Our Final Century: About A Book

A few months ago I read a book by a chap called Sir Martin Rees, who happens to be the Astronomer Royal here in Britain. The book was intriguingly titled Our Final Century. This book is a must read for anyone with any interest in science and the future, or lack of it, of life on Earth.

The book explores the many dangers, natural and man-made, that places the future of life on this planet in great jeopardy. From meteor impacts to genetically engineered viruses, and from nuclear warfare and other forms of WMD to global warming, this superbly written book takes us on a journey through the perils that we face. There is little that we can do about some of these dangers, like comets and super-volcanoes, and it may already be too late to change the things that we might have been able to change...if we had bothered and were willing to pay the costs.

So, in the spirit of the book, I would like to present just one of the many dangers that we may one day face. This little film is narrated in Japanese, which I do not speak and therefore can't translate for you. But the visuals speak for themselves and the Japanese narration just adds to the incomprehensibility of the whole thing. It seems an odd thing to say...but....Enjoy!