What would it take to survive after "the end of the world?" A whole culture of prepping often focuses on a familiar fantasy: grab the gear, flee the city, defend the bunker, survive alone. Anthropologist and survival instructor Chris Begley thinks that’s probably the wrong movie. Ben walks through what history and math show people actually do when civilizations break down — and what they need, from dodging poisonous acorns to forming new communities. Also: luxury bunkers, survival sporks, and the unfortunate role of politics in a world of ruin.
Guest:
Chris Begley, author of The Emergency Playbook: A Bunker-Free Guide to Disaster Preparation.
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Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod
Also, see our episode: "How To Survive a Nuclear War"
Jul 7
33 min
The planet is heating up, every plan to stop it has fallen short, and growing group of scientists has started to ask a stranger question: what if we grabbed the thermostat ourselves? Ben Bradford investigates geoengineering — the science of deliberately manipulating Earth’s climate — from space mirrors and ocean fertilizers to fleets of planes mimicking a volcano. Some of it sounds like cartoon villainy. Some of it might actually work. And that raises the thornier question: if humans can cool the planet on purpose, who decides whether we should?
Guests:
Kate Ricke, climate change scientist at UCSD
Alan Robock, atmospheric scientist at Rutgers
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Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod
Jun 30
39 min
Imagine a friendly assistant that can help you build a bioweapon. Or a chatbot in the nuclear weapons chain, cheerfully hallucinating an attack. AI national security expert Hamza Chaudhry worries this is the biggest threat right now — not “killer robot,” but humans being humans. Because whether AI becomes dangerously smart or confidently dumb, people will find face-palming ways to abuse it. From deranged cultists and rogue states, to stockbrokers and the most evil version of Ben’s little cousin, handing everyone a powerful technology with few guardrails could end badly. Or, is there a path to convince companies to add their own?
Guest:
Hamza Chaudhry, AI national security expert, Future of Life Institute
This episode was edited by Annie Russell.
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Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod
Listen to our episode about rogue AI: We Design the AI That Kills Us All
And our episode about nuclear oopsies: How to Start a Nuclear War
Jun 23
35 min
Are we living through the end times or the best moment in human history? Novelist and internet veteran Jason Pargin argues you have spent your life inside a “literal reverse apocalypse” — and if you don’t see it, he knows who to blame. Ben Bradford talks with Pargin about doom-scrolling, child mortality, processed donuts, murderous Toyota drivers, and how humanity’s greatest problems may be side effects of its greatest successes. So how do we tell if the world is really ending — or if the internet has trapped us inside a giant doom machine?
Guest:
Jason Pargin, author of I’m Starting to Worry About this Black Box of Doom, TikTok: @jasonkpargin
Thanks to Annie Russell for contributing editing to this episode.
Support Are We Doomed?, get bonus episodes, and more: https://doompod.com/support/
Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod
Earlier episodes mentioned:
Are We Going the Way of the Roman Empire?
Past Dooms That Didn't Arrive
Jun 16
31 min
Historically, societies fall. Civilizations collapse. But is that what’s happening now in the United States? With the help of historians, a former CIA-funded researcher on political instability, and one grumbling dad, Ben Bradford looks at the warning signs that can precede collapse — from polarization and political division to outside shocks and cascading crises. How much of that is visible in America right now? What would collapse actually look like in modern life? And if the alarms are blinking, is there still time to turn back?
Guests:
Ian Morris, historian, archaeologist, Stanford University professor, author: Why the West Rules—For Now.
Monty Marshall, former senior consultant for the U.S. Political Instability Task Force.
Annalee Newitz, science journalist, author: Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.
Ben's Dad.
Ben's Mom.
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Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod
Check out Ben’s previous series, Landslide.
Jun 9
37 min
The internet is how you get your news, your paycheck, your groceries, your banking, and sometimes your drinking water. Humanity has quietly handed over the keys to civilization to a network most of us don't understand and couldn't rebuild. So what happens if it goes down — and not for a day or two?
Ben Bradford tries to kill the internet, hunting for weak points in undersea cables, cyberattacks, cloud computing, overlooked open-source plumbing, and fragile politics. It’s harder than it looks, but maybe not impossible. Should we be worried?
Guests:
Bruce Schneier, cryptographer, cybersecurity lecturer, and author of Click Here to Kill Everybody.
Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for Kentik.
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Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod
Jun 2
32 min
People have been predicting the end of the world forever. They’ve always been wrong. Maybe we’re wrong today, too.
So, we’re looking back at three past dooms predicted in the 20th century, none of which arrived as advertised. Why not? What can we learn? Does it mean that the current biggest end-of-the-world fears may be overblown, misunderstood, or — with effort — preventable? Along the way: failed utopias, dystopias, and the animal Ben fears most: the mini-hippo.
Guest: Matt Novak, journalist at Gizmodo and long-time author of the Paleofuture blog.
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Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod
May 26
34 min
The air raid sirens scream (actually, they don’t work anymore). An emergency alert goes out, because … nuclear missiles are in-bound.
It’s happening! How do we survive (non-Hollywood edition)? From diving into crumbling fallout shelters to emerging into a world where nuclear winter is descending, Ben explores what armageddon would actually look like, what the movies get wrong, and why — for most of us — it’s not a flash of light, but a cramped slog.
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Listen to our episode "How to Start a Nuclear War."
Watch earlier episodes on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@arewedoomedpod
May 19
37 min
Mosquitoes are little jerks. They suck your blood to make more mosquitoes, spread deadly diseases like malaria and dengue, and have killed more humans than any other creature in the history of Earth. But now, we can fight back.
Gene-editing technology (CRISPR, gene drives) could temporarily wipe out disease-carrying mosquitoes in whole regions — potentially saving millions of lives. A miracle, but with an unsettling question of its own: Who gets to decide when humanity rewrites nature?
Also: radiation-blasted flies, Australian rabbit smoothies, and … Mosquito Jurassic Park.
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May 12
35 min
A supervolcano burbles under Yellowstone National Park. Enormous. Real. According to the internet’s most excitable corners, just itching to turn America into charcoal any minute now.
Ben Bradford investigates what supervolcanoes can actually do, why Yellowstone is almost certainly not about to blow its top, and how scientists tell when a volcano is really waking up. Panic over a national park may be distracting us from another, sneakier, more critical volcanic threat.
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May 5
40 min
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