From the fantastic book “Ghosts of Vesuvius”. If you missed the original book thread, I highly recommended everyone who likes reading non-fiction to run not walk to get this book. The author is a scientist, I’m not sure what his specialty is, but he is working and has worked on the ancient volcanic ruins around Vesuvius, 2 miles down at the Titanic wreck and at Ground Zero in Manhattan.
First something amazing about the author, Charles Pellegrino. Either he’s one of the luckiest men alive or someone has it out for him really bad:
“I know this [time-dilation when in a life or death situation] to be true…In 1975 the truck I was driving was pierced by engine parts from a crashing 727 jetliner. One hundred and twenty people died around me… I survived with only a bump on my head…I’ve been taken to the brink of death (and back) by a disease most physicians had never seen before, I’ve plane crashed again, then submarine-crashed…rockslided, tornadoed, shot at, slashed, stabbed, hand-grenaded and almost blown up with the Dead Sea Scrolls (this was in Jerusalem during a 1991 incident…in the failed attack…it was a dud…an archaeologist told me that ‘someone must have really been watching out’ for me on account of while everyone else in the room had ducked for cover, I had remained standing, looking stupidly at the grenade trying to decide [if it was real] or just something that “really did look like a grenade”. “Don’t let [the author]’s head inflate with self-importance,” said a rabbi, “God wasn’t watching out for [him], he just happened to be standing near the scrolls and God did not want the scrolls to be harmed.”)”
“If not for a sudden crisis in my family, in July of 1996 [wherein I cancelled my flight so that] … I was on the beach with my little girl when Flight 800 passed overhead and minutes later, exploded on the horizon... [My daughter] called my attention to the explosion…”Oh, Moon! Pretty.” She had said…”
He comments about Roman emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicacea:
“To settle the reincarnation debate, two votes were held in Nicaea. In the first vote the bishops were asked to choose between the afterlife taking place (a) in…heaven or (b) …here on earth. The first vote [results] weighed in against the earthly reincarnations, whereupon Constantine ordered the immediate execution of those who voted for a belief in an earthly [afterlife].
He then held a second vote…the second vote was unanimous, of course.”
About his attitude toward nature:
“Nature did not “select against” the dinosaurs so much as plow over them without even noticing. Those who say we humans must be wise and be caretakers of the earth or nature will take revenge against us, are missing a far more frightening, far more sobering point: Nature does not notice us. Nature does not care.”
He was researching the wreck of the Titanic with a Russian research vessel on 9/11. Once the news got out to everyone on the research vessel:
“The Russians raised an American flag on the stern of their ship and over the speaker system they played Ray Charles singing “America the Beautiful” (unable apparently to find, anywhere on board, a recording of “The Star Spangled Banner”).
He reminds his readers of the engineering crew on board the Titanic who kept the lights going until the very last second, knowing that when they were no longer able to do their job, it would be too late for them to escape. He honors them and recalls similar heroic actions by an engineering crew on 9/11:
“Officially the city (under the Towers) was being abandoned [during the 9/11 attack), but engineer Frank DeMartini and his team remained below, commanding the lighting…[Officer] Vargas noticed that the lights occasionally flickered, but always the power was restored. Always. FDNY Battalion Commander…also noticed that the lights, though strained, always prevailed. Even after the South Tower collapsed…he would recall the North Tower had lights again after only 20 seconds…he would never forget how, on a day when monsters took wing…the men behind the [power] grid also existed and outnumbered the monsters. He would always remember DeMartini’s team who perished, every one of them, belowground...”
And another group:
“Look at the helicopter crews [on 9/11] over and around the Towers – who, when news that a third plane might be on the way and that they should be prepared to stop it in the only way possible, radioed back an expressionless, ‘Affirmative’…”