XEvents: Complexity Overload and the Collapse of Everything

A necessary and thoughtprovoking read for the age of coronavirus, exploring eleven scenarios that may trigger the collapse of the modern world from pandemics to nuclear apocalypse to robot uprisings and what we can do to prevent and survive them.In the twenty first century, our world has become impossibly complicated, relying on ever more advanced technology that is developing at an exponential rate. Yet it is a fact of mathematical life that higher and higher levels of complexity lead to systems that are increasingly fragile and susceptible to sudden, spectacular collapse.In this highly provocative and grippingly readable book, John Casti brilliantly argues that todays advanced, overly complex societies have grown highly vulnerable to extreme events that will ultimately topple civilization like a house of cards. Like Nassim Talebs The Black Swan meets Jared Diamonds Collapse, Castis book provides a muchneeded wakeup call, sounding a fascinating and frightening warning about civilized societys inability to recover from a global catastrophe.An eyeopening and necessary read, XEvents is a shocking look at a world teetering on the brink of collapse, and a population under constant threat from pandemic viruses, worldwide communication breakdowns, nuclear winter, or any number of unforeseeable XEvents. Fascinating and chilling, XEvents provides a provocative tour of the catastrophic outlier scenarios that could quickly send us crashing back to the preindustrial age and shows that they may not be as farfetched as they seem.