The Blessings of Disaster: The Lessons that Catastrophes Teach Us and Why Our Future Depends on It

Engineer Bruneau (My Author Is Dead) delivers a hair-raising survey of “low-probability high-consequence” events— earthquakes, hurricanes, pandemics, nuclear war—along with fascinating insights into the effects of disasters, and why humans are generally so poorly prepared to deal with them. People continue living beside volcanoes and in flood zones, he notes, while governments often delay infrastructure and building-code upgrades. “It typically takes a disaster to trigger actions leading to major changes in how the world prepares for and deals with extreme events,” Bruneau writes. As for the future, the author encourages readers to approach his predictions with a “reasonable dose of skepticism”: as climate change worsens, the population continues to grow, and resources become more scarce, “many players will have a nuclear arsenal at hand and will not hesitate to use it, defensively or offensively.” Bruneau has an easy hand with cutting humor (“As for those brilliant minds who suggested that tornadoes could be killed using nuclear bombs to defuse their energy, a sarcastic slow clap is the only possible response”), and some of the scenarios gamed out will keep readers up at night. The result is an engrossing study of human complacency, myopia, and faulty risk perception on a grand scale. (Nov.)