Content Warning: This section discusses the death tolls of natural disasters.

The CDC was a secret society dedicated to the work of Alfred Wegener (1880-1930), a German climatologist and geologist. It was so secret that virtually no information is available about it outside of Patti Smith’s work. Today, there is an art collective called the Continental Drift Club that is also invested in carrying on Wegener’s legacy. It was inspired by the original CDC, but the groups are not connected. Smith is not one of the art collective’s listed members.

Smith only ever refers to Hurricane Sandy as “Sandy.” The storm, which hit the Caribbean and the east coast of the United States and Canada in late October of 2012, killed over 200 people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes. It was one of the most powerful and destructive Atlantic storms in recorded history. As Smith mentions in M Train, New York City suffered extensive damage during the storm. The Metropolitan Transit Authority stated that it was the worst disaster in the subway’s history, with seven subway tunnels flooding. Coastal areas in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island were particularly hard hit, and 53 people across New York State died in the storm (“