Book Reviewed - End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World, by Bryan Walsh

An interesting perspective for the future of the planet

The author offers an interesting view for the future from a variety of catastrophes; asteroid impact, volcanoes, nuclear war, climate change, diseases, biotech, artificial intelligence, and aliens. He articulates these world-ending apocalypse with passion. It's not just the rising tide of climate change and the deadly natural disasters that seem to be piling up with each passing year. Our very future is in danger as it has never been before, both from an array of cosmic and earthbound threats and from the very technologies that made us prosperous.

We know how bad it can get; the two world wars; the Black Death which killed 200 million people in the fourteenth century; the biggest hurricanes and most devastating earthquakes. These risks are darker than the darkest days humanity has ever known. Our species has always lived under the shadow of existential risk we just didn't know it. At least five times over the course of our planet's 4.5-billion-year history, life was wiped out completely, but each time it was reborn with vengeance. It is good to know that life regenerates itself when the planet offers interesting possibilities. Solar system has another 4.5 billion years to go and earth may shape into new future.