Author Archives: Garry Rodgers

About Garry Rodgers

After three decades as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police homicide detective and British Columbia coroner, International Best Selling author and blogger Garry Rodgers has an expertise in death and the craft of writing on it. Now retired, he wants to provoke your thoughts about death and help authors give life to their words.

WHO REALLY CAUSED THE HINDENBURG AIRSHIP DISASTER

On May 6, 1937, the largest airship ever built caught fire and crashed at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The Hindenburg, or Zeppelin dirigible named after Hitler’s predecessor, Paul von Hindenburg, was completing a transatlantic flight from Frankfurt—already 12 hours late due to strong headwinds and deteriorating weather. The horror took 36 lives, destroyed the aircraft, and ended the airship industry. Over the years, there’ve been competing theories as to what happened, but little revealed about who really caused the Hindenburg airship disaster.

The Hindenburg was an impressive sight and a technological marvel of the time regardless that it bore Nazi swastikas on its tail. It was 804 feet long—three times the length of a Boeing 747 (79 feet shorter than the Titanic)—135 feet in center diameter and weighed 242 tons. That’s a massive amount of gravity pull for a lighter-than-air, hydrogen-filled vehicle.

When the Hindenburg airship erupted into a flaming ball, news cameras below caught the entire conflagration. It’s been shown on newsreels across the world and, today, it’s easily viewed on Youtube. The film is black and white, grainy, and reminiscent of pre-WW2 camera technology.

Click Here to watch the original Hindenburg burn and crash newsreel 

What the film doesn’t show is whose ideological ambitions and actions set a disastrous chain of events into motion. Let’s look at the history of the Hindenburg, its fatal flight details, the theories, and some chemical science before concluding who was directly or indirectly at fault in this terrible tragedy.

Germany began developing its airship program at the onset of WW1 with lighter-than-air vehicles serving as military surveillance craft. Upon the armistice that ended the Great War, the United States forced Germany to turn over their remaining dirigibles to the US Navy who housed the fleet at Naval Air Station Lakehurst. The Americans built an infrastructure to support the ships including tie-up towers so that the vessels didn’t have to directly touch land.

The Hindenburg (Luftschiff 129) was launched on May 4, 1936. It followed an earlier design called the Graf Zeppelin which debuted in 1928. By the time the Hindenburg was destroyed, the Graf had made 590 transatlantic trips covering a million miles and carrying 34,000 passengers without a safety incident. The Hindenburg had 34 accident-free trips in the year it was in operation.

Hindenburg was a next-generation airship. It was powered by four 1200 horsepower Daimler-Benz reversible diesel engines that rotated quad-bladed propellors. Without wind current effects, the Hindenburg cruised at 76 miles per hour which was over twice the speed of the fastest ocean liner. This was attractive to the time-conscious 1-percenters who could afford a ticket from Germany to America. Back then, the fare was $450 USD. Today the ride would cost $7600.

Construction details of the Hindenburg included a webbed steel frame covered by a cotton-based fabric treated with advanced (for the time) treatments. It had sixteen independent and sealed bladders to house the inflation gas which were made of gelatinized latex rubber. The flight control module was in the lower bow area, ahead of double decks for the passengers and crew quarters.

The Hindenburg rivaled the Titanic when it came to luxurious travel. Paying guests could experience fine food and wines as well as relax in a sealed smoking room. Because of the extreme fire danger onboard a gas-floated airship, passengers were removed of all spark and fire-triggering devices like cigarette lighters and matches.

The dangerous gas on the Hindenburg was 7,600,000 cubic feet of pure hydrogen. The ship, like other German dirigibles, was designed to use helium gas which was inert, not like extremely flammable hydrogen. There was a reason why Germany used hydrogen instead of helium.

The United States had passed a law called the Helium Control Act of 1927. Initially, this was to conserve helium reserves, but it was also to control a world monopoly on helium and discourage other nations from expanding their military versions of floating airships. As the Hitler-led Nazis became more and more of an obvious threat in the mid-1930s, the Americans became even more strict in supplying Germany with any gas for their air fleet—military or civilian. With Hitler in power, there was no way the Nazis could purchase helium, so with hydrogen being cheap and easy to produce (unlike helium) the Nazi-backed industry went ahead and used hydrogen.

“But hydrogen is so dangerous,” you say. “Why on earth would they put it in an airplane?”  Here’s a quote from a resource article I sourced:

The German attitude about hydrogen in airships was the same as our current attitude about gasoline in our cars. When you go to work, you’ve got 10 to 12 gallons of gasoline in your fuel tank which is far more explosive and dangerous than hydrogen. You don’t think anything about that because everything is operating as it is supposed to be.

The Hindenburg departed Frankfurt at 7:16 pm local time on May 3, 1937. Pilot Max Pruss and First Officer Ernst Lehmann were part of the 39-person crew who attended to 38 passengers. The ship took its regular route flying 650 feet over the Netherlands and then out over the Atlantic to meet the North American coast at Boston, continuing southward past New York City and docking at Lakehurst.

Because of unusually strong headwinds, the Hindenburg was a half-day late arriving. There was another docking delay—a significant thunder and lightning storm. Safety protocols for the hydrogen-loaded prohibited every craft from grounding during a lightning storm. It wasn’t the risk of the craft being directly struck by lightning while in flight. Many were and they were designed to take direct electrical hits as long as there was no grounding path for voltage transfer.

To understand what physically led to the Hindenburg’s destruction, it’s best to follow an extremely well-recorded timeline of events on the afternoon and evening of May 6, 1937.

4:15 — Hindenburg arrives at the mooring dock area. The electrical storm is ongoing, and the ground control directs the craft to loiter and wait out the storm.

6:22 — Ground control observes a weather break but expects conditions to worsen. They give the Hindenburg an order to make “the earliest possible landing”.

7:08 — Hindenburg returns to the mooring dock. It encounters strong easterly winds and bypasses the dock tower, making a wide circle past the dock and to the port or left side of the craft.

7:16 — Hindenburg reapproaches the dock but encounters a strong gust from the southwest. The pilot compensates by putting the craft in a tight and hard S-turn.

7:18 — Something serious happened. The ship’s stern begins to drop, and the crew immediately drops 300 kg of ballast water to adjust the buoyancy.

7:19 — The stern continues to drop. Two more ballast discharges of 300 and 500 kg are made. The pilot also orders six crew members to run to the bow to balance the weight.

7:21 — The Hindenburg was above the docking pad at 300 feet in elevation. The wet manila tethering ropes were cast from the ship and hit the pad, effectively electrically grounding the steel airframe.

7:25 — The ground crew begins winching the Hindenburg down to the docking portal. The fabric on top of the craft, right where the tail rises, begins to ripple and a yellow flame appears.

7:25:05 — The entire tail section erupts in an orange flame ball. The stern rapidly sinks.

7:25:10 — Now the rear half of the ship is engulfed in fire, and the tail is near the ground with the bow violently raised.

7:25:20 — The bow ejects a “flamethrower’ burst or flame jet from the nose.

7:25:34 — The Hindenburg is on the ground, completely consumed in flames.

In the aftermath, the yellow-orange fire rapidly burns itself out, but the black smoke from the diesel fuel supply goes on for two hours. 35 people are dead at the scene including 13 passengers, 22 crewmen, and one ground worker caught underneath the ship. Over the next few days, several others died from their burn injuries.

The Hindenburg disaster effectively ended the floating airship industry. The public confidence was gone, and Germany suffered a black eye in the face of what was soon to be another world war. Besides, the airship model was already obsolete as heavier-then-air craft were already making transatlantic and transpacific flights safely and much more cost-effectively, not to mention the speed of modern airplanes.

This brings us to look at the theories as to what and who caused the Hindenburg disaster. This was an extremely high-profile world event. Naturally, conspiracy theories would show up. We’ll dismiss a few of the far-out suggestions before drilling down into the chemical science of how the Hindenburg was built and what really went wrong to cause such a catastrophic aircraft failure.

Sabotage — This theory holds no merit. There has never been any evidence to support the theory that someone intentionally scuttled the ship. However, the sabotage theory did come up in the official inquiry and it was raised by Captain Pruss as well as the naval base commander, Charles Rosenthal.

Lightning Strike — The weather at the naval base was continually recorded while the Hindenburg was docking and there was no electrical activity at the time. This is why they were making the dock. Hydrogen dirigibles were prohibited from making ground contact if lightning was present.

Engine Failure and Sparks — Again, there is zero evidence of this. The engines were in perfect working order. Besides, the sparks from a diesel engine’s exhaust would only reach 250C whereas hydrogen ignites at 500C.

Pilot Error/Crew Negligence — No real evidence of this either. At least, nothing intentional or supremely careless. This also applies to a hydrogen valve failing or being accidentally opened during the water balast discharges.

Catastrophic Mechanical Failure Causing a Chain Reaction in a Flammable Environment — This is the most likely scenario, and it takes some explaining. It’s necessary to look at the systems and structure of the Hindenburg to make some sense of the leading theory that has been discussed for years and analyzed by leading scientists and experts in the aeronautic industry.

The Hindenburg, like all dirigibles, was built with four interconnected systems. One was the airframe, skin, and stabilizers. Second was the flotation system with the hydrogen tanks. Third was the propulsion system. And fourth was the control system.

The airframe was a rib-work of honeycombed steel framing. There was nothing flammable about the steel and the grade was sufficiently high. It’s highly unlikely that the Hindenburg suffered any damage to the main frame which might have accidentally been broken. The same can’t be said of the stabilizers and supports.

The skin on the Hindenburg was extremely flammable. It was a cotton-based fabric that was treated with chemical compounds in a method called doping. This was common in the 1920s and 30s as many fixed-wing airplanes had fabric skins rather than metal. It was all about weight control.

In Hindenburg disaster terms, this is called the incendiary paint theory. It was developed in 1997 by Addison Bain who was a NASA engineer. Yes, a rocket scientist. He analyzed remnants of the Hindenburg skin that survived the crash and found the doping components were a mixture of Iron II Oxide (FeO3), Aluminum (AI), and Cellulose Acetate Butyrate (CAB). Mixing CAB and AI with Iron Oxide is a recipe for an incendiary bomb that goes off with what’s known as a chemical or pyrotechnical thermite reaction. It requires high heat to activate the thermite reaction, but having a hydrogen fire under the doped skin would do it.

The Hindenburg’s flotation system was a series of sixteen sealed rubber tanks with control valves for filling and releasing hydrogen. Hydrogen is perfectly stable and safe provided it’s contained outside of oxygen and away from an ignition source. The total hydrogen volume in the tanks was 7,600,000 or 475,000 ft3 per tank. By anyone’s standards, that’s a lot of fuel to burn.

There is no indication that the Hindenberg’s propulsion system failed. The Germans were, and still are, well-known for building dependable diesel engines and drive components. At the ignition, fire, and crash time, the four engines were operating normally. Also, the diesel fuel storage containers were not leaking and could not have contributed to the disaster. Note that the diesel fuel ignited after the main fire as evidenced by the following black smoke.

The control system also had no red flags. If there was a problem with controlling the Hindenburg, the crew would have known it. The Captain and First Officer survived to testify at the official inquiry and would have said something. The only unusual matter they reported was the stern suddenly sagging during the last seven minutes.

In an accident investigation process called case mapping, or root cause analysis, the method is to identify the outcome and then identify the events that caused it to occur. Let’s start with the outcome–the Hindenburg was destroyed, killing 38 people, wounding many others, and ending the airship industry. Why did this happen? Because the Hindenburg caught fire and crashed.

What caused the fire? Well, let’s stop for a bit and examine the first sign of trouble. That was the sagging stern. Why did the stern begin to sag? Because it was losing buoyancy. Likely, this was because buoyant hydrogen gas was leaking from a compromised bladder in the rear section.

What caused the bladder to be compromised and leak? It’s safe to rule out an intentional venting or discharge caused by the crew. It’s also safe to eliminate a faulty valve or the crew’s instruments would have detected the default. It’s far more likely that the bladder was damaged and punctured.

What could have ruptured the bladder? The first clue is this occurred in the furthest bladder to the rear. This is where the mechanical arms are for the rudder and stabilizer. The theory goes that one or more of the mechanical arms snapped and ripped open the bladder.

What could have caused an arm to snap? Let’s look at the event occurring two minutes before the sag started. At 7:16, the pilot executed the sharp S-turn to deal with a sudden wind gust. Up till then, everything was routine. It’s thought excess stress from the turn caused a rudder or stabilizer support arm to snap and rip right through the rubber bladder causing hydrogen to leak out and rise, filling the space above it—just under the skin.

Note that at 7:25, ground witnesses saw the skin begin to rumple at the base of the tail and a yellow flame appear. Five seconds later, the entire tail section was in an orange flame ball. From there, the fire progressively and quickly spread from the back to the front.

Hindenburg disaster, coloured image. View of the German airship Hindenburg (LZ 129) on fire over Naval Air Station (NAS) Lakehurst, New Jersey, USA, on 6th May 1937. This airship is famous for the Hindenburg disaster of 6th May 1937, when it caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast at NAS Lakehurst. Of the 97 crew and passengers on board 35 were killed, along with one member of the ground crew. The balloon was filled with hydrogen, a highly flammable gas. The cause of the accident has never been established but the disaster destroyed public confidence and marked the abrupt end of the airship era. Here the ships water ballast tanks (black dots, lower centre-left) can be seen falling.

Why was this happening? Logic says that the heat from the hydrogen-fueled and incendiary skin coating melted the other bladders and released more hydrogen at an enormous rate. The skin, being extremely flammable when heated to the thermite point, was consumed in under one minute.

It’s worthy to note the flame colors. Hydrogen, when pure and on fire, burns with a faint blue hue. The coloration is towards the ultraviolet scale and would be more noticeable in the dark than the light. The burning doped skin, however, has a different color scale and would present in the yellow-orange range which was reported by all witnesses. Diesel, being diesel, burns black.

So, it’s all well that we’ve identified the leak and the general cause of the fire. What we haven’t ascertained is what the ignition source was. We know what it wasn’t and that’s the engine sparks, and we’re certain the Hindenburg wasn’t struck by lightning. So where did the ignition source come from?

This is where the static electricity theory comes in. The thunder and lightning meteorological conditions in coastal New Jersey that evening were perfect for creating a static electricity buildup within a metal and fabric creation like the Hindenburg. Containing static electricity is safe when a structure is already grounded or remains afloat and ungrounded. However, the grounding act allows an instant electron flow from positive to negative or from the high source to the low source.

It’s likely when the aircrew lowered the wet manila tethering ropes at 7:21, the ground connection was made and the static buildup in the Hindenburg was released. It’s thought that within the metal airframe there was the right-sized gap between two metal components to create an electron jump known as a brush discharge which allowed a spark to ignite the runaway hydrogen gas that was mixing with oxygen. The ideal spot would have been between a broken metal support component and the steel frame, right above the furthest rear bladder that was ruptured and spewing flammable gas into the oxygen-filled space under the skin.

To me, who is trained by Think Reliability as an accident investigator using the cause mapping technique, this perfect storm of a dirigible built of incendiary skin over a steel frame encased leaked hydrogen into an oxygen-rich container and ignited by a spark started by a static electricity buildup arced through a gap between a broken member and its frame makes sense.

I’m satisfied this scenario is what caused the Hindenburg to burn and crash. Taking this a step further, who is to blame for all this? A natural cause mapping progression is to ask what piece of the puzzle could be removed or changed so this tragedy would never have happened. That’s eliminating hydrogen and replacing it with helium like the Zeppelins were originally designed for.

The bottom line? Germany, because it was an extremely dangerous, world menace under Hitler’s Nazi rule, could not obtain helium from the monopolistic Americans. The Germans went ahead and used hydrogen in a government-approved aerospace program. You could make an argument that Adolf Hitler, being responsible for the Nazi government, really caused the Hindenburg airship disaster.

WHO REALLY KILLED BIG BAND LEGEND GLENN MILLER

On December 15, 1944, legendary big band leader and musician Glenn Miller disappeared while on a military flight from England to France. No trace of Miller or the airplane has ever been found, and he was declared dead one year later. Various theories of what occurred have been tossed around over the years. Some are pretty far out, but one conclusion is hard to argue against. Here’s the likely explanation about who really killed big band legend Glenn Miller.

Alton Glenn Miller was born on March 1, 1904, in Clarinda, Ohio. He was forty years old when he died at the height of his musical popularity. Today, his celebrity status would equal mega stars like (according to Chat GPT) Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Adele, or Rihanna. News of Miller’s disappearance shook the free world, not just the music industry. He was just that popular of an entertainer.

Also, according to Chat, “It’s important to note that the entertainment landscape has evolved significantly since the 1940s, and the way celebrity status is perceived and measured has changed as well. Therefore, while these modern entertainers have achieved considerable fame and success, it’s challenging to draw a direct parallel to Glenn Miller’s celebrity status during his time.”

Miller achieved his fame in gradual steps. He wrote his first composition in 1928 while being mentored by “The King of Swing”, Benny Goodman. One-by-one, Miler released timeless tunes like In The Mood, Chattanooga Choo Choo, and Moonlight Serenade. To this day, no individual or group has recorded more Top Ten hits than the Glenn Miller Band, and his style continues to be covered by top swing, jazz, and big band artists.

In 1942, following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and the Americans entering the European war theatre, Miller enlisted in the U.S. Army. His talent and skill were recognized by General Eisenhower who awarded Miller the commissioned rank of Major and tasked him to develop a troop morale program. In two and a half years, Glenn Miller with his hand-picked wind band performed over 900 shows for U.S. and Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen. They also made 500 radio broadcasts for fighters in Europe and Africa.

When France was liberated in late 1944 and the Nazis were on the run, the Glenn Miller Band was scheduled to perform a huge celebration concert in downtown Paris. Miller’s band and equipment were sent by sea and road from England and prepared for Miller’s personal arrival. Glenn Miller, himself, remained at Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) near Bedford, England north of London. This was home to Eighth Army Air Force Command at the airfield known as RAF Station Twinwood Farm which held a mainly transport fleet rather than fighter and bomber squadrons.

Bad weather in France and over the English Channel delayed Miller’s departure from Twinwood on December 13 and 14, 1944. By midday on Sunday, December 15, the weather improved and Miller jumped aboard a small U.S. Amy utility airplane flown by a twenty-year-old rookie pilot named Stuart Morgan for a direct, non-stop flight from Twinwood to Paris. Also on board was Lt. Col. Norman Baessell who was friends with Glenn Miller. The three men departed at 13:55 (1:55 pm) local time and flew off towards France. They were never heard of again and the airplane has never been found, intact or wrecked.

Because this was an unscheduled service flight, Miller was not recorded to be onboard and was not noticed missing until three days later. This was partly due to Allied preoccupation with the Battle of the Bulge which started on December 16. A limited search found nothing, and it was presumed the plane dropped from the sky over the English Channel. There’s no doubt, though, that Glenn Miller was on that plane as thirteen witnesses confirmed they’d watched him leave from Twinwood.

One year after Glenn Miller was last seen alive, he was officially declared dead as per army policy. An army board of inquiry released a finding on January 20, 1945, that Miller’s flight crashed over the English Channel due to a combination of human error, mechanical failure, and bad weather. Miller, along with Baessell and Morgan, are still, to this day, listed as Missing In Action (MIA) by the U.S. Army.

Theories about what caused Glenn Miller’s disappearance began circulating shortly after the news broke to the world on December 24, 1944. The leading speculations are:

  1. Miller was on a secret mission authorized by Eisenhower to negotiate peace with Hitler. Instead, the Nazis kidnapped Miller, tortured him, then killed him and disposed of the body.

  2. Miller died of acute heart failure while cavorting in a Paris brothel. His death was covered up to avoid embarrassment to his wife and family.

  3. The airplane froze up over the English Channel, the engine quit, and it crashed into the water.

  4. The airplane was accidentally shot down by friendly fire and this was covered up.

Let’s look at these theories with objectivity and apply Occam’s Razor to the overall case—Occam’s Razor being the principle of parsimony where, when faced with multiple hypotheses, the simplest answer is usually the right answer. Especially where there’s proof to back up the conclusion.

The secret mission story is ridiculous. To think an entertainer—even one as high-profile as Glenn Miller—would sway any influence over a madman like Hitler is, well, just plain dumb.

The whorehouse story is just as ridiculous. Glenn Miller was known to be of the highest integrity. He was solidly married and had zero recorded incidents of impropriety. Besides, this theory and the Hitler one would have required an identifiable airplane that landed and was stored somewhere.

Let’s examine the ice-up and crash theory. That requires reviewing what kind of airplane it was and whether freezing/mechanical failure was likely. It was not. The missing airplane was a C-64 Norseman single-engine bushplane. It was built in Canada along with 902 other Norsemans and specifically designed to fly in harsh weather and arctic temperatures. Norseman planes are still in operation today, and they’re equally as dependable to the aged DeHavilland Beavers and Otters that are virtually indestructible.

The chance that the Norseman froze its carburetor and/or wings is highly improbable. That trip was done in weather the Norseman thrived upon. As well, freezing and stalling allows considerable time for the pilot to radio a Mayday and to deadstick it down to a belly landing on the water where the occupants could take to a liferaft.

So what about the friendly fire suggestion? For one thing, all air combat was long over in the region so flack from a ship or shore battery was not realistic. Same with a fighter intercept. The flight was in full daylight and the Norseman was highly identifiable as a non-armed American service craft.

But the friendly fire theory—accidental armament engagement—has merit and meets the Occam’s test along with sufficient proof to let the theory support the balance of probabilities and solve the mystery of who really killed Glenn Miller. The answer lies with documents and testimony in the Royal Air Force archives.

In 1956, a British film titled The Glenn Miller Story aired to the public. It ended with an image of a Norseman flying off into the sky over the Channel. A man by the name of Fred Shaw saw the show and came forward with fascinating information.

Shaw had been a navigator on an RAF Lancaster bomber. On a daylight bombing to Germany, Shaw’s formation of 139 Lancasters was recalled before dropping their loads on Nazi territory. Because it’s dangerous to land a heavy bomber like a Lancaster with live ordnance onboard, it was standard operating procedure to jettison the bombs in a specific zone in the English Channel that was restricted to all other aircraft—a no-go, no-fly region ten miles west of the safe air corridor that the Norseman was flight-planned to.

Shaw claimed that he and two other crew members saw a Norseman below them when they jettisoned their bombs and watched it get hit and then spiral down to the sea. He claimed there was nothing could be done to save the Norseman occupants, so they returned to base without any official report as they had no idea as to the Norseman’s specific identity let alone occupant load or flight purpose. Shaw stated he thought nothing more of the incident until watching the biopic and then put two and two together with the date of the incident.

At first, Shaw was written off as a publicity seeker. People suggested he couldn’t positively identify the crippled plane from his vantage point. Shaw countered, stating he had a full, unobstructed view and he was very familiar with the silhouette of a Norseman as he took his navigator training in a Norseman while in Canada, logging hundreds of hours in this airplane.

The simple, get-to-the-bottom remedy was to verify flight times. There was no question that Miller’s flight left Twinwood at 13:55 (1:55 pm) local time on December 15. The RAF logs for Shaw’s Lancaster identifier ”K” NF.973 showed it returning to base at 14:20 (2:20 pm) on December 15. Extrapolating times, this would calculate Shaw’s bomber to jettison its load at approximately 13:40 (1:40 pm) which was almost the exact time that Miller’s plane departed Twinwood airfield.

Because of the time conflict, it seemed obvious that the Norseman could not have been under the bomb-dropping Lancaster and that was that. Until 1984, when an aviation historian named Roy Nesbit, on behalf of the Air Historical Branch of the British Ministry of Defense, conducted an independent investigation, reopening the Shaw claim of the accidental bomb strike. He found the answer to the apparent time mismatch within the logbooks and route maps kept at the Public Record Office in London.

To Nesbit, who was a military pilot and very familiar with record reading, the clue was so straightforward as to be silly. The Lancasters were operating on Greenwich Meantime. They never adjusted for daylight savings time. However, due to the war, a special ordinance called the Statutory Rule and Time Order allowed Britons to operate on the one-hour earlier than Greenwich standard time. According to GMT, the Norseman actually took off at 12:55—45 minutes before the bomb jettison and exactly the time needed to fly a Norseman at 155 mph and place it under the Lancaster formation.

With the timing worked out, the question remained as to why the Norseman was out of the safe air corridor and into the extremely dangerous jettison zone. That answer lay with the pilot, Flying Officer Stuart Morgan. His service records established that he had only recently qualified on the Norseman, and he had no experience in flying with instruments in poor weather. Morgan would have been navigating solely on a magnetic compass using visual flight rules (VFR) on a cloudy day. Only a tiny misjudgment by Morgan or a fraction of a degree off course could easily have placed him ten miles to the west of his designated safe air corridor and into the danger zone.

Given that something suddenly, catastrophic, and overwhelming unsurvivable happened to the missing Norseman, the logical and simple conclusion is it probably was accidentally struck by friendly bombs jettisoned by a British Lancaster warplane. In all likelihood, the RAF really killed big band legend Glenn Miller.

NON-ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Now that the balloon has popped on failed fads like Dot.Coms, Bored Ape NFTs, Crypto, and forever-free borrowed money, the world’s current FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) has turned to the newest and coolest cat—Artificial Intelligence or what’s simply called AI. Make no mistake, AI is real. It’s not simple, but it’s very, very real. And it has the potential to be unbelievably good or gut-wrenchingly awful. But as smart as AI gets, will it ever be a match for Non-Artificial Intelligence, NAI?

I can’t explain what NAI is. I just have faith that it exists and has been a driving force in my life, especially my current life where I’m absorbed in a world of imagination and creativity. Call it make-believe or living in a dream, if you will, but I’m having a blast with a current fiction, content-creation project which uses both AI and NAI.

I’ve asked a lot of folks—mainly writing folks because that’s who I hang with—what their source of inspiration is. Their muse or their guide to the information pool they tap into to come up with originality. Many casually say, “God.”

I don’t have a problem with the concept of God. I’ve been alive for 66 years and, to me, I’ve seen pretty strong evidence of an infinite intelligence source that created all this, including myself. I’ll call that force NAI for lack of a better term.

What got me going on this AI/NAI piece was three months of intensive research into the current state of artificial intelligence—what it is, how to use it, and where it’s going. AI is not only a central character in my series titled City Of Danger, AI is a tool I’m using to help create the project. I’m also using Non-Artificial Intelligence as the inspiration, the imagination, and the drive to produce the content.

If you’ve been following DyingWords for a while, you’re probably aware I haven’t published any books in the past two years except for one about the new AI tool called ChatGPT. That’s because I’m totally immersed in creating City Of Danger in agreement with a netstream provider and a cutting-edge, AI audio/visual production company. Here’s how it works:

I use my imagination to create the storyline (plot), develop the characters and their dialogue, construct the scenes, and set the overtone as well as the subtext theme. I use NAI for inspirational ideas and then feed all this to an AI audio/visual bot who scans real people to build avatars and threads them through a “filter” so the City Of Danger end-product looks like a living graphic novel.

Basically, I’m writing a script or a blueprint so an AI program can take over and give it life. The AI company does the film work and the netstream guy foots the bill. This is the logline for City Of Danger:

A modern city in existential crisis caused by malevolent artificial intelligence enlists two private detectives from its 1920s past for an impossible task: Dispense street justice and restore social order.

Here’s a link to my DyingWords web page on City Of Danger along with the opening scene of the pilot episode. Yes, it involves time travel and dystopian tropes which have been done to death—but not quite like this. I like to think of myself as the next JK Rowling except I’m not broke and don’t write in coffee shops with a stroller alongside.

I was going to do this post as a detailed dive into the current state of artificial intelligence and where this fascinating, yet intimidating, technology is going. However, I have a long way to go yet in my R&D and don’t have a complete grasp on the subject. I will give a quick rundown, though, on what I’ve come to understand.

The term (concept) of artificial intelligence has been around a long time. Alan Turing, the father of modern-day computing and its morph into AI, conceived a universal thinking machine back in WW2 when he cracked Nazi communication codes. In 1956, a group of leading minds gathered at Dorchester University where, for three months, they brainstormed and laid the foundation for future AI breakthroughs.

Fast forward to 2023 and we have ChatGPT version 4 and a serious, if not uncontrollable, AI race between the big hitters—Microsoft and Google. Where this is going is anyone’s guess and recently other big guns like Musk, Gates, and Wozniak weighed in, penning an open letter to the AI industry to cool their jets and take the summer off. To quote Elon Musk, “Mark my words, AI is far more dangerous (to humanity) than nukes.”

There’s huge progress happening in AI development right now. But stop and look around at how much AI has already affected your life. Your smartphone and smartTV. Fitbit. GPS. Amazon recommends. Siri and what’s-her-name. Autocorrect. Grammarly. Cruise missiles, car parts, and crock pots.

Each day something new is mentioned. In fact, it’s impossible to scroll through a newsfeed with the AI word showing up. We’re in an AI revolution—likely the Fourth Industrial Revolution to steal the phrase from Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum.

Speaking of an AI revolution, one of the clearest runs at explaining AI in layman’s terms is a lengthy post written and illustrated by Tim Urban. It’s a two-part piece titled The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or Extinction. Tim calls AI “God in a Box”. Here’s what ChatGPT had to say about it.

Tim Urban’s two-part post “The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or Extinction” explores the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on humanity.

In part one, Urban describes the current state of AI, including its rapid progress and the various forms it can take. He also discusses the potential benefits and risks of advanced AI, including the possibility of creating a “superintelligence” that could surpass human intelligence and potentially pose an existential threat to humanity.

In part two, Urban delves deeper into the potential risks of advanced AI and explores various strategies for mitigating those risks. He suggests that developing “friendly AI” that shares human values and goals could be a key solution, along with establishing international regulations and governance to ensure the safe development and use of AI.

Overall, Urban’s post highlights the need for thoughtful consideration and planning as we continue to develop and integrate AI into our lives, in order to ensure a positive outcome for humanity.

From what I understand, there are three AI phases:

  1. Narrow or weak artificial intelligence—where the AI system only focuses on one issue.
  2. General artificial intelligence—where the AI system is interactive and equal to humans.
  3. Super artificial intelligence—where the AI system is self-aware and reproducing itself.

We’re in the narrow or weak phase now. How long before we reach phase two and three? There’s a lot of speculation out there by some highly qualified people, and their conclusions range from right away to never. That’s a lot of wriggle room, but the best parentheses I can put on the figure is 2030 for phase two and 2040 for phase three. Give or take a lot.

The AI technology involved in City Of Danger is a mid-range, phase one product. The teccie I’m talking to feels it’ll be at least 2025 before it’s perfected enough to have the series released. I think it’s more like 2026 or 2027, but that’s okay because it gives me more time to tap into NAI for more imaginative and creative storyline ideas.

I’m not going to go further into Narrow AI, General AI, or Super AI in this post. I’d have to get into terms like machine learning, large language model, neural networks, computing interface, intelligence amplification, recursive self-improvement, nanotech and biotech, breeding cycle, opaque algorithms, scaffolding, goal-directed behavior, law of accelerating returns, exponentiality, fault trees, Boolean function and logic gates, GRIND, aligned, non-aligned, balance beam, tripwire, takeoff, intelligence explosion, and that dreaded moment—the singularity. Honestly, I don’t fully understand most of this stuff.

But what I am going to leave you with is something I wrote about ten years ago when I started this DyingWords blog. It’s a post titled STEMI—Five Known Realities of the Universe. Looking back, maybe I nailed what Non-Artificial Intelligence really is.