We have survived the potential hazards of the beginning of the new millennium but as Bill Maguire reminds us we survive on planet Earth purely by geological consent. Over the last few thousand years the Earth has been remarkably quiet—geologically speaking, and has dealt none of the literally Earth-shattering blows of which she is capable.

This might seem an odd statement, considering the vast numbers of people that have been killed over this period by natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods and tidal waves. However, we are living on borrowed time according to Bill Maguire, a professor at University College, London. As an expert in geo-hazards, he should know. As Maguire's Apocalypse shows, the geological record of Earth history has been interrupted constantly by cataclysmic events, often with magnitudes far greater than anything experienced within human history.

Maguire explains the science behind these normal but infrequent geological events. He blends them with a judicious mixture of fictionalised glimpses of their impacts in human terms. Very effectively and scarily, he pictures the effects of a huge volcanic eruption in America's Yellowstone National Park, a major giant wave (tsunami) swamping Atlantic islands from the Bahamas to the Azores, a magnitude 8 earthquake hitting Tokyo and a 1km rocky fragment crashing into the English Channel—all reasonable geo-hazard scenarios. This is not just scaremongering but designed to encourage the scientific study of geo-hazard prediction and management. We are lucky to be living in relatively quiet geological times. Let us hope that it stays this way until the scientists improve their predictive skills. —Douglas Palmer