Virtually every first aid training and manual relies on ambulances, doctors and a network of urgent care facilities to fulfill treatment. But what if those resources are unavailable, overrun or too far away?

When disaster strikes your family, you may be compelled to handle a medical emergency. Homemade First Aid goes far afield of Boy Scout first aid and addresses self-reliant, back-country medical care such as child birth, gunshot wounds, appendicitis, plague and austere surgery. It might not be pretty, or without peril, but if you’re your family’s last and best resort, there may be no choice.

Collected from the survival experience of the authors, trauma medicine books and the ReadyMan online group, Homemade First Aid offers a jumping-off point for do-it-yourself medicine, if you ever find yourself stuck without a hospital or doctor.