In 1988, the internet was relegated almost exclusively to government agencies and universities. As ubiquitous as it is today, it’s hard to believe that it was almost completely killed by one nerd before it had a chance to flourish. That nerd is Robert Morris Jr., a college student who was curious about just how large the internet had become in November of 1988, and who thus decided to write a program to map it. The idea was to release his self-replicating code onto the web, where it would eventually infect every computer connected to the internet, thereby giving him a good impression of its scale. Today, we refer to this kind of thing as a “virus.” And this one in particular was one of the worst in history.
Despite Morris’s benevolent intentions, his virus decided to play out a digital version of a zombie movie. Instead of innocuously planting itself on hard drives, it wound up murdering every computer it touched, but not before rapidly infecting every other device on the network. Within days, a large percentage of all computers connected to the internet had been converted – as if by shitty alchemy – into expensive paperweights.
Awful Disasters Caused By Well-Intentioned Stupidity
Out of the collective 53,487 people involved in plane crashes in the U.S. from 1983 to 2000, 51,207 survived. That’s nearly a 96 percent survival rate.
If you’re wondering how that’s possible, just look at something like Aloha Airlines Flight 243. That plane had half of its fuselage ripped off in midair after an explosive decompression.
But, as is often the case, the pilot successfully got it onto the ground in a way that did not cause it to erupt in a giant fireball. As a result, out of 94 people, only one person died on that flight (the one person who wasn’t strapped to her seat when the plane fell apart – hey, that’s why they have those seat belts!).
See, this is why you still need a pilot at the wheel instead of just letting autopilot take care of the whole trip, or letting passengers take turns behind the stick. They’re there in case something goes wrong, and they’re pretty freaking good at their jobs.
So, what is the secret to surviving an airplane crash? Remarkably, doing exactly as you are told. Yes, those in-flight demonstrations of how to use a seat belt are ridiculous, but if you’re out of fuel and about to do an emergency landing in the ocean, that’s going to be the difference between floating safely away on your seat cushion versus trying to jump out of the plane because you saw Arnold Schwarzenegger do it in Commando.
