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Like seemingly everyone in the country I was unhealthily obsessed with the Shoreham Air Disaster, searching Twitter for news and trying to process and understand what had happened. As with the story of that prick who flew his plane into a mountain, this kind of incident fascinates and terrifies us, because we are aware that these random acts of death by accident or design could have happened to any of us. We like to live in a fantasy world where everything happens for a reason and death is handed out to those who deserve it or have at least done something wrong. So if a plane crashes into a road and kills people who were just minding their own business or if a pilot goes crazy and flies his passengers into a mountain, we have a reality check where we appreciate that our lives could be taken from us at any second in a situation that is totally beyond our control. I saw tweets from people saying that they had been on that road an hour before (or just that, like Piers Morgan, they had been on that road at some point in their life) and were appreciating their good fortune, all basically trying to make this tragedy about themselves. But there was no need, because the reason it resonated so much was that because it was about us all anyway. This was so random and horrific that it could have been any of us. That's why it resonates so much. We like to think we have some control over our lives and living in a country that is not beset by natural disasters or out and out war it's easy to think that we have control. But we don't.
I am not exactly sure why people are so keen to seek out film and photos and information about an awful tragedy like this, but I suspect it's at least partly to do with the powerlessness and the understanding that something terrible can happen to any of us at any moment. I was just as fascinated as anyone. But disturbed by my inability to look away.
Sometimes we can take control over an horrific circumstance and the men fighting off the armed terrorist on the train with their bare hands was an amazing example of that. I think we might have discussed more or less this exact circumstance on a recent RHLSTP. I'd like to think I'd be as brave and as lucky as those passengers and certainly they demonstrate that it's possible to thwart an attack by doing the opposite of what might be expected of you.
Well the world is a terrifying and unsafe place, though as Jill Dando used to say these things are very unlikely to happen to you.
