It’s hard to decide what to bring and what to leave behind when you’re planning to take a front-row seat at a historic catastrophe. (You wouldn’t necessarily remember to bring an umbrella to the Hindenburg disaster, but it was raining in New Jersey that day.)

Many of the Earth’s greatest mishaps were lost in pre-history well before the record books and the discovery of the opposable pen-pushing thumb. Too bad the dinosaurs couldn’t write a memoir of their final days, but now time travelers can bear witness. Disasters are crowded with time-gawkers creating maximum-capacity issues. Vesuvius, Hindenburg, and 1906 San Francisco are standing-room-only. The Titanic’s captain has no idea that if he only focuses his binoculars behind the ship he’ll spot hundreds of spectators from the future paddling to watch him bite the dust.

Watching history’s disasters play out is morbid so have patience, act decently, and respect the victims of time’s disasters; most of all, be a good spectator.