Killing the Irish: The Great Potato Famine 

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When The Great Potato Famine was over in 1852, one million people in Ireland were dead. Most of them were dead from the long, slow, and torturous death of starvation and the epidemics that followed. Roughly 1.5 million Irish residents watched their loved ones, friends, and fellow countrymen die in this manner, and they left, convinced the course their country was on would be irreversible. In those seven years, 1845-1852, twenty percent of Ireland’s 8.175 million people were simply gone, and famine scholars declare it one of the most severe famines of the modern era when measured by mortality rate. It devastated Ireland to such a degree that some argue it took generations for it to “recover” in a relative sense. And according to my stepdad, I compounded our mother country’s tragedy by missing a question about it on a World History test.

“You didn’t even know it happened?” he asked. “It was the worst thing that ever happened to our people, and we probably wouldn’t be here if our ancestors weren’t one of the lucky few to get out.”  

“I’m sorry, but it was just so boring,” I said. “The whole subject of World History is just one long bore.” This further outraged my stepdad, and the fact that I still bring this exchange up shows that I still feel some shame. I feel better about it now, decades later, because I think about the ‘just the facts’ style of writing that occurs in World History textbooks. I understand that a comprehensive collection of the history of man requires a facts first presentation that complies with standards and curriculum, but the core of the word history is story. I think it would be a great idea for the team that puts History textbooks together to commission some creative writers to take the data and create a compelling narrative. I know my history now, because I’ve read some incredibly talented authors who wrote compelling books on the same material, and I’ve listened to podcasters who know how to bring history alive. We didn’t learn World History in the classes I took in high school. We memorized names and dates.

“What was the question you missed?” my stepdad asked after he cooled off a bit.

“It was something along the lines of, ‘This almost destroyed the country of Ireland.’ I guessed revolution, as in Oliver Cromwell, and all that.”

“It wasn’t Cromwell, it was a damned fungus eating up Ireland’s potatoes.” 

It wasn’t a microscopic fungus that brought Ireland down. It was Phytophthora infestans—an oomycete, a water mold more closely related to algae than to true fungi.

A biology teacher once told us, “All fungal pathogens are fungi, but not all fungi are pathogens.” What did he say? A guy can’t say that once, and we’re all like, “Okay, got it. Interesting.” We need it repeated and broken down. The distinction sounds like one without a difference, like hair-splitting until you learned what it cost. That distinction, as it turned out, could’ve been everything to Irish potato farmers of 1845, but they only knew the first half of my biology teacher’s description, “All fungal pathogens are fungi.” After suffering the initial blight brought forth by this pathogen, Irish farmers turned to 19th century botanists for advice on how to fight fungi. They followed the botanist’s advice by burning their fields, sprinkling lime, and using sulfur compounds to destroy their harvest to prepare for the next, fungi free one. None of it worked, because fungicides do not reliably kill oomycetes, and that was the distinction. 

The Great Potato Famine was caused by the phytophthora infestans, a microscopic organism more closely related to algae than true fungi. This tiny organism is called an oomycete, which is a water-mold. The idea that it was a water-mold played a direct role in prolonging the famine, because the 19th century botanists believed that that which ravaged the fields of Ireland was a dry-loving fungus, and they advised the Irish farmers to follow these measures to deprive the fungi of humidity, because humidity feeds a fungus. Water‑molds, such as the phytophthora infestans thrive in wet conditions, so the botanist’s advice proved worse than useless. Yet, modern investigations state that even if the botanists correctly diagnosed the pathogen, and Irish farmers followed their advice to the letter, this nation-wide blight probably would’ve happened anyway. It probably would’ve happened anyway because Ireland’s cool, wet, and humid climate produced long periods of leaf wetness that didn’t just allow the potato blight to spread; it supercharged it and made the resultant disease almost unstoppable. 

One million deaths is difficult to grasp, and it’s just as difficult to confirm, because Ireland lacked comprehensive civil registration of deaths at the time. The scholarly estimates are anywhere between 800,000 and 1.5 million, with one million being the central consensus figure. One million is also a round number, and round numbers roll off the tongue so easily that they require perspective. The island nation Fiji, Djibouti, Cyprus, and the Soloman Islands all have populations of roughly one million residents. Fort Worth, Texas, the tenth largest population of the United States has a population of roughly one million citizens. Imagine reading that the entire population of Fort Worth, or Fiji or Djibouti suffered the slow, agonizing death of starvation. 

The Great Potato Famine didn’t damage Ireland, it destroyed it, as evidenced by the fact that Ireland’s population was 8.18 million in the 1841 census, 4.2 million in the late 1920s, and 5.35 million in 2026. These more modern numbers include normal migration patterns, and non-famine related issues, but the point is that when a microscopic organism appeared in Ireland, in September 1845, it destroyed a country to the point that it has never fully recovered.  

The Horror Story 

Another reason I think I missed that question about the potato famine on my World History test was that my people, the Irish, love to tell stories. Ireland has produced some of the most influential storytellers in world literature, and I experienced that love of storytelling in my inner circle. One of primary elements a great storyteller needs is a big bad guy to whom we can all focus our anger, and The Great Potato Famine didn’t really have one. At some point in the grapevine storytelling I heard, a big, bad guy of history, named Oliver Cromwell, made his way into the oral history of The Great Potato Famine. Their “based on a true story” tale suggested that Oliver Cromwell somehow commandeered The Great Potato Famine to destroy Ireland. Only problem is Cromwell was born on the cusp of the 17th Century, and he ruled England and destroyed Ireland 200 years prior to The Great Potato Famine. Now, I’m sure the O.C. would’ve shed no tears over the devastation wrought upon my ancestors in the 19th Century, but he had nothing to do with it. 

The Great Potato Famine was the result of an ecological accident amplified by the climate of Ireland and the country’s agricultural reliance on the potato. Yet, with different administrative policies the Brits could’ve prevented that natural disaster from turning into a catastrophe. It is believed that this whole mess began when ships from the Americas brought the phytophthora infestans to the ports of Europe. Some speculate that those ships first landed in Belgium ports, but it soon became irrelevant what exact port introduced the pathogen to Europe as it began reproducing at such a rapid rate that it spread throughout Europe causing some destruction along the way. It wasn’t until phytophthora infestans made its way to the cool, humid weather of Ireland that it experienced what historians call a reproductive explosion. 

When Irish farmers planted their potatoes in their normal course of a day, the phytophthora infestans fed off the potato blackening them, liquefying their insides, and leaving them rotted in the ground within days. This, of course, didn’t just ruin some fields, or some portions of the fields. It resulted in a nationwide agricultural collapse of the potato; a vegetable Ireland was too dependent upon.

The population of Ireland was so reliant on the potato that parts of the Irish population experienced almost immediate mass starvation, disease, and death. It was a famine driven by famine-related epidemics: typhus, cholera, dysentery, and tuberculosis that drove Ireland’s mortality figures higher. As high as the death rate was, historians suggest that there was such a wide range of deaths that could’ve been related to the famine that precise counting of actual deaths due to starvation was nearly impossible. Many deaths also went unrecorded, especially in rural districts where entire families perished. One day those isolated, rural homes housed father, mother, daughter, and son families, and the next day those houses rotted with corpses in them, and no one checked in on them for years.

Saving the Bloodline 

The World History textbook’s summation of why I exist is that my ancestor, we’ll call him Patrick, witnessed the utter devastation occurring in his homeland, and he left. Patrick packed his bags, walked to the nearest port, jumped on a ship, and made his way to America. End of story. That’s why I’m here today. Horray!

Again, I sympathize with the textbook’s writers need to summarize the history of man, but the textbook version leaves out the harrowing details of the story of Patrick’s travel to America, as illustrated by letters Irish emigrants, who made similar journeys. First, Patrick didn’t just wake up one day and say, “I’m outta here!” This was an agonizing decision that impacted everyone Patrick loved and the rest of his life. Patrick grew up on a family farm, and if you know anything about farmers, you know they don’t give up after a bad year, harsh years, or even punishing cycles. Their difficult lives are such that preparing for the worst of the worst is a part of their daily lives, and leaving the family farm isn’t a last resort; it isn’t even a consideration. For someone to leave a family farm, they must receive incontrovertible proof that they are going to die and end the bloodline with him if they stay. 

By the time Patrick finally decided to leave the family farm, starvation and sickness weakened him. Those who were still alive on Patrick’s family farm were ravaged by starvation and disease. His disease-ridden sister, the dying father he revered as a role model, the mother who had sacrificed her own well-being for his happiness, the grandparents he expected to be dead before he reached America were all torn. They urged him to leave so the bloodline might survive, yet they were terrified of what would happen once the last able-bodied member of the family walked away. They all urged him to leave, but that didn’t mean leaving everyone he loved his whole life wasn’t the most difficult decision this young twenty-something had to make.

If Patrick had any money, and most of Irish emigrants didn’t, he probably had just enough to board a ship out of Ireland. He didn’t have enough money for food purchases along the way, so he likely carried some bread and cornmeal for a day or two of some nourishment along the way. He also may have traveled with a change of clothes, but that’s about it.

If he walked the average 3.2 miles an hour, it probably took him nine and a half hours to walk from the parish of Callan in Kilkenny County to Waterford, the nearest major port. Considering all the information of this route, in 1845, we can estimate that it was likely a multi-day journey for Patrick. 

What Patrick witnessed on this perilous journey comes from letters written by Irish emigrants to America, Kilkenny Poor Law Union reports, and Waterford eyewitness accounts. He would’ve walked alongside “Walking skeletons” assuming he wasn’t one himself, children with swollen legs from edema, adults whose clothes hung off them “like rags on a stick” and people too weak to stand, lying in doorways. 

Patrick witnessed so much death and sadness that it broke his heart to turn away from families with small children, desperately crying out for a small portion of whatever money, bread, or cornmeal he carried on his shoulders. Patrick also witnessed the worst of humanity, as starving parents resorted to violence to feed their children. “These people were not villains,” a Kilkenny relief officer later wrote to characterize what he saw. “They were starving.” 

When Patrick survived the walk and managed to avoid the violent thieves and those so desperate that violence and murder were a means of survival, he probably walked up to the port of Waterford with just enough money to board the ship. The sight of the ship must have appeared momentarily glorious, as it stood as a symbol of his ability to survive the walk with the necessary money. That relief was short lived when he saw the dilapidated conditions of the ship before him, one that he knew would take anywhere from six to twelve weeks to complete the transatlantic voyage. Patrick knew that the mortality rates on the worst of these ships was between 20% to 30%, because priests read letters to their parishioners from survivors of those voyages. If he didn’t hear those letters on Sundays, he read them in the Irish newspapers. By the time Patrick spotted his vessel to freedom, he probably heard the “coffin ships” characterization of these ships hundreds of times.

Most of these “coffin ships” were almost criminally overcrowded, almost criminally ill-equipped for long transatlantic crossings, ridden with the famine-related diseases, and worked by inexperienced crews who hated the Irish. As daunting as all that was, Patrick also knew that –depending on the quality of the ship he was lucky to board— the ship might take twelve weeks to complete the transatlantic voyage. 

Once Patrick survived the overwhelming odds of making the travel from Kilkenny County, Ireland to a port in America, likely New York, specifically Castle Garden –the main immigrant receiving station before Ellis Island—Patrick was not greeted with open arms. He was exhausted, malnourished, and confused, but finally seeing Castle Garden filled him with tears of joy and hope. The realization struck him that he not only survived one of the worst famines in human history, but a journey that killed tens of thousands, based on eyewitness accounts, and emigration records, and historians’ estimates on the path from Kilkenny County to New York.

 

When Patrick disembarked, he kissed the ground and almost immediately stepped into a port that in the 1840s–1850s was one of the most dangerous places an Irish immigrant could arrive. Patrick saw luggage stolen right off the dock and other forms of petty theft. He would’ve been shoved and threatened by the throng on the shore and fellow travelers, and he would’ve seen children separated from the parents in the chaos. “They tore my bundle from my hands, and I never saw it again,” one woman wrote home to Ireland.  

Then, once he survived all that, he saw “No Irish Need Apply” signs in windows of factories and other workplaces. He later experienced Anti-Catholic violence, including church burnings, stereotyping that depicted Irish as lazy, drunk, criminal, or inferior in general, and Patrick faced political exclusion, with efforts to block Irish voting rights. And this didn’t just last as long as it took for the one million immigrants from Ireland to settle into their country, as some historical accounts suggest this many Irish immigrants experienced varying degrees of hatred that Irish lasted from Patrick’s arrival in America, in or around 1847, to the early 1900s, depending on the region they eventually called home. So, if Patrick was a twenty-two-year-old when he arrived in New York, he may have experienced intense discrimination in America for the rest of his life. But he did it.

He Did It

Patrick beat the odds by surviving the long perilous journey from Kilkenny County Ireland to America, and whatever joy he felt was surely dispelled by those he left behind, but he had no choice. I’m the reason Patrick, and his immediate family, made those painful sacrifices and tough choices, and they are the reason I’m here today, living in the greatest country in the history of man. How do you repay that? We’re fortunate to be here and alive, no doubt, but how do you appreciate it?

If there is an afterlife, and that afterlife has a screening room where we can view the painful sacrifices, tough choices, death-defying incidents, improbable survival of illnesses, and anything and everything the Patricks of our ancestry had to survive for as long as it took to have a child, I think we would all realize that it’s not just luck, though luck played a huge role, but it’s so far beyond luck that it’s almost an accident. Every person alive today has their ancestors to thank for the unbroken chain of good decisions, narrow escapes, and sheer chance for their life, but most of all they have good luck to thank.

My guess is Patrick’s tale was far more harrowing than I could possibly report. The horror he experienced lay in the details of the death-defying moments he experienced, and everything else he witnessed. We can also guess that when he finally settled down, Patrick probably found it difficult to smile or laugh in the aftermath. All things considered, he probably found the rest of his life unrewarding. Unless, Patrick saw it as his mission to live, survive, and thrive for those who made it possible for him to leave Ireland and pave the way for those of us who existed because of him. It was probably difficult for him to enjoy small talk, going to the beach, or any of the other useless things we do to relax when we’re not working, but if he learned how to use the opportunity they gave him, Patrick could show everyone, including himself, that they made the right choice.

How do we properly appreciate the gift of life? It’s such an overwhelming idea that we’ll never be able to find a fully adequate answer, so why try? Decades after missing that question on that World History test, I’ve found is to use the gift others bestowed upon me by doing what I do best; learning the story, researching it ad nauseum, and writing an article about it. It’s what I do, but in the course of doing it, I found another form of appreciation that might be more affirming to everything Patrick did to make sure I saw life, and that is reversing my decades old characterization of Patrick’s plight and The Great Potato Famine’s blight as boring.

Fear of Heights: It’s Partly Biology 

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You could say I’m terrified of heights, but they’re just the delivery system. What I really fear is the rapid, involuntary reunion with the ground. 

I’ve tried multiple variations of that unfunny joke through the years, because I want something to say when the questions, the teasing, and the antagonism starts. The best thing to say in these moments is something, because I’ve tried saying nothing, and it doesn’t work. I also need answers to the internal dilemma I experience when I encounter those who fear just about everything but heights. What’s different about me? If I had an actual phobia, an acrophobia, I wouldn’t be able to climb ladders, go on roller coasters, or zipline through a forest. I found an answer that states that I’m not in the five to ten percent of those who suffer from some form of acrophobia, but I fit within a broader, non-phobic category of twenty-eight percent who suffer from something called a visual height intolerance (VHI). This isn’t the answer I was searching for, but it is an answer.  

Even with that answer, those of us who suffer from VHI don’t understand why we have an irrational, emotional reaction to heights that frail, little old ladies and young teenagers don’t. It makes no sense to us that we struggle to stand atop a twenty-foot ladder and jump into a thirty-foot void tied to a zipline, and other people don’t. 

As our group of eleven made our way through the various ziplines, we got to know one another in superficial ways, and we learned that some of us are doofuses, but even our doofus demographic weren’t as scared as I was. They were having fun. I wanted to believe they were too dumb to know how much danger they were in, but when the people who were more intelligent than me screamed with glee on their turn, the only answer left for me was that I was a fraidycat.  

If you’re an awful, offensive person, you probably attract offensively awful people as friends, and if you don’t have answers for them, they’ll hit you with every mean-spirited, funny joke they know. I also have nice friends, but their sad, sympathetic looks hit deeper than my friends’ jokes, and I tell unfunny jokes to keep those looks off me. No matter which side of the fence they’re on, I suspect that most people enjoy tasting another’s vulnerability so much that they can’t hide their sympathetic, concerned smiles. I know this because that’s how I react to their vulnerabilities.  

“You didn’t like the zipline? Because I thought it was fun!” they say. It’s humbling, embarrassing, and frustrating to be this scared of something that people who make no sense enjoy. We can drop our “C’mons!” on them, but after we algorithm their answers, we find that they genuinely enjoy ziplining. I realize I have no answers for that, other than I’m just scared. I’m scared of something that frail, little old women and teenagers aren’t. The idea that the zipline experience didn’t rattle the teenagers, in particular, really got to me, because I was the one who helped them get over their irrational fears. “Monsters don’t exist,” “Most bugs aren’t as big as your fingernail,” and “You can take control of your nightmares in a way that will prevent them from being as scary.” I taught them that if they are able to rationalize the irrational, they might not fear it as much. I helped them conquer their worst fears in life, and they’re the ones now giving me sympathetic, concerned smiles. 

But I Did It!

One of the answers I have for why I fear ziplining so much is that the plot of most of the nightmares I’ve had since I was a little kid involved being high up on something, looking down, then falling off (or stepping off) a platform into nothingness. We now call this ziplining.   

I did it though! Before we continue, I want it noted that I managed to separate myself from what researchers call a clinical case of acrophobia to one who suffers from what they call a visual height intolerance (VHI). Those with a clinical case, the roughly five to ten percent, would’ve never been able to step off that platform into nothingness secured to nothing more than a line with three reinforced nylon ropes. I did it. I braved my worst fears, and I tweaked those (to me, crippling) fears by ziplining through a forest. I jumped off five different ledges and zoomed 30 feet above the ground from tree to tree. It was one of the greatest accomplishments of my life, and that’s not hyperbole for me. I know that’s sad, but it’s sad but true.

Now, how many of my most beloved and loyal members of my friends and family do you think joined me in the celebration of my accomplishment of conquering what I considered the most terrifying experiences of my life? If you guessed zero, you are correct. I didn’t really need anyone to congratulate me, because when I finally touched ground, I experienced what Irvine Welsh wrote about in his 1993 novel Trainspotting “doing heroine [is] like having 10,000 orgasms at once”, except I would replace “doing heroine” with ziplining. I didn’t need anyone to intensify my reaction to completing the course, in other words, but when they asked me: “Are you going to do it again?” my disgust broke out: 

“Who gives a crap! Right now?” I said. “We’re not even a minute away from me conquering my greatest fear in life, and you’re asking me if I’m going to do it again? Why don’t we take a minute to celebrate what I just did.”  

I enjoy being human don’t get me wrong, and I’m not going to switch species based on one petty grievance, but why do we insist on asking someone if they have the skill, temerity, and resolve to accomplish something great, momentous, and unprecedented again? Why do we insist on doing it right after they did it? They don’t let us savor our accomplishment for one minute. When we graduate high school, which was an incredibly arduous accomplishment for me, the first question was, “So, where are you going to college?” When we receive a promotion, they ask, “Is this a stepping stone, or are you going to fly higher?” Who gives a crap about that now, right now? Right now, I think you should say, “‘Holy Larry!’ You did it!” The key to my frustration, if you haven’t guessed is the “right now” portion of this ubiquitous exercise, the present tense, as in just minutes away from our grand accomplishment. We can get around to all the other stuff when we get around to it, but for now, help me celebrate this accomplishment.   

In the history of Super Bowls, there have been a little over 3,000 NFL players who have reached the pinnacle of winning a ring. As evidenced by the idiotic and obnoxious sideline reporters, we don’t want to let those elite athletes celebrate their enormous accomplishment for five minutes, as these reporters ask the star of the game, immediately after the game, ‘Do you think you can do it again next year?’ The player responds, “I’m just going to celebrate this one for a while.” Rather than focus on the incredible athletic achievement these fifty-three players, coaches, and the team’s hierarchy just accomplished, we want to know if they think they’re going to be able to win it all again next year. I want one of these players to look at these reporters with disgust and say, “Do you want to know what it took from us to get to this point? Do you have any idea what it takes to win what might be the most difficult and prestigious trophies in our country? Do you want to know anything about the sacrifices the fifty-three players on our roster made to make this happen?” I want this NFL player to add, “All those hours you spent watching Netflix, going to parties, and sitting around watching sunsets, I was in the weight room, in dark film rooms, and in grueling two-a-days, and doing it over and over again all year, and that’s not even accounting for everything we did in past years to get to this point. We haven’t had a drop of alcohol or smoked anything all year. I haven’t had a slice of cheese in three years. And we did it all for this moment, so could you, maybe, just give me a moment to celebrate what it took me and only about 3,000 other men to accomplish in life?” 

I understand that some anonymous boob ziplining 30 feet off the ground doesn’t even come close to winning a Super Bowl, but conquering my crippling fear felt just as momentous in the moment. When I reached the final platform, and it was over, truly over, I felt an adrenaline rush that informed me that I could do anything I wanted to in life. When that adrenaline washed out of my system, I softened my stance a little, because I realized that my friends and family couldn’t understand how huge that moment was for me, but I added that it would’ve been nice if they asked me to try to explain it to them before asking me if I was brave enough to do it again.    

I’ll admit that I likely won’t do what was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life ever again (insert your small smile of schadenfreude and sympathy here), but why does that matter? Correction, maybe it should matter at some point in the future, let’s say the one or two years from now when we talk about ziplining again. For now though, right now, let’s just let me celebrate my crowning achievement for a moment. Let’s just take a second and realize how hard this was for me, and let’s celebrate the fact that I did it all with a dry throat and quivering legs.  

When they ask, “Are you going to do it again?” they usually follow our ‘no!’ with, “Really? Because I didn’t think it was that big of a big deal. It was 30 feet off the ground. That’s considered a minor to low-medium elevation zipline experience.”  

Our ziplining experience was probably equivalent to a kiddie slope in skiing, and all people and companies that offer ziplining experiences know to go over the top with safety measures to make sure their customer base feels secure. This involves being secured in at three different points and various other procedures the employees require their customers to go through. Our lives were never on the line, in other words, but that’s all rational and reasonable. Those who suffer visual height intolerance (VHI) and a clinical case of acrophobia know that a fear of heights is irrational, unreasonable, emotional, and now we know that it’s partly psychological too.  

Partly

If you missed the key word of that last sentence, go back and reread it and focus on the third to last word of that last sentence partly, for therein lies an answer.  

The research states that the majority of my fear of heights is mental/ psychological, but there are physical elements involved too. That’s right, I found an answer to why some frail, little old ladies who fear things that go bump in the night, and teenagers who still have some remnants of fear of the boogieman haunting their dreams don’t experience crippling fear on a zipline’s platform, and I do. If you’re an acrophobic or one who suffers from VHI, and you don’t have an answer, you might not consider this a quality answer, but I’m okay with that, because like fear in general, the quality of answers are relative to the person.  

Research has concluded that some brains are just different. That’s not a mind-blowing revelation, I know, but it opens up the idea that some brains, be they in the little old lady or teen demographic, adjust well to heights. Others don’t, and the fear that others experience might feel psychological, but its roots are partly physical too — and those roots vary from person to person. At certain heights, an individual’s balance system, their proprioception, or equilibrium, becomes less stable.  

The sensory‑motor system (vision, vestibular organs, proprioception) of the acrophobic and VHI sufferer generates stronger instability signals at heights. The brain’s balance system—its ability to sense its position, movement, and force without relying on visual input, enabling balance coordination, and precise motor control—becomes less stable at varying heights. Some brains interpret that instability as danger; others don’t. It all depends on which side of that divide you fall. When visual cues are far away, those with a condition can’t use them to stabilize posture, so sway increases. Some people’s brains treat that sway as a threat, triggering fear. Others feel the same physical shift but don’t interpret it as danger. Put simply, some brains handle visual–vestibular mismatches smoothly; others become unstable and anxious. If the acrophobic and VHI person experienced frightening experiences, or they dreamt them up, they may have incidentally linked instability with danger. Others don’t make the same associations. The individual who doesn’t fear heights isn’t braver or made of a stronger constitution, their body just doesn’t send “danger” signals at heights, and their brain won’t amplify those signals.

We do it to ourselves, in other words. Some of us may have experienced real life incidents that forever shaped our reaction to heights, but most of us train our overly creative brain to react to heights in such a manner. If we have always imagined the worst, and/or experienced decades of nightmares where heights played a main character, our trained brain will not handle vestibular mismatches smoothly, and our body won’t stabilize posture very well when visual cues are so far away. As I wrote, sufferers might not consider that answer an epiphany, and it might not prevent the pack of wolves, we call friends, from whipping out their measuring sticks to prove superiority, but it is an answer.  

It’s also an adequate answer to the question, “If you received such an adrenaline rush from tweaking your fear, why wouldn’t you want to do it again?” Adrenaline rushes are short term fixes. They’re not the answer, as we will be just as afraid next time as we were this time, because the portion of our brain that regulates proprioception, or equilibrium, when we’re high up is still going to be a little off.  

My final word to those who suffer from these varying levels of fear when they’re high up is, there is something wrong with you, but it’s not what you think. You’re not a coward, a fraidycat, or a wimp. Your brain is just a little tiny bit off, and in the grand list of physical, psychological, and mental disorders this might be the one everyone would pick if they were forced to pick one at birth.

So, the next time someone calls you chicken, a wuss, or a fraidycat, you can now say, “Well, it’s partly that, but it also has something to do with my overly active sensory-motor system cranking out premium-grade instability signals the moment I achieve altitude. My brain simply refuses to handle visual-vestibular mismatches with any dignity whatsoever.

“And yes, it’s mildly embarrassing, as I’ve never actually plummeted from anything noteworthy. After mining the scientific research put into the study of me and my 22-28% brethren, the best answer I found is that I did this to myself. My overly creative brain has changed me into a certified neural drama queen who instantly routes even ‘minor sway’ into the ‘instability equals instant doom’ shortcut anytime I achieve at least twenty feet of altitude.

“You, on the other hand, haven’t trained your brain to broadcast or amplify overly theatrical danger signals. Congratulations, you calm biological member of the majority, but you’re not necessarily braver or composed of a stronger constitution, your hardware just isn’t quite as hysterically talented as mine.”

I’m not afraid of spiders, snakes, enclosed spaces, injections, germs, thunder and lightning, dogs, flying, or flying dogs, but I do have one highly irrational and emotional fear related to my visual‑vestibular conflict. When I started my research, I wanted to find that we have some gene variant or some sort of genetic clue involving the inner ear that helps us regulate balance. I wanted to be able to say that my condition was directly related to genetics, so I could blame someone or something else. The best answer I found is that modern scientific research finds that my system is likely over‑responsive to height‑related visual‑vestibular mismatch — something that can be influenced by genetics, but also by experience, conditioning, and neural wiring. I wanted something I could drop on my family members and obnoxious friends, but there’s no conclusive, proven casual links. I wanted to find satisfying clarity, but every study kept coming back to the idea that an overwhelming majority of my problem is all my fault, and the same level of creativity I use to write on this site is the culprit fueling my greatest fear. It’s an answer, but it’s not a very satisfying one.

Falling for Fraud

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This article is not a self-help, tips guide. I considered summing this article up with a long list of the tips I’ve learned over the years to help you avoid falling prey to internet fraud. My next thought was that I’m not smart enough to write a comprehensive list that could help you avoid falling prey to everything out there. Those lists are out there, and I encourage everyone to seek out, but I’m not brave, bold or brilliant enough to write one. This article will simply detail my personal and anecdotal experiences in this world. 
June 22, 2026: “Florida couple loses $141,000.00 to sweepstakes scam. The couple loses their car, their income, and their home after the dementia-suffering husband fell for a scam that informed him he won $4 million in a lottery.” Yahoo!news 

“The stupid things dumb people do,” was how one Yahoo commenter summed up their reaction to this story. I would’ve loved that reaction in my teens and twenties. “They’re just saying what we’re all thinking,” I would’ve said in-between giggles. Working as a fraud agent at a Fortune 500 company changed me. I talked to these dumb people, and if they’re dumb, then we’re all a lot dumber than we think.  

Who are the Victims? 

“I cannot believe this happened to me,” was the most common reaction our victims had. They would tell us how intelligent and experienced they were. They would talk about how difficult their jobs were, and how their job required a high level of intellect that should never fall for something like this. “I thought I knew enough to know how to avoid something like this, but here we are,” they would add. 

Does that sound like you, and the shocked, embarrassed, and somewhat ashamed reactions you might have for falling for “The stupid things that dumb people do.” If you insist that only morons fall for online fraud, consider this: industry experts suggest that the total figures we have for cybercriminal activity skew low, because most victims are so embarrassed and humiliated that they fell for something so stupid that they won’t even report it to a fraud agent who is as low on the law enforcement totem pole as one could get. They’ll never meet me, so why would they care what I think? They do not want to go through the details, because they cannot bear having one person know how dumb they were. They just want to forget it ever happened. 

The fraud agents I worked with rarely characterized victims as dumb or stupid, because we heard from so many victims a day. We heard so many different stories that we knew the victims we were talking to weren’t in the minority. We usually spent the first couple minutes of every phone call talking these victims down. I may have considered these victims dumb or stupid when I first started working there, but I heard so much since that point that I knew I was as vulnerable as they were.  

I’ve heard from the prototypical little old ladies living on a pension, who had a little money set aside for a more comfortable living. I talked to hard-working joes who worked so hard their whole life and saved their 10% a year to allow their family to just barely escape lower middle class. I heard from so many representatives of age and economic demographic backgrounds that I progressed through a variety of emotional reactions that ended with sympathy and moved to empathy after I heard the wide array of schemes that our customers fell for. If I were to draw up a pie representing the typical victim, old people on a pension would represent the largest section, but that cut wouldn’t be as large as you might think. If you’re one of those who refuse to accept the idea that you’re a lot more vulnerable than you imagine, let me say that I was you, and you are me.   

Other than the ‘I’m too smart to fall for something so stupid,’ the greatest vulnerability I saw among victims was greed. The victims talked about how losing this money meant losing their comfortable lifestyle, which naturally led me to wonder why they would sacrifice that relatively comfortable lifestyle for the prospect of more. Is it an American characteristic, or is it human nature that we’re willing to sacrifice everything we have for the promise of something more? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I saw a wide array of victims put skepticism aside when they thought someone was offering them a pot of gold. The idea that something is too good to be true should require us to do our homework and use the tips that corporations provide to educate ourselves, or perform any checks of verification we can to reduce our risk. 

The theme of this article is that the moment after you think you’re general sense of judgement will prevent you from falling prey to one of their schemes will probably leave you vulnerable, but we saw some victims exhibit such poor judgement that it exacerbated what could’ve been a minor incident.

Who are the Cybercriminals? 

When we read, watch, and hear exposés about criminals, we often hear investigators characterize the criminal in their case as ingenious or brilliant. In my limited experience in this world, I haven’t found cybercriminals ingenious or brilliant. Most often than not, they just kept trying no matter how many times they fail. They exhibit some ingenuity and temerity, but I never saw one scheme that I considered brilliant or ingenious. 

If their first scheme does not convince us to part with the money we earned, these cybercriminals have a “no harm no foul” attitude. There was no crime committed, and thus no evidence of wrongdoing. Depending on the nature of their activity, we fraud agents might be able to restrict the cybercriminal’s access to their account, until they can prove their activity is not suspicious. If they can’t, they just open another account, and another, until they complete a fraudulent transaction. At that point, we can link up their accounts and activity to build a narrative. Long story short, most cybercriminals change, adapt, and tinker with their approach, until they can find a victim. 

The key word in that sentence is tinker. They might add a little something here or delete something there, “They are going to try hundreds of different approaches,” a fraud trainer once told us, “Because they only need one successful scheme to qualify as successful.” For example, professional fraud operations often use botnets, compromised servers, or spam-as-a-service tools that blast out millions of emails per day. Success rates are extremely low (often 0.01% to 0.1% click/open rates), so high volume is essential to generate enough victims to be profitable. How is that brilliant? My guess is that the investigators on the TV exposés on crime are the ones who cracked the case, so calling their case’s criminal brilliant enhances their profile for the audience. We should also note that I base my characterization of cybercriminals on the cases I investigated, and we could say I base my personal profile of them on anecdotal information. In my experience, cybercriminals aren’t ingenious or brilliant, they just tinker, adapt, and change their approach until they find the best way to prey on our vulnerabilities. 

Some fraudsters aren’t a piece of junk who manage to distance themselves from empathy and sympathy, because their victim is some anonymous, faceless entity on the internet. (Their victims often have online nicknames, like rugrat, as opposed Peter J. Hansen, the electrician, who has spent his whole life saving this money.) This anonymous, faceless designation also permits us to characterize victims as “The stupid things that dumb people do,” because we don’t talk to them, see them, or feel their pain. Other cybercriminals are desperate people living in no hope situations, until they are employed by a shady outfit in their home country that exists to defraud victims out of our money. Their employees have quotas, and if they fail to hit their employers’ numbers, be they quantitative or qualitative, the employees are back out on their country’s desperate streets of abject poverty. These shady outfits provide their employees with tight scripts, but they also reward employees for creative improvising.   

When the shady enterprises from other countries are ‘caught’ engaging in fraudulent activity, some of the countries make it known they “don’t encourage such activity”, but the employees and the shady outfits receive little more than a slap on the wrist. The countries “don’t encourage it”, but the countries receive a Gross Domestic Product boost from the amount of money that the shady enterprises generate. We can only guess this doesn’t result in greater taxable revenue for the country, as most of the activity is “undetected” by the government, but we can guess that kickbacks are appreciated.  

One vulnerability we all share to ploys generated by cybercriminals is the ‘I’m too smart to fall for all that’ mentality. This is also where “The stupid things that dumb people do” line comes into play. In a manner somewhat similar to the original reason man created fictional monsters (vampires, werewolves, and mummies) to essentially zoomorphise the inhuman acts of sadistic murder that gives good men and women some comfortable distance between those who would commit mass murder. I think we label victims of cybercrimes as dumb and stupid to try to create a comfortable distance from the horrific possibility that this could happen to us too. The one thing I would tell people who scoff at the possibility that this could happen to them is I’ve talked to people like you every day. I talked to Midwesterners who appeared to know everything about the internet, fast-talking New Yorkers, Surfer dudes, and individuals with a pleasant, Southern Drawl. I talked to little old ladies on a pension, fathers with kids in private schools, and mothers who thought they could supplement the family’s finances. I talked to people who would remind you of your family members, your neighbors, and people who would remind you of you. The one thing they all had in common is they never thought they would fall for something like this. “I thought I’d be able to spot something like this,” they’d often say through tears. “I can’t believe I fell for it.” 

The Fraud Calls 

“This was my life savings,” was such a common phrase we fraud agents became numb to it. I loathe writing that all these years later, but it happens to us when we hear the same complaint, working on a phone line, forty hours a week. At lunch and on breaks, we would talk about the calls we took, and in the beginning, we talked about the heartbreak and devastation we heard, but it happened so often that our conversations switched to a callous competition about the dollar figures we witnessed. “I took a call today where a guy lost $50,000.” “That’s nothing, I took a call last week, where a guy lost $200,000.” It was our way of dealing with all of the sadness we heard.  

These victims called us to fix the devastation they put their proverbial foot in, and we could help them at times...if those victims called in in time. I wrote out a detailed description of process involved in our calls with customers, but I just … deleted it, because my guess is you don’t want to read the particulars the processes involved in these calls. Suffice it to say, I was able to help some of these victims, and I wasn’t able to help others.   

When these worst-case scenarios occurred, the resultant desperation I heard on the other end of the line still haunts me. “This was my life’s savings, my child’s tuition to a better life,” or “my family will be ruined by this,” were things I heard.  

When I first started taking these calls, I felt sympathy for the poor saps that fell for “Something like this.” It didn’t take long for that sympathy to evolve into empathy, as I began to see falling for these fraud schemes did not involve just the prototypical victims I imagined. I realized it could happen to anyone, including those I knew and loved, and a couple hundred more calls convinced me that this could happen to me. It wasn’t every call, of course, as some people did fall for some dumb tactics, but there were others, usually a couple calls a month, when I’d receive a call from someone who reminded me of myself, falling for something that I knew played on my vulnerabilities. I’d go back and investigate the history of the cybercriminal, through linked accounts, and I’d spot their tinkering.

Those of us who worked in this department also received death threats, but the more common reactions involved customers threatening to harm themselves. We heard these desperate people threaten to take their own life so often that our company developed a policy that instructed us to immediately contact their local law enforcement to do a wellness check on them, regardless if we felt we talked them down or not.   

To avoid hyperbole, most of the calls I received involved customers who got “A little ticked that they got got.” They got swindled, cheated, or tricked into paying for an item that was priced so low it was too good to be true. Most of the people I talked to paid twenty to thirty bucks for a product that should’ve cost four hundred to five hundred bucks. They were a little ticked, but “I should’ve known it was too good to be true”was their reaction. I took more than my share of calls from victims who were absolutely devastated by the amount of money these fraudsters tricked them into submitting, however, and “I really thought this was legit,” was their reaction. “I thought I was on the road to a better life.” What do we say to that? That guy probably couldn’t wipe the smile off his face one week, thinking about how he was going to spend all that money, and he then probably had trouble finding reasons to smile for a long time after this. 

When I was able to stop the money, the potential victims celebrated my name, and we laughed for a couple minutes, and they cried tears of joy at the end of our call. They said I was “Their hero.” One old woman wasn’t laughing or weeping with joy, she was bawling uncontrollably. She was so choked up that she couldn’t even speak. Her daughter took the phone from her mother and made me feel like the most special person in the world for one day of my life. 

There were times when the money was gone, out of our system, and the fraudster’s bank account. I instructed them that they would need to contact their local authorities. I instructed them what they should say, what evidence they should provide, and how I was going to provide notes on their account to detail the transaction(s) in a way that would bolster their case.   

These worst-case scenario calls would inevitably end with the victim saying, “Thank you, but let me ask you, based on your experience.” I would close my eyes with a lump in my throat, because I knew the back half of this question. “What do you think are my chances of getting my money back?” I’m in so deep at this point that I’m almost incapable of answering this question. I should add here that I was forbidden by my company from offering my opinion on a case that reached this point (This was for my protection and the company’s). Yet, even if my company hadn’t protected me in this way, I still would’ve felt so bad for them that I would’ve found it difficult to find the right words to say. How do you tell a little old woman that her worst fears of losing her home, her car, and the independent lifestyle she’s enjoyed her whole life are likely gone.

“Your chances of recovering the funds increase substantially if you follow the standard procedures I’ve outlined for you,” is what I would say. This would start a back and forth that would involve them trying to break me down for my opinion. “I’m just asking you, based on what you see and what you’ve seen, what are my chances?” I understood their need to badger me of course, because I was their only point of contact at this point, and they were imagining a bleak future. Before they allowed me off the phone, they wanted to know if they should have some small nugget of hope, or if they should concede to the idea that some criminal managed to not only steal their money, but the life they knew, and the future they planned. These people were devastated, and they wanted some low-level employee on the phone to give them some hope. I froze up on more than one occasion when they made the full breadth of their devastation apparent to me. I was incapable of telling them that the hopeless nature of their situation was probably just beginning.     

“You’re not paranoid if they’re really after you” 

We’re smart enough to spot a fraudster, and we know we wouldn’t fall for some piece of junk’s little games. We know how to spot a fraudster, because we’ve seen them on TV, and we’ve met them at our local, neighborhood liquor store. My experience as a fraud agent has informed me that I don’t know what to look for or how to spot a cybercriminal. There have no bullet point characteristics, and AND there are no bullet point characteristics of a victim either. Neither of them are more “worldly,” “street smart,” and it doesn’t matter if you “know how to play the game, because you’ve dealt with pieces of junk your whole life.” After dealing with both ends of the spectrum, receiving calls from victims and calling fraudsters, I didn’t grow more confident in my ability to spot a fraudster, I grew less confident. I became so uncomfortable with these situations that I became paranoid. I wouldn’t answer the phone from anyone I didn’t know, and on the rare occasion when I answered a call, I didn’t try to showcase my decade’s long experience. I hung up on them, or delete the email, or text as quickly as I could to avoid learning how vulnerable and susceptible I am. (I also avoid signing up for Customer Plus programs, petitions for local bills, and I now run from anyone associated with sales.) I provided a list of tips in the original draft of this article and I deleted it as I wrote earlier, but the best piece of advice I could provide anyone seeking how to avoid falling prey to internet fraud from cybercriminals is get paranoid. I write that knowing the cinematic phrase, “You’re not paranoid if they’re really after you,” and in my experience they’re all after you. Get paranoid!