Includes bibliographical references and index.

Are we all going to die? -- A history of mass extinctions. The apocalypse that brought us to life ; Two ways to go extinct ; The Great dying ; What really happened to the dinosaurs ; Is a mass extinction going on right now? -- We almost didn't make it. The African bottleneck ; Meeting the Neanderthals ; Great plagues ; The hungry generations -- Lessons from survivors. Scatter : footprints of the diaspora ; Adapt : meet the toughest microbes in the world ; Remember : swim south ; Pragmatic optimism, or, Stories of survival -- How to build a death-proof city. The mutating metropolis ; Disaster science ; Using math to stop a pandemic ; Cities that hide ; Every surface a farm -- The million-year view. Terraforming Earth ; Not in our planetary backyard ; Take a ride on the space elevator ; Your body is optional ; On Titan's beach.

"In its 4.5 billion-year history, life on Earth has been almost erased at least half a dozen times: shattered by asteroid impacts, entombed in ice, smothered by methane, and torn apart by unfathomably powerful megavolcanoes. And we know that another global disaster is eventually headed our way. Can we survive it? How?"--Dust jacket flap.