> It’s unthinkable today that a tragedy of this magnitude could occur.
In terms of death toll, there have been worse shipwrecks in this century.
In terms of death toll, there have been worse shipwrecks in this century.
1987 there was a shipwreck that was 4x as bad as the Titanic (over 4,000 deaths).
In 2002 over 2,000 people died in one (nearly 2x the Titanic)
A 2006 wreck had 1,000 deaths. The same magnitude as the Titanic.
It seems that it is only unthinkable for people who can't use Wikipedia.
21st Century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_maritime_disasters_in_...
20th Century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_maritime_disasters_in_...
1910 -> 1.7 billons
1987 -> 5.0 billons (2.9x)
2002 -> 6.2 billons (3.6X)
2006 -> 6.5 billons (3.8X)
So the 1987 case is still worse after adjusting for the global population.
Coupled with the absurdity of a situation where the ship sinks slowly and people drown due to lack of lifeboats (among other things).
Which leads to my other favorite modern myth that we never built a bigger ship than Titanic since that disaster. It's interesting to point out that very few modern Cruise Ships are smaller than the Titanic.
Hell, I didn't hear about Doña Paz until today, despite being the largest peacetime maritime disaster in history and happening just 2 years after Challenger.
In short, people wanted to believe that we could just go into space and leave all the problems we had and mistakes we made on earth behind. It was a sort-of "salvation". The Challenger was a poignant reminder that this was not the case.
In a village, a murder is the talk of town. In a city, we don't even know.
So, yes; GPs point, while cold and calculating in the way only actuaries can sometimes be, was a fair point nonetheless.
(I agree, it's kinda silly metric.)
There's actually a lot of murders that never get solved.
(from a purely; sociopathic standpoint anyway)
Of course, in reality (at least the American judicial system), punishment is usually based more on other factors, such as motive. So premeditatedly killing an old man because you wanted to steal his stuff is punished more than killing a child purely by accident.
Had this happened in 1919, I think it would have been forgotten already, as it would seem pale compared to WW1. In 1912, people were quite innocent, so this was seen as a big event.
Was WW1, at least in part, something that was allowed to happen before most people had forgotten earlier big wars? Roughly 100 years had passed since Napoleon, after all.
When authors today again consider Titantic to be "unthinkable", what does it mean?
I consider it perfectly thinkable that something in our lifetime will trigger a nuclear war, killing billions of people.
Especially if we start to take global stability for granted.
> Was WW1, at least in part, something that was allowed to happen before most people had forgotten earlier big wars? Roughly 100 years had passed since Napoleon, after all.
There's a little mentioned XIX century war that exacted WW2-scale casualties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
Also because of this I think it became sort of a shared generational experience. A single, big, widely reported and discussed tragic event, that made people able to recall "what were you doing when you learned about the Titanic" for years to come. Similar to 9/11 for my generation.
That the thip wath not going to think, same ath in the patht?
Huh?
40 million people died in The Great War, which just ended. And there were world events which killed people on a much larger scale than the Titanic before that.
It's a very modern and naïve viewpoint to think people of years past were "innocent," as if tragedy and large-scale loss of life is somehow a new invention.
Still, my point stands — "innocent" is simply a false way to describe people of that age.
As others have suggested, I would think interest in the Titanic had much to do with the celebrity status of its victims and the ship itself.
There was a strong sense of "That could have happened to me!", especially among the elite.
Imagine how terrified the tech community would be if a major accident at SFO killed 1000 people trying to get on or off flights.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759#Incident
> AC759 reached a minimum altitude of 59 feet (18 m) above ground level, comparable to the 55 ft 10 in (17.02 m) tail height of a Boeing 787-9, two of which were on Taxiway C
But I could be wrong in my interpretation...
I think one of the shocking things about the Titanic is that it was considered to be top of the line and operated in a professional manner. I don't think anyone is shocked that third world countries operate unsafely.
After reading that article not only was such an occurrence not unthinkable, I almost felt like a survivor.
I see what you mean with the bad safety procedures, but now that much better safety procedures are mandated by law and we have radar and real-time weather reports, you could turn that around and say that a disaster with a comparable death toll is even more tragic, given that it's much more easily preventable.
..
With a great big itheberg.