For many of us, until recently, ‘disaster management’ was what kicked in when you ran out of gin halfway through a dinner party. Or you accidentally sent an explicit sext to the family WhatsApp group. Or your eldest declared she was renouncing the exploitative capitalist tyranny of the West and moving to a culty-sounding commune in Indonesia. (Bless.)
What quaint little problems these seem – quite charming, really – in comparison to the prospect of a pandemic, or a national grid collapse, or a third world war, or climate catastrophe, or riots, or the AI apocalypse… There are a number of pick-and-mix end-of-days prospects that feel cocked and loaded these days. Our faith in basic infrastructure, the stability of global politics, technology, the rule of law, and medicine have all…