The Coming Global Superstorm (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: huge question, critical cycle, Nan Madol, Northern Hemisphere, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It's time to stop talking about the weather and do something about it. Paranormal superstars Art Bell and Whitley Strieber bring environmentalism to the masses tabloid-style in The Coming Global Superstorm, a quick look at global warming and its potentially catastrophic effects. Like Old Testament prophets, Bell and Strieber embrace lovingly detailed depictions of global cataclysm; unlike them, our modern-day doomsayers have more to go on than that old-time religion. Their writing is clear and straightforward, interspersing hard data with dramatization and speculation to create an engaging, enjoyable, but thoroughly spooky warning of the next Ice Age.

Scoffers would do well to remember the 1900 hurricane that devastated Galveston, Texas, despite the clear warnings--we may have advanced our meteorological knowledge over the 20th century, but is our judgment any better? Bell and Strieber are ultimately optimistic that quick behavior change can avert the big storm for a while, even if archaeological evidence suggests its inevitability. Their solutions range from the small scale (buy fuel-efficient cars) to the grandiose (global cooperation in weather monitoring). Whether their suggestions will help is a moot question (how could we ever know?); surely, though, they won't hurt. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

The message is very scary and convincing: humankind has so polluted the environment that the world's weather is about to react by taking a "ferocious" turn. But the messengers delivering this news seem a bit flaky: Strieber wrote of his own alien abduction episode in Communion; Bell, a late-night radio talk-show host, regularly covers such topics as UFOs, government conspiracies and near-death experiences. They present an imagined sequence for the catastrophic "superstorm," threatening a possible "extinction event" for humans. It's like Orson Welles's The War of the Worlds, only we're fighting the weather instead of Martians. Interspersed with this alarmist scenario are many credible facts about the effects of trapped greenhouse gasses, as well as explanations of how quickly our ecosystem has deteriorated in this century. Reading, the authors are very grave indeed, lending an otherwise dry scientific topic a heightened sense of dramaAand making it play as a thriller on tape. Simultaneous release with the Pocket hardcover. (Dec.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Atria (December 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671041908
• ISBN-13: 978-0671041908
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (145 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,294,473 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fair Weather Warning, December 6, 1999

By	John E.L. Tenney (Detroit, MI USA) - See all my reviews

Though both Mr. Bell and Mr. Strieber have very vocal critics about their ideas and motives you cannot deny the impact that both individuals have had on our society's popular culture. Continuing to create debate and discussion is The Coming Global Superstorm which I am sure will create a "storm" of conversation with it's readers. Mixing both "fictional" scenarios as well as documented data Bell & Strieber paint what might be a very dim view of our planet's fate, but rest assured there is always a chance for change. Could a storm overtake the entire planet? If it did would we survive? This book takes on questions such as these and as Mr. Bell himself has said "..trys not to alarm, but inform." I may not always agree with the concepts of Mr. Bell and Mr. Strieber but as I sit in my office in SouthEastern Michigan this first week of December and watch the thermometer jump past 62 degrees I can't help but wonder, didn't it use to snow around here at this time of year?

94 of 106 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thought-provoking and well written, December 13, 1999

By	George A. Ramos "loves books" (Montreal, Quebec) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Expecting to read more of the "same-old" doomsday speculation rampant on Art Bell's radio show, this book suprised me with both its message and its scope. With the exception of some of the initial chapters, which provide an overview of recent theories regarding the age of mankind, the entire book was new material for me. It was the first time I'd heard of a "superstorm", how one would form, and the effects such a storm would have. The prospect is terrifying.

The book is so well-written, however, that I felt the book's message was a call to action rather than an simply a disruptive alarm. The authors cleverly intersperse realistic-yet-fictional scenes of the onset of such a storm between the factual, sometimes dry prose. The result is a book that is extremely informative and a pleasure to read (similar to "The Hot Zone").

Grounded in science and only minimally speculative(the authors state very clearly where they do so), this book is well worth reading and contemplating. I hope the book finds its way into academia soon.

57 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Coming Global Superstorm, February 27, 2000

By	"blackjewel" (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews

According to this new book, a monstrous storm of extremely damaging winds, nonstop snow and ice is on its way and could mean the end of our civilization. Depending on when the storm arrives, whether it is Winter or Summer, will determine whether we enter another Ice Age. The main brunt of the reason for the storm is that the North Atlantic Current, which helps maintain our current climate, will shift - allowing for Arctic air to plunge southward. Bell and Strieber claim that Global Warming has moved forward this natural phenomena of superstorms by several thousand years because of humans' poor stewardship of the planet (use of fossil fuels, toxic waste etc.) "Nineteen ninety-nine was the most violent year in the modern history of weather. So was 1998. So was 1997. And 1996." This period of violent weather is a warning, say the authors. Bell and Strieber point to woolly mammoths frozen while chewing vegetation and frozen orange trees found in northern Siberia as proof of prior superstorms which occur suddenly, without any warning. Many other interesting theories abound in the book, including the possibility of a technologically advanced civilization that lived about 10,000 years ago, but was wiped out by the last superstorm.

Art Bell is a well-known radio talk show host. His show covers conspiracy theories, UFOs, unexplained phenomena, global warming and other unusual topics. Whitley Strieber is best known as being the author of the bestselling book, Communion: A True Story, an account of alien abduction. Bell and Strieber lay the groundwork for their theory of the coming superstorm in the main text, but there is also a running fictional account of what happens when the storm arrives. The fictional story is both exciting and frightening; it could have easily made a gripping sf novel on its own merit.

The authors show good scientific instincts in picking this outcome rather than the standard one; their conception of a sudden reorganization of prevailing wind currents that mixes tropic and artic air directly in a giant superstorm is a creative and credible hypothesis. The Coming Global Superstorm is a frightening book whose message of weather-generated doom will hit home for those who follow our increasingly bad weather. Even skeptics may find some of the scientific evidence hard to refute. Fans of Art Bell's show, weather buffs and geologists should find plenty of things to pique their interest here.