Seeking to assuage his existential dread in the face of climate change and the global disintegration of democracy, Dublin-based writer Mark O'Connell tours survival bunkers in South Dakota, ventures to New Zealand to a favored retreat of billionaires banking on civilization's collapse, engages with would-be Mars colonists, and conspiracists all while offering readers a unique window into our contemporary imagination.
What The Reviewers Say
Tim Adams,
The Observer (UK)
O’Connell has a gift for channelling the 'sense of looming crisis' that characterises our times, but is able to step outside it, to bring it into focus.
Jennifer Szalai,
The New York Times
Some of the stops on this travelogue are so spectacularly scenic that I found myself envious, and not a little bit suspicious: Here was someone who had figured out a way to tour the world by writing about the end of it.
Toby Lichtig,
The Wall Street Journal
Mr. O’Connell’s investigation into end-times paranoia, prognostication and 'prepping' (stockpiling tins, dusting down that bunker) could hardly be more timely—and yet in some ways his new book has already dated beyond anything he could have predicted.