ancient disaster

Honorable mentions R101, Marie Celeste, The crash of the "Italia".

pompeii ftw. ironic that the catastrophe has enabled us to learn so much about vanished roman life and custom.

How soon before they get to 9/11?

The Marie Celeste isn't really a Disaster - it's a Mystery. I had a picture book about it, in a series of books on such Mysteries; the Loch Ness monster was another, and perhaps the gold of Eldorado was another again (or that may just have featured in another, larger book). I don't think anyone ever quie found out what happened to the MC crew, though the theory in my book was that they were afraid of a disease (?) and occupied the lifeboat, which then got blown away during a storm. I'm not sure, now, if that sounds credible. Other theories noted in the book included extra-terrestrials, in a flying saucer, picking them all up, possibly with a magnetic field or tractor beam.

Krakatoa FTW.

This one moves me a little, perhaps because of its 1960s provenance: a disaster in reverse?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surtsey

the Black Plague ?

Astonishing wiki Krakaotoa facts:

[With a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 6, it was equivalent to 200 megatons of TNT — about 13,000 times the yield of the Little Boy bomb (13 to 16 KT), which devastated Hiroshima, Japan.

The 1883 eruption ejected more than 25 cubic kilometres of rock, ash, and pumice,[2] and generated the loudest sound historically reported: the cataclysmic explosion was distinctly heard as far away as Perth in Australia approx. 1,930 miles (3,110 km), and the island of Rodrigues near Mauritius approx. 3,000 miles (5,000 km) from Krakatoa.]

The Mary Celeste:

The most plausible theories are based on the barrels of alcohol. Briggs had never hauled such a dangerous cargo before and did not trust it. Nine leaking barrels would have caused a buildup of vapor in the hold. Historian Conrad Byers believed that Captain Briggs ordered the hold to be opened, resulting in a violent rush of fumes and then steam. Believing the ship was about to explode, Briggs ordered everyone into the lifeboat, failing, in his haste, to properly secure it to the ship with a strong towline. The wind picked up and blew the ship away from them. The occupants of the lifeboat either drowned or drifted out to sea to die of hunger, thirst and exposure.

Actually if this is really a list of old disasters, then a truly terrible and odd one is the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918, which killed twice as many as WWI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

Hubert Parry, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Max Weber were all victims!

Yes, I knew there was an ambiguity, or a common error, re. the MC's spelling, and evidently I, like Pashmina, chose the wrong answer to that quandary.

though yes, fl. saucer tractor beam now sounds more right.

I love the idea of US military arrogance being shat on by a bunch of 'primitives', so I'm going Custer.

Anyway, yes, the alcohol / explosion theory was probably the one in the book; and I suppose it sounds plausible.

Apart from the flying saucer.

Custer's last stand vs the first and second afghan wars.

cheers for that surtsey link, pinefox, had no knowledge of that.

There was a bit about Surtsey in the Documentary about volcanoes that was on after the Pompeii thing. I remember seeing it on the news in the seventies, it must have erupted again then, I think?

john mills is in at least two films on the list

If we're thinking about which disaster had the biggest overall effect, surely nothing can beat the Black Death? It killed like 30-60 percent of Europe's population, and over 10 percent of the whole world population.

Was Krakatoa the one that caused the bizzare sunsets that inspired Munch's "the Scream" or was that some other volcano? I can never recall. Yeah google blah, lazy.

spanish flu > black death

I always was fascinated by the ancient mystery of the missing colony of Roanoke, founded by Sir Walter Raleigh off the coast of what became North Carolina -- who then apparently forgot to send them any supplies for three years. This was 1585, 20 years before Jamestown and 40 years before pilgrims landed in Massachusetts.

When supplies finally came, the only evidence that anyone had ever been there was a tree that had been carved with the unrecognizable word, "CROATAN".

john mills is in at least two films on the list

heh and let's sub 'fort apache' for custer and john wayne's in another two.

spanish flu > black death

How come? The Spanish Flu didn't kill as many people as the Black Death even in absolute terms, let alone in proportionate terms. I can't imagine any other disaster having a bigger effect on human societies.

he means flu is preferable to death. tho it doesn't feel like that on some occasions

TAKE THAT, "KING OF THE WILD FRONTIER"

Pluralise that "KING" and you might have the greatest cover version of all time.

I saw that programme, Pash, tho I'd seen it before on the Beeb. Bad timing to run it on the same weekend as the shockingly inaccurate Doctor Who ep.

I had a book about the wild west when I was a kid, and it had a chapter on Roanoke that fascinated me and gave me the chills a bit as well.

The thing about Pompeii that gave me nightmares as a kid was the PLASTER CASTS, oh man they used to scare the shit out of me. I used to dream about them coming to life (x-post which would prob. make a killer dr who episode!)

There was a grim story in the volcanoes (volcanos? Am I doing a Dan Quayle here?) documentary about a volcano under a lake in Africa, there was some kind of seismic shift under the lake, which released a huge volume of Carbon Dioxide, the (invisible) gas cloud bubbled up through the lake, then rolled down the sides of the mountain at night, suffocating every living thing in its path. People showed up the next morning and found thousnds of dead people, as well as livestock and wildlife all dead too.

Black Death massively upped wages for surviving peasants and arguably kickstarted the death of Feudalism in England so I vote it not a disaster.

Scariest volcano = that thing under Jellystone Park that's going to end the world any day now.

back in primary school i got pretty freaked out by some bbc schools thing about the london plague of 1665 which in hindsight seems an odd thing to give 10 year olds to do a week long project on

Dude they still do that tho. lol Londoncentricity. Couple of years ago my boy Joel was coming home telling us how Samuel Pepys buried a big cheese in the back yard whilst he fled the city.

that's how pompeii started also

You mean the supervolcano, right? not cheese-burial?

Samuel Pepys buried a big cheese in the back yard whilst he fled the city.

mmmm parmesan

this thread doesn't seem to show up on New Answers - I wondered if its inhabitants had suffered the same fate as the crew of the Mary Celeste.

Still doesn't show up! It's a Ghost Thread!

Scariest volcano = that thing under Jellystone Park that's going to end the world any day now.

I read about this in that Bill Bryson book "Small history of almost everything" and yeah I freaked out as well. The fact Yellowstone is this gigantic caldera that is way overdue for a massive splosion that'd take half of the US with it and cover the rest of the earth with ash and dark skies for months on end. Mmmm. Fun.

OK I totally got the book title wrong but whatever.

Coincidentally, there's a thing about the Titanic on radio 4 at the moment, tales of the survivors bickering with each other in the lifeboats, a drunken chef somehow surviving in the freezing water, the distress calls received by the Carpathia and so on, all familiar stuff, but still, a powerful, and depressing story!

Am I the only person for whom this is a Ghost Thread? it just will not appear on New Answers, is only accessible via Search.

I'm seeing it just fine on "new answers", Pinefox.

pinefox are you on the right board lol

toss up between destruction of atlantis and the extinction of the dinosaurs by their invention of the atomic bomb

Ice Age, duh

"the extinction of the dinosaurs by their invention of the atomic bomb"

roughly contemporaneous if you believe ken ham

and i do

I read this book crazy book where this guy theorized dinosaurs evolved an advanced civilization at the end of Cretaceous which was destroyed by their own bombs and moved underground with their UFO's which they continue to use to this day. Somehow human males' lack of a penis bone was evidence of this.

no i'm fairly sure pompeii began as the result of a buried cheese

With reasoning that airtight, I'm sure the reptilian overlords have since quietly "removed" the book and it's author.

http://fatadelic.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/planetofapes.jpg

I always was fascinated by the ancient mystery of the missing colony of Roanoke, founded by Sir Walter Raleigh off the coast of what became North Carolina -- who then apparently forgot to send them any supplies for three years. This was 1585, 20 years before Jamestown and 40 years before pilgrims landed in Massachusetts.

When supplies finally came, the only evidence that anyone had ever been there was a tree that had been carved with the unrecognizable word, "CROATAN".

-- Tracer Hand, Wednesday, April 16, 2008 11:25 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

yes this is freaky

still i'm not sure custer's last stand is an "ancient disaster" along the lines of pompeii?

aw who cares.

Croatan was actually a local indian tribe

yeah i think it was a sign to their buddies back in england about where they'd gone to, but a hurricane intervened before they could be found; most people think they "integrated" with the croatans/hatteras indians

Roanoke mystery is pretty cool (and the basis for a rather excellent comic book series.)

Not sure this counts, but isn't there some theory that when the mediterranean valley became the mediterranean sea that was the basis for all subsequent flood myths because ppl were living there already and the survivors were the duders who actually went a started shit up in the tigris/euphrates/indus area that we now think of as the earliest civilization.

Because, THAT!

Also, for recent human instigated stuff (non-war division) the Texas City fertilizer kablooey is pretty wicked.

speaking of subterranean dino civilizations

http://io9.com/380198/dennis-hopper-with-a-deevolution-machine-++-what-could-go-wrong

Yep and "Croatoan" was on the tree (note spelling)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatoan_Island

what board is this thread on? it just doesn't show up anymore. it's like Bigfoot.

i knew i should've kept my mouth shut about our reptilian masters

http://photos9.flickr.com/13128006_f9c7a6cf1a_m.jpg

pinefox it shows up for me fine!

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=40

Scott of the Antarctic I AM GOING OUT I MAY BE SOME TIME BYE BYE

Aw c'mon! um, 5 people dying at the South Pole because LOL they had no idea how to ski or use snowshoes is not a "disaster"

What was disastrous about the Erebus and Terror?

Franklin Expedition, right? That was a disaster.

Santorini/Thera

yeah Scott was no disaster, but I ended up voting for it because for me it's the most interesting of those listed

I'll admit that a few of them don't really qualify as either "ancient" or "disaster", really the only thing that connects them is "bad shit that happened long before I was born, that thrilled me and gave me the fear when I was a kid" Most of them seem to have some kind of hubris clobbered by nemesis thing going on as well.

Did anyone else see the Pompeii exhibit at a museum? It was travelling around in the '80's - before most of you were born, I know.
I was young when I saw it, and remain scarred to this day by viewing the mummified corpses.
So I voted for Pompeii.

Black Death massively upped wages for surviving peasants and arguably kickstarted the death of Feudalism in England so I vote it not a disaster

what is a few dozen million deaths? You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.

are you after writing in a vote for The Great Hunger?

still no sight of this thread on New Answers - seriously. I have never known the like of it.

The Great Fire of London

Also, the Nika Riots. Roughly 30000 killed.

The first five extinction events (all life on earth nearly wiped out, again and again) were pretty big deals too, I'd say.

nika riots are intense!! it's like a 50's greaser movie times a billion, and in uh constantinople in the 6th cent.

black death doesn't count cos there wasn't a "the" black death, the bubonic plague broke out in several different times and places over a few hundred years.

Has this thread now vanished for everyone else too?

It really has not been visible to me since it was brand new.

check your preferences. do you have polls hidden?

"Croatan" = "Nat, a orc" backwards.

It's a creepy thread.

bigscale fave

smallscale fave

creepy in a good way.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

pompeii can eat a classically educated dick

black death doesn't count cos there wasn't a "the" black death, the bubonic plague broke out in several different times and places over a few hundred years.

Bubonic plague did indeed break out during different centuries, but as far as I know only one of these outbreaks is called the Black Death, and that was the plague that spread in Europe between 1347 and 1351, killing 30-60 percent of European population. I think the timeframe is narrow enough to say it was a particular event, certainly it was recorded in history as one.

Yeah!

is anyone watching "The Terror" (fictionalised version of the Franklin expedition, complete with added lovecraftian HORROR* i believe)

based on dan simmons' 2007 novel, which i haven't read

if so NO SPOILERS but is it any good? i was just rereading david c. woodman's two excellent books on how the inuit reported on this disaster (which completely changes the story) (and does include some weird shit, if not quite lovecraftian)

erebus and terror robbed in this poll btw

I just checked the novel out of the library last week after seeing it recommended on some Greatest Horror Novels list. Have not yet cracked it.

I don't know why they needed to add any HORROR, when the story already has a horrific blend of peak BE officer classes, cannibalism, pneumonia, scurvy, lead poisoning, the unremitting sub-zero winds etc...

I fell off this series after a couple of eps, but I read other people saying it was good.

dan simmons is a horror writer so i guess it's what he always adds?

the two versions of the actual real story are
A: "everyone is stuck on two iced-in ships when they eventually leave to march south except they all die, some of them eating others"
B (via the inuits): "everyone leaves the iced-in ships and spends quite a complex two years living off the land but not marching anywhere much until SOMETHING HAPPENS (tho no one quite knows what) and the remainer split into three parties, one remanning the ships and sailing them away (but not very far away), one marching and dying, the third staying put and dying , some of them eating others. the ones who sailed the ships, land and march -- some possibly a tremendous distance in one of several possible directions but no one is quite sure where they end up, hundreds of miles east or hundreds of miles south, or indeed how it all ends for the last ones"

A is possibly not very dramatic
B is all gaps and guesses needs a ton of added speculation to work as a story, with the caveat that the speculation that works best for a story may be wildly untrue

both A and B have a grim and terrible ending, which we know from the outset (no one got home; no inuit have come forward to say "oh they lived out their days with my ancestors")

fair enough, but I do prefer movies where less happens these days and think you might be underrating the dramatic potential of A (directed by bela tar and with barely a paragraph of dialogue for the first 3 eps!), and the point I jumped off this was when the daft oversized polar bear turns up.

yes it's weird in the inuit testimony books bears are NEVER mentioned even though i assume they are a fairly routine menace for one and all

one inuit who encountered them was a young hunter called kai (apparently short for kayak!) who -- after spotting a couple of wandering white guys hundred of miles from where everyone said they all died -- was himself killed by what his fellow inuit called a "very ugly walrus" (which is my favourite line in the book = "strangers among us" by david c.woodman)

a search reveals that walruses sometimes kill polar bears and humans. They are probably underrated as deadly predators in western fiction.

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--LqJpmVwV--/c_fit,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/fuh8gmgmp6g0nujxjcj2.jpg

disasters 3-8 explained

FACT: The first sunglasses date back to the prehistoric Inuits who wore flattened walrus ivory specks, looking through narrow slits to block the haters/any and all bullsh*t to live their absolute best life pic.twitter.com/RNL4YgMtl7

— jeff (@dquyanna) May 31, 2019

Growing up my Gramma would tell me about white explorers who clawed out their eyes from the pain of going snow blind. The snow will bounce the UV directly into your eye sockets and even closing your eyes won't help.

— James Jimmy Jim (@KnikCage) May 31, 2019

yes i am reading the franklin books again

amundsen wore a version of these inuit sunscreen glasses (and also when relevant travelled by night when the sun would be behind them)
vs
scott ... did not

powered up youtube to watch a slew of mostly terrible "documentaries" about franklin via inuit testimony -- including a video of a talk by david c.woodman to accompany the franklin exhibition that greenwich maritime museum put on in 2018-19 which then toured to canada: woodman wrote the book that put inuit testimony upfront (two books in fact) and is a big cheery bear of a man whose life's dream (finding erebus and terror) worked out p well (erebus was found on the sea bed not far from where he thought it would be; terror was found sunk in terror bay and not -- as he thought -- in erebus bay) (erebus ba is also not where erebus was found and terror bay wasn't called that bcz the terror was sunk there)

woodman could not work his powerpoint slides and talked almost as much abt that as about the topic at hand (why was inuit testimony ignored for so long: ans = it wasn't really, it just too until the 21st century for the technology to back up what the inuit had always been saying) (which some people had believed and others had not)

anyway the exciting thing is that he believes the famous big corpse with very long teeth may yet be discovered on one of the wrecks (most likely terror) and that the vaults with the log books exist and will one day also be found

i also watched half of a very bad youtube on how the first searches were organised, with a terrible narrator and no hint that the iced up ships were remanned and sailed on from the place they first froze into the ice and have now been tracked down. the one good anecdote was that some prankster claimed a franklin message balloon had come to earth in their gloucester garden in 1851. franklin had no such balloons tho they were used in some of the searches for him, and they weren't -- as the youtube vid said -- "helium balloons", bcz helium wasn't theorised for another 15 years and only isolated in the 1890s

I know a song about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9H-Jt7_OJE