The Utopia Experiment

<p><b>As read on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week.</b><br><br>Imagine you have survived an apocalypse. Civilization as you knew it is no more. What will life be like and how will you cope?<br><br>In 2006, Dylan Evans set out to answer these questions. He left his job in a high-tech robotics lab, moved to the Scottish Highlands and founded a community called The Utopia Experiment. There, together with an eclectic assortment of volunteers, he tried to live out a scenario of global collapse, free from modern technology and comforts. <br><br>Within a year, Evans found himself detained in a psychiatric hospital, shattered and depressed, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. In <i>The Utopia Experiment</i> he tells his own extraordinary story: his frenzied early enthusiasm for this unusual project, the many challenges of post-apocalyptic living, his descent into madness and his gradual recovery. In the process, he learns