Sam Sheridan's "Disaster Diaries" is all about the end of the world and how people should stop worrying about it and start learning how to survive the Apocalypse.

People are obsessed with the end of the world and from this obsession evolves the concept of zombies, books about Armageddon and movies about outbreaks. Summarizing all this, author Sam Sheridan has compiled a book that talks about dealing with and surviving the Apocalypse. The book has been titled "Disaster Diaries: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse."

In his quest to prime himself and his family for a worldwide disaster, Sheridan reached out to experts on everything from marksmanship, to medicine, to weightlifting. He speaks to Laura Sullivan, host of weekends on "All Things Considered" about a few of these skills.

The first one involves building a fire from scratch, not even with a flint.

Sheridan revealed how he trekked out to Kansas from his home in Los Angeles to meet John McPherson, a Vietnam veteran whose every book is subtitled "Naked into the Wilderness."

Sheridan learnt how to make fire "fire from cold wood." Sheridan describes McPherson flint-napping, or breaking rock, to get sharp edges, and then using the sharp edges for knives, to then cut wood, make a bow drill, get fire. "It takes a long time, yes, it's tough," he says.

The next skill is stealing cars. For this, Sheridan took help from Luis, a former gang member from Los Angeles, to learn how to steal cars. Luis taught Sheridan to get a car running, not by hot wiring it but with a Craftsman 41584 screwdriver.

"It's pretty easy with older cars, and it's pretty impossible with newer cars," Sheridan tells NPR's Sullivan. "It'd be a shame to survive the initial meteor, or whatever it is, and then not be able to start a fire."