Ft Lauderdale Airport Shooting: Real Lessons from an Imaginary Crisis

Don't worry, I'm not some crazy false flag conspiracy theorist.  I assure you, the shooting at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport on January 6, 2017, which left five people dead, was quite real. I know, because my wife and I were at the airport at the time; however, while the shooting was an unspeakable tragedy for the people involved and those close to them, the fact is that it was a pretty minor disruption for everyone else, including us. The shooter immediately surrendered, passengers returned to the terminal, and flights had begun to take off and land again.

Then, about an hour after the shooting, a panic started over a second shooter or perhaps multiple shooters.  That's what caused the complete evacuation and shutdown of the airport, and that's what turned it from a disruption into a crisis.  In the end, that second shooter turned out to be completely imaginary, and the evacuation and closing of the airport completely unnecessary.  Once Esteban Santiago-Ruiz was in custody, there was no danger whatsoever.  Of all the news agencies, the only one I've found that reported what happened accurately was the New York Times (more about reporting shortly).

We were in another terminal, and we know now that we were never in any actual danger - except perhaps the danger of tripping and hurting ourselves or perhaps having a heart attack, but that doesn't mean it didn't seem real at the time.  In the end, the whole thing was an eye-opening experience in a lot of ways.

Our Story

On Friday, January 6, 2017, my wife and I were changing planes in Terminal 1 of the Ft. Lauderdale Airport, on our way from Chicago to Key West. We were sitting near a window by gate C8, which looked out onto Terminal 2.

Suddenly, my wife saw people running out of that terminal onto the tarmac.  Here's a picture...

We had no idea what had happened, and assumed it was a fire or possibly a bomb threat.  There was a buzz about a shooter, but we didn't take it seriously until we started to see it on the news feeds.  At that point, there was an announcement in our terminal that there had been "an incident", but that it was under control and had been fully confined to Terminal 2. We were assured we were in no danger, and that flights would resume shortly.  We watched passengers return to Terminal 2, and when the tarmac was cleared, flights began to take of and land again.  We estimated that we would have a half hour to an hour delay, so we headed to the bar and started watching the story on the news, grimly watching the death toll rise from one to five.

Suddenly, as we were watching the television, the CNN live feed showed the SWAT team running back into the building.  At that moment, we saw passengers from Terminal 2 rush back onto the tarmac.  We barely had time to register this when we heard screaming, and saw people running down our concourse, shouting that there was a shooter following them.  We thought we heard shots, and honestly believed we might die.  We jumped behind the bar, abandoning my phone and our carry on bags.  

We saw a way to get to the exit door without exposing ourselves, so along with all the other passengers, we evacuated to the tarmac.  We had our wallets and my wife's phone, but decided not to risk exposing ourselves to grab the other stuff.  We used the phone to contact our family, to let them know we were OK, but things weren't over.  Later, they moved us to a far corner of the tarmac, where we spent the next five or six hours waiting, with very little information.  The airport was entirely surrounded by police cars.  There were also SWAT teams, helicopters, fire trucks, and a whole lot of ambulances coming and going.  All the indications were that there was still a least one active shooter, and we were very puzzled that the news wasn't saying anything about it.

Eventually, they told us they would not be opening the airport, we would not be allowed to retrieve our items, and that buses would be arriving to take us to the port, at which point we would be on our own.  We used some of our small amount of remaining phone battery to text my stepdaughter and have her make a hotel reservation for us near the port.   We were told that our belongings would be gathered by a contractor and returned to us over the next several days.

The evacuation was complete chaos.  At first, they told us the FBI wanted a record of all of our names, which they tried to do by having two police officers mingle among the people with legal pads.  When it became clear this would take all night they simply gave up.  Buses picked up a few people, then they announced that the pickup would be moved to the other side.  We were walked through the airport to the front, where we realized how many other people had been squirreled away in other parts of the airport.

They had conscripted all manner of buses: airport buses, city buses, and even sheriff's buses with little slit windows, used for transporting prisoners.  There was no crowd management at all, so it was by sheer luck that we made it onto the next round of buses.  As we exited the airport, it looked like the evacuation of Saigon.  There were thousands of people still waiting, and would guess it was early morning before all of them got out.  The roads were so crowded that our bus got completely stuck in traffic for a half hour, at which point we got out and walked the last half mile to our hotel.  Lucky we had reservations, because by that point, everything was sold out.  When we turned on the television in our room, they showed huge crowds still stranded at the airport. 

We got a flight out the next afternoon.  Miraculously, our luggage made it with us, and we had a wonderful vacation in Key West.  They did finally identify the belongings we left behind, and shipped them back home, where we picked them up at the local FedEx office the day after we returned.  In the end, all that was lost was a $10 portable charger, which is not bad, all thing considered - particularly when you remember that five people who lost their lives.

Lessons Learned

Although the second shooter turned out to be completely imaginary, we still learned a lot of interesting things that day...

• A disaster can happen anywhere and at any time: The moment when we thought a shooter was coming down the concourse will be forever seared into my memory.  It wasn't real, but it could have been, and we genuinely believed we might be about to die.  When I finally got my phone back, I found I was in the middle of a FaceBook post when it happened.  That could have been my last act.  I'll probably never go to a public place again without mentally formulating an exit plan in case something terrible happens.
• It takes very little to cause a panic: How did the panic start?  Did someone think they saw a gun or a bomb? Was someone freaked out when they heard a foreign language?  Did someone make a bad joke?  As far as I can tell, no one knows, and what's more disturbing, no one really seems to care.   We've seen the video of the real shooter over and over on the news, but nobody seems to be interested in studying the surveillance tapes to see how the panic started, to figure out how to prevent something similar from happening in the future.  Sadly, we see videos of shootings all the time, but it would be really interesting to see the spontaneous creation of a panicked mob on this scale, because that represents a genuine risk, for which the authorities need to prepare. 
• Imaginations are really powerful: I could swear I heard gunfire.  Lots of other people I talked to swore they heard gunfire.  Some claimed heard glass breaking. A guy who claimed to be a cop and "know what gunfire sounds like" said he heard gunfire.  There was no gunfire. The courts know witnesses are unreliable.  Now we know that, too.
  
• The authorities are much better at handing real crises than imaginary crises: As I said, the real shooter was dealt with quickly and professionally, and airport operations were rapidly returning to normal.  In contrast, they were obviously completely flummoxed by the fact they couldn't find a cause for the panic.  They ended up doing a complete sweep of the airport, looking for bombs, even though it was obvious a bomb didn't cause the panic.  They even blew up a "suspicious package" in the afternoon, which at least broke the monotony.  When they couldn't find any danger, they made the somewhat perplexing choice to completely close the airport for the rest of the day.
• You never know how people will behave in a crisis until it happens:  Given the fact we believed were being shot at, I think my wife and I behaved in a pretty sensible manner.  We took cover, I didn't expose myself to get our belongings that were in the open, we identified the safest path to the exit, and we kept down as we ran for it. If the shooter had been real, I don't think we could have done any better. Not everyone was so logical.  Some just froze up and had to be dragged to the door.  One woman inexplicably decided we shouldn't be going out the emergency exit, and started piling chairs in front of it.  I had to pick up a little girl who was screaming because she couldn't get over them.   
• Panic turns to boredom really fast: When we were evacuated to the tarmac, we could see a unbelievably massive police presence all around us, so we still very much believed there was an active shooter, or perhaps more than one.  We also realized that out there in the open, we were basically a shooting gallery.  In spite of that, we pretty quickly relaxed, joke, made small talk, and waited for the time to pass. I swear, when we got out of the terminal, my first thought was "Now I guess I won't have to pay for those drinks.".
  
  Of course, some people were a little more shook up, but others were quick to comfort them and try to calm them down.  All in all, everyone was very well behaved.  If I'm ever involved in a real shooting, I hope I'm with as pleasant a crowd. 
• Don't put too much faith in "disaster plans": Like all airports, Ft. Lauderdale had a federally approved set of disaster plans.  I can't speak for other airports, but whatever "plan" the airport had, it was pretty clear they were mostly just winging it.  You don't have to an expert to realize that above all else, a disaster plan needs a clear chain of command, and a way to disseminate information.  They had neither.  In the six hours on the tarmac, they never managed to round up a megaphone or PA system to make announcements.  Information was passed in a game of telephone from one person to another.  A lot of things that happened were clearly because individuals simply took initiative.  Southwest started to hand out snacks and drinks, and I believe it was a Southwest pilot who convinced operations that they really needed to get some port-a-potties onto the tarmac, after they had blocked access to the ones on the construction area that people had been using. That man is a true hero. 
  
  It's also clear that the communication problem extended to the authorities themselves.  At the very least, the TSA, police, and FBI were involved, and they were all saying different things.  The sheriffs told us we could go back to the terminal to retrieve our belongings, but when we tried, a heavily armed FBI agent blocked our path.  We tried our best to be well behaved, but it did get very frustrating. 
• One person's crisis is another person's opportunity:  We were told that our belongings would be collected by "a professional contractor specializing in this sort of thing".  A moment of thought will make you realize how ridiculous that description is.  They used a company called "BMS CAT", who advertise themselves as a "professional cleaning service" - not really "this sort of thing" at all.  Basically, they were just a company with the chutzpah to step up and say "Yeah, we'll do this" - and then try to figure out how to do it.  Don't get me wrong, I'm glad someone stepped up to do it, and we did eventually get our stuff back. On the other hand, there's no evidence they brought any unique expertise to the table.  They couldn't set up a call center adequate to handle the volume, even four days after the incident they couldn't give any indication of the time scale of the effort, and more than a week later, there still isn't a status website.  Here's how they packed our belongings.  When the FedEx guy picked it up, our bags fell out the bottom, so it's lucky we got them at all.

• (Most) news services will gladly sacrifice accuracy for the sake of a good story: Let's make one thing clear: like us, the first responders believed there was a shooter, or perhaps more than one shooter, in the airport.  The difference is that while we ran out, they ran in.  That takes courage, and the fact the shooter turned out not to exist doesn't change that one bit.  On the other hand, it doesn't make a good story, so most news services finessed the story to play down the fact that it wasn't the real shooter, but the imaginary one,  that caused all the trouble.  This article at CNN is pretty typical.  There's a brief mention of the imaginary second shooter, but no indication that that's what caused all the problems.   Like I said, as far as I can tell, only The New York Times got it right.  Even the Wikipedia article isn't accurate yet, although I plan to work on that. 
  
  In the future, I'll read reports on every tragedy with a large grain of salt.  At the end of the day, news is primarily entertainment, and well they may not lie outright, they'll certainly massage the story to get a better narrative. 

Above all, I learned that the end can come at any time.  For a moment, we thought "Something terrible is happening, and we might die".  It tuned out to be a false alarm, but just an hour earlier, some other people had had the same thought, and not only did they tun out to be right, but it ended up being their last thought on this earth.  Of course, it's unlikely that such a thing would happen in so dramatic a fashion.  Sudden death is more likely to be a car accident, a sudden heart attack, or something else that wouldn't make the news.  Still, we should do our best to make sure that if it does happen, we have left as little as possible undone. 

Dumbest Premises for Science Fiction Movies

I love sci-fi.  I even love bad sci-fi, but I have to admit that even some of my favorite sci-movies can be pretty stupid, particularly give the fact I'm a physicist, so things bother me that wouldn't bother other people.  Kind of like doctors and nurses can find fault with medical shows that seem just fine to me.

A list of everything stupid and unscientific in science fiction movies would get really long, so I'm going to restrit myself to a list of movies with the most ridiculous fundamental premises:

Silent Running (1972)

OK, let's get this one out of the way first, because the fact is I loved this movie.  After all, it's got Bruce Dern on a spaceship.  What more could you want?  The problem is it's based on a really dumb idea; namely, the Earth's environment has gotten so bad they launched a bunch of bio-domes into space with little forests in them - and not just into orbit, but into interplanetary space.  Now you don't have to give it too much thought to realize that no matter how hostile the environment on Earth is, it can't be as bad as space, so it would have made a lot more sense to build those little domes on the ground.

But then you wouldn't have a movie.

The Matrix (1999)

This one is going to make some people angry, because some people are crazy into The Matrix.  The fact is that the idea that we're all living in a world of virtual reality is actually kind of cool.  The problem comes when they tried to cook up a reason it was happening.   Using humans as a power source doesn't make any sense at all.  Even if you ignore the fact it violates the laws of physics - it takes more energy to keep a body alive than you can extract from it - they never come up with a reason you'd need to invent a complex virtual reality for them.  Just knock them out and keep them alive.  If you think for a few minutes, you can come up with a whole list of more plausible motivations:  using humans as a big computer, experimenting on them, etc.  Pretty much anything is more believable than what they came up with. 

Slipstream (1989)

This is an obscure one, but it's probably got the dumbest premise of any sci-fi movie I've ever seen.  After series of natural and man-made disaster, there's a very strong wind that blows down a canyon.  People use it to fly gliders, but only in one direction.  Really, that's it.  That's the premise.  The funny thing is that in spite of this completely nonsensical motivation, it's actually kind of a cool movie.  As they travel from place to place, the main characters encounter weird remnants of civilization.  Even though it never really goes anywhere, the atmosphere is kind of cool.  Also, one of the few post-Star Wars roles for Mark Hamil.  There's even a cameo by Ben Kingsley. 

Zaat (1971)

A mad scientist dreams of combining man with fish.  It's never clear why this is a good idea.  No redeeming qualities.  It's just a terrible movie from beginning to end. 

Energy: No Such thing as a Free Lunch

This is the first in a series of posts about free energy scams.  I've given several talks on the topic, one of which can be found here.  I'm hoping that writing these posts will get me back to that book on the subject that I keep saying I'm writing.

What do I mean by "free energy"? Although lots of people use the term, but there's no official definition.  For the purposes of this discussion, I'll use the term to refer to supposedly transformative technologies which:

• will dramatically reduce one's cost of energy for transportation and/or domestic use, say at leastFor example,   factor of four or more.
• do not require significant capital costs up front, usually paying for themselves in a year or less.
• don't involve a major change in lifestyle

Of course, it's not impossible that some great new technology will be discovered, but it's not likely going to be done by someone working in their garage.  The last discovery with a profound implication for energy was the discovery of radioactivity - over 100 years ago.

We'll go through some specific examples, but the fact is cars don't run on water, motors don't run on permanent magnets, and cold fusion isn't being covered up by the oil industry; it simply doesn't work.

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden

IMDB Entry: here
Netflix?: yes
My rating (as a good movie): 5/5

This is exactly the sort of hidden hidden gem that makes me keep renewing my Netflix subscription.

It tells the little known story of Europeans (mostly Germans) who settled in the Galapagos Islands around 1930, and some of the mysterious events that followed.  I'll avoid spoilers regarding these events, but for me, they really took a back seat to the story of the settlers themselves.

The movie made me think of the saying "The common factor in all your dysfunctional relationships is you".  For the most part, these people weren't looking for opportunity, they were looking to get away from civilization - and it's clear that in most cases, *civilization* wasn't the problem.

The story was based on original writings of the settlers and some people who visited the island, as well as interviews with children and relatives.  Based on the apparent ages of the children, the interviews were all done about 15 years ago, and sat in the can until the movie was released last year. There's a truly amazing amount of film footage and photography.

The movie primarily focused on the three groups who homesteaded to Floreana, the smallest habitable island in the Galapagos.  Given their unusual shared destination, it's remarkable how different these groups turned out to be.

The first couple was Dr. Friedrich Ritter and his companion Dore Strauch.  They both left their spouses to find paradise in the wilderness - which turned out to be a lot harder than they thought it would be.  Ritter was frankly a pompous ass, who saw himself as a great philosopher. Strauch clearly worshipped Ritter, and he clearly did not reciprocate.

The next people two arrive were the Wittmer family: Heinz, Margret, and their son Rolf, who came because they feared a war was coming.  They were impressive in their normalcy. The saw themselves as the Swiss Family Robinson, and largely lived up to that vision, becoming the most successful of the group, in spite of Ritter's dismissal of them as amateurs.

The final settlers on Floreana were a colorful woman who claimed to be the Baroness Von Wagner and her two male lovers, who were all planning to start a hotel.  Their arrival also signals the start of the tension, which leads to some of the subsequent developments.

There are also some discussions of settlers on the other islands, as well as some writings by a crew member on a research vessel that visited the islands more or less annually around that time.

This is something that had once been a common story in the world, but this was pretty much the last time that people could really "leave civilization" and strike out on their own - albeit in a small and obscure corner of the word, and I found that concept absolutely riveting. At two hours, some might find it a bit long, but it held my attention the whole time.

Highly recommended.

Heaven is Hell

IMDB Entry: here
Netflix?: not yet
My Rating (as a good movie): 4/5

OK, fair disclosure:  I know a lot of people involved with this movie, so maybe I'm a bit biased.  Nevertheless, I think that if you give this movie a chance, you'll be pleasantly surprised.  It really shows what you can do with a good script, good acting, a lot of creativity, and very little money.

The movie opens at the funeral of Faith, who we learn was a devoutly Christian woman.  After the funeral, we see her "wake up" in a Heaven that bears little resemblance to our preconceived notions.  It appears to be a post-apocalyptic battlefield, and Faith immediately comes under fire.  Without giving away any spoilers, I'll say she encounters some Biblical characters, both familiar and unfamiliar, and becomes involved in an epic struggle for the control of Heaven.

This is really low budget, independent moviemaking at its finest.  The script is unique and the acting is good.  There's genuine humor and genuine pathos.  Although it was clearly made with limited funds, the production quality is surprisingly good.  Luckily, Indiana and Illinois offered ample post-apocalyptic settings for the shoots.

I really hope to see more from these guys.

The Truth About Nikola Tesla

There's something on the internet called "Godwin's Law", which basically says that if an argument goes on long enough, someone will eventually bring up Hitler and/or the Nazis.  Similarly, in any discussion involving limitless free energy, someone will eventually bring up Nikola Tesla - and probably the Nazis as well (to describe you, when you tell them what idiots they are).

First, let's examine who Nikola Tesla really was - in the real world, where we all live. Tesla was one of the most brilliant and iconoclastic inventors of the late 19th and early 20th century.  He was born in the Austrian Empire in 1856 in what is now Croatia; however, he's ethnically Serbian, which is why he's on modern day Serbia's 100 dinar bill.

His research focused on electricity - specifically high voltage and high frequency electricity.  His most significant single contribution is arguably the realization that alternating current "AC" is a much more efficient way to distribute electrical power than direct current "DC", which was favored by Edison. This led to a protracted argument with Edison, which Tesla eventually won.  The key victory was when Tesla and Westinghouse won the contract to supply the lighting for the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

A fight he never really won was his fight to get credit for the invention of radio.  Tesla lectured about the possibility of using electromagnetic waves to transmit information as far back as 1893, and he designed a remote-controlled boat in 1898, which he tried to sell to the government.  In 1900, Tesla patented  a "system of transmitting electrical energy" and "an electrical transmitter".  When Marconi claimed to have "invented" radio in 1901, Tesla challenged him in court.  The courts issued a series of contradictory rulings, but whatever the legal standing, history remembers Marconi rather than Tesla as the father of radio.  This arguably helped trigger the bitterness that characterized Tesla's later life.

Tesla was obsessed with the idea of transmitting power using high frequency electromagnetic waves, and he designed and built an enormous tower to do so, called the "Wardenclyffe Tower" to do so.  There's nothing impossible or mysterious about this concept.  It's just that it's not economically viable.  Imagine if you had a bar that served beer by spraying it out of a sprinkler and then you would drink whatever you could catch in your glass.  It would be a lot of fun, but the bar could only make money if they either got their beer for free or the charge one hell of a lot for the glass.  It's the same way with transmitting power.  Most of the power would simply radiate away into space.  It would only work if electricity were too cheap to bother metering.

Tesla had other ideas for for energy, none of which would have worked.  In 1901, Tesla filed a patent for an "Apparatus for the utilization of radiant energy".  This was simply an antenna designed to capture ambient electromagnetic energy.  The problem is that this energy doesn't exist at a level that would be useful in any way.  Nevertheless, generations of free energy enthusiasts have latched onto this as one of Tesla's many contributions that have been lost or were stolen from us.  Of course, it hasn't gone anywhere.  All the drawings are still there at the patent office.  They simply don't work.

Tesla's ideas go beyond free energy.  Late in life, he proposed the idea of a particle beam weapon, which he referred to as "Teleforce".  Like his free energy device, all the drawing still exist, and also like the free energy device, it simply doesn't work.

Adding to Tesla's mystique is the fact that upon his death, the FBI order the seizure of all of his personal papers.  It's likely that the FBI believed Tesla's claims about his particle beam weapons, and seized his papers in the interest of national security. This has fueled decades of speculation about what was in the writings; however, given the nature of the things that are known, it's highly unlikely there were any major secrets in the lost material.

The fact is, everything Tesla did is well understood - not only in light of modern physics, but in terms of physics at the time.  In contrast, his more outlandish claims would require a significant modification of physics as we understand it.

It's unfortunate that someone who made as many genuine contributions to our lives as Nikola Tesla is instead remembered by so many for his more outrageous and unsubstantiated claims.

Phantasm IV: Oblivion (1998)

IMDB: here
My rating (as a bad movie): 5/5
Netflix: No

Wow, just... wow.

The first Phantasm was a classic. No one's quite sure why, because let's face it, the plot was pretty silly, but for some reason, it was just iconic.  The second and third were OK, nothing great, but entertaining.

This one was clearly conceived as the magnum opus, where everything would be "explained".  Of course that's not what happens...

The first problem is of course to get out of the certain doom at the end of the last movie.  If you recall, Mike (still called "boy" in his mid-30s)  is in the process of being changed into some sort of hybrid silver ball/alien thingy,  and Reggie is pinned to a wall by like a hundred of the killer spheres.  Mike apparently just walked away, and the Tall Man inexplicably lets Reggie go - and then spends the rest of the movie trying to kill him.  I don't know, maybe he's like a cat playing with its food.

After that, it's just a confusing jumble.  The main thread follows Mike as he develops super powers and travels back in time to find the origin of the Tall Man, who we learn was once a kindly undertaker named Jebediah Morningside around the time of the Civil War.  He somehow invents the tuning fork/portal thing, but how exactly this turns him into the evil Tall Man is never explained - nor is anything else.

A second thread follows Reggie, who wanders around, encounters a beautiful woman, and is once again sexually frustrated.  I know you're saying you've seen that before, but trust me, this time the end is...interesting.

As for Jody, the dead/undead/possible impostor brother, he keeps popping in and out, "guiding" Mike, but never really being much help, and generally just adding to the confusion.

Without giving away any spoilers, I'll just say nothing is ever really resolved or explained.

That said, there is a certain "charm" to the movie.  The atmosphere and the cinematography are pretty good, and most scenes alone work pretty well - if only they would all tie together into something even remotely coherent.

All in all, this has to be one of the most random, confusing, non-sequitur movies I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot, but I have to say, it's fun to watch just for the jaw-dropping "WTF!?!" of it.