Will You Spot Your Iceberg In Time?
Who is captaining your ship? For that matter, who built it?
Will You Spot You Iceberg In Time?
A few days ago, we observed the one hundred and thirteenth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. It didn’t have to happen. Really, no acident has to happen. But we are human, and we sometimes fail to consider all the possibilities until it’s too late.
Understand that an accident, by definition, was caused by man. We don’t say that a volcano erupting is an accident. It’s a natural occurrence. If people die, as in Pompeii, it is tragic, but not an accident.
The Titanic was an accident. It didn’t have to happen; nobody needed to die. As is often the case with accidents, a number of things could have been done differently, any one of which could have prevented the tragedy.
Improper rivets were used in some of the steel plates. They were brittle, and studies of the ship at the bottom of the ocean indicate that snapping rivets during the collision with the iceberg exacerbated the problem.
(This is reminiscent of the Brooklyn bridge, in which the contractors substituted a cheaper steel cable than what was specified by the engineer. He might have gotten away with it, and the Brooklyn bridge might have collapsed, but the engineer caught the substitution. The contractor called in political favors in an effort to override the engineer. In the end, the engineer’s judgement prevailed. We’ll never know what might have happened otherwise.)
The water containment bulkheads of the Titanic, that were supposed to contain water from any individual breech of the hull, had no sealed ‘lid’. Ultimately, water topped over each bulkhead and flowed into the next bulkhead. That sealed the ship’s doom. If the bulkheads had had sealed ‘lids’ it would not have sunk.
There was a ship close enough to save people in time, but there was a plethora of miscues in that regard. The SS Californian had stopped moving in the dark night (before radar) out of fear of colliding with an iceberg. The radio operator had shut down his rig as a result, and missed the distress call from the Titanic by fifteen minutes. Still, a man on watch saw the distress flares from the Titanic. He didn’t know what they signified, but he easily deduced there was a significant problem. The captain of the Californian was notified, but he declined to take action.
This same ship had sent out a previous radio call telling ships in the area about the icebergs. But, for some reason, the Titanic charged ahead.
It has been said that, in the confusion, lifeboats were launched only half full. That is true. But the reason is that many passengers did not believe that the ship would sink (although the captain told them it would) and preferred to stay on board rather than float in a little lifeboat in the middle of the frigid ocean. There was no mad dash for the boats as depicted in movies.
How many ways could more, perhaps all of the lives been saved? It’s almost impossible to count. If the captain had heeded the warning and halted the ship’s progress, few people today would ever have heard of the Titanic. If people believed the captain when he told them to get on the lifeboats, some number of hundreds more passengers would have been saved. It is true that there weren’t enough boats. The assumption had been that, if needed, the boats could make multiple trips between ships.
When planes fall out of the sky, usually it was the result of more than one malfunction. When bridges collapse, same thing. Even when it’s a single factor, multiple people missed their chance to catch it in time.
So, let’s just say that man is fallible. Modern technology is a wonderful thing, and I don’t want to give it up. But modern technology opens us up to multiple risks, many of which the average person cannot perceive nor consciously avoid. When I think of all the ways things can go wrong (and I have personal experience with some of them), I am surprised that we don’t have more tragedies than we have. We count on experts. We count on people showing up every day and taking their job seriously. We count on schools to properly educate. We count on governments to properly regulate. How warm and cozy does that make you feel?
Once upon a time, before the industrial revolution, a person could live their life almost intuitively. What you saw was what you got. It was not an easy life. There was little education, even of royalty. Heating was pathetic. The royalty in those castles might have suffered from colder temperatures in winter than people in modest houses. No AC for anyone. It took months to cross the ocean, if you made it. People did not understand how disease spreads, or much of what can be done to prevent it. Healthcare didn’t amount to much for anyone. Even the rich suffered from cold and heat, and most lived in little more than hovels.
It is not the aristocracy that changed all that. In reality, the aristocracy has just been along for the ride. It is the Issac Newtons, the Thomas Edisons, the Nikola Teslas, the Henry Fords who have made all the difference. The politicians just line up to take the credit.
I don’t want to go back in time and experience those ‘good old days’. But I also recognize the risks, the self-inflicted risks of a technologically advanced society. The people who make this all work cannot get by intuitively. They must be, as I say, cold-bloodedly rational. In government, people make the laws. Good or bad, fair or unfair, people make and enforce their laws. In the world of reality, nature makes the laws, and enforces them mercilessly against any who flaunt them. The aristocracy of three hundred years ago could rule intuitively. They could rule with coalitions and committees. Some people are well suited for that. But in today’s world, these are exactly the wrong people. I see politicians make declarations concerning energy policy, transportation, communication, and healthcare about which they are totally clueless. It’s a different world, but they are the same old confabulators, unable to navigate the laws of physical reality. Reelect them at your own risk.