Social Science Disasters

An inside account of the fight to contain the world's deadliest diseases - and the panic and corruption that make them worse. The Next Pandemic is a firsthand account of disasters like anthrax, bird flu, and others - and how we could do more to prevent their return. It is both a gripping story of our brushes with fate and an urgent lesson on how we can keep ourselves safe from the inevitable next pandemic.

The year was 1922: World War I had just come to a close, the Ottoman Empire was in decline, and Asa Jennings, a YMCA worker from upstate New York, had just arrived in the quiet coastal city of Smyrna to teach sports to boys. Several hundred miles to the east in Turkey's interior, tensions between Greeks and Turks had boiled over into deadly violence. Mustapha Kemal, now known as Ataturk, and his Muslim army soon advanced into Smyrna, a Christian city, where a half a million terrified Greek and Armenian refugees had fled in a desperate attempt to escape his troops.

If a disaster occurred would you be prepared? Could you feed and defend your family? Do you hope for the best but want to be ready for the worst? We live in uncertain times. The threat of disaster - both man-made and natural - looms ever present. Could you depend on yourself if you had to? Could you take care of your family? This book on SHTF prepping will teach why it's important to be ready, what you need to do to get prepared, what types of items and supplies you'll need after a disaster, and offers plans for both short-term and long-term survival.

A riveting account of the greatest small-boat rescue in American history.

April 27, 2011, marked the climax of a superstorm that saw a record 358 tornadoes rip through 21 states in 3 days, 7 hours, and 18 minutes. It was the deadliest day of the biggest tornado outbreak in recorded history, which saw 348 people killed, entire neighborhoods erased, and $11 billion in damage. But from the terrible destruction emerged everyday heroes, neighbors, and strangers who rescued each other from hell on earth.

On January 25, 2020, after the central government imposed a lockdown in Wuhan, acclaimed Chinese writer Fang Fang began publishing an online diary. In the days and weeks that followed, Fang Fang’s nightly postings gave voice to the fears, frustrations, anger, and hope of millions of her fellow citizens, reflecting on the psychological impact of forced isolation, the role of the internet as both community lifeline and source of misinformation, and most tragically, the lives of neighbors and friends taken by the deadly virus.

The Unreality of Memory collects provocative, searching essays on disaster culture, climate anxiety, and our mounting collective sense of doom. In this new collection, acclaimed poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert explores our obsessions with disasters past and future, from the sinking of the Titanic to Chernobyl, from witch hunts to the plague. These deeply researched, prophetic meditations question how the world will end - if indeed it will - and why we can't stop fantasizing about it.

On January 12, 2010, a major earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people died, and the greater part of the capital was demolished. Dr. Paul Farmer, U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, who had worked in the country for nearly thirty years treating infectious diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS, and former President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, had just begun to work on an extensive development plan to improve living conditions in Haiti.

On June 12, 1972, a powerful explosion rocked American Airlines Flight 96 a mere five minutes after its takeoff from Detroit. The explosion ripped a gaping hole in the bottom of the aircraft and jammed the hydraulic controls. Miraculously, despite the damage and ensuing chaos, the pilots were able to land the plane safely. Less than two years later, on March 3, 1974, a sudden, forceful blowout tore through Turk Hava Yollari (THY) Flight 981 from Paris to London. THY Flight 981 was not as lucky as Flight 96: it crashed in a forest in France.

Marc Thiessen knows more than almost anyone outside the CIA about what went on at CIA “black sites” and at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As chief speechwriter for President Bush, he was given unprecedented access to some of the most sensitive intelligence our government possessed on al Qaeda terrorists. He has since spent countless hours interviewing the men and women involved in the interrogations at every level—from Vice President Dick Cheney to the interrogators themselves.

In the spring of 1964, Anchorage, Alaska, was a modern-day frontier town yearning to be a metropolis - the largest, proudest city in a state that was still brand-new. But just before sundown on Good Friday, the community was jolted by the most powerful earthquake in American history, a catastrophic 9.2 on the Richter Scale. This Is Chance! is the thrilling, cinematic story of a community shattered by disaster - and the extraordinary woman who helped pull it back together.

The U.S.-backed military invasion of Cuba in 1961 remains one of the most ill-fated blunders in American history, with echoes of the event reverberating even today. Despite the Kennedy administration’s initial public insistence that the United States had nothing to do with the invasion, it soon became clear that the complex operation had been planned and approved by the best and brightest minds at the highest reaches of Washington, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President John F. Kennedy himself.

From a global pandemic to social unrest to election messes to murder hornets, 2020 and beyond has been a time of maximum chaos. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Because, there are professionals inside and outside of government who are responsible for keeping us prepared for these things. When disasters happen, they spring into action to coordinate and communicate so that instead of confusion and fear, we get clarity and confidence.

Taking listeners from the melting Alaskan permafrost to storm-torn New Orleans, acclaimed journalist Elizabeth Kolbert approaches this monumental problem from every angle. She interviews researchers and environmentalists, explains the science, draws frightening parallels to lost civilizations, and presents the moving tales of people who are watching their worlds disappear.

Current debates about economic crises typically focus on the role that public debt and debt-fueled public spending play in economic growth. This illuminating and provocative work shows that it is the rapid expansion of private rather than public debt that constrains growth and sparks economic calamities like the financial crisis of 2008.

What would happen if terrorists detonated a nuclear device high above the United States? What about if the sun emitted a large coronal mass ejection that resulted in a damaging geomagnetic storm? In either case, electrical power could be lost for months. Shortages would quickly ensue - food, water, and fuel would disappear within days. Widespread panic and suffering would be unavoidable. Are you prepared for these large-scale disasters? This audiobook will help you to prepare for two the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it (TEOTWAWKI) events: the EMP attack and the solar storm.

On December 3, 1999, the call crackled in to the men of the Worchester, Massachusetts Fire Department: a three-alarm warehouse blaze in a six-story windowless colossus of brick and mortar. What happened next - and how their lives and community were changed forever - offers an unprecedented look at these heroic men whose job it is to rush into burning buildings when everyone else just wants out.

Look around you and think for a minute: Is America too crowded? For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet that's busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else. It's all bunk. The population bomb never exploded. Instead, statistics from around the world make clear that since the 1970s, we've been facing exactly the opposite problem: people are having too few babies.

If you're anything like me and have a family or loved ones to protect, then you know that being prepared in a disaster situation can mean the difference between life and death. This book will go over not only why SHTF prepping is important but how to go about doing it and what food and other items you'll need not only for your short-term survival but for you long-term survival as well.

On the morning of May 9, 1980, harbor pilot John Lerro was guiding a 600-foot freighter, the Summit Venture, into Tampa Bay. Directly in the ship's path was the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Suddenly, a violent weather cell reduced visibility to zero at the precise moment when Lerro attempted to direct the 20,000-ton vessel underneath the bridge. Unable to stop or see where he was going, Lerro drove the ship into a support pier.