In the Premodern Era, Survival Meant Overcoming Earthquakes, Sieges, Global Cooling, Asteroid Strikes, and Cannibalism

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2023

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you ever wondered if you could have survived the eruption at Pompeii, escaped San Francisco's 1906 Earthquake, found a seat on Titanic's lifeboats, outrun the Goths in the Sack of Rome, or lived through the apocalyptic Chicxulub asteroid strike?

Surprisingly, the answer to all those questions is yes, even the last one. Today’s guest Cody Cassidy discusses the reasons that the past had an incredibly high mortality rate, along with survival strategies that humans used to keep from extinction. He is the author of “How to Survive History” and helps us appreciate the challenges our predecessors faced.

This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

Transcript

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0:00.0	Sky year with another episode of the History Unplugged Podcast, how would you survive if
0:09.2	you were at the volcanic eruption of Pompeii?
0:11.6	Or the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, where the asteroid strike 65 million years ago
0:16.7	were turned out to run the Goths in the sack of Rome.
0:19.1	Now, these are a lot of interesting, what-if hypotheticals, but they all point to the larger
0:23.3	issue that all cause mortality was very high in the past.
0:27.9	The reason we lived decades longer than the 21st century on average, though we did
0:31.4	even a few centuries ago, is that there are so many different scenarios where you can
0:35.4	die, it's not just healthcare and antibiotics to keep us alive longer.
0:39.0	What's interesting in all these hypothetical what-if scenarios is that it actually is possible
0:43.4	to survive all of them.
0:44.8	Even the asteroid strike of 65 million years ago, although you probably need to be in Indonesia
0:48.6	and have access to a very deep cave.
0:50.7	To talk about how dangerous the past was is today's guest, Cody Cassidy, authored the book
0:54.7	How to Survive History.
0:56.0	We look at other past calamities like the Black Death, the volcanic eruption of the 6th
0:59.9	century that plunged the global temperature and killed off perhaps half of the Byzantine
1:03.8	Empire, and the Daughter Party tragedy, which is just one of many incidents of human cannibalism.
1:09.4	Hope you enjoyed this interview.
1:11.1	And one more thing before we get started with this episode, a quick break for work from
1:17.3	our sponsors.
1:18.8	They were some of the most powerful men who've ever lived.
	...

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