The 4 consists of 400 pages of fascinating and useful illustrated content on how to survive in various difficult situations, and while performing usual tasks of everyday life. The information is collected from a huge number of books, videos, and stories by experienced professionals from around the world. All information is detailed and beautifully illustrated, which allows you to visually study human inventions and knowledge, to understand the principle of their operation and how to make them yourself.

4 talented illustrators inspired by such famous franchises as the Walking Dead, World War Z, 28 days later, Mad Max, Fallout, STALKER made in 4 different styles incredibly beautiful images of inventions and knowledge of survival in artistic environments of 4 disasters. The 4 will bring aesthetically great pleasure to a child and an adult, awaken curiosity and creativity, and in a visual and interesting form will give useful knowledge on survival in various situations, which will be helpful even in everyday life.

The world rolled back by a hundred years. Essential supplies ran out, and we had to resort to improvising, using old means of combating the infection. Turned out it wasn’t that hard, just place the cut lemon into a moist environment, and wait for the mold to show up. It can then be applied to the infected spots. It’s far from the actual antibiotics, but good enough for emergency use.

Who would’ve thought that a moldy lemon could save lives! We couldn’t imagine how much can be done using common materials. All it takes to make a bar of soap is mix some ash, chalk, salt and water. By using changing proportions, you can make anything – dish soap, washing gel, shampoo, liquid and solid soaps, and more.

Could you imagine a car that runs on something other than gas, diesel, electricity or hydrogen? Once fuel supplies ran out, we were certain that the cars would forever remain rusty monuments of our past. 

Until we made a wooden gas generator that helped us replace liquid fuels.

As the fuel burns, it generates flammable gas that’s routed into the engine through a system of filtering and cooling, setting the car in motion. 

Not all types of wood are compatible with this engine, only those containing high amounts of cellulose. There’s plenty of these, enough to sustain our vehicles by the time we can restore the industry.

We’re continuing our research to improve our way of life. Not a lot of research equipment remained after the catastrophe, so we have to makeshift our own. The optical microscope is one of them. It can be created using multiple magnifying glasses calibrated inside a tube, and a tripod. That’s enough for our basic tasks.

 The planet fell into ruins in a few years. It became unsafe in megacities – all the closed spaces turned into traps, where people were easy prey for zombies.

To survive, everyone rushed to the villages, trying to make fortresses from their houses to protect themselves. Not everyone succeeded … I learned from the mistakes of others and equipped my home with maximum protection. I made the 2nd floor inhabited, reinforced all openings and windows to protect against penetration, made an analogue of anti-personnel barriers from wire around the perimeter.

However, living in a fortress is not enough. We still need to get medicines and food. To do this, we need to overcome long distances teeming with enemies who are ready to eat us for lunch. Many have used bikes for this purpose. Not a bad option, but you can’t carry a lot on a bike, so I decided to rebuild the wheelbarrow into my second deadly fortress on wheels. I strengthened all the openings and the body of the car, added a sunroof and welded various pipes and sharp blades to destroy zombies on the go.

To get food, of course, you have to get out of protection. Experience has proven that not every weapon needs to be carried with you. Something is too heavy, something takes too long to recharge, so when time and effort are not unlimited, this can play a deadly joke on you. Therefore, I have selected the best arsenal for different situations.

Now I don’t even go to the toilet without my favorite katana – an excellent and light weapon that helped me more than once when I ran out of ammo. Well, a pistol and a shotgun are an inseparable couple that is suitable for most situations with both single opponents and groups of zombies.

Long outings to places where a car cannot pass are like expeditions in terms of preparation. I think over every little thing carefully, to carry only what is indispensable. I decided to sketch my equipment, which has never let me down, so that you too could prepare for your forays effectively.

Walk secretly, be ready to defend yourself at any moment, plan your everyday life and your movements. This is the only way you can survive in the wild conditions of the Zombie invasion.

You can’t go up to the surface without a hazmat suit and a gas mask. We’re producing gas masks using makeshift materials – a 5-Liter bottle, filter from a coffee can, and by adding crushed absorbent carbon and napkins.

We’re producing hazmat suits using scavenged rubber materials, i.e. dinghy boats. Depending on the intensity of contamination, we add metal plates underneath to shield the user from radiation.

Unfortunately, even the best protection won’t guarantee full safety from gamma rays, so we’re producing portable dosimeters, useful to determine which areas to stay away from. The contents are a tin can, plastic bottle, copper wire, field transistor and multimeter. A great alternative if there’s no Geiger counter at hand to prevent getting irradiated.

As a result of missile strikes, most power and communication lines were knocked out by a powerful electromagnetic emission. There are only a handful of radio transmitters now, but you can build one by improvising. Coil a copper wire around a carton tube, connect one end to a blade, and bind the other one to a tube that goes into the ground, connect it to pencil lead to work as a grounding.

By connecting it to a speaker, you can cycle radio frequencies by sliding the pencil lead along the blade.

All coastal cities quickly went under water, and then a good half of the rest of the land. The high temperature destroyed most of the vegetation, so a hot desert became a familiar environment.

The oceans and seas became the main source of food. To be mobile on the land and in the water, I converted my car into an amphibious vehicle.

I had to put in a lot of effort to make it work. I added foam layers to the underbody and interior to ensure buoyancy. Then I added a thin sheet of metal underneath so that the contact surface with the water was as flat as possible. I sketched a scheme of all the necessary upgrades so that you could also make an amphibian.

Some have learned to convert their cars into water transport using pontoons. A frame is added to the bottom of the car, on which pontoon elements are fixed to ensure buoyancy. And so, with the addition of a propeller boat motor, the amphibian becomes a whole cruiser.

It would seem that there is more water than land, but there is a shortage of drinking water. Water extraction is one of my most difficult everyday tasks. On land, you need to look for water in dry riverbeds, at the foot of hills, or where there is at least some kind of vegetation. Dig a hole in a suitable place, wait for it to be filled with water. If there is no luck, look for another suitable place. When you finally manage to find water, it is not good for drinking yet. For filtration, I use a tripod with several cleaning layers. Then, it is advisable to hold the water under direct sunlight so that the ultraviolet light thoroughly thins out potentially dangerous microorganisms. Bingo, after all this, you can quench your thirst. But there are times when it takes too long to find a water source, so you have to evaporate urine… Yes, you need to be creative to survive.

What’s next in importance after water? It’s food. My “beautiful world” has a shortage of that too. I put all the waste that I find in a compost bin, where it forms soil for growing vegetables and fruits. Although this process is essential, it is not as fast.

An excellent alternative way of growing vegetation is a hydroponic farm. The pots of vegetation are built into a cascade of slightly inclined pipes, inside of which the nutrient solution circulates. This is a much faster way of growing some plants, but not root crops, which need actual soil to grow. 

All in all, the cataclysm changed people’s everyday lives dramatically. I learned to adapt and find alternative ways in all major aspects of life. To get electricity, I learned to use Peltier thermoelectric generators. They generate current due to the temperature difference and can be used to make such vital things as a hand-operated flashlight or a charging oven. I added the assembly schemes, don’t thank me.

Waste can be used to produce biogas. The anaerobe will produce Methane in an enclosed space, which you may use as a fuel. The recycled biowaste (vermicompost) is moved towards the collection area, and can be used as a fertilizer.

We strongly believe that our planet won’t experience a global catastrophic event in our lifetimes, but life is complicated, and these survival tips and knowledge we’ve collected from a huge amount of sources may prove most useful to you. And the novels we created as a way to present them will make it interesting and easy to understand.

Survival kit. Branded kit containing lots of useful items for travel, hunting and camping. Be prepared for anything unexpected!

Every card bears a cool illustration and useful content from the book. Play, enjoy amazing art and learn useful information in an easy way!

Branded hardcover will preserve your book during travel!

A set of illustrations from the book. We’ve selected the most scenic illustrations, worthy of hanging on your wall!

If you’d like your own The 4 bundle, you may increase your pledge amount to account for any extra amount of extra add-ons:

Hi everyone, this is Alex! From my early years, I took a great interest in literature, comic books, and video games. I immersed myself into the fantastic worlds of Asimov, Bradberry, Burroughs, and Wells, and fought off hoardes of zombies in video games, crafted various useful stuff from items found in radioactive wastes.

I’ve noticed that you can find ways to create all sorts of useful things across various sources, for travel or even home application. It’s a lot easier to understand these essentials in a novel or a game. That’s how I’ve come up with an idea of collecting a large amount of “recipes” for all sorts of inventions in one book, and present it in a game-like way. I chose 4 post-apocalyptic game settings that are known to many, based on various movies, games and novels.

The rest was history – research thousands of sources looking for interesting, true, and useful info! I even used some really old books that only physically exist in single digits, and of course, used some online channels and communities where people share the information on creating all sorts of things.

To ensure it’s easy to understand the collected data, I consulted with over a hundred of illustrators and collaborated with a team of talented people who got inspired by the idea, and created illustrations of various cool inventions in different styles.

The 4 book accumulated knowledge of many people of the past and present, and is inspired by populat novels, games and movies, resulting in the unique artefact beyond time and space.