Booknotes- Scatter, Adapt, and Remember by Annalee Newitz

Scatter, Adapt, Survive and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction

by Annalee Newitz

Finished 6/3/21

A rich and readable popular science book on the end of the world and what comes after.

Annalee Newitz is a great writer, able to synthesize complex concepts with grace and humor. Newitz did this as the editor of the gawker blog io9, and also as a a novelist–I quite liked “the Future of Another Timeline” about time-travelling feminists seeking to edit history in a war with time-travelling violent patriarchs.

This book takes a concept Newitz explored as a journalist, and expands it into a broader interrogation of the history of extinctions on Earth, the possible sources of future extinctions, and the possible solutions that might help us avoid or adapt to them. Despite the stark subject matter, the tone of the book is hopeful and optimistic, with the overall theme being that extinctions are junctures, not endpoints, and that at every documented extinction in our history, “living creatures carried on, adapting to survive under the harshest of conditions.”

Part one surveys this history of extinctions, focusing on the great extinction events that characterize our periodization of Earth’s history prior to the arrival of hominins in the pleistocene. Newitz explores how the earliest life-forms in the Devonian periods created the circumstances of their own mass extinction by expanding too rapidly and spurring dramatic climate change. Not surprisingly, this theme recurs throughout the book. Her discussions of the K-T extinction that “killed the dinosaurs” is rich and nuanced, pointing out that many dinosaur species evolved into modern birds, and that such an extinction event made a path for mammalian evolution. In other words, the extinction of the dinosaurs wasn’t really an extinction, and the changes that it wrought were capitalized on by other species who survived.

Part two focuses on the Pleistocene and human “extinction events”. Newitz’s discussion of human evolution is rich and detailed while still quite readable. Newitz balances the competing interpretations of human migration out of Africa deftly, and their discussion of the “extinction” of Neanderthals is equally compelling, leaning heavily on the idea that homo sapiens and neanderthals likely interbred and formed a single population during the middle paleolithic. The section concludes with a discussion of diseases as extinction events, and foregrounds the idea that epidemics are socially rooted–that is, that the organization of a society will dictate how that society fares against a disease. There is a good discussion of the “columbian exchange” and the ways in which social historians like Paul Kelton (whose book on slavery and disease I also loved) have complicated the idea of “Virgin Soil” epidemics.

Part three focuses on people and other lifeforms who have survived, and draws lessons from that survival. Newitz focuses on the history of the Jewish people, who were scattered from their ancestral homelands around the Mediterranean by the Romans. This scattering and adaptation to new circumstances likely saved them from being wiped out. Newitz also juxtaposes the survival of cyanobacteria and whales, both of whom have unique and complex biology that allow them to survive in difficult circumstances. Finally, Newitz explores the writings of science fiction legend Octavia, who was fascinated with the idea of survival in the face of extinction or hardship, and the necessary costs of and trade-offs that survival required. But, Newitz draws from Butler the idea that we need stories about survival to help us adapt–storytelling is as much a survival strategy as photosynthesis is for Cyanobacteria, and social memories of safe and dangerous places are for whales. 

Part four focuses on urban survival, given that humanity, for the last ten thousand years, has lived in cities. Much of this section focuses on the idea of cities as a process; a form that is constantly growing and changing in some repeatable ways, and in some random ways. Sometimes this change is a function of social or ecological disaster, and Newitz looks at how contemporary disaster scientists are exploring how cities will be affected and impacted by floods, diseases, and other contemporary plagues. Newitz also examines some possible adaptations to such plagues, including underground cities that could help us survive surface disasters, and the growth of urban agriculture, utilizing city-scapes in more sustainable and equitable ways. 

Finally, part five shoots us into space, with a focus on how we will survive our next million years as hominins. Newitz explores how we might use technology to push back against the rigors of climate change, echoing the techno-optimism of books like Leigh Philips “Austerity Ecology and the Collapse-Porn Addicts”. They also examine the current state of the fight against exo-bodies, particularly asteroids, and how we might survive an asteroid crash similar to the one that likely led to the K-T extinction. The most likely feature of our long-term surival is getting off the planet and adapting to new environments, and Newitz explores how space travel, and particularly space-elevators might be utilized for this purpose. Finally, Newitz concludes with how our bodies, minds, and even consciousness might need to change if we are to spread out into the galaxy, possibly as cybernetic or even incorporeal beings. As it always has, survival will require change, perhaps even dramatic change.

This book was a lot of fun, thoughtful and hopeful.