YouTube Transcript:
The Great Smog of 1952 | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror

On the 5th of December, 1952, an unusually heavy  fog descended on London in the UK. It remained  
in place for five days, bringing the capital  to a standstill... and yet it caused no panic.  
Fog was a common phenomenon within London and,  as dramatic as this fog was, it was thought  
of as just another example of typically British  weather. It wouldn't be until much later that the  
true cost of the great smog of 1952 was realized.  London is an incredibly densely populated city.  
With so many people and so much  industry concentrated in one place  
it has always suffered from poorer air  quality than other cities in the UK.  
Even in Victorian times the city was infamous for  its foggy streets. Writers at the time referred  
to these fogs as "pea soupers" - an allusion to  the colour and density of the fog being similar  
to that of soup. There was some improvement in  London's air quality as the city entered the  
1900s, but by 1952 pollution was still very much  a problem. At that time coal was still a common  
power source with numerous coal burning power  plants situated within the boundaries of London.  
Coal was also an important domestic fuel:  Londoners had been burning a great deal of it  
to heat their homes during the particularly cold  winter of 1952. With the Second World War having  
concluded less than a decade ago resources were  still a little thin on the ground. Most people,  
therefore, were reduced to burning low quality  coal which didn't combust very cleanly.  
The sum of all these factors was that London  produced a huge amount of air pollution.  
Weather conditions on the 5th of December, 1952,  conspired to trap this pollution within the city,  
a complete lack of wind combined with a zone  of high atmospheric pressure effectively  
pushing the warm air rising from chimneys and  smokestacks straight back down to street level.  
The byproducts of domestic fireplaces  and factories all over the city  
quickly formed a foggy blanket thick enough  to cover all but the tallest of buildings.  
The fog was severe on the first day, and  it got worse with each day that passed,  
with factories continuing to belch pollution into  the atmosphere at an astonishing rate. A million  
kilograms (or 1,000 metric tonnes) of smoke and  two million kilograms or (2,000 metric tonnes)  
of carbon dioxide, for example, were released  each and every day, swamping the city. Londoners  
were used to fog, but this was on another  level. This fog was extremely thick and dense,  
restricting visibility to just a few strides. In  some places it had a yellowish or greenish hue,  
and many reported that it stank of rotten eggs -  something which led people to don masks or other  
face coverings whenever they had to venture  outside. Despite the noxious appearance of the  
fog, few people were worried about air quality.  Visibility was a much more pressing issue. The  
city's transport networks seized up. Barely  any planes could take off or land, and the  
vast majority of flights were diverted to other  airports. Buses and other forms of above-ground  
public transit were cancelled, as drivers simply  couldn't see far enough to safely complete their  
routes. This left the London Underground as  the only available means of public transport  
for millions of Londoners. Private transport was  equally affected. Roads became blocked by multiple  
accidents, and even those roads that were still  moving were doing so with agonizing slowness.
While the fog caused travel chaos, it also  represented an opportunity for thieves.  
With almost zero visibility and police unable  to get around, crime skyrocketed. There were  
hundreds of reports of robberies and muggings,  with the thieves getting away under cover of the  
fog. In addition to this wave of opportunistic  crime most ordinary activities came to a halt:  
sporting fixtures were called off when it  became apparent that the spectators could not  
see the players, the players could not see one  another, and nobody at all could see the ball.  
Workers were sent home from their offices or  could not make it into work in the first place.  
Schools were closed and even theater performances  were affected: several were cancelled when fog  
seeped in through windows and doors and filled  the auditorium. Personal accounts from those  
who were alive at the time gave some idea  of what it must have been like to navigate  
London during the smog. People recall feeling  their way along hedges on their way to school  
and holding hands with their friends so as not  to become separated. Elsewhere commuters were  
escorted through the streets by policemen bearing  torches, or else used the light glinting off  
overhead electric trolley lines to find their way.  When (or if) people arrived at their destinations  
many found their clothes blackened with  soot, and couldn't stop coughing for days.  
Some people reported taking lamps out into the  street and still seeing nothing. Around the  
Isle of Dogs many people noted that the fog was  too thick for them to even see their own feet.  
Doctors found themselves in high demand... but at  the same time struggled to complete house calls  
because of the fog. Given that the Underground  was the only remaining viable way to get around  
queues for tickets stretched into the thousands.  For five days London endured the Great Smog...  
and then, as the weather changed, the fog cleared  away. The city - which had been trapped in a  
perpetual twilight for five long days - started  moving again. Roads cleared, bus services resumed,  
and Londoners returned to work after one of the  strangest weekends that many had ever experienced.  
It took some time before the real impact  of the fog was known. Respiratory illness  
is a quiet killer, and in this case those it  killed were mostly the sick or the elderly.  
Doctors in hospitals across the capital  noted that they'd experienced an unusually  
high level of mortality during the fog and  doubtless made an association between the two.  
The average Londoner, however,  had no reason to think that the  
smog was anything other than just  some very severe inclement weather.  
Months would pass before the wave of deaths  and respiratory illnesses was noticed...  
and even once it had been noticed the impact was  extremely difficult to gauge. Many of those who  
were affected didn't pass away during the  fog, but instead had their lives massively  
shortened. Someone who died prematurely from  respiratory illness a year after the Great Smog,  
for example, might not have been counted as part  of the death toll. Even so the most conservative  
estimates as to the number of deaths state that  at least 4,000 people were killed by the smog.
The smog and the chaos it caused were a wake up  call for many. Hundreds of those who endured it  
noted that the experience changed their attitude  towards the environment. It certainly moved air  
quality up the political agenda, and in  1956 the Clean Air Act was introduced.  
This legislation made mandatory the use of  smokeless fuels in built up areas, and also  
limited the amount of air pollution factories  were allowed to disperse into the atmosphere.  
While the act itself has been updated and  replaced several times over the years many  
of its principles have remained in place to this  day. As a consequence the air quality in London  
has significantly improved. The most visible  and odorous pollutants have been cracked down  
on particularly hard, leaving the city looking  and smelling far better than it might have done  
70 years ago. It is unlikely that there will ever  be another incident like the Great Smog of 1952.  
However, the problem of air pollution in the city  has not been resolved. By some estimates almost  
4,000 londoners die prematurely each  year as a result of air pollution.  
That's the same number as were killed by the  Great Smog. In contrast to the Great Smog,  
though, these deaths occur year on year and are  considered largely unremarkable. The Great Smog of  
London was dramatic and terrifying for those who  endured it, but the dramatic nature of it was what  
opened the door to such decisive and meaningful  change in the aftermath. Politicians and lawmakers  
couldn't ignore the issue of air pollution when  they could both see and smell it in their streets.  
Given that another smog is unlikely to hit  the city today the issue of air pollution  
is one which still looms large but which, at  the same time, has become very easy to ignore.