January 16, 2009
The recent, totally heartwarming splashdown of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River suggests that January 2009 will be a great month all around. As though the inauguration of Barack Obama and the return of ABC's "Lost" weren't enough, we have the spectacle of Captain Chesley Sullenberger executing an improvised and incredibly difficult water landing of his Airbus six minutes after taking off from LaGuardia and sustaining engine failure. Everybody on the plane survived, and since Flight 1549 didn't slam into midtown Manhattan, everybody on the ground survived as well. It's hard to think of a scarier scenario than a commercial passenger flight gliding powerless over New York City (at least if you happen to live or work in New York City, as I and many of my friends and relatives do), but things turned out about as well as anyone could have dared hope.
Early reports suggest that Flight 1549 nearly fell out of the sky because of multiple bird strikes, the aviation-industry term for a collision between an animal and an airborne vehicle. A flock of geese are thought to have collided with both of the plane's engines and caused them to shut down. Two obvious questions come to mind here: Will there ever be such a thing as a bird-proof plane? And: where else are we as a species vulnerable to goose-related hostility and don't realize it?
Paul Marks at New Scientist has provided a thoughtful and thorough answer to the first question, which boils down to, basically, no; all the measures that engineers have considered to keep birds from gunking up the machinery turn out to be prohibitive from a weight or fuel-efficiency perspective. But the second question, about national-security weaknesses waiting to be exploited, is not receiving nearly the level of attention that it should. If a plane can't withstand an assault by goose, what chance do our personal computers stand? Or our awesome digital watches?
Let's say you're out walking one day, chatting on an iPhone with your sweetie, and a passing Northern Gannet decides that that iPhone would look better in his nest. He swoops down and plucks it out of your hand. What are you going to do about it? What recourse do you really have? You'll just have to stand there on the surface of the ocean (the Northern Gannet is a seabird), shaking your fist in impotent, flightless rage.
Literally most things are smaller than a plane, and it would be reckless to assume that any of them are safe from waterfowl. Man might like to think he's entered a brave new age of computerized invincibility, but as long as our skies remain unpolicied, we as a society are neither truly safe nor genuinely free. There are steps that we can take, though: natural predators of the goose include owls, raccoons and snapping turtles, and dressing up like any of these will frighten any nearby specimens into beating a hasty retreat. (Dressing up like an owl will have the added benefit of making people think you are a character from "Watchmen," although this does increase your risk of making friends with giant naked guys covered in blue body paint.)
Geese are crafty, though, so we may have to take a subtler, psychological approach. Wikipedia offers the following clue: "Geese are monogamous, living in permanent pairs throughout the year." Aha! If we break up the geese couples, their young will grow up jaded and commitment-phobic, leading to a precipitous drop in the species birthrate. Being monogamous, geese are most likely susceptible to the temptations with which other monogamous animals struggle; what's called for, then, is a Presidential Task Force committed to the construction and maintenance of several thousand goose strip clubs. Obama ran as the security candidate; now's his chance to walk the walk.
Ultimately, control of the American skies will rest with whichever species wants it more. Not everyone may agree that billions need to be allocated immediately to build burlesque houses for geese, but rarely are decisions of such import ever made unanimously. One hopes never to see the day that ne'er-do-well geese sit on mile-high stacks of pilfered iPhones, laughing uproariously, as humans stagger around in a world forcibly reverted to nineteenth-century technology. If that day comes, though, don't let me hear you lament that there was nothing we could have done.
Early reports suggest that Flight 1549 nearly fell out of the sky because of multiple bird strikes, the aviation-industry term for a collision between an animal and an airborne vehicle. A flock of geese are thought to have collided with both of the plane's engines and caused them to shut down. Two obvious questions come to mind here: Will there ever be such a thing as a bird-proof plane? And: where else are we as a species vulnerable to goose-related hostility and don't realize it?
Paul Marks at New Scientist has provided a thoughtful and thorough answer to the first question, which boils down to, basically, no; all the measures that engineers have considered to keep birds from gunking up the machinery turn out to be prohibitive from a weight or fuel-efficiency perspective. But the second question, about national-security weaknesses waiting to be exploited, is not receiving nearly the level of attention that it should. If a plane can't withstand an assault by goose, what chance do our personal computers stand? Or our awesome digital watches?
Let's say you're out walking one day, chatting on an iPhone with your sweetie, and a passing Northern Gannet decides that that iPhone would look better in his nest. He swoops down and plucks it out of your hand. What are you going to do about it? What recourse do you really have? You'll just have to stand there on the surface of the ocean (the Northern Gannet is a seabird), shaking your fist in impotent, flightless rage.
Literally most things are smaller than a plane, and it would be reckless to assume that any of them are safe from waterfowl. Man might like to think he's entered a brave new age of computerized invincibility, but as long as our skies remain unpolicied, we as a society are neither truly safe nor genuinely free. There are steps that we can take, though: natural predators of the goose include owls, raccoons and snapping turtles, and dressing up like any of these will frighten any nearby specimens into beating a hasty retreat. (Dressing up like an owl will have the added benefit of making people think you are a character from "Watchmen," although this does increase your risk of making friends with giant naked guys covered in blue body paint.)
Geese are crafty, though, so we may have to take a subtler, psychological approach. Wikipedia offers the following clue: "Geese are monogamous, living in permanent pairs throughout the year." Aha! If we break up the geese couples, their young will grow up jaded and commitment-phobic, leading to a precipitous drop in the species birthrate. Being monogamous, geese are most likely susceptible to the temptations with which other monogamous animals struggle; what's called for, then, is a Presidential Task Force committed to the construction and maintenance of several thousand goose strip clubs. Obama ran as the security candidate; now's his chance to walk the walk.
Ultimately, control of the American skies will rest with whichever species wants it more. Not everyone may agree that billions need to be allocated immediately to build burlesque houses for geese, but rarely are decisions of such import ever made unanimously. One hopes never to see the day that ne'er-do-well geese sit on mile-high stacks of pilfered iPhones, laughing uproariously, as humans stagger around in a world forcibly reverted to nineteenth-century technology. If that day comes, though, don't let me hear you lament that there was nothing we could have done.
