INTERVIEW / NIALL FERGUSON
“Political decisions determine how high the body count of a disaster goes”
Your new book on catastrophe is obviously hugely timely, given the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. When did you start the process of researching and writing it?
I had been wanting to write a history of dystopia, and of how the end of the world has been imagined in science fiction, for some time now – certainly before the advent of Covid-19. And then, in January 2020, I realised that what was unfolding was one of those pandemics I had been reading about in science fiction books about the end of the world. So I managed to persuade my editors that I should write a comprehensive history of disaster.
Have we always been fascinated by our own doom?
It’s clearly deeply embedded in the human psyche because in almost all world religions there is some kind of apocalyptic denouement. In both Islam and Christianity, for instance, there is an “end time”. Even in religions that imagine some kind of cyclical process, there’s a catastrophe before there is rebirth. This shows us that we are fascinated by the idea of the end, whether of the species, the planet, or the universe. That fascination means we slightly exaggerate the probability of the end of the world and jump to the conclusion that it’s happening when even a medium-sized disaster happens.
How good do you think humanity is at conceptualising the effects and outcomes of a disaster?
There’s a great song, popular with Tommies on the western front in the First World War, which goes: “The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling For you but not for me Oh! Death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling Oh! Grave, thy victory?” It’s a good example of how the British like to laugh at death – and, indeed, gallows humour is a big part of many different cultures. But it also captures an important truth: if you’re facing
