10 Books To Have Around When The Internet Goes Down

We have all experienced internet outages from time to time. Depending on your type of usage (from casual e-mail checker to making your livelihood online) it can cause anything from a shrug of the shoulders to a nail biting financial setback. Depending on the cause and length of the disruption, and your level of need for hands on information, the following are ten hardcopy books you might want to have around.

The Bible Or Other Book Of Faith Or Inspiration - Length of outage might be exponential to the increase of usage.

A Homesteading Book - Try something by John Seymour, Helen & Scott Nearing or Gene Logsdon for starters. Thunderstorm outage could make for a brief, but informative, read. An EMP Attack, however, could make this choice one of your better ones.

One Volume Desktop Encyclopedia – You will need something to replace Wikipedia.

All In One Student Dictionary – The kind that includes a thesaurus, etc. Remember, no more spell check.

General History Book – With Google gone you could add this one to the encyclopedia to not only help with pesky trivia questions but also, if you are experiencing a Nuclear Winter, to serve as a primer on how you got into this situation.

Any Book by A Favorite Writer – Loren Eiseley would be my choice. Some of his best work combines a sense of wonder with ponderings on mortality. Handy!

A Classic Novel – War & Peace or Moby Dick might be good choices. Hey, if that internet is going to be out for a long time you will want a long book.

Recipe Book – Find one that offers standard stovetop and oven meals and includes a lengthy section on outdoor cooking.

Road Atlas – With Mapquest out of service how else will you find the way to Aunt Mary’s house, or plan your escape route to the mountains?

Phone Book – With the web down you might need it to call your service provider. In case of more catastrophic reasons for an outage just a few pages torn out of the phonebook at a time can serve as an excellent fire starter.