Short Quiz – Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe

[johnkarls]

.

1. Does the “Doom” Table of Contents comprise brief summaries of each chapter which together occupy 5 pages?

2. Does “Doom” NOT get around to discussing COVID-19 until the last third of the book?

3. Does “Doom” cover in any detail the focus of a currently-proposed book in Sec. 3 of www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.com –- “NYC Harvard Club Book Promotion - ‘Warp Speed: Inside The Operation That Beat COVID, The Critics and The Odds’” by Paul Mango?

4. Does “Doom” address all types of catastrophes throughout history – geological, geopolitical, biological, technological, etc.?

5. Does “Doom” posit that the biggest disasters in human history have been pandemics and wars?

6. Is this perhaps misleading since humanity has faced its possible extinction from a nuclear holocaust for nearly 6 decades?

7. Does Doom’s author, who also wrote 15 other insightful books on, inter alia, Pax Britannica and Pax Americana, overlook how successful has been the imposition of the European Union on the geographic location of so many of the world’s wars??? An organization whose legislative body (the European Parliament) does NOT even have the power to initiate legislation??? And the militaries of most of whose members are embedded in an American-dominated NATO???

8. How many disasters are avoidable such as by not locating settlements near volcanoes or fault lines, in flood plains, etc.?

9. Does Doom Chapter 6 examine a theory that political and military disasters result from incompetent leaders and democracy will prevent such incompetence? Despite American democracy, have we seen quite a bit of incompetence during the COVID era?

10. Does Doom Chapter 7 posit that the Asian flu of 1957 was about as dangerous as COVID-19 but yet it was controlled with no lockdowns or school closures?

11. Are such comparisons to the Asian flu of 1957 invalid because “Doom” was written in the middle of 2020 less than one year into the COVID pandemic, even though “Doom” was not published until 5/4/2021?

12. How many of us are old enough (Yours Truly will be 81 in February) to remember the threat of polio??? That our mothers made us take daily one-hour naps after lunch??? And that public swimming pools typically closed by the middle of the summer as polio epidemics broke out and swimming pools were viewed as polio-germ breeding grounds??? [And please, you “wise acres,” don’t ask how a pool can be a grounds!!!]

13. How many of our mothers were raised on farms and, accordingly, preached that there are zillions of germs around you all the time and the only way to defeat them is to get plenty of fresh air, sunshine, exercise, sleep and to eat right??? And if you do, you will never get sick???

14. But weren’t we nevertheless first in line to get the anti-polio Salk vaccine after it was announced in 1955??? And weren’t we first in line to receive COVID-19 shots???

15. Does Doom Chapter 8 posit that many disasters are the result of operator/managerial error???

16. In championing thorium fission as the only practical solution for economic reasons to global warming (aka climate change), have we explained that the world’s only significant nuclear accidents (which involved uranium fission – thorium is incapable of exploding) were the result of human error???

17. Do Doom Chapters 9-11 deal in depth with COVID-19?

18. BTW, would it be important to know after all its horrendous consequences whether COVID was caused by a “lab leak,” how such work was funded despite U.S. bans on “gain of function” research, why proper precautions were obviously not employed, etc., etc.???

19. What does Doom’s final Chapter (“Conclusion - Future Shocks”) recommend?

20. Do Doom’s 11 chapters + intro & conclusion make you think that Hollywood has invented a device capable of recording your dreams in living color and these are 13 nightmares that the world’s foremost historian had IN MONTANA after suffering from COVID during the early months of the pandemic while on his perpetual worldwide lecture tour causing him to abandon his lecture tour and ride out the pandemic in isolation in Montana with his wife (Ayaan Hirsi Ali) and two youngest children???