Renowned activist and author Mike Davis offers a terrifying forecast of a new global threat and sets the COVID-19 crisis against the backdrop of previous viral catastrophes, such as the 1918 flu that killed at least forty million people in three months or the most recent bird flu, a wake-up call disastrously ignored and whose obvious consequences we are suffering in the current devastating outbreak. With accessible and rigorous language, Davis reconstructs the scientific and political story of a developing viral apocalypse, exposing the central roles of agribusiness and fast-food industries, supported by corrupt governments, in creating the ecological conditions for the emergence of this new plague.