The next time I see one of those “millenials will be photographing the end of the world” posts I’m gonna scream because let me tell you, I just went through a natural disaster and Snapchat literally saved people’s lives. Thanks to snapchat I knew exactly what roads were flooded, what stores were open, what my HOUSE looked like (since I wasn’t there), and which shelters I could go to. People were snapping/tweeting asking to be rescued and THEY WERE. I didn’t get my news from the tv, I saw it in real time on social media and I will never not be grateful for that.
Millennials will survive the end of the world because we photographed it.
When US Airways Flight 1549 had to make an emergency landing in the Potomic River back in 2009, one of the reasons the response to this emergency was able to happen so quickly is because the passengers onboard posted online and made calls on their phones. Even further back, seventeen days after the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980, photographer Robert Landsberg was found buried in the ash a few miles away, and it was discovered that he had been taking photographs of the eruption as it happened, and, presumably realizing there was no way he could escape the pyroclastic flow, took the time to store his film as safely as possible inside of his backpack, and then shelter his backpack with his own body. Thanks to his sacrifice and quick thinking, that extremely important footage exists and could be used for geological study. People who take the time to document and report on disasters are doing something incredibly important, not just for the safety of people in the moment, but for the knowledge of people afterwards.