Literature / I Survived

When Disaster Strikes, Heroes Are Made.

A book series by Lauren Tarshis about various children surviving catastrophes throughout history.

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Occuring in many books

• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Nate and Theo.
  • Thomas and Birdie.
  • Jennie and Bruno.
  • John and Franny.
  • Charlie and Lulu.
  • Hugo and Gertie.
  • Danny and Aki.
  • Max and Zena.
  • Melody and Kevin.
  • Barry and Cleo.
  • Ben and Harry.
• Black-and-White Morality: Unsurprisingly, considering the series's young target audience.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Marcus's father.
  • Nathaniel.
  • Thomas, Birdie, and Clem.
  • Jennie and Bruno.
  • Leo, Morris, and Wilkie.
  • Janie.
  • Max and Zena.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: For Nate, Leo, George, Melody, Jessie, and Ben.
• Downer Beginning: The first chapter of every book is a Medias Res scene of the climax - usually the most terrifying part of whatever disaster the hero is caught up in.
  • Pompeii, American Revolution, Gettysburg, Wellington Avalanche, D-Day, and Nazi Invasion use their second chapter to get the reader acquainted with just how god-awful the main character's day-to-day life is.
• Good Parents: The only heroes whose parents aren't mentioned and/or shown as being this are Thomas and Janie.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Pretty much every blonde non-villain in this series.
• It's a Small World, After All:
  • Marcus just so happens to run into his father while running an errand after his father, Festus, separated them two months before.
    • But maybe this wasn't as much of a coincidence as it seems. Festus hated Marcus's father, so maybe Festus sold him to Pompeii's lanista specifically to get to watch him suffer every time there were games held at the arena.
  • Nate runs into his friend Paul at an army camp.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Festus, the lanista, Storch, Fletch, Kohl, and Stroop all experience this.
• Lecture as Exposition: Happens in most of the books, which easily get away with this because the main characters are children who don't know much about the subject matter being told about it by a more knowledgeable adult.
• Little Miss Badass: The premise of the entire series is about children surviving huge disasters. There are many more little mister badasses in this series, but the author appears to be trying to correct this now.
  • In particular, Nathaniel joined the army
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": What happened when:
  • Mount Vesuvius erupted.
  • Chicago went up in flames.
  • The Titanic sank.
  • The molasses silo burst.
  • The Hindenburg caught fire.
  • The Japanese started raining hell on Pearl Harbor.
  • The great Alaska earthquake hit.
  • The planes hit the twin towers.
• Missing Mom: Many of the heroes have lost their mother.
  • Nathaniel, Thomas, Leo, Janie, and Carmen are orphans.
    • Eliza is a surrogate mother to Nate.
    • Janie was adopted by the Mcbrides.
  • Marcus, Nathaniel, Leo, George and Phoebe, Carmen, Martha, Max and Zena, and Melody were raised by single fathers.
  • It was never said what happened to Leo's mother and Thomas's father.
• Parental Substitute: Eliza for Nathaniel, Mr. Morrow for Oscar, Mr. and Mrs. Mcbride for Janie, Carmen's grandmother, Cassie for Melody, and Benny for Lucas.
• Slice of Life: Features prominently in many books, particularly the ones where the disasters don't last as long.
  • The Titanic doesn't sink until late into Sinking of the Titanic.
  • Most of Shark Attacks of 1916 is Chet and his friends getting into hijinks.
  • As is most of Molasses Flood.
  • Jackson adjusting to public school, other kids, and city life takes up most of Alaska Earthquake.
  • Josh and Holly don't get caught in a wildfire until around the halfway point of California Wildfires

The Destruction of Pompeii, AD 79

• Adaptational Dye-Job: Marcus has short-cropped, curly-looking black hair in the book, but shaggy jaw-length auburn hair in the graphic novel.
• Ancient Rome: The setting.
• Apocalypse How: Class 0: Pompeii is wiped off the map, but the rest of the world continues on.
• Artistic License – History: Most gladiators didn't fight to the death, only about 10-20% of matches ended in one of them getting killed.
  • Most gladiators got way more than two months of training before they were made to fight in front of an audience.
  • On the cover, Marcus is wearing a white tunic. Stark white fabric like that was expensive. Slaves would've usually been dressed in cheap, undyed fabrics: Brown linen or off-white wool.
  • the graphic novel adaptation, he wears a blue tunic with sleeves and a red belt. Colored fabrics were also expensive and Roman tunics didn't have sleeves. They were just a pair of fabric squares sewn together with head and arm holes
    • However, Marcus's master, Festus, is a wasteful, selfish man, which could explain this. He likely doesn't bother providing his slaves with their own clothes, so if he gets bored of and discards perfectly good clothes (Which is likely frequently), his slaves might take it.
• Big Fancy House: Festus's villa.
• Born into Slavery: Marcus.
• Cynicism Catalyst: It's heavily implied that Marcus is only as bitter as he is because of how badly Festus treated him.
• Dream Sequence: Marcus has a dream where he's hunting the hydra with Hercules.
• Driven by Envy: Festus hated Marcus's father so much because Linus, Festus's uncle, preferred Marcus's father over Festus.
  • Justified on Linus's end because Festus is a greedy, selfish, cruel, lying, and, judging by the fact that he has friends at all, brown-nosing bastard.
• Fat Bastard: Festus.
• Evil Nephew: Festus.
• Extremely Protective Child: Marcus is more protective of his father, a docile man who seemingly has more honor than sense, than the other way around.
• Gladiator Games: Where Marcus's father ends up after Festus sold him. Marcus saves him before his first real fight, however.
• Happiness in Slavery: Marcus an his father were happy under Linus's ownership.
• Honor Before Reason: Marcus's father insisted that he and Marcus had to go back to Pompeii, where their masters had no doubt hired slave hunters to track them down and probably beat the shit out of them or worse for running away and then return them, to warn everyone about the impending eruption.
  • Marcus protested at first, but came to see it his father's way quickly.
• It's Personal: Festus sold Marcus's father to a lanista, likely hoping he'd die in a match with another gladiator sooner rather than later.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: Marcus's father, after getting knocked out with a chunk of rubble to the head, is in no condition to evacuate from Pompeii with the stampede of people trying to do the same. He tells Marcus to leave him and escape alone. Marcus refuses. But they find a secret tunnel leading out of Pompeii just moments later, because a book for an audience this young won't have such a downer ending as the hero having to leave his only remaining family to die.
• Made a Slave: Marcus's father, at just ten little years old.
• Offended by an Inferior's Success: Festus is furious that Linus loves Marcus's father more than him
• Parents in Distress: Marcus saves his father from being sent into the arena with only two months of training to fight a career gladiator, and later drags him into the shelter of a temple after he gets knocked unconscious during the eruption.
• Physical Scars, Psychological Scars: Marcus's father was clearly traumatized by his time as a gladiator, from which he also got a huge, hideous scar on his face.
• Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers!: After Marcus suggests "getting even" with Festus and the lanista, his father tells him off, says that holding grudges will make him "no better than Festus", and follows it up with this:
  “There is goodness in the world, Marcus, and kindness. You cannot forget that.”
• Sympathetic Slave Owner: Marcus's first master, Linus, had evidently raised both him and his father with love and care, based on how much Marcus looks up to him and the narrative stated flat-out how Marcus had been happy under his ownership.
  • Not the case with his current master, Festus.
• Villainous Glutton: How Festus got so fat.
• What a Piece of Junk: Peg, a raggedy old one-eared horse who can run as fast as the wind and managed to carry two people for hours up Mount Vesuvius.

The Black Death, 1348

The American Revolution, 1776

• Child Soldiers: Nate joins the army. The army wasn't so eager to let him in, but they needed all the manpower they could get.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Nate used to care about whether or not America would gain independence before his father's death. Afterwards, however, he was sent to live with his Jerkass uncle Storch, and he stopped caring about it because, no matter the outcome, Eliza and Theo would still be slaves and he and the two of them would all still be stuck with Storch.
• Evil Uncle: Storch, who treats his own nephew like he treats his slaves (Horribly). He even tries to strangle poor Nate!
  • Of course he's a loyalist.
• Historical Domain Character: George Washington makes a very brief appearance.
• Offscreen Karma: Storch died of smallpox. Not a pretty way to go out. And, since he didn't bother writing a will, his fortune went to Nate, who would have likely used the money to reunite Eliza with her husband.
• Talk Like a Pirate: Theo, because he wants to be one.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Nate joins the army.

The Battle of Gettysburg, 1863

• Artistic License – Medicine: It's said that Thomas lost most of his blood through a gash in his leg. This can't be true, or he'd be dead.
• Born into Slavery: Thomas, Birdie, and Clem.
• First Snow: What happens in the epilogue. This was the payoff to a motif in the book where Thomas and Birdie wanted to see snow once they reached freedom.
• Minor Living Alone: Thomas and Birdie might as well be at the start of the story, considering that their mother is dead, older cousin was sold off, father apparently dropped off the face of the earth, and owner definitely isn't going to lend a hand. Hell, they would've probably been better off actually on their own than with Mr. Knox.
• Never Learned to Read: Also a running theme in the book, to a similar end as First Snow.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: What the story tells the reader. It doesn't, however, show it very much.

The Great Chigaco Fire, 1871

• Country Mouse: Oscar wasn't ready for Chicago.
• Minor Living Alone: Jennie and Bruno. Their parents are dead, and they fell in with Otis and his gang to make ends meet.

The Children's Blizzard, 1888

• Winter of Starvation: In the backstory, before John and his family came from Chicago to Dakota, locusts had come and eaten almost all the crops.

The Galveston Hurricane, 1900

• Big Fancy House: The Potts live in one.
• Fancy Toilet Awe: Charlie is amazed that the Potts family has an indoor toilet.

The San Francisco Earthquake, 1906

• Memento MacGuffin: Leo's gold nugget, which was passed down from his grandfather, to father, and finally to him.
• Minor Living Alone: Leo's father is dead. No word of where his mother went, but she's presumably also dead.
• Orphan's Plot Trinket: Aforementioned gold nugget.

The Wellington Avalanche, 1910

• Happily Adopted: Janie is adopted by the Mcbride family.
• Rags to Riches: The Mcbrides are rich.
• Survival Mantra: Taken right out of an older version of The Little Engine That Could.

The Sinking of the Titanic, 1912

• Creepy Good: The scarred man wasn't actually out to get George and Phoebe.
• Suddenly Blonde / Adaptational Dye-Job: Phoebe had brown hair in the book but blonde hair in the graphic novel.

The Shark Attacks of 1916

The Great Molasses Flood, 1919

• Daddy's Girl: Carmen; but she doesn't have many other options. Her mother is dead and her grandmother still lives in Italy.

The Hindenburg Disaster, 1937

• Heroes Love Dogs: Hugo and, even more so, his sister Gertie adore their pet dog Panya.
• Snooping Little Kid: Hugo and Martha think something's fishy with all the Nazis aboard and go snooping despite being told not to. They're right.

The Bombing of Pearl Harbor, 1941

• Kids Driving Cars: Danny knows how to drive despite being only eleven. Some of his seedy friends from New York taught him.
  • Lampshaded by a soldier who says, when Danny pulls up to help get an injured soldier to safety, that he's not going to ask where Danny learned to do that.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: An eleven-year-old shouldn't be driving, involved with gangs, and seriously planning to run away from a new home to rejoin those gangs.

The Battle of D-Day, 1944

• Cynicism Catalyst: Four years of living under Nazi rule will do that to you.
• Distant Finale: The epilogue takes place fifteen years later, a longer gap than any other book in the series.

The Nazi Invasion, 1944

• Eagleland: Max and his family are expecting type 1 as they immigrate to America in the epilogue. The story ends before they find out whether or not their were right.
• Minor Living Alone: Because their mother is dead, father had been taken away by Nazis, and they were left behind in the ghetto.
• Too Hungry to Be Polite: Max and Zena when their aunt Hannah and her friends feed them.

The Great Alaska Earthquake, 1964

The Attack of the Grizzlies, 1967

• Intrepid Reporter: Cassie.

The Eruption of Mount St. Helens, 1980

The Attacks of 9/11, 2001

• Formerly Fat: Pre-football Lucas is referred to as a "little butterball".
• Skipping School: Lucas does this to go find Benny to ask him to tell Lucas's parents let him play football again.

The Japanese Tsunami, 2011

The Joplin Tornado, 2011

The California Wildfires, 2018

• Artistic License – Law: Josh's father, Tim, was arrested for bank fraud in New Jersey, where they really throw the book at people who do that - up to thirty years in prison per count! But Tim was only sentenced to eight months.
  • This could also be interpreted as a case of Screw the Rules, I Have Money!
• Big Fancy House: Josh lives in one.
• Nature Hero: Holly.