Carl Sims, a young virologist, discovers a story hatched by agroup of international researchers to cull, in just a matter of weeks, two-thirds ofthe world’s population-some 4.5 billion people-by releasing a deadly virus.Their goal is to reduce Earth’s population from an unsustainable seven billionto two billion. What’s he to accomplish? Try to stop the conspiracy, or join it?

It’s horrific, yes, but imagine if this culling could preventthe extinction of some 40 percent of the planet’s flora and fauna? Or if he about The Culling wascertain it was the only path to prevent a straight larger individual die-off, incurringsignificantly more suffering, by the end of this century? Or if he wereconvinced it symbolized the only hope for humanity surviving in any way? This isat the heart of the thriller, for these infections do, actually, exist.

Most everything that plagues mankind today-the highest concentration of atmospheric CO? in three million years, escalating extinction rates, habitatloss, fishery collapses, weather transformation, polar and glacial snow thaws, arableland loss, desertification, aquifer depletions, sea acidification,unprecedented polluting of the environment, looming famine, and social unrest-stems from overconsumption which, unchecked, will result in Earth’s 6th mass extinction event.