Disasters are, by their nature, difficult to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, fires, economic crises, and wars, do not distribute themselves regularly – there is no cyclical pattern in history that helps us predict the next disaster.

But when it strikes, we should be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted or the Italians of the Middle Ages when the Black Death hit them. After all, today we have science on our side. However, in 2020, the reactions of many developed countries, including the United States, to a new virus from China did not show proper preparedness. Why? Because we saw that only a few Asian countries had learned the right lessons from the SARS and MERS syndromes?

There is no doubt that some populist leaders performed very poorly, but the author argues that deeper pathologies or dysfunctions are also involved, already evident from our reactions to previous disasters.

In his previous works, Niall Ferguson has studied the weaknesses of the Western world, from "imperial hubris" to bureaucratic sclerosis and online fragmentation. Drawing on insights from various scientific fields, such as economics, cyodynamics, and network science, he offers here not just a history but a comprehensive theory of disasters, showing why our increasingly bureaucratic and complex systems are becoming harder to manage.