Nobody was prepared, including the world’s governments. The damage to humanity through loss of life was predictable, yet unfathomable. As nuclear winter spread across the globe, a rapidly cooling climate shocked humanity and many living things to their death. Nuclear Armageddon had become reality and ordinary people were paying the price. In a world without power, the exchange of information was virtually non-existent. A battle for resources was waged, pitting friend against friend and friend against foe. For the Bartlett family, their days on Swan’s Island were untenable.

President John F. Kennedy once said, “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.” Today, a new element has been introduced to the preparations—artificial intelligence. The United States, in its quest to rapidly and effectively defend the nation from a nuclear attack, has incorporated AI into its operation plan of response. But what if the artificial intelligence relied upon by the nation’s decision-makers is wrong? What if AI takes the controls of America’s nuclear response? Might it trigger nuclear war without justification?

America was on the brink of collapse. The fabric of society was torn apart. The economy was in shambles. Ordinary Americans experienced death by a thousand cuts, and it was coming soon to your neighborhood.

Mason Lot is in-house counsel for Poseidon, a major Wall Street firm that serves as a front company for the National Security State. His job pays well and gives him insight into the corrupt shadow government, but it can't help with his problems at home. Mason assumed that the hefty price tag for his daughter’s private school would buy him a pass from the insanity plaguing New York’s public school system. Nevertheless, indoctrinated by propaganda, Wynter wants to transition into being a boy. When Mason refuses to pay for the procedure, Wynter turns to the state for help.

Even before becoming a husband and father, safety had been Shane McDonald’s priority for most of his 45 years. As a nuclear engineer, it’s his responsibility to keep the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant functioning at optimum levels to avoid what protesters fear most: a meltdown. But when a coronal mass ejection from the sun wipes out power across the globe, stopping a nuclear chain reaction is no longer his primary concern.

For young Lexi Broadmoor and her younger brother Travis, the detonation not only took their father away, but their future as well. Now stranded on a highway far from home without any survival skills or someone to protect them, staying alive will depend on their wits, a single bug-out bag, and a map to a stranger’s house.

Lance was just trying to get through his terrible day when his world came crashing down. As the blazing sun dipped below the horizon, Lance's heart pounded in his chest, each beat pushing him closer to the edge of desperation. Racing against time and a cosmic cataclysm, he must navigate a ravaged world after a monstrous CME strikes the Earth, plunging it into darkness. But this harrowing journey is not solely to survive the aftermath; it's a race to reach his injured father in distant Kansas, where a lonely farmhouse stands as their last beacon of hope.

Before the lights went out, Jack Warrant never considered himself a prepper. That was someone on the edge, a conspiracy theorist or a doomsday cultist who had a fatalistic view of the world. He was neither a theorist nor a cultist. He was an optimist. At least that was what he told himself when the darker thoughts creeped into his psyche as he stared at the ceiling in the middle of the night. Whenever he started down the rabbit hole, he always clawed his way back into the sunlight.

Clint Redshaw walks into a port facility meeting expecting an ordinary day arguing about the budget. When the shaking starts, he keeps calm. But as the tremors stretch on and on, the ground rips apart, the dock disintegrates, and chunks of land fall into the Strait. When the quake finally ends, there's only one thing on his mind: his daughter. Mika's singing songs and laughing with a gaggle of other sixteen-year-olds as they climb into the Pacific Northwest mountains for a scout weekend. One minute, it's sunshine and good vibes, and the next, it's screaming and chaos.

Young parents Ethan and Brooke Spencer are on a romantic ski vacation in the Rockies when the lights go out, cars stall, and communications fail. Stranded 800 miles from home, they are desperate to return to their four-year-old twins and are willing to do whatever it takes to reach them.

Normalcy ceased to exist in the United States the instant the Iranian EMP warheads detonated, relieving America of its abundant luxuries and conveniences. The event pushed the entire country backward in a millisecond. Backward in time to the mid-1800s—to a lifestyle that preceded the telephone and, for most, even the use of a simple lightbulb.

An unexpected solar storm destroys the U.S. power grid and unravels civilization. Natasha is a student from a nomadic Siberia tribe trying to adjust to her new life in New York and fit in. But when a cataclysmic solar storm slams into the planet, everything changes. Lightning storms hammer the entire globe, burning and destroying everything they touch. The electrical grid goes down. Fires rage out of control. Cars and electronics quit working. Help isn’t coming. Time is short to flee from a now-lawless city with millions of hungry people who are becoming increasingly desperate.

The Alt Apocalypse is the ground-breaking, genre-bending series from Tom Abrahams. It explores survival under the most extreme circumstances, but with a twist (and no cliff-hangers). This series, which can be listened to in any order, features the same core characters in each complete story. But every book dunks them into a new, alternate apocalypse; a nuclear holocaust, an earthquake, a flood, a wildfire, a hurricane, a plague, and even zombies.

Laurel was working in the ER, stabilizing a patient, when the unthinkable happened. An EMP hit. The power went out. And it never came back. In the devastating aftermath, she must turn South Minneha Hospital into a place of refuge, a beacon of hope for her fellow survivors. But a beacon attracts predators, too… Predators like Arlo Staaf, the brutal leader of a ruthless gang. Desperate to save his dying son, Arlo takes over the hospital and gives Laurel an impossible ultimatum: save his terminally ill boy, or watch everyone she cares for die.

In 2035, in a hopelessly broken world, Nick Ritter is The Posh Prepper, a gifted crisis consultant who sells disaster-survival plans to rich and powerful clients. Haunted by corrupt clients and a tragic past, Nick lives a reclusive life in overcrowded Boston, counting the days until he can retire to his survival ranch in New Zealand. But when he gets an insider tip that a deadly virus is tearing through Boston, Nick has 24 hours to escape the city and flee to New Zealand. He has the perfect survival plan, but there’s just one problem…it doesn’t account for company.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.

Jazz Bashara is a criminal. Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent. Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down.