(Newswire.net — April 30, 2014) —
Survival medicine experts Joe Alton, M.D. and Amy Alton, A.R.N.P. have created a new board game put out by their company, Doom and Bloom called, “Survive!” The game’s development and manufacturing is being funded through a Kickstarter campaign which runs through May 14. The campaign has more than 300 backers and over $22,000 in pledges against a goal of $19,000. The game, say Dr. and Nurse Practitioner Alton, was developed in response to requests for advice from the survivalist community on how to involve the entire family in emergency preparedness training and thinking.
“We thought that a board game would be a great way to learn the skills of general preparedness—not just medical preparedness, although that is our focus. The game teaches preparedness in a way that is fun, not dryly educational or boring. The goal of our organization is to have at least one medically self-reliant person in every household for times of disaster or emergency when medical help is not available,” explains Dr. Alton.
The game is set in a post-pandemic world where there are very few people left. The objective of the game is to collect supplies, such as fuel, food, medicine and weapons, find other survivors and scout locations that can serve as a safe haven in which to start over.
Dr. Alton explains the decision to use a pandemic as the cause of the game’s post-apocalyptic setting: “The main question we get from experienced gamers is, ‘Where are the zombies?’ Everyone loves zombies, but we decided, as survivalists, to create a realistic scenario for our game. Zombies just don’t exist, but pandemics do.”
The pandemic of 1918 wiped out tens of millions of people across the globe, and that was before commercial air travel made it so easy for diseases to get around the globe. The couple wanted to show that they could put together a fun and challenging game that had its roots in a real-life scenario. They also host a popular internet radio talk show, “The Doom and Bloom™ Survival Medicine Hour” and have written a best-selling book, The Survival Medicine Handbook.
Gameplay videos, information on the game’s development and descriptions of donor rewards for the Kickstarter campaign are available at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/survivalboardgame/doom-and-bloomtms-survival. Or see the game’s website at http://survivalboardgame.com.
Additional information on Dr. Joe and Nurse Practitioner Amy Alton is available at: http://www.doomandbloom.net.