What a jolly evening. First I watched Chernobyl being entombed and now I'm watching a programme on Porton Down, all about nasty things like mustard gas. The presenter is a doctor who has worked with soldiers on active service. He asks questions and the personnel often reply,"I can't tell you that." Hardly any relief from Wilfred Owen's poem, Dulce et decorum est which describes the effect of some nasty gas on a soldiers breathing. It's all gloom and doom tonight. It's just amazing what horrors man inflicts on man. I guess I need to do the sensible thing and switch off the gloom machine in the corner of my living room.
I have written in previous posts about disasters. In the case of Concorde, decisions by people, plus other factors were directly to blame for the event. In the case of the Penlee disaster it may have been avoided if someone had made a better choice in the time beforehand and as a consequence brave men and the ship's crew and the captain and his family died. 9/11 was certainly the result of wicked men committing a terrorist act, but even in this there was heroism notably by another Cornish man, Rick Rescorla who helped many to safety and left it too late to help himself. In situations like this we see what the human spirit is capable of both good and evil. What of disasters that come on people because of the earth restless movement of tectonic plates. Often people live near volcanoes because the land is rich and fertile and they have the chance of a better life there when the volcano is resting. We cannot blame them for that but sometimes people become complacent...
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