This Article Originally Ran On Blumhouse.com
On the afternoon of Thursday, December 4th, 1952, a high-pressure air mass settled over the Thames River. As the sun dropped, a cold front moved in from the west and the winds came to a halt. The air sat still over London, trapped by the anticyclone the mixing of weather conditions had created.
As the temperature dropped, the people of London filled their furnaces with more coal. Some drove the streets heading home for a warm meal or maybe heading out to the shops for a little Christmas shopping. The factories billowed black smoke as they always did. The night grew darker as coal ash, soot, and smoke filled the sky.
By the morning of December 5th, London would be trapped under a thick fog that would take the lives of some 12,000 people.
Dense fog wasn’t new to London - the city had gained a reputation for its fog going back to the 13th century when King Edward I banned the burning of sea-coal deal with the constant fog that had come to rest over the city - but this fog was different. It was a type of fog called “pea-soup fog” as coined by the artist John Sartain on account of the thickness and greenish color of the fog.
Public transportation was shut down, flights were canceled, schools were closed, and ambulance services were halted. People were advised to stay home, and many did. They sat in their homes with the radio or TV on, keeping their furnaces filled with coal to battle the December cold. As the day moved on, movie houses closed as the fog made its way into the theaters, obscuring the screens. Sporting events around the city were canceled. Pubs remained open. Everyone waited for the winds to carry the fog away, but the wind did not come. The streets stank of rotten eggs, a by-product of the sulfur filling the air.
On the third day, Saturday the 6th, the fog had grown over thirty miles wide and began to seep under doorways, entering people’s homes. In some homes, the fog enveloped the ground, reaching up to people’s knees. Eleven cows brought to Earls Court for the Smithfield Show choked to death. Breeders created gas masks for their cattle by soaking grain sacks in whiskey. Unable to see more than a few feet, drivers abandoned their cars in the roads and conductors walked ahead of double-decker buses to direct them through the streets, doing their best not to slip on the black sludge that coated the streets. A man or woman would leave their home and walk a block to the grocery, only to arrive looking like they had spent the day in a coal mine.
Refusing to let the fog get in the way of tradition Oxford and Cambridge decided not to cancel their annual cross-country competition at Wimbledon Common. To help the runners stay on the path that they couldn’t see, track marshals yelled out “This way, this way, Oxford and Cambridge!” as the runners came into view. Burglaries spiked, as criminals saw the fog as a grand opportunity to break into homes and stores. The more cowardly criminals used the fog to snatch purses from women who were, for reasons I can’t imagine, walking the streets.
As the sun rose on Sunday the 7th, the fog continued to grow. Emergency services were still shut down as Londoners, particularly the elderly and newborns, unable to breathe, died. People called, begging for help as their fathers, mothers, and children were suffocated by the fog, but there was nothing that could be done. Hospital morgues overfilled with bodies of patients who couldn’t hold up against the poisonous air.
For two more days, the residents of London would suffer under the fog. When the anticyclone conditions broke on December 9th when a cold wind came in from the west for the first time in six days, the people saw the true cost of what became known as the Great Smog.
Undertakers ran out of coffins. Florists were unable to keep up with demand for funeral wreaths. The initial death count from the fog was over four thousand with more than a hundred thousand admitted to local hospitals for side effects. In the months that followed, deaths from bronchitis and pneumonia increased by upwards of seven times the national average. The death rate in the East End increased by 900%.
The British government chose to ignore what had happened as the death toll climbed. For four years, they did nothing as thousands of their citizens died due to complications from the Great Smog. Finally, after years of public shaming, Parliament passed the Clean Air Act of 1956, restricting the burning of coal in heavily populated areas. Over a number of years, the homes and businesses in London were fitted with gas, electric and oil heating systems.
In November of 2016, scientists at Texas A&M University studying the current pollution of Beijing stumbled upon the cause of the Great Smog of 1952. The anticyclone, along with the burning of coal and other toxic elements and an above average humidity for that time of year, turned the London air into a fog of concentrated sulfuric acid.
The Great Smog of 1952 wasn’t the last time London was besieged by a deadly fog; 750 people died during similar conditions in December of 1962. Today, environmental conditions in Beijing are worse than they were in London. A simple shift in the weather, a few days without wind, and China could be dealing with the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions.