The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, October 16, 1834, by Joseph Mallord William Turner, c. 1835. © The Philadelphia Museum of Art / Art Resource.

Disaster

Volume IX, Number 2 | spring 2016

Purchase

Preamble

Shock and Awe

Solidarity and Survival

By Garret Keizer

Whether it’s earthquakes, famines, or floods, the social contract is continuously put to the test in times of calamity.

Map

Survival of the Fittest

Six mass extinctions.

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Miscellany

When Albert Einstein visited Beno Gutenberg, a seismologist at Caltech, in 1933, the two strolled around the Pasadena campus while Gutenberg explained earthquake science. Suddenly their wives arrived to inform them there had been a massive earthquake. “We had become so involved in seismology,” recalled Gutenberg later, “that we hadn’t noticed.”