Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: George Nori with you, Cody Cassidy with us, how to
Speaker 2: Survive History. Cody tell us about the book How to
Speaker 2: Survive History. How long did it take you to work
Speaker 2: on it?
Speaker 3: This took a couple of years. It was It was
Speaker 3: quite a lot of research. I and a lot of
Speaker 3: the disasters. The disasters I picked, I wanted to delve
Speaker 3: deep into them. I wanted to my background as a
Speaker 3: science writer, so I like understanding why the volcano at
Speaker 3: Pompeii was so destructive, or the asteroid at chick exclude
Speaker 3: what it did to the dinosaurs, and exactly the sort
Speaker 3: of mechanics behind it, and that that involves a lot
Speaker 3: of research and and and speaking with the experts. And
Speaker 3: then on top of that, I had to figure out
Speaker 3: how to get out of these disasters, which which usually
Speaker 3: the best way of doing that was was talking to
Speaker 3: the archaeologists at Pompeii and just sort of asking them
Speaker 3: which direction would you run if you were there, and
Speaker 3: then uh sort of recording their answers and and and
Speaker 3: asking them why. So it did take quite a lot
Speaker 3: of work.
Speaker 2: The Titanic went down nineteen twelve. It's made in voyage.
Speaker 2: How could people have avoided that tragedy other than not
Speaker 2: go on the ship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, even if you were in third class, you
Speaker 3: would have time to escape. The Titanic sort of famously,
Speaker 3: as we all know from the movie, to quite a
Speaker 3: long time to sink, and it was very graceful as
Speaker 3: it did it, So you would have a bit of
Speaker 3: even if you were in third class, you would have time.
Speaker 3: And so I would suggest that you would change into
Speaker 3: your finest clothing first when you first hit the iceberg,
Speaker 3: because the lifeboats were on the first class deck, and
Speaker 3: so your best chance is to sort of get invited
Speaker 3: to that exclusive floor and it would be best good
Speaker 3: idea to look the part. And then we can sort
Speaker 3: of see from the passenger manifest of the life rafts
Speaker 3: that if you're on the left side, if you're a man,
Speaker 3: you should go over there, because there was sort of
Speaker 3: this policy on the Titanic where women and children were
Speaker 3: loaded preferentially. But we can see that sort of one
Speaker 3: side of the boat followed that a little bit more
Speaker 3: strictly than the other. So it would sort of depend
Speaker 3: on who you were exactly where you should go. But
Speaker 3: even if you didn't make the life raft, which is
Speaker 3: a possibility, they only had space for about a further
Speaker 3: their passengers. You could swim probably too well. It maybe
Speaker 3: depending that boats are about five hundred yards away and
Speaker 3: the water was about twenty seven degrees so in that
Speaker 3: temperature you have about fifteen minutes before your arms and
Speaker 3: legs become two nune to swim. So the world's best
Speaker 3: ice swimmers can do five hundred yards in seven minutes,
Speaker 3: so fifteen minutes is a tough ask, but it is possible.
Speaker 2: The Titanic, of course, was hailed it as one of
Speaker 2: the best ships ever unsinkable and everything else that smashed
Speaker 2: and do how big was that iceberg?
Speaker 3: Massive? Yeah, that Titanic was almost eight hundred feet long,
Speaker 3: and it was. The iceberg actually weighed more than the Titanic,
Speaker 3: and the Titanic actually barely scraped it. It really only
Speaker 3: scraped the front right side for about three hundred feet
Speaker 3: of its of it of the ship in it, and
Speaker 3: so it uh, it really only did it almost the
Speaker 3: Titanic almost stayed a float. They put bulwarks, these prevention
Speaker 3: these walls within the ship to prevent water from flooding
Speaker 3: the whole deck or the whole hole if it one
Speaker 3: hole appeared and they and it could float if it
Speaker 3: didn't punch punch holes in the four of them, and
Speaker 3: it punched holes behind five. So that's why it actually
Speaker 3: sunk so slowly and almost didn't sink. If they had
Speaker 3: made the walls on these bulkheads a little bit higher,
Speaker 3: it actually would have would have floated in. And for
Speaker 3: Titanic sister ship, they did remodel it so that the
Speaker 3: walls were higher, and had they done that with Titanic,
Speaker 3: it actually would have would have floated long enough to
Speaker 3: at least be rescued.
Speaker 2: That movie put Leonardo DiCaprio on the map, didn't that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And uh it did, and uh there were some
Speaker 3: people who survived in the water, but none that survived
Speaker 3: on doors. I uh, there was one overturned life raft,
Speaker 3: so you can't There is no door to find like
Speaker 3: they do in Titanic, like Leonardo fails to do, but
Speaker 3: there are if you don't want to make the swim,
Speaker 3: you can sort of maybe wrestle for a spot on
Speaker 3: an overturned life wrapp and a few people did survive
Speaker 3: on this tody.
Speaker 2: Had you been offered an opportunity to take that submersible
Speaker 2: down to see the Titanic, albeit two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a seat. But let's say they invited you
Speaker 2: to go as as a journalist.
Speaker 3: Would you have gone? I would not have Maybe I
Speaker 3: would have been curious until but I saw I saw
Speaker 3: as sort of a TV program recently on what that
Speaker 3: sub looked like on the inside, and it looks sort
Speaker 3: of like a soda can.
Speaker 2: It's kind of claustrophobic.
Speaker 3: It looks very costerphobic to me. And at least according
Speaker 3: to this program, it was controlled by a very old
Speaker 3: video game controller, so that might have given me a
Speaker 3: bit of pause. I don't I wouldn't love it regardless,
Speaker 3: but I definitely wouldn't have liked being in there, in
Speaker 3: that small in that small ship. Although I will I
Speaker 3: haven't seen the sort of That submersible was named the
Speaker 3: titan which is a very interesting name because one of
Speaker 3: the sort of famous coincidences of all time is that
Speaker 3: about fifteen years before the Titanic sank, an author wrote
Speaker 3: a book about an unsinkable ship hitting an iceberg right
Speaker 3: where the Titanic did, and he called that ship the Titan.
Speaker 3: The book is called The Record the Titan, so I
Speaker 3: have to assume that the owner of the submersible knew
Speaker 3: that story and that's why he named it's submersible that.
Speaker 3: But it's an odd choice because the point of the
Speaker 3: Record the Titan is that it's sort of man's folly
Speaker 3: to create to believe that a ship would be unsinkable.
Speaker 2: So it's an odd choice with that submersible. I'm not
Speaker 2: seeing many reports on why they think it lost communications
Speaker 2: in hour and forty five minutes into the dive.
Speaker 3: I haven't either. I think the best guess is that
Speaker 3: it somehow lost power, but it should have still been
Speaker 3: able to if it had just been lost power. There's
Speaker 3: many backup systems to enable it to rise. A lot
Speaker 3: of these submersed actually are designed so that if they
Speaker 3: do lose power, they automatically right.
Speaker 2: Float right back up. Right. Yeah, there's there's there's something
Speaker 2: one of one of a couple of things has happened.
Speaker 2: In my opinion, one it has crushed and blown up
Speaker 2: or something like that where there's nothing to rise right now,
Speaker 2: or in the in this particular case, they got stuck somewhere.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe they're trapped in part of the wreckage
Speaker 2: of the Titanic and it can't go up, it's it's
Speaker 2: hitting something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's for me, at least, the scariest scenario. That
Speaker 3: would be terrifying if I were down there.
Speaker 2: But even that, they should they should still have had communications.
Speaker 2: So that's I mean this, this could have been a
Speaker 2: full blown catastrophic event here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that to me, that makes the most sense. Or
Speaker 3: if there there's a possibility too, that they did rise,
Speaker 3: that they've lost communication and are now just sort of floating.
Speaker 2: Well, but they've got so many planes out there in
Speaker 2: the area, you would think somebody would.
Speaker 3: Spot them, you would think, or that they had some
Speaker 3: way of tracking it. I don't know why I did
Speaker 3: not have that system. I don't know.
Speaker 2: And they're hearing these bangs and clayings every thirty minutes
Speaker 2: so far, which tells you that it's time by a human.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I haven't. That's what I've heard. That they're sort
Speaker 3: of suspecting that there's noises going on. I don't. That's
Speaker 3: sort of a terrifying thought. So perhaps they are just
Speaker 3: stuck down there.
Speaker 2: What's even sadder is even if they find them, they're
Speaker 2: running out of time to get them to the top.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's only a few there's certainly no
Speaker 3: humans that there's only a few ships in the world
Speaker 3: that it can get down there, And I don't think
Speaker 3: they could get there in time. So I think I
Speaker 3: read that the best hope is to maybe have one
Speaker 3: of these robots sort of loop a cable around them
Speaker 3: and haul them up. But that's quite a long cable
Speaker 3: even so, a lot of logistical difficulties.
Speaker 2: Crazy, it really is. They should have had backup systems
Speaker 2: for identification and buoys and all this other stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't It doesn't seem like they were. They
Speaker 3: took enough safety precautions.
Speaker 2: We're going to take calls with Cody Cassidy next hour.
Speaker 2: You talk to him a little bit about the nineteen
Speaker 2: oh six earthquake in San Francisco. How could people have
Speaker 2: prepared for that?
Speaker 3: Well, the first step would be San Francisco is a
Speaker 3: lot of it has been built on what amounts to
Speaker 3: sort of pioneer trash and instill on the lowlands, the
Speaker 3: sort of creepy The city sort of creeped into the
Speaker 3: Bay as we needed more space for the people hunting
Speaker 3: for gold and the gold rush and that is a
Speaker 3: particularly bad place to be during an earthquake because that
Speaker 3: sort of soil liquefies and behaved sort of like water
Speaker 3: when the earthquake rolled through. So the first step is
Speaker 3: to not be on San Francisco's lowlands. But that was
Speaker 3: really only the beginning, because the earthquakes severed basically every
Speaker 3: gas and water maine in the city. So fifty fires
Speaker 3: plus broke out across the city and there was not
Speaker 3: a drop to put them out. So the fire department
Speaker 3: the only way that they tried to put it out
Speaker 3: was to sort of detonate buildings along roads to try
Speaker 3: to build a big fire line, but that actually just
Speaker 3: made problems worse by spreading the fire, and so three
Speaker 3: quarters of the city eventually was eventually destroyed. And so
Speaker 3: really the only way for the best way I would
Speaker 3: suggest to get out is to make it to the water.
Speaker 3: And there was sort of a Dunkirk like evacuation. Basically
Speaker 3: every bay, every boat in the bay came to San
Speaker 3: Francisco and helped sale people away because there were no
Speaker 3: bridges at that time. So that's what I would suggest,
Speaker 3: to get to the water as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2: How devastating was that nineteen oh six earth quake.
Speaker 3: Oh it was. I mean, it's still like the record
Speaker 3: for at least justice for inflation, for the most financial
Speaker 3: damage the city has suffered in the disaster. It was
Speaker 3: three quarters of the city basically was burned. There was
Speaker 3: almost nothing left and that had that had to be rebuilt,
Speaker 3: and so the earthquake was really only the beginning of
Speaker 3: the disaster. And we actually don't really even know how
Speaker 3: many people died because records were so poor back then anyways,
Speaker 3: But then City Hall also burned down, in all the
Speaker 3: records of people who are living here gone, so it's
Speaker 3: sort of a pretty inaccurate but certainly quite a high
Speaker 3: number of fatalities.
Speaker 2: The Black Death that hid Europe. Your take on that, sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some people call this the greatest catastrophe to ever
Speaker 3: befall mankind. When it hit London, it's almost unimaginable. But
Speaker 3: in eighteen months, forty percent of the city of London died.
Speaker 3: This is one hundred thousand people who were living in
Speaker 3: London at the time died in just eighteen months. So
Speaker 3: it's really an absolutely unimaginable catastrophe. But if you were there,
Speaker 3: you shouldn't actually leave London because it was actually even
Speaker 3: worse in the in the rural areas because the the
Speaker 3: plague was spread by fleas which were riding on rats,
Speaker 3: and so these rural farms actually had because they had
Speaker 3: more rats and fewer people when the rats were killed
Speaker 3: by the plague, that the fleas would jump onto the
Speaker 3: very few people there. So if you were one of them,
Speaker 3: the odds that a fleet and infectic flee would get
Speaker 3: you were actually higher. So it's better to stay. As
Speaker 3: bad as it is in London or any big European
Speaker 3: city at this time, it were better to stay there,
Speaker 3: and you shouldn't all. The final point is not to
Speaker 3: get a cat either or a rat trap, because that's
Speaker 3: what I thought initially, that you would try to kill
Speaker 3: all the rats around you, But it turns out that
Speaker 3: a dead rat is actually even more dangerous because that
Speaker 3: means that's fleas have to jump onto you, perhaps if
Speaker 3: you're nearby. So stay in the city and don't get
Speaker 3: a cat.
Speaker 2: How did this disease wane or fall apart?
Speaker 3: What happened to it? It basically just infected and either
Speaker 3: killed or immunized everybody in the city, and maybe even
Speaker 3: more importantly, every rat in the city because and.
Speaker 2: It just died off on its own.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was just no not enough people left to infect.
Speaker 3: It's sort of a herd immunity, and the plague has
Speaker 3: a sixty fatality rate, and so once forty percent of
Speaker 3: the city died, that means basically everybody in the city
Speaker 3: caught it. And once you've caught it, you're either immune
Speaker 3: or dead. So that eventually the plague had normal people
Speaker 3: who have affected. But it died back, But that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean it died permanently. It's sort of just retreated and
Speaker 3: actually kept coming back in waves every generation or so
Speaker 3: for hundreds of years, so it's really just a temporary relief.
Speaker 2: And what has happened to it now.
Speaker 3: Well, now into that bacterials can kill the plague or
Speaker 3: can rescue you if you take them in time, and
Speaker 3: they didn't of course have penicillin back then, but they
Speaker 3: still are breakouts, and usually they happen after I had
Speaker 3: droughts when a lot of the rat population or they're
Speaker 3: in rodents. Generally the rodent population dies and so this
Speaker 3: sends a lot of foods looking for new hosts. But
Speaker 3: if you if you take penaphillin in time, it should
Speaker 3: be okay.
Speaker 2: Of every catastrophe you've written about in your book How
Speaker 2: to Survive History, which would you say is the single
Speaker 2: worst one?
Speaker 3: Well, I wrote about the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
Speaker 3: This is sixty six and a half a million years ago,
Speaker 3: and this is the only one in which I spoke
Speaker 3: to a lot of experts that only one of them
Speaker 3: said maybe a human had a chance to survive. So
Speaker 3: this would be pretty pretty unlikely. It's it's an absolutely
Speaker 3: spectacular event. It was a rock six miles wide a
Speaker 3: hit or of traveling ten miles per second, and.
Speaker 2: Would have gotten all of us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean basically this No mammal larger than a
Speaker 3: raccoon survived derived the impact, and really the only dinosaurs
Speaker 3: that did were some ground nesting birds. So even though
Speaker 3: it hit in the Yucatan, it killed almost the entire
Speaker 3: Western hemisphere because the blast, the impact was like one
Speaker 3: hundred million times largest nuclear weapon ever detonated. So it
Speaker 3: was a thousand foot tsunamis sort of rain of fire.
Speaker 3: All the earth that it lifted up came falling back
Speaker 3: to Earth and as fire, and then it eventually coated
Speaker 3: the stratus here in this oil. Basically, this vaporized oil
Speaker 3: that blocked out the sun for about ten years, so
Speaker 3: it was sort of global freeze.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: It was a spectacular and very devastating event.
Speaker 2: Some say that by wiping out the dinosaurs it made
Speaker 2: way for humans. What do you think of that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's certainly that's certainly true. I think dinosaurs has
Speaker 3: been doing quite well for quite a long period of time,
Speaker 3: much longer than the humans have been around, so it
Speaker 3: by killing them off, I think it paved the way
Speaker 3: for mammals as small as we were, even some mammals
Speaker 3: that survive, and that paves the way for us, I
Speaker 3: think absolutely.
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