History CrazyPrepared / Literature

* Jarlaxle, from R. A. Salvatore's ''Literature/TheLegendOfDrizzt'' books, has a hat containing a portable hole, a feather on the hat that summons a giant bird, an infinite supply of knives, a belt that can turn into a snake or extend into a rope, an eyepatch that can see through walls and also protects him from mental intrusion, boots that can silence his footsteps, a ring that can hurl fireballs, a cloak that makes him immune to projectile attacks, several magic wands, a maul hidden in his hat, a ring that detects lies, and a ring that protects from fire or ice. Do not underestimate Jarlaxle.

** Matson subverts the trope during the final inspection as students are expected to be prepared for any reasonable survival circumstances. Any student without cold weather gear and risking ExposedToTheElements fails automatically, despite Matson knowing they wouldn't need it for this test. Conversely, a few students prepare for vacuum or toxic environments and Matson fails them for bringing pressurized space suits: environments lethal to humans aren't a reasonable test parameter, at least without explicit warning of conditions.

** In fact hobbits as a whole, Bilbo outfits Frodo in case he gets stabbed (justifiable under the circumstances, but none of the other hobbits have armor) and in the hobbit Bilbo also considers a pocket handkerchief an essential part of a dragon-hunting adventure.

* ''TheSurvivalist'', hero of the 1980's action novel series by Jerry Ahern. [=Ex-CIA=] agent John Rouke has a well-stocked underground retreat enabling him to survive not only WorldWarThree, the collapse of society and Soviet occupation, but later the extinction of all life on Earth!
* Jarlaxle, from R. A. Salvatore's ''TheLegendOfDrizzt'' books, has a hat containing a portable hole, a feather on the hat that summons a giant bird, an infinite supply of knives, a belt that can turn into a snake or extend into a rope, an eyepatch that can see through walls and also protects him from mental intrusion, boots that can silence his footsteps, a ring that can hurl fireballs, a cloak that makes him immune to projectile attacks, several magic wands, a maul hidden in his hat, a ring that detects lies, and a ring that protects from fire or ice. Do not underestimate Jarlaxle.
* ''WorldWarZ''. White South African Paul Redeker had been hired by the government to come up with contingency plans in case of a large-scale revolt of the native African population (called Plan Orange). When the ZombieApocalypse occurred, Redeker went to his mountain retreat and, on his own initiative, adapted Plan Orange into a national zombie survival plan. Most governments in the world implemented his plan and eventually survived the war. Not forgetting the first book, ''TheZombieSurvivalGuide'', which taught the average Joe how to survive a zombie attack, with advice about forming groups of people, securing secluded land and, naturally, hoarding food, materials and weapons. It's noted in WWZ that it's useful mostly for Americans. Since the "interviewer" is Brooks himself, this is SelfDepreciation.

* Mouse, the central character of ''TheEighteenthEmergency'' by Betsy Byars, spends his spare time working out plans for dealing with various emergencies, such as being bitten by a tarantula or attacked by a tiger. He is a 12 year old who living in suburbia. The premise of the book is that there's an 18th emergency he hasn't prepared for; being beat up by a bully. If you must know, [[spoiler:he gets his head handed to him.]]

* Etjole Ehomba, central character of ''JourneysOfTheCatechist'' by Creator/AlanDeanFoster, carries any number of magical and alchemical gifts in his backpack. Most of these are intended for use in other applications, but prove effective in whatever crazy-ass situation he's currently facing as well. In addition, his "sky-metal sword" usually has a hidden ability perfect for whatever foe he's fighting.
* In ''Literature/GoodOmens'' by Messrs. [[NeilGaiman Gaiman]] and [[Creator/TerryPratchett Pratchett]], the ''International Maritime Codes'' include an eight-letter code (XXXV QVVX, if you're really curious) for "Have found Lost Continent of {{Atlantis}}. High Priest has just won quoits contest."

* The protagonist of Creator/HPLovecraft's ''TheShunnedHouse'' suspects that he has discovered a vampire, but knows better than to rely on a wooden stake and hammer, instead bringing a pair of flamethrowers and a ''[[EnergyWeapon Crookes tube]]'', "in case it proved intangible and opposable only by vigorously destructive ether radiations". [[WrongGenreSavvy This being a Lovecraft story]], it turns out neither of these are appropriate weapons for what's actually going on.

* ''DocSavage'' has a spyhole and control panel within his private elevator that can start a film projection of him getting killed in a selected way ([[{{Squick}} machine gun, acid, explosion etc.]]) onto the lobby door of the elevator before it opens to fool anyone who would ever try to personally attack him in the lobby of the Empire State Building. It is only used once in 16 years.

* Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo in ''FearAndLoathingInLasVegas''. "We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls..."

* TheMoomins series, by Finnish author Tove Jansson: Moomin's mother never parts from her handbag. When another character asks her what she is carrying that is so important, she replies: "Oh, stomach medicine and clean socks and steel wire and other things that might be useful". Also, her handbag frequently contains exactly the thing the family needs.

* This is the whole basis of NeilStrauss new book 'emergency' in which he details how he learned to start worrying and become crazy prepared.

* Nakor in ''TheRiftwarCycle'' is crazy prepared, he can access a table full of useful items he has already assembled in a sealed cave through a [[CoolGate rift]] in his seemingly empty rucksack [[spoiler:including a royal Keshian falcon, long thought extinct]], and a near endless supply of oranges through a separate rift to a fruit merchant's shop! [[spoiler:Nakor is a fragment of a god, so a little foreknowledge probably helps]]

* In DaleBrown novels, Sky Masters aircraft come with the equipment and code necessary to mount Russian weapons just in case their crews ever need to use them, as noted in ''Wings of Fire''.
* In the {{Redwall}} book ''Rakkety Tam'', just before the fight with Gulo, Tam [[spoiler: sharpens the edge of his shield. During the fight, the shield is torn from his arm and embeds itself edge-on in the ground. Later on, Gulo is thrown into the air, and lands just right for the protruding shield-edge to decapitate him.]]

* Cookie from ''{{Nation}}'', with his floating coffin containing everything a sailor lost at sea might need to survive.

* Taken to a serious level in David Eddings' ''{{Malloreon}}'' series. Although not properly revealed until the final book, The Dark (and its agents) showed an unreal amount of advance planning for its conflict with the series' protagonists: ''always'' possessing a fallback plan whenever something didn't work. It is eventually revealed to be part of its fundamental mentality: the idea of a predetermined perfection. The Light is no slouch either...it has a tendency to place knowledge in people's minds or has them do something so that they'll remember about it ''hundreds'' of years later when they need it. Also, twice in ''Belgarath The Sorcerer'', it altered weather patterns in order to give favorable odds to the Child of Light, the more extreme example being making it rain near-continually for ''twenty-five years''...all to create a storm in a specific place that buried an unfriendly army under several feet of snow.
* Jack West Jr. and his team in his series written by ''MatthewReilly''. Their farm in Australia gets attacked by paratroopers equipped with jeeps. They escape by driving through a bridge booby trapped with wheel puncturing spikes, into a river over a concealed concrete ford, into a 747 JUMBO JET hidden in the hillside and release a giant anti-aircraft bouncing bomb to take out 2 fighter jets. CrazyPrepared just doesn't come close.

* In HarryTurtledove's ''WorldWar'' series, the [[LizardFolk Race]] arrives to Earth expecting a CurbStompBattle against a bunch of Medieval knights. While what they find is definitely shocks them (they arrive in the middle of WorldWarTwo), they still give humans a hard time, as their military technology is decades (in our understanding) beyond what humans have. It could be understood that they brought tanks, jet fighters, helicopters, and machineguns to quickly subdue the local population with a display of awesome weaponry. However, there is no justification for them bringing dozens of nukes to fight a bunch of primitives, especially since they are doing everything they can to preserve the planet for colonization. Unusually for this trope, the nukes they bring don't do much to help the lizards, as humans haven't advanced yet to the point where EMP is harmful to their technology (the pulse only fries integrated circuits not vacuum tubes). Their nuking of [[spoiler:Berlin and Washington]] only serves to piss off the locals. In fact, the lizard nukes end up helping humans, as they manage to obtain some radioactive material from the lizards and interrogate several of them in order to finish their own atomic bombs ahead of schedule.

* LaResistance Leader "Doom" in the DeltoraQuest series.
* Toni Ware's shoplifting techniques in ''ThePaleKing''.

* In his book 'The Bad Book Club', Robin Ince talks about 'The Correct Guide to Letter Writing', which contains over 500 different letter templates. They start off sane enough with 'From a commercial traveller, suggesting special terms' but gradually get more crazily specific ('Accepting an invitation from a Gentlemen to Lunch at a Restaurant' is different from 'Accepting an invitation from a Gentleman to a Dinner and Theatre Party' apparently).

* Valentinian in BelisariusSaga. When he has to teach a prince how to fight, he even teaches him how to fight with a spade; even a prince might [[CheckovsGun need to.]]
* Imp Sec in VorkosiganSaga embodies this trope, notably in the headquarters whose security is obsessively detailed and redundant including compartmentalization and internal life support that reminds Miles of a spaceship plus refusing to allow building across the street to ensure a clear field of fire.
* Few people are better prepared than Jeeves, who in addition to knowing the exact social standing of every relationship in the British aristocracy, has a working knowledge of foreign language, psychology, fashion, economic theory (he can completely explain communist theory, despite being completely opposed to it), taxonomy (he refers to animals by their scientific names), and so on, and does it all with such cool implacability he practically qualifies more as a DoAnythingRobot.

* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles:'' Harry Dresden's continued existence is down to being the luckiest man alive (except when it comes to [[PerpetualPoverty money]], women, or [[DestructiveSavior buildings]]) and being CrazyPrepared or capable of being CrazyPrepared with two hours notice and access to a Wal-Mart.

* Imp Sec in VorkosiganSaga embodies this trope, notably in the headquarters whose security is obsessively detailed and redundant including compartmentalization and internal life support that reminds Miles of a spaceship plus refusing to allow building across the street to ensure a clear field of fire.

** Ironically, however, the US Military somehow contrived to have both covert zombie-fighting operations and to be completely stupid when the Battle of Yonkers rolled around. The people responsible for the covert ops were planning to be prepared, but ran out of time. [[hottip:*Specifically, they needed to build up their forces first. Critics of the book have claimed that zombies should be a cakewalk to even unprepared modern military forces, even including what basically amounted to "DM Hax".]]

** Donar Vadderung, [=CEO=} of Monoc Security, keeps his base stocked weaponry to fight any war. The selection goes from sharp sticks to top-of-the-line modern small arms, and there's enough ''of each'' to outfit an army. He also recruits only the most competent staff, and maintains a excellent spy network. His secretary explains that "one can only have as much preparation as one has foresight". Of course, the fact that Vadderung is in fact [[spoiler:Odin, and by a strange turn of events, Santa Claus,]] explains a lot of things.

** Donar Vadderung, [=CEO=} of Monoc Security, keeps his base stocked weaponry to fight any war. The selection goes from sharp sticks to top-of-the-line modern small arms, and there's enough ''of each'' to outfit an army. He also recruits only the most competent staff, and maintains a excellent spy network. His secretary explains that "one can only have as much preparation as one has foresight". Of course, the fact that Vadderung is in fact [[spoiler: Odin, and by a strange turn of events, Santa Claus,]] explains a lot of things.

** Donar Vadderung, [=CEO=} of Monoc Security, keeps his base stocked weaponry to fight any war. The selection goes from sharp sticks to top-of-the-line modern small arms, and there's enough ''of each'' to outfit an army. He also recruits only the most competent staff, and maintains a excellent spy network. His secretary explains that "one can only have as much preparation as one has foresight". Of course, the fact that Vadderung is in fact [[spoiler:Odin, and by a strange turn of events, Santa Claus,]] explains a lot of things.

** Donar Vadderung, [=CEO=} of Monoc Security, keeps his base stocked weaponry to fight any war. The selection goes from sharp sticks to top-of-the-line modern small arms, and there's enough ''of each'' to outfit an army. He also recruits only the most competent staff, and maintains a excellent spy network. His secretary explains that "one can only have as much preparation as one has foresight". Of course, the fact that Vadderung is in fact [[spoiler:Odin, and by a strange turn of events, Santa Claus,]] explains a lot of things.

** Ironically, however, the US Military somehow contrived to have both covert zombie-fighting operations and to be completely stupid when the Battle of Yonkers rolled around. The people responsible for the covert ops were planning to be prepared, but ran out of time.

* The Tucker family in the online serial novel ''TheSagaOfTuck'': Preparations for yearly extended camping trips included vaccinations for several diseases never known to occur in the area they would be hiking through and annual Red Cross first aid re-certification. They carried in their packs: morphine ampules, radios with solar-powered chargers, night vision gear, and enough food and water for more than twice as long as their intended trip. They also trained in unarmed combat, knife fighting (the lead character, Tuck, was known to carry several [[spoiler: especially when dressed as his female alter ego Valerie]], and firearm training that included several types of pistol and rifle and 'spin tests' to ensure they could shoot accurately while disoriented. From comments made elsewhere, this is apparently a fair reflection of how author Ellen Hayes and her family really are. WordOfGod from the author, Ellen Hayes:
--->Nightvision gear was too expensive to justify so they don't have any, they only carry two days extra of food on a seven day trip, I found solar battery chargers on the 'Net before I wrote that, and the immunizations were during the "every year before school" visit most of us had (taken, of course, to the survivalist extreme that the family does). As for me being that way... "Shut up." (A local trope, meaning "You are right but for lame ego-saving purposes I don't wish to admit this out loud.")

* Imp Sec in VorkosiganSaga embodies this trope, notably in the headquarters whose security is paronoically detailed and redundant(including compartmentalization and internal life support that reminds Miles of a spaceship plus refusing to allow building across the street to ensure a clear field of fire.

* ''Literature/TheHost'' gives us Melanie's relatives, but especially Jeb - he completely overhauls a cave system to make it inhabitable, solely because he thought he'd need an ElaborateUndergroundBase someday.

* In the ''BelisariusSeries'', Valentinian knows everything about every possible situation in combat that might come up. He even trains a prince to be able to fight with a shovel in case he finds himself without a sword.

* Etjole Ehomba, central character of ''JourneysOfTheCatechist'' by AlanDeanFoster, carries any number of magical and alchemical gifts in his backpack. Most of these are intended for use in other applications, but prove effective in whatever crazy-ass situation he's currently facing as well. In addition, his "sky-metal sword" usually has a hidden ability perfect for whatever foe he's fighting.

* ''Literature/TheHost'' gives us Melanie's relatives, but especially Jeb - he completely overhauls a cave system to make it inhabitable, solely because he thought he'd need an ElaborateUndergroundBase someday.

** TruthInTelevision (or literature in this case): an essay in the 28 July 1934 issue of ''The New Yorker'' was entitled "Melancholy Notes on a Cablegram Code Book" and it mentions a bunch of these sorts of code groups in a commercial (non-secret) code. Such as LYADI, meaning "Arrived here with decks swept, boats and funnels carried away, cargo shifted, having encountered a hurricane." Or EWIXI, "Very few cases of cholera are now reported". As the essay's author mentions, some of them are just a little too disturbingly detailed.

* Madame Ahnzhelyk from the ''Literature/{{Safehold}}'' series is remarked as planning ahead with a vengeance when it comes to her efforts to reform (and later subvert) the Church of God Awaiting. This is brought int full prominence in the fourth book ''A Mighty Fortress'' where plans she set up ''years'' ago (even before the current antagonist ever came into power) are used to evacuate as many victims of an upcoming Inquisition purge as humanly possible. Her efforts secure the escape of about a tenth of the intended victims, which include the families of prominent vicars and an archbishop. The Church of God Awaiting's creators could be seen as this. As noted in ''A Mighty Fortress'', because the Church was started as a PathOfInspiration to enforce MedievalStasis, but Safehold was still a terraformed planet not originally meant for humans, the "Archangels" had to come up with divine or miraculous explanations for every possible known phenomenon known to man so people wouldn't go and ask "''Why'' does X happen?" They managed it for close to a millennium before it started coming apart.

** Commander Vimes has liberally booby-trapped his home and all non-direct entrances to his office, knowing that various individuals would be contacting the Assassin's Guild about removing him from office. The effectiveness of these precautions )and his increasing importance in Ankh-Morpork's political landscape) has resulted in the Guild refusing to take any more contracts out on him. These days, the Guild uses him as a training objective for know-it-all students: all the trainee needs to do is get a glimpse of him without getting caught by a trap. So far, nobody has succeeded.

** Matson subverts the trope during the final inspection as students are expected to be prepared for any reasonable survival circumstances. Any student without cold weather gear and risking ExposedToTheElements fails automatically, despite Matson knowing they wouldn't need it for this test. Conversely, a few students prepare for vacuum or toxic environments and Matson fails them for bringing pressurized space suits: environments lethal to humans aren't a reasonable test parameter, at least without explicit warning of conditions.

* Clan Korval from the ''LiadenUniverse''. Due to a contractual oversight, they're legally still in charge of the planet of Liad should an enemy try to harm the citizens. The clan has been designed to be able to financially, mentally, and physically able to fight at any given moment. Complete with TimeForPlanB emergency planning.