You probably know the story of the great irony of the Titanic.

The ship
hailed as “unsinkable” sank after it struck an iceberg on its very first trip
across the Atlantic Ocean. In hindsight, it seems almost silly that anyone
would assume that a ship weighing more than 50,000 tons (when fully
laden) was unsinkable. And indeed, many myth busters have claimed that
few people were actually calling the ship “unsinkable” before it sank.
While it is hard to say whether people thought the ship
was absolutely unsinkable under any circumstances, it is clear that people
believed that the passenger liner’s safety design (by Thomas
Andrews) was state-of-the-art, and some did describe it as
“unsinkable” before it ever set sail. Reportedly, that claim was enough to
keep many passengers calm even as the ship was in fact sinking. A vice
president of the company in charge of the voyage told the U.S. Congress
that he initially did not believe reports that the ship was sinking because he
thought it to be unsinkable.
The idea that the ship was unsinkable was advanced by newspaper and
magazine articles as well as by advertisement materials from the shipping
company. The widely circulated articles detailed the design of the liner and
its technologically advanced safety features. Chief among those features
were 16 compartments within the hull whose doors could be shut by the
flick of a switch. It was believed that the ability to quickly close off the
compartments if any of them were breached could keep the ship afloat even
if it suffered damage.

Though it’s an exaggeration to claim that nobody thought the ship

unsinkable, it may be true that, before the Titanic sank, people were not
particularly interested in whether the ship was unsinkable. The Titanic’s
selling point was really its grandeur and luxury, not its safety. Most of the
articles and advertisements for the Titanic focused on its size and
accommodations, not on the details of its design, and the affluent
passengers who boarded the ship chose it for its prestige and comfort. It
was only after the ship’s demise that the “unsinkable” moniker really took
off, presumably for dramatic effect. So even though the ship was in fact
touted as “unsinkable” before it sank, it was the ironyof its tragic
sinking that actually brought that claim to the fore.

There are about 20,000 species of bees in the world, and they are probably
the most important insect pollinators. The thousands of bee species have
unique flight patterns and floral preferences, and many
have coevolved with flowers in such a way that their body sizes and
behaviors almost perfectly complement the flowers they pollinate. Sadly,
bees of all types are in decline worldwide, as are many other insects. The
familiar honeybee has suffered greatly from colony collapse disorder, in
which hives suddenly lose their adult members. Populations
of bumblebeesand other solitary bees have steeply declined in many
places, largely because of insecticide and herbicide use, habitat loss,
and global warming. Some species, such as the rusty patched bumblebee,
are even listed as endangered species.
If all of the world's bees died off, there would be major rippling effects
throughout ecosystems. A number of plants, such as many of the bee
orchids, are pollinated exclusively by specific bees, and they would die off
without human intervention. This would alter the composition of
their habitats and affect the food webs they are part of and would likely
trigger additional extinctions or declines of dependent organisms. Other
plants may utilize a variety of pollinators, but many are most successfully
pollinated by bees. Without bees, they would set fewer seeds and would
have lower reproductive success. This too would alter ecosystems. Beyond
plants, many animals, such as the beautiful bee-eater birds, would lose
their prey in the event of a die-off, and this would also impact natural
systems and food webs.
In terms of agriculture, the loss of bees would dramatically alter human food
systems but would not likely lead to famine. The majority of human calories
still come from cereal grains, which are wind-pollinated and are therefore
unaffected by bee populations. Many fruits and vegetables, however, are
insect-pollinated and could not be grown at such a large scale, or so
cheaply, without bees. Blueberries and cherries, for example, rely on
honeybees for up to 90 percent of their pollination. Although hand-
pollination is a possibility for most fruit and vegetable crops, it is incredibly
labor-intensive and expensive. Tiny robotic pollinator drones have been
developed in Japan but remain prohibitively expensive for entire orchards or
fields of time-sensitive flowers. Without bees, the availability and diversity of
fresh produce would decline substantially, and human nutrition would likely
suffer. Crops that would not be cost-effective to hand- or robot-pollinate
would likely be lost or persist only with the dedication of human hobbyists.