Author(s): Bill McGuire

Science

The Asian tsunami of Christmas 2004 killed more than a quarter of a million people and shattered the lives of many more. The ruthless indifference of the forces of nature to our fragile existence on the surface of the planet could not have been more shockingly demonstrated, nor the sheer scale of their power more tragically displayed. Massive earthquakes and super-eruptions, collision with vast boulders from space, the insidious, potentially catastrophic dangers of global warming: what can mere humans do against these natural hazards, which have devastated life on Earth in the past and could do so again? Are there real alternatives to simply awaiting our doom? Bill McGuire believes there are. Following on from A Guide to The End of the World, in which he presented a frightening vision of the hazards that face us, in Surviving Armageddon, he guides us through the major threats, assessing the solutions that have been proposed, from the reasonable to the bizarre. There really are ways in which we can, perhaps not prevent, but limit the damage caused by future disasters, he concludes.