Book picks similar to
Protocol One by Jacqueline Druga
post-apocalyptic
apocalyptic
apocalypse
sci-fi
The Longest Night
K.M. Fawkes - 2018
History of blood clots? Cholesterol clogging up the old ticker? There was a nanobot for that. It wasn’t cheap of course, and everyone knew that new technology had bugs in it. But hey, why not let the rich be the guinea pigs for once? Fast-forward a year, and the one percent began dying en masse. The nanobots had evolved to view ageing as a virus, and were reacting by shutting down the host. Swathes of the population were infected before the government rolled out a treatment program, in the midst of riots and mass unrest. Meanwhile, the nanomachines spread like wildfire, infecting and killing millions. The remains of the government had no choice but to detonate a series of experimental weapons in the atmosphere, producing an EMP effect which rendered almost all electronic devices on Earth useless. Bradley is one of the survivors. A former veterinarian, he decides to escape his burning city and trek deep into the Maine wilderness, aiming to find his estranged father’s old lake house. Remembering lessons learned and long forgotten, Bradley endeavors to survive on his own terms, and be self-sufficient in a new and altogether darker world. But his struggle has only just begun. This is the first book in K. M. Fawkes’ Enter Darkness series, a post-apocalyptic EMP series of books.
After the Event
T.A. Williams - 2014
He had become a disappointment to his parents, and had become a stranger to the only good things he had ever done in his life, his children. Yet when his long estranged wife loses her battle with cancer he has to return to a family he long abandoned. Then The Event happens. Now Grant has to achieve victory in a war he has never won, in order to bring his family together and protect them from a world that has fallen into chaos. The first step in an epic journey of one family's fight to survive in a world, After The Event.
Struck
Jennifer Bosworth - 2012
She’s survived countless strikes, but her craving to connect to the energy in storms endangers her life and the lives of those around her.Los Angeles, where lightning rarely strikes, is one of the few places Mia feels safe from her addiction. But when an earthquake devastates the city, her haven is transformed into a minefield of chaos and danger. The beaches become massive tent cities. Downtown is a crumbling wasteland, where a traveling party moves to a different empty building each night, the revelers drawn to the destruction by a force they cannot deny. Two warring cults rise to power, and both see Mia as the key to their opposing doomsday prophecies. They believe she has a connection to the freak electrical storm that caused the quake, and to the far more devastating storm that is yet to come.Mia wants to trust the enigmatic and alluring Jeremy when he promises to protect her, but she fears he isn’t who he claims to be. In the end, the passion and power that brought them together could be their downfall. When the final disaster strikes, Mia must risk unleashing the full horror of her strength to save the people she loves, or lose everything.
Contain
Saul W. Tanpepper - 2015
They were wrong.CONTAIN (BUNKER 12 series pilot)Three years. That's how long Finnian Bolles has been hiding inside the impregnable walls of the hydroelectric complex known as Bunker 8. Three years, with enough resources to last him and the other thirty survivors three more.But then a series of disturbing events culminates in the sudden appearance of a stranger at their door. Before he too falls victim to the mysterious sickness known as the Flense, he warns them of a fate more horrific than the one they've been avoiding. But to prevent it, they must leave and seek a place many insist doesn't exist, a mythical twelfth bunker.BUNKER 12 SERIES DESCRIPTIONRequiring no more than the slightest skin-to-skin contact, the Flense spreads with ruthless speed and stealth, decimating mankind before it's even aware of it. The infected are turned into soulless creatures, Wraiths, which wreak destruction upon anyone and anything in their path.Secure inside ten isolated bunkers are Humanity's tattered remains, each working tirelessly to unravel the mystery of the scourge. But the bunkers were never meant to protect forever. In fact, they were never meant to protect at all.CONTAIN is the first book in the new thriller cyberpunk series BUNKER 12.THE FLENSE SERIES DESCRIPTION(BUNKER 12 companion series)Hundreds die in a fiery train crash in northern China. A cargo ship smuggling refugees is lost to calm seas off Libya. Entire villages in Ghana are abandoned overnight.Contracted by a prepper group to investigate a series of seemingly disconnected global tragedies, a young freelance reporter, Angelique d'Enfantine, uncovers a disturbing pattern: each event is preceded by the sudden spread of a mysterious ailment and is followed by the appearance of a man dressed in black and silver who witnesses claim is the devil himself.Each event is more grisly than the last. As the risk to her life grows, Angel begins to doubt that the tragedies are harbingers of an impending biblical catastrophe, but rather practice runs conducted by a fanatical organization bent on global annihilation. Could her sponsors be using her to advance their own paranoid agenda?
The Rain
Joseph A. Turkot - 2013
The thing that always comes to mind first isn’t the how though, it’s the how much. Russell still does the math too: 15, 5,400, and 8,550. 15 inches a day, 5,400 a year, and 8,550 feet since the start. We have no idea if it’s accurate. But it’s important to think about it, he says, because it reminds us to keep moving. I’m Tanner. Russell plucked me from the rain when I was two. Fourteen years ago we left Philadelphia. As the water rose, we moved west, hoping the elevation would keep us warm and dry. Pittsburg, Indianapolis, Sioux Falls, Rapid City. Now we’re stranded on the islands in Wyoming. Russell thinks they used to be the Bighorn mountains. But we can’t go back now. There’s no warm and there’s no dry anymore. Just a rumor about a place where it isn't raining. So we’re going to try to make it—520 miles south to Leadville. But we can’t drift east, the Great Plains have become waterspout alley, a raging tomb of moving water. Together we push on, surviving, heading to Leadville. But something is wrong with him now. He says it’s nothing. But his breathing doesn’t sound that way. Exposure, pruned hands, and infection. But since, Rapid City, it’s the face eaters too. And the crack in the canoe that’s growing. And the ice I think I see on the water. Russell thinks it’s my imagination. We cling to the last strips of the veneer. And each other.
The Return Man
V.M. Zito - 2012
The east remains a safe haven. The west has become a ravaged wilderness, known by survivors as the Evacuated States. It is here that Henry Marco makes his living. Hired by grieving relatives, he tracks down the dead and delivers peace.Now Homeland Security wants Marco for a mission unlike any other. He must return to California, where the apocalypse began. Where a secret is hidden. And where his own tragic past waits to punish him again.But in the wastelands of America, you never know who - or what - is watching you.
Planet Urth
Jennifer Martucci - 2013
The planet has been battered by war, its inhabitants plagued by disease and death. Few humans survived and remained unaffected. Most changed dramatically and evolved into something else entirely. Irrevocable alterations caused by chemical warfare have created a new species. North America is in ruins and has been overtaken. Humanity has fallen at the hands of mutants known as Urthmen. Seventeen year-old Avery is alive and unchanged. But she has not been immune to the harshness of the new world. She has lived on the run for much of her life, in terror. After losing her father, Avery is the sole guardian of her eight-year-old sister, June. Avery is now charged with June’s safety as well as her own, a nearly impossible task.Forced to hide deep in the forest and away from the cities overrun by Urthmen, Avery and her sister are constantly hunted. Danger awaits them at every turn. They fear they are the only human beings left, that they are the last of their kind. But are they truly alone?Find out in this raw and rousing first installment of the Planet Urth series.
Surviving Passion
Maia Underwood - 2010
Every day is a lone struggle for survival in the wilderness, more than a decade after the fall of modern civilization. No longer subject to law, order, or the social norms of its domestic past, the primal nature of man has reared its head with alarming swiftness. From her own frightening experiences, Selena has learned just how dangerous men are. Now, she avoids them at all costs, mastering a thoroughly elusive lifestyle, until she meets her match. After a chance encounter, Selena's life is swept on a tide of chaotic involvement with Dan, an intense but disciplined leader who clashes with her approach to survival on every level. Through her wild experiences with this frightening but captivating man, Selena learns that the human animal loves as passionately as it kills.Note: This novel is more dramatic, suspenseful and adventurous than sweet, loving and traditional.Caution: Contains explicit sex scenes.
The Young World
Chris Weitz - 2014
Jefferson, the reluctant leader of the Washington Square tribe, and Donna, the girl he's secretly in love with, have carved out a precarious existence among the chaos. But when a fellow tribe member discovers a clue that may hold the cure for the Sickness, five teens set out on a life-altering road trip, exchanging gunfire with enemy gangs, escaping cults and militias, braving the wilds of the subway - all in order to save humankind.
Rift
Andreas Christensen - 2014
The RIFT Saga begins here.In the ruins of what was once North America lays the Covenant, a nation forged by the iron will of the Moon people, who descended from their dusty refuge on the Moon after the Fall. The Moon people are wealthy, ruled by a strong government who protects its citizens from the dangers from outside their borders. Their greatest achievement is having learned the secret of immortality, and every citizen has the opportunity to live nearly forever if they choose to, a life of riches and abundance.The English are the descendants of the original inhabitants of this place, and they live very different lives from that of the Moon people. They only live to serve the greater good, and citizenship is something few have the opportunity to earn. At the age of fifty all non-citizens are subjected to mandatory euthanasia. In order to maintain a sustainable society, they are told.Every year a number of girls and boys at the age of eighteen are selected for Service to the State. The brightest and most talented are sent to become Students. The strong, the fighters and the athletes become Janissaries, a band of soldiers protecting the northern border from the enemies of the Covenant. The Wardens, a secretive organization known to operate far to the west, near the Rift, which makes up the border to the wastelands, sometimes choses one or two initiates, but nobody knows what becomes of them. And then there is the Corpus, where the whip rules and backs are bent.Those who complete their Service, may become citizens. And although they will never be equal to the Moon people, they will have access to all the riches and opportunities granted by the Covenant leadership to its citizens.As Sue is nearing Selection Day, she secretly hopes to be chosen, despite having to leave her mother and brother behind. She doesn't crave glory or wealth though. A man or woman with citizen status can do a lot of good, and although few return to their home towns, Sue hopes to return to give her family a better life on the other side of Service.But the Covenant is rotten to the core, and as she begins to learn its secrets, Sue must question everything she has always taken for granted. Soon she will find herself in dire peril, for she has seen the truth and there will be no turning back after that...This science fiction dystopian trilogy is set more than two centuries after the events of Exodus, in a future dystopian society forged from the ashes of global disaster."Mr. Christensen has absolutely found his genre, and I hope he keeps the stories coming!"
Ashfall
Mike Mullin - 2011
Most people don't know it's there. The caldera is so large that it can only be seen from a plane or satellite. It just could be overdue for an eruption, which would change the landscape and climate of our planet.For Alex, being left alone for the weekend means having the freedom to play computer games and hang out with his friends without hassle from his mother. Then the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, plunging his hometown into a nightmare of darkness, ash, and violence. Alex begins a harrowing trek to search for his family and finds help in Darla, a travel partner he meets along the way. Together they must find the strength and skills to survive and outlast an epic disaster.
Pandemic: The Beginning
Christine Kersey - 2019
It doesn't take long for society to collapse, but when surviving neighbors band together, hope is restored.That hope is swiftly shattered when a rogue element forms, requiring food in exchange for security and medical services. The Bronsons refuse, but when the group takes over the neighborhood, they demand the Bronsons join or face deadly consequences. With their lives at stake, they must make a decision: give in or take a stand.
Ashes
Ilsa J. Bick - 2011
. .An electromagnetic pulse flashes across the sky, destroying every electronic device, wiping out every computerized system, and killing billions.Alex hiked into the woods to say good-bye to her dead parents and her personal demons. Now desperate to find out what happened after the pulse crushes her to the ground, Alex meets up with Tom—a young soldier—and Ellie, a girl whose grandfather was killed by the EMP.For this improvised family and the others who are spared, it’s now a question of who can be trusted and who is no longer human.Author Ilsa J. Bick crafts a terrifying and thrilling post-apocalyptic novel about a world that could become ours at any moment, where those left standing must learn what it means not just to survive, but to live amidst the devastation.
New World Rising
Jennifer Wilson - 2014
Since witnessing her parents' murders at the age of eleven, Phoenix's only purpose in life has been to uphold her mother's dying words - to be strong and survive. But surviving outside of The Walls - outside of The Sanctuary - is more like a drawn-out death sentence. A cruel and ruthless city, Tartarus is run by the Tribes whose motto is simple, "Join or die." Refusing to join and determined to live, Phoenix fights to survive in this savage world. But who can she trust, when no one can be trusted? Not even herself... The first of a trilogy, New World Rising is an epic tale of survival, instinct, trauma, and the extraordinary power of human connection."Savage and raw, Jennifer Wilson pulls no punches in this blood tingling dystopian." Kimberly Derting, award-winning author of The Pledge Trilogy
The Rising
Brian Keene - 2003
The dead are returning to life, intelligent, determined…and very hungry. Escape seems impossible for Jim Thurmond, one of the few left alive in this nightmare world. But Jim’s young son is also alive and in grave danger hundreds of miles away. Despite astronomical odds, Jim vows to find him—or die trying.Joined by an elderly preacher, a guilt-ridden scientist and an ex-prostitute, Jim sets out on a cross-country rescue mission. Together they must battle both the living and the living dead…and the even greater evil that awaits them at the end of their journey.