A Guide to the End of the World: Everything You Never Wanted to Know

by Bill McGuire (Author), Director of the Benfield Greig Hazard Research Cen (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.25

  Life on earth will come to an end. It's just a matter of when. A Guide to the End of the World focuses on the many potential catastrophes facing our planet and our species in the future, and looks at both the probability of these events happening and our chances of survival. Coverage extends from discussion of the likely consequences of the current global warming to the inevitable destruction of the earth in the far future, when it is enveloped by our giant, bloated sun. In between, other 'end of the world scenarios' will be examined, including the New Ice Age, asteroid and comet impact, supervolcanoes, and mega-tsunami.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2002

  $3.25

  The earth is an extraordinarily fragile place which is fraught with danger - a tiny rock hurtling through space, wracked by violent crustal movements and subject to dramatic climatic changes as the earth's geophysical and orbital circumstances vary. Only 10,000 years after the end of the Ice Age, the planet is sweltering in some of the highest temperatures it has ever experienced. At the same time, overpopulation and exploitation are dramatically increasing the vulnerability of modern society to natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, floods, and volcanic eruptions. As futurologists long ago discovered, predicting the future is high on impossible, and few of us can even start to imagine what life will be like on planet earth in a million or even a thousand years time. The real question is, however, will there be any human life here at all? The End of the World will focus on the many potential catastrophes facing our planet and our race in the future, and will address both the probabilities of these events happening and our chances of survival. The breadth of treatment will extend from discussion of the likely consequences of the current global warming experiment to the inevitable destruction of the Earth in the far future, when it is enveloped by our giant, bloated sun. In between, other end of the world scenarios will be examined, including the new Ice Age, the asteroid and comet impact threat, supervolcanoes and their effects, and megatsunami.