Book Review: Our End Of The Lake by Ron Foster

This book is about a middle aged “prepper” who finds himself far from home after a natural EMP (Carrington event, sun spots, whatever). He is at a job interview in Atlanta when the whole event kicks off. The main character and his new boss (just got hired by FEMA) are busy getting day drunk to celebrate his new employment. He walks out of Atlanta towards the west with the bouncer from the bar. The main character immediately begins acquiring things that do not belong to him to aid in his survival and trip west.


Along the way they meet some people and get drunk with them. He gets a nice little .380 by trading money  he knows is worthless that he acquired from an abandoned semi with the bouncers relative. Shortly therafter he gets an operational tractor in a lopsided deal and uses it to drive the rest of the way home. He makes it home to Montgomery and his elderly mother, ex girlfriend (who is a “prepper” and they are still close) and some other acquaintances. After some hanging out and drinking they decide that they need to bug out because things are going to get dangerous. They proceed to “acquire” a couple more operational vehicles and then the whole tribe heads out to some lake.

They get there and via a friend he made earlier and take over a few houses for everybody to live in. After getting to the lake they begin systematically searching empty homes for food, booze and things that they can use. They also find a couple boats to use. Along the way they start making friends and setting up some means of trade and small scale commerce. Anyway now I will get to the usual format.

The Good: It was a fun easy read. Also this is a pretty nice vision of a genuine end of the world event. Travel around, take whatever you want and get drunk pretty much every day.  This book portrayed people in a generally positive light which is sort of refreshing. Many survival type books have everyone turn into rapist cannibal murderers if the power goes out for an hour. On the other hand as far as I recall not a single bad thing happened in the book, not violent conflict or even a nasty accident or illness which probably isn't realistic either.

Also the book did have some pretty good primitive living/ outdoor skills stuff. It was sort of awkwardly placed in and at some points it seemed like 2 pages of a random wilderness survival book were accidentally inserted to the story but it was good none the less. I have a good background in this stuff and I picked up a thing or two.

The Bad:  A significant part of the book was pretty much a big cocktail party. It didn’t really have a purpose in the book. To a certain degree this is a reflection of actual human behavior like hurricane parties and such and I didn’t really mind it. I’ve passed more than one power outage with a few folks and a case of beer. However to me about the time when I pull a rifle out of the safe because the world is going crazy it is time for the party to slow down or stop entirely. At one point he is visiting a guy and they have a few beers. He goes to leave and the guy hands him a cold 6 pack for the rest of the trip. Not saying I have always been perfectly responsible in that regard but it was a bit much. While they are could represent human behaviors as folks do tend to hit the bottle or whatever more in bad time,  getting hammered every night and driving drunk are not the best plans for a survival situation.

Also the author seems to have a need to use the words “prepper” and “72 hour bag” a lot. I wish I had a count on how many times each phrase was used. It wasn’t quite The Survivalist style needless repetition but it did get old.

The Ugly: We could debate looting vs. scavenging or whatever (got a post brewing about that) but in any case they take everything they want which isn’t nailed down or guarded. In any case as Suburban Survivalist said “there is enough looting to make Jim Rawles go catatonic.” According to the main character everything that they find is abandoned and they need it so it is free game. At one point they break into an auto shop to take a pair of ATV’s. 

Also they went to a “bug out” to a place where they did not own any property or have an agreement with those who did. They made an agreement (one in a long series of totally lopsided, convenient and essential agreements in this book) with a homeowner once they got there but I am not sure if they planned to just squat or what the exact deal was.  It could have been touched on and I missed it but they occupied several houses which they did not own or compensate the conveniently absent owners for.

 In any case after they occupy a few houses at the lake they begin systematically breaking into and searching every empty house for things they can use. In fairness to the characters in the book they seem to not have a problem with other folks taking everything that isn’t nailed down so at least they are not hypocrites which is good. Regardless of ones take on looting vs. scavenging in real life I suspect a group of people who acted that way could realistically face some consequences.

Conclusion: For the price of $8ish I thought it was a decent value for my entertainment dollar. I got a few things out of it and it provoked some ideas. I don’t regret reading it but doubt I will read it again.