Is Mass Extinction Possible?

When we think about the future, and the vast array of dangers that we face as a society and a species, how big do we think? Is our future measured in days, weeks, hours or perhaps millennia? For Alvy Singer, the Woody Allen stand-in in Annie Hall, the future was far, far away as the young man worried about the “universe expanding” while sitting in Brooklyn. The fact is that Alvy was thinking in species time, and history tells us that species do go extinct; that our day will come to an end and that maybe it is something we should be thinking about. Science writer and blogger Annalee Newitz, has certainly been thinking about it, and she lays it out in Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. My conversation with Annalee Newitz: