What if, as a preteen camper, you had to learn how to put your survival skills to the ultimate use in a post-apocalyptic world caused by a natural disaster?

That’s the scenario painted in the new young adult novel “The Big One,” released on July 22, by Apopka resident Samantha Seebeck.

Targeted at children ages 11 to 14 years of age, “The Big One” explores a different world from a child’s perspective to highlight the youth’s overexposure to technology among kids today and motivate them to build real-world skills.

In the novel, the eruption of a super volcano wiped out a world 12-year-old Paul knew, forcing him and his family to retreat to the Florida wilderness to fight for survival. 

“It would be a completely alien world for them to explore in the book, like learning to survive in the Florida wilderness,” Seebeck said. “I kind of also was hoping it would motivate kids to learn those real-world skills, or at least provide alternative entertainment to screen time.”

Because Seebeck lives near Wekiwa Springs State Park, that setting became a place of survival in the novel, Seebeck said.

Paul and his mother have camped at Wekiwa Springs State Park, making them somewhat familiar with the area. However, camping as a vacation and camping to survive an apocalypse are starkly different things, according to Seebeck.  

“It is enormously different because communication is knocked out worldwide, so they’re really on their own,” she said. “They don’t have convenient access to resources or even food. They have to gather, they have to ration what they’ve saved, and then they eventually end up learning how to trap and hunt. So those are all skills they develop.”

The book may lead to a series, exploring societal rebuilding 20 years later, focusing on the next generation and the re-establishment of civilization.

“Is civilization starting to re-establish itself? Is communication back up online? Is there a government? And then, if there is, how do the people who decided that they like living in the wilderness, such as my main character, Paul,” Seebeck said. “Are they permitted to do so? How does like that rugged American individualism, the frontier spirit, reassert itself 20 years later?”

Seebeck appeared at the Local Author Festival at the Orange County Library System promoting “The Big One.” She has developed supplemental workbooks for middle school-level language arts and science. All three books are available online as paperback and Kindle e-book on Amazon.

“I am hoping that it’ll be a really good tool to read the novel for enjoyment, but then also have educational resources for home schoolers or for summer camps, anybody interested in developing outdoor these skills,” she said.

A former teacher and librarian and currently a stay-at-home mother, Seebeck is the author of a children’s book series “The Awesome Series,” which delves into the world of ordinary objects like sprinklers, fans, and elevators, and “Birds of Wekiwa,” a coffee table book that captures roughly 200 bird species of Wekiwa Springs State Park.