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Bhopal Disaster Revisited [updated]
On December 3, 1984, a chemical plant run by Union Carbide and located in Bhopal, India
released about 40 tons of a toxic gas which was an intermediate chemical used in creating pesticides. (That is, the plant was in the business of creating chemicals deadly to life.) Safety at the plant had not been a concern of management; numerous safety systems were offline or non-functional. The gas cloud drifted over the city and killed thousands of people, and inflicted permanent injury to hundreds of thousands more. It was the worst industrial accident to date. Today, the site remains a contaminated wasteland, unusable and never cleaned up. The survivors have been minimally compensated, but as time passes, enough of them have died that compensation may now be in the works. Update: 12/03 15:51 GMT by M : Whoops, just kidding, the Reuters story linked there is wrong; the BBC was apparently hoaxed into putting a Dow spokesman on TV who wasn't actually a Dow spokesman. Dow has no plans to clean up the facility and no plans to compensate the survivors. Hope this clears things up.
Is this really news for nerds? Sorry to complain, but I really doubt it falls under the nerd category. Since it happened 20 years ago, is it even stuff that matters? My last complaint (sorry its Friday and I want to go home) is that I don't really think that this is technology that necessarily failed. I don't know a lot about this, but most technology includes safety features to prevent failures. If human's turn them off I call that human error rather than a failure of technology. Bah!
I completely agree. After all, most companies and countries have agreed that they have to reduce on greenhouse gases, they have to invest in alternative energies, they have to care for the social cost of their business much, much more. This is what makes me and many other people so optimistic about the future. The main problems are solved or at least there are plans underway to solve them.
Let's look forward to a bright future, which is good for both corporations and small people. A future which has education for all people, enough food for all, a clean environment for all and hope and health for all.
At least if they are Christians.
Otherwise let's bomb them back to the stone age.
Well, well
How do we blame Microsoft for it? Alternatively, what does it have to do with /. ? Not in the "politics" section even.
Also - I don't know whether Hiroshima counts as an "accident" but it was much worse.
So why isn't in the Science section? Note who posted this: Michael. This is just another case where Michael is using the Slashdot front page to rant. He's a big fan of corporation bashing.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Let the insane neocons come out of the wood work babbling about this being "the cost of doing business" in their twisted way. If there's anything I hate, it's the fucking neocons.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Nothing. It's just that people need to place the blame on someone. I can't be the fuck-up who actually caused the accident, that's probably some poor Indian idiot. It has to be some high level executive from the U.S.