laserviking42
from End-World
Since: Oct, 2015
Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
#27: May 16th 2022 at 9:37:08 PM
That's one bad judgment call followed by another bad judgment call. Neither are disasters in and of themselves (again, which is what the trope requires). It was the over-correction which put the plane into a graveyard spiral, which is bad piloting, that is the only disaster.
The trope isn't "here's a list of bad things that led up to a disaster", that list would be endless (and we're seeing it on the page with the tremendous bloat). The trope is "one disaster leads to another disaster which leads to another and so on". One of the reasons I pushed for the trope to be NRLEP is precisely because we're getting all these shoehorns and arguable Wikipedia plagiarism.
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
Carnildo
Since: Jan, 2001
#28: May 16th 2022 at 11:53:06 PM
Condensed version of Speedbird 5390:
- British Airways flight 5390
: During routine maintenance, one panel of the windscreen was replaced using the wrong bolts: 84 of the 90 were too narrow, while the other six were too short. During the next flight, the windscreen panel blew out. The wind from the resulting Explosive Decompression carried the captain partially out of the window. He was saved when his knees caught on the control yoke — but this disconnected the autopilot and put the airplane in a steep dive. Despite all this, the co-pilot managed to land the airplane with only two people injured: the captain suffered frostbite, severe bruising, and several broken bones, while an air steward who held on to his belt to keep him from sliding further out the window suffered frostbite and a dislocated shoulder.
Look suitable for putting back?
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#29: May 17th 2022 at 3:24:43 AM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Question about this example: where’s the endpoint “disaster” here? The airplane was landed with minimal injuries and no one died. If everyone who had a dislocated shoulder and frostbite as a result of something qualified as a disaster, there’d be no end of entries that qualify.
I say cut it.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#30: May 17th 2022 at 4:03:21 AM
Albert 3105, the Software folder has one entry, and I posted it on the thread already. It’s the entry that starts off with “npm.” I don’t see how this qualifies as a disaster, and think it should go.
If you have any issues with it, let me know very shortly. I’ll assume silence means consent to cut.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#31: May 17th 2022 at 4:06:05 AM
I also think any example that smells like Wikipedia plagiarism should be cut immediately. They can always be rewritten later for reapproval if someone thinks they belong.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#32: May 17th 2022 at 7:08:12 AM
Laserviking 42, regarding the Environmental folder, I think that's a good solution. I had actually brought up the Fukushima one as Not An Example and loaded with natter earlier. I support your thoughts fully.
Edited by BoltDMC on May 17th 2022 at 7:12:14 AM
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#33: May 17th 2022 at 7:11:23 AM
As requested, here's the Politics folder:
Politics
- The debacle of the 1968 Democratic presidential primary was set off by Lyndon Johnson's under-performance in the New Hampshire contest. Johnson was allowed to run for another term because he was sworn in with less than two years left on John F. Kennedy's term. He was a popular incumbent, but a growing faction of Democratic politicians were starting to become vocal about their opposition to his Vietnam policies. However, no one wanted to challenge a very effective President of their own party; efforts to recruit people like JFK's brother Bobby to run went nowhere. Finally, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota challenged Johnson, but his late entry meant he had to pour all of his team's resources into New Hampshire. He only lost to Johnson by seven points on March 12; Bobby Kennedy entered just a few days later. On March 31, Johnson officially announced that he wasn't going to seek another term to save face, putting his support behind his vice president, Hubert Humphrey. At that point, the Democrats were basically a coalition of four smaller parties: (1) segregationist Dixiecrats who supported Humphreynote , (2) labor unions who also supported Humphrey, (3) student anti-war activists behind McCarthy, and (4) a diverse coalition of working class and non-WASPs (like northeastern Catholics and African-Americans) who supported RFK. So in the spring before an election, the party was fractured with no clear leader or incumbent. Humphrey and Kennedy eventually pulled ahead but neither had enough delegates to claim victory heading into the convention and neither would concede, so the deciding state would be California. Kennedy was assassinated on the night of June 5th after declaring victory in the state, further throwing the process into chaos and leaving the anti-war faction without a leader to rally behind. Humphrey became the presumptive nominee. At the convention in Chicago, anti-war protests started. Since this was the first election where most families had a television, footage of the Chicago police brutally clashing with the protesters was broadcast for the whole country to see. Humphrey's campaign (which was strongly allied with mayor of Chicago Richard Daley who had ordered the police crackdown) never was able to rebound for the general; he lost the popular vote to Richard Nixon by only about .7%, with Nixon carrying 32 states.
- Several political upsets have occurred because of a chain of events occurring that made everything worse.
- Barack Obama's election in 2008, while many considered likely simply based on the fact the presidency usually flipped every eight years, was greatly aided by the many missteps of the Republican Party. George W. Bush was incredibly unpopular due to his administration's handling of the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina, combined with a series of scandals that dogged the GOP in 2006 (enabling Democrats to retake Congress), but he was also aided by the fact that John McCain was seen as Bush 2.0 among voters who wanted change. McCain's decision to pick Sarah Palin backfired disastrously, as her performance with Katie Couric and frequent portrayal on Saturday Night Live highlighted her lack of foreign policy experience, along with her many gaffes. The biggest domino, and the one that tipped the election decisively to Obama, was the 2008 financial crisis, where Bush was forced to authorize a banking bailout. Obama proceeded to win an electoral landslide.
- Obama's re-election was similarly aided by many bad candidates in the 2012 election. Mitt Romney was a moderate Republican governor of one of the most Democratic states in the country (Massachusetts) note which caused many in the Republican base to not trust him. Exacerbating this was a gender gap that amplified following several controversial comments on rape, which forced the Republicans to answer on a controversial social issue, rather than the economy. The final blow was when a video showed Mitt Romney bash 47% of the electorate as people who believed that housing and healthcare should be given to them, which allowed Obama to paint Romney as unconcerned with a majority of ordinary citizens. Obama easily won re-election as a result.
- The Alabama 2017 Senate race. It all started when Senator Jeff Sessions was named US Attorney General, which mandated a special election in Alabama to fill his seat. Everyone initially assumed it would be a pro forma election; whoever the governor appointed to the seat would likely win it for the full term. However, Governor Robert Bentley appointed Luther Strange, the state attorney general who was investigating Bentley for criminal conduct, into this critical role. Bentley later resigned, and Strange faced allegations that the Senate seat was a backroom deal in exchange for Bentley not facing charges. The new governor moved up the special election, and Strange, now incredibly vulnerable, faced a harsh primary fight between himself, Roy Moore, and Mo Brooks. Brooks was eliminated in the initial primary, and Strange ultimately lost to Moore by almost double digits in the runoff. Moore was already considered the most vulnerable of the three, given that he's been removed twice from the Alabama Supreme Court for refusal to follow federal court orders (the second instance involving a US Supreme Court ruling). As the election approached, Moore was also accused of sexual misconduct involving minors, and several comments that showed him blatantly praising slavery also came to light, causing prominent Republicans to shy away from supporting him. At the same time, despite the fact that it seemed like a race they were bound to lose, Alabama Democrats happened to put up Doug Jones, a candidate who ended up being strong enough (even in ruby-red Alabama) to take advantage of Moore's failings. Come election day, Republican turnout waned, while Democrats, invigorated by the thought of flipping the seat (as well as some of them, particularly the African-American community, having particular respect for Jones), turned out in full force. Moore lost to Jones by 2 points — the first time since 1992 that a Democrat had won a statewide election in Alabama. Jones' success was short-lived, as he would be routed in his 2020 bid for a full term to former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, who had beaten Sessions in the GOP primary.
- The 2020 Presidential election is an interesting case of this. Donald Trump, in spite of facing numerous scandals (including an impeachment trial he was acquitted in) and was significantly controversial amongst voters, was still expected to win based on a strong economy. All of that came crashing down when the COVID-19 Pandemic struck the world, and thousands of Americans died as Trump and his allies were accused of downplaying the virus. Within months, hospitals were overloaded, many Americans were forced to stay at home or lost their jobs due to businesses shutting down, and the burgeoning economy Trump had touted his entire administration faltered to the point it was at its worst since The Great Depression. (No, not Great Recession. Great Depression.) Further controversy erupted when the death of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests against police brutality, with Trump losing more ground when he and his allies backed efforts to shut down said protests. And when the election did come around, the virus had forced many to mail in their ballots, delaying the results by several days while Trump decried the method as "cheating". When the results were tallied, Biden had won by 81 million votes—the most for a President in history—compared to Trump's 74 million votes (which was still the second highest). Trump's efforts to overturn the results in court were dismissed due to a lack of evidence of mass voter fraud that Trump had claimed, and him rallying discourse amongst his base over these claims led to a mob storming the US Capitol on January 6 while Congress was certifying the results of the election. All it resulted in was Trump becoming the first President in US history to be impeached twice (though he was again acquitted), while Biden was sworn in office without incident.
- The events that saw the Democratic-Farmer-Labornote lose two Senate seats plus the Governor's mansion in 1978 in what became known as the "Minnesota Massacre".
- It began when incumbent DFL Governor Wendell Anderson decided to step down to allow his Lieutenant Governor and successor, Rudy Perpich, to appoint Anderson to the U.S. Senate seat about to be vacated following incumbent Senator Walter Mondale's resignation after being elected as Vice-President alongside Jimmy Carter in 1976. The gambit turned off a number of voters in the state; as in the campaign for a full term in 1978 saw Anderson defeated by the Republican candidate, Plywood Minnesota founder Rudy Boschwitz.
- Meanwhile, in the Governor's race that same year, Perpich was likewise seeking a full term, but due to a combination of the chicanery involved in the Anderson appointment and soaring interest rates that would play a major role in Carter's 1980 Presidential defeat, Perpich found himself defeated by Republican Congressman Al Quie in the race for Governor.
- But that's not all. There would also be a special election for the other Senate seat that became vacant when Minnesota political legend Hubert Humphrey; who had just been elected to his 2nd term in that Senate seat in 1976 after having held positions as Minneapolis Mayor; Minnesota's other Senate seat until becoming Vice-President under Lyndon Johnson from 1965-69 and the Democratic nominee for President in 1968, died in January from bladder cancer. Businessman and former Texas Rangers owner Bob Short won the DFL nomination after Humphrey's widow Muriel (who had been appointed to the seat pending a special election) decided not to run for the seat in the special election, only for Short to be defeated by a very liberal Republican nominee; attorney David Durenberger.
- The upshot would be that of those seats; the Governorship would be the first to return to DFL control when Perpich was elected in 1982 after Quie decided not to run for a second term; ultimately serving two full terms before being defeated by Republican candidate Arne Carlson in 1990. Boschwitz would hold the Senate seat previously held by Anderson until he was defeated in an upset by DFL candidate Paul Wellstone in 1990. The other Senate seat would be in Republican hands until 2000; when Mark Daytonnote defeated first-term incumbent Republican Senator Rod Grams (who had succeeded Durenberger after Durenberger announced his retirement before the 1994 midterm elections), with Dayton holding that Senate seat until leaving after declining to run for a second term in 2006. Dayton was later elected Governor in 2010, which made him the first DFL member to become Governor since Perpich's 1990 defeat.
- It began when incumbent DFL Governor Wendell Anderson decided to step down
- The 1974 New Hampshire Senate race would go down as the closest in American history, as it ended up taking nearly a year to finally be resolved. Hope you're sitting comfortably for this one.
- The race was for the Senate seat that became available when 20-year incumbent Republican Senator Norris Cotton announced his retirementnote , and would pit Republican Congressman Louis Wyman against Democratic Attorney General John Durkin.
- At first, it appeared that Wyman had bucked a strong Democratic trend (both with the tradition of the party not holding the White House generally doing well in midterm elections and Watergate having climaxed in the resignation of Richard Nixon) by defeating Durkin by a margin of 355 votes. However, Durkin requested a recount, which resulted in Durkin being declared the winner by a razor-thin margin of 10 votes; upon which Republican Governor Meldrim Thomson gave Durkin a provisional certificate of election.
- But Wait, There's More! Wyman launched an appeal to the State Ballot Law Commission, and despite Durkin's efforts to deny the appeal; his efforts were rejected and the Commission did another recount, this time with Wyman emerging victorious by a whopping 2 votes. You read that right, two votes separated Wyman and Durkin. Wyman was then given a new certification of election, followed by Thomson appointing Wyman to finish the final few days of Cotton's term when Cotton resigned on New Year's Eve 1974.note
- You guessed it, we're not done here. Durkin decided to appeal directly to the United States Senate (Constitutionally, the Senate is the final arbiter of Senate elections; with the House of Representatives likewise being the last arbiter of House races) where the day before the Senate officially began their new term, the Senate Rules Committee deadlocked 4-4 on whether to seat Wyman or notnote . The case then went to the full Senate briefly only for the matter to be returned to the Rules Committee, which set up a special staff panel to examine 3500 questionable ballots. The Rules Committee then sent a list of 35 disputed points regarding the election to the full Senate, but only one of the points was resolved while the Republicans successfully filibustered efforts to seat Durkin.
- Eventually the proceedings dragged on into the summer until in late July 1975, Wyman wrote a letter to Durkin requesting the support of a new, special election - which Durkin initially refused before being persuaded to change his mind. The day of Durkin's reversal, July 30, the Senate voted by a 71-21 margin to declare the seat vacant effective August 8. Governor Thomson then appointed Norris Cotton to his old Senate seat pending the special election on September 16, 1975.
- Finally, after 10 months the matter was settled when Durkin defeated Wyman 54%-43%, with a margin of victory of over 27,000 votes. Durkin would hold the seat until becoming a casualty of the Reagan coattails when he was defeated by Republican challenger Warren Rudman in 1980.'
- The 2010 Massachusetts special election to replace the late Senator Ted Kennedy turned into a debacle that cost the Democratic Party a seat they had held for over half a century.
- First, in 2004 the Democratic-controlled Massachusetts General Court note removed the authority of the governor to appoint someone to fill a vacant Senate seat in order to prevent then-Governor Mitt Romney (a Republican) from filling Democratic Senator John Kerry's seat if he won the 2004 Presidential Election. Ted Kennedy himself lobbied for the change, which had been stalled for months and was then enacted over Romney's veto.
- Roughly a week before his death from brain cancer, Kennedy wrote to the General Court and asked them to repeal the law so that the Democratic governor (Deval Patrick) could appoint a "caretaker" Senator to prevent a vacancy in the Senate that would last for five months (as well as reduce the Democratic Senate majority to 59, which would no longer enable them to break any filibuster by the Republican minority). A month later, the General Court repealed the law along largely partisan lines.
- Patrick appointed Paul Kirk, a former Kennedy aide and Democratic National Committee Chairman, to the vacancy pending the special election. As a condition of the appointment, Kirk pledged not to run for the seat himself, and the special election was set for January 19, 2010.
- State Attorney General Martha Coakley won the Democratic nomination, while State Senator Scott Brown was selected by the Republican voters. While Coakley got off to a good start, her campaign was plagued with missteps (one ad calling Brown a "Wall Street crony" had to be edited after footage of the World Trade Center was used, and another had to be edited because the ad agency misspelled Massachusetts) and several high-profile ethical issues involving Coakley's tenure as a District Attorney in Middlesex County and as Attorney General that dragged her numbers down and changed the race to a "tossup".
- Meanwhile Brown, who had been deprived of national funding or support in what was considered a safe Democratic stronghold, took advantage of the then-nascent conservative presence on social media and blogs to boost his campaign while running a very grassroots effort that included crisscrossing the state in a pickup truck (taking advantage of another Coakley misstep when she rhetorically asked "What should I do, stand in front of Fenway [Park] and shake hands with voters?"). Then during a televised debate when the moderator asked him about the "Kennedy seat", Brown shot back that it was "the people's seat" which became his campaign's rallying cry.
- The election was a wipeout, with Brown defeating Coakley by 4 points and flipping the seat. The stunning upset energized conservatives, who used it as a referendum on President Obama going into the 2010 midterms and leading to a massive Republican wave that saw the GOP pick up 6 more Senate seats and 63 House seats (which gave them control of the chamber). Brown's success was short-lived, however, as he was ousted 2 years later by college professor and former lawyer Elizabeth Warren.
- The end of the 300-year-long Romanov dynasty in 1918 in Russia was largely brought about by Tsar Nicholas's many, many missteps. However, the most decisive misstep was the decision that he and his wife Alexandra made to keep the fact that their son Alexei was a hemophiliac a secret from everyone outside their immediate family circle. It snowballed from there. When Alexei was born in 1904, the country was already in a hopeless war with Japan that seriously highlighted the flaws in Nicholas's leadership. The Russian people already didn't like the German Alexandra and when she had Alexei, she withdrew from public life to take care of him. However, this only further heightened the distrust of her. Since Alexei wasn't allowed to do normal child things or go out much because a normal slip could kill him, people saw them hiding him as them being haughty and uncaring to normal folks. The family became close to a religious mystic named Grigori Rasputin who was the only person who could get Alexei to calm down and "heal" him.note Since no one knew that he was actually sick and that Rasputin was there to heal him, rumors started flying that he was having an affair with Alexandra. To outsiders, some crazy sleazebag was running the government which only further tarnished their reputation. The aristocratic class (who also didn't know that Alexei was sick) decided he was a problem and one of Nicholas's cousins and his friends killed him. By that point, the Russian economy was in the tank and they would lose some 2 million men to World War I, only further paralyzing the monarchy. He would abdicate in favor of his younger brother Michael in March 1917. The entire family was imprisoned not too long thereafter and then murdered the following July.
- One could say that the dominoes were set up by Alexander III, who had no use for his son and refused to give him any role in the government or any training whatsoever on how to be Tsar—even though Nicholas was the heir to the throne.
- Some even consider the assassination of Alexander II by revolutionary group Narodnaya Volya, at the time where Alexander II was liberalizing and reforming the Empire, as the start of the disaster chain. In the wake of this assassination, Alexander III (who witnessed that event himself) abandoned all his father's reform program and went on full autocratic, even establishing Okhrana to help curtail civil liberties. This in no small part only fueling the revolutionary sentiment against the monarchy as the time passes on.
- Todd Akin set off a series of events that would culminate in Mitt Romney suffering a landslide loss at the hands of Barack Obama when he made his "legitimate rape" comment during his 2012 Senate bid in Missouri against incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill. At the time, Barack Obama was still not entirely guaranteed to win the election, despite a large increase in his poll numbers during the summer, as some members of his coalition still could defect to the Republicans. Akin's comment marked the beginning of what would turn into a disastrous fall campaign for Republicans, as Democrats around the nation, especially President Obama, seized on the comment, and the furious uproar from women, to link Akin and Romney, and forcing the party to answer on a controversial social issue rather than the economy. Things got worse for Republicans as Romney was caught on a video bashing 47% of the nation as being for Obama regardless of his policies or their outcomes, which Obama was all too willing to use to paint Romney as out of touch with ordinary Americans, and also reinforced doubts that many people had had about Romney from the start. Then, Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who had unexpectedly ousted longtime Senator Dick Lugar in the GOP primary earlier that year, made his own controversial rape comment two weeks before the election where he said that impregnation from rape was "something God intended". This uproar once again brought attention to Akin's comment and the perception that Republicans were hostile to women; the fact that Romney, in stark contrast to Akin where he said he should drop out, refused to rescind his endorsement of Mourdock didn't help his chances, something Obama and the Democrats had a field day with. As a result, on Election Day, Obama wins in a landslide, even as Romney was easily winning both Missouri and Indiana. McCaskill handily beats Akin while Mourdock loses his race to Congressman Joe Donnelly. Republicans later threw the whole blame for the debacle on Akin, admitting he caused the train wreck in the first place. However, Donnelly and McCaskill would both lose their seats the next time they were up for re-election in 2018.
- In the presidential election of 1800, it originally seemed that there would be a straight Democratic-Republican victory, with Thomas Jefferson as president and Aaron Burr as Vice President. At least, that was the case, until a miscommunication meant that someone accidentally gave both of their votes to Burr instead of one to each, meaning that Burr and Jefferson tied instead of giving Jefferson one more vote as intended. This threw the election to the Federalist-controlled House, who thought of giving Burr the presidency just to spite Jefferson. To prevent Burr from gaining the presidency, Alexander Hamilton gave a speech to his party, denounced Burr as lacking principles, and persuaded them to vote for Jefferson, giving him the presidency. By this point, by not speaking up about the situation, Burr had alienated everyone in the government, and so in 1804 not only did Jefferson make it clear that he intended to not have Burr on his re-election ticket, but his attempt to run for Governor of New York led to Hamilton denouncing him again and costing him another election. Enraged by this, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel and killed him, costing him his reputation for the rest of his life.
- The "Battle of Alcatraz" is the colloquial term for an escape attempt from the prison island on May 2, 1946. It actually had the potential to become the first successful escape attempt in the prison's history: one of the escaping prisoners, Bernard Coy, successfully forced his way into the armory, got weapons from the lockers, and let out five other prisoners... except when they went to leave the cell block, they realized that a guard named Miller had accidentally kept the courtyard key on his person when he was actually supposed to put it away, and he hid it inside a toilet before the convicts could find it. They broke the lock by trying to jam it open, and by then they had nowhere to go. By that point, security on the island was aware of the escape attempt, and at the end of the resulting two-day-long armed siege, three of the prisoners and two of the guards were dead and thousands of dollars in damages had been caused to the structure of the prison.
- In June 2015, a white supremacist shot up a black church in Charleston, South Carolina. The aftermath? A massive backlash against the Confederate Flag and "Confederate culture" as a whole, specifically targeting statues of Confederate figures. Among the statues that were ordered to be taken down was a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, leading many far-right groups to order a rally for August 12, 2017, called Unite the Right to defend the Lee statue. That rally led to clashes with protesters that were violent and horrible regardless, but unlikely to lead to more... until one neo-Nazi decided to drive his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring at least 19 others. The consequences? Not only did it fail to save the Lee statue, but re-ignited the movement to take down more statues. The neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer was booted off its server, several rallygoers lost their jobs and saw their social media accounts terminated, and Barack Obama issued one of Twitter's most popular tweets ever. It is considered one of the worst scandals of Donald Trump's presidency, and up to that point was likely the worst. Trump's response to the attacks, while not outright espousing one side or the other, drew heavy criticism, being seen as indifferent and/or ignorant at best, implying moral equivalence between the two parties at the rally in the middle, or at worst, effectively a tacit endorsement of the white supremacist side. As a result, Trump's Gallup approval rating reached a record low, and with it plunged the reputation of the GOP in Virginia. This allowed the Democrats to effectively rout their GOP rivals out of the state in that year's gubernatorial and state legislative elections, with the events in Charlottesville that August being cited as having been a major tipping point in the race in favor of the Blue. All in all, this whole situation became one of the biggest political quagmires of the 2010s, set into motion by the Charleston, South Carolina shooting.
- The unexpected Democratic victory in the Senate runoffs of Georgia in 2021 was greatly aided by several factors and misfires on the Republican candidates' part.
- In early 2020, incumbent senator Johnny Isakson retired halfway through his term due to failing health caused by Parkinson’s disease. Finance executive Kelly Loeffler was appointed by Republican governor Brian Kemp to fill the seat until a special election could happen in the fall. Loeffler was a newcomer to politics but Kemp figured appointing a moderate woman would help not only in that specific election but also in the 2022 midterms when he’d be on the ballot with her for the seat’s normal term. He’d only managed to squeak out a win in 2018 by 55,000 votes in a rapidly changing state. He also believed her massive personal wealth would make up for lost time. However, her being perceived as a moderate drew a primary challenger in Rep. Doug Collins (who was furious he was passed over by Kemp for the seat) who dragged her far to the right and against whom she barely managed to win, alienating her from the people to whom she was appointed to appeal. Loeffler lacked political acumen and made several strategic blunders early on, like dumping stock after receiving a classified briefing on the COVID-19 pandemic that put her in a hole she couldn’t get out of.
- After an underwhelming performance on election night itself, where the Democrats fell short in their bid to capture the Senate, everyone assumed that Joe Biden would have to face a Republican Senate unless Democrats could win both Senate runoffs in Georgia, which was widely seen as unlikely, since Georgia is still a nominally Republican state and runoffs typically favored Republican. However, moderate college educated suburban voters in the Atlanta area utterly loathed President Donald Trump.note . Add in the very reliable 30% of total votes Democrats bank on black voters alone note and you get a very narrow Biden win in the state.
- Coming out of election night, the Republican candidates seemed to be in the driver seat. David Perdue gained more votes than Jon Ossoff and almost won outright while Kelly Loeffler, Doug Collins, and the other GOP candidates had more votes combined than Raphael Warnock and his Democratic competitors; however, Perdue and Loeffler's suspected involvement in insider trading badly damaged perceptions of their honesty, and the Democrats had two strong recruits in Reverend Raphael Warnock and political strategist Jon Ossoff. The first debates only cemented this; while Warnock and Ossoff were passionate, energetic, and on the attack for everything they could get, Perdue and Loeffler came off as dispassionate and disconnected from the lower-class base they were trying to mobilize. The senators then canceled the next debates to sidestep the problem, giving the Democrats almost complete control of the airwaves and messaging, as well as handing the hopeful-senators all the ammo they needed to call them cowards who were too scared to openly debate.
- Loeffler and Perdue also ran incredibly racially tinged campaigns that once again pushed away moderate suburbanites. Perdue purposefully mispronounced and mocked Kamala Harris' first name at a Trump rally (despite having been her colleague for pretty much the entirety of her tenure in the Senate) and went into hiding after that. Loeffler went after Warnock's religion, running several ads taking things he'd said in sermons out of context to make him seem like a leftist. She also tried inventing a child abuse scandal that happened in the early '00s in a Warnock's church's summer camp for which he got arrested. In reality, some kids at the camp got in trouble and he was arrested for trying to stop the cops from talking to them without a lawyer present; the charges were dropped and he was given a settlement. An attempt at painting him as domestic abuser over an argument he and his now ex-wife had where he accidentally backed over her foot with his car also fizzled out. These attacks on his religion backfired and turned rural black votersnote out against her in droves. Some of the rural black counties had 90% of their presidential turnout which is unheard of for a runoff.
- Then, in the weeks following the general election, the Republicans were bitterly divided over the result; Trump and his most fervent supporters were adamant that the election was stolen, and Perdue and Loeffler repeated the claims, believing it would boost voter turnout. This ended up backfiring: the allegations manufactured doubt in the security of the electoral process in the very base that Perdue and Loeffler had hoped to reach, causing many to adopt an "it's all rigged so what's the point" mindset, while at the same time alienating moderate voters who had been inclined to vote Republican because they were wary of giving Democrats full control of Washington, but who despised Trump, doubted his fraud claims, and came to feel that Perdue and Loeffler were too closely entangled with himnote . This cost them both votes that they would have easily gotten if they'd attempted another strategy. Not helping matters was Donald Trump's constant attacks on Governor Brian Kemp and especially Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger culminating in a now-infamous phone call asking him to find 11,780 votes to swing the state back into the GOP column.
- Another major factor was the $2,000 stimulus checks and COVID-19 relief. It was a key issue amongst Georgia voters not to mention that Perdue and Loeffler supported passing into law as much as Ossoff and Warnock. Unfortunately, the then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked it from ever being passed. Because of the GOP rejection, the Democrats would utilize it as an effective political tool to spread their message across the state.
- Meanwhile, Democrats, who did believe the election would be fair and secure, kicked voter registration and turnout efforts into overdrive (former 2018 Democratic governor nominee Stacey Abrams in particular spearheaded several "get out the vote" organizations), and African American voters in particular (a demographic that overwhelmingly votes Democrat) mobilized en masse, especially for Warnock. Come the runoff election, black voter turnout skyrocketed, especially in the cities and suburbs, college-educated voters abandoned the two Republicans en masse, while rural and right-wing voter turnout was lower than expected.note This resulted in Ossoff and Warnock winning the two runoff elections cleanly, tying the Senate but giving control to the Democrats since Vice President Harris can cast a tie-breaking vote.
- Brazil has a tradition of isolated criminal instances that unveil massive corruption schemes. Most notably Operation Car Wash: a money laundering scheme that used a gas station... that turned out to be just a part of a massive criminal ring, who had seeds in major construction firms and the state-run oil company Petrobras, whose value sank, worsening the Brazilian recession... and then most of the Congress was revealed to be on the scheme... including the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, who responded to his persecution by starting an impeachment process on President Dilma Rousseff... Rousseff was driven away, and the new ministry set by the Vice-President soon had scandals of their own... suffice to say, From Bad to Worse barely covers it... especially considering this led to the rise of Jair Bolsonaro as president (which is a whole subset of tragedies, most notably how bad the country was hit by the COVID-19 Pandemic).
In that post, I questioned the folder's contents as follows:
Question: do any of the examples under Politics constitute a disaster? The examples are all about winning or losing an election, and while no candidate wants to lose, it hardly qualifies as a "disaster." More importantly, that would seem to violate ROCEJ.
I say cut the whole shebang. Any serious objection?
Carnildo
Since: Jan, 2001
#34: May 18th 2022 at 12:05:03 AM
BoltDMC: The endpoint disaster is a decompressed airplane in a power dive with an unconscious pilot half-out the broken windscreen. Nowhere in the description for Disaster Dominoes does it state that the chain of events needs to end in an irrecoverable situation.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#35: May 18th 2022 at 5:53:12 AM
We definitely don’t agree about what constitutes a disaster, then. I’d be more on board with something where the plane crashes and people are killed. To me, that waters down the definition of the term. Otherwise, we’re opening the door wider and wider to the point of meaninglessness. This seems more like a near-miss, whatever trope covers that scenario.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#36: May 18th 2022 at 9:32:50 AM
Have heard nothing further regarding cutting the Politics and Software folders, so am assuming silence means assent.
They're both cut.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#37: May 18th 2022 at 1:29:11 PM
So took a look at the Environmental folder. I support laserviking42’s suggestion to cut all but the Chernobyl example. I can do that any time, and will do so citing this thread shortly unless someone else gets to it in the next day or two.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#38: May 18th 2022 at 2:16:02 PM
So a quick look at some stuff in the Transportation folder, if not complete. Some of this can definitely go. Bear in mind that the trope isn't "here's a list of bad things that led up to a disaster", it is "one disaster leads to another disaster which leads to another and so on" :
Transportation
- Similar to the Arab Spring, in 2013 Brazil had protests on abusive public transportation prices. The first went somewhat calm, then things got real once the one in the biggest city ends up receiving police brutality to get suppressed, even hitting some reporters trying to cover the chaos. It even got its catchy name, "Vinegar revolts"◊ (as some of the protesters were carrying vinegar, supposedly because it helps contain tear gas bombs). No chain of disasters here that I can see. Cut.
- The Donner Party. A huckster touts an alternate route to California before he ever had a chance to actually travel it. An 1846 migrant party decides to take it, even after being warned by people who'd actually been on the route that it was treacherous and unproven. The huckster finally travels the route in the opposite direction but only gives the party some vague advice and basically leaves them on their own to negotiate the forbidding mountain and desert terrain. Instead of saving time, the cutoff actually adds about a month to their journey, putting them at the foot of the Sierra Nevada just as the winter snows hit, with dwindling supplies and major internal dissension. By spring only half the party made it out of the mountains alive, bringing with them tales of murder and cannibalism. The endpoint is a disaster, but the steps leading up to it are not. Cut.
- Where the United States had the Donner Party, the United Kingdom and Canada have Franklin's lost expedition of 1845 (which Dan Simmons's The Terror and its TV adaptation are based on). While the ultimate fate of the individuals on the expedition remain a mystery (with the remains of crewmembers still being identified in 2021), a mix of hindsight, forensic evidence, and oral testimony have given us a clearer picture of why the expedition — which was using (for the Victorian period) cutting-edge technology to chart the Canadian Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage — ended in disaster, enough to help us surmise the how. Only the last three bullet points have any possible claim to being a disaster. If example is kept, it should be severely trimmed.
- For starters, despite past accomplishments, the overall commander of the expedition, Captain Sir John Franklin, had a spotty record. Franklin had previously led an 1819 expedition to the Arctic through the Canadian wilderness which, thanks to poor planning, ended in many of his men dying of starvation and in Franklin himself eating his own boots to survive.note His second-in-command, Captain Francis Crozier, was arguably more qualified to lead the expedition,note but was passed over for being Irish and lower-class. Not a disaster.
- Despite extensive modifications, the repurposed warships used by the expedition, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, were woefully inadequate for sailing through the icy maze of the Arctic. Instead of maritime engines, the Admiralty had both ships fitted with steam engines originally used for trains which only produced up to 25 horsepower, or four knots.note Not a disaster.
- It wasn't just the engines where the Admiralty cut corners. While Erebus and Terror were stocked with canned food which should have given the crewmen provisions lasting years, when the time came to hire someone to handle those provisions, the Admiralty went with the lowest bidder. It later turned out that the provisioner, Stephen Goldner, not only soldered the cans with lead but had done so improperly (leading much of the food to spoil). What's more, not all of the cans were even filled with food to begin with; the provisioner had struggled to produce the required number of cans (8,000) in the allotted timeframe and had filled some of the cans with rocks rather than lose the contract. Not a disaster.
- The issues with the canned food not only left the crewmen malnourished but also led them to develop lead poisoning which in turn left them susceptible to diseases such as tuberculosis or scurvy. When Erebus and Terror became ice-locked at Beechey Island (in modern-day Nunavut, Canada), three crewmen were buried there; the bodies were exhumed for forensic examination in the 1980s and were discovered to contain abnormally high concentrations of lead, most likely from the solder.note This is closer to being a disaster.
- After Beechey Island, the expedition sailed further inland only to once again become ice-locked at the mouth of Victoria Strait, off the coast of King William Island. Unfortunately for them, the Arctic was entering an unusually intense cold period, and Erebus and Terror remained frozen in place, unable to move, for over a year. During this period, Franklin and 22 of his crewmen died. Eventually the decision was made to abandon the ships and trek south across King William Island towards Back's Fish River on the Canadian mainland. This is closer to being a disaster.
- It is here where the ultimate fate of the expedition remains murky. However, testimonies by the local Inuit people suggested that discipline among the surviving crewmen broke down by this point, that the expedition split up into smaller groups, and that at least some of these groups engaged in murder and cannibalism to survive. Despite contemporary Victorian society vehemently denying that proper Englishmen would resort to such a thing, the cannibalism was eventually confirmed upon examination of human bones found on King William Island.note This is closer to being a disaster.
- Defied with the sinking of the sister ship to the Titanic, the Britannic. That was not the result of hitting an iceberg, but instead from hitting a sea mine. Thanks to safety improvements done to the Britannic in construction as a result of lessons learned from the Titanic, no Disaster Dominoes happened to cause this sinking, but they did help to increase the number of survivors for three reasons: one, the weather was about 70 degrees, there were more lifeboats available, and help got there quicker, especially so since the sinking only took an hour. Most of the 30 fatalities in the Britannic tragedy were the result of the first two lifeboats being lowered while the propellers were still turning, causing the boats to be sucked into the propeller blades, ripping them and their occupants to pieces. Not an example. Cut.
- The 1956 sinking of the Italian passenger ship SS ''Andrea Doria'': Doesn't have the required disaster chain. Cut. See below.
- On the evening of July 25, Andrea Doria was sailing on her normal route past Nantucket Lightship towards New York City. The ship encountered heavy fog and her captain, Piero Calamai, only slightly reduced the ship's speed from 23 knots to 21 knots. This decision would come to haunt Calamai for the rest of his life. Not a disaster.
- Traveling in the opposite direction was the Swedish passenger ship MS Stockholm, helmed at the time of the accident by Third Officer Johan-Ernst Carstens-Johanssen. Although Carstens-Johanssen would insist the opposite was true for decades afterward, evidence suggests that he had misread his radar and assumed Andrea Doria was at his ship's port side, when in reality it was at his starboard. Thus when he steered Stockholm to starboard, Carstens-Johanssen was turning his ship towards Andrea Doria rather than away from it. Not a disaster.
- Because of the thick fog, Andrea Doria and Stockholm did not make visual contact until a collision between the ships was unavoidable. Once the two ships realized they were on a collision course, Andrea Doria steered to its left to attempt a starboard-to-starboard passing. This only narrowed, rather than widened, the passing distance. Despite a last-ditch attempt by Andrea Doria to correct her course to port, Stockholm (which had a steel-reinforced bow designed to break up pack ice) sliced into the ship like a scalpel and tore a 90-degree gash that sealed Andrea Doria 's fate. Now we get the disaster.
- Andrea Doria might have still remained afloat had the crew properly ballasted the ship. Due to nearing the end of a transatlantic voyage, Doria's fuel tanks were mostly empty, accentuating an already-known topweight problem the ship had. To counter this, the fuel tanks were designed to be filled with sea water after being emptied. This was not done, and the empty, air-filled tanks on the opposite side from the impact site contributed to the immediate fatal list she developed, a list that rendered her watertight compartments useless because the side with the gash tipped over hard enough to let water in above the compartments. Not a disaster.
- Another design flaw was the access tunnel between her pump controls and generator room, which despite passing through a watertight bulkhead lacked a watertight door. Naturally, the tunnel flooded, the generator room flooded, and the ship lost all power. Not a disaster.
- But one domino did tip away from disaster: due to being near New York Harbor on one of the busiest shipping lanes on the planet, Andrea Doria 's distress call immediately drew several ships to the scene to rescue the passengers, most dramatically the French liner Ile de France, who charged onto the scene out of the fog all lights blazing. The only casualties of the disaster would end up being the people killed in the initial collision. Not a disaster.
More to come.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#39: May 18th 2022 at 2:55:48 PM
More from Transportation. This is everything else except the Titanic example:
Transportation
- The 2001 Selby Railway Disaster, the deadliest railway disaster in the United Kingdom in the 21st century, is due to a particularly unlucky sequence of these. Not an example. Cut. Only one disaster here.
- A sleep-deprived driver makes an early-morning cross-country commute from Louth to Wigan, around a two-and-a-half hour drive. The reason he was sleep-deprived is because he had spent all night talking on the phone to a woman, and had lost track of time doing so. Investigators found that he would have to be speeding in order to keep up the pace he was travelling that morning. Not a disaster.
- On a rightward bend on the M62, he lost concentration and drove off the road next to a bridge. His car could easily have caught itself on a treeline, but it managed to drive far enough to become stuck on the southbound track of the East Coast Main Line. Not good, but not a disaster in and of itself.
- The train that inevitably crashed into it shortly afterwards was a high-speed InterCity 225, travelling at the line's top speed of 125mph. This didn't derail the train by itself and the emergency brakes were applied, but just slightly beyond the crash site was a freight siding. As the train was unstable in this state, travelling over the switches at such a high-speed caused it to derail and shift onto the oncoming track. Tragically, at that precise moment a freight train also happened to be travelling along that track, and effectively took a head-on collision from the high-speed train. Here's your disaster.
- In total, 10 people died: Both drivers, two of the train staff on board the InterCity 225, and six passengers. The fact that there wasn't more fatalities was due to the passenger train being relatively empty at around 1/5th occupancy, as well as the structural integrity of the "Mark 4" passenger coaches. It was noted that had the crash involved an InterCity 125 with its older Mark 3 coaches, the results could've been much worse. Aftermath, not the disaster itself.
- The 2012 wreck of the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia. The whole mess could be considered a masterpiece of Disaster Dominoes: Not an example. Cut. Only one disaster, maybe a second if you squint really hard.
- First off, it should be noted that Captain Francesco Schettino's background consisted of being a security guard that rose to the position of Chief Security Officer, then was somehow horizontally promoted to Captain in a few years despite his position having nothing to do with "sailing ships". Schettino had been involved in two separate crashes of other Costa ships he captained before he assumed command of Costa Concordia. Not a disaster that directly impacts the main one.
- It all started when the ship's head waiter, who was a native of Isola del Giglio, asked Schettino to do a "sail-by salute" near the island and salute the residents via the horns. Schettino deviated from the ship's computer-programmed route, claiming that he was familiar with the local reef and could navigate through it. In fairness, this was considered a tradition by Costa ships and in theory should have been an easy thing to pull off. Costa Concordia had in fact performed this maneuver before with success. Not a disaster.
- Schettino was apparently so confident in his abilities that he decided to take them closer to the island than was normal for the maneuver (just 1,500 feet off the shore) and switched off the alarm on the ship's navigational computer. According to his first officer, Schettino had left his reading glasses in his cabin and repeatedly asked the first officer to check the radar for him. Schettino eyeballed the distance (again, not necessarily uncommon if highly unprofessional, but his questionable eyesight leaves that a noticeable danger). Not a disaster.
- As the ship closed the distance, Schettino called up former captain Mario Palombo and had a casual chat about the sail-by salute and the proper safe distance from shore, but Schettino was still confident in his ability to pull the close run by. He ordered a new heading of 310 and then 315, then pushed up the ship's speed to 16 knots. Not a disaster.
- The helmsman, Indonesian national Jacob Rusli Bin, was a relatively new hire on the job, with his previous experience being as a painter and a cleaner. But most importantly, Rusli Bin was non-fluent in either English or Italian. As they closed the distance, when Schettino relayed "325", Rusli Bin heard it as "315" before the first officer corrected to "335" and Schettino repeated "325" to clear the misunderstanding. An innocuous mistake that was corrected, but one that foreshadowed what was to come, especially as it caused them to move in a wider arc than they expected and thus closer to the shoreline. Not a disaster.
- This wider arc would be noticeable and could be corrected faster, but the third officer (who was supposed to be relaying the exact current coordinates each time Schettino gave the new directional heading per procedure) wasn't doing so out of negligence. Not a disaster.
- At this point, the ship reached 16 knots and Schettino ordered the second officer to head to the left wing to get a better view of the ship. Schettino started to realize the looming danger when he noticed white foam crashing on rocks directly in front of him in the distance. Costa Concordia was now 700 meters closer than it should have been and at risk for direct collision if not stopped. Not a disaster.
- Schettino ordered the ship to turn away, first at 335, then 340, and then 350. However, the ship's speed at 16 knots worked against them as it couldn't hope to complete such a drastic turn at its speed, as well as undersea (in other words, the bow of ship is still pointed at 327, not nearly enough to miss the rocks). The escalating situation was not helped by the language barrier causing Rusli Bin to hesitate at "340" for several crucial seconds before correcting to 350. Not a disaster.
- Schettino ordered the rudder to be moved starboard to 10, then 20, and finally "hard to starboard", but at this point even if they cleared the rocks they needed to get the rest of the ship to swing around and not crash. He ordered "midship" to center the rudder, and finally called "port 10" and then "port 20". If all went well at this point, they just might have avoided the rocks, or at worst caused a scrape bad enough to cause flooding in one compartment. However, a panicking Rusli Bin, again confused by Schettino's orders, turned to starboard instead of port, undoing the swing. In the eight seconds before he realized his mistake and corrected, it was too late: the bow of the ship barely cleared the rock before the stern was practically gutted on impact, flooding three compartments. Despite attempting to close the watertight doors, the flooding is severe enough to short out the ship's six engines in twenty-nine seconds due to the fact they were located in the initially-hit compartments, triggering a ship-wide blackout twenty-two seconds later. Here's your disaster.
- Schettino's final order was to turn the rudder "hard to starboard" before propulsion was also lost, resulting in the ship drifting starboard. Had he not done so, the ship wouldn't have drifted back and run aground in the shallows of the islands and the capsizing would have claimed many more lives. Even so, thirty-two passengers and crew lost their lives in the end, Schettino not among them as he abandoned ship in a lifeboat (after switching into civilian attire and refusing orders from the Coast Guard to return to the ship and assist evacuation). 'Not a disaster.
- The emergency generator lost cooling due to short-circuiting, preventing the crew from using it despite desperate attempts to keep it on long enough to be useful without causing it to catch fire using a screwdriver. Among other things, this trapped people in elevators, resulting in twelve of the fatalities. Not sold on this as a separate disaster.
- The Concordia crew lied about the situation to passengers and rescuers in a futile attempt to prevent a panic and allow Schettino to delude himself into thinking the situation wasn't as dire as it actually was. This made the evacuation far more chaotic than it needed to be and prevented an adequate external response, and the order to Abandon Ship came long after passengers had called bullshit on the "temporary electrical fault" and taken the initiative to evacuate. Not a disaster.
- The events that led up to the February 3, 2015, collision of a Metro North Railroad commuter train on the Harlem Line with a stopped SUV in Valhalla, New York, that killed the driver of the SUV and five passengers on the train: Not an example. Cut. Only one disaster here.
- The crossing that the accident happened on was on a section of the Harlem Line running parallel to the Taconic State Parkway. One hour before the incident, a pretty serious car accident closed both lanes on the parkway going southbound, and one lane going northbound, causing many drivers to seek alternate routes. Not a disaster.
- The driver of the SUV took this detour and somehow ended up stopped on the tracks at a grade crossing while waiting to rejoin the parkway. Not a disaster.
- The gates came down and got stuck on the driver's car. Not good, but not a disaster.
- Instead of trying to back up and possibly avoid being hit by the oncoming train, or even just abandoning the car to at least save his own life, the driver tried to pull forward (and this is after getting out of the car and trying to free it from the crossing gate by hand), and thus was in the center of the tracks when the train hit it. Here's the disaster.
- The Fox River Grove grade crossing collision, where a Metra train hit a school bus stopped at a red light on Algonquin Road and Northwest Highway and killed seven students, was the result of a sequence of events that could have been prevented: Not an example. Cut. Only one disaster, when the train hits the bus, and it's not even a bullet point.
- At the crossing where the accident happened, the tracks of the UP Northwest Line run parallel to the Northwest Highway. Prior to the 1990s, the highway was a two-lane road and there was about 60 feet of space between the tracks and the highway. When the highway was widened to four lanes, the distance between the tracks and highway was reduced to 30 feet so as not to impede business development north of the highway. The Illinois Department of Transportation also erected a modernized traffic signal to ensure traffic cleared the crossing in front of an approaching train. Not a disaster.
- The gates at the crossing on Algonquin Road only activated 20 seconds before the train arrived. However, the traffic light clearing the rail intersection only allowed cars to clear 18 seconds after the crossing signals activated, giving vehicles only 2 to 6 seconds to clear the tracks. Not a disaster.
- The accident happened in the early morning when the sun wasn't yet fully up. Not a disaster.
- There was a substitute bus driver driving the bus. She wasn't familiar with the route and failed to judge the distance between the light and the crossing, such that the last three feet of the bus were hanging over the tracks. While the students on the bus did realize the danger that was about to unfold and began screaming for the driver to move forward, this may have only further caused the accident by distracting the driver, since she was no longer watching the traffic light (which the NTSB determined turned green six seconds before the train hit), and trying to attend to what she presumed was some crisis within the bus. Not really a disaster in and of itself, but it's the closest we've got.
- The Kursk sinking. Not sufficient for dominoes, only two disasters at most. Cut.
- The welds of the torpedo weren't checked because it was a "dummy" torpedo, with no warhead. It is theorized that, while loading one of the dummy torpedoes for a training exercise, a faulty weld caused the torpedo's volatile high-test peroxide (HTP) fuel to interact with its kerosene catalyst, causing the torpedo to explode and cause a fire. Not the disaster per se.
- The torpedo tube door, which would have contained the blast, hadn't been sealed properly, a common issue at the time. Not a disaster.
- The bulkhead, which would also have contained the blast, didn't because it had been pierced by a ventilation shaft. The same blast also forced open the aforementioned unsealed torpedo tube, causing a deluge of flooding as well as the still-raging inferno. This looks like the disaster.
- Said ventilation shaft led almost directly to the control room in section 2, thus the first blast immediately incapacitated the only people on the ship who could do anything. Not the disaster.
- Despite only on a training exercise, Kursk was carrying a full combat load, including cruise missiles and anti-submarine torpedoes, which were kept on standby in their ready positions. Without anyone fighting the blaze, the fire raged hotter and hotter until several of those torpedoes detonated, destroying the entire bow and sealing the submarine's fate. This looks like a disaster also.
- The emergency buoy which would have given the submarine's exact location and told everyone the issue was big had been disabled, due to fears that it would trigger accidentally and give the submarine's position away to non-Russians. Not a disaster.
- The only escape vessel which could have evacuated the survivors in the aft sections was located in front of the conning tower in the area taking in water. Not a disaster.
- The automatic shutdown on the nuclear reactor worked flawlessly, immediately shutting off power to the still-inhabitable areas of the submarine. Not a disaster.
- The air filters providing breathable air to the survivors trapped in the aft section used Potassium Hydroxide, which is highly volatile when it comes in contact with water and also very difficult to handle with no light or heat on board. Not a disaster.
- No one was willing to risk being disciplined to investigate until five hours after the disaster (after the Kursk failed to make a routine check-in), despite the explosion being audible to practially all ships in the area (this meant NATO was aware there had been an explosion on board before the Russian government did). Not a disaster.
- The Russian government refused all offers of help for five days.
- The external locking mechanism for the emergency hatch was extremely complex and the Norwegian divers who first made it down to the ship were told explicitly it had to be turned counter-clockwise to open. After a day of trying this, the Norwegians finally tried turning it clockwise, which opened the hatch. Not a disaster.
- Ablation cascade / Kessler effect is a theoretical space disaster. It is speculated that if the mass of objects wandering in low Earth orbit reaches a high enough density, a collision would eventually trigger a chain reaction creating debris that would itself hit and destroy other objects, producing even more debris. It would eventually make space exploration and satellite use impossible for several generations, as the debris would be very slow to reenter Earth's atmosphere, meanwhile shredding anything that tried to get past it. Not an example. Cut.
- See the Gravity entry (in Films) for a realistic portrayal of such an event in fiction. Bad indentation and natter. Cut.
- Apollo 13. It started with the ship's oxygen tanks being dropped during transfer from another service module. The vent tube used to drain the oxygen after testing was damaged. Normally, it wasn't a big deal, since they could just burn off the oxygen and it wouldn't be needed after the tanks were refilled and in space. But, someone failed to realize that an upgraded electrical system had been installed, and did not change the thermostat that normally shut down the tanks if they overheated. As a result, the increased charge going through the thermostat fused it shut and it could not shut off the tanks as they heated. This resulted in the insulation of the wires melting and leaving them exposed. Only the supercooled oxygen in the tanks kept the whole thing from blowing up on the pad. The problem was that by the time the explosion occurred, enough oxygen had been used to expose the wires and allow a spark. Fortunately, no lives were lost that time. Not a successful space mission, but not a disaster, either. Not an example. Cut.
- The Challenger disaster: Not an example. Cut. Only one disaster.
- NASA's publicity stunt of recruiting Christa McAuliffe, a public school teacher who would have been the first private citizen to travel in space, created much incentive for NASA to ensure that the upcoming mission proceed with as few issues as possible, which would later be determined to have caused the space agency to downplay or ignore major warnings about the faulty O-rings in Challenger 's solid rocket boosters. Not a disaster.
- The shuttle launch was supposed to occur on January 22, 1986. However, a series of delays caused them to push it back until January 28th. These included delays from a previous mission, bad weather at a Transoceanic Abort Landing site at Dakar, numerous bad weather moments, and problems with its exterior access hatch. Not a disaster.
- On January 27th, engineers for Morton-Thiokol, the company who made the O-rings, realized that the launch date would be unsuitable as the O-rings were not rated for a launch temperature so low (they were rated at 40 degrees F, while launch day would only have it at 30) and desperately called NASA for a conference call to beg the group to delay the launch until it got warmer. NASA refused. Morton-Thiokol tried again, but only with the management of the Kennedy and Marshall Space Centers. They were again refused. Amazingly, Morton-Thiokol management then gave the thumbs up for the launch to proceed, with one shocked engineer admitting to his wife that Challenger would be destroyed. Not a disaster.
- The day of the launch, Rockwell International, the main contractors for NASA's shuttles, was aghast at the amount of ice on Challenger and feared that build up could damage the shuttle upon ascent. As well, the temperature that day was colder than most launches, at about 28 degrees F. Rockwell tried to warn NASA to scuttle the mission, but they ended up only delaying until around 11:38 AM. Not a disaster.
- Everything went swell until, over a minute after launch, everything fell apart, one after another in rapid, cascading succession: hot gases escaped from a hole created from the damaged O-rings, creating a blowtorch effect into the fuel tank. The fuel tank then detonated, causing the solid rocket boosters on either side of the shuttle to twist before seperating and breaking apart, their fuel adding to the explosion. At this point, the shuttle was still intact, and would have remained intact if these events were the only thing that happened, since, after all, this is a vehicle designed to survive the extremes not only space, but also launch and re-entry. However, another event did happen: A combination of the explosion, and the SRB's twisting, caused the shuttle to suddenly pitch up, subjecting it to extreme wind sheer, like tossing a balsawood glider into a tornado. While the shuttle was designed to withstand forces at shallow-to-moderate angles of attack during descent, the sudden, deep pitching, combined with the fact that the shuttle was moving at almost Mach 2, was far beyond the Challengers design tolerances and leading the shuttle's sad disintegration on live television. Here's the disaster.'
- The San Bernardino train disaster was a fine example of this. If one of several things had gone differently, it's possible that six people would not have died: Not an example. Cut. Only one disaster, plus one minor tangent.
- First, someone didn't write the weight of the cargo that the train was hauling down on the form, and since the cargo, trona, which is heavier than coal, was loaded to a point well below where coal would be loaded visually (but to the maximum weight capacity of the hopper cars), the station clerk went with a visual inspection and estimated that the cargo was 40% lighter than it actually was. Not a disaster.
- As a result, the engineer, working off the wrong figures, underestimated the number of engines he would need, meaning he would not have sufficient braking power for going down the Cajon Pass. Not a disaster.
- Complicating matters was the fact that one engine at the front (it was dead to begin with, only having air brakes operational) and one at the back did not have their dynamic brakes working, further reducing brake power. Not a disaster.
- On the way down the pass, when they realized the train was now a runaway, they pulled the emergency brakes, which turned on all the mechanical brakes on the train, but, for whatever reason turned off the dynamic brakes, which kept the train from slowing much. Not a disaster.
- The train hit a curve at the bottom of the pass, which had a speed limit of forty miles an hour, at over 100, causing it to fly off the tracks and hit several houses, killing four. In fact, this curve was the major reason the engineers knew they would have to slow down while going down the Cajon Pass, thus their growing panic when they realized their train was a runaway and that a derailment was inevitable. Here's your diasater.
- It gets better though: when cleaning up the trona that had spilled, some heavy equipment damaged a fuel pipeline running nearby, and that burst. The company responsible for the pipeline did not react to the sudden drop in pressure, and the emergency valves meant to stop flow in cases like this did not trigger. This resulted in a massive fire that killed two more people. Tangental to the main disaster at best.
- First, someone didn't write the weight of the cargo that the train was hauling down on the form, and since the cargo, trona
- The 1988 Gare de Lyon rail accident was another case of this. Not an example. Cut. Only one disaster.
- It all began with a passenger who was unaware that train schedules had recently been changed and that this train no longer stopped at the stop she usually used. When she realized they were passing the stop, she panicked and pulled the emergency brake so she could exit. (Due to the number of intervening factors, she was not held responsible for the accident, although she was fined for misuse of the emergency system.) Not a disaster.
- While trying to reset the emergency brake, the driver and the engineer inadvertently closed a critical valve between the first and second cars, which disconnected the second car and every car behind it from the braking system. Not a disaster.
- As a safety precaution, the brakes were designed to lock if disconnected, preventing the train from moving. However, the driver and engineer failed to recognize the significance of this and believed that the brakes lines were overloaded as a result of the emergency brake activation, a common malfunction. In order to correct the suspected malfunction, the driver and engineer manually released air from the braking system, disabling the safety mechanism and allowing the train to move despite the problem in the brake system. Not a disaster.
- Adding to the confusion, the driver's gauges showed the brake pressure as normal. He was unaware that, with the valve closed, he was only getting brake pressure readings for the first car, not the whole train. There were also no additional indicators to warn him of a problem in the braking system. Not a disaster.
- By the time the train got moving again, they were severely delayed. The train was supposed to make two more stops, but in order to make up some of the lost time, dispatchers instructed the driver to skip the penultimate station, which was on level ground and would have allowed the driver to recognize the failure in enough time to bring the train safely to a stop even with the greatly diminished braking power. Instead, the train proceeded directly to Gare de Lyon, which sat at the bottom of a shallow hill. By the time the driver realized the brake system was malfunctioning, he was already on the graded part of the track, which greatly increased his stopping distance. Not a disaster.
- When he realized the problem, the driver activated an emergency alarm and then called the station and attempted to warn them of the problem, but in his panic, he failed to identify himself or his train, so station controllers were uncertain which train was having the problem. In his panic, he also forgot that he had a backup braking system, albeit one that wasn't always reliable. Not a disaster.
- Furthermore, after calling in the warning, the driver left the cab in order to help direct passengers to move to the rear. This likely prevented fatalities aboard the inbound train, but it also made it impossible for controllers to reestablish contact with him. Not a disaster.
- The controllers quickly determined it had to be one of four trains, and attempted to call each of the four to determine which one was in difficulty, which could have allowed them to identify the train by process of elimination even with the train's driver not responding. However, the activation of the emergency system had gone out to all the trains, and a flood of calls inquiring as to the nature of the problem prevented them from making the outgoing calls in a timely manner. Not a disaster.
- According to the original programming, the inbound train was (as any train would be) supposed to be routed to an empty platform. Crashing into the empty platform would have probably wrecked the train, but with all the passengers moved to the rearmost car, there would likely have been no serious injuries (as there weren't aboard that train in the wreck that ultimately ensued). However, the emergency system overrode that programming, sending the inbound train to the platform directly ahead, where a fully-loaded outbound train had been waiting to depart. Not a disaster.
- At this point, the disaster is mitigated slightly by the driver of the outbound train, André Tanguy, who sees the train coming at them and frantically orders his passengers to evacuate. But while some lives are unquestionably saved by his actions, there are just too many people onboard and not enough time for all of them to get off safely. With the evacuation still in progress, the inbound train slams into the outbound train, killing 56 people aboard the outbound train (including Tanguy, who refused to leave his post so he could continue to call out the evacuation warning over the PA; he was most likely the first to die when the train careened into his cab, killing him instantly). Here's your disaster.
- In 1998, a single wheel failure led to a horrific single-train accident in Eschede, Germany. This one might qualify, though the first bullet point isn't a disaster. The other might qualify, but less sure.
- The train had a two-piece wheel design, known as a resilient wheel, which was typically only used on trams/streetcars, and had been added to the trains in question because solid wheels typically used on heavy-rail trains caused excessive vibrations. The resilient wheel had not been tested for reliability at high speeds. Not a disaster.
- The outer rim of one of said wheels fractures and unwinds from the wheel, puncturing the front passenger car and leaving the other end sticking out the bottom. A passenger, who had been riding with his family in the compartment of the front car where the wheel rim penetrated, goes to find the train manager, but Deutsche Bahn policy at the time requires staff to make a judgement on whether the emergency brake should be pulled. However, the manager doesn't have any authority on pulling the brake lever either, as he is not a driver nor an engineer.
- Just as the train manager and passenger arrive to investigate the damage, the train passes over a switch in the track. The hanging piece of metal catches on a check rail that operates as part of the switch mechanism, pulling that car, and by extension the one behind it, off the track.
- As the first two cars derail and coast partially off the rails, the straying wheels bump the switch rails into the open position. This causes a torquing force to be applied to the third car that swings it out sideways. By terrible coincidence, this switch operates in close proximity to a concrete highway overpass, and the swinging motion of the third car sends it right into the support pillars for the overpass, knocking them out and critically compromising the bridge's structure.
- The violent motion of the third car also pulls the fourth car from the tracks. It rolls up onto an embankment where two highway workers are unluckily working at the time; both are killed instantly.
- While the first four cars and the front power car clear the overpass, the rest of the train is not so lucky. The overpass collapses, crushing part of the fifth car and the entirety of the sixth car so severely that the resultant wreckage was later determined to be about six inches high; anyone in those sections would have been killed instantly. The front half of the fifth car is spared from a direct impact with the concrete, but the force of having the rear part of the car crushed and torn off is enough to cause serious injury and death even in the part that was left intact.
- The remaining six passenger cars and the rear power car are still moving at high speed and have nowhere to go but into the massive pile of concrete. The cars jackknife and plow into the pile one by one with crushing force. Including the two highway workers, 101 people are killed, most of them in the fifth through twelfth cars.
- Rescuers were hampered in their attempts to get into the derailed train because of the design of both the framework and the pressure-proof windows, the latter of which were replaced with windows with predetermined breaking seams in the aftermath of the accident.
- The Big Bayou Canot rail accident qualifies: Not an example. Cut. Only one disaster, and it's not even a bullet point.
- The railroad in charge of maintaining of the bridge, CSX, had the swing span acting as a fixed span. To their detriment, it had been built as a swing during the 1940s, but they maintained it as a fixed span due to the waterways being difficult to navigate. Not a disaster.
- The railroad failed to light the bridge in any way. Not a disaster.
- The railroad failed to secure the swing span against unintended movement. Not a disaster.
- The railroad also had the rails contiously welded. Had the rails severed, the signals would have indicated a problem ahead, giving the engineer time to either stop the train or slow down the train to minimize the damage done. Not a disaster.
- The Sunset Limited was delayed by half an hour due to an unscheduled repair on a malfunctioning air conditioner unit and a toilet in New Orleans, LA. Had they not had to repair the toilet and AC, the train would've missed the accident by almost 20 minutes. Not a disaster.
- The weather was foggy at the time of the accident, which caused the tugboat pilot to become disoriented and veer into a waterway never intended for use by craft as big as a tugboat with barges. Not a disaster.
- The tug boat pilot was not trained to read any radar, and the tug boat did not have maps, a compass or charts of the local waterways. Not a disaster.
- The Dutchman's Curve Train Wreck of 1918, the worst disaster on US rails, was a "long, thin chain of events" as described by Trains Magazine. Here's what happened leading up to it. Not an example. Cut. Only one disaster.
- Two trains of the Nashville Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad, the #1 and #4, were scheduled along the same route. The #4 was ordered to hold in the station until #1 arrived, as the stretch of track leading out of Nashville was an unsignaled, single-track main with no room to pass. Not a disaster.
- 7 minutes had passed past departure time, and #1 was still holding position. Then the conductor noticed another train passing, thinking it to be #1. He informed the engineer, who proceeded with the train. The problem was that train wasn't #1—it was a switcher passing with an empty train from the yards—but the conductor was too busy checking passengers in during a crowded day to notice. Not a disaster.
- The disaster might have been prevented when the yardmaster at Shops, the last junction before switching to signal track, noticed #4 leaving without verifying #1 had passed. Engineers were required to make such confirmations before leaving the yards, but they had been disregarding it without consequence. The yardmaster tried to get them to stop, but the train had passed without hearing the warning whistle. Only a few minutes later, both #4 and #1 had collided at a combined speed of 100 mph, killing 101 people. Here's your disaster.
- The infamous wreck of Casey Jones might have been a simple run that night, had Murphy's law not reared its ugly head. Not an example. Cut. Only one disaster.
- Casey wasn't even supposed to work that night. He had just gotten off his shift and was heading home, but the #1 train to Canton had arrived several hours late, and Sam Tate, the regular man, was out sick. That meant Casey and his fireman, Simm Webb, had to fill in for him aboard #382, the train's locomotive. Not a disaster.
- It was a rainy night on an unsignaled stretch of signal track, with six other trains scheduled for that evening. The #25 was running ahead of #1, and he would have to take siding at Goodman to let the higher-priority #2 pass. Otherwise, most of his meets would be at Vaughn, Mississippi, where two freights and a double-section train would hold siding to let him pass. The problem was that the freights—#73 and #82—were too big to fight into the siding at Vaughn, so they had to couple end to end and snake around each train that passed them, with just a few cars hanging out of the end of the siding. Not a disaster.
- But perhaps the biggest detriment was Casey himself. He had already built himself a reputation as a fine engineer, but he was also known as a risk taker, often pushing his train to dangerous speeds to make up time whenever they were running late. On this night, Casey was hellbent on making sure #1 made it to Canton on time, and he had already made up several minutes by the time the disaster occurred. But he was pushing himself so hard, he never considered fate might have other ideas. Just before he got to Vaughn, the freights had snaked outward onto the main track where Casey was barreling towards in order to let the two sections of #26 back into the station to make room for #1. They were planning moving to block the north switch to let Casey by, then maneuver back to the south, but before they could, an air hose broke and sent the train into emergency. They set a torpedo warning Casey, who was moving too fast to stop in time. His fireman jumped, (and indeed, Casey's last known words were to him, shouting, "Jump, Sim, jump!") while Casey valiantly stayed aboard to stop his train, only to smash into the rear of the stalled freights; to his credit, he managed to slow his passenger train down from a blistering 75 mph to a relatively slower 35 mph before the collision occurred. Casey was the only fatality that night, but his efforts saved his passengers, and he was rewarded for his service by being hailed an American folk legend. Here's your only possible disaster.
- In January 2022, a powerful snow storm in Virginia left motorists stranded on a fifty mile stretch of Interstate 95 for over a day and a half, including US Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va). How did this happen? Despite having over a day's warning at how bad the storm could be, the Virginia Department of Transporation (VDOT) had decided to not pretreat the roads for the snow and ice as there would be rain before the changeover to snow, running the risk of the treatment being washed away by the rain and passing cars. With the roads untreated, snow and ice began to build, leading to six tractor trailers blocking the road. Even more, the snow falling at a rate of 2 inches/hour meant that traversing the hill-filled area was impossible. Making matters worse, power outages around those areas knocked out VDOT's webcams around those areas, meaning they had no idea such problems. The only inklings that things were terrible were Twitter posts asking for where any one was, that they were stuck there with low food, water and gas. This lead to at least one lawmaker vowing to make a law to make sure nothing like that never happened again. Only one disaster. Not an example. Cut.
- One notable rail disaster that's still buried under Richmond, Virginia, is Chesapeake and Ohio #231, a 4-4-0 locomotive that remains trapped in the abandoned Church Hill Tunnel after almost a century. How it got there was a long, thin chain of events that started at the end of the Civil War—a disaster of which plagues Richmond to this very day. Not an example. Cut. Only one disaster.
- During the Reconstruction Era, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) elected to dig a rail tunnel under Church Hill Street to increase coal traffic out of the area. Where the railroad faltered was that the tunnel was dug out under a marl deposit, which was more prone to absorbing and discharging water. Numerous cave-ins occurred during construction, and the area was frequently prone to flooding. Not a disaster.
- Eventually, C&O gave up on the tunnel, constructing a new line out of the area to reach the Alleghenies, and bypassed Church Hill in 1901. That might have been the end of things, but someone in management decided to reopen the troublesome area in 1925 so they could get a few extra trains through. Plans called for widening the tunnel to accommodate larger rail cars and locomotives. Alas, it seemed nature was not pleased about being disturbed. Not a disaster.
- On October 2, 1925, a larger area near the western end of the tunnel collapsed while #231 was passing through, pulling ten flat cars. Several men died, the boiler ruptured, the engineer was immediately killed, and the fireman was severely burned and died the next day. Workers attempted to recover a few of the bodies, but the area was so unstable that C&O gave up completely and sealed off the west end of the tunnel and a portion between the collapsed area and the east end. It was used a wye for a few years at the unsealed end, but that was eventually abandoned, and the tunnel was left to rot. A local legend reemerged after the disaster, claiming the burnt fireman was really "The Richmond Vampire," who caused the collapse as punishment for being disturbed. Here's your disaster.
- Today, the tunnel still sits as a threat to Richmond. Sinkholes have formed, a few buildings on Church Hill have collapsed due to the water damage wreaked by the tunnel, and even a few buildings farther from it have been victims. Numerous attempts have been made to extract the train and the bodies (if there's much left after nearly a century of rot), but the increased danger of extraction has made that an almost impossible task. While there are still those hoping to see if #231 will finally escape the prison of Church Hill Tunnel, its threat will loom over Richmond for a long time. Not a disaster.
- Torre del Bierzo, the worst rail disaster in Spain's history, might have been avoided had wiser heads prevailed on a mail-and-express train that was running several hours late. Not an example. Cut. Only one disaster.
- The train in question was being doubleheaded by 4-8-0s, but they were well behind schedule due to braking issues. One of the engines had to be left behind when a hotbox broke out, delaying the train further. And yet, despite the brakes clearly not working, they decided to continue on their journey anyway. What happened next is this trope in full force. Not an example.
- After the train's brakes stopped working, the line ahead tried putting sleepers on the tracks to slow it down. Unfortunately, it was going so fast, it failed to do anything. Not a disaster.
- At Tunnel 20, a shunting engine was traveling backwards when it heard about the runaway barreling toward it. While it made a valiant effort to get out of the way, the mail-and-express smashed into it head on. And if that wasn't enough, the wreck severed the cables for the signals, meaning an oncoming coal train was given a false clear to enter the tunnel and smashed into the wreck at full force. And then it caught on fire, burning the survivors inside the tunnel alive. It got so bad, the crews couldn't get inside for several days, and when they did, most of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition. Here's your disaster.
- Quintinshill is to Great Britain what Dutchman's Curve is to Americans—the deadliest train wreck on home soil. Occurring as World War I was well underway, the network had a lot of problems brewing that wound up costing a lot of lives thanks to a very bad habit its crewman had gotten into. Not an example. Cut. Only one disaster.
- The signalmen at Quintinshill had two men on duty—a night shifter and a day shifter—who would come in to relieve the other when it came time to punch out at 6:00 AM. However, in order to let the morning shifter get an extra half-hour of sleep and come to work on the local passing that way, it was practiced where the night shifter would write all scheduled train movements through the area on a piece of paper, pass it to his replacement, and said replacement would copy them into the logbook so no one would find out. This practice was not only highly illegal, but very dangerous due to the risk of misplacing trains. George Meakin, that day's night shifter, was engaging in this practice so his replacement, James Tinsley, could take over without anyone noticing. Not a disaster.
- The junction at Quintinshill consisted of an Up Line, a Down Line, and two passing sidings on both lines. Unfortunately, the network was experiencing a huge uptick in traffic due to the war, so it wasn't uncommon for the siding on the Down Line to be occupied, forcing trains that needed to let higher priority ones traveling in the same direction move onto the Up Line, and into the path of oncoming trains heading that way, until the lower line was clear. The day the accident occurred, the Down Line's siding was occupied by a goods train from Carlisle, and both northbound expresses were running late. On top of that, the Up Line had an empty coal wagon train and a special troop train heading towards Carlisle. Not a disaster.
- Meakin had the goods train parked in the Down Line siding and cleared the empty coal train to head into the Up Line siding, while also clearing the first express train (which Tinsley was riding on) to maneuver onto the Up Line to make room for the train behind it. However, though he alerted the signalmen at Kirkpatrick that the coal train had cleared the main line, he neglected to alert of the first express train's presence on the Up Line. He also neglected to put a lever box on the signals to make sure the Up Line wasn't cleared, with both men forgetting of the train's presence. Not a disaster.
- Worst yet, the fireman on the express had neglected to ensure Tinsley was properly alerted of the train's presence on the Up Line, as, though he reminded him of the train's presence, was doing so at a moment where Tinsley was writing the logbook information his coworker had written down elsewhere, and failed to take notice of a lack of a lever box. Other staffers on both the express and goods train were also violating company policy by hanging out in the signal box longer than necessary, and thus neither train was properly protected. Not a disaster.
- With the express train completely forgotten about, the Southbound troop train was given clearance to proceed. At 6:49, it smashed into the stopped express head on. Only a few minutes later, the other express on the down line smashed into the wreckage blocking its path, and thanks to older rolling stock being used that day, a fire broke out that made rescue efforts that much more difficult. By the end of it, 226 died, and 246 were injured. Here's your disaster.
- An inquiry into the accident found both signalman guilty of culpable homicide and breach of duty, and the two were sentenced to prison. In later years, however, the BBC charged that the railway itself was the guilty party, running wartime traffic to the point it was putting such a strain on the network and its men, and that the signalmen were overworked as a result. Not a disaster.
- In a similar vein, there was Harrow & Wealdstone in 1952. Not an example. Cut. Only two disasters.
- On a very foggy morning, a commuter service from Tring to Euston arrived at Harrow & Wealdstone station, taking the fast line as it was due to run non-stop to Euston after making its booked stop. The train was delayed by 7 minutes due to fog, and was busier than usual as the previous service had been cancelled. Not an example.
- Fast coming up behind was an overnight sleeper train from Perth to Euston. Normally, it would have been long gone by the time the commuter service stopped at Harrow, but it too had been delayed by the fog and was running 80 minutes late. Not a disaster.
- As the fast line was occupied, all signals were at danger. However, the driver of the express missed the signals (there was no advance warning system outside of the former Great Western Railway) and the express smashed into the commuter train. Here's your disaster.
- To make things worse, the wreckage spilled onto the adjacent line right into the path of an express to Liverpool, which had already passed clear signals at speed. Ultimately, 112 people died and 340 were injured. This also counts.
- Much more recently, there was the 2001 collision at Great Heck. Not an example. Cut. Only one disaster.
- A jeep was being driven along a motorway by a man who had had just 45 minutes' sleep in the last 48 hours. The man fell asleep and the jeep veered off the motorway, down an embankment, and onto the busy East Coast Main Line. Not a disaster.
- Moments later, the first train from Newcastle to Kings Cross collided with the jeep, pushing it along the line. Although the front bogie of the leading vehicle derailed, the train stayed upright and pushed the jeep along the line until it reached a set of points. Not a disaster.
- The points deflected the train to the right, causing them to foul the up line. At that moment, a freight train running 20 minutes early (perfectly legitimately, as freight trains are allowed to run early if a "path" can be found) collided with it. Both drivers and six passengers were killed, and 82 people were injured. Here's your disaster.
Albert3105
Since: Jun, 2013
#40: May 18th 2022 at 3:00:10 PM
For Disaster Dominoes, I always thought the chaining was the important part, not the horror of the disaster.
Vilui
Since: May, 2009
#41: May 18th 2022 at 3:05:37 PM
You are taking the trope name much too literally when you require multiple steps that are each a "disaster" on their own. The trope description explains that it's about a chain of multiple things going wrong and adding up to a disaster.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#42: May 18th 2022 at 3:41:48 PM
Troper laserviking42 said above:
The trope isn't "here's a list of bad things that led up to a disaster", that list would be endless (and we're seeing it on the page with the tremendous bloat). The trope is "one disaster leads to another disaster which leads to another and so on". One of the reasons I pushed for the trope to be NRLEP is precisely because we're getting all these shoehorns and arguable Wikipedia plagiarism.
I agree.
BoltDMC
Since: May, 2020
#43: May 18th 2022 at 3:44:21 PM
As I understand it, what needs to be chained is a set of disasters that cause each other in succession. Somebody making an error in judgement or bad weather happening isn't a "disaster."
Edited by BoltDMC on May 18th 2022 at 3:44:32 AM
Albert3105
Since: Jun, 2013
#44: May 18th 2022 at 3:56:38 PM
It is clear that we are at an impasse regarding the trope's definition. I don't know if Short-Term is the most appropriate place for this dispute.
laserviking42
from End-World
Since: Oct, 2015
Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
#45: May 18th 2022 at 4:04:43 PM
Sorry I've been AFK, real world stuff going on.
Anyways, yes the trope description is rather vague, but every accident on earth is due to a series of missteps, bad judgment calls, faulty design, etc. I could list every disaster that has taken place in just the city I live in and it would easily equal what is on the page already. This is the reason I wanted the RL examples cut, because it's endless. And one of the signs that RL needs to be reined in is when the RL folder exceeds the fictional tropes, which this one does.
If the trope is so formless that we are describing a chain of events that lead to an accident, then it may need TRS.
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
Albert3105
Since: Jun, 2013
#46: May 18th 2022 at 4:37:58 PM
Pretty much what I said, but more explicit and longer.
Nen_desharu
Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire
from Greater Smash Bros. Universe or Toronto
Since: Aug, 2020
Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire
#47: May 21st 2022 at 8:47:35 PM
Removed more mentions of television network Disaster Dominoes in Transatlantic Equivalent, One Game for the Price of Two, Networks, Misaimed Marketing, and Creator.Global Television Network
It would be great to check the creator wicks for Disaster Dominoes for more television networks.
Edited by Nen_desharu on May 21st 2022 at 11:55:21 AM
Kirby is awesome.
Total posts: 47
Edited by Albert3105 on May 16th 2022 at 12:13:36 PM