A Quote by Mary Roach

Here is the secret to surviving one of these [airplane] crashes: Be male. In a 1970 Civil Aeromedical institute study of three crashes involving emergency evacuations, the most prominent factor influencing survival was gender (followed closely by proximity to exit). Adult males were by far the most likely to get out alive. Why? Presumably because they pushed everyone else out of the way.
Some people say it might be good for your career to die and then come back again. I have died many ways, car crashes, motorcycle crashes, etc. But, I am still alive.
Law Number XIV: After the year 2015, there will be no airplane crashes. There will be no takeoffs either, because electronics will occupy 100 percent of every airplane's weight.
By sort of combining the research of a lot of smart people, I came up with an equation for dread [dread=uncontrollability+unfamiliarity+imaginability+suffering+scale of destruction+unfairness]. The dread equation is a simplification, but it's a way to explain why we fear something so much when it is so unlikely. Part of it is the lack of control. That's why we're more scared of plane crashes than car crashes even though we know rationally which is more dangerous.
If black boxes survive air crashes - why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?
And I always think of life like a giant wave. You know, it rises and it crests and it flies, and it's just magnificent, and then it crashes. And for a lot of people, when it crashes, that's the end, and they go down the deep, dark hole of depression.
For me, people are like the black boxes found in the debris of airplane crashes.
Waves are fascinating, the way they are created by wind far out at sea and groomed by different winds as they come closer to shore. We surfers ride the very last part of the wave's life before it crashes and disappears, never to be seen again.
I always think family get-togethers when everybody just sort of crashes out are pretty much the best. If it's more than a few days it gets hard, but for just a few days, it's the most amazing thing ever.
For if as scientists we seek simplicity, then obviously we try the simplest surviving theory first, and retreat from it only when it proves false. Not this course, but any other, requires explanation. If you want to go somewhere quickly, and several alternate routes are equally likely to be open, no one asks why you take the shortest. The simplest theory is to be chosen not because it is the most likely to be true but because it is scientifically the most rewarding among equally likely alternatives. We aim at simplicity and hope for truth.
Most serious plane crashes are survivable. There's a sense that, 'Oh, if we go down, that's it, it's out of my hands.' And that's just statistically not true. I have more optimism and more faith that my own actions can make a difference.
I look away at car crashes, and I know people who look away at car crashes, because it makes us uncomfortable to watch other people in pain.
What's the most critical factor in any business decision you'll ever have to make? Basically, it boils down to this question: If this all crashes, will it bring the whole house tumbling down like a pack of cards? One business matra remains embedded in my brain - protect the downside.
'The Walking Dead' and 'Guardians of the Galaxy' have pumped up the recognition factor a thousand times. I can't get off an airplane anymore. I don't know how the hell they know and how these people find out. They must have some interesting, secret way of getting a hold of the flight manifesto or something.
Laughter, along with madness, seemed to be the only way out, the emergency exit for humans.
The most likely way to kill a tradition is to over-formalize it, which is to carry it on in the same way after everyone has ceased to defer to it. The way to revive it is to show that it has grown out of and is still related to our most cherished values. But this requires radical insight and the stripping away of many things which are mere accretions.
when we travel, most of us take too much. I always work on the assumption that I'm going to take everything with me because I don't want the second wife to have anything if the plane crashes.
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