At whatever stage of development human society is, it is always and inextricably linked with the environment. At the beginning of the 21st century, our civilization is increasingly feeling the changes on the planet that it itself initiated. The more dangerous the intervention of mankind in nature, the more unpredictable and scary are its answers. However, the environment is far from always to blame for something: man-made accidents in 70% of cases occur due to the fault of the person himself.
Every year the number of such events is only growing, disasters of this nature happen, sadly, almost daily. Scientists testify that over the past 20 years their frequency has increased exactly twice. Unfortunately, behind all these figures lies a sad reality: man-made accidents are not only the tremendous costs of eliminating their consequences, but also crippled lives and people who died or remained crippled.
Basic information
By the way, what exactly is meant by this term? Everything is simple: fires, plane crashes, car accidents, other events that occurred due to human fault. The more our civilization relies on technical means of management, the more often technological accidents occur. This, alas, is an axiom.
Formation stages
Every event in the world does not happen “anyhow” and not immediately. Even a volcanic eruption is preceded by a certain phase of accumulation of molten magma. So in this case: technological disasters begin with an increase in the number of negative changes either in the industry or at a particular facility. Any catastrophe (even technogenic) occurs under the influence of decentralizing, destructive factors on the existing system. Technologists distinguish five phases of emergency development:
- Primary accumulation of deviations.
- Initiation of the process (terrorist attack, technical malfunction, negligence).
- Directly accident.
- The effect of the consequences, which can be very long.
- Measures to eliminate the accident.
Since we are considering technological accidents, we will analyze their main causes and predisposing factors:
- Oversaturation and excessive complexity of the production process.
- Initially made errors in the design and manufacture.
- Depreciation of equipment, obsolete means of production.
- Errors or intentional harm from staff, terrorist attacks.
- Misunderstanding during joint actions of various specialists.
Here are the main causes of technological accidents. I must say that as far back as 100-150 years ago, there were very few of their varieties: shipwreck, accident at the factory, etc. To date, the variety of production and technical means is such that a separate classification of technological accidents was required. We will analyze it.
Traffic accidents
This is the name of some extreme event involving vehicles that arose as a result of technical malfunctions or external influences, as a result of which property was damaged, significant damage was caused, people were killed or injured. In order to better understand the scale of such events, we give a few examples:
- 1977, Los Rodeos Airport (Canary Islands). A terrible accident when two Boeing 747s collided at once. As a result of the disaster, 583 people died. Today it is the largest and most terrible accident in the history of all civil aviation.
- 1985, the Japanese Boeing 747 of JAL 123 crashed into a mountain due to a navigation system error. The catastrophe claimed the lives of 520 people. Until today, this is considered the largest accident in a civilian aircraft.
- September 2001, USA. The infamous collision of planes with the towers of the World Trade Center. The exact death toll is still unknown.
Thus, the death of people is the worst thing that are caused by technological accidents. There are examples of similar disasters in the USSR:
- On November 16, 1967, when departing from Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk), the Il-18 crashed. All 130 people who were on board at that moment died.
- May 18, 1972 at the Kharkov airport, the An-10 crashed, falling to pieces when landing. Total killed 122 people. Subsequently, it turned out that the cause of such an absurd disaster was the deep design flaws of the machine itself. More aircraft of this type were not operated.
And now let's talk about what technological accidents and catastrophes can threaten everyone: after all, the chance of dying in a plane crash is extremely small, which can not be said, for example, about fires.
Fires and explosions
This is one of the most common natural and man-made disasters in the world, from ancient times to the present. They inflict huge material damage, colossal harm to nature, a large number of people die. Survivors experience psychological stress, which they often fail to manage on their own, as the help of a qualified psychologist is required.
When did such technogenic accidents occur in the recent past? Examples from the recent past:
- June 3, 1989 - a terrible event in the history of our country: not far from the town of Asha rolling stock of two passenger trains caught fire. Presumably, this happened due to gas leakage on the main gas pipeline. A total of 575 people died, among them - 181 children. The exact causes of the incident are still not clear.
- 1999, Mont Blanc Tunnel. The passenger car caught fire. The fire was so dispersed that it was possible to extinguish it only after two days. Killed 39 people. The companies that managed the maintenance of the tunnel, as well as the deceased truck driver, were found guilty.
What other man-made accidents exist? Examples, unfortunately, are numerous.
Accidents with the release (or threat) of potent poisons
In this case, a large number of substances are released into the external environment, which in their effect on living organisms are equivalent to strong poisons. Many of these compounds not only have a high degree of toxicity, but are also very volatile, quickly enter the atmosphere when the production cycle is disturbed. Such man-made accidents and catastrophes are really scary, because in their course a lot of people die, even more - they remain disabled, they give birth to children with terrifying genetic abnormalities and deformities.
One of the most terrible examples of this type of accident is the incident that once occurred in a branch of the American company Carbide Union. Since then, the Indian city of Bhopal is rightfully considered a synonym for hell on earth. A catastrophe happened in 1984: as a result of the incredible stupidity of the negligence of the staff, thousands of tons of methyl isocyanate, the strongest poison, fell into the atmosphere. All this happened late at night. By morning, entire apartments and streets were littered with corpses: the poison literally burned the lungs, and people, distraught from terrible pain, tried to run out into the air.
The American administration still says that 2.5 thousand people died then, only the population density in the city was such that, most likely, at least 20 thousand died. Another 70 thousand people remained disabled. In that locality, to this day, children are born with terrible deformities. What technological accidents can compete with leaks of potent poisons?
Radioactive catastrophes
One of the most dangerous varieties of disasters of technological origin. Radiation not only kills living organisms, but also provokes an avalanche-like increase in cellular damage and mutations: animals and people exposed to radiation almost certainly remain infertile, they develop numerous cancerous tumors, and their offspring, even if it can be born, very often affected by genetic defects. The first man-made accidents and catastrophes of this kind began to occur at the time when the mass operation of nuclear power plants and reactors producing weapons-grade uranium and plutonium was started.
Not so long ago, everyone was following the events in the Japanese town of Fukushima: judging by what is happening there now, this station will poison the Pacific Ocean with radioactive water for many more hundreds of years. The Japanese still cannot eliminate the consequences, and it is unlikely that they will succeed, since the molten nuclear fuel has gone far into the coastal soil. If we describe the "radioactive" technological accidents in Russia and the former USSR, then two cases come to mind at once: Chernobyl and the Mayak plant in the Chelyabinsk region. And if almost everyone knows about the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, then the accident at Mayak is known to few. It happened in 1957.
Ten years before, in 1947, it became completely clear that the country urgently needed a huge amount of weapons-grade uranium-235. To solve this issue, a large enterprise for the production of nuclear weapons components was built in the closed city of Ozersk. In the process, a tremendous amount of radioactive waste was generated. They merged into special “banks” located in cavities carved into rock. Their cooling was carried out using a steel coil. By the end of 1956, one of the tubes was leaking, the containers stopped cooling. A year later, the volume of active waste reached a critical mass and it all exploded …
Another example
But far from always the concept of a man-made accident implies explosions, fires and / or terrorist attacks. An ideal example is the American medical (!) Drug Therac-25, which went into serial production in 1982. Initially, this was the triumph of American physicians: the most sophisticated tool for radiation therapy was created exclusively through computer calculations! It was only later that it became clear that the “medicine” is exclusively radioactive, and there are still no exact data on the number of its victims. Given that it was removed from production only after a year, the number of victims is probably impressive …
In both of the above cases, the causes of technological accidents are commonplace - miscalculations in the initial design. At the time of the creation of the Mayak, people practically did not know that ordinary materials under the conditions of increased radiation background were degrading at an incredible speed, and the Americans were let down by the confidence in artificial intelligence and the greed of the heads of pharmacological companies.
Release of biohazardous substances
This term most often means getting into the external environment of biological weapons: war strains of the plague, cholera, smallpox, etc. It is clear that authorities around the world prefer not to spread about such incidents. Have such technological accidents occurred in Russia? Hard to tell. But in the USSR it was exactly like that. It happened in April 1979 in Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg). Then several dozen people fell ill with anthrax, and the strain of the pathogen was very unusual and did not correspond to the natural one.
There are two versions of what happened: an accidental leak from a secret research institute and a sabotage act. Contrary to the opinion of “espionage” among the Soviet leadership, the second version has the right to life: experts have repeatedly noted that outbreaks of the disease covered the site of the alleged “release” unevenly. This suggests that there were several sources of leakage. Moreover, in the "epicenter", near the ill-fated research institute, the number of cases was scanty. The bulk of the victims lived much further. And further. The Voice of America radio station spoke about what happened as early as the morning of April 5th. At this time, only a couple of cases were recorded, and they were diagnosed with pneumonia.
Sudden collapse of buildings
As a rule, the causes of technological accidents and catastrophes of this type are gross violations at the design and construction stage of buildings. The initiating factor is the activity of heavy equipment, adverse weather conditions, etc. Environmental pollution is minimal, but often the accident is accompanied by the death of a large number of people.
An ideal example is Transvaal Park. This is an entertainment complex in Moscow whose roof collapsed on February 14, 2004. At that time, at least 400 people were in the building, and at least 1/3 of them were children who came with their parents to the children's pool. Total killed 28 people, eight children. The total number of injured - 51 people, at least 20 children. The version of the attack was initially considered, but everything turned out to be much worse: the designer saved as much as possible on the construction, as a result of which the supporting structures were more decorative than real roof support. Under a relatively small load of snow, she collapsed on the heads of people resting.
The collapse of energy systems
These incidents can be divided into two categories:
- Accidents at power plants, accompanied by a long interruption in power supply.
- Accidents on power supply networks, as a result of which consumers are again deprived of the supply of electricity or other energy resources.
For example, on May 25, 2005, such a collapse took place in the city of Moscow, as a result of which not only several large areas of the metropolis were left without electricity, but also many areas near Moscow, as well as some settlements near Kaluga and Ryazan. Several thousand people were blocked for some time on subway trains, many doctors conducted critical operations literally in the light of flashlights.
