Book picks similar to
Ice Fall by Michael Edelson
post-apocalyptic
thriller
sci-fi
mystery
The Pulse: An EMP Prepper Survival Tale
Roger Hayden - 2015
On a seemingly normal Monday morning, a power outage occurs across the entire state of Georgia. A massive breakdown of vehicles and communications follows, sending towns and cities into chaos. The sweeping blackout is unlike anything ever seen, but that's not all. Without access to news, there is no information on the mysterious phenomenon. Rumors of a looming war spreads, creating further panic. Only one weapon could be capable of such stealth destruction: an electromagnetic pulse (EMP),and on that Monday, the nightmarish cold war scenario becomes a chilling reality. Meanwhile, a group of preppers band together amidst the chaos to seek safety at a rural bug-out house. But getting there won’t be easy in this exciting thriller of a dark future where society is on the brink, and no one is safe.
The Gone-Away World
Nick Harkaway - 2008
Gonzo Lubitsch, professional hero and troubleshooter, is hired to put it out, but there's more to the fire, and the Pipe itself, than meets the eye. The job will take Gonzo and his best friend, our narrator, back to their own beginnings.
Immobility
Brian Evenson - 2012
And you're paralyzed from the waist down apparently, but you don't remember that either.A man claiming to be your friend tells you your services are required. Something crucial has been stolen, but what he tells you about it doesn't quite add up. You've got to get it back or something bad is going to happen. And you've got to get it back fast, so they can freeze you again before your own time runs out.Before you know it, you're being carried through a ruined landscape on the backs of two men in hazard suits who don't seem anything like you at all, heading toward something you don't understand that may well end up being the death of you.Welcome to the life of Josef Horkai….
Divided: Silent Nation Book One
Joseph Coley - 2019
His grandmother died, his ex-fiancee was trying to take his daughter away, the snow was coming down, and he was on his way back from Ohio. Then something happened. As he stops at a rest stop in northwest Ohio, the power goes out. Not just the lights, but the cars, phones, and everything else that made up everyday life. He has to get home, and he has no idea how to do it. Stuck in the snow amid a cataclysmic event that no one can precisely explain, he sets out to help not only himself, but those trapped with him. He has to find a way to travel the 300+ miles home, and he needs to do it fast. His family at home is saddled with problems of their own, and they have no way of knowing what has happened to him. As the world slowly spirals out of control, Ben must try to make it home...or die trying. From the bestselling author of the Six Feet From Hell and Refuge From the Dead series comes a realistic take on TEOTWAWKI - the end of the world as we know it. No zombies this time, just pure survival.
12.21
Dustin Thomason - 2012
. . Deep in the jungles of Central America, an indigenous man discovers a unique and priceless treasure - a beautifully painted codex that has survived for centuries within the ruins of an undiscovered ancient Maya city. Knowing that this rare artifact could be worth millions, the looter smuggles it into the US - but unbeknownst to him, he has brought something far more dangerous across the border . . . In the first week of December 2012, the codex finds its way into the hands of the Antiquities Curator of the Getty Museum, Chel Manu, the world authority on ancient Mayan inscriptions. She is torn between her duty to alert the authorities and this once in a lifetime chance to translate the codex herself.Meanwhile - in an LA hospital, an unidentified man is dying of Fatal Insomnia, a rare and highly infectious neurological disease. The patient speaks only in a garbled Mayan dialect - and Chel Manu is called in to interpret his dying words . . . just as countless others in the city begin to show signs of infection. Within days the world seems to be unravelling, hurtling towards the prophesied apocalypse . . . and deciphering the codex is the only hope for humanity . . .
Annihilation
Jeff VanderMeer - 2014
Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.
Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End
Manel Loureiro - 2007
But he never expected that his anonymous blog would ultimately record humanity’s last days.The end of the world has begun…Governments scramble to stop the zombie virus, people panic, so-called “Safe Havens” are established, the world erupts into chaos; soon it’s every man, woman, and child for themselves. Armed only with makeshift weapons and the will to live, a lone survivor will give mankind one last chance against…Apocalypse Z
Surviving the Fall Box Set: The Complete Surviving the Fall Series - Books 1-12
Mike Kraus - 2019
When a devastating attack cripples and destroys every Internet-connected device in the country, Rick Waters is stranded a thousand miles from his wife, Dianne, and their children. To get back home he'll have to draw on every survival instinct he has as he's pulled into a web of lies and conspiracy that threaten not just his survival but that of the entire world. Surviving the Fall is a thrilling post-apocalyptic episodic series that focuses on Rick and Dianne Waters and how they each deal with the apocalypse. Stranded across the country away from his family, Rick must travel from California to Virginia to reunite with his wife and children, all while struggling to comprehend and deal with the horrors along the way. At home with her three children when she experiences the beginning of the end in a dramatic and deadly fashion, Dianne Waters has experience as a prepper and survivalist, but not even years of training and preparation have readied her for the darkness that comes with the end of the world. Now she must draw upon those skills to protect her loved ones and fight back against those who come against her and her family. This complete edition of Surviving the Fall features all twelve books in the series, each one full of action, suspense and drama as Rick and Dianne struggle to survive the end of days.
Bloodring
Faith Hunter - 2006
The world didn't end. And the appearance of seraphs heralded three plagues and a devastating war between the forces of good and evil. More than a hundred years later, the earth has plunged into an ice age, and seraphs and demons fight a never-ending battle while religious strife rages among the surviving humans.Thorn St. Croix is no ordinary neomage. All the others of her kind, mages who can twist leftover creation energy to their will, were gathered together into Enclaves long ago. There, they live in luxurious confinement, isolated from humans and exploited for their magic. When Thorn's powers nearly drive her insane, she escapes - and lives as a fugitive, disguised as a human, channeling her gifts for war into stone-magery and the pacific tasks of jewelry making. But when Thaddeus Bartholomew, a dangerously attractive policeman, shows up on her doorstep and accuses her of kidnapping her ex-husband, she retrieves her weapons and risks revealing her identity to find him. And for Thorn, the punishment for revelation is death....
Frontier Justice
Arthur T. Bradley - 2013
Governments have collapsed. Cities have become graveyards filled with unspeakable horror. People have resorted to scavenging from the dead, or taking from the living. The entire industrialized world has become a wasteland of abandoned cars, decaying bodies, and feral animals. To stay alive, U.S. Deputy Marshal Mason Raines must forage for food, water, and gasoline while outgunning those who seek to take advantage of the apocalyptic anarchy. Together with his giant Irish wolfhound, Bowie, he aligns with survivors of the town of Boone in a life and death struggle against a gang of violent criminals. With each deadly encounter, Mason is forced to accept his place as one of the nation's few remaining lawmen. In a world now populated by escaped convicts, paranoid mutants, and government hit squads, his only hope to save the townspeople is to enforce his own brand of frontier justice.
Tracer
Rob Boffard - 2015
It's broken, rusted, falling apart. We've wrecked our planet, and now we have to live with the consequences: a new home that's dirty, overcrowded and inescapable.What's more, there's a madman hiding on the station. He's about to unleash chaos. And when he does, there'll be nowhere left to run.In space, every second counts. Who said nobody could hear you scream?
Metro 2033
Dmitry Glukhovsky - 2002
The world has been reduced to rubble. Humanity is nearly extinct. The half-destroyed cities have become uninhabitable through radiation. Beyond their boundaries, they say, lie endless burned-out deserts and the remains of splintered forests. Survivors still remember the past greatness of humankind. But the last remains of civilisation have already become a distant memory, the stuff of myth and legend. More than 20 years have passed since the last plane took off from the earth. Rusted railways lead into emptiness. The ether is void and the airwaves echo to a soulless howling where previously the frequencies were full of news from Tokyo, New York, Buenos Aires. Man has handed over stewardship of the earth to new life-forms. Mutated by radiation, they are better adapted to the new world. Man's time is over. A few score thousand survivors live on, not knowing whether they are the only ones left on earth. They live in the Moscow Metro - the biggest air-raid shelter ever built. It is humanity's last refuge. Stations have become mini-statelets, their people uniting around ideas, religions, water-filters - or the simple need to repulse an enemy incursion. It is a world without a tomorrow, with no room for dreams, plans, hopes. Feelings have given way to instinct - the most important of which is survival. Survival at any price. VDNKh is the northernmost inhabited station on its line. It was one of the Metro's best stations and still remains secure. But now a new and terrible threat has appeared. Artyom, a young man living in VDNKh, is given the task of penetrating to the heart of the Metro, to the legendary Polis, to alert everyone to the awful danger and to get help. He holds the future of his native station in his hands, the whole Metro - and maybe the whole of humanity.
Going Home
A. American - 2012
Then to begin the ruination of your much anticipated weekend the grating tone of the Emergency Alert System flashes over the radio, then promptly dies.This is the beginning of a 250 mile odyssey for Morgan Carter. Morgan works on the road and finds himself far from home when his car dies, as well as his Blackberry and every other piece of electronics he has. With no idea what has occurred he reluctantly finds himself on shanks’ mare carrying that ridiculous pack that everyone made fun of him for keeping in the car. Morgan has to find his way across the state of Florida, from Tallahassee to the heart of the state in Lake County.Along his way he has to seek out food, water and shelter where he can, not to mention keeping himself from being killed by any number of now scared and desperate people. During his travels he will try and help where he can, but that can turn out to be a costly mistake. We live in a wonderfully modern society where anything we want is a mouse click away. The lights come on with the flip of a switch and even a child can turn on the faucet at the sink and water always comes out. But what if it all went away?Could you face what Morgan faces, could you make the decisions he has to make? Life and sometimes death in the blink of an eye, could you do it?
Collapse
Richard Stephenson - 2012
With the American people deep in The Second Great Depression and two of the most powerful hurricanes on record to contend with, the United States is in no condition to deal with hidden terrorists on its soil, maniacal politicians, and the most formidable military threat the world has seen since the Third Reich. This is the story of three men from three very different walks of life: Howard Beck, the world's richest man, also diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome; Richard Dupree, ex-Navy SEAL turned escaped convict; and Maxwell Harris, a crippled, burned-out chief of police of a small Texas town. At first, they must overcome their own struggles and fight for their survival against impossible odds. In the end, the unlikely trio must band together to save their beloved country from COLLAPSE. Empires topple. Nations crumble. Civilization is fragile. In 2027, America will fall.
ARC
Devon C. Ford - 2018
Amir Weatherby has the world in his hands, quite literally. When his company discovers an asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth, they decide to keep the news quiet and find a way to survive the impending apocalypse themselves. Secret projects begin with the intent of preventing the world going the same way as the dinosaurs. Three top-secret sites are developed, each designed to hold a small pocket of the human race safe until after impact. It just so happens that one of these sites is in space. The former ISS is transformed intoa safe haven called the ARC, the Automated Resettlement and Repopulation Cryostation, where some of the world’s greatest scientific minds will sleep through the whole show. But events unfold in ways that couldn’t have been predicted, and when they arrive back on Earth there is a whole new disaster waiting for them.