Why I don't read horror novels or watch horror films.

[vakkotaur]

In no particular order, a non-exhaustive list:

Cocoanut Grove fire
Triangle fire
Chicago, Peshtigo, etc.
Chelyabinsk (Mayak)
Three Mile Island
Chernobyl
Jamestown
Shuttle Challenger
Shuttle Columbia
Windscale
Bhopal
World Trade Center, Sept. 11
Oklahoma City
Minamata
Sultana
Titanic
Edmund Fitzgerald
Texas City ship explosion
Boston molasses flood
Halifax explosion
Port Chicago explosion
Thresher
Aloha flight 243
Pan Am 103 - Lockerbie
Tylenol poisonings
Influenza
Tambora

...and plenty others as well.

And life goes on.

Comments

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's something that's always puzzled me... there's enough real horror to go around, why would anyone want to make up more of it? More importantly, why would I wanna watch it?

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Also, reading about the real thing is more interesting. Not for the horror of it, but finding out what went wrong or could have been done better.

I don't know if you looked at the influenza link, but it's about the 1918 pandemic. Not linked to are stories of the "bird flu" of 1997(?) which has been considered a close call. One health worker described it as "bird ebola." Others were quite convinced that if it jumped to humans (and in a few cases, did) and spread, the results would have been devastating. That has been prevented, fortunately, so far.