Ten Technology Disasters

Ant writes "What do a 17th-century Swedish warship, an opulent Chicago theater and a Kansas City hotel "skyway" have in common? All met catastrophic ends and they have important lessons to teach today's innovators."

Comments

What about Banqiao and Shimantan dams

[btempleton]

A story that claims to be reporting on the greatest tech disasters, in particular the lesser known ones, and it fails to mention Banqiao and Shimantan in 1975?

I mean, not only was this the greatest technological disaster in human history with 80,000 to 230,000 dead depending on whose numbers you believe, but it also is sufficiently unknown that the author of an article on disasters doesn't appear to know of it!

Re:What about Banqiao and Shimantan dams

[nels_tomlinson]

A story that claims to be reporting on the greatest tech disasters, in particular the lesser known ones, and it fails to mention Banqiao and Shimantan in 1975?

Since the original post mentioned this as if we should be familiar with it, here're the details: A big dam in China failed, in large part because the Communist ideologues over-ruled the hydrologists. Many thousands died, but of course that's all right because the houses of the Party cadre were built on high ground. Click on that link for the fine print.

RISKS - assesment community

[DaveWood]

No discussion of the topic could be complete without mentioning RISKS. The RISKS Digest has been discussing risk factors associated with technology and engineering (and to some extent generally) on the internet since 1986.

Every engineer should spend time reading there. Any _good_ engineer should subscribe.

-David

When the corporation goes unregulated...

[stefanlasiewski]

This is what happens when you have a system that allows the corporation to run amuck.

The lowest bidder cannot be trusted to create products that are safe.

In these cases, it is good to still have some government oversight.

Re:Well, I read it, and I can't see any patterns..

[Registered Coward v2]

So does anybody know of a good reference work out there which actually has some worthwhile analysis on stuff like this? Didn't Feynmann write something up after Challenger?


Yes, it appeared as an appendix to the Roger's Report. He also discussed it in his autobigraphy either "Surely your joking..." or "What do you care...", I can't remember which. The appendix is a good read, and can be found here:
http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-re port.ht ml
or any of a number of other googleable links.

Forget Ye Not the Therac-25

[ewhac]

Even if you never get near embedded systems of this type, you can't call yourself a responsible software engineer until you read and learn from An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents.

Executive Summary: Company introduces next-generation radiation therapy machine, replacing hardware-based overdosage safety interlocks with software-based mechanisms. Software fails. People are killed.

Schwab

Navy's Dead ship

[reflexreaction]

An article on the NT problem is available here.

From the article

The Yorktown lost control of its propulsion system because its computers were unable to divide by the number zero, the memo said. The Yorktown's Standard Monitoring Control System administrator entered zero into the data field for the Remote Data Base Manager program. That caused the database to overflow and crash all LAN consoles and miniature remote terminal units, the memo said.

And a little bit later in the article

"If you understand computers, you know that a computer normally is immune to the character of the data it processes," he wrote in the June U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings Magazine. "Your $2.95 calculator, for example, gives you a zero when you try to divide a number by zero, and does not stop executing the next set of instructions. It seems that the computers on the Yorktown were not designed to tolerate such a simple failure."

GO ARMY!!!!!!!

or Halifax.

[s20451]

In 1917 collision between two ships in Halifax harbor -- one carrying close to 3000 tons of high explosive -- resulted in an explosion which levelled much of the city and killed 2000 people, in what was one of the largest non-nuclear manmade explosions in history.

No Common Thread...but...

[efuseekay]

every engineer has their own stories of how they SNAFU-ed. I have mine (one of the reasons why I wuss-ed out and now do theoretical physics instead :)).

Usually, the problem is :

(a) Pushing Envelope without prior analysis (Vasa)
(b) Not exercising Due Diligence in design (Tacoma Narrows)
(c) Failure of communication between departments (Mars Climate Orbiter : remember the units SNAFU?)
(d) Insufficent redundancy design (Iroquis Fire)
(e) Failure to recognize likely failure modes (Concorde, Titanic)

and others of course.

I've once fucked up an expensive spacecraft component because of (c). I worked on the mechanical design of the component housing, some electronics guy worked on the electronics detector sitting inside my housing. We have an innovative design whereby some of my mechanical supports were designed to keep some of his electronics ICs in place without the PCB board. The SNAFU : both of us thought the other is suppose to apply anti-vibration gell (layman's term here, we call it RTD...).

So the part was fab-ed, electronics put in, and the whole thing was sent to a vibration table for testing..

Result : a loose IC, clanking around the housing for 2 minutes at about 600Hz. The whole thing was toast.

funny?

[passion]

the Navy's dead Windows NT ship is tops for the funniest in my book.

Many psychologists have suggested that the emotion of humor has evolved as expressing relief from danger.

I find it truly frightening.

Re:Three Mile Island, Chernobyl. Is Tennessee next

[Melantha_Bacchae]

Phrogger wrote:

> First Three Mile Island. Then Chernobyl. Is Tennessee next?

Sorry, Tennessee would have to get in line. One of the most spectacular examples of stupidity causing a nuclear accident was at a plant in Tokai-mura on September 30th 1999, and it is the greatest nuclear plant accident in Japan's history. Basically, they dumped all the safety precautions and mixed themselves up a batch of acidic nuclear soup in a big steel bucket and stirred. Instant hot fission! You can read the World Nuclear Association's writeup here (it has a nifty table of different levels of nuclear catastrophe that is a must read):

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf37print.htm

The interesting thing is, Toho was filming on location at the Tokai plants for a Godzilla attack in the then upcoming "Godzilla 2000 Millenium". They were probably done with filming by the time the accident actually occured. In December 1999, the movie opened, with Godzilla heading over to attack the plants.

This wasn't the first one of Toho's monster movies to "come true", only one in a long history. Here are two other famous ones:

"Gojira" 1984: the Russians have a nuclear accident in the movie (in the original Japanese version, US version makes it a deliberate act). In 1986, the Russians had a real accident: Chernobyl.

"Mosura 3: King Ghidora Raisu" 1998: the King of Terror (King Ghidora) begins his attack on Tokyo by flying through the twin towers of a skyscraper. Office workers flee while talking on cell phones. The US version ... well there was no US version, except the real life one on September 11th, 2001. Tristar, why was "Rebirth of Mothra 3" never released so we could have been warned as Mothra clearly intended?

Sonora:"New Godzilla reading. He's moving inward toward Tokai."
Shinoda: "The nuclear plants, I knew it.
Sonora: "Afraid so."
Yuki: "Well, that's just lovely. Another Chernobyl."
"Godzilla 2000" (US version dialog)