In 2007, a mudflow almost completely destroyed the mountain village of Bulungu in Kabardino-Balkaria. Today, against the background of many other sad events, this fact is unlikely to amaze anyone. Another thing is striking: one person and a couple of cows died in Bulungu.
But the mountains are not tundra for you, where you have to get to your neighbor for a cup of tea for two days on deer. A high-mountain village is, as a rule, a patch of more or less comfortable land, where all the buildings huddle together like grapes in a bunch. How did almost all the inhabitants survive on such a piece?
Bulungu village
RANDOMITY OR REGULARITY?
Surprisingly, but true: the inhabitants of the village at that very moment suddenly all together left their homes and scattered in all directions. Some took the cattle to the pasture, and the relatives just before the wildness brought them lunch. Others with the whole family went to their relatives for a wedding.
Someone else had a toothache, and he went to the regional center to see a dentist, and his relatives joined him to go shopping. The dwellings of those who were at home in that unkind hour were miraculously spared by the deadly stream.
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It turns out that there is a coincidence of happy accidents?
Moreover, this is not the first such natural disaster in Bulungu. Previously, twice in 1983 and 1995, mudflow fell on the village. And in 1995 the mudflow also claimed only one life.
Air France stewardess Isabelle Sarian in 2000 was supposed to take off on the next flight. But in the morning she cut her finger, and then her son had a fever. Isabelle called her mother and asked to sit with the child. But she managed to slip on the tangerine peel and break her leg. After that, Isabelle had no choice but to call her superiors and ask her to replace. A few minutes after takeoff, the airliner crashed …
On September 11, 2001, many of the employees of the World Trade Center in New York also had a lucky break. For example, Greer Epstein from the office on the 67th floor, shortly before the plane crashed onto the building, went to a tobacco kiosk. A certain Bill Trinkle was late for work, playing at home with his little daughter and not catching the morning train, and a girl named Monica O'Leary was fired the day before the tragedy.
In 2008, five people missed a Boeing 737 flight en route Moscow - Perm for various reasons and had to travel to their destination by train. During landing, the plane crashed, and none of the 87 people on board survived.
Many celebrities claim that they have a guardian angel that protects them from misfortune. An example of this is the story of the famous Argentine race car driver Juan Manuel Fangio. On February 23, 1958, he was kidnapped by Cuban rebels. It happened a day before the start of the Havana Grand Prix.
After 28 hours, the rebels released Fangio, making a statement that they had committed this act so that the whole world knew about the uprising against the Batista dictatorship. During the races in which Fangio was unable to take part, there was a terrible disaster with many casualties. After that, Fangio announced that Providence had intervened in his fate, and refused to give any evidence against his captors …
IN SEARCH OF TRUTH
Researcher William Cox found that the number of passengers on 28 trains that crashed was significantly less than on the same route a week before the accident or a few days after it. In addition, the number of passengers in damaged or derailed cars was also lower than in the rest.
Our domestic experts on paranormal phenomena Olga and Boris Kolchenko go further in their research, claiming that the subconscious, or rather, intuition, helped people to feel the approach of a catastrophe. Kolchenko did not take this conclusion from the ceiling: they had previously carried out a lot of work to study such phenomena. And what? They found a lot of similar cases. It happens that a person missed a train, and that one crashed; someone was negligent and did not go to work, and that day there was an explosion in the office, and so on, so on, so on.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the world, in the United States, a similar idea was put forward by the famous American sociologist James D. L. Staunton. Back in 1958, he published in the Journal of Sociology the results of his work, carefully examining more than 200 train wrecks (since 1900) and more than 50 plane crashes (since 1925).
To begin with, he entered all the data into a computer to establish the ratio of three factors: the number of people involved in the accident, the number of deaths and the capacity of the vehicle. And for the purity of the experiment, he also studied the same number of planes and trains that safely reached their destination in the most thorough way.
The results of the study amazed the scientist. It turned out that in all accidents, transport was only 61 percent full. And if the trip was successful, the number of passengers exceeded 76 percent of the total volume of the plane or train. The 15 percent difference is no small matter. Any specialist will confirm this to you.
This theory was developed by Staunton even before the advent of computers, and the "smart machine" only proved it. From these calculations, Staunton concluded: people, of course, did not know which planes and trains would get into an accident, but something helped them to avoid it.
What? All the same intuition, although the reasons for all the lucky ones were different. One, for example, had a grip on his stomach before the trip. Another's relative died suddenly. The third on the way to the airport twists his leg, which is why he is a few minutes late for the flight. Staunton called this phenomenon the phenomenon of foreboding of catastrophes.
FORGOTTEN SKILLS
The idea of James D. L. Staunton found its grateful admirers, in particular Stephen King, a great connoisseur of human psychology and a writer whose every new book becomes a bestseller, became interested in it.
“After I first read Staunton's article,” King wrote, “a Majestic Air Lines plane crashed at Logan Airport. All on board were killed. When things had settled down a bit, I called the company office and introduced myself as a journalist (a little well-intentioned lie). He said that we would like to write an article about the plane crash, asking for information on how many people who bought a ticket for this flight did not take off. There were 16 of them.
When asked how many latecomers are on average on the Denver-Boston line, I was told that no more than three. In addition, another 15 people refused to fly this flight, while usually the number of refusals does not exceed eight. So what happens? Although the headlines of all the newspapers screamed "The Logan Plane Crash Killed 94 People", they could be read like this: "31 people escaped death in the crash.
But King continued to bend his line further. In particular, I asked a logical question: if we are all such sensitive natures, why then do we not always anticipate trouble? After much deliberation, the writer came to a very original conclusion.
Our distant ancestors, in his opinion, lived in completely different conditions - not like the present ones. To survive in a harsh environment, they needed not only dexterity, ingenuity, endurance, but also highly developed senses, including intuition. Over time, much acquired at the dawn of human civilization fell away as unnecessary. Lost mortals and natural instinct.
What is the use of having it if it is no longer practically necessary? What good is it when, sitting in the office, you feel like your wife was hit by a car, if you still get a phone call and tell you about it? Our sensitivity atrophied a long time ago, like so much else. And only in the most extreme cases, and even then not for all, the "subconscious alarm system" is triggered. And then the person happily avoids seemingly inevitable death.
This is how Stephen King looks at the problem. His interpretation of the subconscious foreboding of catastrophes perfectly explains the case of the mass “rescue” of the inhabitants of the Bulungu village. After all, many generations of highlanders live in conditions that would drive a plain dweller into deep and prolonged stress. Such is the nature of the mountains - you have to keep your ears open all the time. Therefore, the majority of the highlanders retained elements of the same psychological instinct that people living in the comfortable conditions of the plains lost. And therefore, not 30 percent of the villagers escaped death there, but almost all.
Alas, so far only a few have taken care of this problem. Most pundits bypass her. But in vain. Perhaps a more detailed study of it would help more than one person to avoid the sad fate …
Lyubov DYAKOVA