| Field Guide to the Apocalypse: Movie Survival Skills for the End of the World | 
 enlarge | Author: Meghann Marco
Creator: Dominic Bugatto
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95
Buy Used: $1.55
You Save: $11.40 (88%)
New (10) Used (30) from $1.55
Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 268981
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.2 x 5.6 x 0.6
ISBN: 068987877X
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.602
EAN: 9780689878770
ASIN: 068987877X
Publication Date: May 31, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More.
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
We're a culture obsessed with the end of the world. Whether it's Y2K or an asteroid barrelling towards us, the fact that 37 percent of species are set to become extinct in the next fifty years due to global warming, or weapons of mass destruction popping up in turkey farms, Armageddon might not be far off. We're also obsessed with movies, and studios have been releasing films about the end of the world as long as Hollywood has been Hollywood. Now, in FIELD GUIDE TO THE APOCALYPSE, Meghann Marco combines two of our favourite obsessions. Using information gleaned from dozens of movies wherein the unthinkable occurs, FIELD GUIDE offers practical advice on a variety of situations that may well occur as the apocalypse draws near. You'll learn how to deal with damn dirty apes (PLANET OF THE APES), how to convert a '70s muscle car to run on bathtub gin (MAD MAX), how to deal with last-woman-on-earth survival guilt, how to identify yourself as a replicant (BLADE RUNNER), and how to synthesise a species-saving vaccine from your own mucus. The FIELD GUIDE couldn't be more timely: According to Blade Runner all living animals will be genetic copies by 2019. Buy FIELD GUIDE now before you have to get copies for all your clones!
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
She "gets it" September 2, 2007
This is one of those books.
Unfortunately shorter than War and Peace or Brothers Kam... , something Cyrillic. We need more from this author. She is someone who has the wit to spit in the eye of the inevitable. You wouldn't mind striking up a conversation with her in the line at the DMV or waiting for that express elevator. If you guys have any pull, use it for our advantage. Please. This is a funny, insightful, useful book.
WWMMD (What Would Mad Max Do)? May 9, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Ahhh, Meghann Marco, it must be crazy being around you. So the end of the world is coming (and it will come) so what are you going to do? Well, Meghann has given us some options based on knowledge-stealing from friends like 'Smart Neighbor', her own research, and piles of Apocalyptic movie scenarios. While this book isn't dead serious, it still provides some actual information yet in a highly humorous way. What do we have to look forward to - here ya go:
1. The False Utopia where culture, emotions, and reproduction are controlled by the 'higher ups'. How to break free of those mind controlling drugs they have you on and how to hide your freewill so as not to be captured and 'recycled'. You learn how to tell if you're in a dreamworld and how to avoid the simulacrum robot replacement initiatives.
Some at the movie references: The Island, Matrix, Clockwork Orange, Total Recall, Equilibrium, Stepdford Wives.
2. Neo-Medieval World and how it's brought about through natural disasters (super volcanos, greenhouse effect, ice age, meteor strike), pandemic disease, robot revolution, and the massive co-ordinated animal uprising. You learn how to survive in the apocalyptic wasteland (remember Wardrobe, Firepower, and proper choosing of your Vehicle & Pet). How to become the Warlord. Converting your car to use alternate fuels. Some notes on zombies and how to make antiserums (along with who to save - hotness is a factor). And dealing with massive severe climate change.
Look to movies like Mad Max, Army of Darkness, 12 Monkeys, Planet of the Apes, Terminator, Back to the Future, 28 Days Later.
3. Advanced Technological Dystopia where computers and robots infest our world. What to do to become the heroic detective and how to talk in 'cityspeak'. Being the Hacker and how to dress for it. How to tell if someone is a replicant and clone (and using it to your advantage). Dealing with extra-terrestrials and robot uprisings.
Movies: Terminator, A.I., Blade Runner, Fifth Element, Mars Attacks, They Live, and Alien.
4. Lastly, Tips for saving the world such as how to stop the alien invasion, assembling the proper ecclectic group of people to save the world, beating the massive co-ordinated animal uprising, and dealing with giant insects and other mutants of radiation.
Meghann gives us a great book to show how we can outwit and survive those less knowledgeable people that live down the street. Big influences on Mad Max movies, Matrix, & Blade Runner. Also, Meghann wants to make sure that anyone should be saving Jude Law for her (or George Clooney as a back up). She appreciates the undefined wisdom of Biff Tannen and most importantly... do whatever you need to to get a 1974 Ford Falcon 'V8 Interceptor' and you will be sure to survive.
 The book lacks what the title says November 11, 2006
1 out of 10 found this review helpful
This book has more of a comical approach to the apocalpse.It was an alright read but don't be looking for good info on survival.This is a fun read not a serious one.
Who ever thought Mad Max could be so funny February 17, 2006
Funny as hell, no funnier than that; funny as underwater basket weaving.
Buy It. Read It. Tell other people about it. November 10, 2005
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
- Do houseguests constantly complain that you've got nothing interesting to read in the bathroom?
- Do friends complain that waiting impatiently for you (as you try on your 33rd successive outfit while getting ready to go to the club) is boring because your coffee table contains only archaic episodes of the Onion and a few unpaid cable bills* to read?
- Are you constantly searching for 'light' or 'light-hearted' reading material that won't suck you in to a plot-line and refuse to let you get to sleep until 5 minutes before your alarm goes off?
Then go get yourself a copy of Field Guide to the Apocalypse : Movie Survival Skills for the End of the World by Meghann Marco
Most of the people I choose to spend my Saturday nights gaming, watching movies or even just socializing with, probably could have written this book. I probably could have written this book. You probably could've written this book** -- if we weren't so busy whiling our time away reading and writing things like Amazon.com Reviews instead, that is.
But thank heavens that Meghann Marco did - because it needed to be written!! And she definitely did it justice. Don't believe me without thumbing through it yourself? Go read a few excerpts.
It's a delightful little book - and if you keep it on the coffeetable, or in the W.C., it will amuse the crap out of you*** - presuming you have at least a passing knowledge of post-apocalyptic movies. It's good to be familiar with just about any Charlton Heston after-the-end-of-civilization movie (Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, Omega Man...) It's good to know any Kubrick 'futurism' movies (2001, Dr. Strangelove...) It's good to know some of the more popular Philip K. Dick stories-adapted-to-movies (Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report...) It doesn't hurt to have a healthy knowledge of the Classic-Sci-Fi-novel-turned-movies (1984, Farenheit 451, Brave New World...) in order to get a lot of the 'Cognoscenti' references. But even if your only familiarity is a brush with Logan's Run or the Matrix movies, you'll still enjoy the humor.
Honestly, this isn't deep, meaningful literature. It's not groundbreaking - there are a slew of similar books on the same subjects, including those limited to just one genre of PA society (zombies, comets, asteroids, wastelands...)
But it IS damn funny... and it's definitely worth the cover price.
Even if nobody else ever stays in your post-apocalypticesque bathroom long enough to find out why you kept laughing so hard while you were in there!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Which at least explains why they aren't watching pay-per-view adult movies on your TV instead
** An assumption, given that you're literate enough to have gotten this far and clearly have at least a passing interest in the subject matter - or you wouldn't have kept reading
*** The pun was unintentional when I wrote it, but then it amused me, so I left it in due to vanity (did you catch that one?) and because I can (can! hah... another bad restroom pun! I crack me up - not as much as the book does, but you get what you pay for)
|
|
|
