Apocalypse

Rating:
Summary: This is the Way the World Ends
Review: As I read "Apocalypse," I kept thinking of a phrase from Woody Allen's "My Speech to the Graduates": "One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." McGuire's book is hard to put down, but it doesn't offer much comfort when it comes advice about how to escape the consequences of global disasters.

The short message is that there are some cataclysms that we can do absolutely nothing to prevent and that we can do very little to protect ourselves against. McGuire describes four "big ones" that could plunge civilization into a new Dark Ages or cause the extinction of the human race. These are a volcanic super eruption, a massive tsunami, a massive earthquake in Tokyo, and an asteroid or comet strike.

Each major section of the book explains the science behind these scenarios and describes what we know about how often these events have occurred in the past. McGuire ends each chapter with a dramatic and lurid account of what happens when one of these things hits: Yellowstone Park (which is actually the caldera of a gigantic volcano) massively erupts, buries large parts of the United States under a blanket of ash and throws the rest of the world into a volcanic winter; the Cumbre Vieja volcano erupts and sends half the island of La Palma tumbling into the Atlantic, causing huge tsunamis that wipe out the east coast of the United States and all the coastal cities of western Europe and Africa; a magnitude 8.3 earthquake hits Tokyo, wiping the city out and causing worldwide economic catastrophe; a one kilometer wide piece of comet smashes into the earth, annihilating western Europe and plunging the rest of the world into mass starvation.

The troubling thing about all of this is that it is not a matter of "if," but of "when." McGuire explains that super eruptions, comet and asteriod strikes, massive tsunamis and fairly large earthquakes are regular occurrences on a geological time scale, and they are bound to happen again. The difference this time is that there is now a large and interdependent global civilzation in the way, and it is not likely to survive the encounter.

Having said all that, I have learned to take predictions of doom with a grain of salt. The Y2K bug didn't live up to its billing, and I suspect that McGuire is underestimating how resourceful human beings can be in responding to disaster, even one on a global scale--we get a few brownie points for surviving ice ages and the last super eruption in 70,000 BC. This doesn't mean that "Apocalypse" isn't sobering, or that the "big one" won't get us all eventually, but I'm not prepared to give up hope yet.

Rating:
Summary: This is the Way the World Ends
Review: As I read "Apocalypse," I kept thinking of a phrase from Woody Allen's "My Speech to the Graduates": "One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." McGuire's book is hard to put down, but it doesn't offer much comfort when it comes advice about how to escape the consequences of global disasters.

The short message is that there are some cataclysms that we can do absolutely nothing to prevent and that we can do very little to protect ourselves against. McGuire describes four "big ones" that could plunge civilization into a new Dark Ages or cause the extinction of the human race. These are a volcanic super eruption, a massive tsunami, a massive earthquake in Tokyo, and an asteroid or comet strike.

Each major section of the book explains the science behind these scenarios and describes what we know about how often these events have occurred in the past. McGuire ends each chapter with a dramatic and lurid account of what happens when one of these things hits: Yellowstone Park (which is actually the caldera of a gigantic volcano) massively erupts, buries large parts of the United States under a blanket of ash and throws the rest of the world into a volcanic winter; the Cumbre Vieja volcano erupts and sends half the island of La Palma tumbling into the Atlantic, causing huge tsunamis that wipe out the east coast of the United States and all the coastal cities of western Europe and Africa; a magnitude 8.3 earthquake hits Tokyo, wiping the city out and causing worldwide economic catastrophe; a one kilometer wide piece of comet smashes into the earth, annihilating western Europe and plunging the rest of the world into mass starvation.

The troubling thing about all of this is that it is not a matter of "if," but of "when." McGuire explains that super eruptions, comet and asteriod strikes, massive tsunamis and fairly large earthquakes are regular occurrences on a geological time scale, and they are bound to happen again. The difference this time is that there is now a large and interdependent global civilzation in the way, and it is not likely to survive the encounter.

Having said all that, I have learned to take predictions of doom with a grain of salt. The Y2K bug didn't live up to its billing, and I suspect that McGuire is underestimating how resourceful human beings can be in responding to disaster, even one on a global scale--we get a few brownie points for surviving ice ages and the last super eruption in 70,000 BC. This doesn't mean that "Apocalypse" isn't sobering, or that the "big one" won't get us all eventually, but I'm not prepared to give up hope yet.

Rating:
Summary: This is the Way the World Ends
Review: As I read "Apocalypse," I kept thinking of a phrase from Woody Allen's "My Speech to the Graduates": "One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." McGuire's book is hard to put down, but it doesn't offer much comfort when it comes advice about how to escape the consequences of global disasters.

The short message is that there are some cataclysms that we can do absolutely nothing to prevent and that we can do very little to protect ourselves against. McGuire describes four "big ones" that could plunge civilization into a new Dark Ages or cause the extinction of the human race. These are a volcanic super eruption, a massive tsunami, a massive earthquake in Tokyo, and an asteroid or comet strike.

Each major section of the book explains the science behind these scenarios and describes what we know about how often these events have occurred in the past. McGuire ends each chapter with a dramatic and lurid account of what happens when one of these things hits: Yellowstone Park (which is actually the caldera of a gigantic volcano) massively erupts, buries large parts of the United States under a blanket of ash and throws the rest of the world into a volcanic winter; the Cumbre Vieja volcano erupts and sends half the island of La Palma tumbling into the Atlantic, causing huge tsunamis that wipe out the east coast of the United States and all the coastal cities of western Europe and Africa; a magnitude 8.3 earthquake hits Tokyo, wiping the city out and causing worldwide economic catastrophe; a one kilometer wide piece of comet smashes into the earth, annihilating western Europe and plunging the rest of the world into mass starvation.

The troubling thing about all of this is that it is not a matter of "if," but of "when." McGuire explains that super eruptions, comet and asteriod strikes, massive tsunamis and fairly large earthquakes are regular occurrences on a geological time scale, and they are bound to happen again. The difference this time is that there is now a large and interdependent global civilzation in the way, and it is not likely to survive the encounter.

Having said all that, I have learned to take predictions of doom with a grain of salt. The Y2K bug didn't live up to its billing, and I suspect that McGuire is underestimating how resourceful human beings can be in responding to disaster, even one on a global scale--we get a few brownie points for surviving ice ages and the last super eruption in 70,000 BC. This doesn't mean that "Apocalypse" isn't sobering, or that the "big one" won't get us all eventually, but I'm not prepared to give up hope yet.

Rating:
Summary: Apocalypse - The scientific reality of our unstable planet
Review: Its clear from the geological record that the history of life on Earth has been punctuated with dramatic and drastic changes in the global climate.In this book, Bill McGuire, gives a vivid account of four types of extreme natural disaster, supervolcanic eruption, tsunami (wrongly called tidal waves in English), catastrophic earthquake and cometary or asteriodal impact, all of which have plentiful precendents in Earth's history, and presents an entirely plausible account of the disastrous consequences in global climate, the resultant human and biosphere changes and even the consequences to the global economy. Bill McGuire writes wittily and with style. He brings a grim sense of humour together with a zest for geology and geophysics, which manages to translate what could be a dry recollection of past geological events into an exciting and fascinating dialogue. My favourite(!) disaster concerns the tsunami hazard to the United States posed by a little known volcano in the Canary Islands. I'll be watching the news very carefully for news about the Cumbre Viejo volcano from now on! Weird prophetic point: how did the author know that the International Space Space would be christened "Alpha"? Not quite five star material. A few more diagrams and photographs would be a big help. All in all, an excellent book of science and serious scientific speculation. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: NOT religious eschatology... this is actual science.
Review: This book is absolutely terrifying. Each chapter goes into a different cataclysmic natural event, which, the authors show us, is certain to take place sooner or later. There are chapters on monstrous mega-tsunamis; stupendous super-volcanoes; economically egregious earthquakes; and, well, apocalyptic asteroid strikes. Each chapter is carefully presented, using as conservative data as possible. The authors help us understand that ALL of these events have happened before in Earth's history, over and over again, at irregular intervals. These disasters, we are shown, usually aren't even thousands of years apart -- only a few hundred. Every one of these disasters is certain to happen again, and again, and again.

Statistics are given, but please don't worry if you have math-phobia. It is perfectly possible to get a vastly enhanced understanding of these perils, while paying only minimal attention to the statistics. The text makes everything quite clear.

As an additional, macabre, morbid bonus, readers are treated here to four mini-thrillers. The end of each chapter contains a little fictional scenario about how the event under discussion might play out. The authors make the not-terribly-unreasonable assumption that each scenario might take place some time within the next century or so. (They aren't suggesting that ALL of these events will happen during the next century -- they simply construct each separate, unrelated scenario within that timeframe.) Each mini-thriller is about 5 or 10 pages long. Two of the events portrayed lead to only a relatively moderate negative outcome -- total, absolute, utter global economic collapse, requiring decades for a recovery. That's the MODERATELY negative outcome. The other two mini-thrillers end with the whole planet being plunged into a new Dark Age, which the authors speculate could last for centuries. I'll leave it up to you to see which disasters are the really bad ones.

Most alert people today are reasonably familiar with the asteroid threat, and with the possibility of catastrophic earthquakes. Two scenarios which, bizarrely enough, have received significantly less attention in the popular media, are the "super-volcano" scenario, and the possibility of a "mega-tsunami" inundating the east coast of the United States. This book helps us understand how bad things could be, and how real the threat is. Did you know that all of Yellowstone Park is basically the top of a gigantic underground volcano, which could wipe out about 10 states overnight if it ever blew? I, for one, was totally unaware of this. Not only that -- scientists have proven that the Yellowstone Supervolcano blows up approximately once every 600,000 years. The last time it exploded was about 640,000 years ago. Do the math, and think carefully about your next vacation plans.

Let me quickly add that all the events described in this terrific book are NATURAL disasters. There's nothing about nuclear war, for example. As long as you're on a disaster kick... I'd like to recommend "Planet Earth in Jeopardy: Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War," by Lydia Dotto. In the same vein, you might want to find a copy of "The Cold and the Dark," by Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich. Both of these books are detailed discussions of what scientists think nuclear winter might be like.

I myself am not a geophysicist, an oceanologist, or an astronomer. Therefore, I need books like this to keep me informed. If you are like me, you will benefit from this book, and your friends could benefit as well. I recommend that you buy a copy, and talk it up amongst your friends, co-workers, and family. We should all be better informed about these issues. Two thumbs up for Bill McGuire and Maggie O'Hanlon, for this incredibly important book.