History Main / FailSafeFailure

* In most episodes of ''Series/{{Thunderbirds}}'', disasters were caused, or at least not averted, by faulty safety equipment or poor engineering. Examples included bridges that collapsed as soon as their maximum load limit was exceeded, aircraft whose nuclear reactor shielding failed if the flight was delayed, failure to survey sites properly before beginning major engineering projects, and numerous vehicles without a DeadManSwitch or equivalent.
* In the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode [[Recap/SupernaturalS09E02DevilMayCare "Devil May Care" (S09, Ep02)]], Kevin is locked in the bunker unable to contact anyone after the sensors detected the falling angels.

Compare the way Hollywood treats personal vehicles when the owner is always [[DrivesLikeCrazy Driving Like Crazy]] or [[TheAllegedCar leaving his car in a state of neglect]], In Hollywood a decrepit car that endangers its occupants and everyone around it is frequently [[RuleOfFunny treated as comedy]], and all to often this same insouciance extends to things capable to inflicting serious damage should one lose control of them. There's usually NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup or Lock-out/Tag-out procedures, and the BigRedButton is frequently unguarded

* Starships in ''Literature/HonorHarrington'', especially warships, are built with numerous failsafes that usually work as intended. Occasionally though, Weber falls into this trope, such as when one of the circuit breakers protecting a fusion plant from power surges is itself knocked out, destroying the ship.

* Averted in the ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine DS9]]'' novel ''Valhalla''. A [[AIIsACrapshoot sentient]], [[DrivenToSuicide suicidal]] [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal starship]] tries to blow itself up by running its fission pile too hot. (Un)fortunately, a mechanical failsafe triggers, wrecking the drive in the process.
* In the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' novel, ''Time's Enemy'' it is shown that the self-destruct command for Jem'Hadar ships is simply "Destruct" in their own language. There is no override, there is no countdown. This is simple and, with the mindset of the Jem'Hadar, the perfect method.

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What's a failsafe? Well, the world is full of a lot of dangerous machinery and devices. Huge electrical turbines and nuclear reactors, Power lines carrying enough juice to light a whole city and pipelines carrying megatons of explosive petroleum. Trains speeding down the tracks at 300 km/h, semi trucks that weigh in excess of 40 tons rolling down the freeways, aircraft that weigh more than ''400'' tons flying over our heads. And that's just the stuff that ''isn't'' designed to kill anyone. There's plenty of stockpiled bombs, missiles and such out there too. These could all cause some spectacular collateral damage if they suddenly went out of control.

* The B-movie ''{{Evolver}}'' involves a failed military robot (which ended up killing dozens of soldiers during a training exercise) being re-purposed as a household laser-tag toy. Needless to say, the robot reverts to its original programming and starts killing people. When its creator attempts to use the verbal shutdown code that worked during the training exercise, the robot simply rejects the override and kills the guy.

* In most episodes of ''{{Thunderbirds}}'', disasters were caused, or at least not averted, by faulty safety equipment or poor engineering. Examples included bridges that collapsed as soon as their maximum load limit was exceeded, aircraft whose nuclear reactor shielding failed if the flight was delayed, failure to survey sites properly before beginning major engineering projects, and numerous vehicles without a DeadManSwitch or equivalent.

** Another example of it actually working would be in episode 13, when the viral angel attacks Nerv. When one of the Simulation Evas reaches for the Pribnow Box, an emergency shatter-and-pull mechanism blows the arm off, protecting the crew in the Box. The makers probably only allowed that because [[strike:the alternative would be killing off some main characters all too soon]] dying that way is not painful enough in Hideaki Anno's twisted, twisted imagination.

** Why an experiment of this type actually even needs an ordinary door is a pretty significant question. It would only need a small hatch that is closed at all times, except when experimental material is being put in, and even more intricately closed larger hatch for necessary repairwork, with parts that make the system completely disabled while open.

* GreenLantern actually does have several failsafes which kick in, shutting down if the wearer breaks Lantern Code, reserving a small supply of energy the lantern normally can't access to protect the wearer from mortal energy and so forth. But Lanterns have been able to override the latter failsafe to continue fighting after their normal reserve is depleted (and given that lanterns are selected for fearlessness, it seems silly to allow that.) Also Hal Jordan was able to override the former failsafe after his ring was depleted for insubordination by drawing energy from a Guardian's construct.

* ''DrStrangelove'' has a pretty much identical plot to ''Fail-Safe'' (see Literature below), but the attack is a result of human intervention rather than mechanical failure (although it is a mechanical failure because of an attack that prevents one of the bombers from being recalled).

* ''[[EndersGame Speaker for the Dead]]'' got that bit right on a planet-busting bomb: "Disarming it is easy. Arming it is near impossible."

* A textbook example from ''TheMachinist'': a worker is repairing a broken machine when someone accidentally leans on the On button (which is only possible because the workshop has NoOSHACompliance ''whatsoever''). Hammering on the Off button does absolutely nothing, the repair worker is dragged into the machine and loses his arm. It's not clear what was wrong with the machine to start with, but it might have been a good idea for someone to ''disconnect the power'' before sticking his arm in there.

* In the notorious Creator/IrwinAllen disaster flop ''Film/TheSwarm'' (1978) the killer bees attack a nuclear power station, and cause it to blow up almost instantly when one of the technicians falls across a random instrument panel. Also the actual core is [[YouFailNuclearPhysicsForever completely exposed to the air without any evident shielding]].
* In the Film/JamesBond film ''Film/{{Thunderball}}'', an assassin tries to kill Bond by turning up the setting on a spine-stretching exercise machine he's strapped into. Bond blacks out and is only saved by a nurse happening to enter the room just in time. Leaving us to wonder why the hell the machine was even designed to be able to go that fast.

* Justified in ''TheTakingOfPelhamOneTwoThree'' where the safety devices on a NewYorkSubway train are actually a plot point. The police believe the Dead Man's Handle will prevent the villains jumping off the train while it's moving, but they've actually rigged up a system to hold down the lever. Later as the train appears to be careening out of control, it's eventually stopped by the safety devices built into the track.
* In ''{{Outbreak}}'', a lab technician is infected with ThePlague when he [[TooDumbToLive carelessly opens and reaches into a centrifuge]] while it's still spinning, breaking a vial of infected blood and cutting his hand. In RealLife, lids on most (but not all) centrifuges lock until the spinning has completely stopped; for these models, it's ''impossible'' to open one while it's still in motion.
* In the 1971 film version of ''TheAndromedaStrain'', the lab has a nuclear [[SelfDestructMechanism self-destruct device]], with three substations (to disarm the bomb) per floor, but it's discovered they need five per floor, and are in the process of adding them, but they haven't been finished (this is a government installation, of course). When the self-destruct countdown is activated, team leader Stone, along with the only team member who has the shut-off key, are trapped in a section with an unfinished nuclear destruct shut-off substation. Stone cries out, "When the bomb goes off, there'll be a thousand mutations! [The virus] Andromeda will spread everywhere, they'll never be rid of it!" He touches the other team member and points at the exposed, unfinished shut-off substation. "The defense system is perfect, Mark, it'll even bury our mistakes."

** In fact, you would actually want the bomb to ''not'' be able to be turned off by the people in the facility. If they have been infected by something, but not yet dead, what if they panic and try to leave? You would ''want'' them to not be able to stop the bomb and and escape. Nuking a small number of people deep underground is a small price to pay to stop a dangerous pathogen like this one (other than its ability to feed on nuclear energy) from escaping. A major plot point in the novel the film is based on covers this psychological aspect, that is, only one member of the entire research staff should have the ability to call off the self-destruct sequence, and is entrusted with said authority under the assumption that he ''will'' allow the entire facility to be sterilized (including himself) to neutralize a deadly pathogen and is in essence only there to stop it from going off accidentally.
* For something less high-tech, SylvesterStallone's 1993 film ''Cliffhanger'' starts with Gabe (Stallone's character) climbing up a mountain to rescue friends Hal and Sarah. To get to the rescue helicopter they have to pull themselves on a line stretched across chasm suspended by their climbing harness and a carabiner (a big metal clip). When Sarah is in the middle of the crossing the carabiner starts to buckle and Gabe goes on the line to catch her but he is too late and she falls to her death. The problem with that scene is that a carabiner is designed to withstand the weight of a falling climber, a standard one would have a rated strength of 23 kilonewtons while the static load of a of a Hollywood starlet would would be around 0.5 kilonewton. At that point viewers who knew their climbing may feel their WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief shatter with the carabiner.

* [[AvertedTrope Averted]], [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] and [[JustifiedTrope justified]] in quick succession in the climactic scene of the movie version of ''Film/TheHuntForRedOctober''.

** [[IncrediblyLamePun The Sub Version]]: The commandeering of the Red October is interrupted by the arrival of a russian Alfa-class attack sub, which launches a torpedo. Captain Ramius orders the sub steered into the torpedo's path at full throttle, closing the distance before the torpedo's warhead can arm itself - its safety features work a little ''too'' well.

* Averted and lampshaded a bit in the book ''TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey''. The makers of the failsafes of the airlock doors had mentioned, "We can protect you from stupidity, we can't protect you from malice."

* In the climax of ''Literature/TheShining'' (the Stephen King book), lead character Jack Torrance desperately tries to cool down the main boiler of the Overlook Hotel, while Danny, Wendy and Mr. Hallorann escape on a snowmobile. At first, it looks as though the boiler (which has to be constantly maintained) will return to acceptable levels, but the pressure is already too great, and the boiler blows up, taking Jack, the hotel and the topiary animals with it. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in this case as the boiler is explicitly described as both very old and very dangerous; the hotel manager has been bribing the safety inspector for ''years'' to keep it from being forcibly replaced.
* As above, the ''TheAndromedaStrain''. The bacterium mutates and destroys gaskets... that are protecting the lowest, most secure level from being contaminated. A nuclear bomb is set to destroy the base, and since the bacterium mutates with levels of energy, it'll cause a worldwide outbreak.
* In ''TheStand'', the engineered superflu virus nicknamed "Captain Trips" is accidentally released from a top secret installation in the High Mojave, and, unfortunately for the rest of the world, a security guard is able to escape because the doors to his station (which he thought erroneously to be "clean") did not magnetically lock at the moment of the installation's containment breach. The guard takes his family and flees, making it all the way to East Texas before dying. General Billy Starkey, the man charged with the containment operation, later [[LampshadeHanging comments]] on this fact.
* In DaveBarry 's ''Literature/BigTrouble'', it is mentioned that the corrupt MegaCorp built a new prison in downtown Miami using off-the-shelf garage door openers to power the cell doors open and shut. Someone accidentally hit their garage door opener button while driving by soon after the jail was filled, and ''every door in the place opened''. [[HilarityEnsues Hilarity Ensued]].

* In the StarfleetCorpsOfEngineers series, a Federation space probe in one story (actually entitled ''Failsafe'') suffers a FailsafeFailure, requiring the crew undergo a mission to retrieve it from a pre-warp planet. Sonya Gomez even seems to lampshade the improbability.

* Averted in ''[[EndersGame Children of the Mind]]'', where an active MD Device is quickly and easily disarmed by a technician. The tech notes that the [[EarthShatteringKaboom planet-atomizing superweapon]] was deliberately designed to be easy to turn off... turning it on, on the other hand, is really hard.
* In SergeyLukyanenko's ''Emperors of Illusions'' (part of the ''Line of Delirium'' trilogy), [[spoiler:Arthur van Curtis]] holds the command crew of an [[TheEmpire Imperial]] cruiser at gunpoint while the ship is in [[SubspaceOrHyperspace hyperspace]]. He orders the crew to prepare to drop the ship out of hyperspace without first slowing down. In this case, the ship enters normal space at relativistic speeds and, by the time it will slow down, decades or even centuries will pass for the rest of the universe. This has happened before, and yet nobody decided to make deceleration a ''standard'' part of dropping out of hyperspace instead of simply a step that a crewmember might one day forget to do.

* In the novel ''The Dorset Disaster', a nuclear reactor explodes due to a FailsafeFailure, because someone tampered with the settings that controlled when the reactor should SCRAM-In a bit of similarity to the RealLife Chernobyl incident, it was SCRAM-ing too often and annoying the people running the plant. So they changed the settings, and that led to a big kaboom.

** Particularly ridiculous is the season one finale of ''Voyager'', where the "manual" override on a door lock is shut down by a power failure, negating the very purpose of a manual override in the first place. As SFDebris put it, "That's like having an emergency light that plugs into a wall socket, or a parachute with a rope attached back to the airplane."

*** This case was brought up as a way to show that one of the characters had gone ''crazy'' from a [[MakesSenseinContext pregnancy]].

* In one episode of ''Series/BattlestarGalacticaReimagined'', two characters stuck in a leaking airlock are told that the "manual override" for the door had failed. This provided an excuse to space the pair in an over-the-top CG-fest. It's good to know that no major space craft will ever carry a crowbar.

* Justified in an episode of ''TheOuterLimits'', the technicians who created a planet busting bomb are being tortured to provide information on the bomb. The bomb itself is sitting in the room. The technicians find out how to bypass all of the safety measures and arm the bomb...only to find out they are on Earth undergoing a psychological stress test. Of course [[TooDumbToLive they used the real bomb]].

* Played absolutely straight in Season 4 of ''[[Series/TwentyFour 24]]'', where Marwan The Wonder Terrorist manages to steal a MacGuffin that can cause every nuclear reactor in America to go into simultaneous meltdown. How one electronic device could ''untraceably'' hit over 100 sites at once AND bypass the dozens of failsafes, manual breakers, and shunts present at every site [[MST3KMantra they don't even try to explain]] (let alone WHY an American company would make such a thing).

* Averted in [[TheSarahConnorChronicles Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles]] wherein a nuclear power plant's failsafes DO kick in, but a T-888 deliberately sabotages them one by one.

* ''AceCombat5'': During an airshow turned firefight, Chopper gets shot up by enemy forces, damaging most of his plane's internal systems. He still flies for a minute or so to find a safe place to land, [[spoiler:but by that time, his eject system is damaged too heavily for him to eject. He dies in the following crash.]]
* ''{{Half-Life}}'': When things go awry at the Anomalous Materials research department of the Black Mesa science facility, the classic exchange is heard:

** Justified in ''Half-Life 2: Episode 1''. The Citadel's dark energy reactor had a failsafe that was deactivated by the Combine as part of a XanatosGambit. Reactivating the failsafe doesn't prevent the reactor GoingCritical as its condition had already deteriorated, but it slows the process enough to allow the rebels to evacuate.
* In the ''Portal'' game series, we find that GlaDOS had an emergency red phone in the control room, so scientists could call if she had problems. Too bad she killed all of the scientists with deadly neurotoxin before the call could be made.

* Not actually a failsafe, but certainly a countermeasure: in the ''XWingSeries'', it's mentioned that X-Wings have a system to be triggered when they are powerless in flight which should turn the power back on. It is never shown working. It works in the books, though.

* ''BraveFencerMusashi'': Whoever designed Steamwood is NOT an engineer. Any damage at all to it results in catastrophic pressure build-up which can only be released with ''eight'' separate valves on ''separate floors'' which have the most convoluted method of operation seen even in a video game. I'm surprised Grillin' Village is more than a steaming crater.
* In the {{Infocom}} game ''VideoGame/{{Suspended}}'', the player [[BlessedWithSuck wins]] a lottery to [[HumanPopsicle function as a fail-safe]] for the global weather control systems. Of course, when everything goes wrong, it turns out the player's robots are broken, the repair center is a mess, [[spoiler:your provided documentation contains errors]], and nobody actually told you how to find out what the problem is or how to fix it. [[spoiler:Of course if you are taking too long to fix the problem and the casualties are piling up, actual repairmen will show up to deal with the issue. They start by turning you off -- as it's assumed these failures could only occur if ''you were causing them''.]]
* VideoGame/MightAndMagic VIII plays with it. From your perspective, the failsafe itself[[note]]Once Escaton has begun the process of destroying a world - which he only does if it is infested by Kreegan and he deems it unable to remove that infestation even with his help - he cannot willingly stop, no matter what[[/note]] ''is'' the failure (as it will cause the destruction of the world, all for no gain). From the perspective of the ones that implemented the failsafe, the failsafe works perfectly, you just happen to be collateral damage (as the reason ''why'' the failsafe is there is to stop the [[ChaoticEvil Kreegan]] from subverting Escaton).

* Parodied in a ''Homestar Runner'' cartoon. In a Strong Bad e-mail that parodies ''Franchise/StarTrek,'' Strong Bad activates "the forward humbuckers" to prevent his ship from colliding with a comet. A message comes up on a screen saying "the forward humbuckers have never worked."

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Ben10}}: Secret of the Omnitrix'', the titular device gets messed with in such a way as to cause it to start a countdown to an explosion that will destroy the universe. The subversion is that [[spoiler:that ''is'' the failsafe. The creator figured that destroying the universe itself was better than having the thing fall into the wrong hands.]] Which raises a number of questions that have never really been resolved.
* During the first SeasonFinale of ''{{Megas XLR}}'', Coop frantically searches his dashboard for a [[ContextSensitiveButton button]] that will save the world, only to discover that the button actually labeled "Save the World" was marked "Out of Order".

* In one episode of ''{{Archer}}'', a computer virus infects the mainframe and threatens to upload all the spies' names to the virus' creator. They get the idea to just unplug the mainframe until everything can be sorted out, but it turns out the mainframe has a battery backup. Behind a nearly indestructible locked door. Whose lock is controlled by the mainframe.

* In the BugsBunny cartoon ''Hare Lift'', Bugs and Yosemite Sam are aboard a pilot-less aircraft. After an extended argument, [[ItMakesSenseInContext Bugs rips out the plane's steering yoke]]. In response, Sam pushes a button marked "autopilot". A [[SkeleBot9000 thin, beeping robot]] then emerges and upon seeing the condition of the plane's controls, immediately grabs one of two parachutes and jumps.

* DarwinAwards are often awarded to people who go to extreme lengths to override failsafes in their determined effort to get from point A to B or retrieve a fallen object or some similar minor objective. Like [[http://darwinawards.com/personal/personal2000-39.html this man]], who had to try ''really'' hard before he could get run over.
** Don't try to unjam a woodchipper without turning it off first, or you might {{Fargo}}-ify yourself, as at least one Darwin Award winner did.

** However, the disaster could have have had far more serious consequences. Windscale was air-cooled. Core temperature was kept under control with a series of fans, and the waste heat was exhausted into the air. On the suggestion of Nobel prize-winning nuclear pioneer Sir John Cockcroft the cooling towers were fitted with expensive, complex air filters, which were originally pooh-poohed on account of the work involved - the towers had already been constructed by the time Cockroft found out about them, and the filters were large, heavy structures that had to be built on top of the towers. As it turned out, the filters prevented the release of red-hot nuclear particulates into the environment, although the release of radiation was nonetheless substantial.

** As ''MythBusters'' demonstrated with a gas cylinder, it punched a nice, clean hole through a cinder block wall they'd built for the test. In the process, the ''wall was shoved back noticeably'' and the wall behind said cinder block wall was nearly punched through itself.
* In the original space shuttle design that caused the ''Challenger'' disaster, the joints between booster rockets segments were sealed by two thin rubber o-rings, the second ring supposedly holding secure in case the first ring was burnt out. The SRB design itself wasn't flawed. It worked fine -- so long as you maintained mission parameters and didn't try to operate a solid-fuel rocket dependent on o-rings well below temperatures for which it was rated, or reused parts that were obviously deteriorating. The Morton-Thiokol engineers who designed it knew this and objected to NASA and their own higher-ups overriding their recommendations. Thanks to near-freezing temperatures at the launch ''both'' rings failed to seal and were vaporized. There was nothing else to stop the leaking flame from the rocket burning away one of the support brackets holding the booster to the external fuel tank, which subsequently ruptured and broke apart due to aerodynamic forces when the insufficiently secured booster smashed its nose into the tank. Also, pressure suits and the cockpit ejector seats had been discarded after the first few missions since crews of seven couldn't be ejected during launch. In the two-deck orbiter design only the pilot and commander could have ejected, and possibly the two crew seated behind. Because they were a deck down, other passengers (in ''Challenger'''s case, including teacher-in-space Christa [=McAuliffe=]) would have died anyway. By contrast the earlier Apollo and Mercury launchers were both equipped with escape towers -- separate rocket systems that pull the crew capsule off of and away from from a faulty booster rocket -- while the side-by-side Gemini design allowed for ejection. And there have been two different Cosmonaut crews saved from certain death by the escape towers launching their Soyuz capsules away from an exploding rocket.

* As shown on ''MythBusters'': plugged safety valve on water heater + thermostat failure = [[SteamPunk steam-powered]] [[NoKillLikeOverkill ballistic missile]]. As reported all over the news, one such incident occurred in a strip mall in Burien, WA on July 28, 2001.

** Similarly, the British Navy during WorldWarOne had one of the safest and most efficient systems of transferring explosives from turrets to magazines. Unfortunately, [[GeneralRipper Admiral David Beatty]] of the Battle Cruiser Fleet thought that they weren't efficient enough, and so decided not to use them, unlike his superior and commander of the Grand Fleet Admiral Jellicoe. The result? At the Battle of Jutland, both the battlecruisers of the Battle Cruiser Fleet and the dreadnoughts of the Grand Fleet sustained similar hits. But while the dreadnoughts stood up beautifully, firing back and damaging several of their German counterparts so badly that they were effectively forced out the war, three battlecruisers exploded in as many minutes.
* {{Inversion}}: Electrical codes require failsafe protection (fuses or circuit breakers, for example) to be on all circuits, to stop the current flow in the circuit when the wire gets hot enough to possibly catch on fire. Aspiring electricians will have the failsafe rules for preventing electrical fires hammered into their heads repeatedly (electrical fires being as much as if not more of a danger than electrical shock). So it is jarring at first, to learn that circuits for fire pumps MUST NOT have any fuses or circuit breakers of any kind. Why? If the fire pump is running, it is assumed there is already a fire, and a fuse or breaker breaking the circuit (and shutting off the pump) isn't going to improve the situation.

** Another problem was the control room was equipped with more than 120 separate dials, alarms, and gages, making it very difficult to isolate the root cause when the the accident triggered virtually of them all at once.

** BP's safety record is one of the worst in that regard, in that the disabling the failsafes and monitors to increase productivity seems to be a SOP for the company. For example, the earlier Texas City Refinery Explosion occured partly because someone disabled an overflow alarm, which, when the other one broke, started a chain reaction that killed 17 people.

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->''"My failsafe spell... failed?!"''
-->-- '''Twilight Sparkle''', ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic''

* This sort of thing seems to happen all the damn time in the ''FinalDestination'' franchise, to the point that its a wonder that horrific freak accidents don't happen constantly. Some of these failures, though apparently outlandish, are still within the realm of possibility, however unlikely.

*** Just thrice in the history of the franchise[[hottip:*:VOY episode "Day of the Dead", Film/StarTrekInsurrection and the [[Film/StarTrek 2009 preboot]] has core ejection worked. All were plot points.
**** In the [[Film/StarTrek 2009 preboot]], the core wasn't even malfunctioning. Ejecting it was a part of an IndyPloy to push the ship out of a [[UnrealisticBlackHole black hole]]. So, all we know about Starfleet safety features is that they sometime work under normal conditions.
**** Similarly in Film/StarTrekInsurrection, the core was not malfunctioning. It was detonated to seal a subspace tear.

** It also includes a slight variant on the Trope. When the bomber plane is damaged after getting hit by a missle, a pilot's surveying of the problems ends with, "I think the self-detonation device got hit and blew itself up."
* This is parodied in ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'' when, after the BigRedButton is pushed activating the self-destruct, the computer says in the last few seconds that they can stop it by pressing a button to cancel. The button, of course, has a big "out of order" sign hanging on it, which prompts Dark Helmet to shout, "FUCK! Even in the future, nothing works!"

* In ''Film/LiveFreeOrDieHard'' the bad guys blow up an entire natural gas facility by routing all the gas to it, never mind the fact that there would be dozens of failsafes to prevent the necessary overpressure from breaking anything at all much less exploding. Of course the bad guys used the power of HollywoodHacking to pull it off and since computers are magical it all makes sense.
** And apparently [[EverythingIsOnline none of the failsafes are purely mechanical]], either.
** Not so ridiculous after all: I knew a guy who worked with the Italian natural gas agency and he told me that when the distribution system was computerized (about 1970) the master mainframe was put in an underground vault with armed guards at the door, because causing large accidents and property damage by inputting purposely wrong commands wasn't outside the realm of possibility. He may have been exaggerating, and automatic protection systems have come a long way since then, but still.

** To expand on the "incompetent design:" There were two radiation sources. One was low power and meant to be used more or less directly, the other was about ''100 times'' more powerful and was meant to be run through a lot of extra hardware that would diffuse it to safe levels. There was software to prevent human error from activating the high-power beam without all its accompanying hardware engaged... But pressing a key at just the right instant would crash that module. ''Oooops.''