# @wired on Instagram

- **Type:** Video
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DdykBtNjoxk
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/71017122-wired-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/90af9227fb.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-09-27T14:01:53.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** WIRED (@wired) — https://gondola.cc/wired

## Caption

If the United States collapses in the near future, you’ll no doubt be tempted to point a few fingers. Just don’t blame Emily St. John Mandel (emilystjohnmandel).

As Covid tore across the planet, Mandel became something of a pandemic prophet for writing the hit 2014 novel, “Station Eleven.” Journalists and everyday Twitter users alike looked to her for guidance as they hunkered down at home, desperate for someone—anyone—to tell them what was happening, and what might come next. Now, Mandel is out with a new book, “Exit Party,” that documents the interwoven lives of people living in two different, near-future versions of the US: A violent, post-civil-war free-for-all, and a totalitarian state where surveillance runs roughshod over a paranoid populace. She started writing the book in 2022, when polarization and political extremism were already surging—but well before the era of Trump 2.0, widespread ICE raids, and tech-infused surveillance we’re living through today.

“Exit Party” is a tremendous, riveting, deeply human novel. And despite being strictly fictional, the two futures that “Exit Party” imagines also feel eerily, uncomfortably close to reality. But as Mandel reminded WIRED’s Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond when they sat down at WIRED’s New York studio, the book is also infused with plenty of hope, and forces readers to ask themselves important questions about what kind of person they’d be if it all went to hell. She was also, of course, quick to point out that “it doesn’t actually take any particular clairvoyance,” to see where this moment in US history might take us. So no, Mandel can’t help you much if the militias roll through—but “Exit Party” might offer a few lessons in how to show up for your neighbors. (And throw the best post-collapse party.)

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