Customer comments on this selection.
Excellent Choice! I purchased this book as a gift for a friend, and it was exactly what I was looking for! This book offers solutions to travel nightmares, very handy for an inexperienced traveler.
A Series of Worst-Case Events Two things you should know when considering whether to buy this book:
1. When they say worst-case scenario, they really mean worst-case scenario. It advertises advice on surviving volcanic eruption, not on losing your travelers' checks.
2. It is humor. On page 48, they advise "earplugs are useful when you want to sleep in a battle zone" which leads into the next section "How To Survive A Hostage Situation." This section, by the way is a kind of awkward read post-9/11 (as near as I can tell, the book has not been revised since before that event or at all). They also recommend that you wave for help when stuck inside the trunk of a car, so there you go.
If you are looking for humor, I recommend it. If you are looking for something more serious in the light of New York, Madrid, London, Thailand/India/Sri Lanka, New Orleans, etc. in the past five years, you will need to look elsewhere or you will be disappointed.
Hilarious and handy This book was so funny! My friend and i have nothing better to do, so we went and sat there and read all of the worst case scenario book, and i must say, this one was bomb! i loved the emergency phrases in the back, such as: Why is the water brown/green/yellow?
I actually learned something from this book too. The section on how to stop a thief and how to survive a mugging are good for anyone to learn, not just travelers!
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Light reading for the adventurous tourist This book, like the others in the series, is tongue in cheek. Some of the advice and scenarios are practical but others are completely in fun. My favourite was the advice of what to do if you are threatened with alien abduction. You should not let your mind give in to them. In other words, stop hallucinating and you will be just fine. :)
At the same time some of the advice is practical and could be useful to everyone, not just travellers. For example it gives advice on what to do if your car ends up hanging over the edge of a cliff. While not an everyday occurrence it almost happened to a friend of mine during a snowstorm on the highway.
Not up to past standards The "Worst Case Scenario" people are really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Surviving an airplane crash and building a snow shelter can be important! But encountering aliens, while offering both an extreme scenario and a touch of humor, isn't specifically travel-related. The same with a plummeting elevator, or losing someone who's tailing you. On the other hand, they've omitted some important items, like getting arrested in a foreign country, or losing your passport. This series is losing steam.
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