Apocalyptic Planet - A Field Guide to the Future of the Earth

Zusatztext 56854078 Informationen zum Autor CRAIG CHILDS is a commentator for NPR’s Morning Edition, and his work has appeared in The New York Times , Los Angeles Times , Men’s Journal , Outside , The Sun , and Orion . He has won numerous awards including the 2011 Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award, 2008 Rowell Award for the Art of Adventure, the 2007 Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, and the 2003 Spirit of the West Award for his body of work. Klappentext 2013 Orion Book Award Winner2013 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award WinnerOurs is not a stable planet. It is prone to sudden, violent natural disasters and extremes of climate. In this exhilarating exploration of our globe, Craig Childs goes to where the apocalypse can be seen now. From the driest deserts of Chile, through the genetic wasteland of central Iowa, to the site of the drowned land bridge of the Bering Sea, he uncovers cataclysms that tell us what could be next: forthcoming ice ages, super volcanoes, and the conclusion of planetary life cycles. Childs delivers a sensual feast in his descriptions of the natural world, and undeniable science that reveals both the earth's strengths and frailties. Bearing witness to the planet's sweeping and perilous changes, he shows how we can alter the future, and how the world will live on, though humans may not survive to see it.   Introduction   I took the idea for this book from my aunt who was sitting on her kitchen floor weeping. We were in her home in Southern California with a broken refrigerator pulled out from the wall, food rotting inside. Streams of sugar ants laced the ceilings and baseboards. It was a seasonal infestation, tiny ants coming out of the ground and filing into her every room. She also had rats. We could hear them padding behind walls and along trusses overhead. I had found one dead in her bathroom vanity. The ants were all over it.   My aunt was in the middle of writing her own book about how to survive the end of the world. Her book was meant to prepare people for what she saw as a coming change, a much-heralded apocalypse and a dawning of a new age. Now she was having trouble just getting through her day.   “I feel awful,” she cried. “Everything is falling apart.”   She and I used to talk about end-times. That was years back in New Mexico, where she was born and raised almost within earshot of the first atomic explosion. She had looked me in the eye and told me the end was coming and I would be one of those who survived. With a sad and loving smile she had said, “If anyone is going to make it, you are.”   Why did my aunt believe this? Maybe because I could skin and eat a snake or knew how to start a fire in the rain. But I didn’t know what exactly I was supposed to survive, or even if I wanted to. I was younger when she told me this, a bit more spry anyway. Now I was too chunky and balding to survive anything of consequence. I couldn’t even fix her refrigerator. Nor could I do anything about the rats or ants, nor the wildfires that had begun burning in the hills above her house, nor the tectonic fault itching to slip directly beneath us. Even the divorce she was going through was beyond me. I crouched before her, and all I could do was put my arms around her as tears started again, her life crashing in all at once. Together we weathered the terrible squall, what is said to be the end of the world.   With a strained laugh, she sniffed and palmed away her mussed bangs. “I feel so stupid,” she said. I told her it happens to the best of us.   I put her to bed, pillows behind her back, and brought her a bowl of hot soup. When her eyes closed, I took her empty bowl. In the bathroom I doubled a grocery bag and removed that wretched rat, dropping its ant-maddened remains into a trash bin outside. I tidied her sink, quietly closed the door behind me, and made off with her book idea.  <...

Product details

• Authors: Craig Childs
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 02.07.2013
• EAN: 9780307476814
• ISBN: 978-0-307-47681-4
• No. of pages: 368
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 203 mm x 20 mm
• Series: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Subjects: Guides > Nature; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Geosciences > Geology