The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions

by Peter Brannen

But when she was near the end, she was fond of quoting the English medieval mystic Julian of Norwich. “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well,” she said. I didn’t buy it. The headlines made it daily more difficult to believe. At the same time that the only known habitable planet in the galaxy seems to be careening into geologic catastrophe, beheadings and crucifixions over centuries-old creeds, pandering nativist demagogues, and tribal recriminations dominate the newscasts. As a species, we seem so ill equipped for what lies ahead. Perhaps the trying changes of the coming centuries will prune us of our adolescent stupidity and superstition, and we’ll emerge as worthy and capable stewards of the world for millions of years to come. Perhaps we’re at the dawn of the Sapiezoic Eon*—a wild flourishing of intelligence and creativity, a new epoch as wondrous and different from the age of animals as that age was from the age of bacteria that preceded it. Or maybe the whole bizarre fever dream of humanity will be nothing more than a single strange sliver of stratigraphy, capped by mass extinction and buried in the canyons of the far future.