The Discerning Tourist's Guide to the End of the World

The End of the World is a dangerous place. Remember in particular the old wise never share a handkerchief with a skinny bloke on a horse.This book, written in the style of your average travel guide book, reflects on a variety of ways in which the End of the World might come about. Whether it's through catastrophic climate change, meteor impact, or a horde of rampaging Viking deities, people have imagined Armageddon in a multitude of forms and agencies. This book looks at them from an historical, cultural, and scientific perspective, evaluates their likelihood, and explains what we can do about them (usually not much).It deserves a Nobel Prize for updating the Drake Formula (working out the likelihood of alien life existing) to assess the probability of an alien invasion, including such variables as whether we've convinced them we'll set Tom Cruise on them, or whether they read the Guardian newspaper, and what The Neighbours are saying.Particularly useful for people looking at joining a doomsday cult (which generally ends badly), investing in North Sea waterfront property on the eve of an Ice Age (a great investment), and survivalists who like to take selfies.This volume does NOT classify as a Class 3 relic for undead protection purposes, though the author might.