People are
often asking me why in bloody hell I like to watch the NatGeo’s documentary series
“Air Crash Investigation”. Since they do
not believe that I enjoy watching people die (well maybe somebody does…) they
cannot understand how interesting is to see and understand potential threats
and its solutions.
In fact
many people use to deny threats and or any bad luck, they are feeling like “It
happens to the others but I will not happen to me” and they putting themselves
to a jeopardy every day. However people are still somehow afraid of flying or
they usually not enjoying it same way as they can enjoy driving a beautiful modern
car. And guess what, the threat that of danger in a car is bigger than in the
plane. The fact is that usually the plane crash is a bigger catastrophe due to
the amount of victims in the same occasion.
I do really
prefer the ACI episodes when there are no victims however the investigation and
after that the edification is the real point why I like the ACI/Mayday series.
People are
so naive and blind in a regular life (without flying) so I decide to remind
about real killers and threats which we usually do not see or deny – not
because we cannot but we don’t want to see them. Here is my top three list:
Mainly the
insidious sly and really powerful killer is obesity. I do not need to remind
you that obesity is a condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the
extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life
expectancy and/or increased health problems. Obesity is in fact a global
epidemic if concerned as a medical condition. It causes serious health problems
and diseases such different heart diseases, diabetes, stroke, migraines, poor
mobility, osteoporosis, birth defects or death during delivery etc. Most of the
diseases caused by obesity are not curable and even fatal. Despite these facts
about 40-49% of modern world population is obese/morbidly obese. Obesity is in
fact a killer number one in UK and on the top of killer list also in USA.
Imagine that it kills more often than cancer or AIDS.
Next one
tasty killer is alcohol. Compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic
beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal
relationships and social standing is well known “medical” condition of
alcoholism. Identifying alcoholism is difficult for the individual because of
the social role of alcohol associated with socializing in all levels from the
purest up to the elite society. The
social aspect causes people with alcoholism to avoid diagnosis and treatment
for fear of shame or social consequences. The evaluation of responses to a
group of standardized questioning is a common method for diagnosing alcoholism.
These can be used to identify harmful drinking patterns, including alcoholism,
but the individual condition of the patient should always be considered. In
general, the individual’s problem drinking is considered alcoholism when the person
continues to drink despite experiencing social or health problems caused by
drinking alcohol. However the whole thing is very tricky. Even some person is
not experiencing social or health problem cause by alcohol drinking it can be
the sly threat or worse a killer. I don’t mean the alcohol poisoning but fatal
diseases caused by alcohol consummation such as heart attack, stroke or kidney
and liver diseases. Alcohol is a number
one women killer in Finland (breast cancer is number two) and number one killer
in Russia.
At last but
not least I would like to highlight a killer which the most of modern and
developed nations’ population likes, uses almost every day, it is sometimes
treated better then family pets. It is a mark of social status and a hobby.
Yes, it is a car. I don’t need to speak about symptoms or anomalies which cars
cause. But I need to say that it is always the car and the individual driving
it or at least stars it to make a potential to kill. Do you think that I
perform like a small child, of course we all know how cars works and we know
their highly important position in nowadays society.
But since
people are afraid travel by plane (in less cases by boat/ship) I would to point
out here that more people die or are seriously injured by car crashes or car
accidents then by plane accidents. The other think is also the awareness of the
danger. In the plane before take-off you are always get a security demonstration
which is there to help but negative effect is that it pointing out the danger.
You do not get any security demonstration in a car or a bus (to be absolutely clear,
a bus is also a car). That makes the situation of accidents more dangerous as
many people are seriously injured or died as people don’t know or they don’t
care to prevent the accident, do help, to give the first aid. Let’s have a
moment to remember where in your car is the first aid set if there is some, if
your airbags are functioning if they are there, or worse remember if you ever
have bribed the vehicle inspector to get your car through it to be able to
drive etc. etc.
In fact the
car accident is number one killer in Poland, within top 3 in Czech Republic,
Germany and Italy and probably France, Spain and USA will not be so far from
that list as well.
I wonder
why there is no documentary series Car Crash investigation. Maybe because there
is an uncountable number of car crashes in a history and the number of victims is
more than shocking.
In the
aircraft when accident strikes the pilots fight for everybody’s lives more or
less successfully to end – whatever the end is. Sometimes it is incredible to
see what they can do, how much power and performance a human being can deliver
under stress.
This is a
great story of an aircraft accident with a happy end.
Update on 28.10.2013
Update to ”Invisible” killers:
I have seen
something shocking and I have to say, that I wasn’t so exact about obesity. It can kill itself. I have seen photos of
organs which collapsed due to the press of the oversize fat inside the body;
there were lungs, heart and kidney.
But that’s
true that the opposite of obesity is a killer as well. Mental anorexia, mental
disorder leading to starving and morbid underweight, is the number one killer
among mental diseases. Mental anorexia or anorexia nervosa is fatal directly if
not treated as the patient is starving to death.
One of such
stories is the story of Isabelle Caro. She was a French model suffered from
mental anorexia from her age of 13. Even she was a successful photo model she
terminated her carrier when she joined the controversial campaign “No Anorexia”
she was posing without clothes and make up, showing here bones under skin. She was 165cm tall and her most recent weight
was 33kg, her lowest adult weight was 25kg. She died on 17. November 2010; the
cause of was a result of her anorexia.
Mental
anorexia is result of modern society and desire of slim body or rather skinny
body which has been an ideal for models from almost 70’s in 20’s century and
culminating in late 90’s when also anorexia started to spread as an epidemic
among girls and young women. The ideal of skinny body without any curves was
devastating for many of them. Mortality of anorexia patients has reached up to alarming
20%.
Yet there
is a still a lot of beauty and modeling contests where the skinny body is preferred.
However the biggest international “Miss” contest and events has improved since
year 2000 and there doesn’t seem to be any eating disorders among the
contestants anymore.
I will
probably come back to this topic later again.
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