Let’s begin by stating that Tom Ough’s The Anti-Catastrophe League is rather a triumph, the sort of book that one imagines being read in a comfortable armchair, with a roaring fire, a glass of excellent port, and perhaps an escape plan in case the supervolcano erupts mid-sentence. Mr Ough has set himself the enviable task of cataloguing the most stylish ways civilisation might be abruptly curtailed. He takes us from cosmic billiards (asteroids) to the wrath of the Earth’s own plumbing (supervolcanoes), with diversions into nuclear brinkmanship, pestilence, and that most fashionable of modern nightmares, rogue artificial intelligence. The effect…
