Rather than buy that book, I'd invest in a Vanguard index fund.

Seriously.

Ever since I can remember -- which is since the 70s -- there's been a gloom-and-doom industry peddling all manner of fates to dread.

The world's population is going to freeze, melt, starve, be extinguished by some natural or man-made disaster.

Economic apocalypse is another perennial. I don't buy it and I wouldn't waste money on a book about it, especially if we were headed for an economic cliff. That would be, after all, when you most need to save your resources.

Economies cycle through good times, bad times and mediocre times. I'm confident we're not going to repeat the Great Depression, let alone anything worse than that. Oil prices will subside in the next couple years, housing prices will drop further and then flatten for a few years and the world will hum along.

That said, I might thumb through a copy -- for free -- at the bookstore.

:-)