Scatter Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive A Mass Extinction

Two hundred and fifty million years ago, 95 percent of the species on Earth perished. Sixty-five million years ago, a meteor strike destroyed the dinosaurs and pretty much every other organism bigger than about fifteen pounds. Now another mass extinction is coming. This book is about how our species can survive it.

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember makes a powerful argument about humans’ ability to survive at a time when many scientists and media commentators are hell-bent on preaching the opposite. Environmental cynicism rules public policy, and apocalyptic stories about zombie death plagues rule the world of fiction. It’s a time of tremendous uncertainty, and Scatter, Adapt, and Remember offers a note of pragmatic, scientifically grounded, and humorous optimism to the current public conversation about our collective future. Readers will be equipped—scientifically, intellectually, and even emotionally—to face challenges that promise to be far greater than contemporary humans have yet encountered.

Annalee Newitz is the founding editor of the science website io9.com. She’s written for publications such as Wired, Popular Science, and the Washington Post. She is the editor of the anthology She’s Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Geeky Stuff (2006) and is a former professor of American studies at UC-Berkeley. She lives in San Francisco.