James Wesley Rawles

James Wesley Rawles (born 1960) is an American author, former U.S. Army Intelligence officer, and survival retreat consultant.

Rawles describes himself as a Constitutionalist Christian libertarian.

He presents his name as "James Wesley, Rawles", using a comma to differentiate between the names that belong to him, and that which belongs to his family.

James Wesley, Rawles was born James Wesley Rawles in California in 1960 and attended local public schools.

He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from San Jose State University.

Rawles worked as an associate editor and regional editor (Western U.S.) with Defense Electronics magazine in the late 1980s and early 1990s Concurrently he was managing editor of The International Countermeasures Handbook.

From 1984 to 1993, he served as a United States Army Military Intelligence officer.

He resigned his commission as a U.S. Army Captain immediately after Bill Clinton was inaugurated as President of the United States.

He worked as a technical writer through most of the 1990s with a variety of electronics and software companies, including Oracle Corporation.

The book was originally released in draft form as shareware under the title "Triple Ought" in the early 1990s.

It was released in a printed edition by Huntington House.

After Huntington House went out of business, the book was re-released by Xlibris, a "print on demand" publisher.

In 2005, he began blogging full-time.

Rawles is now a freelance writer, blogger, and survival retreat consultant.

He is the author of the survivalist novel Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse, and the senior editor of SurvivalBlog.com, a blog on survival and preparedness topics.

Rawles has seven books in print that are sold by mainstream booksellers: five novels and two nonfiction survival books.

Starting in April 2009, the novel was published in a paperback edition by Ulysses Press.

In early April 2009, shortly after its release, it was ranked number 6 in Amazon.com's overall book sales rankings, but fell to number 33 a week later.

By the end of the month it had fallen to number 98.

The book's initial popularity caught librarians unprepared because it was considered a niche title and had not been reviewed by the major book review publications.

Librarians then scrambled to purchase copies of the book to meet the unanticipated demand.

The popularity of the first book spawned four sequels: Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse, Founders: A Novel of the Coming Collapse, Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse, and Liberators: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse.

His How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times is a non-fiction book drawn primarily from his posts on SurvivalBlog.com.

The book was described as "The preppers' Bible", by a Reuters journalist.

His blog addresses preparing for the multitude of possible threats toward society.

Rawles describes how to prepare against a post-disaster society that suffers looting, armed violence and food shortages.

He recommends establishing rural safe havens at least 300 miles from the nearest major city, financial planning for a future barter-based economy, water retrieval and purification, food production and storage, security and self-defense techniques and strategies.

The book received a mixed review from the New York Journal of Books:

"For a neutral assessment of the huge efforts put in by the author, the book has its own strengths and weaknesses; however, the former outweigh the latter by a huge margin. One of its crystal clear strengths is the author's obsession with precision and a clinical eye for relevant details."

It received a favorable book review on the weblog of Orville R. Weyrich Jr. A summary of the book was published in the March–April 2010 issue of The Futurist magazine, under the headline: "Alarmingly Practical Advice For Doomsday."

Syndicated radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy interviewed Rawles and said that his book "posits a collapse of civilization."

When Rawles was interviewed by radio host Laura Ingraham, she described the book as going "through point-by-point the basics of being prepared and heightening your chances of surviving some type of major crisis."

Ingraham said that "there is a thin line between order and total anarchy in time of a crisis, when peoples' lives are on the line—and all the niceties and the rules go out the door."

How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It has 14 chapters and three appendices, 336 pages, ISBN 978-0-452-29583-4.

His second nonfiction book, titled Tools for Survival, was published in late 2014.

His novels tend to be heavy on acronyms and technical jargon, while his non-fiction books concentrate on practical skills and tools.

In the Acknowledgments note to his book Tools For Survival, Rawles credits David Brin, Algis Budrys, Tom Clancy, Bruce D. Clayton, Colonel Jeff Cooper, Frederick Forsyth, Pat Frank, Gordon Dickson, Friedrich Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Ernest Hemingway, Dean Ing, Elmer Keith, Herbert W. McBride, Ludwig von Mises, Dr. Gary North, Arthur W. Pink, John Piper, Jerry Pournelle, Ayn Rand, Lew Rockwell, Murray Rothbard, George R. Stewart and Mel Tappan as influential to his writing.

In his blog, Rawles also cites Robert A. Heinlein as an influence, and often quotes him.

His first novel was a work of speculative fiction set in a near future including hyperinflation and socioeconomic collapse.

Initially titled: Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse, and later re-titled: Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse.