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The Sky Falling On Our Heads
A brief history of ill-advised reactions to adversity
Anyone familiar with the French bande dessinée Astérix le Gaulois will recognize the saying:
Nous n’avons rien à craindre sauf le ciel qui nous tombe sur la tête!
Protected from Roman incursion by their famous magic potion, Asterix’s little band of Gauls had nothing to fear.
Except fear itself.
Let’s step backward in time a little to see a few of the consequences that arise when everyone is so fearful that reason flies out the window.
During World War II, iron railings across the United Kingdom were torn up and thrown into trucks (called “lorries” in British English) that carried them off to collection centers. As a result, quite a few British children were injured or died as a result of falling into rivers and unprotected holes, and a great deal of scarce petroleum was used up to fuel those trucks. Yet only a modest percentage of all the iron was ever used. The vast majority merely rusted away, hidden from sight.
Why?
Well, the British were panicking. Nazi Germany had won battle after battle with its combined air-tank-infantry tactic of blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) and the British Expeditionary Force had beaten a retreat to the beaches of Dunkerque, from which it…
