i did this with air disasters. i'd been terrified of flying for many years so i immersed myself in every kinds of media i could find on the topic. i found it oddly comforting (though i definitely overthink things whilst in the air at times). geeking out has helped me navigate some tense moments.
The audio recordings of pilots and air traffic controllers doing their best Chuck Yeager voice during a malfunction and going through checklists and binders and clipboards is immensely reassuring to me. There's contingency plans for all the contingency plans. Everyone involved made their bed well enough to bounce a quarter off of it that morning and (where applicable) trimmed their mustaches to conform to some NIST standard. The drilling! Such drilling.
A few years ago a passenger plane had a window blow out and some other problems. In the radio recordings the pilot, a former military flying instructor, sounded completely unperturbed.
