Women and Children First?

[Egann]

JEMC said:

Egann said:
If you have the intelligence to fend for yourself, you should.

The classic example, of course, is the Titanic, but what most people forget was that there was almost two hours between the launching of the first lifeboats and the actual sinking. Basically, by the time you know the ship is sinking and that there are not enough lifeboats, you have an hour left.

An hour of free reign of the ship? I'm sure I could come up with something to keep myself alive. Possibly someone else, too. I expect this of myself.

Sinking in five minutes with an arsoned fire onboard? That's not so likely.

If I'm not mistaken, what killed more people during the Titanic sinking were the fact that the lower classes had the "doors" closed and not all could escape in time and the fact that those who fall into the water (even the ones with life-jackets) died because of hypothermia.

Yes and no. The staff prioritized telling the first class passengers, but still most of the lower class did wind up on deck. In fact, if you trust wikipedia then the lower class passengers actually had a soccer game with a block of ice going on during the sinking. And hypothermia did kill most of the ones there, eventuallly.

Still, there are things you can do. Wool was a popular outer clothing fabric because it retains something like 90% of it's insulative properties, even if it's wet. It's just a matter of making or finding a way to stay out of the water for extended periods of time. The movie required blind luck to find a big bit of flotsam, but really so many things float it's got to be doable in a more controlled way. I expect no one thought to try because MacGuyver wasn't around back then.