However, it behooves us to remember and take heed that the two most immediate and easily preventable causes of the sinking were first, the absence of binoculars. The Titanic s excellent quality binoculars were sitting inside a locker in the cabin that the originally scheduled Second Officer (Blair) was assigned. Blair was replaced by Henry Wilde shortly before sailing and Wilde did not know where the binoculars were. Thus he was using naked eye observations to look for icebergs. The seeing was excellent that night, and had Blair had binoculars, he would likely have seen the iceberg earlier. However, how much good that would have done is debatable because Titanic was cruising at a mad speed, despite having been warned about icebergs in her vicinity and on her charted course. Why Captain Smith ordered such speed and that it be maintained has been the source of speculation and debate for a hundred years. It seems like that both Ismay and Smith wanted to show that the Titantic could give good speed (and thus crossing time) performance despite her size and lavish fittings. Whatever the reasons, the ship was moving at an unsafe speed and that reduced the reaction time in which to deal with icebergs. So, the PROXIMATE causes were human error. However, in most disasters involving complex technological systems, of which cryonics happens to be one, there was really NO single point failure. Rather, it took multiple failure mechanisms to cause the disaster: human error & overconfidence, failure to engineer the watertight bulkheads so that they would not be swamped and overflowed, failure to engineer the electrical system supplying the bilge pumps to deal with immersion, the use of steel plating and rivets that became embrittled in near or subfreezing temperatures, failure to have an adequate number of lifeboats abroad, failure to have a backup pair of binoculars or dedicated on-bridge storage locker for them, failure to have strict regulations (with harsh penalties) for exceeding safe speeds in berg laden waters…. Such accidents are in fact almost Black Swans in their occurrence is a result of a combination of events which is perceived to be very unlikely, or almost impossible. Most or all of those factors had to be present and present when the Titanic took a grazing blow from the iceberg, A direct hit would not have sunk the ship. It was only the grazing contact with a berg of the right mass that could have opened a seam along much of the length of the ship’s hull. The Challenger disaster is another similar example. These failures modes are no respecters of time, place or nation. As instructive or more so is the very low failure rate in the commercial aviation industry. This feat has been achieved by meticulous attention to failure mode analysis and the design of systems that are robust against both single point and Swiss cheese failures. To achieve that, aeronautical engineers have had to adopt a number of fascinating principles, including the concept that a near miss is, in fact, a catastrophic failure, not a piece of good luck.

Engineers and thoughtful humans are fairly good at spotting single point failures. However, multi-point failure modes are more problematic and they become extremely difficult when human behaviors, motivated by factors completely outside the cool engineering of the designer’s envelope, comes into play. — Mike Darwin

The design of the ship’s hull and other ship’s systems is undertaken by Naval Architects. Naval Architecture is one of the engineering professions. The Naval Architect is to ships as the Aeronautical Engineer is to aircraft. Other engineers are involved in the design of ships such as Mechanical, Electrical and Electonic Engineers.

It would be helpful to include information on the role of Naval Architects and Naval Architecture in any writings on the Titanic.

In one of the movies on the Titanic that I saw, I saw someone make Naval Architecture type comments about the Titanic’s plight/chances of survival.
When a ship is damaged, it is best that those skilled craftsmen and labourers
follow the instructions given by a Naval Architect inorder to increase the probability
of the ship surviving.

I realized in my 20′s that there were very few cryonicists and out of those I could count on one hand the amount who could actually run facilities and properly suspend people. I naively thought cryonics would grow naturally as more learned of it, as it had been common sense for me. Over time I saw that cryonics does not make any money, loses money chronically and does not train new people-unless said people devote their lives to cryonics eschewing any family or career. A high price to pay and untenable for most people. Alcor wants to know what to do to grow, CI wants to know what to do to grow–they take different approaches of course as most readers here know. I feel it is imperative for each to give back to their community in some way. It is hard for cryonicists to see that, because they are struggling to just keep things running–resources are scarce (or poorly managed).

People are interested in cryonics, but the process of signing up is insurmountable for most. I don’t have all the answers of how to help the organizations, but I’m still learning (only in my thirties) and feel I’ll have some relevant ideas with time. It is quite amazing what I’ve learned and how my own views have changed in the past decade. Mike is right about the major problems at Alcor and CI, reading his blog is daunting–but there are specks of hope to be gleaned, suggestions for correct courses of action.

“Now every gambler knows the secret to survivin’
Is knowin’ what to throw away
And knowin’ what to keep
‘Cause every hand’s a winner
And every hand’s a loser
And the best you can hope for
Is to die in the sleep”

‘The Gambler’ – Kenny Rogers

Once you realize what death is, if you have any empathy at all, then you realize why there is religion in the world. And once you realize what the undiluted,and unmitigated awareness of death does to a human being bereft of hope, then, if you have even a bit of common sense, you are grateful that religion has existed. A world of 6 billion crazy people is bad enough, a world of 6 billion angry, raving mad people, bereft of any prospect of rescue or succor, is terrifying. And that leaves the issue of social controls, in the forms of religious morality, out of the equation. [And please, don't lecture me about rationality and rationalist thinking; as a species we just figured out the most primitive rules of physics and biology (evolution) an eye blink ago, and the year I was born (1955) 44% of the world's population were illiterate (the number is now somewhere between 16 & 20% and rising).]

Finally, once you understand how venal, cruel, prejudiced and otherwise (despicably) human gay people can be, then, if you have a lick of sense, you understand that mostly discriminatory behavior is an integral part of human nature, and that if you put those on the bottom on top, they’ll be just as nasty as those they replaced, in less than a heartbeat.

The only rational responses to these realizations are compassion and a commitment to change things for the better – if we can only figure out how. — Mike Darwin