James Burke Legend Connections 1 The Trigger Effect

[Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] would you do me a favor i'd like to stop talking for a minute and when i do take a look at the room you're in and above all at the man-made objects in that room that surround you the television set the lights the phone and so on and ask yourself what those objects do to your life just because they're there go ahead [Music] well that is what this series is going to be all about it's about the things that surround you in the modern world and just because they're

there shape the way you think and behave and why they exist in the form they do and who or what was responsible for them existing at all the search for those clues will take us all over the world and 12 000 years into the past because it's in those strange places and in those long gone centuries that the secret of the modern world lies and you'll never believe the extraordinary things that led to us being the way we are today things like for instance why a 16th century doctor at the court of queen elizabeth did

something that made it possible for you to watch this screen now or the fact that because 18th century merchants were worried about ship's bottoms you have nylon to wear or why a group of french monks and their involvement with sheep rearing helped to give the modern world the computer [Music] or what medieval europeans did with their fire in winter that led to motor car manufacturers the story of the events and the people who over centuries came together to bring us in from the cold and to wrap us in a warm blanket of technology is a

matter of vital importance since more and more of that technology infiltrates every aspect of our lives it's become a life support system without which we can't survive and yet how much of it do we understand do i bother myself with the reality of what happens when i get into a big steel box press a button and rise into the sky of course i don't [Music] [Music] [Music] i take going up in the world like that for granted we all do and as the years of the 20th century have gone by the things we take for

granted have multiplied way beyond the ability of any individual to understand in a lifetime the things around us the man-made inventions we provide ourselves with are like a vast network each part of which is interdependent with all the others i mean cross the road whether or not a car coming around the corner knocks you down may have something to do with the person you've never met fitting the brakes correctly change anything in that network and the effects spread like ripples on a pond and all the things in that network have become so specialized that only

the people involved in making them understand them i don't mean use them anybody can use them down there is one of the biggest most complex cities in the world full of people using things as if they understood them and sometimes not even knowing they're doing it [Music] new york city like all the other major high density population centers scattered across the earth is a technology island it can either feed nor clothe nor house nor warm its inhabitants without supplies from outside without those supplies the entire massive structure and the teeming millions it encloses would die

and yet in cities everywhere we act as if that were not so we have no choice the pace of life in new york is set by the pace of the technology that serves it you just have to hope it will stay that way i'd like you to meet a few people who were in or near new york city on a november evening over a decade ago and the reason i'd like you to meet them is because they all have one thing in common they were all brought to a sudden and catastrophic realization of how vulnerable

they were how dependent on one aspect of that technological network i was talking about because of what this did to their lives now until i was told what this is i was no more able to recognize what it is than you are now but watch what it did to those people and if you look very carefully you'll see evidence of what this does in every second of what follows now it's one minute past five in the evening rush hour in downtown manhattan 800 000 people crowd onto subways looking forward to home to the end of

this journey for most of them the technology carrying them doesn't exist they take it for granted [Music] two minutes past five kennedy airport the usual evening departure rate passengers with appointments in new delhi london tokyo appointments they expect to keep and 200 planes due to arrive in the next five hours no delay is expected three minutes past five at the energy control center downtown nothing special is happening it's the standard rush hour condition in the main control room the time of day when power consumption starts to come up to a maximum as people head for

home and meals get cooked it's cool outside after a high of 58 the temperature's falling to an expected low of 39 with a predicted wind chill factor of 5 degrees the energy levels are more than enough to cope even on a chilly november evening [Music] ten past five mount sinai hospital i'm just giving a bit of options [Music] okay the patient mrs marcana is expecting twins thank you mr chairman may i first say to my distinguished colleague the ambassador from the ussr 12 minutes past five the u.n general assembly in session the speaker is president

roosevelt's son in their boxes the interpreters the invisible support structure of the debate whatever the language at the un that's taken for the weights granted means in the subway herbert friedman a lawyer reads his paper on his way home to suburban jamaica al heynik works for a publisher on fifth avenue he passes the time doing a crossword [Music] margarita shawansee also works for a publisher looking forward to spending a quiet evening at home steve bowati late been to a movie bruce singer works in greenwich village bill palmer is a student just been playing basketball and

hans kramer insurance broker all these people take the subway every evening they expect to get home they always do 5 15 at kennedy airport at one of the international terminals on the board scandinavian airlines 911 scandinavian 911 is on its way into kennedy the pilot is veteran captain carl lofstadt kennedy approach control scandinavian 911 with the information yankee 5000 feet approaching great 911 roger park deer park one two to one radio vector final runway four right ils a clear moonlit night the flight manifest lists 89 passengers landing lights the descent into kennedy is so far

uneventful it's now 15 minutes and 30 seconds past five [Music] with the next contraction dude you'll take a deep breath and push real hard okay i think one is about to start take a deep breath and push real hard okay at mount sinai hospital mrs marcano is in labor okay i think you can put her asleep now fair enough the anesthetic being used at the time is a mixture of gases including one called cyclopropane it's potentially explosive but everybody knows that [Music] okay she's fairly sleepy now though okay with the next contraction we'll have her

a little bit of pressure all right well she's starting contraction now there's a little bit more okay okay okay it's now exactly 16 minutes and 10 seconds past five one second later several hundred miles northwest of new york city this did what it was built to do with disastrous consequences you may have already guessed what kind of technological network this is part of it's a bit of a power station the power station known as adam beck ii here at niagara where electricity is generated by the tremendous power of falling water the water turns turbine blades

that make a shaft spin at the top of the shaft are magnets and they spin inside a cylinder up there that has copper wire coils on its inner wall the interaction between the spinning magnets and the copper coils makes electricity that's where this comes in it's a relay and its job is to detect changes in power going onto a transmission line these up here power flows north along these lines and on the particular evening in question this relay detected an increase in power on one of those lines that was above a preset limit when that

happened magnets set around this metal cup caused it to rotate and that brought this arm to make a contact like this that contact was made on the evening of november the 9th 1965 at 16 minutes and 11 seconds past five the effect was to cascade power off the overloaded line and onto another which overloaded and tripped the next until all five lines going north had tripped out dumping their entire load onto lines going south within seven seconds the tremendous overload began to take out generating stations all over northeastern america from boston to new york as

the network fell apart as each area went it overloaded the next within 10 seconds the only major system left was the great energy island of new york [Music] as the network fell apart links between one energy center and another broke instead of 300 000 kilowatts coming into new york to help meet demand one and a half million kilowatts were draining out of the city to supply areas now cut off from the network but still connected like leeches to the new york generators as the overload hit the new york generators they too began to trip out

hello farmland and your 13 speed is okay your banks are all in that bring it up number two right now is that a major power failure as the lifeblood of the city drained it went into spasm [Music] at the un chaos the power to keep the lights on also serve the interpreters who in the growing darkness has however i hope brought a glimmer of light and without interpreters trapped in their darkened boxes deprived of access to the ears of the delegates the united nations were suddenly and totally disunited as completely as if at war the

city's elevators stopped perhaps the subways were the only technology that people expected to fail here we go again 800 000 people were now deep in the ground under new york caught in a technology trap most of them had never thought twice about as light went so did the one in mrs mcconner's operating theater what the hell is going on it was now only 10 minutes since the crisis had been triggered by the relay at niagara more than 500 miles away [Music] the generators continued to trip out and at kennedy airport the radar screens went black

and flight 911 was in trouble uh roland i got flag warning switch number two to the island okay kennedy yeah who we got yeah john can you hold it until then i'll take the 200 if i can what time did it go up astoria two and three went out they can't hold on by 5 28 the time had come to protect the system by deliberately switching what was left off we shut down those lights in brooklyn it's the only thing left going to kill us we leave that in or shut it down oh we better

shut it down i guess the system operator recommends shutting down staten island yeah don't let me know what you'll find out all right okay so uh [Music] thank you over an area of 80 million square miles 30 million people were now in darkness [Music] [Applause] [Music] isolated from each other in small groups millions of people were still unaware of the extent of the blackout in the subway especially people started chatting and but for the most part no one really got into it yet because we thought it was just another typical rush hour delay but it

was dark and that was kind of unsettling to be in such a crowd but not to be able to see anybody um so the one of the women had candles in her back you know i have some candles this abnormal business of actually talking to anybody on the subway caught on briefly all over new york let's put some light on the situation my birthday anyway anybody feel like singing make a happy situation out of a terrible one [Music] but while this journey had taken on a meaning nobody expected so too at the hospital had mrs

markana's delivery of twins thanks to the anaesthetic it was then a general scurry around to find flashlights and i immediately commanded one so to see what was happening one of the nurses i shall never forget walked into the room carrying a lighted candle put the candle out get out of here what's going on get out of here scared of my mind with explosive anesthetic agent i had visions of all of us the whole place blowing up in one great conflagration no the phone system was the only thing if you could get a number no i

can't see the runway and captain lost it was learning the full extent of his predicament ils the landing aid that guided him in wasn't there anymore and needs to check the radio kennedy approach control scandinavian 9 11 then the ifs went u.s i've got some wine here the extraordinary thing in the subways was that a full hour into the crisis nobody was trying to escape from the trap yeah it's not even a corkscrew would it be crooked to put one in there yeah okay now what we need is the knife [Music] [Music] many years i

just assumed that something went wrong with a particular train that i was riding on there was a feeling of it's being something we all just had to wait out together there was nothing anybody could do about it no one knew anything about anything kleenex i'd carry napkins around i wipe those seats off so i don't get my clothes dirty put yourself in this position would you do any different here they were one hour into a major disaster and still trying to laugh their way out of it i'm drinking wine on the subway i'll tell you

that yeah help yourself if anybody's driving don't drink remember that how about singing a song anybody know your songs [Music] people began to be very jovial and began to sing show me the way to go home and everything that people could think of that related to our plight [Music] at the hospital darkness made no difference well the baby was delivered without the lights because you didn't need the lights for the delivery that's manipulative remember you're reaching up into the uterus grabbing a foot which is strictly by feel you rub to the membranes and you bring

the foot down the second baby was vigorous and then we repaired the peas there you go oh you're such a pretty girl yes kennedy approached the bride scandinavian had only a few seconds left to make his decision he was at 2 000 feet past the airport and heading straight for manhattan in the darkness there was only one thing he could do [Music] lofts did and 200 other jets that night landed with the help of radio working on planes sitting on the ground in the subway people were still coping about after an hour or an hour

and a half people became very restless it was not not pleasant it was not very congenial but everybody felt scared never been this late let you sit here and wonder and wonder and send nobody down to help us guys out there somebody knock on the window and see if you're going to turn this attention after about an hour and a half of these train employees would pass outside not look at us and not answer us when people bang down the windows and called out they just ignored us i think he's the conductor from the train

but i'm not sure maybe he's going for help i don't know he must be gradually finally people began to realize where they were lost under the ground helpless unless help came when we have a major power blackout and at least hits the entire city is this all relaxed we'll be trying to get you off as soon as possible we wouldn't have to be in between states how can we be on a platform i don't know how long this will take it's it's con edison it affects the entire city we have people coming by evacuating the

trains now please relax mrs makana found out what had happened to her though not the way she expected this is my colonel when i woke up and i saw the other candles lit around the room i thought i was dead and there was a priest standing nearby and for a minute there i thought he had come to give me my last rights and i was afraid that all my family knew that i was there and they came to like candles for me no no no no no more [Music] and finally as in all good fairy

stories it was over exactly five hours after the train stopped about 10 30 the train began to empty by having all the passengers walk out singly upon the catwalk a few days later people were back at their daily routine as if it had never happened the night new york became a trap forgotten this is one of the more perfect examples of the kind of technological trap that we set for ourselves the lift the elevator i mean what is it it's a steel box with some buttons in it and maybe a trapdoor for emergencies but whoever

looks that close except when this happens where is it and even in this situation closed in with an escape route that we can't handle we behave like many of those new yorkers did we strike a light and we look around to see how badly things are and if we find in this case an emergency button absolutely great we sit back and we wait for help to come we wait for technology to come back and save our lives because it's inconceivable that it won't isn't it i mean if you admit that you've got to admit that

every single day of your life in some form or other you unconsciously walk yourself into a technology trap because that's the only way to live in the modern world so you don't admit it you say oh well in this situation we'll cope but what happens when the effects become widespread irreversible devastating what happens when what little resources you have to help you cope give up then what well in all the disaster scenarios you read what happens is that without power technologically based civilization cracks up rapidly without enough auxiliary power and most major cities don't have

it organization is impossible it's every man for himself looting and arson follow and in a city not prepared to be a fortress supplies run out fast and however frightening the thought of leaving your technological womb sooner or later there is nowhere to go but out away from the danger the minute you decide to move you're on your own in a way that no modern 20th century city dweller has ever been in his life and then the traps begin to close to start with do you even know where to go in order to survive did you

manage to get a map before you left and if you did how do you get out walk drive until you run out of fuel are you ahead of the millions of other people pouring down these roads trying to do just what you're trying to do and if they catch up with you have you got something they need and if you have can you protect yourself did you bring enough food and drink to last as long as necessary and if you didn't where will you get it steal how far out will you have to push on

until you're far enough out to be safe and can you be sure that's far enough and even if by some miracle you finally make it do you know enough to recognize a place to stop when you see it i mean what does survival without technology look like the breedo signs up so let's say that uh finally somewhere far out into the country you come across a place that looks right and let's say that you've had the good sense and the good luck to to look for a farm because that's where food comes from doesn't it

okay so it's a farm so you decide to stop has anybody got there first or are the owners still here because they're going to need shelter and people don't give their homes away they barricade themselves in so sooner or later exhausted and desperate you may have to make the decision to give up and die or to make somebody else give up and die because they won't accept you in their home voluntarily and what in your comfortable urban life has ever prepared you for that decision okay let's say by some miracle the place is empty and

it's all yours is there enough food in the house how long will it last how would you cook it wood fires are you fit enough to chop all the wood you need before winter comes if you're lucky you've got livestock on the farm great meat but can you slaughter and bleed and butcher an animal okay supposing you manage that you've got enough meat to eat until you've eaten all the cows but at least you can start running your farm but it's a modern farm remember it's mechanized there's a gasoline pump but it's empty so you

can't use the tractor what you need is a horse and cart but when did you last see a horse and cart on a modern farm and everything else here the saw the power drills the light the sterilizer the water supply the sewage system the hoist the milking parlor the pumps and everything on this control panel demands the one thing you don't have [Music] electric power everything on this farm that you found doesn't work the place is a trap but there's nowhere else to go the only way you're going to survive is if you find the

one thing you need to keep on providing the food you've got to have and you don't need the mechanized version of that thing you need the kind people haven't used in 100 years ah you need that kind of plow you're saved or are you because what it comes down to at this point is this can you use a plow it's taken a series of miracles just to get you this far and here you are with the biggest miracle of all a plow and animals to pull it so maybe after a few days of fumbling around

with the harnesses and the bits and pieces you managed to yoke up the oxen and plow the land and then and only then can you say that you have successfully escaped the wreckage of technological civilization and lived off the land and survived if you know how to use the furrow you plow i mean can you tell the difference between an ear of corn and a geranium seed do you know when to sow whatever it is you think it is okay do you know when to harvest it and eat the bit that you think isn't poisonous

i mean it's no accident that the chain of events triggered off by that relay and the power station back there in niagara falls ends here with the plow the relay itself doesn't matter i mean any one of a million things could fail and cause our complex civilization to collapse for an hour for a day however long because that's when you find out the extent to which you are reliant on technology and don't even know it that's when you see that it's so interdependent you take one thing away and the whole thing falls down leaves you

with nothing unless you can plow and survive and start the whole process off again from scratch and it's no accident that to do that you have to have a plow because it was the plow that triggered everything off a long way back in the past after a different set of people also found out that their comfortable life was falling apart [Music] in a world where events came to a point where a fundamentally new way of life had to be found [Music] [Laughter] that's exactly what happened about 12 000 years ago it may be four places

on the earth northern india syria egypt central america it stopped raining and got very hot the result of that change in the weather was to lead to an invention that would trigger the development of a civilization that ends with us in the modern world let me explain that you see the high grasslands started to dry out became like this place and the plants and the animals that had sustained the wandering tribes started to disappear people began to die there was only one thing the survivors could do head for water and so down they came into

the great river valleys here in egypt that river was the nile and the nile was an extraordinary river it rose in two places for one it brought rotting vegetation and from the other potash and any gardener will tell you what that means when it flooded every year it dumped compost and fertilizer onto the land and the land bloomed too well with easy food the population grew to where not even the nile could support it without help faced with starvation the river dwellers tried planting grain by hand not enough what solved their problem was an invention

that triggered off a series of events which ends with us in our modern technology track because that invention was to trigger the beginnings of civilization [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] this is the first great man-made trigger of change the plow because with it you know how much harvest you're going to get next year and because of that you know you're going to be here next year and because of that you can plan for the future and after a while when you can produce surplus food then that's when things really start to move in the tiny settlements

[Music] with regular food supplies the population explodes the village expands there are more buildings and they're bigger for bigger families and they're more permanent you domesticate animals for their milk and their meat and their skin because they're not there to hunt anymore and basket weaving and the twisting of grass to do it teaches you how to spin flax and that makes linen but it's the grain that causes the fundamental change because with it you bake the bread that is the staple diet on which everybody lives and you learn about ovens and about the effects of

heat on mud and brick but above all you have to have somewhere to store the grain surplus in pots but there's so much surplus by now you need the pots to be made faster and you need them to last longer so the potter's wheel happens then comes the problem of who does it belong to and the only answer to that is this writing and the very first writing takes that form a name and a symbol for what's inside this pot or a lot of pots or an entire village granary [Music] and so the little villages

grew with their huts and their granaries and then almost out of nowhere it seems that happened [Music] the oldest stone building in the world the steppe pyramid of king zosa at sakara near cairo built around 2700 bc instant sophisticated architecture from mud huts in one jump how do they do it because of what they'd had to do to feed themselves irrigate because the river flooded every year and destroyed landmarks and then retreated leaving the soil to dry out they had to do two things find a way of measuring the land so the farmer got his

own fields back and a way of channeling the water away for use after the flood had gone the kind of measurement you need to do those things involves geometry and the type of mathematics a civil engineer uses and building canals teaches you to work stone [Music] if you know stonework and geometry and mathematics you can build pyramids especially if a strong central government that was developed to run the irrigation schemes in the first place tells you to if the pharaoh said he wanted a pointed stone monument that's what he got [Applause] [Music] [Applause] funny thing

is the same drought that drove everybody down to the nile also preserved the things they built like their tombs for thousands of years the stuff on the walls in this tomb for example is 4500 years old a kind of cartoon view of the civilization the plow created i mean look here's the irrigation there are these people carrying water pots you see them and they carry them across and they pour the water into a garden that has a wall around it and then over here look there's a fella doing a bit of weeding there's the plow

[Music] they domesticated oxen they tried to domesticate any animal that they could get their hands on i mean take a look at this animal flatten its back tight back legs hang on to its front legs stuff food down its throat and hope it'll learn to love you didn't get too far with that one it was a hyena well you've got a growing community and plenty of spare food and you'll need to protect yourself so making weapons becomes very important and here on this wall there's a whole thing about handling metals look here are the weights

and measures people checking on how much metal is going to be used next to them the furnace men you see the way they're raising the temperature they're blowing on these tubes to create a draft in the furnace to get the temperature high next to them here's the molten metal being poured into a mold and here the feathers beating it flat okay you get yourself a kingdom you get what you deserve you get bureaucrats here they are the scribes writing everything down see the pens behind their ears in this case they're noting taxes here are the

people coming in to pay their taxes led persuasively by the local police here's a policeman with the rod of office more policemen here's an egyptian scruff of the neck he obviously doesn't want to pay if you end up not paying they get out their whips and they tie you to a poll and that's what you get for not coming up with the money so you have a busy sophisticated society you have to have people at the top in charge this is the tomb of one of them he was a kind of egyptian chancellor responsible directly

to the king there he is his name was miraruka by sometime around 3200 bc the entire 700 mile length of the nile from the mediterranean to aswan was united and administered by officials like mariruka each one running what was called a water province the section of the irrigation network and of the river under his command what held it all together was the king's magic ability as a god to come up year after year with an inundation of the nile and to know exactly how high the waters would go because it wasn't magic it was his

astronomers they observed that one particular star sirius rises just before dawn on one particular day the 17th of july every year and that day is one day before the flood begins they also saw that on average the flood itself came once every 365 days now you put those two facts together the star before dawn and the flood and you've got yourself a calendar and with a calendar you can organize people you can give them a date to do something on and as for the king's ability to predict how high the water would go well you

you record the level of the flood every year with a scratch on the wall and after a while your experience will tell you early on how high the water is going to be later now in egypt where water is life that kind of knowledge and ability to control gives you the power to build empires [Music] these are the great ancient temples of karnak on the edge of the nile about 450 miles south of cairo they were the center of egyptian religion built in the imperial city of thebes when the egyptian empire was at its height

the greatest power in the world this was the new york of the time the temples were built over a period of about 2 000 years each pharaoh adding his bit leaving his name in stone to last forever [Music] inside the temple domain there were 65 towns 433 gardens and orchards 400 000 animals and it took 80 000 people just to run the place small wonder that centuries afterwards the greeks and the romans came here and gawked like peasants at a civilization that made their efforts look like well-dressed mud huts it still has that effect today

[Music] you come here from the great modern cities full of the immense power of modern technology at your fingertips press a button turn a switch and this place stops you dead [Music] and then just when you think you've got the measure of karnak you come here at dawn to the hall of columns one of the most massive structures ever built and anything i was going to say isn't enough look at it [Music] [Laughter] [Music] the egyptians built an empire and ran it with a handful of technology uh the wheel the irrigation canals the loom a

calendar pen and ink some cutting tools simple metallurgy and the plow the invention that triggered it all off and yet look how complex and sophisticated their civilization was and how soon it happened after that first man-made harvest the egyptian plow and those of the few other civilizations that sprang up around the world at the same time gave us control over nature and at the same time tied us for good to the things that we invent so that tomorrow will be better than today [Music] the egyptians knew that that's why they had gods to make sure

their systems didn't fail karnak was the first great statement of what technology could do with unlimited manpower and the approval of the gods [Music] ironically the modern equivalent lies again in the desert this time the nomads also settled by a river a river of oil but what it took the pharaohs 4 000 years to build took the kuwaitis 4 000 days what's happened in kuwait the change from a nomadic existence to being able to buy and use everything modern technology has to offer has come in much less than one generation [Music] kuwait represents the immense

power of technology using a way most of us have never experienced because we've lived with the kind of change it can bring for more than a hundred years here it's been focused change has been instant and total name yeah kuwait has suddenly become like new york or any other of the great urban islands of technology totally dependent on that technology like them without it kuwait would return to the desert hello michelle hi how are you hey listen i'm coming uh to spend my christmas in new york okay you see how increasingly the only way we

in the advanced industrial nations with our bewildering technology network can survive is by selling bewilderment and dependence on technology to the rest of the world [Music] or is it not bewilderment independence but a healthier wealthier better way of living than the old way and yet whether or not you dress up technology to look local the technology network is the same and as it spreads will it spread the ability to use machines as we do without understanding them somebody said a few years ago about the way our modern world affects us all if you understand something

today that means it must already be obsolete or to put it another way never have so many people understood so little about so much so why are we in this position why is our modern industrialized world the way it is and not some different way with different technology doing different things to us well that's what the rest of this series is going to look at you saw just now that the plow and irrigation kicked us all off and that an invention acts rather like a trigger because once it's there it changes the way things are

and that change stimulates the production of another invention which in turn causes change and so on why those inventions happened between six thousand years ago and now where they happened and when they happened is a fascinating blend of of accident genius craftsmanship geography religion war money ambition above all at some point everybody is involved in the business of change not just the so-called great men given what they knew at the time and a moderate amount of what's up here i hope to show you that you or i could have done just what they did or

come close to it because at no time did an invention come out of thin air into somebody's head like that [Music] you just had to put a number of bits and pieces that were already there together in the right way [Music] following the trail of events from some point in the past to a piece of modern technology is rather like a detective story with you as the detective knowing only as much as the people in the past do and like them having to guess at what was likely to happen next so the trigger that sets

off the first of those detective stories is that and i'd like to leave you with one question before next time why does a modern invention that fundamentally affects the lives of every single human being on this planet begin two thousand six hundred years ago with somebody doing this