The authors planned this book during the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic and wrote it during the Zika outbreak. As they worked, they did not forget the 2002 SARS coronavirus epidemic, the 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak, and the 2012 MERS coronavirus. Finally, after all this, the world faced the COVID-19 pandemic. And according to the assurances of the authors, the next pandemic will definitely come, and after it another and another. Most likely, we are waiting for a new influenza virus, no less deadly than the "Spanish flu" of 1918-1919. Only this pandemic will unfold in a world where there are three times as many people, where there is international air travel and there are Third World metropolitan areas - powder kegs ready to explode. The book encourages us to use the COVID-19 crisis as a lesson and a basis for preparing for future events so that they do not take us by surprise.