Training for Catastrophe: Fictions of National Security after 9/11

Lindsay Thomas

May 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Karen Peakes

About this audiobook

Why would the normally buttoned-down national security state imagine lurid future scenarios like a zombie apocalypse? In Training for Catastrophe, author Lindsay Thomas shows how our security regime reimagines plausibility to focus on unlikely and even unreal events rather than probable ones. With an in-depth focus on preparedness (a pivotal, emergent national security paradigm since 9/11) she explores how fiction shapes national security. Thomas finds fiction at work in unexpected settings, from policy documents and workplace training manuals to comics and video games. Through these texts-as well as plenty of science fiction-she examines the philosophy of preparedness, interrogating the roots of why it asks us to treat explicitly fictional events as real. Thomas connects this philosophical underpinning to how preparedness plays out in contemporary politics, emphasizing how it uses aesthetic elements like realism, genre, character, and plot to train people both to regard some disasters as normal and to ignore others. Training for Catastrophe makes an important case for how these documents elicit consent and compliance. Thomas draws from a huge archive of texts to ask difficult questions about the uses and values of fiction.

About the author

Lindsay Thomas is assistant professor of English at the University of Miami. She is also a principal investigator for WhatEvery1Says, a large-scale digital humanities project that explores public discourse about the humanities.

Karen Peakes began narrating audiobooks in 2014 and has been nominated for an Audie Award. She dearly loves bringing stories to life in her home studio and has been lucky enough to narrate a wide range of genres, from true crime to romance, literary fiction, and more. She resides in New Jersey with her husband and son.