"Ain't this some bullshit?" -Nick Cave

After some consideration I've decided not to endorse your airline. - Dr. Alan Grant

Oh, mommy! Mommy!

Don't you fuckin' look at me!

our phones break falling off a table, you think they'd survive a 600mph crash?

I'd have a 14 page comic book printed on 1" thick tungsten slabs in this situation but I might not have enough time, in which I would drop it down to 11 pages at a push.

I don't know, memory cards are pretty durable.

Except this piece of shit 16GB Verbatim SD that just went unusable, even though I didn't use it that much, just kept it in my Android pad. Doesn't even show up as a drive in Windows anymore.

That's an interesting way of looking at it. I was thinking that if I was about to die, or at least thought there was a good chance, I'd try to call someone, kiss the person sitting next to me, or light up. But taking a selfie (and I don't know if that's what's running through peoples' minds) could provide black box-esque insight if the phone was recovered post-crash.

If you have a smartphone, I highly recommend getting an Otter case, which was at least sold to me as being able to withstand falling off half of a mountain, or something like that. The iPhone could snap like a twig, but one of those cases could potentially withstand the impact of a plane crash, not that anyone would want to test that theory.

memory cards, digital cameras and cellphones have been around a almost two decades now, any stories of some being recovered from a crash and readable?

just don't smoke or some rageaholic might step on your neck

Dying is the realest shit you're ever going to do, you better think it through before it hits you.

What would you do?

Probably act in complete surprise, since if it doesn't hit you in the form of a disease, it's likely to be a pretty big surprise without a whole lot of time to get that book you've been meaning to read finished.

You'ed get arrested I'd imagine.

Yeah, I get that part.

"worst was landing gear wouldn't retract all the way and we were flying over DFW where a flight had just killed hundreds"

You referring to Delta Flight 191?

Yikes! My worst was an attempted IRA hijacking that somehow got thwarted minutes before we lifted off from Heathrow. I was too young to know what the IRA was, but there were guns. Lots of guns. The other was a bomb scare flying into Sydney, and we had to stay on the tarmac for at least 6 hours (maybe it just felt that long.) The AC was cut and they just showed the same movie over and over again, ironically Groundhog Day. To this day I can't watch that movie without thinking of that.

Given how fast missiles fly, saying you missed one by 4 hours doesn't sound so much like a close call as having a tour guide say, "and in this very spot a missile once haunted the skies."

"2 deaths (one possibly due to farts)"

Now you just can't mention that without elaborating.

Someone farted because a missile was somewhere near the plane 4 hours ago. Then he died.