Overthinking Our Way To Insanity

From the outside looking in, its easy to become curious about what we don’t see, so we allow our minds to fill in the blanks.

By now, most of you have heard about the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland. The incident is less than 12 hours old as I begin this draft and speculation is running rampant, as you might imagine.

As I often do, I leave it to others who know better to explain what happened. Here’s the best summary of the incident to date from a shipping industry insider:

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed early today after the large containerships Dali struck a primary support column. Two individuals were rescued, one is seriously injured, and authorities estimate that seven people are currently missing, though the number could be higher. This incident represents the most severe US bridge collision since the Tampa Skyway Bridge disaster in 1980. The event occurred in the early morning hours as the ship was leaving the port under pilotage.

Agencies are reporting the containership Dali, which collided with a Baltimore bridge on Tuesday, “lost propulsion” while exiting the port. The crew on board alerted Maryland officials that they had lost control of the vessel, as reported by ABC News, citing an unclassified U.S. intelligence report.

“The vessel notified the MD Department of Transportation (MDOT) that they had lost control and a collision with the bridge was possible,” ABC quoted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s report as saying. “The vessel struck the bridge, causing a complete collapse.”

According to Marine Traffic the ship departed the Seagirt Marine Terminal in the Port of Baltimore at approximately 00:30 local time, sailed northwest past the Nuclear Ship Savanah then turned southeast to depart the harbor, released the tugboats, and collided with the bridge at approximately 01:38.

She struck the southwest support column at a speed of 7.6 knots (8.7 MPH).

Cameras from the Vessel Traffic Service captured footage of the collision and subsequent collapse. The ship’s lights went out twice before the collision, indicating possible issues in the engine room. Despite the quick restoration of lighting, this suggests a full blackout occurred, prompting the emergency generator to restore basic electrical services and lighting.

Without propulsion or tugboats, a ship this size is nearly impossible to stop.

As the article explains, the collision was caught on video. You can watch it here; I have to say it’s one of the most frightening incidents I’ve ever seen, in person or on video. The way the bridge just suddenly gave out, knowing there were people on it. One can only imagine the devastation had the collapse occurred during rush hour.

There’s still a lot to learn about what happened, but the initial details suggest this is a fairly straightforward incident. Unfortunately, as people often do, the disaster is being used to buttress all sorts of narratives - the “competency crisis,” the perils of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), “complex systems,” you name it. It’s amazing how something so simple can stimulate the mental faculties of so many!

One of the things we as preppers - practical people - do is spend less time on the “what ifs?” and more on the “what is.” At the end of the day, unless there’s supporting evidence, attributing the disaster to a competency crisis or DEI is purely speculative. Very early on, someone was claiming this could’ve been a deliberate act. Others insisted the vessel could’ve been hacked, forced it to collide with the bridge. I’m sure all options are on the table in the absence of information, but just because you can think it up doesn’t make it so. It seems like everyone wants to be right as opposed to getting it right.

The fact is, ship collisions happen. It’s not a rare occurrence, especially when operating in close quarters, as the container ship Dali was. Nor are ships running into bridges a one-in-a-million event, as some suggest. Our friend

Nate Green

(subscribe to his Substack!) brought to my attention the collapse of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in May 9, 1980, an incident similar to what happened in Baltimore. Did a competency crisis exist in 1980? Was DEI a serious problem back then? Or do we live in an imperfect world where terrible things sometimes happen?

I mentioned in an essay last year that I used to make a living sailing the seas, aboard vessels similar in size to Dali. Loss of propulsion isn’t something which happens all the time, but its far from uncommon. In fact, it happened to a ship I was aboard. We had left the shipyard and were taking the vessel out for a sea trial, when the engines suddenly stopped while navigating the river towards the open ocean. Those of us out on deck all scrambled to the bow, preparing to drop both anchors in a last-ditch attempt to avoid running aground if propulsion couldn’t be restored in time. Like Dali, we were operating in tight spaces, though not as tight as Dali was up in Baltimore at the time of the collision.

Thankfully, propulsion was restored in relatively short order and disaster was averted. That said, we had the luxury of having more operating room than Dali did. There were also no man-made structures nor any other vessels operating in the immediate vicinity at the time, from what I can recall. Had we run aground, the worst which would’ve happened is we beached ourselves. The likelihood of loss of life, if not injury, was minimal. It didn’t occur to me until writing this piece that we would’ve needed to pass under a bridge on our way out to the ocean. I shudder to think what would’ve happened had we lost propulsion as we approached that bridge.

None of this is to minimize what happened in Baltimore. It now appears the United States Coast Guard has suspended rescue efforts to recover six construction workers who are presumed to have fallen into the water when the bridge collapsed. It’s among the cruelest of tragedies; imagine being stuck on that bridge, with nowhere to escape to, nowhere to go except down. We strive to avoid disasters like these, but sometimes, they happen. The world is run by humans and humans aren’t without defect. Neither are we.

So while anything could’ve happened, only a few things could’ve likely happened. The fact is, every incident has a number of highly probable explanations and a number of less-probable explanations, even if they remain plausible. We’ve all heard Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation is the most likely. Personally, I haven’t found this to be true, though the explanation always ends up being simple. I’ll instead offer up “Max’s razor”: the most probable explanation is the most likely.

What’s the most probable explanation? Let’s ask a maritime Chief Engineer with 20 years of experience:

Source

I wasn’t an engineer when I was out at sea, but what the Chief Engineer says here makes sense to me and is consistent with my limited understanding of how marine propulsion systems work. Even if this wasn’t exactly what happened, it remains among the likeliest of scenarios. What’s described here is a thousand times more likely than the ship getting hacked during a cyberattack. We have to remember that “plausible” isn’t the same thing as “possible,” but as social media proves, far too many fail at drawing the distinction.

Nobody likes being called a “conspiracy theorist,” but ask yourself: why does the term get under our skin? It’s because being a conspiracy theorist is a low-intelligence way of seeing the world. It’s basically saying, “I don’t like this or that explanation, so I’m going to come up with my own.” Finding the truth is hardly the point when it comes to conspiracy theories. It’s instead about finding explanations which conform to one’s worldview and making sense out of a chaotic situation.

When assessing incidents like the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, it’s important to keep your imagination in check, the same way you need to avoid overthinking when it comes to your own safety. Reality is quite boring, even in the event of tragic outcomes. Narratives of a “competency crisis” make for a great storyline, but I don’t think that’s what happened here. At least, if competency was an issue, it sure wasn’t an American issue, as the ship was Singapore-flagged and the crew almost entirely Indian.

Two American pilots were controlling the vessel during the transit, but, if this was indeed an engineering failure, there’s not a lot the pilots nor the ship’s captain could’ve done to avoid a collision. Having maneuvered vessels myself under the direction of many pilots in many different waterways, I’ve never witnessed anything which made me concerned about the competency of American maritime pilots. It’s among the most highly-specialized professions in the world, as well as among the most highly-paid. Similar to flying an airline, it’s not a job you just give someone to score diversity points. It’s far too skilled of an occupation and there are lives, along with millions of dollars of hardware at stake.

I’m of the thought the competency crisis is more imagined than real. I know that’s certain to ruffle some feathers, but I spent much of my working life in both the aviation and maritime industries and I never saw anything remotely close to what’s being postulated. If anything, you’ll hear those in the industry complain about over-regulation, too much emphasis based on safety. Note that the biggest proponents of the competency crisis theory don’t even work in the industries they critique. From the outside looking in, its easy to become curious about what we don’t see, so we allow our minds to fill in the blanks. Since humans are imaginative, we tend to think of the most dramatic explanation possible, when in reality, the truth is quite often boring.

Bottom line: it’s okay to not know what happened. It’s okay to defer judgment to those in a better position to evaluate the situation. I get it - the experts have lost a tremendous amount of credibility over the last several years. But just because someone like Anthony Fauci or Mark Milley, both lifelong bureaucrats who compromised themselves professionally in pursuit of political influence, was proven to be untrustworthy, this doesn’t mean everyone is now suspect. Again, be discerning: don’t cast broad judgments, evaluate everyone and everything on their own merits.

If you can’t figure out what happened, then just accept that you don’t know everything. None of us go through life knowing the answers to everything. Callous as it may sound, I doubt anyone will be talking about the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse a week from now. Then nobody’s opinion will matter because nobody will be talking about it.

Heart Problems Existed Before COVID

Let’s talk about another example of how we allow our curiosity overwhelm reason: the COVID vaccination.

Full disclosure: I’m vaccinated, but I haven’t received any booster shots. I received the initial dosage despite initial reservations more because COVID was still a novel disease that’d killed many around the world. Having some protection against it was better than nothing at all. I didn’t receive any boosters due to concerns that they were causing cardiac issues. It’s a concern which seems to have some credence.

I’m in an unenviable place, where both sides hate me. The Left hates me because I exercised bodily autonomy and didn’t worship medicine or Expert™️like they did. The Right hates me because I got vaccinated, period. For the record, I never told anyone else to get the shots and I argued with family members who wanted me to get boosted. I held my line. It’s amazing how something like a vaccine, something that’s supposed to make us safer, has become such a contentious topic loaded with political implications. But we are where we are.

I think we all ought to force ourselves to be far more skeptical than we already are about what we put in our bodies. Vaccines are created by humans and the COVID-19 vaccination was rushed into service. I’m sure, with time, it’ll become safer, like all vaccines have eventually become, but there’s always risks with any initial development. By now, millions of Americans have received the shots, so if there are risks, we’ve already been exposed to them by now.

It’s one thing to be vaccine-skeptical; it’s another to blame the vaccine on every single health problem in existence. One of the most bizarre delusions of the new world created by COVID is the attribution of heart ailments to the vaccine. Here’s a recent example of this trend:

Source

The implication is that Schwarzenegger’s heart problems are the result of the COVID vaccination, which he publicly advocated for, to an unacceptable degree. Maybe Schwarzenegger shouldn’t be telling people what to do with their bodies, but suggesting the vaccination was the reason he most recently ended up in the hospital is absurd.

For one, Schwarzenegger was born with a heart abnormality, a fact one can discover with just a little bit of research. For another, Schwarzenegger has had multiple heart surgeries already - the headline even says so! His most recent surgeries came in 2020 and 2018. Did he receive the COVID vaccination before everyone else or something? Being in his 70s, it’d be nothing short of a medical miracle if Schwarzenegger wasn’t still having heart issues given his history.

Remember football player Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills? Last year, he collapsed on-field during a regular season game, suffering cardiac arrest, since attributed to a phenomenon called commotio cordis. When struck hard in the area of the chest directly over the heart, it can disrupt its rhythm, leading to cardiac arrest. It’s overall incidence is rare, but much higher among… wait for it…

Athletes.

When reviewing in-game footage, you can clearly see Hamlin is struck in the chest lending credence to this theory:

Despite there being footage clearly showing Hamlin being struck in the chest, I can’t tell you the number of people at the time who insisted it absolutely had to be the COVID vaccine and not commotio cordis. As with the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, many of the same voices are immediately dismissing more likely causes and attributing Hamlin and Schwarzenegger’s cardiac events to a plausible, but far less likely cause.

What about all the other athletes, namely soccer players, who’ve suddenly been collapsing on the playing field following the introduction of the COVID vaccine? Well, their collapses may be sudden, but the phenomenon isn’t.

Look at this headline. Then note the date of the article:

Source

Were these deaths caused by the vaccine, too? In 2018? A quick search on the Internet will introduce you to stories and studies pre-2020, including from over a decade ago, showing that “sudden death” among young athletes has been a problem for a long time. Again, it only takes a little bit of research. Skepticism isn’t a one-way street; we need to be willing to challenge our personal narratives as much as we challenge official ones. Otherwise, we’re being intellectually dishonest.

It might be difficult to believe, but Americans weren’t perfectly healthy pre-COVID. Heart disease has been a major concern for as long as I’ve been alive. Maybe COVID exacerbated it, maybe the vaccine exacerbated it, who knows. But the idea that every single heart-related medical incident is associated with the COVID vaccine is so lacking in common sense, you have to wonder if people are being willfully obtuse.

It all gets ridiculous after a while. There are a million different diseases out there; COVID is one of them. Likewise, there are a million other reasons that could cause heart problems other than the COVID vaccine. The question of the vaccine’s safety and the incidence of heart disease are ultimately separate issues. Discernment, discernment, discernment.

Don’t Lose Your Minds. It’ll Make You A Better Prepper.

It’s important to question authority. It’s even more important to question authority today, given all they’ve done to damage their own credibility. However, none of this is an excuse for any of us to go off the deep end. If anything, the onus is now on us, individually, to learn the facts and get the story straight. It’s our responsibility now and we can’t blame anyone else if we get it wrong.

I always go back to a story I saw on X where someone talked about how a woman at a local town hall meeting claimed the 5G network was spreading COVID. It’s a ridiculous assertion - electromagnetic radiation doesn’t spread viral infections - and the person telling the story knew it. But he also said he couldn’t blame her for thinking so, because the authorities have so discredited themselves.

The problem with this sort of thinking is that it actually discourages free thought and skeptical inquiry. In the end, you’re still depending on someone else to tell you what’s happening, by exchanging one set of lies for another, all because you don’t like the story you’re being told and who’s telling it to you. This hardly entails making up your own mind; where do you think the woman got the idea 5G spreads COVID, anyway? You think she came up with that on her own? And even if she did, what did she base it off of?

The failure of authorities is no excuse to lose our own minds. Yet that often seems to be what some people want: license for insanity. You’re not going to make it through the troubles to come if you go crazy, however. You’re not going to make it intact through any crisis, personal or political, if you can’t keep your head on straight.

So I think the lesson here is: calm down. Quit letting your imaginations get the best of you. In every instance, there are a set of more likely causes and a set of less likely causes. Find out what those are and lend credence to what’s more likely, unless evidence suggests the less likely scenario is, in this particular instance, more likely. Be mentally flexible; it’s okay to change your mind! We’ve all changed our minds a million times throughout our lives. It’s what you’re supposed to do when introduced to new information that alters the picture. As preppers, when SHTF strikes, we’re going to subjected to a deluge of information. You not only need to be able to process lots of information at once, but also to be able to change your mind quickly based on new information. There’s a lot of uncertainty in a crisis; prepare it now by keeping an open mind while the stakes are still low.

Finally, before you ask, I’m aware many so-called conspiracy theories have been vindicated over the years. This still doesn’t mean every single conspiracy theory has now been validated. One more time: discern. Notice patterns, but ultimately judge every case on its own merits. Most important, remember Max’s razor: the most probable explanation is the most likely. Apply this to your personal life: if an item goes missing and you don’t know how, it’s more likely than not you lost or misplaced it, less likely someone stole it. If you vehicle starts sputtering, it’s more likely a component is failing and less likely someone sabotaged it. Then apply that same principle when judging events like the Francis Scott Key bridge collapse or heart-related medical cases.

Do You Have Your Head On Straight?

What’s your reaction to the Francis Scott Key bridge collapse? How about the COVID vaccine? Do you know anyone who had an adverse reaction to it? What do you think is behind “sudden death” among seemingly healthy individuals? Did you know it was a problem among young athletes pre-COVID?

Talk about it in the comments section.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

If you liked this post from We're Not At the End, But You Can See It From Here, why not share? If you’re a first-time visitor, please consider subscribing!