Destruction

Disasters are, by their very nature, difficult to predict. There is no historical cycle to help us foresee the next pandemic, earthquake, fire, financial crisis, or war. However, when disaster strikes, we should be better prepared than the Romans when Vesuvius erupted, or mediaeval Italians when the Black Death hit. After all, we have science on our side. Yet in 2020, the response of many developed countries to a new virus from China was poorly managed. Why? Why did only a few Asian countries learn from SARS and MERS? The author argues that the pandemic revealed deeper pathologies – pathologies that were already evident in our responses to earlier disasters. Drawing on many disciplines, including economics, cliodynamics, and network science, the book offers not just a history but a general theory of disasters, showing why our increasingly bureaucratic and complex systems are becoming worse at dealing with them.