So I spent a fair bit of this morning on airplanes, and did a lot of thinking on random airplane-related things. I'm pretty tired, and it's gotten late, so I'll share some of those thoughts here.
Basically, I came up with a bunch of evidence showing that planes are a safe way to travel.
We can look at the safety precautions they have- I was on a smaller plane, so it didn't have oxygen masks (it wasn't at a high enough altitude for them to be necessary). It had a few emergency exits, and seatbelts, and that's it- no airbags or anything. What this shows is that the only real danger is falling out of your seat during take off or landing, or the plane landing in the wrong spot (like, say, the ocean), and needing people to evacuate.
Another thing we can look at is what they allow you to do on board. The fact that you can have food and drinks without risk of spilling, or use a bathroom, or even walk around, really shows how smooth the average flight should be. If that doesn't do it for you though, it's worth realising that they have staff members walking around with big, heavy, metal carts on wheels, and these are considered safe enough to be used while in flight.
I did come up with one rather strange question though- what would happen if the atmosphere were to spontaneously disappear? Firstly, I think the plane would explode. I know it seems like a cliche, but you have to realise, if the cabin is fully pressurised, you have almost 15 pounds of force per square inch of airplane interior- just 10 square inches worth of pressure could lift a person. After that, it would be complete chaos- the plane would start falling on a parabolic trajectory, with no way to keep up (whether or not it managed to keep functioning, and in a vaguely planelike shape). The people on board (if they survived) wouldn't have it much better- parachutes would be useless without an atmosphere.
I realise this is a bit of a weird thing to question, and definitely not something worth worrying about- if you're really desperate to be afraid of airplanes, there are more rational things that could go wrong. But they're not as fun to think about mid-flight, so...
Anyways, that's gonna be it for today! Hopefully you enjoyed this ramble.
