--- title: Titanic vs. Lusitania: How People Behave in a Disaster description: It's hard to remember your manners when you think you're about to die. The human species may have developed an elaborate social and behavioral code,... canonical: https://time.com/archive/6934213/titanic-vs-lusitania-how-people-behave-in-a-disaster/ author: Jeffrey Kluger article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2010-03-03T05:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-23T04:30:51.417Z article:section: Health og:title: Titanic vs. Lusitania: How People Behave in a Disaster og:description: It's hard to remember your manners when you think you're about to die. The human species may have developed an elaborate social and behavioral code,... og:url: https://time.com/archive/6934213/titanic-vs-lusitania-how-people-behave-in-a-disaster/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb481b7415563d7ea/698a4e0c096a94146b6afab0/360_titanic_0225.jpg?branch=production&width=360&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 360 og:image:height: 203 og:image:alt: 360_titanic_0225.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Titanic vs. Lusitania: How People Behave in a Disaster twitter:description: It's hard to remember your manners when you think you're about to die. The human species may have developed an elaborate social and behavioral code,... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb481b7415563d7ea/698a4e0c096a94146b6afab0/360_titanic_0225.jpg?branch=production&width=360&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Health](/section/health/) # Titanic vs. Lusitania: How People Behave in a Disaster > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. 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It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=bc022b81-5708-4a58-8dae-c87135338474&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/) Mar 3, 2010 5:00 AM UTC  An illustration of the Titanic as it sank in the Atlantic Ocean An illustration of the Titanic as it sank in the Atlantic Ocean Time & Life Pictures / Getty by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/) Mar 3, 2010 5:00 AM UTC It’s hard to remember your manners when you think you’re about to die. The human species may have developed an elaborate social and behavioral code, but we drop it fast when we’re scared enough — as any stampeding mob reveals. That primal push-pull is at work during wars, natural disasters and any other time our hides are on the line. It was perhaps never more poignantly played out than during the two greatest maritime disasters in history: the sinking of the _Titanic_ and the _Lusitania_. A team of behavioral economists from Switzerland and Australia have published a new paper in the _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ (_PNAS_) that takes an imaginative new look at who survived and who perished aboard the two ships, and what the demographics of death say about how well social norms hold up in a crisis. [(See the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2009.)](https://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379%5F1944416,00.html) The _Lusitania_ and the _Titanic_ are often thought of as sister vessels; they in fact belonged to two separate owners, but the error is understandable. Both ships were huge: the _Titanic_ was carrying 2,207 passengers and crew on the night it went down; the _Lusitania_ had 1,949\. The mortality figures were even closer, with a 68.7% death rate aboard the _Titanic_ and 67.3% for the _Lusitania._ What’s more, the ships sank just three years apart — the _Titanic_ was claimed by an iceberg on April 14, 1912, and the _Lusitania_ by a German U-Boat on May 7, 1915\. But on the decks and in the passageways and all the other places where people fought for their lives, the vessels’ respective ends played out very differently. To study those differences, the authors of the _PNAS_ paper — Bruno Frey of the University of Zurich and David Savage and Benno Torgler of Queensland University — combed through _Titanic_ and _Lusitania_ data to gather the age, gender and ticket class for every passenger aboard, as well as the number of family members traveling with them. They also noted who survived and who didn’t. [(See a survival guide to catastrophe.)](https://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1810315,00.html) With this information in hand, they separated out one key group: all third-class passengers age 35 or older who were traveling with no children. The researchers figured that these were the people who faced the greatest likelihood of death because they were old enough, unfit enough and deep enough below the decks to have a hard time making it to a lifeboat. What’s more, traveling without children may have made them slightly less motivated to struggle for survival and made other people less likely to let them pass. This demographic slice then became the so-called reference group, and the survival rates of all the other passenger groups were compared to theirs. The results told a revealing tale. Aboard the _Titanic,_ children under 16 years old were nearly 31% likelier than the reference group to have survived, but those on the _Lusitania_ were 0.7% less likely. Males ages 16 to 35 on the _Titanic_ had a 6.5% poorer survival rate than the reference group but did 7.9% better on the _Lusitania._ For females in the 16-to-35 group, the gap was more dramatic: those on the _Titanic_ enjoyed a whopping 48.3% edge; on the _Lusitania_ it was a smaller but still significant 10.4%. The most striking survival disparity — no surprise, given the era — was determined by class. The _Titanic_‘s first-class passengers had a 43.9% greater chance of making it off the ship and into a lifeboat than the reference group; the _Lusitania_‘s, remarkably, were 11.5% less likely. [(See pictures of the _Queen Elizabeth 2_‘s final voyage.)](https://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1851444,00.html) There were a lot of factors behind these two distinct survival profiles — the most significant being time. Most shipwrecks are comparatively slow-motion disasters, but there are varying degrees of slow. The _Lusitania_ slipped below the waves a scant 18 min. after the German torpedo hit it. The _Titanic_ stayed afloat for 2 hr. 40 min. — and human behavior differed accordingly. On the _Lusitania_, the authors of the new paper wrote, “the short-run flight impulse dominated behavior. On the slowly sinking _Titanic_, there was time for socially determined behavioral patterns to reemerge.” That theory fits perfectly with the survival data, as all of the _Lusitania_‘s passengers were more likely to engage in what’s known as selfish rationality — a behavior that’s every bit as me-centered as it sounds and that provides an edge to strong, younger males in particular. On the _Titanic_, the rules concerning gender, class and the gentle treatment of children — in other words, good manners — had a chance to assert themselves. Precisely how long it takes before decorum reappears is impossible to say, but simple biology would put it somewhere between the 18-min. and 2-hr. 40-min. windows that the two ships were accorded. “Biologically, fight-or-flight behavior has two distinct stages,” the researchers wrote. “The short-term response \[is\] a surge in adrenaline production. This response is limited to a few minutes, because adrenaline degrades rapidly. Only after returning to homeostasis do the higher-order brain functions of the neocortex begin to override instinctual responses.” Once that happened aboard the _Titanic_, there were officers present to restore a relative sense of order and to disseminate information about what had just happened and what needed to be done next. Contemporary evacuation experts know that rapid communication of accurate information is critical in such emergencies. [(See TIME’s health and medicine covers.)](https://search.time.com/results.html?N=46&Ntt=Health+&+Medicine&iid=covers) Other variables beyond the question of time played important roles too. The _Lusitania_‘s passengers may have been more prone to stampede than those aboard the _Titanic_ because they were traveling in wartime and were aware that they could come under attack at any moment. The very nature of the attack that sank the _Lusitania_ — the sudden concussion of a torpedo, compared to the slow grinding of an iceberg — would also be likelier to spark panic. Finally, there was the simple fact that everyone aboard the _Lusitania_ was aware of what had happened to the _Titanic_ just three years earlier and thus disabused of the idea that there was any such thing as a ship that was too grand to sink — their own included. The fact that the two vessels did sink is an unalterable fact of history, and while ship design and safety protocols have changed, the powder-keg nature of human behavior is the same as it ever was. The more scientists learn about how it played out in disasters of the past, the more they can help us minimize loss in the future. [See the best pictures of the week.](https://www.time.com/time/picturesoftheweek) [See the editorial cartoons of the week.](https://www.time.com/time/cartoonsoftheweek) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6934213/titanic-vs-lusitania-how-people-behave-in-a-disaster/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6934213/titanic-vs-lusitania-how-people-behave-in-a-disaster/"},"headline":"Titanic vs. Lusitania: How People Behave in a Disaster","datePublished":"2010-03-03T05:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-23T04:30:51.417Z","description":"It's hard to remember your manners when you think you're about to die. 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