People Are Remembering The Biggest Catastrophic Failures Of Various Human-Made Devices And Here’re 30 Of The Most Devastating Pics

In order to find out how one such catastrophe has changed the fashion industry forever, Bored Panda spoke with Ieva Zubavičiūtė, CEO of Fashion Bloc, consultant and investor in sustainable fashion. “On the 24th of April 2013, the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh collapsed killing 1,134 people and severely injuring thousands of garment factory workers.”

Ieva said that the catastrophe was a turning point “for many to find out that our clothes were being made in deadly environments and nobody wanted to be accountable for that.” Moreover, “The collapse of Rana Plaza, a multiple factory facility that manufactured clothing for brands such as Benetton, Mango, Primark, and dozens of others, was a wake-up call to the industry.”

“Sadly, this was not the first or the last tragedy that could have been avoided if the required safety measures were taken or brands would have monitored their supply chains adequately,” Ieva added. Nevertheless, it helped raise public awareness and initiate campaigns demanding transparency. 

“One of the biggest impacts of the Rana Plaza tragedy is public awareness and the beginning of the Fashion Revolution movement. Every April, people are encouraged to demand transparency from the brands they wear by asking #whomademyclothes on social media.”

“In the same way, brands are asked to celebrate their makers. Fashion Revolution created a transparency index where they rate hundreds of major brands - from luxury houses such as Chanel to high-street labels such as Zara on the transparency of their supply chain,” Ieva explained. “Movements such as Fashion Revolution help the public make more informed decisions when buying clothes and prioritize transparency,” the fashion industry expert concluded.

Created back in 2015, the subreddit features “videos, gifs, or aftermath photos of machinery, structures, or devices that have failed catastrophically during operation,” states its description. Today, it has a whopping 1.5M members, so it’s obvious that huge audiences find the content very entertaining.

Even though the group’s title “Catastrophic Failure” suggests that some very unsettling content is shared there, the subreddit’s rules are strict to make sure the posts don’t cross any lines. The group doesn’t allow submissions that depict people visibly being seriously injured: “you must apply the 'Visible Injuries' flair to your post and tag it 'NSFW.'”

Moreover, “If a submission depicts a situation where people were killed, but those people are not directly visible, you must apply the 'Fatalities' flair to your post (e.g. the Hindenburg Disaster, or a plane crash).”

Speaking of catastrophes themselves, there have been far too many of them in the past and recent history. Since one of them, the Aloha Airlines flight 243 tragedy in the skies, over 30 years have already passed. The incident happened when cruising at 24,000 feet: an 18-foot section of the plane's roof suddenly ripped off. It caused an explosive decompression, creating a gaping hole in the fuselage and sucking a flight attendant out of the plane.

After the incident, a passenger reported that before boarding, she noticed a crack in the fuselage, but she did not report it prior to takeoff. Later, a National Transportation and Safety Board investigation suggested that the incident may have been caused by the plane's old age and poor maintenance. Moreover, Aloha Airlines short flights like this should have received check-ups twice as often as they had.

Another peculiar incident happened a year ago at a Swiss chocolate factory where, due to internal malfunction, it sent out a plume of cocoa 'snow.' Fine particles dusted the ground around Lindt & Spruengli factory in town of Olten after the ventilation system stopped functioning properly.

The area where the malfunction happened was in charge of making roasted cocoa nibs. These nibs are fragments of crushed cocoa beans, which are the basis of chocolate. Due to the strong winds, the powder spread around the factory, covering it in fine cocoa dust.

A year ago, a giant whale sculpture became a national hero in The Netherlands for stopping a train that overran the tracks. Luckily, the driver of the train in Rotterdam city escaped serious injury as the train crashed through barriers at the final station of De Akkers in Spijkenisse, near the Dutch port city of Rotterdam. The accident occurred on a raised platform, ten meters (30 feet) off the ground, where the carriage could have easily plummeted into the water below.

Maarten Struijs, the architect who designed the whale sculpture, expressed his astonishment and relief that the structure had played a life-saving role. “I'm surprised it's so strong," he told a Dutch news outlet. "If plastic has been standing for 20 years, you don't expect it to hold a metro carriage."

When it comes to the term “catastrophic failure” itself, it refers to a sudden and total failure from which recovery is impossible. Catastrophic failures often lead to cascading system failure. These failures are usually investigated with the methods of forensic engineering. It aims to isolate the cause or causes of failure.