Scan barcode
A review by jfogg
The End: Surviving the World Through Imagined Disasters by Katie Goh
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
As someone who struggled to interact with disaster media through COVID (I dropped Parable of the Sower in 2020 and didn't play Pandemic again until 2023), it was interesting to read an argument for how they can be helpful to take time to process an ongoing apocalypse. It was interesting seeing the adaption of disaster media post 9/11 too, not something I knew about.
That said, Goh's ideas weren't as clearly set out as some of the other 404s I've read and (perhaps understandably for a book published in 2021) focused disproportionately on COVID rather than other, more persistent apocalii like the climate crisis. There's also a conflation of "preppers" (the hyper-masculine subculture of bunker builders with kit to survive a zombie apocalypse) and disaster preparedness which I didn't love.
That said, Goh's ideas weren't as clearly set out as some of the other 404s I've read and (perhaps understandably for a book published in 2021) focused disproportionately on COVID rather than other, more persistent apocalii like the climate crisis. There's also a conflation of "preppers" (the hyper-masculine subculture of bunker builders with kit to survive a zombie apocalypse) and disaster preparedness which I didn't love.