Ancient and modern history is full of events we all know were tragic. But dig a little deeper into the complete stories, and you'll find that they're even sadder than what's on the surface.
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00:00:00Ancient and modern history is full of events we all know were tragic.
00:00:04But dig a little deeper into the complete stories, and you'll find that they're even
00:00:08sadder than what's on the surface.
00:00:10You might be forgiven for thinking that the most disturbing part of the eruption of Mount
00:00:14Vesuvius in 79 A.D. was the sheer suddenness of Pompeii's destruction.
00:00:19But while the town's destruction was unspeakably tragic, the speed at which it happened wasn't
00:00:23nearly the worst thing about it.
00:00:26Two festivals happening in the town at the same time meant the tragedy at Pompeii ended
00:00:30up so much worse than it should have been.
00:00:33According to the book Pompeii, An Archaeological Guide, the Pompeians were in the middle of
00:00:37a multi-day celebration in honor of the emperor Augustus.
00:00:41Known today as the first emperor of the Roman Empire, Augustus had died 65 years earlier
00:00:46and had just been made a god, as well as having the month of August named after him.
00:00:50Pompeii's streets were filled with public celebrations, including street musicians,
00:00:55fortune-tellers, plays, and athletic events.
00:00:58Many of those performers and athletes came from outside Pompeii to take part in the event,
00:01:02as did the visitors and tourists who came to see them.
00:01:05We can't know exactly how many extra people were in the town at the time of its destruction,
00:01:10but it is certain a lot more lives were lost than might have happened if the eruption had
00:01:14happened a month later.
00:01:16Even worse, the day before the eruption was Vulcanalia, the festival of the god Vulcan,
00:01:21otherwise known as the god of fire and volcanoes.
00:01:23It wasn't so much that the people of Pompeii didn't get a warning that Mount Vesuvius was
00:01:27going to erupt, because there definitely would have been smoke, small earthquakes, and loud
00:01:31rumblings at the very least.
00:01:33It was more that, because of Vulcanalia, they would have interpreted these signs as good
00:01:37omens from the god rather than the warnings to get out of Dodge.
00:01:41As far as the townspeople cared, these warnings were simply signs that Vulcan was busy at
00:01:46his forage inside Mount Vesuvius, perfectly happy that everyone was celebrating his special
00:01:51day.
00:01:52And his volcano day.
00:01:57It wasn't just the timing of the festivals that screwed everyone over in Pompeii, though.
00:02:02It was also the weather.
00:02:03According to Perspecto Weather, the wind in that part of Italy during August tends to
00:02:07blow in a southwesterly direction.
00:02:10If this had been the case during the eruption, the cloud of ash and deadly gas from the volcano
00:02:14would have blown away from Pompeii.
00:02:16Sure, there still would have been the whole heat and lava thing to contend with, but that
00:02:20wasn't what killed most people in the city.
00:02:23If the ash and gas had spread in the direction the wind normally blew, far more people would
00:02:28have likely survived.
00:02:29But for some reason, that day the wind was blowing to the northwest, straight towards
00:02:33Pompeii.
00:02:34Aside from dooming the town itself, this also meant that many of the townspeople couldn't
00:02:39escape.
00:02:40Pompeii sits on a bay, and some people evidently attempted to escape by ship.
00:02:44But our only eyewitness account of the tragedy, by Pliny the Younger, says the wind was blowing
00:02:49dead inshore and stopped terrified residents, including his own uncle, from leaving that
00:02:54way.
00:02:55Their most effective escape route was blocked off because of a bizarre change in the weather.
00:02:59In fact, the nature of the wind that day was so bizarre that it has caused some historians
00:03:03to think we have the date of the eruption wrong.
00:03:06According to the Australian National Maritime Museum, the unexpected wind pattern could
00:03:10mean the eruption took place in autumn, later in the year than first thought.
00:03:15Considering many of the people of Rome lived around 2,000 years ago, it's easy to feel
00:03:19a disconnect between their lives and our own.
00:03:22But with Pompeii, we don't just have the skeletal remains of those who died.
00:03:26We can actually see in great detail the fear on their faces at the moment of their deaths.
00:03:31The nature of the detail in these remains makes the town's destruction feel like so
00:03:35much more than just history.
00:03:37When Pompeii was being excavated in the early 1800s, the archaeologists realized that, when
00:03:42they found a skeleton, it was always surrounded by a void in the compacted ash.
00:03:46The diggers started pouring plaster of Paris into the spaces, and what emerged were essentially
00:03:50casts of people during the last moments of their lives.
00:03:53In essence, the archaeologists could see the exact positions they took as the ash rained
00:03:58down.
00:03:59There are even animal casts, including one of a dog writhing on its back, twisted as
00:04:03if in great pain.
00:04:05We find several groups together, three people together, four people together.
00:04:10It seems that they may be helping each other."
00:04:14But modern technology can take this information even further.
00:04:17Seeker reports that in 2015, many of these casts were CAT scanned.
00:04:21This means we now know the victims' ages, sexes, and intimate details about their health.
00:04:26We can even construct accurate images of their faces, such as a four-year-old boy frozen
00:04:31in terror, or a baby asleep on its mother's lap.
00:04:34Giovanni Bobino, the head radiologist on the project, said,
00:04:37"'Working with these casts was extremely moving.
00:04:40It felt like I was dealing with real patients.'"
00:04:43Pliny the Younger provides our only eyewitness account of what happened on that day in Pompeii,
00:04:48and he didn't even write about it until more than two decades after the event.
00:04:52But his account shows that witnessing the city's destruction had a profound effect on
00:04:55him.
00:04:56Pliny was 18 and living across the bay in Mycenae when the eruption began.
00:05:00His uncle, Pliny the Elder, had also been a naval commander in the early Roman Empire,
00:05:05and decided to sail to Pompeii to try and rescue people.
00:05:08Pliny and his mother were left to escape Mycenae on their own.
00:05:11Eventually, they left their house because the strength of the earthquakes made staying
00:05:14inside dangerous, and they had to keep shaking off ash so they wouldn't be crushed by the
00:05:18weight of it.
00:05:20Elsewhere in the town, people began to panic, and false rumors quickly spread about Mycenae
00:05:24being on fire.
00:05:26But according to Pliny, it was the noise that was the worst.
00:05:29He wrote,
00:05:30"...I could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men.
00:05:34Some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize
00:05:38them by their voices.
00:05:40People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed
00:05:44for death in their terror of dying.
00:05:46Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left, and
00:05:51that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness forevermore."
00:05:55Pliny the Elder died at Pompeii, having failed to save a single life.
00:05:59Historians still aren't exactly 100 percent sure how people in Pompeii actually died.
00:06:05But it's mostly accepted that, in general, they were smothered by ash and gas, crushed
00:06:09when buildings collapsed, or hit and killed by falling debris.
00:06:13This is why the bodies archaeologists have found show people were largely intact when
00:06:17they died.
00:06:18But this might not have been the case for victims in other cities affected by the eruptions.
00:06:22According to National Geographic, in the cities of Herculaneum and Oplontis, things were all
00:06:27the more disturbing because they were probably hit by pyroclastic surges, catastrophic mixtures
00:06:32of ash, lava, and noxious gases.
00:06:35But the deadliest characteristics of a pyroclastic flow are heat and speed.
00:06:39They can move at 50 miles an hour and reach temperatures of 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:06:45That kind of all-consuming heat can effectively flash-fry a person to death.
00:06:49It causes a person's bodily fluids to boil instantaneously, including those inside their
00:06:54brain, essentially causing their head to explode.
00:06:57Within ten minutes, all the soft tissue on their body would vaporize.
00:07:01And there's strong evidence that this happened to many of the victims in Herculaneum and
00:07:05Oplontis.
00:07:07If Egypt has taught us anything, it's that people really do not give a toss about the
00:07:11sanctity of the dead, with tombs in that country being ransacked almost as soon as they were
00:07:16sealed.
00:07:17The same is true in Pompeii.
00:07:18Despite it being the final resting place for thousands of victims, all grave robbers tend
00:07:22to think about is how much shiny stuff is buried with them.
00:07:25And the residents who fled their homes in terror did make it easy for these thieves,
00:07:29since many of them grabbed all their valuables to bring with them.
00:07:32Since Pompeii wasn't really rediscovered until the 1700s, these grave robbers have remained
00:07:37active up to the present day.
00:07:39Pompeii's official website mentions archaeologists unearthing one room and finding tunnels dug
00:07:43in the ash and the skeletal remains of six individuals thrown around.
00:07:48Damage done by humans, not a volcano.
00:07:50A shop was also discovered in 2016 with evidence that looters had been there first, although
00:07:55thankfully they managed to miss a hoard of gold coins found inside.
00:07:59In 2017, there was actually so much tomb raiding that, for the archaeologists, it became a
00:08:04race to dig out new areas before they were found by crooks.
00:08:08Not everyone who steals digs a tunnel, though.
00:08:10Some just pick stuff up when they visit as tourists.
00:08:13Luckily, a lot of them come to regret that decision.
00:08:16According to The Telegraph, in recent years, authorities have been sent a hundred packages
00:08:21returning items pilfered as souvenirs, with many of the repentant grave robbers believing
00:08:25the objects had brought them bad luck.
00:08:28Perhaps the worst thing to happen to Pompeii since the eruption was the fact that, for
00:08:32a long time, it wasn't even properly taken care of.
00:08:35And it wasn't the archaeologists in the 1800s who screwed up, but those in charge of the
00:08:40site during the second half of the 20th century.
00:08:42In 2008, The Guardian reported that the Italian government had declared a state of emergency
00:08:47at Pompeii, not because the volcano was about to erupt again, but because the historic site
00:08:52was in such a state of disrepair.
00:08:54The conditions were described as squalid, with the amazing site swarmed by souvenir
00:08:58hawkers, fake parking attendants, and bogus tour guides.
00:09:02It had few signs, even fewer security guards, and only three bathrooms.
00:09:07The third of the site that was still buried was even being used as an illegal trash dump.
00:09:12But more dire, according to Reuters, was the decades of neglect the UNESCO World Heritage
00:09:16Site had suffered, with visitors expressing shock at the site's decay.
00:09:20Frescoes and stones that had survived almost 2,000 years were deteriorating at an alarming
00:09:25rate, with thousands of pieces lost every year.
00:09:29Restoration work that had started in 1978 was still nowhere near being completed.
00:09:33The culture minister at the time stated that to call the situation intolerable doesn't
00:09:37go far enough, and a year-long state of emergency was quickly declared.
00:09:41A special commissioner was thus appointed to try to save the site before human laziness
00:09:45and selfishness could destroy Pompeii all over again.
00:09:49To this day, the volcano that destroyed Pompeii is considered one of the most dangerous in
00:09:53the world.
00:09:54Mount Vesuvius made it pretty clear it wasn't messing around when it buried numerous towns
00:09:58and killed thousands of people back in 79 A.D., but that eruption wasn't even the most
00:10:03destructive in terms of damage.
00:10:05That happened in 1631.
00:10:07But for some reason, the area at its base is still regarded as prime real estate.
00:10:12Six million people currently live close to Vesuvius, and according to Volcano Discovery,
00:10:17three million of them are at serious risk if it ever erupts again.
00:10:20And the problem is that Vesuvius tends to get very angry very quickly.
00:10:25Unlike some volcanoes, Vesuvius doesn't let off small warning eruptions before the big
00:10:29one.
00:10:30Instead, this volcano tends to sit perfectly quietly for a long time, and then suddenly
00:10:34let off a massive, deadly eruption.
00:10:37It also has a much tighter timescale for eruptions than other volcanoes, so even though
00:10:41it last blew in 1944, it could easily go again tomorrow.
00:10:46Even some supervolcanoes are considered less dangerous than Vesuvius.
00:10:49The Italian government has multiple plans in place should another eruption occur.
00:10:54At a minimum, 600,000 people would need to be evacuated from the immediate risk zone
00:10:58on the lower slopes of the volcano.
00:11:00Unfortunately, it's uncertain whether these plans would actually be effective or not,
00:11:05and seems almost a given that not everyone will be saved.
00:11:08From faulty O-rings to deadly weather and foreboding warnings, the engineers closest
00:11:13to the Challenger space shuttle knew what was wrong.
00:11:16So why didn't NASA step in?
00:11:19The Challenger was destroyed due to a faulty O-ring seal in one of its booster rockets,
00:11:23allowing burning gas to escape.
00:11:25The rubber O-rings weren't supposed to be burned by the gases resulting from liftoff,
00:11:29but that's exactly what happened during the testing phase.
00:11:32Shockingly, according to the Rogers Commission reports, when it was found that the O-rings
00:11:36could be damaged, engineers at both NASA and Morton Thiokol, the company contracted to
00:11:41design and build the rockets, decided that the situation was undesirable but acceptable.
00:11:46A test in 1977 revealed another ominous problem.
00:11:49The rocket ignition could cause parts of the rocket's steel casing to bend outward, reducing
00:11:54the pressure on the O-rings.
00:11:56Keep in mind, the opposite was supposed to happen, with parts bending inward and helping
00:11:59the O-rings to seal properly.
00:12:01At this point, engineers began to sound the alarm.
00:12:04One characterized the current design as unacceptable in October 1977, and another stated in January
00:12:101978 that redesign was necessary to, quote, "...prevent hot gas leaks and resulting catastrophic
00:12:15failure."
00:12:16Despite this, nothing was changed.
00:12:19NASA had more than theory to go on after its second shuttle mission, when the space shuttle
00:12:23Columbia flew in November 1981.
00:12:25When they recovered and examined the shuttle's ripe rocket booster, one of its primary O-rings
00:12:30had been eroded badly.
00:12:32The news was ultimately met with no action.
00:12:34Multiple subsequent shuttle missions during the 1980s showed O-ring damage, yet still,
00:12:39the design wasn't changed.
00:12:40We learned that little things that seem harmless can become catastrophic events.
00:12:48By 1985, engineers at Morton Thiokol had another concern about the O-rings.
00:12:53Their concern was based around how the cold weather could loosen the O-rings' elasticity.
00:12:57Given that NASA's bevy of planned shuttle missions included winter launches, this was
00:13:01a problem.
00:13:02As told by NASA Spaceflight, one of the engineers, Bob Ebeling, wrote a memo in October 1985
00:13:08entitled it helped in the hope of finally drawing attention to the issue.
00:13:11No help came.
00:13:12On January 27, 1986, NASA called Morton Thiokol and asked how they felt about a launch in
00:13:1818-degree weather, because the O-rings' lower threshold of safety was 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:13:23The engineers, when hearing this, were aghast.
00:13:26Ebeling called his team together, and they all agreed that a launch in such a temperature
00:13:29would be the death of the shuttle crew.
00:13:31In a teleconference with NASA, the engineers laid out why Challenger should not be launched
00:13:35the next morning, and recommended that it not lift off in any temperature lower than
00:13:3953 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:13:41As engineer Roger Beaujolais later recounted to NPR, a NASA official was appalled at the
00:13:46thought of waiting so long to launch.
00:13:48The clear, cold weather that night led to ice forming all over the launch pad, but NASA
00:13:52still decided to proceed.
00:13:55The crew were told about the ice when they were briefed on the weather that morning,
00:13:58but they weren't told about any concerns regarding the temperature's effects on the O-rings.
00:14:02To that effect, the mission was a go.
00:14:05As detailed by the Rogers Commission reports, Challenger's launch was scrubbed repeatedly
00:14:09for one reason or another.
00:14:11Had even one of those delays not occurred, the shuttle might have lifted off in safer
00:14:15temperatures.
00:14:16First, it was moved from January 22 to January 23 due to schedule ripples caused by the prior
00:14:21delay of another mission, SDS-61C, and then the Program Requirements Changeboard moved
00:14:26liftoff to January 25.
00:14:29After that, the after-effects of SDS-61C's delay bumped Challenger again to January 26.
00:14:34The evening before the new launch date, the mission was pushed off yet again due to a
00:14:38forecast of wind and rain, which turned out to be entirely wrong.
00:14:42As Gene Thomas, launch director for the Challenger mission, recalled,
00:14:45"...we decided we would not launch on Sunday, and Sunday was a beautiful day.
00:14:49We missed an opportunity to launch."
00:14:51Challenger's crew were strapped in and ready to go on the morning of January 27, when another
00:14:56problem reared its head.
00:14:57A screw wouldn't release from the shuttle's crew hatch.
00:15:00A drill was brought in, but its battery was dead.
00:15:03According to NASA Spaceflight, nine more batteries were brought to the launch pad, and for reasons
00:15:07unknown, every single one went dead.
00:15:10Liftoff was finally pushed back one more time to January 28.
00:15:14"...what should have been a day heralded for education turned to tragedy in a split second."
00:15:20At 11.38 a.m. on January 28, Challenger launched from Kennedy Space Center.
00:15:25Footage later showed that dark smoke began to jet from one of the right-side solid rocket
00:15:29booster's O-rings less than a second after liftoff began.
00:15:33The shuttle broke the sound barrier 40 seconds up, and at around 59 seconds, a plume of flame
00:15:37began to emit from the right-hand SRV.
00:15:40The crew wouldn't have known about this, as further evidenced by their yells of,
00:15:44"...woo-hoo!" at 60 seconds, a mere quarter-second before the flame began to contact the orbiter's
00:15:49massive external fuel tank.
00:15:51Per SpaceflightNow, even if the crew had known what was happening, there was nothing they
00:15:55could have done.
00:15:56Just before 73 seconds came the last words from Challenger spoken by Mike Smith,
00:16:01"...uh-oh."
00:16:02Immediately afterward, the shuttle was torn apart as the external fuel tank erupted into
00:16:06a massive fireball.
00:16:08A few seconds later, an object was seen descending slowly by parachute.
00:16:12Several TV stations began to focus on footage of the object and the shock and confusion
00:16:16that followed.
00:16:17However, it was only the nose cap of one of the SRVs.
00:16:21Anyone in the know wouldn't have focused on the parachuting nose cap for long, because
00:16:24there was no way for the Challenger crew to have escaped from the shuttle.
00:16:28The Rogers Commission report noted that Columbia had ejection seats similar to those of an
00:16:32SR-71 Blackbird for its four test flights early on, but that was when only two people
00:16:37were flying.
00:16:38The seats were never meant to be in place for the actual shuttle missions when it was
00:16:41assumed that all risks would have been accounted for and resolved.
00:16:44NASA had, in fact, considered full crew ejection options back in 1971 when the shuttle was
00:16:49being designed.
00:16:50They examined the feasibility of conventional ejection seats, encapsulated seats, and a
00:16:55whole detachable crew compartment.
00:16:57The problem was the cost of integrating any of these options into the design.
00:17:01Open seats would have cost $10 million, encapsulated seats would have cost $7 million, and the
00:17:06crew compartment option would have added a whopping $292 million to the bill.
00:17:12After the Challenger disaster, the idea of an astronaut escape system was examined once
00:17:15again.
00:17:16A number of designs were considered, but as before, all of them were ultimately rejected
00:17:20due to the difficulty of their implementation.
00:17:23Per the Rogers Commission reports, recovery efforts began within an hour of Challenger's
00:17:27breakup, but the crew wouldn't be found until March 1986.
00:17:31Off the Florida coast, two divers came across the crew cabin on the seabed approximately
00:17:35100 feet below the surface.
00:17:37It was a wreck of twisted metal and wires, and the divers didn't know what they'd found
00:17:41until they saw a spacesuit bobbing in the water.
00:17:44Low on air, the two men marked the location and swam for the surface.
00:17:48The next day, the USS Preserver came to recover the lost astronauts.
00:17:51As detailed by NBC News, that was easier said than done.
00:17:55Between the crash and the time spent underwater, their remains weren't in good shape, having
00:18:00at times to be removed in parts.
00:18:02First, Judy Resnick was recovered, followed by Krista McAuliffe.
00:18:06After this, it was determined that the jagged, jumbled cabin would have to be raised from
00:18:09the ocean in order to continue.
00:18:12As the crane pulled the cabin to the ship, a splash of blue appeared on the surface.
00:18:16It was the jumpsuit-ed body of Gregory Jarvis, which had become free as the cabin was raised.
00:18:21As the crew of the Preserver watched in dismay, it sank below the waves again.
00:18:24A search for Jarvis immediately ensued, during which astronaut Robert Crippen even hired
00:18:29his own boat to help.
00:18:30Jarvis wouldn't be found again for another five weeks, 200 yards from where he'd been
00:18:34lost.
00:18:36After failing to convince NASA to stop Challenger's January 28th launch, Morton Thiokol engineer
00:18:40Roger Beaujolais was sent home.
00:18:42As detailed by NASA Spaceflight, Beaujolais, fearing the worst, had no intention of watching
00:18:47the launch, but fellow engineer Bob Ebeling convinced him to do so.
00:18:51When the shuttle seemed to lift off just fine, a wave of relief washed over the engineers
00:18:55until they saw the fireball.
00:18:58Everyone present knew just what had happened.
00:19:01Despite his efforts, Beaujolais felt responsible for the seven astronauts' deaths, as did Ebeling.
00:19:05Over the following months, the once-bulky Beaujolais lost quite a bit of weight and
00:19:09became plagued by headaches, insomnia, and depression.
00:19:12He testified to the Rogers Commission and also sued both NASA and Morton Thiokol.
00:19:16However, his lawsuits weren't successful, and Beaujolais' actions led to his shunning
00:19:21by some of his colleagues, worsening his despair.
00:19:24As told by his wife to NPR, Beaujolais did eventually find peace, however, through speaking
00:19:28to engineering schools about the disaster, which he continued to do until his death in
00:19:32January 2012.
00:19:34According to a report by NASA scientist Joseph P. Kerwin, when the Challenger broke apart,
00:19:39its crew, protected by the cabin, wouldn't have been killed or even seriously injured.
00:19:43But were they still conscious as they fell toward the sea?
00:19:46The answer is unclear.
00:19:48After the orbiter was torn apart, the sturdy crew cabin began to freefall.
00:19:52The central question is how quickly the cabin depressurized.
00:19:55On the ocean floor, the cabin was a mangled mess, but that was due to its impact.
00:19:59Given the damage, it couldn't be determined whether there'd been any breach in the cabin
00:20:03before the crash.
00:20:04There is one chilling indicator of the crew's fate.
00:20:07"...Challenge is fast.
00:20:08Launch is fast.
00:20:09It's banged.
00:20:10And then it's a two-minute ride down, and you're conscious, we know that."
00:20:16Of the four personal egress airpacks, or PEAPs, that were recovered, three had been activated
00:20:21before the impact.
00:20:23However, Kerwin noted that the PEAPs may have been activated instinctively due to depressurization
00:20:28right at breakup, in which case they wouldn't have kept the astronauts awake, as they only
00:20:32provided regular air.
00:20:34For what it's worth, per NBC News, three-time shuttle commander Robert Overmyer, who participated
00:20:39in the cabin's recovery, is certain that the Challenger's astronauts were conscious.
00:20:43Tragically, there was no chance of survival when the cabin struck the ocean at 207 miles
00:20:48per hour.
00:20:49The sinking of the Titanic was a terrible disaster, resulting in the deaths of over
00:20:531,000 people, but the story is even worse than the numbers suggest.
00:20:58Here's why the death toll isn't the most disturbing part of the Titanic's sinking.
00:21:02It's probably safe to say that the Titanic's designers didn't do much reading of popular
00:21:07fiction.
00:21:08If they had, they might have picked up a little piece of literature entitled Futility, or
00:21:11The Wreck of the Titan.
00:21:13Although it was a work of fiction released 14 years before the launch of the real-life
00:21:17ship, Futility contains some seriously eerie similarities to the story of the Titanic.
00:21:22The fictional Titan is described as the largest craft to float, equal to that of a first-class
00:21:28hotel, and unsinkable.
00:21:30Sounds familiar.
00:21:31So this is the ship they say is unsinkable.
00:21:33It is unsinkable.
00:21:34God himself could not sink this ship.
00:21:36But the similarities don't stop there.
00:21:38Like the Titanic, the fictional Titan was about 400 nautical miles away from Newfoundland
00:21:43on a voyage in April, when, at close to midnight, it struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic.
00:21:48And like the Titanic, the Titan didn't have enough lifeboats for everybody on board.
00:21:53We probably don't have to point out the similarity of the names.
00:21:57It's just a bizarre coincidence, so much so that after the Titanic sank, people began
00:22:01accusing author Morgan Robertson of being some kind of clairvoyant, which he denied.
00:22:07But he did try to cash in on publicity from the disaster, with the book being republished
00:22:11in 1912 with some minor changes and the new Wreck of the Titan title.
00:22:16We'd say too soon, but apparently he came up with it first.
00:22:20The Titanic wasn't the first ship in history to use the SOS distress call, but in 1912,
00:22:26wireless communication was still pretty new, which meant there weren't really any standards
00:22:30regarding monitoring the airwaves.
00:22:33That explains why no one on board the Californian, a ship which was somewhere between 8 and 12
00:22:38miles away from the Titanic, heard the sinking ship's distress calls.
00:22:42At the time that the Titanic hit the iceberg, the Californian had only one wireless operator,
00:22:47and he'd switched off his equipment and gone to bed.
00:22:49That's it for me.
00:22:51I'm shutting down.
00:22:55If he hadn't, he would have known that the Titanic was in trouble within about 15 minutes
00:22:59of the collision, when the first distress call was sent.
00:23:02At the time that the Titanic was sinking, the Californian was surrounded by ice and
00:23:06stopped for the night.
00:23:07If the ship had received the SOS call and left immediately, it probably would have taken
00:23:1130 minutes to get through the ice and another 30 to 60 minutes to reach the Titanic.
00:23:16It took two hours and 40 minutes for the Titanic to actually sink, so the crew of the Californian
00:23:21would have had more than an hour to collect passengers.
00:23:24They might have even been able to save everyone, but that's not what happened.
00:23:28Making things more tragic, the Californian's crew did see the Titanic's distress rockets,
00:23:32but the captain dismissed them as non-emergency signals meant for some other boat.
00:23:37By the time the Californian turned the radio on the next morning, there was nothing left
00:23:41of the Titanic but bodies floating in the sea.
00:23:44The Titanic wasn't floating blindly through the North Atlantic when it hit the giant iceberg,
00:23:49so why didn't the ship just go around?
00:23:52One theory says the sea was too calm and the two lookouts in the crow's nest weren't able
00:23:56to see waves breaking at the iceberg's base.
00:23:59According to another theory, the crow's nest didn't have any binoculars… except that
00:24:03one isn't really a theory, it's really an unfortunate fact.
00:24:07Let's get this straight.
00:24:08The Titanic had rowing machines, an electric horse, a squash court, and a heated swimming
00:24:12pool, but it didn't have a pair of binoculars on board?
00:24:16Well, it did, but at the time the ship struck the iceberg, they were unhelpfully locked
00:24:20away in a cabinet, and no one could find the key.
00:24:23That key was back in England in the pocket of a crew member who had disembarked the ship.
00:24:28Whoops-a-daisy!
00:24:30That crew member was David Blair, who served as the Titanic's second officer between the
00:24:34ports of Belfast and Southampton.
00:24:37But before the ship's maiden voyage to New York, the White Star Line decided to replace
00:24:41him at the last minute.
00:24:42In his rush to disembark, he forgot to give the key to his replacement, a mistake that
00:24:47potentially doomed more than 1,500 people.
00:24:50Before the Titanic left, Blair sent a postcard to his sister-in-law in which he wrote in
00:24:54part,
00:24:55"...this is a magnificent ship, and I feel very disappointed I'm not going to make her
00:24:59first voyage."
00:25:00Imagine how disappointed his crewmates felt when they couldn't find that key.
00:25:04Every life lost on the Titanic was a tragedy, from third-class Jack to first-class Rose.
00:25:10Except Rose didn't actually die, and, oh, yeah, they're fictional.
00:25:14But even though all the real-life stories are devastating, some are harder to read than
00:25:18others.
00:25:19One especially awful story is about Ramon Artagabatia, who survived the sinking of a
00:25:24ship called the America, which sank off the coast of Uruguay in 1871.
00:25:29According to his own letters, Ramon may have suffered from PTSD after his first shipwreck
00:25:33experience, which is pretty understandable.
00:25:36But if you've already lived through one shipwreck, the worst has got to be behind you.
00:25:40It couldn't happen again, right?
00:25:42"...It happened again."
00:25:44After years of anxiety, Ramon wrote to a cousin about his fate in the Titanic, with words
00:25:48that now read as tragically ironic.
00:25:51"...At last I will be able to travel, and above all, I will be able to sleep calm."
00:25:55Ramon died in the disaster, and his body was recovered about a week after the sinking.
00:26:00Once the disaster started to take hold, nobody could really have saved everyone on the Titanic.
00:26:06But there were plenty of acts of heroism on that fateful night.
00:26:09One under-publicized act of heroism is the sacrifice of the ship's engineers.
00:26:13There were 35 of them on board the Titanic, but despite that large crew number, we have
00:26:18no firsthand accounts of what they were actually doing during the ship's final moments.
00:26:22That's because they all died.
00:26:24"...Go to maximum warp!
00:26:25Push it!"
00:26:26"...I'm giving it all she's got, Captain!"
00:26:28Here's what we do know.
00:26:29While the ship was going down, the engineering team stayed at their post and kept the lights
00:26:33on.
00:26:34That's a bigger deal than it might sound like it is.
00:26:36Remember, this was in the middle of the North Atlantic on a night without a full moon.
00:26:40Beyond the ship's own lighting, there was just darkness in the sea.
00:26:44The electric lights made it possible for the crew to load the lifeboats and keep passengers
00:26:47from panicking.
00:26:48The power also made it possible for the radio operators to continue transmitting distress
00:26:53signals.
00:26:54Even though their efforts didn't save the ship, their sacrifice doubtlessly helped save
00:26:57many lives.
00:27:00It's hard to believe that one meager iceberg could take down the biggest thing in the ocean
00:27:03with just a glancing blow.
00:27:05And until the wreckage of the ship was discovered in 1985, people could only speculate about
00:27:10the exact nature of the Titanic's vulnerability.
00:27:13For a while, researchers wondered if the Titanic might have been built out of low-quality steel,
00:27:18but that theory was disproven when large pieces of the ship were recovered and tested.
00:27:22Sonar mapping of the side that struck the iceberg revealed only six thin tears in the
00:27:26hull, which would have left roughly 12 square feet open to the sea.
00:27:30That by itself wouldn't have been enough to sink a ship like the Titanic, which had 16
00:27:34watertight compartments.
00:27:36So what happened?
00:27:37In 1998, an analysis was conducted on the rivets of the ship's wreckage, which found
00:27:42that the wrought iron contained three times as much slag as modern standards allow for.
00:27:47That's very interesting, but what is slag?
00:27:50"...slag!"
00:27:52In case you're not a blacksmith, shipbuilder, or rivet maker, slag is the glass-like residue
00:27:56left behind by metal ore after the smelting process.
00:28:00According to the theory, all that extra slag used in the rivets made them brittle in cold
00:28:04temperatures, so the iceberg just sheared off the heads as it scraped along the side
00:28:08of the ship.
00:28:09When that happened, the rivets came loose, the hull plates separated, and water came
00:28:13rushing in.
00:28:14So basically, the Titanic's shipbuilders seem to have cut some crucial corners, leading
00:28:18to dire consequences.
00:28:20This can happen when you rush things.
00:28:22When it comes to most projects, you can do something fast, or you can do it right.
00:28:26The builders behind the Titanic apparently chose the fast option.
00:28:30And it shows.
00:28:32Four days after the disaster, the Boston Globe declared,
00:28:35All drowned but 868.
00:28:37But there are two inaccurate things about that headline.
00:28:39The first problem is the number of survivors, which was actually closer to about 700.
00:28:44The second was the manner of death.
00:28:46While the sinking of the Titanic claimed many victims, not everyone who lost their lives
00:28:51in the disaster died by drowning.
00:28:53The Titanic didn't really have that many drowning victims, at least not as many as you would
00:28:57think.
00:28:59Those who remained in the ship probably drowned as the Titanic sank and the ship's breathable
00:29:03air was displaced, but those who jumped into the water were mostly wearing life preservers,
00:29:08making them much less likely to drown.
00:29:10There's also the fact that the survivors who were safely in the lifeboats later reported
00:29:14hearing the awful din kicked up by those in the water, suggesting that most of the people
00:29:18floating around the boats weren't drowning.
00:29:21Drowning is a thing that happens silently.
00:29:23People who are in the middle of it typically can't call out for help.
00:29:27What really worked to kill so many people was freezing.
00:29:30The seawater in the North Atlantic was only 28 degrees Fahrenheit on the night of the
00:29:34Titanic's sinking, which is four degrees below the freezing temperature of freshwater.
00:29:39That's more than cold enough to damage the human body.
00:29:42It's possible that as people lost consciousness from the cold temperature, they inhaled water,
00:29:46which hastened their deaths.
00:29:47But that's not drowning as we understand it.
00:29:50It's drowning as a side effect of being incapacitated by hypothermia.
00:29:54If the ship crashed in the Caribbean in some 80-degree water, lots more people may have
00:29:58made it back to shore alive.
00:30:00But if that was the case, it probably wouldn't have hit an iceberg, either.
00:30:04If anything, it maybe would have hit a Carnival cruise ship, or the Bermuda Triangle, or maybe
00:30:09some of these guys.
00:30:10Look, the seven seas can be a really crazy place.
00:30:14Imagine that it's the spring of 1912, and you're still reeling from the death of a loved
00:30:18one who went down with the Titanic.
00:30:21Maybe they were one of the people who rather grandly played in the ship's band, providing
00:30:24musical comfort to doomed passengers as the ship slowly sank.
00:30:28You miss your father, your brother, your son, and then you get billed for his uniform.
00:30:33This is something that actually happened.
00:30:36While it may not be as disturbing as some of the other things we know about the Titanic,
00:30:39it's a pretty ugly footnote.
00:30:41One example of this happening can be found in the story of musician John Hume, who was
00:30:46booked on the Titanic through a firm called CW and FN Black.
00:30:50Two weeks after the sinking, Hume's father received a bill for his son's uniform, which
00:30:54included items like his lapel pin and white star buttons.
00:30:58The bill amounted to 14 shillings and seven pence, and that's before you count the insult
00:31:03of even getting a bill at all.
00:31:05Okay, so if you spilled mustard on your uniform because you were eating a messy burger in
00:31:09your off time, maybe you had that bill coming.
00:31:12But the Titanic's dead musicians weren't responsible for the destruction of their uniforms, and
00:31:16the dead musicians' parents definitely weren't responsible.
00:31:19"...in a way that's deeply capitalist."
00:31:21Anyway, Hume's dad refused to pay, and sent the letter to the Amalgamated Musicians Union,
00:31:26who published the outrageous demand in their newsletter.
00:31:29So now you know that even if you're a victim of a Titanic-scale disaster, some companies
00:31:33will still try to get money from you, literally, over your dead body.
00:31:38On April 26, 1986, there was a catastrophic accident at the USSR's nuclear power plant
00:31:44near Chernobyl.
00:31:45Despite the couple of immediate deaths caused by the explosion, other effects of the disaster
00:31:50were arguably much worse.
00:31:52Here are some less-discussed, terrible things about the Chernobyl disaster.
00:31:57The meltdown at Chernobyl never should have happened.
00:31:59There was plenty of warning that something could go wrong long before the power plant
00:32:03there had even been built.
00:32:04Chernobyl's reactors were the same kind as those at a nuclear facility in Leningrad,
00:32:08and when those had powered up in 1973, at least three major problems with the Soviet's
00:32:14new design quickly became obvious.
00:32:16There were major differences between how the inventors predicted the design would function
00:32:20and how it actually worked.
00:32:22But no one bothered to look into those issues.
00:32:24That meant there was no information on how this new type of reactor would behave in an
00:32:28accident.
00:32:29On November 30, 1975, over a decade before the Chernobyl disaster, the Leningrad reactors
00:32:34suffered a partial meltdown as the plant was brought back online after scheduled maintenance.
00:32:39Nothing could be done to stop the chain reaction, and radiation poured into the atmosphere.
00:32:43It means the fire we're watching with our own eyes is giving off nearly twice the radiation
00:32:47released by the bomb in Hiroshima.
00:32:50It's every single hour.
00:32:52The official line from the commission set up to investigate the Leningrad accident was
00:32:55that a small manufacturing defect was to blame.
00:32:58What they really found were massive problems with the design of the reactor itself, but
00:33:02those findings were suppressed.
00:33:04The commission did make recommendations on various changes to that kind of reactor, including
00:33:09new safety regulations and a faster emergency protection system.
00:33:13They were completely ignored, and Chernobyl was built with the same fundamentally flawed
00:33:17reactor as Leningrad.
00:33:19On the outside, the Chernobyl meltdown initially appeared to be a relatively small, manageable
00:33:24fire, and the Soviet government was in no hurry to reveal how dangerous it was, even
00:33:28to their own people.
00:33:30Scientists in Sweden were actually the first to notice something was up, and alerted the
00:33:33outside world to the radioactive fallout emitting from around Kiev.
00:33:37The USSR still stayed silent, even as international news covered Chernobyl as a major disaster.
00:33:43When their state TV finally had to admit there'd been an accident, it assured Soviet citizens
00:33:47the West was spreading exaggerated reports as propaganda, and that while there had been
00:33:51a bit of an issue, everything was already taken care of.
00:33:55This was, of course, a lie, and it had deadly consequences.
00:33:59The people living close to the biggest nuclear accident in history initially had no idea
00:34:03the danger they were facing.
00:34:05With radiation pouring out over the nearby town, the government repeatedly refused to
00:34:09order an evacuation, and plant workers were forbidden from telling anyone about the accident.
00:34:14Finally, after two days, the order came and officials gave residents less than an hour
00:34:18to evacuate.
00:34:20Being told you have 50 minutes to pack, grab your family, leave your pets and valuables,
00:34:24and get out of town is unbelievably stressful in the best circumstances, and the circumstances
00:34:29of the Chernobyl disaster were far from the best.
00:34:32According to the World Health Organization, 116,000 people were evacuated immediately,
00:34:37with an additional 230,000 following over the next few years.
00:34:41The stress brought on by losing their homes is one of the often-overlooked tolls of those
00:34:45affected.
00:34:47Families were even split up during the evacuation, making things even more traumatic for children
00:34:51and their parents.
00:34:52The trauma of Chernobyl didn't end quickly, either.
00:34:55In 2013, a study at the University of Southern California found millions of people were still
00:35:00suffering from mental health problems related to the accident.
00:35:03There was even a resulting mistrust in doctors.
00:35:06Both relocated people and those who got to stay put still showed a diminished quality
00:35:10of life, depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
00:35:13And now you want us to swim underneath a burning reactor?
00:35:18Do you even know how contaminated it is?
00:35:21The brave people who cleaned up Chernobyl for three years after the accident were taken
00:35:24advantage of from the beginning.
00:35:26The government suppressed information on how dangerous the job was, and almost all liquidators
00:35:31were sent in with inadequate protection against radiation.
00:35:34When machines broke under the pressure, they moved the radioactive debris with their hands.
00:35:39At least 28 died horribly within weeks, and thousands more died from the effects of radiation
00:35:44or became disabled from exposure.
00:35:46You'd think the governments involved would be grateful, but the liquidators are still
00:35:50fighting for support today, after years of seeking compensation and protesting against
00:35:55benefit cuts.
00:35:57The most pronounced long-term physical health effect among survivors of Chernobyl is thyroid
00:36:01cancer, and according to the United Nations, it wasn't just radiation emanating from the
00:36:05reactor that caused it.
00:36:07Thousands of children appear to have gotten cancer from drinking radioactive milk.
00:36:11By 2005, 6,000 people who were children and adolescents at the time of the disaster developed
00:36:16thyroid cancer and were left with a grim reminder of what they'd been through.
00:36:21Removal of the thyroid resulted in a distinctive scar on the neck that became known as the
00:36:25Chernobyl Necklace and carried a stigma with it.
00:36:27The good news is that virtually all the individuals who got thyroid cancer survived.
00:36:32Amazingly, the issue still isn't over today.
00:36:35In 2016, a journalist in what is now Belarus saw cows grazing near signs warning radiation
00:36:41was higher than normal.
00:36:42He sent a sample of milk to a lab to see if it was still dangerous all these years on,
00:36:46and it was, with a radioactive isotope level that was 10 times higher than the safe level.
00:36:52The government also wanted to suppress the findings, since exporting milk is a big business
00:36:56for the country and pointing out it's still affected by Chernobyl wouldn't be good for
00:37:00the economy.
00:37:01The company sued the journalist and won, so plenty of people in the area are still
00:37:05drinking contaminated, potentially cancer-causing milk.
00:37:09While the people around the Chernobyl plant were eventually warned and evacuated, the
00:37:13animals in the surrounding areas weren't so lucky.
00:37:16Sadly, dogs, cats, and farm animals were the victims of some of the disaster's most devastating
00:37:21effects.
00:37:22Ranchers noticed a dramatic increase of genetic abnormalities in farm animals born after the
00:37:26accident, and unfortunately, the same goes for wild animals living near Chernobyl.
00:37:31Grazing animals like elk may look fine, but they have high rates of radiation in their
00:37:35bodies.
00:37:36And then there's Chernobyl's dog population.
00:37:38Yeah, they're radioactive, so they have to go.
00:37:42But it's not hard, they're mostly pets.
00:37:45When people were evacuated, they were told to leave their pets behind, and while an effort
00:37:49was made by the Soviet army to eliminate the animal population, many of them survived.
00:37:54The result was what appears to be a large and apparently thriving population of stray
00:37:58dogs in the exclusion zone, numbering in the hundreds.
00:38:02In a minor but still pretty depressing development, the dogs may have high levels of radiation
00:38:07and possible exposure to rabies, meaning that they're very dangerous for visitors to pet.
00:38:12The good news, however, is that a non-profit called Clean the Futures Fund has launched
00:38:16a program called Dogs of Chernobyl.
00:38:18For the past few years, they've been working with the support of international veterinary
00:38:22volunteers to help manage the canine population in a way that's far more humane than the Soviet
00:38:27Union's initial strategy of containment by extermination.
00:38:31With the advancement of technology over the past 30 years and the worldwide attention
00:38:35that's been given to the Chernobyl disaster since 1986, it might seem like the area would
00:38:40be cleaned up by now.
00:38:41Sadly, it's not even close.
00:38:43By some estimates, much of the area won't be safe for human habitation for 3,000 years,
00:38:48and one geologist thinks it's more like a million.
00:38:51When the reactor blew, it only lost 5 percent of its enriched uranium.
00:38:55That means 190 tons are still in Chernobyl's shell, combined into a massive mess with concrete,
00:39:01steel, and other debris from the explosion that clocks in at around 2,000 tons.
00:39:06Unfortunately, the technology to safely take that fused mass apart and dispose of it doesn't
00:39:10exist yet, and even in the best-case scenario, it won't for at least a few decades.
00:39:15The only option currently available is containing the site underneath a new concrete and steel
00:39:20sarcophagus built in 2017, but even that will only last 100 years.
00:39:25One Ukrainian energy policy expert's actual solution is to just hope that the next century
00:39:30brings a new generation made up of people who are a whole lot smarter than we are so
00:39:34that they can figure out how to solve this radioactive puzzle.
00:39:37The logistics of containing what is effectively an unplanned nuclear waste dump until the
00:39:41year 4986, assuming humans are still around, are almost beyond comprehension.
00:39:46Still, some people aren't willing to wait and have moved back to just outside or even
00:39:51into the exclusion zone.
00:39:53Even the good area is still radioactive, though, and some residents go about their daily lives
00:39:57with Geiger counters around their necks.
00:40:00By the time of the Chernobyl disaster, people knew fossil fuels were terrible for the environment.
00:40:05Nuclear meltdowns are also very bad, though, and having the planet die slowly is a lot
00:40:09less scary than a nuclear plant that could kill you tomorrow.
00:40:13In the 1970s, nuclear power was thought to be the next big thing.
00:40:17Compared to coal, it was cheap and much better for the planet.
00:40:20Then the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters happened in the span of seven years.
00:40:24After that, most everyone accepted fossil fuels as the better route.
00:40:28Partially due to fears of another Chernobyl, the U.S. didn't open a single nuclear power
00:40:32plant between 1996 and 2016.
00:40:35Meanwhile, it, and almost all other countries, has been burning fossil fuels like there's
00:40:39no tomorrow.
00:40:41In terms of sheer body count, nuclear power may have been the better choice from the beginning.
00:40:45In the end, Chernobyl could kill an estimated 4,000 people, but deadly meltdowns are fortunately
00:40:50very rare.
00:40:52Meanwhile, Wired reports that about 7,500 people die from problems related to coal-burning
00:40:57power plants every single year.
00:40:59A switch to nuclear, which Chernobyl's preventable disaster helped delay, could have saved some
00:41:04of those lives, plus slowed down the destruction of the environment, assuming that we learned
00:41:09something from the disaster and made things a little safer.
00:41:12Chernobyl gave Earth a major dose of radiation in 1986, and global climate change, which
00:41:18the disaster helped to speed up, is going to make sure it's a gift that keeps on giving.
00:41:22In 2019, scientists studied glaciers in 17 sites across the world.
00:41:27They found the levels of radioactive material were much, much higher than what you'd see
00:41:31anywhere outside of an exclusion zone like the one around Chernobyl, in some cases ten
00:41:36times higher.
00:41:37Every single site had nuclear fallout present, and not deep down, but on the rapidly melting
00:41:42surface ice, which may have a disastrous impact.
00:41:45An impact means completely uninhabitable for a minimum of 100 years.
00:41:51To be fair, it's not all Chernobyl's fault.
00:41:54Anytime radioactive material is released into the atmosphere, whether from nuclear tests
00:41:59or the atomic bombs used in World War II or other meltdowns, it ends up mixing with clouds.
00:42:05If it falls as snow onto the ice, the heavy sediment results in concentrated levels of
00:42:09nuclear residue.
00:42:10To be less fair to Chernobyl, it released so much radioactive stuff into the atmosphere
00:42:15that when researchers took core samples of the glaciers, they could see that the disaster
00:42:19caused a massive spike in the nuclear material they found.
00:42:23The radioactive material is soluble in water, which means it will probably end up in the
00:42:27food chain as global warming melts the glaciers.
00:42:30Even more worryingly, there isn't enough data to know how much of this particularly dangerous
00:42:35substance could make it back to humans.
00:42:38The Apollo 1 fire was a horrific tragedy, but the worst part was that it could have
00:42:42been avoided.
00:42:43Here's a deep dive into the decisions and circumstances that foreshadowed the deaths
00:42:46of three astronauts.
00:42:48During a series of tests at the Kennedy Space Center on January 27, 1967, a fire broke out
00:42:54in the command module of Apollo 1.
00:42:56All three astronauts inside — Virgil Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chappie — died
00:43:01in the flames.
00:43:02While disasters like the Challenger and Columbia shuttles took place during their respective
00:43:05missions, Apollo 1 differs in that her crew never actually made it to their launch.
00:43:10Instead, the accident took place in the middle of a testing day, and even before the catastrophic
00:43:14fire, it was already something of a mess.
00:43:16The day played host to a ton of different technical issues.
00:43:19Most notable were the communication issues.
00:43:21The astronauts inside Apollo 1's command module should have been able to talk with their co-workers
00:43:25in the nearby buildings.
00:43:27But for whatever reason, those systems weren't working.
00:43:29The whole thing really got on Gus Grissom's nerves, in particular, and he yelled out,
00:43:33The hell are we gonna get to move if we can't talk between two or three buildings?"
00:43:36The command module itself was giving the astronauts a number of problems.
00:43:40Pumping it full of oxygen kept triggering alarms for no apparent reason, on top of making
00:43:44it incredibly difficult to even open the hatch.
00:43:46But seeing as how the boosters didn't have any fuel in them, the crew figured that things
00:43:50were safe enough for them to continue forward.
00:43:53One of the primary factors in the Apollo 1 fire was the environment inside the command
00:43:57module.
00:43:58The space was pressurized with pure oxygen at 16.7 PSI.
00:44:02Oxygen is, of course, highly flammable, so any spark would have been enough to create
00:44:06a huge flame.
00:44:07But there's a whole history here that actually makes this a lot more complicated.
00:44:11During the testing of the early Mercury capsules back in 1959, engineers intended the capsule's
00:44:15environment to be a mix of nitrogen and oxygen.
00:44:18But logistically, it would have been too heavy, and the mix ratio too complicated.
00:44:22So they settled on pure oxygen at 5 PSI.
00:44:25But for ground tests, the low oxygen content caused an astronaut to pass out, so they upped
00:44:29the pressure.
00:44:30The higher pressure was effectively grandfathered into the Apollo tests, but the main difference
00:44:34was that the Apollo modules were a lot larger than the Mercury capsules.
00:44:38More space meant more oxygen, and that in turn meant more possibility of fire.
00:44:43Engineers recommended that mix of nitrogen and oxygen again, but NASA nixed the idea
00:44:47for fear that an accident might cause decompression sickness in that environment.
00:44:51So they kept with the pure oxygen atmosphere instead.
00:44:55Considering the rapid and intense nature of the fatal fire, the hatch to the Apollo 1
00:44:59command module might seem like a pretty irrelevant thing to consider.
00:45:02But the hatch was no simple thing, and some poor design decisions might have condemned
00:45:06the astronauts to death.
00:45:08After all, if the three men had been able to quickly escape, then the tragedy would
00:45:11have been avoided.
00:45:12The hatch was, in fact, a death trap.
00:45:14It consisted of multiple, different parts, including an inner and outer hatch, both of
00:45:18which served different purposes and had to be opened using different tools.
00:45:22The inner hatch also opened inward, which was a problem on its own.
00:45:25The pressure inside the module was higher than it was outside, a good thing in space
00:45:29since it helped keep the hatch closed, but a bad thing on land because it made the door
00:45:33even harder to open.
00:45:35Engineers recommended including explosive bolts that could knock the hatch off its hinges
00:45:38in an emergency, only for NASA to shoot that down.
00:45:41Missions after Apollo 4 corrected both of those mistakes by introducing an easily removable
00:45:46unified hatch, but the crew of Apollo 1 had to struggle with a hatch that was designed
00:45:50to lead to failure.
00:45:52The pure oxygen atmosphere in the Apollo 1 command module was already a disaster waiting
00:45:55to happen.
00:45:56But oxygen wasn't the only flammable issue.
00:45:59There's plenty of technology we wouldn't have without the space race, but at the time, American
00:46:03astronauts had discovered the usefulness of a very different technology — Velcro.
00:46:07It was a supremely practical solution to a uniquely space-based problem.
00:46:11Things that could start floating around in zero gravity were easily secured by just sticking
00:46:15them to Velcro positioned all around the interior of the spacecraft.
00:46:18They'd gotten pretty dependent on it, and it was tradition to customize Velcro positions
00:46:22prior to missions, to the point that fire prevention rules were getting forgotten.
00:46:26After all, Velcro is flammable, and it was getting stuck to places less than a foot from
00:46:30potential ignition sources.
00:46:32On its own, that was already courting danger, but Apollo 1 was even worse.
00:46:36Accounts of the command module describe it as wall-to-wall Velcro.
00:46:39No one realized until afterward that the increased oxygen content would cause these things to
00:46:43burn twice as fast as in earlier tests.
00:46:46All in all, Michael Collins later calling the module a tinderbox was quite accurate.
00:46:50At 17 psi pure oxygen, Velcro explodes.
00:46:55Many of the failures that led to the Apollo 1 tragedy were technical in nature.
00:46:59However, some of the factors were pure human error.
00:47:01On the one hand, this wasn't a bunch of amateurs who were constantly making mistakes.
00:47:06Astronaut Michael Collins responded to the official NASA report on the disaster by explaining
00:47:09that even the smartest of people could miss the most obvious things, stating,
00:47:13I don't know why.
00:47:14We're blind to them.
00:47:15I mean, it makes us think that the quality of our engineering across the board was juvenile,
00:47:19yet it wasn't.
00:47:20It was very good engineering.
00:47:21There's so many things that can go wrong.
00:47:24The machinery is compact, but complex, extremely complex.
00:47:28But that blindness might also have been a bit more intentional.
00:47:31Earlier in the decade, President John F. Kennedy had promised that people would watch the moon
00:47:35landing, and that started putting pressure on NASA.
00:47:37As a result, the teams working on Apollo 1 were taking risks and ignoring problems.
00:47:42Flight Director Gene Kranz explained that there were plenty of botched simulations.
00:47:46Plans were far from finalized, and procedures kept changing over and over, but nobody did
00:47:50anything to address it.
00:47:51All anyone wanted was to keep their schedule, so they kept pretending there weren't issues.
00:47:55In taking the blame for the tragedy, Kranz summed things up by saying,
00:47:58We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in
00:48:02our hearts we knew it would take a miracle.
00:48:05In much the same way that the Challenger space shuttle explosion could have been avoided,
00:48:08the same could be said of Apollo 1.
00:48:10If the technicians just seen the dangers or kept safety protocols in mind, then maybe
00:48:14three men wouldn't have died on that day.
00:48:17But it goes far deeper than technical mistakes.
00:48:19NASA officials were explicitly told how much danger they were reporting, and they chose
00:48:23to ignore it.
00:48:24The contractors who recommended that the Apollo missions be tested using a mix of nitrogen
00:48:28and oxygen were completely shot down by NASA officials.
00:48:31Over the course of multiple different arguments, they were told just to do their job without
00:48:35question, despite internal notes fully recognizing the validity of those concerns.
00:48:40It has been observed that a number of otherwise non-flammable materials, even human skin,
00:48:45will burst into flame in a pure oxygen atmosphere.
00:48:48Officially, NASA's response was more or less indifferent, expressing faith that a fire
00:48:52was unlikely.
00:48:53But once again, internal documents betray that confidence.
00:48:56The program's director, Joe Shea, privately noted,
00:48:58The problem is sticky.
00:49:00We think we have enough margin to keep fire from starting.
00:49:02If one ever does, we do have problems.
00:49:05In retrospect, there are a lot of reasons to think that Apollo 1 was a doomed mission
00:49:09from the start, whether that has to do with rather obvious, unsafe testing parameters
00:49:13or the other errors and mishaps that had already occurred earlier that day.
00:49:17But the most telling thing might be the fact that those directly involved in the mission
00:49:20could see the problems coming from a mile away.
00:49:23The three astronauts, and Gus Grissom in particular, seem to have some pretty major reservations
00:49:27about the fate of a mission.
00:49:28There is some risk, I recognize it, but we just try to take as much of that out as we
00:49:35can during the pre-testing.
00:49:37Grissom reportedly told journalists that he'd consider the mission successful if he
00:49:40just got his men home alive — a worthy goal, but not exactly a high bar.
00:49:45Astronaut Wally Schirra even told him,
00:49:47If you get the slightest glitch, get out of there.
00:49:49I don't like it.
00:49:50To really make their feelings known, the three men of Apollo 1 even went so far as to take
00:49:54a mocking photo, which has instead become tragically ironic.
00:49:58All of them with their heads bowed in prayer, just hoping they would come home safely.
00:50:02And they had good reason to be concerned.
00:50:04The craft was undergoing constant modifications to both its hardware and software.
00:50:08Said hardware was literally broken or leaking at times, and those problems were well-known
00:50:12among the crew.
00:50:13It had so many parts, it seems, that people lost count.
00:50:16Some technicians say it had two million.
00:50:19Some say three.
00:50:21Of course, there's no ignoring the fact that the Apollo 1 disaster led to the deaths of
00:50:24Grissom, White, and Chappie, but it's also worth mentioning that the other technicians
00:50:28present at the scene lived through a harrowing experience of their own.
00:50:32Though the crew running the tests was spread throughout multiple rooms, the command module
00:50:35was directly connected to an area called a white room.
00:50:38The technicians stationed in that room reacted immediately to the fire, trying to free their
00:50:42friends, only to be blasted by columns of fire themselves as pressure vessels ruptured
00:50:46and sent flames arcing toward them.
00:50:48Those who arrived in the room later found it filled with fire and smoke, ashes, and
00:50:52burning pieces of Teflon.
00:50:53The men continued trying to pry the hatch open, choking on fumes and blinded by smoke,
00:50:58all while knowing that a nearby escape rocket would explode if the fire got to it.
00:51:02Given the string of mechanical failures, lapses in judgment, and unintentional blindness that
00:51:07culminated in a near-literal powder keg on that tragic day in 1967, it's a small comfort
00:51:12to know that there was probably very little suffering when Grissom, White, and Chappie
00:51:16were killed by that fire.
00:51:17Because the fire wasn't what killed them.
00:51:19At least, not directly.
00:51:20Of course, the fire did cause extensive burns to all three men, but autopsies determined
00:51:25that the majority of those injuries were suffered post-mortem.
00:51:28The fire actually burned through the oxygen hoses on the astronauts' suits, and they quickly
00:51:32fell unconscious due to the carbon monoxide flooding their suits.
00:51:35Officially, they passed away from asphyxiation and cardiac arrest.
00:51:39Several days later, sobered and resolute, Gene Kranz told his team,
00:51:42"...We were too gung-ho about the schedule, and we locked out all of the problems we saw
00:51:46each day in our work.
00:51:47Every element of the program was in trouble, and so were we.
00:51:50I don't know what Thompson's committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find.
00:51:54We are the cause.
00:51:55We were not ready.
00:51:56We did not do our job."
00:51:58After the tragedy, NASA implemented major overhauls of the Apollo program to ensure
00:52:02it would never happen again.
00:52:04Engineers got their oxygen-nitrogen mix, the module hatch was redesigned from the ground
00:52:08up, live wires were shielded in metal.
00:52:10Those and other changes led to the successes of later Apollo missions, and arguably the
00:52:14success of the entire space program.
00:52:17Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee never got to
00:52:21see the monumental achievements they paid so dearly to bring about.
00:52:25Bad news?
00:52:26You're being raided by the Vikings.
00:52:28Good news?
00:52:29You might be able to avoid some of their more creative torture methods.
00:52:33To die in the middle of a Viking raid was brutal and bloody, but for the most part,
00:52:37it was also quick.
00:52:39Early Viking raids were relatively small, extremely brutal, and tended to be over very
00:52:43quickly.
00:52:44And while you wouldn't want to find yourself caught up in one, they weren't anything people
00:52:47weren't already used to.
00:52:49It was the late 8th century when the Vikings appeared in Britain, after all, a time when
00:52:53you could wind up in anything from a massive battle to a skirmish between rival families
00:52:56or towns.
00:52:58It wasn't an easy time to live, and the Vikings were just one more headache for people to
00:53:02deal with.
00:53:03Don't cry too many tears over those who died in the Viking raids, then.
00:53:05It was the survivors who had it much, much worse.
00:53:09Monasteries and churches were always favorite targets for the Vikings.
00:53:13For the rest of the world, anyone who would defile sacred places and murder God's servants
00:53:16was nothing short of wicked.
00:53:18This was a time when religion was at the heart of life for many towns and people, and that
00:53:22made the Vikings' disrespect of God's domain even worse.
00:53:25The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes the Vikings as wild heathens who trampled upon saints'
00:53:30bones and destroyed God's house.
00:53:32If this is their God, and he's dead, it's nailed to the cross.
00:53:37Vikings looted many of the monasteries and churches they raided, stealing pretty much
00:53:41anything they could get their hands on.
00:53:42In some cases, they even stole ornate reliquaries that were used to hold sacred saints' relics.
00:53:47For a Christian, this would be more or less unthinkable.
00:53:50Perhaps unsurprisingly, people at the time struggled to discern the Vikings' motivations,
00:53:54and many came to the conclusion that they were the physical manifestation of God's fury.
00:53:59Scribes and monks lamented the violence and crime they saw in the world around them, and
00:54:02wrote that the Vikings had been sent to deliver retribution on morally corrupt people of the
00:54:06world.
00:54:07Others referenced terrible omens that heralded the coming of Vikings, including great lightning
00:54:11storms, famine, and even dragons.
00:54:14Today, we can only imagine the fear that the victims of these raids must have felt to come
00:54:18face-to-face with the wrath of God.
00:54:21Vikings didn't only raid to loot and kill.
00:54:23They also sought to reinforce a vital part of the Viking economy — slavery.
00:54:27Most Viking slaves were taken from the British Isles and Eastern Europe.
00:54:30Occasionally, native Vikings who committed crimes at home were also reduced to the status
00:54:34of slave.
00:54:35While there's not a lot of contemporary evidence regarding the lives of Viking slaves, archaeologists
00:54:40have been able to piece together a few details.
00:54:43Thousands of people could be enslaved in a single Viking raid.
00:54:46Many were sold to the Vikings' countrymen in Scandinavia, who had stayed at home to
00:54:49work the fields.
00:54:50Wool was a huge industry at the time, as it was needed for the ship's sails, and archaeological
00:54:55evidence indicates that many slaves ended up laboring on huge plantations.
00:54:59Ancient poems suggest they were given names like Bastard, Stumpy, and Stinker, and when
00:55:03they died, they were just left laying around as food for dogs and birds.
00:55:07For some idea of how much — or little — a human life was valued, consider this.
00:55:11Viking trade records show a female slave was worth the same as a cow and an ox, while four
00:55:16male slaves had the same worth as two horses, or pseudo-chain mail.
00:55:21There can be little doubt that every day of a Viking slave's life is going to be filled
00:55:24with fear, starvation, abuse, and backbreaking labor.
00:55:28Norse beliefs held that it wasn't just the rest of a slave's life that was going to be
00:55:31hard, however.
00:55:32As far as they were concerned, the afterlife wouldn't be much better.
00:55:36Researchers have discovered numerous Viking burial sites in which both men and women were
00:55:40interred with grave goods.
00:55:42These items were offerings that the deceased could take into the afterlife, but tended
00:55:45to include weapons and jewelry, some of which came from far afield.
00:55:48What else have we got here?
00:55:50Well, we have some brooches, and then we have the Buddha.
00:55:54The Buddha?
00:55:55But many Vikings share their graves with other bodies, which show signs of malnourishment,
00:56:00injury, and a brutal death.
00:56:02Those are the slaves who were sacrificed and buried with their masters so they could serve
00:56:05them for eternity in the afterlife.
00:56:08It gets worse, too.
00:56:09Almost every Viking slave burial site has been different in some way, and this has led
00:56:13some archaeologists to put forward a terrifying theory.
00:56:16They believe that, as part of the burial ritual, the Norse might have recreated important events
00:56:21from the life of the deceased — a slave standing in for the dead man.
00:56:25Did a dead man or woman lose a limb, get their teeth knocked out, or suffer some other catastrophic
00:56:30injury?
00:56:31Guess who had to recreate all that before they were sacrificed and tossed in the ground?
00:56:36Historian Mary Valenti has made a compelling and disturbing argument when it comes to the
00:56:40early Viking raids in Britain.
00:56:41She claims that, when they attacked monasteries, the Vikings were looking to capture monks
00:56:45for a very specific reason.
00:56:47Buried in writings and biographies from the era are mentions of large numbers of slaves
00:56:51being transported from Western Europe through Italy, and finally to Byzantium in the Middle
00:56:55East.
00:56:56These captives were then put to work as teachers, guards, and even harem servants.
00:57:00Those roles were important in these cultures, and they had to meet certain requirements.
00:57:04They needed to be literate, they needed to be educated, and they needed to be eunuchs.
00:57:11Valenti argues that many of the monks, scribes, and acolytes taken from monasteries during
00:57:15Viking raids were young men who had the first two requirements covered, so when they were
00:57:19shipped off to Italy, they were castrated to fulfill the last one.
00:57:23Throughout the Viking era, demand for these eunuch slaves rose steadily, and there's a
00:57:26good chance that many of the men who didn't die in Viking raids ended up wishing they
00:57:31had.
00:57:32For a long time, historians have been trying to figure out just why the Vikings started
00:57:35raiding, and one still-popular theory was suggested around 1,000 years ago by Dudo of
00:57:39St. Quentin.
00:57:40The basics are this.
00:57:42Vikings practiced polygyny, which is the idea that a man could not only take multiple wives
00:57:46but also keep concubines.
00:57:48The more powerful the man, the more women he had.
00:57:50To each his own, right?
00:57:51Well, that's the problem.
00:57:53So many powerful Vikings were taking so many wives that each man didn't have his own.
00:57:58Research suggests that the large numbers of unmarried Viking men helped drive not just
00:58:02raiding parties, but the taking of female captives.
00:58:04There's a good chance those female captives were forced to return home with their Viking
00:58:08bachelors, or they would be put to work as domestic slaves and childbearing concubines.
00:58:13These unfortunate women were sometimes seen primarily as sex slaves, and when they did
00:58:17have children, one of two things could happen.
00:58:19The children could either be acknowledged as the official children of the father, or
00:58:22they could be forced into a life of slavery themselves.
00:58:26Many of the most well-known Viking torture methods walk the line between fact and fiction.
00:58:30It's unclear just how fictionalized some contemporary writings about Vikings are, but the legends
00:58:34are a testament to how creative they seemed to have been when it came to violence.
00:58:38First and most famously, there's the Blood Eagle.
00:58:41This has been described as the fate of several Vikings, but just how widely it was practiced
00:58:45is still up for debate — if it was ever practiced at all.
00:58:49The Blood Eagle involved carving the shape of an eagle into the victim's back, then cutting
00:58:53the ribs away from the spine and pulling out the lungs so they looked like an eagle's wings.
00:58:57"...until it is the worst, most painful death of all, but astonishing."
00:59:05Another kind of torture-turned-execution method is described in Jarl's Saga, so it may or
00:59:09may not actually be true.
00:59:11After the Battle of Plontarf, Ulf Farada reportedly inflicted an ungodly amount of pain onto a
00:59:16fellow Viking named Brodyr in retribution for killing an Irish king.
00:59:20Ulf, it was said, sliced open a bit of Brodyr, pulled out some of his intestines, and ordered
00:59:25him to walk around and around a tree, pulling out the rest of his innards as he walked.
00:59:30That doesn't look so bad right now, does it?
00:59:33Sometimes the Vikings would like the look of the lands they raided, so they decided
00:59:36to stick around.
00:59:37This is exactly what happened in Iceland, and when the Norsemen decided to make the
00:59:40island their home, they set out to destroy its forests.
00:59:44Trees were used for construction, heating, and charcoal for forges, while the land was
00:59:48used for planting crops and grazing animals.
00:59:50Within a few hundred years, Iceland was left with a landscape that was almost entirely
00:59:54treeless.
00:59:55That was fine for the Vikings, of course, but in the 21st century, the repercussions
00:59:59have been devastating.
01:00:00With no trees to secure the soil against Iceland's brutal winds, erosion has become a major problem.
01:00:06The soil, which contains a lot of volcanic rock and ash, blows away with a force that
01:00:09could strip the paint off carves.
01:00:12This has made farming impossible, grazing land scarce, and sandstorms a way of life
01:00:16for Icelanders.
01:00:17It has even impacted Iceland's ability to regulate their emissions, as there are no
01:00:20trees to absorb the carbon dioxide produced by the country and its inhabitants.
01:00:25Iceland has been trying to re-establish their forests since the 19th century, when a devastating
01:00:29sandstorm buried much of Gunnarsfjall, killing hundreds of livestock.
01:00:32Today, Iceland is still only around 1.5 percent forested, but there is finally some cause
01:00:37for optimism among the re-wilders.
01:00:39"...the forests are growing better than anybody ever thought.
01:00:44People will more and more look at them and say, hey, this is something that's worth having."
01:00:48By the time Æthelred the Unready became the king of the English at the turn of the 11th
01:00:52century, the Vikings had been raiding and pillaging their way up and down the British
01:00:55coast for around 200 years.
01:00:57Obviously, people had more than had enough of the Norse, an issue exacerbated by the
01:01:01fact that many of them never left.
01:01:04Æthelred's Britain was divided between Anglo-Saxons who lived in the south and the Danes who had
01:01:08settled in the north.
01:01:10Even though Viking settlers intermingled, and in some cases intermarried, with their
01:01:13Anglo-Saxon neighbors, much tension existed between the two cultures.
01:01:17This all came to a head when, after being informed that the Vikings were trying to kill
01:01:21him, Æthelred issued a call to arms.
01:01:23On November 13, 1002, he ordered his faithful subjects to kill all Danes living in Britain.
01:01:30It's unclear how many died during the St. Brice's Day Massacre, but multiple mass grave
01:01:34sites have been found dating to the time of Æthelred's decree.
01:01:37Among them were a group who sought shelter in an Oxford church that was burned down by
01:01:41an angry mob outside, as well as Adam Gunnhild, the sister of Denmark's King Svein.
01:01:46Her death added still more fuel to the fire and eventually led to the largest Viking invasion
01:01:50that Britain had ever seen.
01:01:53Some of the survivors of Viking raids were simply too valuable to sell into slavery,
01:01:57but there's no telling how life was going to turn out for them.
01:02:00Some of the Icelandic sagas record the taking of hostages, including the tale of Olaf Tryggvason
01:02:05and Sigurd the Stout, in which Olaf takes Sigurd's son hostage as a guarantee that he
01:02:09will fall in line.
01:02:10It's believed by many that political hostages were taken more often than most would expect,
01:02:14and according to research from the New University of Lisbon, it was pretty common for Vikings
01:02:19to ransom them back to their families.
01:02:21Unfortunately, paying the ransom would often devastate entire families, leaving them destitute.
01:02:26Sometimes it just didn't work out for the hostages.
01:02:28One of the most well-documented instances of brutality against hostages comes from Canute
01:02:33the Great.
01:02:34Canute was forced to flee England for the safety of Denmark when the Anglo-Saxons refused
01:02:37to acknowledge him as his father's heir, and during his escape, he cut off the ears, noses,
01:02:42and hands of the hostages he had been given as a token of goodwill.
01:02:46Anything else, the Vikings believed, would have been weakness.