Hacker News Reader

Comment by trashtester | Hacker News Reader

I reacted to that, too, and it made me think.

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.

View on HN

The RMS Empress of Ireland sinking on 29 May 1914, with over a thousand fatalities despite the changes made in response to the Titanic sinking, is almost forgotten. The day after the commission of inquiry concluded, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, and the events leading to WW1 began to dominate the news.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Empress_of_Ireland

> 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.

There's a little mentioned XIX century war that exacted WW2-scale casualties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

> 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.

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.

And then the Spanish Flu killed even more people than WW1 in 1918/1919.

> When authors today again consider Titantic to be "unthinkable", what does it mean?

That the thip wath not going to think, same ath in the patht?

In 1912, people were quite innocent, so this was seen as a big event

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.

The Great War ran from 1914 to 1918.

Thanks for that. I knew the dates for WWI. For some reason I had it stuck in my head that the Titanic was 1919, not 1912.

Still, my point stands — "innocent" is simply a false way to describe people of that age.

Uhhh...the great war wouldn't start for another two years in 1912....it went from july 28 1914 - November 11 1918 and world war 1 did totally change the way greater society looked at war, death and horror. Actually I read a pretty great article on hn recently that gets into how ww1 changed our perception of horror in general.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18345993

Most people of a certain age also remember OJ Simpson's famous highway chase and the subsequent murder trial. A nationwide, shared cultural memory doesn't even require large scale tragedy, let alone innocence.

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.

Huh? What is "The Great War"? My search engine points me to WW1 which ended 1918 - so it's not what you mean, is it?

"The Great War"/"World War I" started in 1914... so in 1912 it had not happened, that's where the "quite innocent" came from.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com