I'm a reader of blogs and certain forums. One of which is airliners.net. A post from November 2000.
When the two towers that make up the World Trade Center were built, they were designed to withstand the impact of the largest airliner of the day, the Boeing 707 Intercontinental. The Empire State Building survived a B-25 medium bomber crashing into it on very foggy day. It was during the weekend when most people weren't there, but still, 14 people died.
Anyone wanna bet that the World Trade Center could survive an 767-300 impact?
An eerily prophetic question asked 10 months before 9-11 occurred.
The author Morgan Robertson wrote a novel titled 'Futility' 14 years before The Titanic sailed. Robertson's book was about an ocean liner on its maiden cruise crossing the Atlantic. It hits an iceberg and sinks. The name of Robertson's ship- The Titan.
Comments
Prophetic
Tom Clancy wrote in one of his novels quite a few years before the Twin Towers episode about a hijacked JAL 747 crashing into the US Capitol. It wiped out the Senate, Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court.
Portia
Portia
That was the first Clancy novel I read
It's title- Debt of Honor. When the President of the United States gives his state of the union address, one Cabinet member who is eligible to be President is intentionally absent.
Writing is painful, it's lonely and you suffer and there's no immediate feedback.- Actor, writer, playwright Robert Shaw
Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant
Cabinet member?
Do you mean member of Congress? No cabinet members are eligible for the presidency, as I recall.
However, there's a line of succession into the Senate (and house?)
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Yes cabinet members are part of the succession
At a minimum, the Secretary of State is eligible as is the Secretary of Defense but I do not know off the top of my head where in the succession they are. However, they are not first choice of course as the VP and Speaker of the House are of course higher in the pecking order.
Kim
US Presidential Line of Succession
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_line...
I stand corrected,
I stand corrected,
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
even before tom clancy
even before tom clancy, dale brown wrote a novel in which airplanes are rigged as radio controlled bombs.
as a matter of fact, when GPS was thought up, the possibility to use aircraft on autopilot as smart bombs was discussed, as well as measures to prevent that.
the idea was around for quite some time.
Futility
I've read 'Futility,' other than the name, which if you look at the naming conventions of the time isn't really a prediction and the iceberg, which the ship crashes straight into (nothing like the Titanic impact) the stories aren't similar at all.
Walter Lord
The Author of the classic retelling of the Titanic's sinking, 'A Night to Remember', saw the similarity.
The largest cruise ship at 800 or more feet long
That can make a speed of 24-25 knots
has a three screw propeller
On its maiden voyage
Hits an iceberg
On a April night
With a great loss of life
Those are an awful large amount of big facts to be right about. The angle the cruise ship hit the iceberg at a different angle, didn't have a captain named Smith, and had different color carpeting are supposed to make the book not seem like prophecy or premonition. I beg to differ.
Writing is painful, it's lonely and you suffer and there's no immediate feedback.- Actor, writer, playwright Robert Shaw
Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant
Except...
The size, speed, and number of screws were all the next logical step in ship building. It's a bit like writing a story with a Flash Drive that is 1 TB in size, you know that it is coming.
April is the time of most danger from icebergs, and it wasn't the Titan's maiden voyage. In fact the Titan was on the NYC to England rte, not England to NYC. The Titan sank within moments, and had previously in the voyage struck and sunk another vessel.
For every simularity, there are numerous differences that are not normally mentioned.
Futility">
What If...
It's human nature, if we're trying to prove a theory or particular point of view, to emphasise the bits that agree with your preconceived idea, and ignore those that don't. I'd imagine several writers of disaster books created very plausible scenarios - and there are probably many which could theoretically happen in real life but haven't yet.
A significantly more irreverent "predictor" of the WTC attacks (i.e. it isn't but bears a marginal resemblance): if you've still got a copy of SimCity 2000 lying around, try zoning high density near an airport - planes will crash into skyscrapers routinely - but unlike WTC, the skyscrapers survive intact. Evidently Will Wright and co. just included the animation to remind "mayors" that airports are generally more successful if the flight path is unobstructed - apart from making the airport less efficient it has a negligible impact on city coffers, fire protection or building longetivity. Unsurprisingly this behaviour was discontinued in SC3K and SC4 (probably also in SCS, although Societies is hardly a true successor to 4)
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!