A Field Guide to the Apocalypse

A common sense field guide to understanding, surviving, and thriving in our time of complex chaos and crises.

From Covid-19 to runaway technology to climate change, we are currently living in an apocalyptic state. And it’s nothing new: As a species we’ve been surviving-and evolving from-apocalypses for as long as we’ve walked the Earth. So, we’re capable of dealing with them, surviving them, and yes, thriving through them. In How to Make Friends and Win the Apocalypse, evolutionary psychologist and zombie enthusiast Athena Aktipis has assembled a lively, unexpected field guide to help readers mentally and practically prepare for current and future apocalyptic events. She begins by teaching readers to overcome the main obstacle in surviving an apocalypse: fear. And then trains them on how to make smart decisions based on historic precedent, human psychology, and brain science. Illustrated with 2-color illustrations throughout that both teach and entertain, the book is organized into five chapters that guide readers through our history with apocalypses, how we’re evolved to survive them by cooperating with each other, and how to thrive amidst our multi-apocalyptic reality.

Author Biography

Athena Aktipis is an evolutionary psychologist and professor at Arizona State. She is the co-Director of the Human Generosity Project, hosts a podcast called Zombified, and is the chair of the Zombie Apocalypse Meeting. Her most recent book is The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Understand and Treat Cancer.