Our fascination with trainwrecks

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Our fascination with trainwrecks

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12wonderY
Edited: May 20, 2014, 1:35 pm

'Trainwrecks' is the historic catch-all descriptor that I can think of. They don't happen as often anymore, but my dad piled us kids into the car once to go view one. Tourists at a disaster?

I was checking out the shelves of a new member and saw that we share Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine: being an encyclopedic collection of rare and extraordinary cases, and of the most striking instances of abnormality in all branches of medicine and surgery, derived from an exhaustive research of medical literature from its origin to the present day, abstracted, annotated, and indexed, published in 1896, and that led me to want to tag some of my books to describe the type of non-fiction book that is published mainly to satisfy our human desire to view the awful.

This title purports to be a medical book, but I think it was meant to be bought by the curious layman.

I have a short shelf of flood books, beginning with History of the Johnstown Flood, published in 1889.

Help me to come up with a tag uniting these sorts of books.

And list more of them too, if you can think of them. Lets just keep them to our TBSL criteria of pre-1950.

2fuzzi
Edited: Jun 10, 2014, 8:35 pm

How about tagging them as "disaster" books?

Or "rubberneck"? When people have to slow down to gawk at a car accident, we refer to them as "rubberneckers".

Or a "gawker" might work, and it's a shorter word.

32wonderY
Jun 18, 2014, 1:47 pm

Okay, I'm trying 'rubbernecking.' That seems to convey my meaning.

So-

The subtitle for The History of the Johnstown Flood is "Including all the fearful record; the breaking of the South Fork Dam; the sweeping out of the Conemaugh Valley; the overthrow of Johnstown; the massing of the wreck at the railroad bridge; escapes, rescues, searches for survivors and the dead; relief organizations, stupendous charities, etc., etc. ... with full accounts also of the destruction of the Susquehanna and Juanita Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek. Illustrated.

Another title I've got is Our National Calamity of Fire, Flood and Tornado, published in 1917, has the subtitle "The appalling loss of life, the terrible suffering of the homeless, the struggles for safety, and the noble heroism of those who risked life to save loved ones; the unprecedented loss of property, resulting in the laying waste of flourishing cities and towns. How the Whole Nation Joined in the Work of Relief" but on the front cover it says "Thrilling Stories with Photographs & Sketches."

4JerryMmm
Jun 18, 2014, 2:49 pm

I like the etc., etc. in the subtitle :)

5Collectorator
Edited: Jun 18, 2014, 4:12 pm

This member has been suspended from the site.

62wonderY
Jun 18, 2014, 4:14 pm

The Hindenburg is exactly the sort of fascinating subject matter that fits.

7fuzzi
Jun 19, 2014, 2:00 pm

I have a copy of A Night to Remember, that would fit the category, hmm?

82wonderY
Jun 19, 2014, 2:23 pm

Yep. And so would Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, though it was just published in 2003. Truly, has anyone ever heard of this disaster?

9PossMan
Jun 19, 2014, 2:39 pm

>2 fuzzi:: "Rubbernecker" sounds perfect to me and Rubbernecker is also the name of book by Belinda Bauer which I quite enjoyed. There's an incident at the beginning where the main character behaves exactly as you describe. He also suffers from Asperger's and the book is based on his time in a university anatomy course where he realizes that one of the cadavers has in fact been murdered. Quite an original plot.
>1 2wonderY:: As far as medical images are concerned a good recent book is The Sick Rose by Richard Barnett - most of the images I think come from the Wellcome Foundation library.

10fuzzi
Jun 19, 2014, 9:17 pm

>5 Collectorator: card catalog denizens...ah...I remember...

11BonnieJune54
Jun 19, 2014, 10:03 pm

>8 2wonderY: What a bizarre tragedy to have been totally forgotten.

12thorold
Jun 20, 2014, 7:55 am

I have book that's literally about train wrecks: Red for danger, by L.T.C. Rolt. It skates a little bit uneasily between the sensational aspect and the worthy purpose of showing how the railway industry learned from its mistakes.

>8 2wonderY:, >11 BonnieJune54:
Molasses floods might be more common than you would think - there was one in Delft about ten years ago. It's a fairly widely-used raw material in industry, and not very dangerous, so they probably don't take special precautions to contain it in the event that a tank fails or a pipe bursts.

13ligature
Jun 20, 2014, 12:11 pm

Yes! I grew up near Boston and it does get referred to from time to time.

142wonderY
Jan 16, 2015, 12:39 pm

Found an original copy of THE SAN FRANCISCO CALAMITY By Earthquake and Fire published in 1906.

You'll have to go to the other thread to read the entire sub-title. (!)

15abbottthomas
Jan 16, 2015, 1:28 pm

I was tempted, but then passed over, a copy of Why buildings fall down; How structures fail by Matthys Levy in my local Oxfam bookstore. It deals with things like the Tacoma Narrows bridge - quite entertaining. Maybe I'll pop back and see if it is still there....

I do have William McGonagall's poem about the "Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay" falling down - perhaps that counts.

162wonderY
Sep 14, 2015, 7:52 am

Not a book, but an online article titled Death By Food

The flour mill explosions were horrific. I worked for a time at grain storage and shipping locations along the Mississippi River, and the dust in the air was always heavy. I freaked when I saw an employee light a cigarette inside the plant. He was fired immediately.

17fuzzi
Edited: Sep 14, 2015, 12:44 pm

>16 2wonderY: I'd heard about the combustibility of grain dust, but had forgotten.

My sister's husband's family had a family business, grain storage silos along the Mississippi for years, but the business went under after the horrific floods of about a decade ago. Too bad.

18varielle
Aug 10, 2019, 2:40 pm

There is a Disaster Buffs group on LT for people who collect that sort of thing. https://www.librarything.com/groups/disasterbuffs

19NinieB
Aug 10, 2019, 8:43 pm

I have another rubbernecking book about the San Francisco earthquake. It was definitely marketed to the disaster junkies of the time: Complete Story of the San Francisco Earthquake, the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius and Other Volcanic Outbursts and Earthquakes, Including All the Great Disasters of History.

20alco261
Aug 12, 2019, 7:59 am

Rising Tide - a book about the great Mississippi flood of 1927 would fit in this category.

If you include epidemics under the natural disaster heading then The Great Influenza would also fit.

Another good man made disaster like the Johnstown Flood is the Hinckley Fire and there are two good books on that subject The Hinckley Fire and Under a Flaming Sky.

>16 2wonderY: and >17 fuzzi: - it's no just flour dust that can explode - any kind of fine powder in the air will do. Many years ago I worked at a PVC plastic compounding facility where, one day, the air filters for the grinding process failed - the room quickly filled with dust and, since everything was using electric motors for power, sparks were everywhere. The processing building blew up. Fortunately, at the time, all of the workers were in the main control room for a safety talk (which is why no one noticed the filter failure) and the building itself had blow out walls built just for this purpose. The building looked like hell after the explosion but no one was injured.

21fuzzi
Aug 27, 2019, 12:50 pm

>20 alco261: yikes!

As plastics are made from petroleum, that might explain why they were so combustible.

22PossMan
Aug 27, 2019, 2:33 pm

Mention of the Mississippi reminds me of Five Days at Memorial. The aftermath in 2005 of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. A pretty nasty experience for staff and patients stranded as the hospital was flooded and isolated. But when it became possible for many to escape some very ill patients on the top floor were killed for the convenience of some staff. Obviously that's a brutal and tendentious description of a more complex situation.

23alco261
Aug 27, 2019, 9:59 pm

>21 fuzzi: in general the issue is that of surface to air ratios - dust from any of the following will explode if the conditions are right...so don't smoke 'em if you've got 'em... :-)

Agricultural Products:
Egg white
Milk, powdered
Milk, nonfat, dry
Soy flour
Starch (corn, rice, wheat)
Sugar
Sugar (milk, beet)
Tapioca, Whey, Wood flour

Agricultural Dusts:
Alfalfa,Apple,Beet root,Carrageen,Carrot,Cocoa bean dust,Cocoa powder,Coconut shell dust,Coffee dust,Corn meal,Cornstarch
Cotton,Cottonseed,Garlic powder,Gluten,Grass dust,Green coffee,Hops (malted),Lemon peel dust,Lemon pulp,Linseed,Locust bean gum
Malt,Oat flour,Oat grain dust,Olive pellets,Onion powder,Parsley (dehydrated),Peach,Peanut meal and skins
Peat,Potato,Potato flour,Potato starch,Raw yucca seed dust,Rice dust,Rice flour,Rice starch,Rye flour
Semolina,Soybean dust,Spice dust,Spice powder,Sugar (10x),Sunflower,Sunflower seed dust,Tea
Tobacco blend,Tomato,Walnut dust,Wheat flour,Wheat grain dust,Wheat starch,Xanthan gum

Carbonaceous Dusts:
Charcoal (activated, wood)
Coal, bituminous
Coke, petroleum
Lampblack, Lignite
Peat, 22%H20
Soot, pine
Cellulose, Cellulose pulp, Cork, Corn

Chemical Dusts:
Adipic acid,Anthraquinone,Ascorbic acid,Calcium acetate,Calcium stearate,Carboxy-methylcellulose
Dextrin,Lactose,Lead stearate,Methyl-cellulose,Paraformaldehyde,Sodium ascorbate
Sodium stearate,Sulfur

Metal Dusts:
Aluminum
Bronze
Iron carbonyl
Magnesium
Zinc

Plastic Dusts:
poly (Acrylamide, Acrylonitrile ,Ethylene - low-pressure process)
Epoxy resin,Melamine resin
Melamine, molded
(phenol-cellulose)
Melamine, molded
(wood flour and
mineral filled phenolformaldehyde)
(poly) Methyl acrylate
emulsion polymer
Phenolic resin
(poly) Propylene
Terpene-phenol resin
Urea-formaldehyde/
cellulose, molded
(poly) Vinyl acetate/
ethylene copolymer
(poly) Vinyl alcohol
(poly) Vinyl butyral
(poly) Vinyl chloride/
ethylene/vinyl
acetylene suspension
copolymer
(poly) Vinyl chloride/
vinyl acetylene
emulsion
copolymer

24fuzzi
Aug 28, 2019, 2:13 pm

>23 alco261: I'll just assume all dust is flammable...

252wonderY
Aug 28, 2019, 3:34 pm

And thus one should just leave it lay.

Sister sent me a blurb recently ~ You are dust and return to dust. That is why I don’t dust. It could be someone I know.

26fuzzi
Aug 28, 2019, 7:37 pm

27alco261
Aug 29, 2019, 8:38 pm

>25 2wonderY: of course the other side of the coin is this - if it is indeed from dust to dust and you don't bother to dust then you might wake up one morning and find a total stranger asleep under your bed. :-)

282wonderY
Aug 29, 2019, 9:44 pm

>27 alco261: Favorited that!

29PossMan
Aug 30, 2019, 2:29 pm

>25 2wonderY:: Like it! But some people say that about swatting wasps. Well if the yellow-striped beast is a long lost 3rd cousin 5 time removed — too bad. But if people really think a wasp could be a lost ancestor couldn't swatting it mean that it comes back as the snake that gets you?

30fuzzi
Aug 30, 2019, 6:59 pm

Y'all are funny!!!!