The Flame — How to Survive the Next World War is the first full volume of The Beating of War Drums trilogy, providing families with a clear and practical roadmap for enduring the unimaginable. Where Ground Zero explains why global war is increasingly likely, The Flame teaches readers how to survive it, physically, emotionally, and morally. This book transforms the overwhelming concept of “wartime readiness” into a series of achievable, structured actions any household can follow, regardless of income, location, or prior experience. It is a guide to protecting your loved ones when systems fail, when fear spreads, and when decisions must be made quickly and with clarity.

Through step-by-step preparedness planning, historical lessons, emergency checklists, and real-world crisis scenarios, The Flame helps readers understand the essentials of family survival: securing shelter, water, food, medicine, communication, and personal safety when infrastructure collapses. The book also emphasizes mental resilience, the discipline, calm, cooperation, and moral grounding needed to navigate chaos without losing the humanity that keeps families strong. Readers learn not only what to store and how to prepare, but how to think, organize, and respond with confidence during high-stress situations.

Above all, The Flame is a book about responsibility and hope. It is not written to instill fear, but to give families the power of foresight and the dignity of preparedness. It invites readers to see readiness as an act of love, something done not out of panic, but out of care for those who depend on us. This first book lights the way forward, teaching the foundational skills that will carry families through hardship and prepare them for the choices, challenges, and possibilities explored in the volumes that follow.

I am an American. Our department of defense is now called the department of War.  It seems clear to me then that even countries are hearing the beating of War drums. War and peace are two completely different strategies of survival. My family and I must plan for the survival of WAR.

I have concluded the next war will be a WORLDWIDE WAR. It will not be a local skirmish, it will be a divide of the world, nation against nation, an all-out atrocious war. If we are to survive, how do we go about that, what act of duty do we have to survive? And what act of action must prevail? What living constraints will be placed on me and my family? That is what this book is about. How then shall we live?

What if the next world war does not come with warning sirens and declarations, but with sudden blackouts, broken supply chains, and neighbors turning desperate?

History tells us that world wars do not belong to the past. They are part of the human story: repeating, reshaping, returning. The twentieth century gave us trenches, firebombed cities, and mushroom clouds. The twenty-first century has given us cyberwarfare, biological threats, and nations bristling with weapons of extinction. To pretend it cannot happen again is dangerous.

This book is not written for soldiers or governments. It is written for ordinary people, for families, neighbors, students, and elders who may one day find themselves cut off, cold, and frightened in a world at war

This book started as my personal plan to keep my family safe. It has turned into a book to keep your family safe. It is not a book of fear, but of resilience. It will not promise you invincibility. No book can. But it will give you tools, lessons, and stories that may keep you alive, human; when the world around you fall’s apart.

I have drawn from history, from the testimonies of survivors, from modern conflicts, and from the timeless wisdom of communities that endured famine, siege, and disaster. Their voices echo through these pages.

You will learn how to prepare, how to endure, and perhaps most importantly, how to rebuild. Because surviving a world war is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of what comes after.

My hope is that you will never need the pages that follow. That this book will sit on a shelf as a reminder of what could have been, not what was. But if the unthinkable comes, I hope these words will give you strength, guidance, and courage.

Survival is not just about outlasting destruction. It is about carrying forward the light of humanity through the darkest night; so that, when dawn comes, we can build again.

This trilogy was born from a single question: What do we do if the unthinkable happens? For most of human history, war has been a recurring fire. Sometimes it has burned villages, sometimes nations, and sometimes the entire world. Each time, people swore never again. And yet, the seeds of conflict have always been planted anew.

I did not write these books as prophecy. I wrote them as preparation, reflection, and hope. Each volume answers a different facet of the question of war. 

Book One: How to Survive the Next World War

What if the fire comes? How do we endure hunger, thirst, fear, and despair? This book is a manual, a collection of hard knowledge for those who may one day face collapse.

Book Two: Stories of Survival and Collapse

What does survival feel like? How do choices shape fate? This book tells the story of one family, the Desais, in two mirrors: one where wisdom is heeded, and one where it is not. Through them, we walk inside the human heart of survival.

Book Three: How Not to Have War

How do we prevent the fire altogether? This book turns to prevention, exploring the seeds of conflict and the counter-seeds of peace. It draws on the wisdom of traditions, philosophies, and communities showing how forgiveness, fairness, balance, foresight, and empathy can weave a fabric strong enough to resist tearing.

Together, these books trace a path:

· From enduring, to imagining, to preventing.

· From manual, to mirror, to map.

· From the fire itself to the story of fire, to the field where seeds are planted or pulled.

The trilogy does not deny that war is possible, even likely. But it insists that survival is possible, that choices matter, and that peace is not an accident.

This journey ends not on my page but in your hands. You are not only the reader, but the inheritor of this question.

Will you/we endure war if it comes?

Will you/we make choices that lead to survival instead of collapse?

Will you/we plant seeds of peace before the fire begins?

The answers lie not in these books alone, but in what you choose to do after closing them.

This trilogy is not prophecy. It is not doctrine. It is invitation.

To prepare.

To imagine.

To prevent.

The field is before us. The seeds are in our hands.

The future is still unwritten.

A reflection on why this book exists; not to spread fear, but to prepare. War is not inevitable, but if it comes, survival will depend on foresight, resilience, and community.

An overview of the threats humanity faces: nuclear conflict, climate stress, collapse of supply chains. This chapter frames survival not as paranoia, but as practical responsibility.

1. Food: Growing, Storing, Rationing in Scarcity

2. How to secure calories when supply chains fail: preserving dry goods, sprouting seeds indoors, foraging basics, small-scale gardening, and the discipline of rationing.

1. Lessons from World War II, the Cold War, and modern conflicts

2. Understanding today’s threats: nuclear, cyber, biological, and economic warfare

3. The psychology of denial vs. preparedness

1. Water: Finding, Purifying, and Conserving

Methods for locating water sources, filtering and boiling, improvising with natural materials, and conserving every drop. The hierarchy of survival begins with water.

2. Shelter: Safety from Ruin

The principles of protection: insulation, defense, and concealment. How to fortify existing structures, improvise in the wild, and create safe communal spaces.

3. Heat and Light: Fire, Fuel, and Energy in a Darkened World

Fire-making techniques, storing fuel, alternative light sources, and staying warm without electricity. Fire as warmth, cooking, protection and a symbol of hope.

4. Medicine: Health, Injury, and Improvisation

First aid skills, building a field medical kit, treating infections with improvised tools, and understanding the mental health challenges of collapse. The thin line between life and death in survival is often medical.

5. Tools and Skills: Craft, Repair, and Resourcefulness

Essential tools for survival and the knowledge to use them. Includes knot-tying, sewing, carpentry, and repair. Skills become currency when goods are gone.

1. Fear and Panic: Mastering the Inner Battlefield

The psychology of survival: adrenaline, shock, and despair. Techniques to manage fear, avoid rash choices, and cultivate calm.

2. Trust and Betrayal: Building Bonds in Crisis

The double edge of community: how trust sustains survival, and how betrayal destroys it. Strategies for cooperation, vigilance, and managing conflict.

3. Children and Elders: Protecting the Vulnerable

Survival across generations: caring for children, teaching resilience, and honoring the elderly as keepers of memory and wisdom.

4.  Roles and Leadership: How Communities Hold Together

How small groups function under pressure. Leadership styles that strengthen rather than fracture. Decision-making in scarcity, fairness in distribution, and conflict resolution.

5. Ritual and Meaning: Keeping Humanity Alive

Beyond food and fire, survival requires meaning. Rituals, stories, songs, and shared practices prevent despair and keep identity alive.

1. The Psychology of Survival: Memory, Hope, Despair

What allows some to endure when others give up? Examining resilience, the role of hope, and the danger of hopelessness. Mental endurance as crucial as physical.

2. Learning and Teaching: Passing Skills Through Generations

Survival is not just for today. Knowledge must be taught, practiced, and remembered so that future generations can rebuild.

3.  Seeds of Renewal: Rebuilding After Devastation.

How survival turns into recovery: rebuilding trust, communities, agriculture, and culture. Planting not only crops, but the foundations of peace.

A reflection that survival is not the end, but the bridge. To survive war is to create the possibility of renewal but only if survival does not strip away humanity.

· Survival Checklists: Food, Water, Shelter, Medicine, Tools

· Emergency Reference Guides: Simple recipes, first aid, fire-making steps

· Suggested Reading and Resources for further study

Survival is not about fear. It is about preparation, a daily practice that keeps you ready, resilient, and hopeful, no matter what tomorrow brings.

· Before the War – Preparation, mindset, stockpiling, resilience planning.

· During the War – Day-to-day survival, dealing with shortages, safety in urban vs rural areas, communication, and defense.

· Aftermath – Rebuilding, governance, restoring order, mental health, and lessons for the future.

· Risk Assessment – Nuclear, cyber, biological, chemical, and conventional war.

· Emergency Preparedness – Bug-out bags, food/water storage, medicine, energy alternatives.

· Safe Zones – Identifying safer regions, evacuation planning, and shelter fortification.

· Self-Sufficiency – Gardening, water purification, first aid, off-grid power.

· Community & Networks – Building trust, small survival groups, barter systems.

· Mental & Emotional Survival – Coping with stress, fear, and trauma.

· Long-Term Resilience – Education, rebuilding local economies, adapting to a new global order.

This book is a manual; a manual that answers and prescribes solutions to:

· Lessons from World War II, the Cold War, and modern conflicts

· Understanding today’s threats: nuclear, cyber, biological, and economic warfare

· The psychology of denial vs. preparedness

· Nuclear escalation and fallout risks

· Cyber warfare and infrastructure collapse

· Biological/chemical weapons and pandemics

· Conventional wars and regional conflicts

· Creating a realistic preparedness plan

· Stockpiling essentials: food, water, and medicine

· Power and heating alternatives

· Bug-out bags and “get home” kits

· Urban survival vs. rural relocation

· Hardening your home against threats

· Underground and improvised shelters

· Identifying safer regions in a global conflict

· First aid and trauma care

· Water purification and rationing

· Fire-making and cooking off-grid

· Navigation without technology

· Foraging and urban scavenging

· Gardening in hostile conditions

· Hunting, fishing, and alternative protein sources

· Barter and trade in wartime economies

· Personal security and situational awareness

· Low-profile living: blending in to stay safe

· Protecting your family and community

· Weapons, alternatives, and the ethics of force

· Radio, ham, and low-tech communication

· Creating information networks

· Avoiding propaganda and disinformation

· Coping with fear, grief, and trauma

· Leadership and decision-making under pressure

· Children, elderly, and vulnerable populations

· Building trust in uncertain times

· Assessing safety after hostilities end

· Dealing with radiation, disease, and damaged infrastructure

· Mental health and survivor’s guilt

· Local governance and cooperation

· Education and skill-sharing in post-war societies

· Restoring basic services (water, power, communication)

· Political and economic shifts after world wars

· Preparing for a multipolar world

· How communities can resist tyranny and oppression

Lessons for the Future

· What history teaches about resilience

· Building a culture of preparedness

· Hope, human spirit, and survival beyond survival

· Checklists – Bug-out bag, food/water storage, emergency medical kit

· Skills Index – Quick guides on fire-making, water filtration, and navigation

· Recommended Reading & Resources – Historical references, survival manuals, and further research

· Blank Templates – Personal preparedness plan, family emergency communication plan

The idea of another world war feels almost unthinkable. For most of us, war is something distant, a grainy black-and-white film of World War II, a dusty history lesson, or a headline about some far-off battlefield. But history has a cruel way of repeating itself, especially when we fail to learn its lessons.

The 20th century gave us two global wars that shattered nations, ended empires, and left hundreds of millions dead or displaced. The Cold War that followed brought humanity to the edge of nuclear annihilation more than once. And while the Cold War eventually ended, the weapons, rivalries, and ambitions it left behind have not disappeared. In fact, in many ways, they have grown more dangerous.

Today, the threats of global conflict are more complex and unpredictable than ever before. Nuclear arsenals remain on hair-trigger alert. Cyber warfare can disable entire nations without firing a shot. Pandemics and engineered biological weapons can spread invisibly across borders. Economies can collapse in days under the weight of sanctions, sabotage, or misinformation. A single spark: whether a regional war, a terrorist strike, or a political miscalculation could ignite a chain reaction that engulfs the world once again.

This book is not about predicting if the next world war will happen. It is about asking a harder question: what happens if it does?

If a new global conflict breaks out, those who endure will be the ones who prepared, not just with supplies, but with knowledge, mindset, and adaptability. This book is written for ordinary people, not governments or generals. You will not find military strategies or geopolitical theory here. Instead, you will find what you need to keep yourself, your family, and your community alive when the unthinkable becomes real.

We will explore what to do before the first bombs fall, how to endure the chaos while it unfolds, and how to rebuild in the aftermath. Along the way, we will draw on history, modern survival science, and timeless human resilience.

The world may stumble into the next great war. You do not have to stumble with it. This is your guide to surviving, and ultimately, to living, in a world at war.

This book will repeat itself. That is not an oversight. It is a training exercise.

What follows contains built-in redundancies concepts echoed, phrased anew, revisited from different angles. This is not because I doubted your attention, but because survival itself depends upon reinforcement. You are not simply reading a book; you are entering a discipline, a mental and moral field exercise. Each repetition is a drill. Each echo, a layer of memory being set in place.

In peace, redundancy is inefficiency. In war, redundancy is what keeps people alive.

When aircraft pilots train, they repeat the same checklists until they can recite them in smoke and chaos. When soldiers move through danger, they rehearse patterns until muscle and mind no longer hesitate. When monks sought to awaken the mind, the Buddha used repetition: stories within stories, verses revisited like tides so that wisdom became not something known but something remembered. So, it will be here.

If you find familiar words returning, do not skim past them. They are the anchors of your recall. They are the voice you may one day hear in the dark. Read them slowly. Let the repetition become rhythm. Let rhythm become instinct.

For in the end, survival is not the triumph of strength but of memory the ability to recall what matters when everything else has been stripped away.

So, before we begin, understand this clearly: Repetition in these pages is not mistake it is method. You are not being taught merely to think, but to remember. Because in the hour of trial, memory is life.

This book is not meant to be read once and set aside. It is meant to be remembered.

What you will encounter here has been written with redundancy by design. Not error. Not accident. But intention. Repetition is how truth takes root in the mind. In times of peace, repetition is a teacher. In times of war, it is survival.

Mystics taught through repetition, through cycles of words, parables, and silence because he understood the nature of the mind. It forgets. It drifts. It clings to comfort and resists discomfort. To awaken people from illusion, he returned again and again to the same truths, phrased differently, carried through new stories, repeated until they lived in the listener’s bones.

You will find that same rhythm here. Ideas echo. Lessons return. Principles reappear dressed in different language. Do not rush past them, sit with them.

Repetition is how the mind forges pathways through fear. In crisis, you will not have time to deliberate. You will act from what you remember what is etched into your being.

That is why these pages repeat themselves, why phrases recur like heartbeat and breath. If you find yourself thinking I have heard this before, good. That means it is working.

Because when the lights go out and the world unravels, you will not recall every page of this book. But you might remember one sentence that keeps you alive

So, before we begin, know this:

Repetition here is mercy.

Repetition here is discipline.

Repetition here is survival.

The Flame burns not once, but again and again, until its light becomes your own.

Do not read this book as you would read a story. Read it as you would prepare for a journey that may decide your fate.

Each chapter is both mirror and map. Some pages will seem reflective: psychological, philosophical, even spiritual. Others will feel procedural, practical, and tactical. Both are necessary. One trains the hands, the other trains the heart.

Approach it as training, not entertainment. Read slowly. Revisit sections. Speak lines aloud if they move you. Mark passages that strike a nerve that discomfort means something vital is stirring.

This book was designed to be read more than once. The first reading opens awareness.

The second builds comprehension. The third, when you are tired, uncertain, or afraid, cements the knowledge in your bones.

At the end of each section, pause. Reflect on what you would do, truly do, if tomorrow turned. The mind cannot prepare for what it refuses to imagine. Use the repetitions as drills. Turn the questions into habits. The stories and reflections that recur are not literary ornaments; they are survival patterns written into words.

You will notice certain phrases, principles, and parables return throughout the trilogy. They are the threads that weave your readiness. Learn them until you can recall them under pressure because when fear grips, memory becomes your only instructor.

Do not rush. Do not skim. Survival does not reward speed, it rewards attention. And remember: You are not reading to finish this book. You are reading to begin something else.

When you close these pages, your training begins in earnest. Carry these ideas until they are no longer ideas but instincts until wisdom moves faster than fear.

Take a breath. The world you are about to enter is not distant fiction. It is the shadow of what already stands before us.

What follows may unsettle you. It should. Discomfort is the mind’s awakening, the soul’s first stir toward vigilance. If you feel resistance, remember that too is part of training.

This book does not ask for belief; it asks for attention. It does not offer escape; it offers preparation.

Carry that understanding as you turn the page. You are no longer a spectator; you are a participant. A witness. A keeper of what might endure when the fire comes.

Now, let us begin and may the first spark light not fear, but remembrance.

 The Manual of Endurance. 9

Introduction. 19

Chapter 1: Why Preparation Matters. 25

Chapter 2: The Survival Mindset 45

Chapter 3: Building Your Survival Foundation. 69

Level 1: The Beginner’s Kit (Low Budget / First Steps) 99

Level 2: The Family Foundation (Medium Budget / Practical Prep) 101

Level 3: The Long-Term Resilience Kit (Advanced / Off-Grid Survival) 103

Building Your Survival Foundation. 105

Chapter 4: Safe Zones & Shelter. 111

Chapter 5: Survival Skills Everyone Needs. 175

Chapter 6: Securing Resources When Supplies Run Out 253

Chapter 7: Defense & Security. 283

Chapter 8: Communication in a Blackout 319

Chapter 9: The Human Side of Survival 357

Chapter 10: Emerging from the Rubble. 393

Chapter 11: Lessons for the Future. 433

Conclusion: The Choice Ahead. 463

Appendix: Tools for Survival 467

Author: Charles DesJardins, Ph.D.
Series: The Beating of War Drums
Genre / Category: Geopolitics, War & Peace, Resilience, Preparedness
Format: Paperback, Hardcover, Kindle (Coming Soon)
Publisher: Independent — Safe Haven USA Press
Official Websites:

www.thebeatingofwardrums.com
www.safehavenusa.org