Existential Hope

Introduction – Beyond Risk and Anxiety
PART 1 – The Ends of the World
Chapter 1 – Scanning the Trees
Chapter 2 – Who Would Destroy the World?
PART 2 – How Did We Get Here?
Chapter 3 – Thinking Machines
Chapter 4 – Unmasking the Powers
Chapter 5 – Utopia is a Dangerous Place
Chapter 6 – A Point of Inflection
PART 3 – Working Together
Chapter 7 – Steering the Centuries
Chapter 8 – Not With A Bang
Chapter 9 – How (Not) to Save the World
PART 4 – Preserving Humanity
Chapter 10 – You Are Here
Chapter 11 – Standing at the Shoreline
Chapter 12 – Young, Curious, and Brave "Let SJ Beard replace your existential anxiety with existential hope – once you read this book there is no going back, and your world won’t ever look quite the same again." Mark Lynas, author of Six Minutes to Winter: Nuclear War and How to Avoid It

"SJ Beard eloquently lays out our past and current predicament to help us all direct a more hopeful future. Timely and much needed." Hannah Critchlow, author of Joined-Up Thinking: The Science of Collective Intelligence

"SJ Beard is one of the founders of the field of existential risk and has thought deeply about the precarious nature of civilization. In this accessible work, by turns philosophical and personal, Beard flips the script and focuses on the many ways our shared humanity provides a beacon of light guiding us forward." Daniel Holz, Chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, setters of the Doomsday Clock

SJ Beard is Academic Programme Manager and Senior Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge.