The Next Apocalypse. The Art and Science of Survival

Chris Begley is an underwater archaeologist, wilderness survival instructor, and a professor of anthropology at Transylvania University. He has worked in Central and South America and the Mediterranean. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky, USA. Pandemic, climate change, or war – our era is permeated with the scent of Judgment Day. Modern films, books, and other sources are filled with creepy fantasies about life after the apocalypse. We imagine terrible, abandoned cities and how we return to the land in a desperate attempt to survive. In his book, Chris Begley argues that our concepts of how disasters happen are fundamentally wrong. Using the example of the collapse of past civilizations, such as the Maya and the Western Roman Empire, the author shows that this is more of a gradual process of changes rather than a collapse due to a cataclysm. Some people abandon their homes and neighbors. Others band together to start anew. More importantly, what happens after the event that triggers this reaction. Begley emphasizes that the end of the world has been experienced by communities, groups of people, rather than lone heroes. And this will be the case during the next apocalypse.