The Pessimists Guide to History.

The Pessimist’s Guide to History

UPDATED EDITION.



AN IRRESISTIBLE COMPENDIUM OF CATASTROPHES, BARBARITIES, MASSACRES, AND MAYHEM—FROM 14 BILLION YEARS AGO TO 2007



14 Billion Years Ago: The Big Bang. The first and greatest natural catastrophe imaginable was the Big Bang, the cataclysmic event that scientists believe created virtually the entire universe we know today. The true pessimists among us might find it a less than desirable event, as the calamities that follow would never have occurred had it not been for the Big Bang.

While no one knows what really took place, scientists today believe the universe before the Big Bang was a single, supercooled energy field no bigger than a speck that floated in a dark, limitless vacuum. Then, for some unknown reason, the energy fi eld was disturbed by a random fl uctuation.

Suddenly the field started expanding rapidly; then gravity, light, and subatomic particles formed from the original energy field. In a fraction of a second, the Big Bang blasted matter and energy outward at incredible speeds, and even today, billions of years later, the universe continues expanding outward. During the eons following the Big Bang, great clouds of gases and dust formed and gradually condensed into the galaxies, stars, planets, and everything else we see around us today.