The Holidays are here, but there's at least one book here that might keep you from getting all warm and fuzzy about it. It's the one that reminds us, without a lot of nuance, that the end of the world is nigh. I think you'll know which one it is...
The End: Natural Disasters, Manmade Catastrophes, and the Future of Human Survival
By Marq de Villiers
You say it’s beginning to look at lot like Christmas? Maybe it’s more like a spirit of a different cast, a signification of The End: Natural Disasters, Manmade Catastrophes, and the Future of Human Survival. Indeed, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, pandemics, cosmic radiation, gamma bursts from space, colliding comets, and asteroids - those calamities that used to concern us upon occasion have become the background noise of our culture. In fact — contends author Marq de Villiers — apart from more immediate issues of global warming, "we've been living in a little bubble of stability in a great sea of chaotic change," and cataclysm is the universe's normal condition. He looks back billions of years to posit that mass extinctions have at times wiped out 96% of all species living in the seas, the world has cycled through several monumental ice ages, collisions with comets and asteroids have altered life on Earth, and land-shattering earthquakes have transformed continents. More recently, immense volcanic explosions have noticeably influenced global temperatures and human life half a dozen times — most recently Krakatoa in 1883 and Pinatobu in 1991 — and noxious gases, mammoth tsunamis, great floods, "vile winds, tropical cyclones and tornadoes," plagues and pandemics continue to threaten human survival.
Urging us to act upon and be always prepared for such inevitable natural disasters when they occur, de Villiers passes along some challenging ideas for mitigating the damage all such calamities can inflict on us and our world. Happy New Year!
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