In order to study these differences, the authors of the Journal of the National Society of Scientific Workers-Bruno Frey of the University of Zurich and David Savage and Banno Togler of the University of Queensland-searched for the data of Titanic and Lusitania everywhere, collecting the age, gender and ticket grade of all passengers on board, as well as the number of family members traveling with them. They also recorded survivors and victims.

Using these first-hand information, they analyzed an important group: all third-class passengers aged 35 or above are most likely to die if they don't bring their children during the trip, because they are old enough, not healthy enough, and are at a low depth on the deck, which is enough to prevent them from successfully boarding the lifeboat. More importantly, traveling without children may make them less motivated to fight for survival, and it is even more impossible for others to let them go. The statistics of these people later became the so-called reference group, and the survival rates of all other passenger groups were compared with this group. The research results reveal an enlightening story.

Compared with the reference group, the probability of children under the age of 16 on Titanic is about 3 1% higher, while the probability of children on Lusitania is 0.7% lower. The survival rate of men aged 65,438+06 to 35 on Titanic was 6.5% lower than that of the reference group, and that on Lusitania was 7.9% higher than that of the reference group. For women aged 16 to 35, the gap is even more dramatic: women in Titanic enjoy 48.3% advantage; The advantage of women in Lusitania is smaller, but there is still a noteworthy advantage, 10.4%. The most obvious difference depends on the level, because it was in that era, which is not surprising. The first-class passengers of Titanic successfully left the ship and boarded the lifeboat, which was 43.9% greater than that of the reference group. It is worth noting that the probability of passengers on Lusitania's successful escape is reduced by 1 1.5%.

There are many factors behind these two completely different living conditions-the most important of which is time. Most shipwrecks are disasters with relatively slow development, but the degree of slowness is different. After the German torpedo hit the Lusitania, it slipped under the waves in less than 18 minutes. Titanic floated for 2 hours and 40 minutes, so people behaved differently. The author of the new paper wrote that on board Lusitania, "the impulse to escape as soon as possible dominated people's behavior. On the slowly sinking Titanic, there is enough time for the behavior pattern decided by society to reappear. "