 Can you believe it? That this channel has been going for six whole years. I can't either, but well thank you for keeping coming back every year. So this is the usual annual omnibus of pretty much every video from October last year to October this year. I can't believe how long this one actually is and it's uh well at the time of recording this voiceover part it's currently at 18 hours although I reckon it's actually going to be longer by the time I finish rendering it. Anyway thank you for six years and let's hope for a couple more years or maybe six more. I hope you enjoy this massively long amount of me talking. It is the 4th of January 1986 and 26 year old James Harrison is working at the Sequoia Fuels Corporation site in a scrubber building. He begins coughing little does he know that he has inhaled a deadly cocktail of hydrofluoric acid. An alarm is heard and he escapes the building but the chemicals he had ingested will prove to be fatal. The building he was working in was 15 meters away from a ruptured tank which held uranium hexafluoride a compound used in the enrichment of uranium for the nuclear industry. The event would release 29,500 pounds of material into the atmosphere and would expose and hospitalize many workers. It would not be the first time but Operator Kermige would be entangled in a nuclear controversy with the Karen Silkwood scandal in the late 1970s and it would not be the last. As like many similar events the release would be the result of improper management, multiple shift changeovers and product handling issues. Sadly the working-class employees would pay the price. As such I'm going to rate this disaster here five on my disaster scale but only three on my legacy scale due to the event being quickly forgotten because of another bigger disaster in 1986. The road to 1986 started back in 1968 with Kermige breaking ground on a new uranium processing plant. The site is near the town of Gore, Vian and Webber Falls in eastern Oklahoma not far from Interstate 40. The site was intended to be used to convert yellow cake into gaseous uranium hexafluoride and was licensed as a fuel cycle facility regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission operated under Kermige Nuclear Corporation. Production started on site in April 1970 with a conversion capacity of 4550 metric tons of uranium per year working 24 hours a day with a four shift pattern. This subsidiary split into two companies in the early 1980s in which one of them, Sequoia Fuels Corporation, would be responsible for owning and operating the site. The process in its most basic explanation is yellow cake in uranium hexafluoride out but we will want to have a look in a little more detail. Uranium concentrate is weighed, sampled and indigested using nitric acid to produce uranium nitrate which then undergoes a solvent extraction process where impurities are removed from the product. The impure uranium nitrate solution enters at one end of the solvent extraction circuit while a mixture of organic solvents that have the ability to absorb uranium enters at the other. Passing encounter currents past each other the two solutions enter six stages of mixing and setting where the uranium is extracted from the solution and the impurities remain in the acid. The baron acid solution is neutralized and is further processed to remove radioactive uranium daughter products such as radium which are then stored on site as a sludge. The process raffinate which is virtually free of radioactivity is then stored on site in holding ponds to be reduced by evaporation. The solvent extraction solution containing the purified uranium is re-extracted into water in a countercurrent pulse column and enters an evaporation and boil down process. Evaporation concentrates the weak uranium nitrate solution into molten uranium nitrate hexahydrate or UNH. This intermediate form of uranium is then converted by thermal decomposition to uranium trioxide in a denitration process. Burnesses heat the denitrator troughs which are equipped with agitator arms that constantly stir the UNH. The U03 drawn from the denitrator troughs is shaped into orange colored pellets measuring about a millimeter in diameter. Grinding pulverizes these pellets into a fine powder. The powder is reacted with hydrogen in a two-stage counterflow fluid bed reactor to produce U02 as a powder. This powder is then put into a two-stage stir bed reactor also with a countercurrent flow. Hydrogen fluoride is added and the U02 is converted into uranium tetrafluoride. The uranium tetrafluoride is then transferred to a tower reactor where reaction with elemental fluoride creates the final product. To solidify the UF6 it is sent to coal traps. It is then heated again to turn into a liquid for pumping into storage tanks. Once inside the UF6 solidifies as it cools down to room temperature. These tanks are rolled around on carts running on tracks. The cart and tank before filling are rolled onto a set of scales. It will be kept here throughout the filling process to measure the net weight. Stopping the filling of the cylinders on site is done manually by operators and there is no automatic cutoff. During filling via a flexible pigtail line UF6 is kept at a temperature of around 210 degrees Fahrenheit. It can take several eight-hour shifts to fully fill a tank and all of this is dependent on the production rate on site. After filling the tank's valve is closed and the hose is removed and the product is moved via forklift to a steam chest which is used to keep the UF6 in liquid form. Cylinder number E2047 a model 48Y tank passed a 20-point inspection in October 1985. This was intended to find any damage to the valve or welds on the unit and is conducted by an experienced and licensed engineer. The cylinder is made up of five apes of an inch thick steel. The body is approximately 117 inches long with an inside diameter of 48 inches. In total the empty weight of such a container is 5,200 pounds and is not allowed to exceed a net weight of 27,500 pounds. The same inspection is undertaken by shift manager before any filling takes place which is exactly what happened on the 3rd of January 1986 at 10 a.m. Filling would initially take place at two different traps providing 1230 and 10,000 pounds of UF6 during the morning shift. During the evening shift a further 12,200 pounds are added bringing up the net weight to 23,430 pounds. Next came the midnight shift. As part of the handover the operator was informed that he would be continuing to fill the tank. The operator is to fill the tank to the target weight of 27,500 pounds. But he notices something strange when the scales won't go above 26,400 pounds. After investigation the operator notices that one of the cylinder's cart wheels aren't completely on the scales. This is a problem as the weight is not being properly measured. After several attempts to move the cart eventually he manages to get a new reading on the scales which can only show a maximum of 30,000 pounds. The operator is shocked to find that he is reading 29,500 pounds in effect bottoming out. Worried the operator consults his supervisor who suggests using vacuum from the previously emptied coal traps to remove the excess weight. The evacuation begins at 6.15 a.m. and initially around 150 pounds are removed in a space of 10 minutes. At the end of his shift he reports to the relieving operator of the overfill due to the cart being off the scales. As the day shift went on the operator who ironically was the one who initiated the filling the day before noted that no more product was being evacuated. As we saw before once the uf6 reaches room temperature it begins to solidify. The assistant supervisor and the operator then decided to move the tank into a steam chest. The placing of an overfilled tank into a steam chest is a direct violation of company policy. At around 11.30 a.m the tank ruptured after 2015 minutes of heating. The force of the explosion damaged the top of the steam chest. The uf6 vaporized and combined with moisture in the steam chest released a highly acidic gas. This deadly chemical made its way into the facility ventilation system. It was here that James Harrison inhaled the acidic gas. The plume left the plant had traveled 29 kilometers due to a strong wind heading south past the I-40 and over several sparsely populated residential areas. The vapor entered the ventilation intake vents of the process building injuring the employees within. Most of the approximately 40 workers on site at the time were in the lunchroom. Upon realizing the danger many escaped but had to pass through the cloud. The evacuation alarm was sent and the ventilation system was switched off. The rendezvous point for the site workers was luckily upwind where they observed the release for a further 40 minutes. The company didn't really have an emergency plan but the Gore Police Department was called and they notified the Sequoia County Sheriff's Department and Oklahoma Highway Patrol to close down the I-40 and Highway 10. Harrison was driven 13 kilometers to a nursing home for a canister of oxygen before he was taken to Sequoia Memorial Hospital. However upon reaching the hospital it was discovered that he was ill-equipped for treating Harrison and sent him to the larger Sparks Regional Medical Center in Fort Smith, Arkansas another 34 kilometers away. He would die at 3 p.m soon after arriving at the emergency room. The fatality was a result of the company not having an adequate emergency plan arrangement with local hospitals. In total 100 people were sent to hospital with 21 severely injured. Most of the contamination was within the boundary site. In total around three curries of radiation was released. In comparison Three Mile Island released over four times that at 13 curries. During the investigation it was found that the cylinder was not defective but instead succumbed to the extreme pressure caused by an overfilled container being heated and the UF6 expanding past the point of no return. The site after cleanup would continue to operate until 1993 but it would see another release in 1992. This coupled with storage ponds leaking into the ground meant that the site would need a long time to be fully decommissioned The incident didn't stir much in the media as you would have thought but luckily for Kermah Guy but just a few months later Chernobyl would happen. This video is a plain difficult production. All videos on the channel were Creative Commons Attribution Share like licensed. Plain Difficult Videos are produced by me, John, in a sunny south-eastern corner of London, UK. Help the channel grow by liking, commenting and subscribing. Check out my Twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos. I've got Patreon and YouTube membership as well so if you fancy check them out to support the channel financially. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Approaching a terminus platform is one of the most important parts of a train driver's duties. This is because usually at the end of the line there is a wall, buffer stops or sand drag. Even at low speed a collision with a solid object can be pretty catastrophic. The reason is pretty simple. A big heavy object like a train stopping, hitting something, transfers all the momentum to the vehicle's occupants and even a collision at a few miles an hour can result in damage and injuries. An accident in 1975 would make London Underground completely rethink how it protects trains approaching terminus platforms. Resulting in an addition to the signalling system which would take the name of the tragedy Moorgate. Before the days of transmission based train control was implemented on the northern line, drivers were taught during manual handling Moorgate more break. But today's video isn't about the northern line platforms that you can visit today but instead platforms 9 and 10 which form parts of the route called the north city line. This short route between Moorgate and Drayton Park has had a number of operators since its 1904 opening and was under the control of London Transport up until 1976. The line when opened by the great northern and city railway ran from Moorgate to Thinsbury Park low level and was pretty much isolated from the rest of the rail network. It was built using a similar construction method to the city in south London line. This gave the tunnels a similar look to the deep level tube lines like the Bakaloo, Central, Piccadilly, Northern and Waterloo city lines but with one exception. That was the tunnel diameter. On your standard deep level line the tunnel loading gauge is around 12 feet but the new northern city line was built to accommodate mainline stock and as such it was built to a larger 16 feet loading gauge. During construction the route was originally planned to run beyond Moorgate to proposed Loughbury station. These plans were abandoned but a small runoff tunnel had been constructed which would house a sand drag. The line was never very profitable which led to being taken over by the Metropolitan Railway, the pre-runner to the Metropolitan line in 1913. After the formation of the London passenger transport board in 1933 the Metropolitan was lumped in with the other underground railways and the line was rebranded as the northern city line. In 1934 it was then re-rebranded as part of the Edgeware Morden line which was in itself renamed the northern line in 1937. Eventually in 1939 operations were transferred from the Metropolitan to the northern. The inclusion into the northern line formed part of the failed northern heights project. I'm not going to cover this here but I do know someone who has done a video on the subject. In 1964 the northern city line was cut back from Thinsbury park to Drayton park with its former platforms becoming part of the Piccadilly and the then new Victoria line to allow cross platform interchange. And this would form the final chapter of the line's London underground operation and you guessed it this came hand in hand with another rebranding to the northern line Highbury branch. This meant that passengers wanting to travel from Thinsbury park to Moorgate would have to travel on the Victoria line to Highbury in Islington and then change to the northern city line. Moorgate Platform 9 had a sand drag heaped up to about two feet above the rail level. Beyond this was a defunct hydraulic buffer stop then a brick wall. Entry to platforms 9 and 10 were accessible from a crossover which was protected by signal November Delta 9-10. And at the end of each platform was a fixer red light which denoted the limit of movement authority for trains in the station. In the early 1970s the route was once again pegged for change as a link was constructed from Drayton park back to Thinsbury park albeit this time on the high level to allow it to be connected to the main line. As part of these plans a line would then come under control of British rail and be operated on the national network albeit with local instructions very similar to the LUL rulebook. But this change over wasn't to happen until August 1976 and our disaster happened in February 1975 but first let's talk about the trains and their safety systems. The rolling stock used on the line were 1938 tube stock comprised of two three car units coupled together totaling 316 feet six inches in length weighing in at around 151 tons. The cars were body on frame construction with the body shell consisting of steel sheets welded and riveted together. This was placed onto a steel frame. The seating layout was standard for the time with a mixture of longitudinal and transverse similar but not identical to the 1972 stock on the Bakelulime. The door arrangement was again standard for the time with single leaf doors at each end with two double leaf doors in the middle. On the driving motor cars the cab took the place that would have been occupied by the single leaf door on one end. The trains were operated as part of the two person crew one motorman and one guard. Manual driven London Underground lines have a form of train protection called the train stop tripcock system and it's part of the two main safety systems employed on the network. It in its most basic form is a mechanical way to apply the emergency brakes on a unit in situations where the driver has passed a signal at danger or entered certain sections of track too fast. You see without this type of protection there'll be nothing to stop a train from going past a conflict point or into the rear of another train apart from the actions of the driver or shutting off traction current. The other safety system is called the dead man's device. This is fitted to the master controller. The controller is used to control the traction motors by actuating resistors. If the handle is released then the train pipe is vented to atmosphere putting the emergency brakes on. The 1938 tube stock made use of several intertwined systems all of which had to work to allow the unit to take power. One such was the control governor. This would cut out traction motors if there was insufficient air to operate the brakes. The train had two types of braking systems both operated the same physical brakes but provided air in different ways. The first let's look at the Westinghouse system which the brakes are based off. The system uses a reduction in air pressure in the train line to indirectly apply the brakes. It uses a triple valve which allows air into a tank ready to be used. It applies the brakes and it releases them. The braking system is a combination of the Westinghouse automatic brake and a self-lapping electroneumatic brake. The EP brake allows for multiple brake applications and releases and uses its own mainline air pipe whereas Westinghouse requires a little more thought. The Westinghouse brake isn't self-lapping meaning when you apply the brake you have to move the brake controller into lap to hold the required air in the brake cylinders and uses the train line air pipe. This system traces its heritage all the way back to the days of steam. This doesn't allow much room for error as you can only add brake pressure thus increasing braking force. If you do overdo it then you need to release the brakes and this is not something you'd want to do when approaching a platform. LUL uses a two aspect signalling system which only has unsurprisingly two aspects red for stop and green for go. Unlike national rail trains LUL rolling stock doesn't have a warning system like AWS. It's said relying on the driver's liner site to the next signal. If the signal visibility is obstructed say by the curvature of the track then a repeating signal is provided and can give two indications yellow meaning the signal it is repeating is at danger red and green meaning the signal ahead is clear. Each stop signal is provided with a train stop a metal bar that is next to the right hand running rail which is electroneumatically operated that rises three inches high when the associated signal is at danger. This makes contact with a trip cock that is mounted to the right hand shoe beam of the train when this is tripped vents all the air out and applies the emergency brake. If you wanted to be a driver on london underground way back when you had to follow a pretty sick career path the traditional route to motorman at the time was to work your way through the ranks starting as a guard after which you could then go for your motors which would promote you to a guard motorman until a position of motorman came up. This was the same career progression route for 50 year old motorman L.B. Neusen who had started with the company in 1969 as a guard working out of barking depot. He qualified as a guard motorman in 1974 racking up only six days of 1938 tube stock driving experience. He'd also gained around 31 days of experience driving the C69 stock on the Hammersmith and City service. In January 1975 he transferred to the hybrid branch line based out of Drayton Park depot aged 56. His training took place on the 22nd of January 1975. His instructor noted that Neusen was cautious but competent as a driver. For the next few weeks the newly qualified driver Neusen set about the usual duties of a motorman on the hybrid branch line. Between the 23rd of January and the 28th of February 1975 Neusen had driven to Moorgate several hundred times. This leads us on to the morning of the 28th of February 1975 and motorman Neusen booking on the number two duty at 624 driving 272. Unsurprisingly the shift would involve multiple trips to and from Moorgate including bringing the train into service at the start of the working. Neusen was already at work at 6.10 am with plenty of time to make a cup of tea and ready himself for the shift ahead. A fellow driver asked Neusen for some sugar which he obliged saying be careful with it as I'd like to have another cup after my shift. In his work bag he had his tea milk sugar rulebook and a notebook and in his coat he had 270 pounds to buy used car for his daughter in the afternoon. The day started off with Neusen's usual guard Mr Robert Harris running late and due to this another driver volunteered to work as the guard until Harris met the train en route. When Harris met the train at Moorgate the two set on their usual routine and nothing unusual was noted by Harris. It was well known by many of the drivers at Drayton Park that Neusen approached platforms slower than others showing a more cautious driving style. The remaining journeys went as they had done hundreds of times before with Neusen driving as he normally did. When 272 set off from Drayton Park at 08 38 am around a minute late little did anyone know that the busy rush hour train would be taking its last trip. Due to the exit stairway being at the end of the platforms at Moorgate the majority of the train's passengers occupied the front three carriages. As explained by guard Harris later all seemed well with Neusen testing the Westinghouse brake at the penultimate station as per the instructions for the 1938 tube stock. Harris walked around the rear carriage where the guard's panel was located in search for a newspaper but as soon as the train approached Moorgate and the station lights came into view Neusen seemed to be driving much more aggressively. A signalman on platform 9 at Moorgate saw train 272 approach the platform at a speed estimated at between 35 and 40 miles an hour, speeding down the platform and seeing the first couple of cars disappearing into the overrun tunnel. A second later the front cab then impacted the sand drag eventually going straight into the buffers beyond. This was quickly followed by car number two and three crushing into one another. The complete 52 foot length of the first car was crushed into 20 feet of tunnel. The second car had pushed under the first significantly damaging the body but not severely deforming the frame. The third car was much less damaged but did show signs of the impact. The thin steel body crumpled trapping passengers within. The platform became engulfed with a thick cloud of dust and debris from the impact and the sound rang about the tunnels of Moorgate station. The first emergency call was sent out at 848. The response was quick with the London Ambulance Service personnel reaching the station at 854. At around the same time the City of London Police informed nearby St Barts Hospital of a train collision at Moorgate but the severity of the incident was yet to be known. At 857 the first of the London Fire Brigade reached the scene and after an initial inspection the event was raised to major accident level. A doctor who had gone to the scene from nearby offices seeing the carnage requested all the morphine from a nearby boots pharmacy and by 9 a.m all from the third much less damaged carriage evacuated. By 9 30 a.m many of the surrounding roads had been closed off to allow space for the constant stream of ambulances taking casualties to hospitals. Byman cut holes in parts of the train structure including the floors and ceilings through which it was possible to crawl about the wreckage to retrieve casualties. By now a triage and makeshift operating theatre was set up on the platform tackling the severity of some of the injuries. Due to being underground radios were ineffective meaning runners had to be used to request assistance and extra medical supplies and again due to the location everything from plasters to machinery had to be moved by hand down to platform 9. By 12 noon only five live casualties were still stuck in the train and by 3.15 only two were left who were trapped together in the first carriage. Because services had ceased the air in the station began to stagnate as no trains were pushing in fresh air. This also had a horrible side effect of drastically increasing the temperature on the platform. The final two were removed at 8.55 p.m and 10 p.m respectively with the first needing to have her foot amputated. To clear the wreckage flame cutting equipment was used. On the first of March the third carriage began to be winched back down the track and a true damage was revealed to the rescue workers. During the first and second of March the wreckage of the second carriage was cut away in sections and it wouldn't be until the fourth that Newson's body could be retrieved. At 3.20 p.m on the same day the last passenger body was removed. The driver's cab normally three feet deep had been crushed to six inches. The investigators ascertained that Newson was at his controls although his head had been forced through the front window. Newson's body was removed at 8.05 p.m on the 4th of March. Remained with the wreckage was cleared by 5 p.m on the 5th of March and the control of the platform was handed back to London Underground. Now as always with incidents and with a death toll of 43 and over 70 people injured the question remains how did the accident happen? Well after investigators checked the service history of the train and inspections of the equipment it was deemed that the units were sound working condition. They also discovered that no braking effort was made as the handle positions were in off leaving one outcome the human element. This is where we'll never actually know what the cause was as the autopsy showed no signs of any physical conditions such as a stroke or heart attack. Initial tests showed no drugs or alcohol in Newson's blood stream and there was no evidence of liver damage from heavy drinking. An analysis of Newson's kidneys by toxicologist Dr. Ann Robinson showed his blood alcohol level at the time of the post mortem was 80mg per 100ml. However this can be caused as part of the decomposition process. Newson's demeanour on the day seemed to be the same as any other working day according to his colleagues and even the guard working with him. Suicide would seem unlikely as Newson did have plans after his shift and if he was showing signs of distress someone might have picked up on it with the regular changing ends on such a short route. Leaving a mystery as to why Newson didn't react to the situation. I.K.A. McNaughton was tasked with setting up an inquiry and on the 4th of March 1976 his report was published concluding. I must conclude therefore that the cause of this accident lay entirely in the behaviour of Motorman Newson during the final minute before the accident occurred. Whether his behaviour was deliberate or whether it was a result of a suddenly arising physical condition not revealed as a result of the post mortem examination there is not sufficient evidence to examine. But I am satisfied that no part of the responsibility for the accident rests with any other person and that there was no fault or condition of the train, track or signalling that in any way contributed to it. There are many theories linked to Newson's lack of reaction but one of the most likely is possibly due to daydreaming or distraction as cuts on his hands indicated that he had raised his arms before the point of impact. Leading up to the crash, Newson had had two platform overshoots in the week previously which may have hinted to a concentration issue but we will never know for sure. The disaster did have a positive effect on London Underground and its train protection system. A type of protection named after the crash came into effect. This Morgate system used multiple time controlled train stops on approach to buffers at terminal stations. These would lower the train stop once the train was doing a particular speed checking the train down to a safer velocity to reduce the damage of any potential impact. If the train violated the speed the train stop would hit the tripcock putting the train's emergency brakes on. This coupled with a resistor on the current rails set to reduce the amount of power a train can draw when approaching a terminus means that an accident like Morgate shouldn't happen again. Well at least not on London Underground. As more lines go to automatic operation the risks of human-related collisions go down drastically as most ATO lines limit manual operation when not protected by the signalling system to below 10 miles an hour. On the main line the implementation of TPWS on routes and stock should put accidents like Morgate firmly kept in the past. This video is a plainly difficult production. All videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed. Plainly we've got videos are produced by me John in a sunny south-eastern corner of London UK. Help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing. Check out my Twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos. I've got a Patreon YouTube membership as well so you can check that out if you fancy supporting the channel financially. All that's left to say is thank you for watching. It is the 29th of June 1995 and a luxury six-year-old department store will be the center of one of the world's most deadly structural failures not involving a terrorist attack. The event will serve as a stark warning against quick urbanization of cities and the importance of proper building use consideration. The collapse of the Sampoong department store in Seoul would be the largest peacetime disaster in South Korean history killing 502 people and injuring 937. As such I'm going to rate it here seven on my plainly difficult disaster scale but here eight on my legacy scale as the perpetrators of the event would actually be made to pay for their negligence. It is the 1980s and South Korea is enjoying an economic boom. Although the country politically is under the control of military strongman Chul-do Won it will towards the end of the decade move towards democracy. The country is experiencing great expansion of heavy industries, electronics and steel industries with the backing of the government. This is part of the miracle on the Han River where the country hurtled itself to be the 11th largest economy in the world. Towards the end of the decade Seoul hosts the 1988 Summer Olympics and the success of this on the international stage makes the city even more of a world destination. As such the nation's capital develops at a lightning pace stretching the country's construction companies to breaking point. This is further exasperated by bans against international contractors signing contracts for projects in Seoul. In 1987 riding on the wave of success in Seoul leading up to the Olympics ground was broken for a new building. The construction project is based in Seoul Chul district an area in the southern part of the city. The building is to be built across land that used to be used as landfill but it is now prime real estate ideal for a modern apartment block. The building will be a relatively straightforward four-story apartment block to be built by Woosung Construction. However this original plan wouldn't last long as the lead of Sampong Group's Construction Division Lee Joon decided that a change of use would make the project more profitable. This would involve turning the building into a department store. The change necessitated significant amendments to the plan to the building to accommodate a central escalator system but instead of recalculating the loads on each floor Joon's team made some adjustments to the blueprints. The building was designed without a steel skeleton instead each concrete floor would be supported by the columns without the use of horizontal beams. This method is known as flat slab construction. The use of this style of construction aids in speed of completion ease of installing sprinklers and utilities and other piping as well as cost but with the ease comes some serious downsides and that is the construction of large spans is more difficult and the size of the support column is vital. Throughout the central portion of the building each floor was to be supported in the original plans by multiple concrete columns 80 centimetres in diameter with 16 22 millimeter diameter reinforcing steel bars within but in order to accommodate the escalators and maximize retail space eight columns were reduced in size to 60 centimetres with only 8 22 millimeter reinforced bars. This was not liked by Woosong Construction which led to the company being dropped and Sampung completing its project in-house. The original 80 centimeter diameter columns meant that their spacing was set at 11 meters apart widening that gap with smaller pillars would push the building beyond its limits but that would not be the end to the modifications from Sampung. To further optimize the plot of land for a new department store a fifth floor was envisioned for a roller skating rink a relatively lightweight tradition to the already strained building but yet again the plan was changed. Gone was the lightweight use of the top floor but instead a food court was posed. The equipment needed for such a plan would greatly push the limits to the building past breaking point but the construction continued. Not only that but the Korean style of underfloor heating known as Ondol was specified for the fifth floor. This would include a concrete floor with heavy heating pipes running within. Original plans for level five had a calculated predicted load of 1040 kilograms per square meter but a new configuration had 1530 square meters nearly a 50 increase in weight strain on the already minimized supporting columns. The supporting columns didn't line up throughout the building leading to the load having to be transferred along the concrete floor slabs. To add even more load on the already stressed design three 15 ton air conditioning units were installed on the roof creating a 45 ton load that was four times originally envisioned. This was another side effect of the change of use for the building as originally the design wasn't intended to have such large air conditioning units. Not only the weight caused the stress on the building but the vibrations themselves generated from the units. Nevertheless the Trouble Project was completed in late 1989 seeing its first guests on the 7th of July 1990. Around 40,000 people per day would visit the bustling shopping mall attracting lunchtime customers from the nearby business district earning its business owners around four million US dollars per week. Around 1,000 people were employed in its day-to-day running and business is booming. Cooling towels on the building were installed on the side next to an apartment building. Shortly after opening, complaints started to come in to the department store's management. Instead of hiring a crane to move this heavy cooling structure, rollers were used and the 45 ton towel was dragged across the roof. This yielded some results, a cheaper and easier move but also caused significant damage to the roof as the weight rolled across. Along came 1995 and some worrying signs started to appear around the 5th floor at the Sampoong department store. Rack started to appear during April in the ceiling of the south wing. What should have been a major red flag was only met with a minor reaction from management in which staff were told to move the merchandise and stores from the top floor to the basement. The cracking around the south wing would continue to increase accelerated by vibrations of the air con tower. It is the 29th of June 1995 and the department store opens as usual. Hundreds visit the building but above their heads in the 5th floor ceiling the cracking continues to worsen. In the morning, cracks in the area had increased dramatically, prompting managers to close parts of the top floor. No evacuation was ordered and customers, although inconvenienced by the closure, carried on shopping as normal. However, executives for the company did evacuate as a precaution but to avoid a loss of a day's revenue management carried on as usual. This would still be the case when engineers were called up to investigate the cracking. After only a short check, it was revealed that the building was at risk of collapse and yet the building stayed open. Around lunchtime, loud bangs and cracks could be heard from the 5th floor as the concrete separated from the columns. By now, customers were complaining about severe vibrations throughout the building. To alleviate the concerns, management switched off the air con but the damage had already been done. A 10cm wide crack had appeared on the 5th floor with collapse all but guaranteed an emergency board meeting was held. Many argued for the closing and the evacuation of the building but Lee June insisted the store stayed open however Lee himself left the building. At around 5pm, the 5th floor was completely closed off as the roof began to sink but the rest stayed open. The decision to completely evacuate was taken at 5.50pm but this was too late. At 5.52pm, the Sampoong department store collapsed. The weakened roof gave way, sending the air conditioning units crashing through the overstressed 5th floor. The south wing pancakes crushing each subsequent floor below it, trapping over 1,500 people within the rubble. Rescue crews were on scene within minutes, frantically trying to rescue anyone trapped within. Heavy lifting equipment would arrive the next day but rescue efforts would be called off from fears of further collapsing in the area. To alleviate the fears of further damage from the structure, the remains of the store were steadied by guide cables. A week after the collapse, focus changed to clearing the structure but survivors were discovered as late as 17 days post disaster. A survivor who was pulled free 9 days after collapse described to rescuers that many had died drowning in the water sprayed on the structure for fire suppression. In total, 502 people lost their lives at the department store collapse. The event shocked the nation, even prompting President Kim Jung Sam to visit the wreckage site. As such, an investigation panel was set up to find out how the Sampoong department store collapsed and who was to blame. Professor Lang Chung from Dancook University's engineering school was chosen to head up the investigation. Initially, a gas explosion was thought to be the culprit, even more worrying was the culprit of a terrorist attack. Although the pancaking collapse with little debris ejected suggested the failure was more due to structural issues. After investigating plans and drawings of the building, a number of key issues were discovered with the design. The flat slab construction was highly criticised as it didn't have reinforcing beams, instead relying on the column to hold the slab in place. Too small of a column would result in it punching through the flat slab and this problem is exasperated if the weight the columns need to support is increased, just like level five at the Sampoong department store. The investigation summarised the cause of the collapse in four points. The changes in design and increase in load upon change design was the key cause of the disaster. The building was constructed poorly using improper concrete mixing and poorly reinforced ceilings and walls. An adequate building and structural planning using a flat slab construction was a factor that caused the progressive collapse. Slabs on the fifth floor and the roof floor in the vicinity of the 5E pillar and 5F pillar experienced sheer failure, eventually along the circumference of the pillars. This is believed to lead to destruction of adjacent slabs, which is a progressive collapse, ending up with the destruction of the entire building, potentially caused by the movement of the air conditioning units. What sets this event aside from many I've covered is that the driving force behind the disaster did actually meet some kind of justice. On the 27th December 1995, after some incriminating statements made during the collapse investigation, Lee June was found guilty of criminal negligence and received a prison sentence of 10.5 years, later reduced to 7.5. Lee June's son, who was also the store CEO Lee Han Sang, received 7 years for accidental homicide and corruption. Others would also be sentenced for crimes relating to bribery and building regulations violations and would include local government officials as well as company executives. The Samppoon Group, two months post-disaster, agreed to sign all of its money and assets over to the victims for compensation, which would result in a total of around US$300 million being paid out to 3,293 cases. Ironically, the land was cleared and in the early 2000s turned into luxury apartments. It is the 7th December 1993 and the first of several congressional hearings is waiting to begin. The room is full with people with an empty table near the front, one side has a TV screen and an easel. Senator John Lieberman holding a light gun begins to speak. He explains that video games are increasingly becoming a more violent and dangerous influence on children. The TV is switched on and a video of mortal combat springs to life. As the senator continues to speak, he describes the basis for the game. As the committee meeting goes on, a number of industry and educational experts speak. This hearing will become to be known as the 1993 Congressional hearings on video games and it was the culmination of a moral panic, the thinking being that violence shown in media will be emulated by children. The ultimate result of the hearings is a more unified age rating system for home media. Although not explicitly stated, this idea is an evolution of fears tracing its way back before home video games to a long-standing theory, the social learning theory. This line of thinking became part of the social zeitgeist from a number of studies, starting with BF Skinner's operant conditioning and culminating in a controversial but fascinating study called the Bobo Dole experiment, overseen by Albert Bandura. The aftermath of the study reinforced the belief that children become violent when exposed to violent media. The experiments would in retrospect be seen as a controversial and ethically questionable chapter in the discipline of psychology. Many criticisms to the experiments would be brought forward including accusations that the children were manipulated to gain the desired results and selection bias, but the results would influence general thinking on children copying actions observed, which would ultimately be the scientific justification of media censorship and age-related restrictions. Welcome to the dark side of science. Our story starts in a small town in Alberta, Canada, named Mundare, on the 4th of December 1925 with the birth of Albert Bandura. He was born to Polish and Ukrainian parents. Growing up in a small town, educational opportunities are fairly limited, but under the guidance of his family, he became self-motivated. It was encouraged by his parents to seek out experience of life beyond Mundare. After high school, he took a job in the Yukon. It would be here that his interest in science would be sparked in an unlikely turn of events. While studying at British Columbia University, he took a psychology course in order to pass the time in his empty early morning schedule, becoming passionate about the subject. In 1949, he would graduate with a BA. To further his newly discovered passion, he moved to the University of Iowa. From there, he gained an MA in 1951 and a PhD in 1952. Post doctorate in 1953, he took a teaching position at Stanford University. Throughout the 1950s, Bandura became fascinated in a new theory, originally posed by B. F. Skinner in his series of lectures in the 1940s on social learning. Skinner mentioned a thing called echoic response. In its most basic form is the copying of a parent's speech by child. Barely straightforward and obvious when observing a child copy a parent talking. But Skinner stated that all verbal behaviour was underpinned by operant conditioning. Around the same time, a book, Social Learning Theory was published in 1941 by Clark Lewis Hull, which suggested that personality traits were learned by copying parents' actions. In 1959, Noam Chomsky published his review of B. F. Skinner's verbal behaviour theories and criticised his 1957 book called Verbal Behaviour. Chomsky said that operant conditioning alone could not explain our ability to learn language, and instead there is something more. As if Skinner's theory was right, then to learn a new response would require multiple attempts and positive reinforcement, much like how you train a dog to sit. In the same vein, Bandura set out to find if learned behaviours were from operant conditioning, i.e. from reward or punishment, or from imitation, i.e. watching another do something and copy it. One particular thing that fascinated Bandura was aggression. In Social Learning Theory, three models of observational learning are posited. Live models, where a person is demonstrating the desired behaviour to a participant. Verbal instruction, in which an individual describes the desired behaviour in detail and instructs the participant in how to engage in the behaviour. And symbolic, in which modelling occurs by means of the media, including movies, television, literature and radio. Stimuli can either be from real or fictional characters. Working with one of his first doctorate students, Bandura set out to prove his theory. This resulted in a 1959 book, Adolescent Aggression. The research for the book involved looking into the origins of antisocial behaviour of 26 adolescent boys. Each boy and a matched control were given an intensive interview and a TAT-like projective test. The parents were also interviewed to determine their attitudes about and how they actually handled problems relating to dependency, aggression and sex as they arose from day to day. Bandura's next study would be the culmination of his research and that would be to put the theory into practice and see if a child would copy a model doing a certain kind of behaviour. And this involved a strange item, a large blarp clown doll. This is Bobo, a blarp clown doll. Although a kind of creepy looking toy, he is a bop bag and is intended to be used as a safe way for a child to practice boxing, bouncing around and generally playing with. Well, that's what my daughter does with it. An unlikely tool for a psychological study, but it would become a vital part of a classic series of experiments. The Bobo Dull experiment would start in 1961, but first let's look at the method that Bandura set out. The study involved 36 boys and 36 girls who had been enrolled in the Stanford University Nursery School. They ranged from the age of 37 to 69 months, with a mean age of 52 months. Two adults, a male and a female served in the role of model, and one female experimenter conducted the study for all 72 children. The children were split up into eight experimental groups of six, with a control group of 24. Half the experimental subjects would be exposed to aggressive models and half were exposed to models that were subdued and non-aggressive in their behaviour. These groups were further divided into male and female. Half the subjects that experienced the aggressive and non-aggressive models had same sex models, whereas the others had an opposite sex model. Each subject would be exposed to the scenario individually. This was to prevent the children from copying one another. The child and model would be brought into a playroom where they would be confronted by the Bobo clown doll. The child was seated in one corner filled with things such as stickers and stamps. The adult model sat in another corner with a toy set, a toy mallet, and the inflatable Bobo doll. Before leaving the room, the experimenter explained to the child that the toys in the adult corner were only for the adult to play with. In the aggressive scenario, the model would initially start playing with the Bobo doll. After a short while, the adult model would start to verbally and physically assault the doll. They would also use the mallet. After a period of 10 minutes, the experimenter came back into the room, dismissed the adult model and took the child into another playroom. In the non-aggressive scenario, the Bobo doll was completely ignored and the model simply played with the other toys in the room for the 10 minutes. Before being dismissed and the child, like in a previous scenario, was taken to another playroom. The next part of the experiment involved the child being allowed to play in the second playroom with some toys. To create frustration, after around two minutes, the experimenter would tell the child they would have to put the toys down because they were reserved for other children. They were told they could instead play with the toys in the experimental room. In the first room with the Bobo doll, the child was allowed to play for 20 minutes, while an experimenter evaluated the child's play. The experimenter would record each time the child would initiate aggression in four ways. The first measure was based on physical acts such as punching, kicking, sitting on the Bobo doll, hitting it with a mallet, or tossing it around the room. The second measure was any verbal aggression towards the doll, especially if it mimicked the model. The third measure was the number of times the mallet was used to display forms of aggression other than hitting the doll. And the fourth measure was each time aggression was shown that was not a direct imitation of the role model's behaviour. Landau's results were not particularly surprising. The children who experienced the aggressive scenarios were way more aggressive in the playing with the Bobo doll. The results also showed that if the model was of the same gender as the child, then they would be even more aggressive. The most aggressive were boys who had a male model who had shown aggression towards the Bobo doll. When compared between the two genders, males exhibited 270 aggressive instances compared to 128 instances exhibited by females. After the experiment, Bandura wanted to dive deeper, but it would take another two years before he upped the ante. For a second experiment, Bandura set out to see if the results would change if the children saw the aggressive scenario in the form of a cartoon or a film in comparison to a live model. Bandura also thought that maybe the children would experience a cathartic effect by seeing the aggression from the medium of media or would watching the aggression on TV create the same response as a live model. This time the number of subjects was increased from 72 to 96, but like before they were from the Stanford University nursery and were divided into three groups. A live aggressive group, a pre-recorded model aggressive group and a cartoon of a cat being aggressive to the Bobo doll group. There was also a 24-child control group, like before they were subdivided again to gender. The original results from the 1961 study were used as a control for the experiment and like before, each subject experienced the aggressive scenario individually. Like before, after the exposure the subject was placed in a mildly frustrating situation before being left alone with the Bobo doll. The results were similar to before with the live model, but what was interesting was that the children did actually show aggression after exposure to the pre-recorded model and the cartoon. A third experiment in 1965 sought out to find if classic conditioning could affect the results. This time 66 children, 33 boys and 33 girls were used for the study. Again three groups were used, which were again subdivided into gender. The first group would witness a model display aggression towards the Bobo doll, followed by a researcher praising the model, rewarding them with candy. The second group would witness the same scripted scenario of aggression behaviours, but instead the model received a rep command and was hit with a rolled wooden golf club. The third group served as the control and the model had no reward or punishment for the display behaviour. The children like before would watch individually. The child would then be placed in a room with the doll and any aggressive behaviours would be noted. The results showed no real difference compared to the previous studies, at least in regards to the reward and control group. However, the group that witnessed the model being punished showed an interesting reduction in aggression. The Bobo doll experiments helped further Bandura's social learning theory and carve a new way of thinking. This is mainly due to children observing the punished model and subsequently understanding this to modify their own response to the Bobo doll without being punished themselves. But let's look at the study's criticisms. Although not as controversial as other studies involving children, the Bobo doll experiments did have some shortcomings. Firstly, there was a question of whether the children did actually show aggression, or were they just mimicking the model. You see children are very well known for copying adults, with little thought to the consequences, meaning finding out the motivation behind the subject's actions can be difficult and open to interpretation. An overtly aggressive act to an adult observer might be perceived by the child as a simple action, with no weight placed on the actual meaning behind it. A later study which copied Bandura's method for the experiment found that subjects acted much less aggressively when observing an aggressive model if they had a neutral exposure to the Bobo doll in a previous experience. This means that the novelty of the doll in the study could have encouraged a more exaggerated response from the children. The study could also be considered as unreliable, as most of the subjects were from the same racial and economical background, being that in the early 1960s the majority of attendees were wealthy and Caucasian, due to having parents that were students of Stanford University. The main concern for the study, however, is its ethical implications. This is due to the children being almost trained into being aggressive by placing them in a frustrating situation before observing them with the Bobo doll. There is also a question of consent, as a child isn't able to make an informed decision as to whether they want to take part in a study. Needless to say, from all three studies the subjects did not agree nor disagree to take part, which leaves a potential ethical grey area. The children also didn't have a long enough cooldown period between experience exposure and observation. This means that there can be no proper conclusion as to the long term effects of exposure to aggressive acts, which brings us back to the media and whether it actually in the long term makes children more likely to be violent in real life. Personally I think age restrictions on media is a good thing, as a parent myself I would not want my child to be exposed to age inappropriate material, such as swearing. As I know, she would just start copying and say it to everyone she speaks to. I think the Bobo doll study is a very fascinating experiment, although not particularly dark, I still really enjoyed looking into the subject. The study is a very important cornerstone of modern day psychology, and this is reflected in Albert being the fourth most cited psychologist of all time. And as such I'm going to rate it a three on my ethical scale, which is mainly due to the lack of informed consent from the children. But more importantly, where would you rate this subject on my scale? One being all okay, and nine being as cruel as a fox's head on a stick. Let me know in the comments below. This is the Plain Difficult Production. All videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed. Plain Difficult videos are produced by me, John, in a currently late night and dark southeastern corner of London, UK. Help the channel grow by liking, commenting and subscribing. Check out my Twitter for all sorts of videos and odds and sods, as well as hints on future videos. I've got Patreon and YouTube membership as well, so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Radioactive sources are needless to say very dangerous in the wrong hands. It seems that lost source incidents are far more regular than you would like. After its disillusion, the countries that formed part of the former USSR were forced to maintain, protect and dispose of radioactive sources. An industry that was centrally controlled by an established government infrastructure was almost overnight dissolved, resulting in highly dangerous materials falling to the responsibility of new fledgling governments, dealing with the complex aftermath of communism. The change in the economies of such countries resulted in financial hardship, where government support was once there, no longer existed, leaving people to try and carve out a living by any method possible, and one such way was through scrap metal. A waste repository in Tamiku Estonia became a prime target of free opportunistic scrap thieves. This is due to the relatively isolated and unguarded state of the site, but this would be a very grave mistake. Today we're looking at the radiological accident in Tamiku, and as such I'm going to rate this incident here 5 on my Patented Plain Default Disaster Scale, and here 3 on the Legacy Scale. In September 1991, the Estonian Parliament declared independence from the USSR. After this was recognised by Moscow, the parliament approved a new constitution and was headed by a president. As part of this, much of the support from the USSR began to be cut off, and new departments in the country were set up to handle various elements of governance, and this included the management and disposal of nuclear waste. Estonia was neither a nuclear energy user, or even a research reactor operator, but a need for nuclear waste disposal was still present from uses relating to research, industrial and medicinal. In 1963, the Tamiku facility was set up 12km south of Tallinn, which is around here on the map. The site was intended for management of low and intermediate-level reactive wastes. The facility became the central storage disposal area for Estonia's nuclear industry. Much of the site's design came from the criteria developed in Moscow in the 1950s. The Tamiku site was situated in a remote forested area. It was surrounded by an outer barbed wire fence at a 500m radial distance, with a gate and guardhouse, and an inner fence around the liquid waste storage tank and solid waste storage vaults. The main disposal facility consisted of a 15x5x3m providing to disposal capacity for solid radioactive waste. The storage of liquid waste is an underground cylindrical concrete tank with a stainless steel lining, both for buried underground and are accessible via a locked roof cover. The site was updated in the 1980s, but the project was only partially completed due to lack of resources. None of the waste stored at Tamiku was planned to be treated, and after around 30 years of use, 1028 batches of waste had been disposed of at the facility, totaling approximately 97 tonnes, with a total activity of 200 terebecuels. The prominent radionuclides were strontium 90 and cesium 137. By the early 90s, the activity of the site had reduced to 76 terebecuels. The facility was also around the same time looking a bit worse for wear and no round-the-clock security personnel. Much of the timeline for this video is based off of the IAEA report into the event, and as always, the link is in the description if you fancy further reading. This brings us onto the 21st October 1994, and three brothers breaking into the Tamiku facility in order to gain access by climbed offences, broke into the repository, and climbed down into the pit, in doing so bypassing the electric alarm system. The three men cut off the padlock to one of the storage areas, pulled open the steel door and one of the brothers stepped inside. Once inside the underground vault, the brother found a metal container, and passed it up to his siblings. While he was doing this, a metal cylinder, 18cm long and 1.5cm in diameter, fell out of the open tube of the container. This was thrown back inside the storage area. A shorter cylinder, with the same diameter, had also come out of the metal container, but instead of throwing it back, one of the brothers placed the strange item inside his coat pocket. The three also broke into the liquid waste storage area, where they stole some aluminium drums. The hazardous contents were emptied onto the ground, the drums, and the metal container were then carried off site to be transported by car to a scrap metal dealer in Tallinn. During removal of the drums, one fell against one of the brothers' legs, the same one who had pocketed the strange item, causing minor injury. On route two of the men started to feel ill. The brother with his injured leg returned to his house in Kesar, where he lived with his stepson, the boy's mother, and the boy's great-grandmother. Upon entering, he hung up his coat which had the stolen item in it. Later on in the day, it was moved into a drawer in the kitchen. Throughout the later part of the day, the man started to vomit and experience extreme nausea. On the 25th of October, the brother went to the local medical centre to seek out care for his injured leg. Obviously he didn't mention how or where the accident happened, and the doctors diagnosed him with a crush injury. However, within a week, on the 2nd of November, he would be dead with an official cause of kidney failure. But this was because the medical practitioners weren't aware of what or where the brother had been and taken home with him from the woods. The theft at the Tamaku Storage Facility wasn't discovered until the 8th of November, when more waste was disposed of on site by operators. The workers noticed that the securing padlocks at the waste vaults had been cut and replaced them. What was even more suspicious was that the dose rate on site had drastically decreased since the last disposed-along site in September. The operators didn't think to report this all the damage to the locks to management. The days the item taken from the site sat in the kitchen drawer being close proximity to the inhabitants within, including the dead brother's stepson and the family dog. The next victim was said dog who had been showing signs of acute radiation sickness, which was not a considered cause of illness of a family pet. The Canis Familiaris passed away on the 16th of November. The stepson had discovered a strange item in the drawer after searching for tools to fix his bike and during this time he had touched the object. Finally on the 17th of November 1994 the 13 year old stepson was admitted to hospital with severe burns to his hands. These were diagnosed as radiation induced and the police were notified. This worrying case of the burns sparked a region-wide search for a possible multiple orphaned sources. Needless to say the item stolen from Tamaku was a deadly radioactive isotope source. The police in term notified the Estonian Rescue Board, which immediately sent staff to KISA who arrived at 23.30 on the 17th of November 1994. Initial dose rate surveys were undertaken of the household of the dead brother. Members of the rescue board briefly entered the house to try and locate the source. The measured dose rate of 1.2 grey per hour was recorded close to the surface of the drawer in the kitchen. The measured dose rates in other rooms were around 15mg an hour. This resulted in all houses within a 200m range being evacuated totaling 15 families. For the recovery efforts staff wore lead aprons and thin rubber gloves but did not have any proper handling tongs to place the source into a hastily obtained 3.5cm thick lead walled shielded box. Two limited time entries were planned to identify and recover the source by recovery staff. During the first entry lasting 2 minutes and 35 seconds the drawer of the kitchen cupboard was emptied onto the floor allowing operators to correctly identify the source. The dose rate was at 5-7cm from the unshielded source measured to be 1.5-1.8g an hour. The second entry unsurprisingly was to safely regain ownership of the source. This took 2 minutes and 15 seconds and necessitated carrying in the lead shield container and manipulating the source into it with the operator's hands. The contact exposure lasted 2-3 seconds. The dose rate close to the surface of the lead box was measured to be 100mg an hour. Once recovered the source inside its new container was placed in the back of a van but the transportation back to the Tamaku Repository. The recovery operation was completed by 2.30pm on the 18th November 1994. Neighbours were then permitted to return to their homes. The item that was thrown back by the brothers into the vault turned out to be a spacer hinting that the item stolen for scrap was actually a source carrier of some sort. Strangely it was uncertain at the time what radioactive element made up the lost source. As a recovery team lacked any portable gamma spectrometry equipment in Tallinn making it very difficult to determine the precise nature of the radioactive source. It was most likely either cesium-137 or cobalt-60 but eventually it was discovered to be cesium-137 when a portable gamma spectrometer provided by the IAEA was used at the Tamaku facility in December 1994. The source was estimated to be between 150GB 2.7.4TB of radioactivity, clearly enough to prove to be fatal if exposed near for too long. Even more worrying was that in January 1995 a second unaccounted 4 source was discovered alongside the road between Tallinn and Narva. A Swedish led recovery team helped in safely returning this 1.7TB source back to Tamaku. Due to the discovery of the sources the death of the brother was re-evaluated and it was estimated that the 25 year old had received a dose of between 2000 and 3000g an hour. One of the other brothers later showed signs of burns on his hands from a possible handling of the source as well. After the incident the surviving brothers were interviewed by the police and even though admitting to breaking into the Tamaku facility were adamant that they did not know the risks posed by the materials kept on site, instead only wanting scrap metal. The lessons from the incident are pretty obvious and were easiest to take on for the Estonian authorities. This included more robust reporting of suspicious activity and more importantly 24 hour guarding of dangerous material sites. Plus it seems a rather inefficient way to dispose such materials and the IAEA set out better guidance for Estonia moving forward which included better grading of high and low level waste as to make use of the limited storage facilities more effectively. The response to the discovery of a patient with ARS was quick however the team were ill-equipped for the situation necessitating manual handling of the deadly radioactive source which is a crazy way to deal with such an item. It's crazy to think that such a dangerous item could have been so easily stolen but sadly in a country that had only recently gained its independence some things would take higher priority than others to sort out and it seemed nuclear waste was not the most important thing to manage but a fledgling government and the radiological accident in Tamaku was the result. Thank you for watching this video is a plain difficult production all videos are produced by me John in a sunny southeastern corner of London UK all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed if you'd like to support the channel financially you can on youtube membership and patreon and also if you fancy you can check out my twitter page for all sorts of hints and photographs to do with future videos and all there's left to say is thank you for watching. Scientists have tried to conquer the mind through many different ways for many different reasons one such is in the treatment of mental disorders experimental science has in some of its most controversial studies shed a light into how the brain works we've seen this in this very series with the monkey mother baby albert and milgram experiments but how about the treatment of mental disorders in a world before modern day medicinal drug based therapy around the mid 20th century a form of invasive surgical procedure would gain praise for being able to tackle the problem of overcrowded mental hospitals and treat the previously untreatable it would eventually be known as the lobotomy the surgery would go down in the annals of time as a barbaric and cruel procedure which would leave behind thousands of patients in its wake with devastating side effects including confusion incontinence seizures and in some cases even death one of the main characters in the story of this surgical procedure would describe the operation as surgically induced childhood eventually the surgery will become synonymous with the mishandling of mental health and the running rough shot over patients rights as such i'm going to rate this dark page in scientific history a nine on my plain difficult ethical scale welcome to the dark side of science it is the turn of the 20th century mental health institutions throughout europe and the usa have become dangerously overcrowded during the 19th century where scientific discovery took leaps and bounds many attempts to treat the mentally ill had failed leading to a large population of incurable patients this was due to many industrialized countries having national systems of regulated asylums these institutions sought out care for patients that had been disposed of in the system by their families poor houses and the criminal justice system with no proper ways of treating inhabitants of the asylums many different forms of medical procedure were tested on the unfortunate patients there are many gruesome types of treatment on offer in the early 20th century in 1917 malaria therapy was introduced where a patient would be deliberately infected with a zoonotic disease to induce fever to fight neurociphalous in 1920 the barbiturate induced deep sleep therapy for premature dementia aka precocious madness or in its modern name form schizophrenia this treatment used drugs to keep patients unconscious for days or even weeks in 1927 you might have been given insulin shock treatment which used the peptide hormone to introduce daily comas in 1934 patients could be prescribed with the first type of seizure therapy where a patient would be deliberately induced into convulsions by the use of pts this therapy would be superseded by the more familiar electroshock therapy although these treatments could cause long-term lasting psychological and physical trauma the patient had not undergone a surgical procedure to eradicate the disorder but in 1935 in Portugal a doctor named Antonio Moniz would change this when he performed the first leucotomy on a patient the leucotomy in its most basic form was the deliberate damage of brain tissue in order to treat mental illness the name would later be changed to a more recognizable name when a procedure spread across the Atlantic Ocean but that will come later on in our story the thinking that inspired Moniz was that mental illnesses originated from abnormal neural connections in the frontal lobe Moniz had seen the aft effects of soldiers who had received injuries to the front lobe in which the vectorines would show a calm and quiet disposition the brain is made up of two types of matter gray and white gray matter is the brain's neurons and associated blood vessels and extensions the white matter is the nerve fibers that connected to the areas of gray matter and carry messages between them through electrical impulses Moniz theorized that by severing the white matter fibers from the frontal lobe would improve the patient's mental illness although in theory this might make sense the connections within the brain in reality are far more complex than what was fought at the time the grim procedure in its first form would involve drilling holes in the skull either side of the prefrontal cortex and injecting the connecting fibers with alcohol to destroy them Moniz found this method to not yield very good results due to the solution damaging much more than the white matter a tool was developed called a leukotome which looked like a long stick with a retractable wire loop inside it allowed the operator to insert a metal loop into the brain which was used to sever the white matter by extending and then retracting said loop the process cut six cores in the white matter of each hemisphere using the new tool because the procedure involved cutting through the skull the patient had to be operated on in a proper operating theater under general anesthetic to test the theory Moniz enlisted neurosurgeon Almedia Lima to conduct a surgery on 20 test subjects of these initial 20 patients who were suffering from depression schizophrenia and anxiety Moniz claimed seven cures seven improvements and six unchanged cases although the results were open to interpretation Moniz claimed that the risk of some behavioral and personality deterioration outweighed the debilitating effects of severe psychiatric illness which is understandable when taking mental health care at the time as a contextual background a second set of patients were operated on due to the success of the first trial these 18 patients all suffered from schizophrenia and three were considered as almost cured and another two had also become improved Moniz did conclude that patients that had deteriorated considerably from their condition pre-procedure did not benefit much from the operation in a well-known quote from Moniz he described his radical new surgery prefrontal leukotomy is a simple operation always safe which may prove to be an effective surgical treatment in certain cases of mental disorder the procedure would eventually earn Moniz a Nobel Prize in 1949 but initially Moniz's new way of treating the thought to be untreatable was widely derided by the medical community in 1936 Moniz published his results through articles in the medical press and a monograph but to little attention on the 26th of July 1936 one of his assistants gave a presentation at the Parisian meeting of the society medico-psychologic on the results of the second test subjects the 18 people suffering from schizophrenia leukotomized by Lima this meeting wouldn't go down well as the lead doctor at the institute in Lisbon who had supplied the first set of patients to Moniz was also in attendance and widely denounced the after effects of the surgery saying that patients who had returned to his institute post operation were diminished and had suffered a degradation of personality further adding that the initial results of calmness and improvement were more likely attributed to the severe shock of the surgery and ultimately from the horrible brain trauma that the procedure induced on its victims many other physicians denounced the procedure but bizarrely this isn't the end as several individual clinicians thought Moniz's leukotomy could be useful on an experimental basis on severe patients and as such the surgery was spread throughout Europe and even to the US during the mid to late 1930s and this leads us down an even darker path it is here that we are introduced to American doctors Walter Freeman and James W Watts inspired by Moniz's new surgical procedure in 1936 the duo performed their own leukotomy Walter had learned of the procedure after a chance meeting of Moniz at the London hosted second international congress of neurology in 1935 the American was fascinated by the surgical technique upon returning to the US Freeman started communicating with the Portuguese doctor Moniz during the correspondence promised to send a monograph on leukotomy and urged him to purchase a leukotone of his own upon receiving the paper on the procedure Freeman reviewed it and set about with his colleague Watts on experimenting with the surgery which led to September 1936 seeing flaws in the surgery Watson Freeman developed their own variation which renamed the procedure the standard prefrontal lobotomy to differentiate it from the Moniz method this version severed more of the white matter and would be the de facto method moving forward for lobotomies performed in operating theatres Walter thought that the lobotomy could be streamlined even further still the new standard procedure had the same shortcoming of the Moniz method and that was access to the brain you see cutting through the patient's skull required the operation to be conducted in an operating theatre with all the trappings anesthesiologist qualified surgeon hygiene and so on and so forth Walter had heard of an Italian doctor Amorello Firenberti who had performed the leukotomy by accessing the prefrontal lobe through the eye socket in 1937 Firenberti's method was to puncture the thin layer of orbital bone at the top of the eye socket and then much like Moniz's early experiments inject alcohol into the white matter or in later surgeries cutting the white matter with a hypodermic needle Walter took this process and modified it using probably one of the most unlikely of tools this is a surgical tool or is this a surgical tool it's hard to tell as one was used in psychosurgery and the other is an ice pick well the similarity is not a coincidence as Freeman's improvements on Amorello Firenberti's transorbital lobotomy replaced a needle with a nice pick in development of this new method Freeman took an ice pick from his own kitchen and started practicing on a watermelon he would eventually graduate to using cadavers the thinking was that if the lobotomy could be performed without exposing the brain then it could be performed by psychiatrists in psychiatric hospitals allowing more people to be operated on these are the tools used to the Freeman transorbital lobotomy a new tool called the orbiter class essentially an ice pick with markings along the side and a hammer the method would involve the patient being either under anesthetic or electroconvulsive therapy used to render the subject unconscious then the orbiter class sharp end is placed under the eyelid and against the top of the eye socket the hammer is then used to penetrate the surgical instrument through the thin layer of bone and into the brain along the line of the bridge of the nose eventually going five centimeters deep the orbiter class was then pivoted 40 degrees at the orbital perforation so the tip cut towards the opposite side of the head after this the tool was then hammered in a further two centimeters into the brain again the orbiter class was pivoted around 28 degrees each side to cut outwards and again inwards once this was complete it was removed and the process was repeated on the other eye socket the first patient to receive the procedure was in 1946 but once Freeman's partner Watts had heard about this new method he left their practice disgusted at the transorbital lobotomy but like every other chapter in this story this would not hamper the procedure's prevalence the lobotomy had now been transformed from a serious surgical procedure of last resort to a 10-minute doctor's office job along with this came a severe lack of follow-up care and monitoring which led to high relapse rates because of this towards the end of the 1940s nearly 20,000 people in the US have received the procedure but not only that the transorbital lobotomy would spread across the world and even back to the leucotomy's home grounds of Europe spreading further still to the Soviet Union and Japan to get a lobotomy in its late 1940s peak you really didn't need to have much of a mental health condition with the treatment touted for all kinds of ailments the list of treatable illnesses with a lobotomy included but was certainly not limited to ADD, OCD, anxiety, PTSD, postnatal depression, chronic pain, Alzheimer's, criminality, and violent outbursts. Freeman Everett Showman was responsible for a patient's death in 1951 when pausing a lobotomy to pose for a photo in doing so causing severe brain hemorrhaging he was even known to lobotomize two patients at the same time one with each hand the doctor even performed the operational minors including children as young as four in total around 15% of patients who received the lobotomy died but many more would change for life a shell of what they once were for those who survived the ordeal relapse would often follow but like its first unveiling to the world in Paris in 1936 the procedure didn't go uncriticized in the late 1940s as Moniz was set to receive his Nobel Prize multiple voices in the medical community spoke out on the barbaric procedure but it wouldn't be the criticism for the December banning of the procedure in the USSR but the synthesization of chlorpromazine the first anti-psychotic. As a side note Soviet psychologist Dr. Nikolai Orozetsky was quoted saying that lobotomies violate the principles of humanity and that was from an official from 1950s USSR. The procedure gradually fell out of vogue but Freeman would continue to perform the lobotomy all the way until 1967 when after their third lobotomy one of Walter's patients died of a hemorrhage this final procedure would get him banned from performing it ever again the USSR wouldn't be the last to ban lobotomies as even Moniz's Portugal would disallow the procedure from use. With further developments in drugs such as SSRIs, anti-psychotics and types of therapy like CBT the need for surgical intervention slowly faded away and by the 1980s lobotomy became a thing of the past. Now how would you rate the lobotomy on my ethical scale one being good and nine being pure cruelty let me know in the comments. This is the Plain and Difficult Production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like license. Plain and equal videos are produced by me John in a sunny southeastern corner of London UK help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos I've got patreon and youtube membership as well so if you fancy check them out to support the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. When investigating the causation of disasters the Swiss cheese model was often brought up I know it sounds like a strange comparison to bring up cheese but bear with me imagine a block of holy cheese sliced some holes only go part of the way through it imagine an event say you tripping up on a child's toy this could have been prevented in a number of ways say telling your two-year-old to put their toys away after playing with him or looking where you're going in the Swiss cheese model either of these potential blockers for your painful fall would have averted disaster but say all of those failures or holes line up like how you can line up the holes in slices of Swiss cheese to see all the way through then disaster is inevitable here is a more official sounding explanation the Swiss cheese model likens human systems to multiple slices of cheese stacked side by side in which the risk of threat becoming a reality is mitigated by the differing layers and the types of defences which are layered behind each other this means that one failure wouldn't result in disaster however more multiple lapses in safety procedures and human factors line up those holes resulting in a bigger failure of the system's place to prevent disaster now I've got you thinking about tasty cheese you might be asking what has this got to do with anything well one such incident in tenerife in 1977 would be the perfect example of how this model works today we're looking at the collision of klm flight 4805 and pan am flight 1736 as such i'm going to rate it here seven on my patented plain default disaster scale but here nine on my legacy scale this is the result of an impatient pilot multiple communications failings by using non-standard phrases radio interference a lost plane on a runway a terrorist attack at another airport and poor visibility due to low clouds each individual situation may have not led to disaster but when added together the collision of klm flight 4805 and pan am 1736 almost became inevitable it is the 27th of march 1977 and members of the canary islands independence movement detonate a bomb in a flora shop in grand canary airport near las palmas grand canaria injuring eight as security forces scrabble to investigate a second bomb threat is called in not wanting to be responsible for a massacre the police are forced to shut down all traffic to grand canary airport whilst they search for the hidden device with multiple planes in the air the decision by air traffic control is to divert many aircraft to nearby los roddeus airport in tenerife now called tenerife north airport some 75 kilometers away los roddeus by the early afternoon was a wash with aircraft far more than usually experienced at the airport the airport had only one runway and one main taxiway running parallel to it with four short taxiways for connecting the two so much was the congestion on the ground that planes were blocking the taxiway forcing aircraft to taxi on the runway before positioning themselves for takeoff a procedure known as back taxing at the beginning of the shutdown pan am flight 1736's crew would have much preferred to stay in the air in a holding pattern as at 1315 they had around two hours worth of fuel however the flight was ordered to land in tenerife much to the disappointment of her crew and passengers much better for the passengers comfort to be ready to land when the all clear was given especially due to the long distance the flight had covered from los angeles with an intermediate stop at new york the crew on board consisted of captain victor grubbs age 56 first officer robert bragg age 39 flight engineer george warns 46 and 13 flight attendants along with 380 passengers mostly of retirement age the flight crew had over 30 000 hours of experience although not all covered on the Boeing 747 the crew were confident in the plane the pan am plane was quite a historically important specimen for the 747's legacy it had operated the inaugural 747 commercial flight on the 22nd of january 1970 not only that but the plane had the honor on the 2nd of august 1970 to become the first 747 to be hijacked another plane caught out during the disruption of services to grand canary airport was KLM 4805 which much like pan am 1736 had found itself diverted to tenerife the KLM aircraft was also a 747 and was chartered by the holland international travel group and had departed from Amsterdam airport shreephole neverlands the crew were also experienced but was captained by somewhat of a KLM celebrity jacob the hoosen van zanten aged 50 van zanten was KLM star pilot and head 747 training instructor so much was his value to the company that his face was even on advertising material for the airline his flying career started in 1947 when he gained his private pilot's license and by 1950 he had achieved his commercial certification and began working for KLM the same year by 1977 he had amassed over 11,000 hours of flying time 1500 of which were on the 747 accompanying van zanten on the crew of the KLM were first officer and flight engineer William Schrader again like the pan am flight the team combined had several tens of thousands of hours of experience by late afternoon grand canary airport slowly opened up to traffic again this meant that the much delayed and diverted aircraft could complete their journeys not wanting to be delayed further at its destination and not wanting to break the laws on duty crew working time van zanten took the opportunity to refuel the KLM where they were however this would block in other aircraft including 1736 for over half an hour much to the annoyance of the pan am which still had enough fuel on board for the final leg of its journey the captain and first officer left the plane to measure the gap between the KLM and the active runway but the distance was lower than the safe minimum they were obliged to wait the added delay was further compounded by a dutch family not going back to the KLM on time finally at 1656 van zanten's KLM radioed the control tower for clearance to taxi tennery airport is at 633 meters above sea level this has an unusual side effect clouds at 600 meters above ground level at the nearby coast are at runway level at Los Rodeos with clouds being blown in from the sea this creates variable visibilities where clear visuals one minute can almost instantly drop below minimums the next and the 27th of march was just such a day after three minutes of confused conversation at 1659 the instructions to proceed down the main runway and to backtrack for takeoff were received and understood by the flight crew these instructions meant that the KLM would turn 180 degrees once at the end of the runway in preparation for takeoff at 1702 the pan am called the tower for clearance to taxi this was granted but with the additional instructions to turn onto the third left taxiway pretty straightforward you might think but when you look at the diagram of the airport those instructions make little sense only two taxiways on site look viable for a 747 to make the desired turn to reach the end of the runway the taxiways were unmarked and by now visibility on the runway was concerningly low the pan am called up the tower to confirm that it was not indeed taxiway one instead of the requested three the atc replied abruptly third one sir one two three third third one the aircraft proceeded to taxi up the main runway marking off the taxiways to their left as they passed number one and two were successfully identified but lost in a thick fog the crew failed to identify number three a confused conversation broke out in the cockpit hinting that they were now lost meanwhile the KLM plane contacted atc to confirm that they had passed a fourth exit the tower replied okay make 180 and report ready for clearance almost immediately after the plane was in a position for takeoff van zanten pulled back the throttles and the plane started to move first officer mers advised van zanten that atc clearance had not been given and captain replied no i know that go ahead ask in doing so bringing the engines back to idle at 1705 the KLM confirmed it was ready for takeoff and awaiting atc soon after atc informed the KLM what their route was to follow after takeoff but no authorization for takeoff was actually given the KLM replied and confirmed the information given but added we are at takeoff which is a non-standard message atc replied okay stand by for takeoff i will call you back during this message the KLM experienced radio interference muffling the instructions van zanten interrupted the co-pilot's readback with the comment we're going taking atc's non-standard use of okay as authority to proceed the KLM released its brakes took power and started to move down the runway with atc not being able to see the two planes in the thick fog they thought all movements were still under control the tower then contacted the panam flight saying papa alpha report when runway clear to which panam replied okay we'll report when runway clear unbeknownst to the panam and the tower that whilst this final conversation took place the KLM had started on a head-on collision course hearing the communications between the tower and the panam the KLM engineer said is he not clear that pan american van zanten replied oh yes but still continued with the takeoff the KLM loomed off in the fog as it hurtled towards the panam captain victor grubb shouted there he is the panam was now near exit number four grubbs yelled god damn that son of a bitch is coming captain brag applied the throttles and tried to turn on to the grass off the runway in an effort to avert disaster shortly after the KLM crew saw the panam on the ground by now it's traveling too fast to abort the takeoff they rotated the aircraft and attempted to clear the panam by getting airborne causing a tail strike at a speed of 160 miles per hour and at a distance of 100 meters from the panam the KLM's nose gear cleared the aircraft off the ground but the left side engines lower fuselage and mainlanding gear struck the upper part of the panam's fuselage the result was ripping apart the center part of the panam almost directly above the wing the right side engines crashed through the panam's upper deck behind the cockpit the momentum of the takeoff speed of the KLM led to a brief time in the air but it had received critical damage and subsequently the plane stalled took a sharp roll and impacted the ground 150 meters down from the panam after impact the freshly fueled aircraft burst into an uncontrollable fireball engulfing all within seeing the inferno rescue workers made a beeline to the site of the KLM completely ignoring the panam in a miraculous turn of luck the captain first officer and flight engineer of the panam 1736 had survived this would come to haunt them for the rest of their lives the only survivors of the disaster was 61 members of crew and passengers aboard the panam many escaped through and now opened central part of the fuselage onto the still intact wings jumping to the relative safety of the runway all aboard the KLM perished most likely from the impact and fire when the aircraft hit the ground although not severely deformed the escape doors on the plane's fuselage were not operated the 61 survivors were promptly transported to Santa Cruz hospitals needless to say Los Rodeos airport the only operating airport on Tenerife at the time was closed to all fixed wing traffic this closure would last for two days to allow some clear up efforts with 583 dead 61 injured and two multi-million-dollar aircraft written off the only questions available are how and why initially KLM upon hearing about a collision involving one of their fleet set about assembling an investigation team the logical person for this task would be the head of pilot training captain jacob third hueson van zanten but the company would be shocked to find out at the helm of the disaster was their most experienced 747 pilot the investigation into the event would gain international attention in part due to it being a collision between a dutch and american airlines on spanish soil but also due to the entirely preventable nature of the crash both planes were sound mechanically and both crews had more than enough experience for operating in such conditions however van zanten did take off disregarding all the apparent warning signs for example his first officer not gaining clearance for takeoff and the atc giving no explicit instructions to allow him to which should have pointed him to stay on the ground in the back of the captain's mind was a recently imposed law on limits of time a crew can operate when the rule came into force it was relatively easy for a captain to work out how much time his crew had to work but after december 1976 the process to work out the amount of operating time left became too complicated this meant that crews could not work without fully knowing the remaining time and as such aired on the side of caution as a violation could result in not just punishment from the company but also dutch law this would have played on van zanten's mind and even on that of the crews were exceeding the limit with result in the plane being grounded at los palmas and could have cost the company money and affected plans back at home the theory of being stuck far away from home would have had an effect on the crew called fixation an almost tunnel vision like mental state where the goal is the most important thing and all potential hazards are ignored in the spanish investigation into the crash it was thought that this phenomenon along with communication areas led van zanten to believe that he had the authority to take off let's look at the communication areas that could have caused this the dutch investigation pointed out that during communications between the tower and both planes background noise could be heard from a football game being listened to this could have contributed to some confusion or distraction amongst communications also the tower had to deal with a higher than normal workload on top of that poor visibility due to low clouds no one could see where the other was also the instructions to the panam to use taxiway 3 would have resulted in a difficult maneuver for the crew to do leading to confusion and eventual loss of position of the plane during the vital clearance request stage once the KLM had lined up a misunderstanding led the crew to believe they had clearance the statement by the first officer we are ready for takeoff and we are awaiting atc clearance was responded to from the tower with your clear to papa alpha beacon which was the atc clearance the intention of the atc was to inform them of their route after takeoff that this was understood as you are clear to go the second part of the control towers message was to stand by for takeoff clearance which was continued by okay followed on with a two second gap ending with the message I will call you back captain van Zanten took power halfway through the reback of the first officer in the assumption that the authority had been given which was further reinforced by hearing the word okay his crew on board could have questioned the assumption that his seniority and experience led them to accept his decision the main cause the accident was the confusion in communication where the KLM thought it had clearance for takeoff or simultaneously the tower fought the plane was stationary the final potential diversion from disaster was thwarted by pure bad luck as the panam heard the word okay from the tower they feared the KLM could misunderstand this in desperation they radioed saying that they were still on the runway but this was blocked out by the towers two second gap between the words okay and I will call you back this created a squeal sound in the KLM cockpit and the warning sign was missed multiple failures lined up at tenor if which each individual one wouldn't have resulted in the crash but when each hole was matched the outcome was inevitable the Dutch government initially refused to accept that van Zanten was responsible for the accident but with red lent and KLM paid the victims family's compensation ranging between fifty eight thousand and six hundred thousand dollars the event shook the airline industry and helped push forward the understanding of human factors most importantly completion bias and fixation these issues still remain in all industries today but the greater of one's ability to recognize these can help prevent future disasters las rodeas has now been relegated to domestic and smaller airplane flights the airport has subsequently been renamed to tenor if north a newer more modern airport opened in 1978 and has taken the load of international flights named tenor if south which by 2018 would handle over 12 million passenger journeys per year this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike license plain difficult videos are produced by me john in a sunny southeastern corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so if you fancy check them out and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it is the 5th of october 1999 at around 8 a.m a newly qualified driver michael hodder prepares his class 165 train on platform nine at paddington for its next working to bedwin in wiltshire the station is bustling with travelers consisting of commuters and holidaymakers trains serve paddington from all over the southwest of england and south of wales and this includes packed local trains and fast intercity services the departure time is 806 a.m and the initial part of the train's journey was to travel over a very complex section of track which allows trains to enter and exit london paddington station part of this complex journey involves observing and obeying a signal known to be troublesome especially during times of the day when the sun is at its lowest but at just three minutes after departing as the train heads towards ladbrook grove disaster strikes and the free carriage train travels head on to an intercity train killing 31 and injuring 417 the disaster will highlight many shortcomings in the british railway industry spanning driver training signal training and will boost a growing need for infrastructure changes and a more modern train protection system as such i'm going to rate this disaster here six on my scale but here eight on my legacy scale as if you've travelled on a train in the uk but the aftermath of this event has pretty much ensured your safe travel the disaster at lab at grove was a long time coming with multiple failures within the industry but before we get into the accident we need to look at the development of the railway signaling systems safety on the railways has always been a difficult task as you're relying on humans to be faultless which as we know is not the case this is why we do things to mitigate this take the gear shifter in my car as an example to stop you from accidentally rolling forward you can't go into drive without your foot on the brake pedal trains benefit from high efficiency of movement due to the reduced friction surface between wheel and rail but this has a major drawback and that is in stopping distances and conflicting movements ever since trains have achieved speeds that can mean it can't stop within the line of sight the railway has tried to keep trains safely apart which is what signaling is for a conflicting movement is where one line joins another which needless to say is where collisions can occur railway signaling in its most basic form is to allow one train in one section at one time and the history of this goes all the way back to the early days of the network originally a timetable system was relied upon to ensure each train was kept at a safe distance but needless to say that this method of working breaks down very quickly if a train goes too slowly or stops unexpectedly next came block signaling which was controlled by the signaler for each block as a train passed through and passed the signal box the state of the line will be telegraphed to the previous and next signaler a natural progression of this was for the state of the line to be communicated to the signaler automatically via a track circuit the visitor work the sections or blocks of track are electronically insulated from one another via a thing called an insulated block joint which is made from a non-conductive material as the steel wheel and axle enters the block it completes a circuit which can revert a signal to danger and once the last set of wheels have left the block the signal can change to green showing the section is clear this is a good system but if a train passes a signal protecting an occupied block then a collision can happen and as such it can be made safe for steel by the use of a thing called an overlap the overlap in its most simplest explanation is a safety margin and is roughly 180 meters beyond the signal i do cover the overlap in a little more detail in my clap and junction video so shameless plugs out of the way let's look at how this system can be improved upon further steel this is where multiple aspect signaling comes into play where a red signal is communicated to the driver via the signals on the approach to it in four aspect signaling this comes with two types of cautionary aspect preliminary caution or double yellow and caution single yellow the next signal after caution is danger or red the signals and the driver's knowledge of the route allow them to drive accordingly within the permissible speed for the line so if you're going past a single yellow then you've got to be slowing down for that red ahead we can make this system even more safer with the addition of extra warning of the signals what if we can give the driver of the train advanced information on the signal aspect before the signal well that's where a thing called aws comes into play aws or automatic warning system gives an audible and visual indication of the signal ahead to the driver the way this works is via two magnets between the running rails on the approach to a signal at around 180 meters one the magnets is permanent and the other magnet is an electromagnet when a signal is at caution preliminary caution or danger the second magnet is de-energized this is picked up by a sensor underneath the train and sends a signal to a device called the driver's visual reminder or DVR which displays this sign and then this sound is heard the driver has around 1.9 seconds to cancel the horn using the aws acknowledge button if the driver fails to do this then the emergency brakes come on and bring the train to a stand for 60 seconds if the signal is green then the electromagnet is energized the sensor picks up on this as the train passes over the magnet and the DVR will display this sign and a bell sound will be heard the driver in this case doesn't have to do anything this system was introduced in the 1950s and helped improve safety on the railway but it has one major flaw did you notice it well aws's major problem is that both a danger and a caution signal create the same warning for the driver if it is acknowledged then the train can still sail past a red signal this is also a major problem in poor visibility as if the driver doesn't react appropriately then a signal pass at danger can happen which is why in today's railway if your aws is cut out then you can only travel at a maximum speed of 40 miles per hour in situations of bad visibility this is a big problem and throughout the 1980s the rail industry tried to find a solution but we'll look more into this later on but first let's look at junctions in colour light track circuit signalling junctions are protected by signals much like ones used on normal running lines but instead of being controlled by the passage of trains they are controlled by the signal and as such are known as controlled signals diverging and converging points are when a train changes from one line to another and these are navigated at various speeds depending on the layout of the track and the condition of the track clearly when a train is passing through a junction you'd want to stop all other conflicting movements this necessitates bringing a train to a stand at a red signal if a train is to be signalled from one line to another a driver could receive one of two indications a junction or route indicator both do pretty much the same thing junction indicators can only convey seven routes whereas a route indicator usually consisting of a fiber optic display county and theory display an unlimited number of routes well that was my brief introduction to rssb signalling rules let's return to october 1999 and the 806 to bedwin the class 165 diesel multiple unit was operated by a post privatisation company called tems trains the company had been working the franchise since 1996 and boasted a fleet of 57 trains 53 year old driver brian cooper was working his hst which made up of the 603 first great western he had been driving for just over two hours and was making good progress the hst dating from the late 1970s was made up of two power cars and eight mark three slam door carriages driver cooper was on the final part of his journey to paddington as part of this he needed to navigate the upper mainline there in total six bi-directional lines on the approach to london paddington with trains moving in both directions as traffic flow increases in the morning it is a regular occurrence for trains to be held at signals to allow intercity services to terminate and this morning is no different driver cooper is receiving clear aspects although single and double yellows but the closer he gets to paddington he starts to see greens driver hodder upon receiving a clear signal at paddington departs at around 806 on time he departs on a green and a route indicator for line four his next signal is also green by now he has taken power up to around 44 miles per hour he receives a horn and a caution indication from the aws and he acknowledges it this prompts him to slow down to below 40 miles per hour expecting the next signal to be single yellow again the aws shows a warning on the approach to signal sierra november 87 he is given a junction indicator to the left he is now heading for line three he should be slowing right down and looking for his next signal which should be red but he just coasts along at near 37 miles per hour by now the sun is low and is bleaching the next signal sierra november 109 the light bounces off the lens making it look yellow the aws goes off exhibiting a warning and like before he cancels it but he is now fallen into the trap of the limitations of the system the signal is actually red thinking that the line is clear he takes power to just below 50 miles per hour the train continues across the points onto the down main driver cooper of the hst on the approach to signal sierra november 120 at green notices something a driver does not want to see his signal turns back to red in front of him the train is traveling at 81 miles an hour and cooper slams on the brakes meanwhile driver hodder sees the hst in the distance and slams on his breaks the two trains collide on a combined speed in the region of 130 miles per hour the hst and the turbo were offset due to the angle of both trains resulting in a glancing blow of the turbo train due to the hst being an older design crumple zones were not built in which resulted in the tems train taking the brunt of the collision both drivers of the trains were killed instantly with the hst driver brian cooper being thrown from the wreckage the power car of the hst rose up and fell towards the right multiple carriages of the hst were derailed and during the impact fuel tanks and the tems train were ruptured sending the wreckage into a fireball an emergency call was made at 8 10 a.m and fire crews from north kensington fire station arrived a minutes later they were confronted with a fireball and a cloud of smoke as more fire crews police and london underground emergency response units arrived rescue operations began the derailed carriages were secured enabling passengers to be recovered from the intact parts of the trains but many were trapped in the mangled wreckage first responders bravely fought the fire and helped find survivors in the wreckage much like what we saw at the moor gate and at clappham rescue workers went well above and beyond what was expected of them in total 31 people died in the crash 24 were on the tems train and seven were on the hst nearly all of the deaths were related to the initial and subsequent impacts but one of the victims died later in hospital due to the effects of the fire in total 417 were injured in the accident with many experiencing severe burns after recovery of the bodies clearing works could begin which involved a crane starting on the 9th of october the last carriages of the wreckage were removed on the 13th of october with such a tragic disaster investigators looked into the cause that could lead to such an event the obvious cause being the signal past the danger but the actual cause ran much deeper and would point the finger directly at the railway industry the course of the accident might seem straightforward but it can be divided into two parts what the driver could have done to prevent the spad and what could have been done to mitigate the after effects of the spad signal seara november 109 was notorious for drivers that worked trains in and out of paddington before october 1999 there had been eight known incidents where a train had passed its movement authority at the location since its re-signalling in 1993 because of this seara november 109 was classed as a multi spad signal meaning it had been passed multiple times when at danger the number of incidents at the signal put it in the top 22 most past signals in the country leading it to be described as a black spot multi spad signals are not a unique thing on the railway and can be caused by a combination of infrastructure and human factors that make them high risk places train operating companies have certain processes to make drivers aware incidents through the use of notice boards and incident folders where staff become for duty but ultimately it is down to the driver to know the risks of the route over which they drive one such way to prevent incidents is in the use of defensive driving which is where a driver reduces their speed when driving under restrictive aspects this strategy was known by tem's trains and information had been passed out to drivers although little extra training had been given needless to say if you're new to the job then there's a higher risk of not knowing instant hotspots and thus a higher risk of contributing to the spad statistics but this is usually mitigated through training driver hotter of the tem's train had only been qualified for two weeks before the collision which brings the question as to whether his training was adequate during the investigation it was found that driver hotter's training was far from acceptable you see privatization of the british railway operations was still relatively new and as part of the dismantling of the national network into multiple small private train operating companies the standard of training varied as companies sought out to streamline their syllabus back in the br days a more unified experience for driver training was used where a similar standard was set irrespective of depot and driving location this was due to a driver essentially having to learn both passenger and freight services the situation at tem's trains was pretty dire leading up to the disaster and this was mainly linked to training and management the company had twice the industry standard number for signal pastor danger six of the eight spads at seo and november 109 were attributed to tem's trains although having a terrible record the company hadn't made any serious improvements to its root learning training root maps were never provided and during root training instructors didn't see it as part of their job to teach characteristics of the lines driven this led to a serious gap in driver hotter's knowledge of the paddington to elaborate grove area but the buck doesn't stop at the driver's mistake as humans make errors it is also down to the railways industry as a whole to mitigate the danger resulting from an accident the hsc investigation led by law cullen highlighted multiple infrastructure issues you see seo november 109 had a very dangerous layout of its signal heads in an unusual un non-standard reverse l shape when compared side by side you can see how this setup could lead to confusion the style of the signal head also can create a high risk of misreading as they are susceptible to a thing called bleaching where sunlight reflects off the lens washing out the color displayed in the modern day railway rulebook a bleach signal should be reported to the signaler using the rt3185 form which would have also given the signaler a chance to inform driver hotter what the actual aspect on display was after resignalling in the area multiple complaints came in from drivers about the sighting and risk of read across for gantry 8 which housed seo november 109 as part of the modernization and electrification of the uk railways the paddington area have received overhead line equipment in 1995 this required the installation of stanchions the infrastructure installation further added to the cluttered visibility of gantry 8 the addition of banner repeaters was put forward which would have given an advanced visual indication of the signal ahead but these were not installed due to cost implications and the fact that the line speed would be restricted it was also found that during the re-signalling of the area a type of anti-collision system could have been implemented and that is called flank protection when a signal was held at danger at a junction the points can be set so that if a spat occurs the train can be directed towards the route least likely to cause a collision although in theory a simple addition it would have required the routing computer to work out the least dangerous route to be set which could have operational issues as it adds another level of complexity the other reason that the system was not implemented was the belief that a type of automatic train protection was just around the corner and this leads us to the final thing that could have prevented disaster automatic train protection during the final years of british rail and in the aftermath of the Clapham rail disaster a form of train protection was in the making you see underground lines the Wattford DC and a number of other routes had a type of protection called tripcock train stop as I mentioned in the Moorgate Crash video is a form of stopping the train after a spad by means of mechanically activating trains brakes the system is reliable and has shown great results in preventing collisions from conflicting movements and spads but it did have a number of drawbacks one such thing is that it is not very reliable at high speeds due to the tripcock potentially being damaged if struck too hard it also added a certain level of complexity and that is of the lowering of the train stop because of it being a mechanical item either electricity or as employed on the underground air is needed to lower the train stop this resulted in british rail looking for another form of protection and the system they sought to trial was called ATP this employed beacons in the track that would stop a train if passed a signal at danger without authority the system was installed in the 1990s on the Paddington to Bristol route which ran right through signal Sierra November 109 and was active on the day of the crash but installing the train mounted system was time-consuming and expensive many trains had ATP fitted including the HST involved in the crash although it was defective on that particular train tems trains had employed engineering firm ws atkins to perform a cost of benefit analysis for fitting their trains and track with the ATP system it was found that the cost of benefit was not significant enough to employ ATP and as such tems trains rolling stock was not retrofitted part of this analysis also took into account the cheapest system called train protection and warning system which was also being trialled elsewhere and was looking to be the preferred system thus leaving ATP obsolete ws atkins came under criticism by overestimating the cost of installation of equipment by costing the installation of line side equipment which in most cases would have been paid for by rail track the company in charge of uk railway infrastructure at the time all of which factored into tems trains decision to not install ATP all of the factors from driver error to lack of safety system led to the disaster which changed the railway industry forever tpws has been installed on most main lines in the uk now and greater emphasis on training and personal protection strategies have increased safety on the railway but sadly accidents still happen we saw this recently with the chow font and latimer near miss where tripcock brake demand was reset resulting in two trains nearly having a head on collision another improvement that can be seen rolling out across the network today is the use of led type signal heads these are less susceptible to bleaching from the sun and although not perfect they are a step in the right direction and even more advanced step in train protection than tpws is etcs a type of in cab train control and signaling which ironically is being rolled out on some parts of the great western mainline this system has other benefits in achieving automatic train operation like what can be seen on the tems in core where train is fully controlled by signaling the disaster has changed the uk railway industry for the better but even still those tragic deaths on that day in october 1999 will still leave a mark on the industry this video is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed many different videos are produced by me john in a currently very wet and gloomy corner of southeast london uk help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check that out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching throughout history mankind has sought to answer what happens after death after all the end of life is part of the human condition in an effort to alleviate our fears of demise many theologians religious scholars and scientists have sought to discover proof of the soul and to a greater extent where it goes post death one such scientist was set out to find if the very center of our being has a physical weight although an impossible task you might think a theory was conceived that concluded that a soul weighs around 21 grams derided as a case of selective reporting the theory would see widespread rejection within the scientific community despite this many see the results as a hopeful glimmer of life after death in order to prove this the study would go down a dark path welcome to the dark side of science it is 1907 and a new theory of proof of the soul is leaked in the new york times the headline exclaims the soul has a weight position from hava hill massachusetts duncan mcdougal thinks but our story starts all the way back in glasgo in 1866 with the birth of duncan mcdougal he emigrated to hava hill massachusetts in the united states at around the age of 20 shortly after emigrating he attends the boston university school of medicine receiving his medical degree he would return to hava hill where he would meet mary and have a son in the mid 1890s like many people of this era mcdougal was fascinated with death and the human condition as such he devised a way to prove the existence of the soul he surmised that if we have a soul that it must hold a physical space and therefore can be weighed once death is complete then in theory as consciousness is extinguished when the soul leaves the body then the weight of the deceased will change in his 1907 hypothesis published in the journal of the american society the psychical research he said since therefore it is necessary to the continuance of conscious life and personal identity after death that they must have a basis that which is space occupying or substance the question arises has this substance weight to prove the theory mcdougal needed access to people near the point of death but not only that but also incapable of being able to move as this would make conducting the weighing easier and more accurate as said by mcdougal himself it seemed to me the best to select a patient dying with a disease that produces great exhaustion the death occurring with little or no muscular movement because in such a case the beam could be kept more perfectly at balance and any loss occurring readily noted needless to say this task is easier said than done as very few people in their last moments of life would be willing to take part in a study but a disease that killed roughly 25 percent of the adult population would create a ready supply of bed ridden subjects and this was named consumption or better known today as tb the disease takes a relatively easily predictable progression allowing sufferers time to make arrangements for their affairs post death this prediction of the time of death was assisted with the discovery of the x-ray in 1895 by Wilhelm Röntgen as the disease was spreadable by kissing coughing breathing or sneezing many sufferers were sent to homes for treatment and to stop the spread one of these was Dr. Cullis's consumptives home between the 1860s and 1890s the institution based in Roxbury Massachusetts had taken care of over 2000 critically ill patients Dr. Cullis believed in cure by faith in which prayer would help heal the sick although not the most scientific method the home offered comfort and care for its patients back doogle had been refused by many homes for his morbid study into the point of death but Cullis's home offered an opportunity for McDougal the faith based institution who agreed to allow the scientific experiment thought that proving that the cell was real could have both spiritual and medical importance in total six dying people would volunteer for the experiments the process set out for the experiment involved taking the patient as their last moments approached and placing them into a cot suspended from a fair bank scale sensitive to two tenths of an ounce due to the progression of the disease the patients were so ill they did not move allowing the measurements to be accurate McDougal and two physicians carefully observed the patient noting the weight on the scale as the moment arrived they recorded the exact time of death and looked for any change of weight at that moment the experiments would start on the 10th of April 1901 when the first volunteer was wheeled into a room which housed the cotton scales the man continued to breathe for three hours and 40 minutes before death suddenly coincident with death the beam end dropped with an audible stroke hitting against the lower limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound the loss was ascertained to be three fourths of an ounce or roughly 21 grams the second subject a man also suffering from TB was observed for four hours and 15 minutes before his death at which time the weight dropped half an ounce all more patients will be observed by McDougal patients three and five were observed losing a small amount of weight but four was discounted due to scale failure and six was disallowed due to the patient dying was entering the cot in McDougal's thinking animals didn't have souls so as a control of sorts he conducted the study on 15 dogs he would later state surrounded by every precaution to obtain accuracy and the results were uniformly negative no loss of weight at death although not explicitly stated it is likely that the dogs were poisoned in order to measure the moment of death the tests on the dogs were vitiated by the use of two drugs administered to secure the necessary quiet and freedom from struggle so necessary to keep the beam at balance six years later in 1907 before his results were published in the journal of american society the psychical research the new york times released the story the study upon publication received strong criticisms one of the loudest was from physician august p clark clark explained that the difference in weight loss between humans and dogs was primarily due to one thing sweat you see as the body dies the cooling effect of breathing no longer takes place leading to a momentary increase in body temperature causing a quick burst of sweat which would evaporate and this could easily account for the missing 21 grams the big difference with dogs is that they don't have sweat glands so wouldn't lose the weight in this manner the criticism from the wider scientific community wouldn't stop there as it was pointed out that only one case out of the four recordings of weight resulted in 21 grams which would suggest a case of selective reporting from a modern perspective the methods used in 1901 to ascertain the exact moment of death are not as accurate as you would have liked wearingly for the results this is even semi-admitted by mcdougal himself for the second patient the last 15 minutes he had ceased to breathe but his facial muscles still moved convulsively and then coinciding with the last movement of facial muscles the beam dropped another criticism is the sample size which by most scientific standards is way too small to yield any discernible result of a total of six with only four results being allowed many other variables were not controlled for example temperature of the room cause of death and even it's being limited to just one institution the imprecise nature of the study meant the results were far from reliable but the reason that the experiment is known today and not just a bizarre footnote of strange history of science is its cultural impact needless to say fundamentalist religious groups of the day embrace the findings and even though dr. Duncan mcdougal would pass away in 1920 the weight of 21 grams permeated itself into modern day culture more modern attempts of a recreation of the study by louis e hollanda jr on various animals actually yielded and unaccounted for weight gain so i'm going to rate the 21 grams experiment of five on my ethics scale and that's mainly for the needless slaughter of the dogs how would you rate this experiment let me know in the comments below this is the plain default production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently sunny southeastern corner of london uk help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy we fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it is around 502 pm on the 10th of june 1999 and a usually quiet and calm forest erupts into a fireball a teenager fishing by the river and two children would die as a result of the explosion which investigators would later find to be caused in part by unnoticed damage caused to the pipeline five years before although a small death toll the event would cause over 50 million dollars worth of damage affecting the local water supply and releasing over 277 000 us gallons of gasoline the explosion showed the inherent dangers of the fossil fuel supply chain when the transportation of fuel from refinery to shipping terminal was required not much can be done about this as the constant and convenient supply of petroleum is vital to any country's economy as such i'm going to rate the olympic pipeline explosion here seven on my disaster scale but here six on my legacy scale this is due to the event not being greatly remembered today our story starts in the 1950s washington state had a capacity of 125 000 barrels of refined oil products being supplied from fourth refineries the state has a problem and that is capacity you see the usa has an unquenchable thirst for gasoline and as quickly as it is produced it is consumed much of the product is transported via truck or barge which is fairly slow and as such a faster and more efficient mode of delivery is needed starting off in the early 1960s the olympic pipeline company was formed the organization set about to design and build a network of pipelines to connect the main refineries to terminals in washington state and oregon by 1964 nearly 300 miles of pipeline were installed soon after the total system numbers over 400 miles and consists of multiple lines in its most northern extremities two lines each 16 inch in diameter run from refineries at cherry point and anacortis where they interconnect then join on to a pumping station near allen heading south from allen station are two lines a 16 inch diameter and a 20 inch diameter respectively that run parallel until reaching a pumping station in renton from there a single 14 inch diameter pipeline extends south to portland with various smaller lines branching off to multiple terminals the city of bellingham in 1966 required a new water treatment plant the location of the daikin u site landed right over some of the buried section of the olympic line but a pipework to still be accessible for maintenance and to not risk being disturbed the line and approximately 724 foot long section was rerouted the move section was constructed of externally coated api grade x52 steel pipe with a wall thickness of 0.31 inches before being pressed into service the pipeline was tested to 1820 psig on the 20th of june 1966 the maximum operating pressure was worked out to be 80 percent of the tested pressure resulting in a value of 1456 psig the pipeline safety regulations limited the allowable pipeline pressure to 110 percent of the maximum operating pressure during surges which is roughly around 1580 psig now with such a large and intricate network of pipes how is the pressure kept below these maximum values this was controlled by a series of valves worked by a computer system to control and manage the whole system a computer administration software was employed and this was called SCADA supervisory control and data acquisition the system consists of sensors actuators remote terminal units a communications link and the main SCADA computer the SCADA shows a network on the computer screen to operators who can intervene to reduce pressures across the system by remotely operating valves if situations develop that exceed preset values an alarm can be given to the operators olympic SCADA system used two identical computers which were called ol y1 and ol y2 one of the computers was used as the primary system with the other available as a backup the system became a victim of its own success and as such in 1998 a new products terminal at bayview was constructed the new terminal was two miles upstream from the existing allen station it housed five product tanks and a storage tank capacity of around 500 000 barrels a 10 000 barrel transmix tank was also installed as a breakout tank at the facility to protect the facility several valves were employed this was to reduce and even stop the flow of fuel into bayview in the event of a high pressure situation the inlet control valve cv 1904 was used to throttle product flow into the bayview terminal and this was set at 600 psi g a relief valve named rv 1919 was installed just downstream of the control valve and was intended to work at a pressure of around 650 psi g it was designed to open and transfer excess product to the transmix tank if the pressure after cv 1904 exceeded a set pressure in the relief valve upstream of cv 1904 was a receiver manifold arrangement consisting of three motor operated and remotely controlled block valves and these also controlled product flow but were set to close completely if the pressure of over 700 psi g was experienced in the facility thus blocking the whole pipeline upstream from it these were only intended for extreme circumstances the system also had another over pressurization prevention system and that was the pumps at ferndale having a set limit of 1400 psi g in which if reached was shut down reducing the flow of fuel when the relief valve was installed and mix up in specifications meant that rv 1919 was set to operate at only 100 psi g when bayview was opened and the line was repressurized operators noticed rv 1919 opening at 100 psi g even though this was out of spec the engineering supervisor instructed staff to find out why aware that the operation of the valve was from a pilot valve and spring that could be adjusted thinking it was at its maximum setting and not reading the instruction manual and new spring was ordered the manual would have told them that the supplier made two types of valve a high and low pressure model both of which used the same spring meaning replacement would yield no change of operation regardless of this the spring was replaced and the valve was adjusted allowing the line to be pressurized this resulted in the inlet block valve closing around 35 times between 1998 and 1999 operators didn't think this was much of a problem but you see the inlet block valve is a safety system intended to only automatically step in during points of extreme operating conditions of high pressure this is what the relief valve is there to do but olympic pipeline did not investigate these abnormal valve operations properly and this brings us on to june 1999 it is the afternoon of the 10th of june 1999 two controllers operate the entire 400 mile pipeline system from the olympic control room in renton in addition to this an olympic pipeline controller who had been temporarily assigned as a computer system administrator was also working in the control room each controller is in charge of a separate section of the network throughout the day the SCADA system was operating as normal using computer ol y02 operating as the primary machine with 01 running as a backup at around 3 10 p.m the administrator began to note errors being logged on the SCADA system after undertaking database development work at around the same time one of the controllers began preparing to stop product delivery to the toscow facility and start delivery of gasoline to the harbour island terminal in seattle at around 20 past three the north controller contacted personnel at cherry point refinery and asked them to begin transferring product to the adjacent cherry point pumping station the pressure in the pipeline began to rise this is normally remedied by starting a second pump at the unattended woodenville station this required the controller to issue the command via the SCADA system the system failed to send the signal and almost instantly the pressure in the line rose to 1440 psig the controller responsible for the other sections of the line also noted that their commands into the system had become unresponsive the administrator attempted to change over to ol y01 computer at around the same time the controller phoned the pumping station at allen to get them to shut down one of the pumps as the pressure increased the block valve at bayview began to close the pressure sensors in the area recorded a 1494 psig reading at 328 p.m uncommanded shutdown of the pumps at cherry point and ferndale stations also happened at the same time with a shutdown of the cherry point of ferndale pumping stations the 16 inch pipeline was essentially dead from cherry point to renton with a single pump at woodenville the only remaining operational unit left strangely just a minute later at 329 p.m the system recorded the pressure dropping back down to 230 psig little did they know but the section of pipeline next to dakin new water plant by the city of bellingham had ruptured the very same section rerouted back in 1966 grantically the administrator tried to get the scarter system back up and running eventually returning to operation on ol y02 at 3 45 p.m at around 4 p.m the controller came into the computer room and asked if the pipeline could be restarted at 4 11 p.m the inlet block valve reopened at bayview at 4 15 p.m the controller contacted the refinery and asked that products transfer be restarted at 16 past 4 the controller started the pump at the cherry point station followed by at 4 17 by starting of a pump at the ferndale station an olympic employee traveling on his way home called the control centre to report smelling gasoline at a bridge over whatcom creek by now fuel was pouring out of the ruptured pipeline and the smell of gasoline was becoming unbearable for anyone nearby as such multiple calls to 911 were made by the public the whatcom creek turned a strange colour the local fire department escalated the response to a hazmat level incident at about 4 35 p.m the controller contacted arco again and asked that the transfer or fuel be stopped emergency responders started cordoning off and evacuating the areas that smelled of petrol at 5 o 2 p.m fire department staff started to see fire igniting in the whatcom creek and benningham police officers also witnessed the ignition the fire turned into an explosion releasing a plume of smoke 30 000 feet into the air the temperature was thought to exceed 1090 degrees Celsius three were killed leon wood 18 who was fly fishing in the creek drowned after succumbing to the fumes and two children wade king and steven tesorvis both 10 were playing near the creek both survived the blast but sustained severe burns dying the next day in hospital eight more people were also injured around an hour and a half later the fire was quelled with most of smoke dissipating by 7 p.m but what was the cause of the event as high pressure shouldn't have resulted in rupture especially in a well-established system the question of why would send investigators down a very worrying path in which the way the system was operated and how work undertaken near the pipeline can have a devastating effect investigators found that five years before the disaster the daikin new water treatment plant had undergone modernization works part of the work required excavations near the olympic pipeline on the 9th of may 1994 during installation of a 72 inch diameter steel water line that was to cross the line of the 16 inch pipe was exposed olympics pipeline was then covered with material on the 12th of may 1994 with the water pipe placed some 36 inches above it this work was undertaken under the watch of olympic pipeline officials more work was undertaken over the pipeline to install a T between existing water pipeline and a new discharge line from the improved treatment site an olympic inspector was present but only for part of the day more duct and pipe work was installed during the water plant upgrade with most but not all the days being witnessed by an olympic employee on the 11th of august 1994 several witnesses noted the pipeline being struck 17 feet north of the centre line of the T connection although olympic was not informed of this personnel coated the area of the pipeline that had been struck with amastic coating before backfilling over it when looking at a diagram of where the rupture happened we could see that the works for the water treatment plant and the strike location match up the pipeline was inspected between 1991 and 1999 and anomalies were discovered in the area of the waterworks but no remedial action was undertaken investigators found that the cause of the rupture was due to multiple failures stemming from the initial damage to the pipeline but the disaster could have been averted with proper investigation into the damage but the failure goes much deeper than that as the way Bayview was brought online with the malfunctioning relief valve led to extended times of high pressures within the network which in turn caused the damaged section of the pipeline to rupture the warning signs of the block valve repeatedly closing were not rectified by olympic this problem was further compounded with the actions of pipeline staff undertaking database development work on the SCADA system whilst it was being used to control the pipeline leading to a complete system failure with the system unresponsive and the block valve closing precious surges found the path of least resistance the damaged section of the pipeline which resulted in catastrophic structural failure and ignition apart from the human cost property damage was estimated at $58 million most of it caused by the ignition and fireball many nearby buildings were damaged with broken windows with one house being completely destroyed the water treatment plant near the explosion site survived but most of the machinery within was severely damaged the line was eventually however repaired and brought back into service olympic reached a 112 million dollar settlement with the victims and in 2000 the pipeline was taken over by BP and the company still operates the line today the area around the rupture and fireball still shows signs of damage but like all things nature has done a lot to reclaim and cover the evidence this is the plain default production all videos on this channel are created commons actuation share like license plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently wet and windy corner of southeast london uk check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it is the 21st of june 1990 and an operator is called out to an irradiation facility at serec in israel he notices a problem the transport mechanism of the irradiator has gotten jammed based with the workload pressures and confronted with two conflicting indications on his control panel the operator decides to try and clear the jam himself the safety systems on site should prevent him from entering the irradiation room but a known exploit of turning the system on and off multiple times releases the lock to the room he enters to inspect the blockage he leaves to retrieve a cart and then enters again within minutes feeling his eyes start to burn he flees the room but it was too late he received a full body deadly radiation dose despite intensive medical care he would die 36 days later today we're looking at the radiological accident in serec as such i'm going to rate this subject here free on my disaster scale but also free on my legacy scale although fairly unknown the event shows the importance of safety procedures and the risks you're exposed to if ignored serec has been the center for israeli nuclear research ever since the 1950s and the construction of the country's first research reactor an irradiation facility in serec was built in the late 1960s the project was a joint venture between the nevelins and the israeli atomic energy commission although within the serec site the facility is operated under a separate company by the name of sovan radiation limited the irradiation facility employed a model js6500 gamma sterilizer designed manufactured and installed by atomic energy of canada limited the unit uses cobalt 60 as its radioactive material the facility is used to irradiate and thus sterilize pre-packaged medical products amongst other items irradiation of an item can take many hours as it is passed through the machine in steps packages to be irradiated are packed in cartons and two or three of these cartons are stacked and taped together the passage through the irradiator the boxes move through the machine via a roller system similar to the ones used on other types of production lines except in this case the items move past the radioactive source multiple times in a z-like shape to receive the required dose over two levels to achieve movement of the carton boxes pistons are employed at each changing direction the amount of time the item stays in each position is controlled by a timer and when a preset timer is passed the piston is activated like with all radioactive materials its safe movement and control are vital to the overall site safety and serec was no different as personnel may need to enter the irradiation room and being confronted with a whole load of cobalt 60 would ruin most people's day the cobalt 60 was mounted on a source rack consisting of six modules containing multiple pencils of the radioisotope made up of two source elements within to even out the dosage dummy pencils were also installed in each module totaling 42 pencils per module when not in use the rack is stored in a water tank and this shields staff from gamma radiation to raise the source rack to its irradiation position cables and hoists are used powered by a pneumatic piston as a failsafe if the piston runs out of air then via the power of gravity the rack is plunged back into its water pool the state of the rack is indicated to operators on the control panel via a simple micro switch but this needs regular adjustment to give the correct information during the 1970s and 1980s similar systems had experienced blockages and jams as such the manufacturer issued a notice to install a metal shroud however at Sarek this was not done so how was the system made safe from any unwitting intruder to the irradiation room as you don't want something like the Hanoi radiation incident to happen again the operator's control the system via a control panel outside the irradiation room there are three key switches for power on source raise and machine on the first two control the movement of the source and the third allows movement of the transport mechanism while the source is raised the irradiation program is interrupted and the source automatic lowered if any of the following occur being tripped by a safety interlock or if sensors detect high temperatures in the irradiation room low pressure in the pneumatic hoist system or misaligned cartons jamming the transport mechanism if a product jam stops the source rack from returning to its pond then an alarm should sound to the operator to enter the irradiation room a key switch that operates the door lock solenoid is linked up to a radiation monitor leaders to say if radiation levels are registered above background then the door cannot be unlocked to gain access to the room the operator first has to press the monitor test button the radiation detector checks the reading in the room if okay the button can be released then this is checked again to make sure the room is at background levels after this the lock will be released all of this is also interlocked with the source rack position sensor if not in the pool then the door also cannot be released I should say also if the radiation alarm is going off then the test cannot be attempted as the lock to the door is completely de-energized once entrance to the room is granted the operator must make their way through an area called the maze finally entering the irradiation room there is an emergency cutoff pool string attached to the wall of the room which if pulled will drop the source rack back into the pool of a total workforce of 20 at sauvan there were four operating staff a senior technician who had worked at the plant since it was built in the late 1960s and three technicians each had been certified and had at least one year's practical experience which was a requirement to operate the facility due to the equipment being from Canada much of the operating manuals were in English only a short list of routine operating and safety instructions including the procedure for entering the radiator had been issued in Hebrew this led to some confusion as not all the operators were very proficient in English the radiator was often in operation 24 hours a day due to the high workload but it was only staffed on a regular day shift the conveyor was long enough to hold five to seven hours worth of cartons before leaving at the end of the day shift the staff loaded the input conveyor to its full capacity and completely unloaded the output conveyor at around midnight an operator would go to the facility to reload and unload the conveyor for the night due to the facility being unattended the source rack down indicator is hardwired to the emergency control centre of the SUREC research nuclear test centre and is staffed 24 hours a day in the event of a malfunction the on-call operator would be requested to attend and rectify any faults this leads us onto the summer solstice of 1990 and a jam occurring at the irradiation facility just after 5pm at around 5pm on the 21st of June 1990 a jam occurred in the transport mechanism in the irradiator room this caused cartons on other parts of the conveyor to burst open one carton was pushed towards the source rack the overdose timer detected the jam and the control system automatically initiated the source rack to be lowered displaced cartons on the lower conveyor stopped the rack from lowering back into the pool the micro switch on the source hoist malfunctioned and incorrectly indicated that the source rack was fully down the product jam was registered at the emergency centre at the SUREC nuclear research centre and a SOAR van duty operator was informed at home by telephone an unqualified staff member silenced the alarm by disconnecting it from the control panel by 5.35pm the on-call operator had attended and reconnected the alarm on the console the product jam and source down light were illuminated confusingly the radiation alarm was sounding indicating a high level of radiation these were all conflicting indications for the operator the situations like this two operators are required to be in attendance but strangely he decided to deal with the issue alone and this is most likely due to production pressures based with conflicting information the operator decided to ignore the radiation alarm and believe the source rack was safely in the pool little did he know but the vital micro switch used to prove the source rack location had not been adjusted correctly and was thus defective to silence the alarm the operator went behind the console and disconnected the cable from the radiation monitor to the alarm and control circuitry this should have meant that the door to the radiation room could not be opened as the radiation monitor test would automatically fail but there's a little knack to bypass this the key from the machine switch can be removed and inserted into the power switch which is cycled on and off several times while pushing the test button tricks the monitor into thinking that is reading background radiation after bypassing the interlock the operator entered the maze he took with him a small radiation monitor but did not calibrate it as he entered the room he should have been greeted with the blue glow from the source rack in the pool caused by a cherry cove radiation not noticing that he still continued in the side the operator left the room to fetch a cart after re-entering the room he began to remove the damaged cartons from the conveyor quickly he began to feel a thumping in his head and a burning sensation in his eyes he fled the room and contacted at five forty five p.m. who's superior the senior technician and explained what happened not long later he felt sick and with his head still throbbing started to retch the senior technician telephoned the emergency center at Syrac nuclear research center an RSO from the research center came to assist and after being explained on how to gain access to the room went into the maze with a dosimeter his reading was at 0.5 cv an hour the 32 year old operator was transported to the Ichilov medical center in Tel Aviv where he was examined by a physician two hours and 15 minutes after exposure at this point it was thought that his exposure was 10 to 20 gray over a period of around two minutes as a note four gray has killed people before for the first few days he vomited regularly each day and continued to fill nausea by day four he was given a bone marrow transplant the white blood cell count continued to drop rapidly on day five and by day 22 the symptoms continued with a fever of 40 degrees centigrade liver function continued to deteriorate in testing and the sickness increased by day 34 he was confused and bedridden at 2 a.m on the 27th of July 1990 day 36 the patient died it was found during the autopsy that death was linked to his radiation exposure and gvhd graft versus host disease this happens when after a bone marrow transfer the white blood cells from the donor start attacking the recipient which ultimately can cause organ failure after the accident the source rack was returned to its safe position later that evening on the 21st of June after taking advice from the supplier's headquarters in canada investigators set out to find out why the operator acted as he did as noted in the IAA reports that a properly translated manual for the operators could have helped with fault finding as well as stricter training by properly configuring any portable radiation monitors before entry to an irradiation area moreover if the operator had followed the rules and requested another member of staff to assist then the dangerous path he went down likely wouldn't have happened it was also found that entrance security to the radiation room was easily bypassed by playing with the console by repeatedly cycling the key in the power switch also the micro switch needed proper adjustment was found to be faulty leading to the incorrect indications on the operator's panel but essentially preventing the jam from the start would have averted the radiation incident if the company had heeded warnings in the 1970s and 80s and installed a recommended shroud then the jam and the source rack might not have happened at all needless to say these were key recommendations given from the IAA to the facilities management it is a shame that pressure to get production running again led the operator to undertake actions that turned out to be pretty deadly but as they say rule books are written in blood this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in the currently raining southeast in corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of odds and sods as well as future hints on videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so if you fancy supporting the channel financially you can check them out and all that's left to say is thank you for watching an ethical human experimentation can conjure up the images of horror and pain inflicted by unit 731 or dachau or Auschwitz during the second world war but although Germany and Japan were the most well known for inhumane experimentation during the early to mid 20th century they were most certainly not the only perpetrators of suffering in the name of scientific discovery other experiments on humans have taken a much more subtle route than that of the access powers running in democratic western countries preying on the poor racial minorities and or prisoners the experiment orchestrators would draw in potential subjects by offering free medical help and or financial incentives such an experiment between the 1930s and 1970s would cross the line well into an unethical study and although not as blatantly gruesome as a vivisection on a subject would actively hide the diagnosis of a debilitating disease and withhold treatment from its victims all to find out how a person would succumb to said illness the experiment orchestrators would draw in potential subjects by offering free medical help and or financial incentives not only that but the disease in this study syphilis which not only can be deadly is also easily transmissible from sexual contact with an infected person even being able to be passed on from mother to unborn child today we're looking at a truly dark page in infectious disease study the tuskegee syphilis experiment as such i'm going to rate it here nine on my ethical scale although it didn't have as many victims this is most certainly up there with the lobotomy it is 1932 an enrollment has begun on a new study the participants are all african-american males from impoverished backgrounds they have been convinced to become participants by the promise of free lunches transportation and medical care the initial groundwork for this enrollment came from an earlier study funded by the julius rosenwald fund and conducted by the u.s public health service during 1928 it took place over six counties in alabama usa and highlighted hot spots of syphilis infections in macon county in the town of tuskegee the aim of the rosenwald study was to find a population perfect for an attempt of mass treatment for the debilitating disease and the largely african-american inhabitants of tuskegee seemed like the ideal test bed it was estimated that around 36 of the 27 000 residents in macon county were infected with syphilis giving the area a syphilis prevalence among the greatest in united states the funding for mass treatment would never come as it was widely thought at the time that syphilis affected different races in different ways and could often remain dormant in african-americans most bizarrely it was also thought at the time african-americans were not even want to seek treatment even if offered needless to say these assumptions were wrong this distorted view was influenced by the racial segregation laws of the time which made african-americans essentially second-class citizens in the southern states mass treatment was also not considered due to a lack of funding as by 1929 post wall street crash money was not available especially for a largely impoverished african-american population with no state matching funding the rosenwald fund also withdrew its money for the treatment program the report into the findings of the 1928 investigation was written by public health service officer dr talifero clark but with no government funding the project found itself at a dead end with no funding to treat the ill dr clark found that the results provided an unusual opportunity for observation of the disease by 1932 clark thought that the results of the rosenwald study merited a revisit and he began preparing to find test subjects for a long-term observation into the progression of syphilis in african-american males the new study would be considered by the public health service as a classic study in nature rather than an experiment although either way you looked at it the participants would be observed and actively not treated for the disease the key for the experiment to work was that the subjects would not know that they are infected and thus not seek treatment as this would affect the results the justification for this again was in the racist theory of that the african-americans wouldn't seek medical help anyway so misdiagnosing wouldn't make any difference to the participants dr clark sent a raymond h vondler to tuskegee to act as the on-site director the plan was to find syphilic males between the ages of 25 and 60 and was to initially last for around six months initially low vondler found it hard-going trying to find test subjects amongst the men screened only 20 percent had been infected and an even lower number still who had not sought out any kind of treatment those who had not received treatment were initially unwilling to volunteer for the study but vondler discovered that if free medical care was offered then the subjects would be more than willing for participation as part of vondler's plan to win the trust of the local community employed tuskegee institute nurse unis rivers she would become a vital point of contact for the u.s public health service and the local population this ironically went against the original thinking that african-american males would not seek out treatment kind of scuppering the justification for the study but that didn't get in the way for the u.s public health service unaware that it was an experiment many of the participants thought it was a mass treatment program linked to the earlier rosenwald study of 1928 this misunderstanding was not corrected helping dr vondler gain the trust of many subjects in total around 4 000 men were lured in to be screened for tertiary syphilis resulting in 399 positive test subjects being convinced to take part in the study 201 males were also enrolled as a control group who had not contracted the illness to not raise suspicion of the infected participants the control group was also administered useless medications and if any later contracted syphilis they would be transferred to the study group or just secretly dropped all involved were told that they had bad blood a local colloquialism for a multitude of conditions and common ailments eventually subjects were found and in order to be entered into the study a comprehensive examination had to take place culminating in a spinal tap biopsy to find if any of the subjects had neuro syphilis this was dressed up as a form of treatment for the subject's bad blood the reason for the spinal puncture being last was twofold one was to have the subject leaving feeling like they had received a treatment and two is that neuro syphilis can be one of the final stages of the illness once infected persons were found the intention was to not tell them of their condition and instead only offer placebo or other useless treatments for the symptoms caused by the syphilis this allowed the doctors to concede that the participants were ill all without actually making them aware of their real diagnosis in 1933 and with contradicted assumptions on whether African Americans would seek out treatment the study was allowed to continue past its initial six months the participants were given a small dose of mercury as a way to make them feel like they had received some kind of treatment Clarke and now looking at the long term wanted to see what would happen over a five to ten year period but this would eventually last for over 40 years but this came with a problem you see the only need for the subjects was for a few blood tests every few years but ultimately it would be their bodies post death that would provide the most scientific value the issue being how do you convince someone to donate their body after death to you if you are the one that is meant to be treating them to offer an incentive for continued participation and eventual access to their body a $50 stipend was offered for their burial costs and yearly cash payments of $25 were made for any man who stayed in the study and this continued participation was where nurse Eunice came to be very handy because she was made the middleman she kept in regular contact with the participants and administered fake treatment tonics as well as arranged for transport to the Tuskegee Institute when too ill to travel at the time syphilis was incurable but as the 1930s drew to a close the study would take a darker turn from withholding information and effective symptom treatment to actively withholding cure but before this I think we need to have a quick look at the disease itself and what it does to the human body syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium trepanina pallidum subspecies pallidum its origin is largely unknown but its first written records of an outbreak of syphilis in Europe occurred in 1494 or 1495 in Naples Italy the disease presents itself in four stages between two and six weeks after exposure bisexual contact with an infected person a lesion is formed called a chancra usually this occurs on a person's genitals but can appear on any part of the body that has come into contact with another chancra after a few weeks if left untreated the chancra will disappear on its own and this is known as the primary stage the next secondary stage comes along around four to six weeks after the first signs of symptoms and this part of the progression of the disease shows itself in many different ways but most commonly manifests itself in rashes on any part of the body and other symptoms include fever sore throat malaise weight loss hair loss and headache these acute symptoms usually resolve after three to six weeks leading to the next stage latent syphilis develops after secondary syphilis and it is itself divided into early latent and late latent stages this stage develops two years after exposure the infected person can then after a number of years develop into the fourth and final period of the disease and that is tertiary stage the final stage can occur between three and 15 years post initial exposure and can manifest itself in one of several ways gumatis syphilis which is benign tumors that can appear on the body which can lead to physical disfigurement cardiovascular syphilis which can cause heart problems neuro syphilis which is an infection involving the central nervous system and can result in dementia mania psychosis depression and even brain damage and finally meningovascular syphilis which involves inflammation of the small and medium arteries of the central nervous system roughly 30 percent of people who've contracted syphilis reach the tertiary stage this part of the disease progression is largely not infectious to other people the things in the 1940s would change dramatically for sufferers and like nearly everything 20th century links into the Second World War in 1942 Alexandra Fleming successfully treated Harry Lambert's streptococcal meningitis originally thought to be a fatal condition with a new drug called penicillin the potential use of the fungus for medicinal purposes was known as early as the late 19th century but growing enough for the fungus to actually be useful was one of its biggest hurdles before Fleming's use of pure penicillin Australian scientist Howard Flory later Baron Flory and a team of researchers at Oxford University had treated a policeman for an infection on his face in 1940 sadly though a participant died when stocks of the fungus ran out this would lead to Flory to travel to the USA to seek out a mass production which in the early 1940s was backed by the US government and by June 1942 just enough penicillin was available to treat 10 patients with USA now involved in the Second World War the usefulness of a drug that could kill many different infections was clearly an obviously useful thing and one of these infections that were easily wiped out by the new wonder drug was the age old blight on humanity syphilis over 2.3 million doses were ordered for the D-Day landings in 1944 but how does this tie back into Tuskegee you might ask well would the country in a state of war from 1941 the US needed soldiers and as such the draft was implemented as the country's pre-war professional career military wasn't big enough to fight in the Pacific, Atlantic, Asia, Africa and Europe now many of these test subjects for the Tuskegee study by 1941 were well within the age range for military service and with the introduction of the draft in 1940 the study was at risk of losing some of its participants but again you might think what is the problem well part of enlistment is a full medical including testing for STDs as well as the other side effect of being in the army of risking getting killed in a war as such United States public health service convinced macron county or the scientific importance of the experiment and thus declined conscription of men who were enrolled in the study in total some 256 of the men had their draft blocked by the Tuskegee study not before some of them being diagnosed by the army and told to get treatment which again was duty blocked locally by the study post-war the US government now wanted to stamp out the disease with the large availability of penicillin which was a standard treatment from 1947 many of the men had now sought out treatment outside of the study however an estimated seven percent of the men received what would be considered an adequate dose to keep the deception going in 1959 certificates were issued to the participants congratulating them for 25 years of service in the Tuskegee medical research study many kept this certificate as a source of pride in taking part in a government project but even as late as 25 years post-study beginning they were kept ignorant of the true reason of their participation the 1950s rolled into the 1960s and nurse unis continued visiting the men medicating them with us tonics in 1969 a cdc panel met to discuss the continuation of the study and although one doctor pushed for the ceasing and actually treating the men the experiment was allowed to continue collecting samples from the living and autopsy in the dead but the end was on the horizon but not from the powers that be but instead by whistleblower heater buxton an epidemiologist and public health employee he was hired in 1965 to interview std sufferers and as part of his duties he discovered the Tuskegee study disgusted by this in 1966 he made an official protest to his superiors only to be instantly shut down again he opposed the study in 1968 and again he was shut down with no options left in 1972 buxton leaked information to june hella this led to publication first appearing in the washington star the public outrage forced the public health service to form an ad hoc advisory panel comprising nine members via the whom were african-american the panel focused on two main issues penicillin therapy and informed consent both of which were not present in the study and very rightly they concluded the Tuskegee syphilis experiment was ethically unjustified buster study was officially ended in 1973 however only 74 of the original participants had survived the experiment of the original 399 test subjects 28 had died of syphilis 100 died of related complications and 40 of their wives had been infected with 19 of their children born with congenital syphilis needless to say this was a disgusting result and this is only an estimate as many other infections could have been spread within the community 13 peer-reviewed publications were made during the study with nurse unis rivers co-authoring many the nurse had worked with the subjects all throughout the 40 year lifespan of the experiment leaving her to be the longest serving member of the clinicians involved the study failed not only on ethical grounds but also scientific ones participants were treated with mercury rubs injections and bismuth however minimally effective these treatments may have been this completely contradicted the purpose of the experiment to track completely untreated syphilis this led the results completely being unreliable and essentially a complete waste of time money and most importantly quality of life resulting ultimately in life itself on july 23rd 1973 fred gray a civil rights lawyer filed a $1.8 billion class action lawsuit in the u.s district court for the middle district of alabama the lawsuit alleged multiple violations of participants constitutional rights unsurprisingly this never went to trial and resulted in an out-of-court settlement for $10 million netting many of the victims from between under $20,000 and over $40,000 each free medical care for themselves and any affected family members as well as new regulations to be set out to prevent further abusive studies but nowhere near what should have been given the racial part of the study is unavoidable and the race and social economic backgrounds of the participants were preyed upon for their continuation in the experiment much of the language in correspondences between the clinicians is pretty hard to read due to the way they talk about the human beings that they were actively refusing treatment for because of the study trust in medical studies have been erased especially in the african-american community and many parts of the united states which has a knock-on effect in a critical under-representation of african-american men in studies for example in understanding the pathology of prostate cancer sickle cell anemia as well as many other diseases in an attempt to try and mend the bridge for clinical studies with different racial backgrounds president clinton in 1997 called survivors and descendants to the white house for a formal apology for the united states role in the study but the legacy casts a very long shadow over clinical trials one that will take a long time to erase even 90 years after its beginning the study leaves a bitter taste in the mouth as it resulted in unnecessary suffering due to the manipulation of its subjects and this is why it has a nine on my scale but more importantly where would you rate this study thank you for watching i'm not going to lie this one made me very sad if you want to read more about the study there is a great book called tuskegee truths rethinking the tuskegee syphilis experiment it's well worth a read and this video really is only a scratch of the surface for the dumpster fire that was this experiment this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share a light licensed ladies quick videos are produced by me john in a currently average southeast in corner of london uk help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so if you fancy checking them out and helping out the channel financially you can go there and all we have to say is thank you for watching it is the afternoon the 17th of october 1989 and thousands line the seats of the candlestick stadium in san francisco millions more have tuned in to watch the 1989 world series the streets of the bay area are noticeably quieter than the usual afternoon traffic jams as many stay in to watch the game and others stay late for after work viewings this is because two local teams are preparing to face off against one another those on the road a quicker journey home must feel like a godsend as any reduction in commuting time is always greatly appreciated the many in the oakland area navigating the cypress street viaduct is essential for those wishing to avoid the congested streets below but just as the relief of less traffic for those travelling must have been felt disaster would strike as the 1989 loma prieta earthquake began to set in the viaduct would fail under the stress of the 6.9 magnitude earthquake killing 42 and burning the image of the fallen roadway into the californian collective memory of the dangers of living near the san andreas fault line today's subject i'm going to rate here six on my disaster scale but here eight on my historical legacy scale in the late 1940s the city of oakland streets were awash with traffic especially leading to the bay bridge along cypress street a plan was conceived to alleviate the congestion issue with a new viaduct that would be built along the same alignment of cypress street the project would also have a side effect of displacing perceived undesirable slums in west oakland the plans were settled upon in 1949 but construction wouldn't start for another few years as contracts were set out to tender the first phase of the project was completed in 1955 at a cost of 1.7 million dollars it consisted of the central off-ramp of the future viaduct and was completed by frejikson and watson company the second phase would involve the construction of the viaduct proper and was designed under the association of highway state official specifications but it did not properly take into account seismic activity and the risks in natural loads on the structure this is because at the time of its design the concept of lateral loads was less understood than today and due to this the viaduct followed the convention of design at the time a new contractor was employed for the main part of the viaduct with work commencing in february 1956 under contractors grove wilson shepherd and krug the viaduct employed two levels each with four lanes the upper deck was used by southbound traffic and the lower deck was used by the northbound traffic each roadway has a width of 52 feet and is made up of a deck consisting of a seven cell box girder and is four feet six inches deep the roadways are supported via column structures called vents each one is made of concrete with a metal frame the concrete for the columns was poured in sections and were supported on one feet diameter pile foundations which were then themselves poured concrete inside a metal tube set between 15 and 50 feet into the ground each column had between nine and 35 piles and were set into the field land on top of bay clay during the construction several different bent styles were employed as the viaduct snaked its way above cypress street the main types of bench used for the construction were named b one two and three respectively b one employed two portals mounted on top of one another with sheer keys connecting the upper and lower sections the keys are used to protect the structure from lateral loads b two vents use three such keys two on the upper deck where it connects to the upper column and another between the upper and lower column on the viaduct's west side this means that the east side column was continuous from top to bottom and thus it was the only side that offered resistance to lateral forces b three only had sheer keys at the top of the upper part of the column and the bottom roadway also had a central support the remainder of the vents were specialist designs for particular sections for example exit and entrance ramps and therefore only existed in small numbers the structure had expansion joints roughly every three columns these allowed the viaduct to flex and move in relation to the loads placed over it during day-to-day operation the road was officially open to traffic on june 11th 1957 it was at the time california's first double-decker freeway and represented the controversial urban renewal projects throughout the us during the 1950s to 1970s all would seem good with the new roadway diverting traffic from the inhabited streets of oakland below however in 1971 the san Fernando earthquake would make caltrans reassess all the roadways and bridges under its control and this would lead to an upgrade project for the cypress street installation part of this would involve improving the expansion joints to limit the amount the structure can move this came in the form of seven galvanized steel cables tied to anchor points installed in three points across each section this leads us up to the 17th of october 1989 and the evening of the third game of the world series at 1704 the loma prieta earthquake struck the main epicenter was in the santa cruz mountains the shock lasted approximately 15 seconds not long you might think but different areas felt this in different ways in rocky areas the power of the earthquake was reduced by the unconsolidated soil but in the clay of oakland the vibrations were more intense and lasted longer as the ground shook the viaduct vibrated weakening the structure around the shear keys the sub part of the lower part of the bent column weakened bilateral forces began to crack and eventually crumble this forced the upper part of the bent outwards with nothing holding the upper roadway in place it came crashing down pushing the upper column out further still as this happened the cars heading north on the cypress viaduct in the collapsed areas were crushed under the upper roadway after a matter of seconds all was over 48 bent columns had failed with vast sections of the 1.5 mile viaduct collapsed with no aftershock many residents rushed to assist in finding survivors some were able to escape relatively easily but others needed emergency amputation to be cut out of the failed structure like the skyway collapse at the height regency the emergency crews bravely worked to rescue commuters from their cars and the wrecked structure the effort became immensely harder in the evening darkness many buildings in the area were damaged by the earthquake and even the san francisco oakland bridge suffered a partial collapse of its upper deck in total two-thirds of the total death toll of the earthquake was from the cypress roadway with 42 losing their lives if it wasn't for the baseball game then the casualty rate would have been much higher but interestingly the investigation into the disaster also showed that it was pure luck that more of the viaduct hadn't collapsed needless to say the root cause of the collapse was the earthquake but how did the viaduct fail so catastrophically especially in an area known for seismic activity well post event investigators undertook an examination of the structure including both failed and intact columns right from the start investigators found a startling similarity during the examination many expansion joints were seen cracked around the anchor point hinting that they had experienced extreme force pulling on the seven steel cables b1 columns were found to have had the highest failure rate followed by the b2 variant although hardly surprising as both were the most commonly employed design but investigators found that bent 96 and 97 had survived the quake the reference the main part of the collapse was between bent 63 and 112 interestingly these two were of the b3 design which employed shear keys right at the top of the columns even more interestingly between 96 and 97 was no modified expansion joint in addition to this each end of the collapse section was a bent design different to b1 and b2 the section of the viaduct that had collapsed also had piles which were the deepest set into the clay this led investigators to think that the root cause was higher levels of vibrations transmitted into the piles that were then affecting the shear keys on the b1 and b2 in the investigation report it was concluded that the cause of the collapse was in the stubs of the lower supporting columns which after being subjected to the lateral forces of the earthquake failed and thus the top half of the columns became unsecured it was also found that reinforcement of this area was inadequate compared to modern day standards and if the earthquake had lasted any longer then the remaining bents could have also failed but this brings up the question of why not incorporate more effective seismic activity protection clearly it was understood that a viaduct was vulnerable to extreme lateral forces as expansion joints were modified trans cow had thought that a double decker bridges and viaducts were stronger due to the extra support provided by the larger columns and as such had proposed upgrade works for its single-story structures first but even if the double decker structures were prioritized no effective measures could be employed on an inherently poor design ultimately the issue came down to money as there was no proper way to reinforce the existing structure effectively meaning that replacement was the only way to fix the viaducts needless to say it was not a realistic option when the current one cost 10 million dollars in the 1950s the remains of the viaduct were demolished and a new alignment was employed with a ground level design with a more conventional single-story viaduct this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently wet and windy southeast in corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as against some future videos i've also got patreon and youtube membership as well so check that out if you fancy supporting this channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching a match something so mundane and ordinary you probably have a box in your house but from a young age we are taught of the dangers of matches and the fire they can create this is understandable as a small wooden item like this can cause immense fires endangering life and limb there's something so run of the mill would create havoc in the world's oldest underground railway and burn a tragic event into the collective consciousness of the tube traveling public in london one evening in november 1987 will shock the world and kill 31 during its investigation it would ultimately lead to a new discovery in the way fires reach enclosed spaces called the trench effect in the aftermath of the disaster fire regulations across the country would change and the look of the underground would be altered for good today we're looking at the king's cross fire of 1987 and as such i'm going to rate this event here seven on the plainly difficult disaster scale and here eight on my historical legacy scale it is the 18th of november 1987 and a traveller lights a cigarette from a match as they travel on the escalators at king's cross station smoking on the underground has been illegal since 1985 but many openly flaunt the law and make use of the cover of the escalators of king's cross tube station to light a cigarette before going out into the evening air the match still lit falls down on the wooden escalator stairs and eventually works its way into the machine mechanism this seemingly innocuous act would start a raging fire but let's pause there and have a look at the escalator set up at king's cross the tube station entrance of king's cross has two sets of escalators from the ticket hall one serving the piccadilly line and another serving the victoria line the former led out to a concourse from there passengers could go down further on another set of escalators to the northern line platforms needless to say this area of the station is busy as it is an interchange between lines that serve the north south and west of london to deal with the high traffic flow three m series escalators were installed to transport passengers along the 30 degree incline over a rise of 17.2 meters the m series were a familiar sight around london underground with a total of 180 installed across the network they were capable of speeds between 30 and 35 meters per minute and consisted of wooden decking side panels cleated steps and risers the steps were metal backed plywood with maple wood cleats at each side of the step is a metal fire cleat which is designed to cover the gap between the step and the skirting board these were meant to stop cigarette butts and matches from entering the escalator mechanism but they needed regular adjustment as unsurprisingly with around 250 000 daily users of king's cross station damage was a regular occurrence through the machine's working life some of the cleats became missing leading to around a quarter not installed on the escalators the three escalators for the ticket hall to the picker d line were installed in 1939 and were meant to be maintained every six months to remove grease paper debris and other flammable materials proposals for a smoke detection system were made during the 1950s but interestingly these were not realised meaning wooden escalator plus no smoke detection means high risk of fire the escalators had two machine rooms an upper and a lower the former housed the electric motors were in reduction gears chain drives to the drive shafts for each of the escalators the electrical control gear circuit breakers connecting motors to main supply and the water fog controls the latter housed the return wheel and the sump pump for inspection there are three sets of steps below the escalators two narrow and one larger central set the middle largest set of steps had the supporting walls for escalator five and have periodic gaps through which the only and very restricted view can be seen of the underneath of escalators four and six there are two pairs of wheels for each step on the escalator each running on a track one pair of these wheels the chain wheels run outside and the other called the trailer wheels run on the inside of the track there is a large gap of around 15 centimeters between the two sets of wheels giving enough space for a large buildup of grease and other debris which due to the space once again is very difficult to remove such a buildup is pretty much the perfect supply of fuel for a fire to add to the cherry on a disastrous cake in order to fully clean the equipment it would need to be completely dismantled putting out of use a busy thoroughfare instead cleaning maintenance was undertaken on the running tracks by hand only and all without removing the steps and ever since installation no full deep clean was ever undertaken between 1956 and 1988 london underground had experienced around 400 fires on escalators and this leads us to 1987 and a tragic day in november at around 1930 on the 18th of november 1987 a member of the public noticed a small fire on the Piccadilly line to ticket hall set of escalators around the same time another passenger operated the emergency stop button and shouted at others to get off the escalator a british transport policeman checked the fire and saw flames coming from a gap between the sides of the stairs of the escalator over the length of one step whilst this happened a staff member in the booking hall and btp control were informed a few minutes later at 1934 the london fire brigade was also informed just two minutes later the btp ordered an evacuation via the victoria line escalators for now smoking escalator four was taped off but members of the public continued to step over and continue on the unmoving escalator steps btp officers reported the fire as mainly on one side and stretching about halfway across the width of the escalator over one or two steps the fire was burning cleanly with flames about handrail height by now smoke was permeating its way into the ticket office and could be seen from the outside the fire now established around halfway up escalator four was spreading albeit slowly the order to evacuate the station was given but deep below on the piccadilly and northern line platforms trains continued to stop letting off passengers by 1943 the flames were spreading and around four feet high were becoming a very big concern for underground staff just one minute later the flames were now five to six feet high four to five yards long with extra flames shooting up from both sides of the escalator a 1945 a flash over was witnessed by passengers in the ticket hall as a jet of flames shot up the escalator shaft enveloping it with intense heat and thick black smoke the flames struck the ticket hall ceiling as the jet hit the ceiling the ceiling turned into a layer of flame rapidly spreading outward during the flash over 30 were killed instantly another would die of burns a week later victoria line trains were told to enter the station slowly to pick up passengers stranded on the platforms by 1959 the first ambulance was on the scene and would be followed by in total 14 more and over 155 fighters all of whom would be treating the injured and ferrying them to hospitals all around london in total 100 people were taken to hospital with 19 severely injured it would take another two hours to contain the fire and by 1.46 in the morning the king's cross fire was finally over but it had left in its wake severe death damage and destruction the ticket hall and platforms for the metropolitan line were unaffected and reopened the next morning the victoria line escalators were only slightly damaged and resumed operation the following tuesday the ticket hall for the three deep lines the piccadilly northern victoria was reopened over four weeks later the escalators down to the piccadilly line were completely destroyed necessitating passengers to exit the station by the victoria line and mid-city platforms but with so many escalators like the ones at king's crossing use across the london underground the cause of the fire had to be investigated and prevented for the future the investigation was initiated by the police soon after the fire and the scene was preserved and with the help of the london fire brigade found that arson was not the cause this was due to no evidence of accelerants difficulty to get into the machine room large build-up of grease and debris and the remains of matches and cigarettes now matches and cigarettes you might think might actually hint towards arson but they would tip the investigation towards the actual cause you see smoking was banned on london underground in 1985 way earlier than almost every other part of society in the uk and as such people tended to flaunt this rule this meant that smoking on the tube was often seen even two years after the ban it was a common sight for people to light up the cigarettes before leaving the station leaving a potential ignition source investigators also found with the evidence of discarded matches large amount of lubricating grease fibrous material and paper all of which had made its way under the tracks of the escalator to try and find out for certain investigators used an unburnt portion of the escalator for an in-situ experiment three attempts to initiate the fire were made by dropping smoldering cigarettes through the gap at the side of the escalator but all failed however the first lighted match dropped initiated a fire under the tracks within minutes the flames spread by the time the fire was visible to the passenger side of the escalator the spread was almost uncontrollable after nine minutes the fire was put out and the cause was now understood but what made the fire flash over in such a dramatic way this would involve a computer simulation and scale model in December 1987 the AERE Harwell Laboratory was commissioned to carry out modelling of the flows and temperature distributions in the Piccadilly lion escalator shaft leading up to the flash over the computer simulator discovered something shall we say unexpected it was thought that the flash over might have been linked with the type of paint on the ceiling but strangely modelling found that once ignited the fire stayed low it travelled along the 30 degree angle running parallel to the escalator trench which concentrated the jet of flame up towards the ticket hall the health and safety executive sceptical of the computer results made a scale model of the escalators and ticket hall and lo and behold in the next experiment the fire followed the exact same characteristics of the computer simulation the now newly discovered phenomenon was called the trench effect and was the ultimate reason for the extreme flash over the public inquiry also put blame on london underground limited with the station staff not reporting the fire quick enough which allowed over 10 minutes of smouldering to develop into a full blown fire the desmond fennel report was released to the public in 1988 and multiple recommendations were made which involved the removal of any hazardous materials cctv fitted within stations installation of fire alarms and sensors and giving personal radios to staff the report also recommended improvements to some of the busiest stations on the network with better passenger flow eventually the three escalators for the piccadilly line were completely replaced being commissioned on the 27th of february 1989 but it wouldn't be until 2014 that the last wooden escalator would be decommissioned on the network at greenford you've been watching a plainly difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed plainly difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently wet and windy south eastern corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching round to charles normal speech development they may begin to stutter this is normal as they negotiate the complex journey of language most of it make it past this speech development and don't carry the stutter into adulthood however some develop a stutter that becomes permanent which can cause frustration anxiety and social isolation for the unfortunate sufferer the condition is a mystery as to why some children develop a stammer and others do not there are theories but no single cause has yet to be discovered because of this conundrum scientists have sought to discover definitely what the cause could be ultimately this could lead to cure but one such study into the condition would create a dark legacy reminiscent of Nazi experimentation similar to the Tuskegee study the experiment will be disguised as a form of treatment but unlike the Alabama syphilis research where real treatment was refused today's study actively try to cause the observed condition not only that but the unwilling participants were children from a veteran's orphanage in Iowa the experiment would not be publicized due to revelations being made in Germany during the closing months of the second world war the fears of the practitioners reputations be compared to the horrors of the concentration camps today we're looking at the monster study so called due to the outrage of the experimenters peers upon discovery of the methods employed as such I'm going to rate this subject here seven on my ethical scale welcome to the dark side of science our story starts in 1906 with the birth of a future American psychologist in Roxbury, Kansas as they got older and as their speech developed they began to stutter unknown to the young Wendell Johnson but a seed of a career into speech pathology had been planted when he reached his early 20s he enrolled at the University of Iowa to study English for his master's degree however he switched to psychology completing his studies in 1929 and achieving a PhD Johnson continued his association with the university working his way up through the academic ranks stutters would be a key influence on his academic life including his first publication because i stutter in 1930 which gave readers an insight into the life of a stammer sufferer he was fascinated with finding a cure for the condition and as such began to look into cases and treatments this would lead him to his 1932 study the influence of stuttering on the personality this study involved personal interviews and intimate observations of subjects these consisted of 80 stutterers age seven to 42 years old 61 were male and 19 were female the study found that social and mental health issues became more prevalent throughout the older groups of the participants but this only led Johnson further down the wormhole of speech defects and he next sought out to find out how a stutter is created and one such way Wendell theorized was through labelling of a subject as a stammerer the theory Wendell posited was that you could create a stutter in otherwise healthy child purely by labelling the subject as having a speech deficiency and conversely by labelling a stuttering child normally you could improve their condition Johnson's thought was that maybe stuttering begins not in the child's mouth but in the parent's ear meaning that labels attached to a child during their speech development in which some stuttering can happen creates a longer term condition by the late 1930s Johnson was well established at Iowa University and in the field of speech language pathology he set out to try and prove his theory by setting up an experiment however he wouldn't control the study directly instead delegating it to one of his graduate students a Mary Tudor in 1938 the study commenced and was set out as written by Tudor herself to answer four questions will removing the label stutterer from those who have been so labeled have any effect on their speech fluency will endorsement of the label stutterer previously applied to an individual have any effect on his speech fluency will endorsement of the label normal speaker previously applied to an individual have any effect on his speech fluency will labelling a person previously regarded as a normal speaker a stutterer have any effect on his speech fluency. On January 17th 1939 256 children from the soldiers and sailors orphanage home in Davenport Iowa were picked at random and surveyed. The orphanage was some 50 miles to the east of the university and had been used several times before for experiments and it quickly gained the permission to conduct another study there. The subjects were chosen from preschool to the ninth grade. In addition to the random subjects all of the children regarded as stutterers by the teachers and matrons in the institution were also enrolled. All of the children surveyed were put in front of five professionally trained speech pathologists. Each subject was told to speak for three minutes. Their fluency was rated by these speech judges on a five point scale using three as an average, five as fluent as one would expect to be and one being the lowest relative degree of fluency. Of the randomly selected 256 3.9 percent were judged as stutterers and 18.3 percent as having articulatory defects. The institute children from a total number of surveyed subjects were selected and split into two further groups. Ten of whom were identified as having a stutter by their teachers and 12 normal speakers with varying degrees of fluency selected at random by the five judges. Each of the 22 children underwent an IQ test and a dexterity test. Then the two groups were again divided into four groups called 1a, 1b, 2a and 2b. As a side note the reason for the dexterity test was it was a common thought at the time that stutterers were caused by cerebral imbalances which was created by left-handed children being forced to write with a right hand. 1a consisted of five children who had been labelled stutterers by members of the institution. The study researchers made an attempt to remove the label stuttering from the children in this group. This was done by telling him that they were not indeed stutterers but normal speakers who had been erroneously called stutterers. This would be reinforced by visits made by Tudor over the coming months in which she would offer speech therapy and give reaffirming advice telling them that their speech development was normal. The teachers and matrons at the orphanage were also told to uphold the label now given to the group in 1a which so far sounds like a good idea as it could increase the confidence of the children and thus possibly help improve their stutter. But the labelling of the next two groups is where the study steps over the line. 1b consists of children labelled by their teachers as stutterers but unlike the previous group this label would not be changed and they would be told that they certainly did have a stammer. They acted as the control group to compare to 1a. 2a was made up of six children, normal speakers with varying degrees of fluency. In this group the judges attached the label stuttering and they were told that the type of speech interruptions they were having indicated that they were stutterers. Again like 1a this would be reinforced by interviews and by teachers at the orphanage but these children were not originally stutterers. Finally 2b was the control group for 2a and consisted of six normal speakers matching in age, sex, intelligence and fluency with the six normal speakers in group 2a. Jude allied to the orphanage's teachers and matrons telling them that she was there to do speech therapy so they would become unwitting participants in the experiment. This was because the children had to be fully immersed into their new given labels. The teachers wholly accepted the new diagnosis without any question which continued to enforce the new labels even when Tudor was not at the orphanage. To help enforce the new labels a number of interviews will be undertaken over the space of roughly five months. For group 1a the first interview held with each of the subjects followed a standard procedure. The following reaffirming statements were told to each of the subjects in the first stutter label removed group. Do you like to speak? Do you like to read aloud? You should do more speaking and reading aloud. Many children have this same kind of trouble that you seem to be having but it really isn't a problem. It's just a certain stage where children go through. In no time you'll outgrow it and you'll be able to speak even much better than you are speaking now. Pay no attention to it and soon you'll be speaking very freely and well. Pay no attention to what others say about your speaking ability but undoubtedly they do not realise that this is only a phase in speech development that you are undergoing. In a short while you'll be able to speak well. For the second group who were labelled as stutterers and were the control group were only just asked questions about their stutter. Group 2a would be told this statement the staff has come to the conclusion that you have a great deal of trouble with your speech. The type of interruptions which you have had are very undesirable. These interruptions indicate stuttering. You have many of the symptoms of a child who is beginning to stutter. In fact you are beginning to stutter. You must try and stop yourself immediately. Use your willpower. Make up your mind that you are going to speak without a single interruption. Anytime that the subject made even a small repetition Tudor would stop them and tell them to reset and start the sentence again. Needless to say this gave much distress to the participants. They would also be told you see how and then they would be given a name of a child in the institution who stutters severely. Stutters don't you? Well he undoubtedly started this very same way. With group 2b the control for group 2a were told reaffirming statements on how well they spoke. After the first session many of the children in the labelled stutter group 2a already started to show signs of stress and anxiety. One subject upon their second session with Tudor replied to the question what are you afraid of? The young girl replied I'm afraid I might stutter. Bearing in mind that this child just a few weeks before had perfectly good language skills. The same child a few more sessions later would only say a couple of words together slowly thinking through each word whereas before they had spoken almost fluently. This was not a unique case amongst the subjects in 2a. Clarence Pfeiffer an 11 year old boy because of his deteriorated speech which during the experiment had gone from normal to jerky and laboured led to other children teasing him. All of the children in group 2a started to do worse in school as they became more anxious to talk and less confident amongst their peers. The effects of conducting the study wore into Tudor as well as each time she went to the orphanage she lost her confidence in the experiment later saying I didn't like what I was doing to those children. Group 1a received the opposite in regards to their interviews and with the coping strategies Tudor taught them a number improved their speech. For the final set of interviews and assessments Johnson accompanied Tudor to find out how the children's speech had developed or deteriorated. After the final assessment the results didn't become the golden bullet for the cause of stuttering but it did offer some interesting outcomes. Group 1a two subjects increased in speech fluency two subjects decreased in speech fluency and one subjects fluency rating did not change. Four out of the five students in this group decreased the percentage of their speech interruptions and one of the group increased the percentage of his speech interruptions. Out of group 1b the stutterers control which had their label reaffirmed three subjects increased their speech fluency as rated. Four out of the five subjects in this group decreased the percentage of their speech interruptions and one out of the group increased the percentage. The group 2a two of the subjects increased in speech fluency. Two decreased in speech fluency and two did not change in fluency as rated but what did change significantly was the personalities of the children. They had reactions shown by many adult stutterers in relation to their speech and there was a tendency for them to become less talkative. On top of this they had significantly reduced confidence in speaking often slowing down words and thinking through more carefully what they wanted to articulate. Group 2b had an increased fluency of speech as no negative label was given to them and showed improvements in confidence in speaking much like you would assume from a healthy language development. After the experiment ended on the 24th of May 1939 haunted by the deterioration of some of the subjects Tudor continued to go to the orphanage to offer speech therapy to the affected children but the damage was already done. The social and personality effects had become difficult to undo and Tudor would eventually stop voluntarily visiting. A 256 page paper would be completed by the end of the summer of 1939 but Johnson did not seek to publish the results and thus the experiment did not get peer reviewed. However those of Johnson's peers who did read the freely available paper did come to a conclusion. Instead of the prestige of a scientific review it was given the name the monster study. This was due to the shocking realities of using orphaned children to confirm a hypothesis. In the wake of the Second World War where the Axis powers were found to have conducted human experimentation Johnson's hand in the experiment was hushed up and he would not see any ramifications for his part as he would pass away in 1965 at the age of 59. But some justice would come to those participants in the study. Mary Tudor would be haunted for the rest of her life and would live to see the public become aware of the experiment. Rumours of a less than ethical experiment using children in the late 1930s would lead to an investigative reporter for the San Jose Mercury News in 2001 breaking a story. In the research for the article a number of the participants had been tracked down and it was found that they had experienced long-reaching emotional scars. Although none had developed a stutter they had developed a difficult relationship with language and thus had developed psychological issues. The 84-year-old Mary Tudor Jacobs was announced in the article who was by then a retired speech therapist residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the mid-2000s a lawsuit was brought against the state of Iowa in which Tudor was called for a deposition through which she expressed remorse for her part in the study. On the 17th of August in 2007 seven of the orphaned children were awarded a total of $1.2 million by the state of Iowa for the psychological and emotional scars caused during the University of Iowa's experiment. This seemed like little compensation as all were passed for time and age. By modern standards this experiment is pretty up there with the baby Albert study as the potential risks for long-term psychological effect is pretty high and little to no aftercare was offered. Much like other studies like the Boba Dull experiment the lack of informed consent pushes this event beyond what is ethically acceptable. The study also had shaky scientific grounds as the study group was not large enough meaning not many participants being at the same age apart from their control group mirror and getting an effective speech performance from a child can be very difficult meaning the pre and post-experimental ratings probably weren't very accurate. Now where would you rate this subject on my ethical scale? One being all good and ten being pure evil. This is a plain difficult production. All videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed. Plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently average southeastern corner of London UK. Help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as getting some future videos. I've got patreon and youtube membership as well so if you fancy checking them out and helping out the channel financially you can go there and all was left to say is thank you for watching. It is the evening rush hour on the 1st of august 2007 and traffic crawls its way along the i-35 west mississippi river bridge. The crossing has been here for over 50 years and is an essential part for many journeys around minneapolis. Bridge 9340 as it is officially known is a steel girder structure stretching for 14 spans roughly 1907 feet long. The bridge has become a bit of a bottleneck as four of its eight lanes were closed for resurfacing as such the evening rush traffic files through the limited space but little did the commuters know that they were travelling on borrowed time. The bridge failed in the blink of an eye plunging the vehicles down into the mississippi river below. Today we're covering the mississippi bridge collapse and as such i'm going to rate it here six on my disaster scale and again here's six on my historical legacy scale. In the early 1960s plans were drawn up to cross the mississippi river as part of the colossal construction of the i-35 a monumental 1569 mile north south cross country interstate highway project. Parts of what would become the i-35 had been constructed pre-1956 the date on which the interstate system was formed in the u.s. The route would eventually be completed in 1982 and it ran from minnesota in the north all the way down to texas in the south and parts of the route would have to travel through minneapolis necessitating the crossing of the mississippi river. As a side the i-35 in the region actually splits into two the i-35 west and the i-35 east. This allowed the highway to be brought into minneapolis and st paul respectively. Both branches rejoined in columbus. In 1962 plans were begun to be put on paper on the i-35 west river crossing. As part of the design process engineering firm svered up and parcel were hired on to produce a preliminary engineering report. Create final design plans checked by a registered professional engineer and check design computations. On the 12th of april 1963 two options were presented to the minnesota department of transport a four and a two trust design. Svered up and parcel recommended the latter for economic reasons which was the option selected by the department. The accompanying report from svered up and parcel stated welding is planned throughout for the makeup of girders and trust members and in this connection high yield strength still conforming to t1 will be used extensively. They also commented that the use of welding compared to riveting would save the department money but in reality the use of t1 steel had an overall cost implication. By september both minnesota department of transport and the federal highways administration began to express reservations about using such large quantities of t1 steel in the bridge. You see t1 is a very strong construction material but this comes with a drawback the way it is heat treated and as such members made of t1 are limited by the size of the heat treatment facilities where they are produced. This meant that there would be a need for more joints which incurred extra cost during construction. Not only that but a material was more expensive compared to other steel types at the time. t1 was 38 cents per pound compared to the say weaker a441 steel that was around 31 cents per pound and could be made in longer sections due to the different heat treatment processes. During the march 1964 conference minnesotan department of transport and the federal highways administration decided that sverd up and parcel eliminate t1 steel from all main trust members and use a441 and a242 steels instead. This required a redesign as the a441 and a242 steel had a capacity of 27,000 pounds per square inch versus 45,000 pounds per square inch for t1. Due to the weaker steel the design had to be replanned and required thicker steel which in turn added more dead weight to the structure. However some of the original 0.5 inch t1 steel gussets weren't thickened when the change to weaker steel was employed. The ones that were improved in the final design were up to 1 inch thick and they might be worth while remembering this for later on. The final design was settled upon by march 1965 however initial works to build the piers had already started in 1964. Let's first look at the actual design accepted. The structure used welded built up steel beams for girders and trust members with riveted and bolted connections. The bridge was 1907 feet long and carried eight lanes of traffic for northbound and for southbound. The bridge had 13 reinforced concrete piers and 14 spans numbered south to north. 11 of the 14 spans were approach spans to the deck trust portion which was only three spans long but was over a thousand feet in length. The bridge deck in the approach spans was supported by continuous welding steel plate girders or by continuous voided slab construction. The three main spans used deck trust construction consisting of two reinforced concrete deck slabs separated by about six inches with a total width of the deck slabs of about 113 feet four inches. This was enough to accommodate all eight lanes of traffic. The main trusses comprised of two parallel main sections this was made up of an upper and lower cords that extended the length of the deck trust portion of the bridge. For added strength the cords were connected by straight vertical and diagonal members. To connect these together at each junction gusset plates were installed and riveted together these were made of steel. To connect the east and west trusses bracing members were utilised. Construction was completed in 1967 and opened to traffic and for 10 years or so all seemed well until it reached its first renovation in 1977. Back in 1967 when the bridge was initially constructed it had 1.5 inches of concrete over the uncoated top reinforcing bars of the bridge deck. This was pretty standard for the time but by the 1970s a number of similar structures were experiencing rebar corrosion. In order to combat this a thicker layer of concrete was poured on top of the bridge bringing the total thickness to three inches. But this came with an issue and that was the increase in weight on the truss structure in the region of roughly three million pounds or 13.4 percent. All throughout the bridge's life the structure received an annual inspection starting in 1971. Part of these inspections were a general condition and evaluation report but after 1991 the results took a nosedive. As part of the annual survey the bridge is given a status and at the start of the 1990s it received an unsatisfactory structural deficiency rating. A status does not indicate that a bridge is unsafe but only that the structure is in need of maintenance, repair or eventual rehabilitation and as such a weight restriction is given. However in 1993 some gusset plates had experienced corrosion. In 1998 another refurbishment project was underway at the bridge. This involved improving several features including the central barrier and outside traffic railings which did not meet that at the time safety standards and like in 1977 the permanent changes increased the dead load on the bridge by about 1.13 million pounds or 6.1 percent. In the early 2000s cracking was discovered and was drilled out and reinforced and the process of six monthly inspections was enacted and this brings us to the bridge's final renovation leading to four of the eight lanes being closed on the I-35 bridge. The 2007 renovation involved removing some on a concrete and adding a two inch thick concrete overlay on the deck. Part of the construction works involves staging materials on the bridge ready for use. This increased the static load by roughly 578,000 pounds right over one of the 0.5 inch thin gusset plates. During the works throughout July the staging of materials was not raised as a concern and as such for each surface pour tons of sand, rock and water was stored right over some of the most vulnerable portions of the bridge. On the afternoon of the August the first 2007 the contractors working on the bridge were preparing to pour a 530 foot overlay in the southbound inside lanes. The pour was set to be undertaken at 7pm due to the hot summer sunshine and in lead up to this large numbers of materials was stored on the bridge and two cement tankers were fully loaded at 80,000 pounds and were parked over pier 6 and a weakened gusset plate. To add more weight to the bridge from the concrete pour the busy evening rush hour traffic crawled its way over the open lanes further concentrating the weight on the structure. The inevitable would happen at 6.05pm. The central span of the bridge suddenly gave way followed by the neck spans. The structure and deck collapsed into the river and onto the river banks below. There was a motion control security camera and this captured the dramatic and fatal moment of the structure's failure. There were 111 vehicles on the bridge when it collapsed and this included public as well as personal vehicles. Many were plunged into the river, the banks and the rail yard below the span of the bridge. The first call from 911 dispatch went out at 6.07pm and at 6.08pm Minneapolis 911 dispatch made a distress call requesting that all available emergency assistance personnel attend the scene. Many of the first people involved on the scene were locals and others stuck in traffic. Just five minutes after the collapse police were on scene and began to coordinate the rescue efforts. Within an hour of the collapse 12 public safety agencies responded with 28 watercraft to assist with the river rescue operations helping to recover many victims from the Mississippi River. Some sections of the roadway were resting on top of the river leading to the occupants of some of the vehicles being stranded necessitating 93 being rescued from various precarious situations. In the summer evening many lined the banks of the river to watch the unfolding dramatic rescue efforts launched by the first responders. By 7pm the rescue efforts started to move towards search and recovery as the submerged vehicles needed to be identified. By the next morning many were still unaccounted for and as such the river was lowered by two feet by the four dam downstream. It would take three weeks for the final body to be removed from the wreckage site. The collapse had a total of 190 casualties 34 of whom were seriously injured and 13 would be killed. On the 6th of August the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate each voted unanimously to secure $250 million in emergency funding for the state of Minnesota. With traffic now rerouted away from the bridge site many dead and millions of dollars worth of damage the NTSB set out to find the reason for such a dramatic and southern structural failure. Every piece of the structure that was recovered underwent scrutiny. Investigators found that gusset plates at the upper node 10 had fractured. The fractured gusset plates coupled with fractures in the lower cord members between L9 and L10 nodes resulted in completely separating the main trusses in this area thereby allowing the center span to drop. Analysis of the security camera footage showed that failure had begun towards the southern end of the center span centered on the gusset plates and their material thickness. And the NTSB concluded that some had inadequate capacity for the expected loads on the structure which was further compounded by the increase weight during the 1977, 1998 and 2007 refurbishments. Ultimately the NTSB report released in 2008 concluded due to a design ever by Spared Up and Parcel and Associates of the gusset plates at the U10 nodes which failed under a combination of substantial increases in the weight of the bridge which resulted from previous bridge modifications. Spared Up and Parcel received a great deal of blame along with the state transport officials for giving inadequate attention to the gusset plates during inspections. Needless to say the financial implications went beyond the recovery and cleanup for the state. On the 2nd of May 2008 a $38 million agreement to compensate victims of the bridge collapse was settled. Another $52.8 million was received by the victims from the URS Corporation and Jacobs Engineering Group, the successor of Spared Up and Parcel. They also agreed to pay the state $8.9 million in an out-of-court settlement. The bridge would be replaced and opened on the 18th of September 2008. This video is a plain-of-foot production. All videos on the channel are creative commons attribution-sharer-like licensed. Plain-of-foot videos are produced by me John in a currently sunny south-eastern corner of London UK. Help the channel grow by liking, commenting and subscribing. Check out my Twitter for all sorts of odds and sods as well as hints on future videos. I've also got Patreon and YouTube membership as well, so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching. It is the evening rush hour on the 1st of August 2007 and traffic crawls its way along the I-35 west Mississippi River Bridge. The crossing has been here for over 50 years and is an essential part for many journeys around Minneapolis. Bridge 9-3-4-0, as it is officially known, is a steel girder structure stretching for 14 spans, roughly 1907 feet long. The bridge has become a bit of a bottleneck as four of its eight lanes were closed for resurfacing. As such, the evening rush traffic files through the limited space. But little did the commuters know that they were travelling on borrowed time. The bridge failed in the blink of an eye, plunging the vehicles down into the Mississippi River below. Today we're covering the Mississippi Bridge collapse. And as such, I'm going to rate it here 6 on my disaster scale and again here 6 on my historical legacy scale. In the early 1960s plans were drawn up to cross the Mississippi River as part of the colossal construction of the I-35, a monumental 1569-mile north-south cross-country interstate highway project. Parts of what would become the I-35 had been constructed pre-1956, the date on which the interstate system was formed in the US. The route would eventually be completed in 1982 and it ran from Minnesota in the north all the way down to Texas in the south. And part of the route would have to travel through Minneapolis necessitating the crossing of the Mississippi River. As a side, the I-35 in the region actually splits into two, the I-35 West and the I-35 East. This allowed the highway to be brought into Minneapolis and St. Paul respectively. Growth branches rejoined in Columbus. In 1962, plans were begun to be put on paper on the I-35 West River crossing. As part of the design process, engineering firm Sverdup and Parcel were hired on to produce a preliminary engineering report, create final design plans, checked by a registered professional engineer and check design computations. On 12 April 1963, two options were presented to the Minnesota Department of Transport, a four and a two-trust design. Sverdup and Parcel recommended the latter for economic reasons, which was the option selected by the department. The accompanying report from Sverdup and Parcel stated, welding is planned throughout for the makeup of girders and trust members. And in this connection, high yield strength still conforming to T1 will be used extensively. They also commented that the use of welding compared to riveting would save the department money, but in reality the use of T1 steel had an overall cost implication. By September, both Minnesota Department of Transport and the Federal Highways Administration began to express reservations about using such large quantities of T1 steel in the bridge. You see, T1 is a very strong construction material, but this comes with a drawback, the way it is heat treated, and as such, members made of T1 are limited by the size of the heat treatment facilities where they are produced. This meant that there would be a need for more joints, which incurred extra cost during construction. Not only that, but the material was more expensive compared to other steel types at the time. T1 was 38 cents per pound, compared to the say weaker A441 steel that was around 31 cents per pound, and could be made in longer sections due to the different heat treatment processes. During the March 1964 conference, Minnesota Department of Transport and the Federal Highways Administration decided that Sverdup and Parcel eliminate T1 steel from all main trust members and use A441 and A242 steels instead. This required a redesign, as the A441 and A242 steel had a capacity of 27,000 pounds per square inch, versus 45,000 pounds per square inch for T1. Due to the weaker steel, the design had to be replanned, and required thicker steel, which in turn added more dead weight to the structure. However, some of the original 0.5 inch T1 steel gussets weren't thickened when the change to weaker steel was employed. The ones that were improved in the final design were up to 1 inch thick, and they might be worth while remembering this for later on. The final design was settled upon by March 1965, however, initial works to build the piers had already started in 1964. Let's first look at the actual design accepted. The structure used welded built-up steel beams for girders and trust members, with riveted and bolted connections. The bridge was 1907 feet long and carried eight lanes of traffic, four northbound and four southbound. The bridge had 13 reinforced concrete piers and 14 spans numbered south to north. 11 of the 14 spans were approach spans to the Deck Trust portion, which was only three spans long, but was over a thousand feet in length. The bridge deck in the approach spans was supported by continuous welding steel plate girders, or by continuous voided slab construction. The three main spans used Deck Trust construction consisting of two reinforced concrete deck slabs separated by about six inches, with a total width of the deck slabs of about 113 feet four inches. This was enough to accommodate all eight lanes of traffic. The main trusses comprised of two parallel main sections, this was made up of an upper and lower cords that extended the length of the Deck Trust portion of the bridge. For added strength, the cords were connected by straight, vertical and diagonal members. To connect these together at each junction, gusset plates were installed and riveted together. These were made of steel. To connect the east and west trusses, bracing members were utilised. Construction was completed in 1967 and opened to traffic, and for ten years or so, all seemed well, until it reached its first renovation in 1977. Back in 1967, when the bridge was initially constructed, it had 1.5 inches of concrete over the uncoated top reinforcing bars of the bridge deck. This was pretty standard for the time, but by the 1970s a number of similar structures were experiencing rebar corrosion. In order to combat this, a thicker layer of concrete was poured on top of the bridge, bringing the total thickness to three inches. But this came with an issue, and that was the increase in weight on the truss structure in the region of roughly £3 million or 13.4%. All throughout the bridge's life, the structure received an annual inspection, starting in 1971. Part of these inspections were a general condition and evaluation report, but after 1991 the results took a nosedive. As part of the annual survey, the bridge is given a status, and at the start of the 1990s it received an unsatisfactory structural deficiency rating. A status does not indicate that a bridge is unsafe, but only that the structure is in need of maintenance, repair or eventual rehabilitation, and as such a weight restriction is given. However, in 1993 some gusset plates had experienced corrosion. In 1998, another refurbishment project was underway at the bridge. This involved improving several features, including the central barrier and outside traffic railings, which did not meet the at the time safety standards. And like in 1977, the permanent changes increased the dead load on the bridge by about £1.13 million or 6.1%. In the early 2000s cracking was discovered and was drilled out and reinforced, and the process of six monthly inspections was enacted, and this brings us to the bridge's final renovation, leading to four of the eight lanes being closed on the I-35 bridge. The 2007 renovation involved removing some on a concrete and adding a 2-inch thick concrete overlay on the deck. Part of the construction works involves staging materials on the bridge, ready for use. This increased the static load by roughly £578,000, right over one of the 0.5-inch thin gusset plates. During the works throughout July, the staging of materials was not raised as a concern, and as such, for each surface pour, tons of sand, rock and water was stored right over some of the most vulnerable portions of the bridge. On the afternoon of August 1st 2007, the contractors working on the bridge were preparing to pour a 530-foot overlay in the southbound inside lanes. The pour was set to be undertaken at 7pm due to the hot summer sunshine, and in lead up to this, large numbers of materials were stored on the bridge, and two cement tankers were fully loaded at £80,000 and were parked over pier 6, and a weakened gusset plate. To add more weight to the bridge from the concrete pour, the busy evening rush hour traffic crawled its way over the open lanes, further concentrating the weight on the structure. The inevitable would happen at 6.05pm. The central span of the bridge suddenly gave way, followed by the next spans. The structure and deck collapsed into the river and onto the riverbanks below. There was a motion control security camera, and this captured the dramatic and fatal moment of the structure's failure. There were 111 vehicles on the bridge when it collapsed, and this included public as well as personal vehicles. Many were plunged into the river, the banks, and the rail yard below the span of the bridge. The first call from 911 dispatch went out at 6.07pm and at 6.08pm, Minneapolis 911 dispatch made a distress call, requesting that all available emergency assistance personnel attend the scene. Many of the first people involved on the scene were locals and others stuck in traffic. Just five minutes after the collapse, police were on scene and began to coordinate the rescue efforts. Within an hour of the collapse, 12 public safety agencies responded with 28 watercraft to assist with the river rescue operations, helping to recover many victims from the Mississippi River. Some sections of the roadway were resting on top of the river, leading to the occupants of some of the vehicles being stranded, necessitating 93 being rescued from various precarious situations. In the summer evening, many lined the banks of the river to watch the unfolding dramatic rescue efforts launched by the first responders. By 7pm, the rescue efforts started to move towards search and recovery as the submerged vehicles needed to be identified. By the next morning, many were still unaccounted for and as such, the river was lowered by two feet by the four dam downstream. It would take three weeks for the final body to be removed from the wreckage site. The collapse had a total of 190 casualties, 34 of whom were seriously injured and 13 would be killed. On the 6th August, the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate each voted unanimously to secure $250 million in emergency funding for the state of Minnesota. With traffic now rerouted away from the bridge site, many dead and millions of dollars worth of damage, the NTSB set out to find the reason for such a dramatic and southern structural failure. Every piece of the structure that was recovered underwent scrutiny. Investigators found that gusset plates at the upper node 10 had fractured. The fractured gusset plates coupled with fractures in the lower cord members between L9 and L10 nodes resulted in completely separating the main trusses in this area, thereby allowing the center span to drop. Analysis of the security camera footage showed that failure had begun towards the southern end of the center span, centered on the gusset plates and their material thickness. And the NTSB concluded that some had inadequate capacity for the expected loads on the structure, which was further compounded by the increase weight during the 1977, 1998 and 2007 refurbishments. Ultimately, the NTSB report released in 2008 concluded, due to a design error by spared up and parcel and associates of the gusset plates at the U10 nodes, which failed under a combination of substantial increases in the weight of the bridge, which resulted from previous bridge modifications. Spared up and parcel received a great deal of blame, along with the state transport officials for giving inadequate attention to the gusset plates during inspections. Needless to say, the financial implications went beyond the recovery and cleanup for the state. On the 2nd of May 2008, a $38 million agreement to compensate victims of the bridge collapse was settled. Another $52.8 million was received by the victims from URS Corporation and Jacobs Engineering Group, the successor of Spared Up and Parcel. They also agreed to pay the state $8.9 million in an out-of-court settlement. The bridge would be replaced and opened on the 18th of September 2008. This video is a plain default production. All videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed. Plain default videos were produced by me, John, in a currently sunny south-eastern corner of London, UK. Help the channel grow by liking, commenting and subscribing. Check out my Twitter for all sorts of odds and sods, as well as hints on future videos. I've also got Patreon and YouTube membership as well, so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Scientific theories can have an influence on society, be it what is healthy to eat, whether some surgeries help or hinder, or even whether if the earth is flat. The theory does not need to be proven right, as even an idea on shaky ground can influence other's actions. One such theory would probably have one of the largest effects on the 20th century, as it would be used as a disgusting excuse for some of the world's worst atrocities. Following the scientific theory would lead to genocide, segregation and social racial laws. That, by modern standards, leave a disgusting taste in the mouth. A convenient excuse to allow unacceptable actions by individuals and governments alike, and even in contemporary times the subject filters its way into modern day society. It has mostly been used as an open door for misuse, scientific racism and tyranny. Today we're looking at one of the most dangerous scientific ideas, especially when used to prove prejudice and be used as an excuse for callousness. The theory is of eugenics and its long reaching effects in the 19th and 20th century. As such I'm going to rate this subject here 9 on my ethical scale. Welcome to the dark side of science. Our story starts with a very famous book by a much revered scientist, The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. The work was released in 1859 and is widely regarded as the foundation of evolutionary biology. The new field of research would over the next few decades split into many different disciplines as evolution became more widely accepted. Many scientists looked to develop Darwin's ideas. One such person was one of his own cousins, Francis Galton. Galton was fascinated by his cousin's work and sought out to research variation in human development. He started to look at different aspects of human variation, covering anything from mental ability to height and from facial images to fingerprint patterns. Galton combined Darwin's theory of evolution with a concept of heredity to develop his new idea. The concept of genes came from Gregor Mendels when in 1865 the basic laws of heredity were discovered. His experiments with peas showed that each physical trait was the result of a combination of two units and could be passed from one generation to another. Galton, upon discovering the obvious variations across human population, wanted to see if defects or attributes are hereditary, passed from parent to child. For this work, a monumental amount of data was needed to be able to correlate any characteristic within individuals. This would lead to his 1869 book Hereditary Genius, an inquiry into its laws and consequences. During research for the book, Galton looked into who he described as successful men in a given profession. He surmised that their sons were more likely to achieve such eminence themselves than if they were not closely related to eminent individuals. Basically saying that successful people have successful children, from this Galton theorised that it was evidence for genetic transmission of human intelligence. During his research for the book he showed that the numbers of eminent relatives dropped off when going from first degree to the second degree relatives and from second degree to the third. The book gained praise from his peers including his cousin Darwin, but the work had limited appeal outside of the scientific community. He thought that the most desirable traits in humans were transmitted through heredity and thus thought that selective breeding could achieve improvements of the race where high achieving children be nurtured and given a good education and once old enough encouraged to marry with another high achieving partner. He also stated where the better sort of immigrants and refugees from other lands were invited and welcomed and their descendants naturalised. As for the low achieving people he stated that less desirable people could find a welcome and refuge in celibate monasteries or sisterhoods. This would become a theme for later eugenicists. Next Galton looked into finding out if his theory of nature over nurture was true and to do so he envisioned studying twins that had been separated at birth. As if raised in different families with different social and economic backgrounds would this affect the intelligence of each sibling. He used questionnaires to collect data and published it in an 1875 paper The History of Twins in which he used to test his nature over nurture hypothesis. His next book would coin the actual termogenics although this was his first use of the word as seen in hereditary genius Galton had already been developing its main tenants but had yet to name it. His book inquiries into human faculty and its development would first use the term eugenics which opened up saying this book's intention is to touch on various topics more or less connected with that of a cultivation of race or as we might call it eugenic questions and to present the results of several of my own separate investigations. He devised a plan that would give marks for a person's preferable family traits and as such that society should reward early marriage between families of high rank via provision of monetary incentives. In his book he pointed out the tendency of British high society of late marriages between eminent people which resulted in less of an average physical size of their children. Galton did not suggest any particular selection method but instead hoped that society would naturally favour breeding desirable couples with the help of financial incentives. He would flesh out his term definition in his 1908 book Memories of My Life stating that the official definition of eugenics as the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally. The field still focused on selective breeding much like with animals through the means of financial encouragement. These ideas did not particularly take off in Galton's native UK but it did in other parts of the world most notably in the United States and the early stages of the 20th century but before we look across the pond let's summarise Galton's idea. It is split into two parts positive and negative eugenics. The former being the promotion of good traits through encouragement of high achieving individuals having children and the latter being discouraging people with undesirable traits such as mental illnesses or any other handicap from having children. This second form of the theory would be the claim justification for multiple human rights issues and ultimately genocide. Now let's look at the propagation of the field in the early 20th century. We'll come back to something I mentioned earlier, Mendel's Law. By the late 1800s this theory was largely lost to obscurity however in the 1890s bottomists Hugo de Veers and Karl Karens simultaneously and apparently unaware of each other rediscovered hereditary which in turn independently verified Mendel's theory almost 40 years earlier. Leading to the rediscovery of Mendel's paper in 1900 this brings into the picture William Bateson an English biologist inspired by the works of both Darwin and Galton he set out to further the study of heredity and in 1894 in unawareness of Mendel's work released his book Materials for the Study of Variation. Bateson upon the rediscovery of Mendel's work started to popularise the concept of Mendelian inheritance even coining the term genetics in the early 1900s. Now that was a slight diversion but it does play into eugenics and its importation into the US. Charles Davenport was a prominent biologist in the late 19th century throughout his studies he gained a respect for Galton and his theories on encouraging the British elite to reproduce more. After the rediscovery and subsequent promotion of Mendelian inheritance Davenport would seek to put these new discoveries into practice. Davenport was not the only one to embrace eugenics. Stanford president David Starr Jordan originated the notion of race and blood in his 1902 racial epistle blood of a nation in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood. In 1904 Davenport became the director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. From there he began a series of investigations into human mental and personality traits that have been inherited. Six years after working at Spring Harbor Davenport started the eugenics record office a research institute that collected biological and social information about the American population serving as a centre for eugenics and human hereditary research. What was dark about the ERO was that family pedigrees were recorded and it provided training for eugenics field workers who were sent to analyse individuals in various institutions such as mental hospitals and orphanage institutions across the United States. Essentially making a list of who the ERO deemed should be allowed to have children and conversely who should not be allowed to have children. The institute had a Harry H Lochlin as its director. We will come back to him in a little bit. Eugenic legislation began in the USA with Indiana becoming the first state to enact sterilisation legalisation in 1907 followed by California and Washington in 1909. Davenport would release in 1911 one of his most famous books heredity in relation to eugenics and this writing would be a massive influence on the early 20th century eugenics movement. The book posited that many human traits were genetically inherited and that it would therefore be possible to selectively breed people for desirable traits to improve the human race. So much was the success of the book that it was used as a text for medical schools. In the early days of the American eugenics movement a number of financial backers sought to support Davenport by funding several foundations. One such was the Race Betterment Foundation created in 1914 by John Harvey Kellogg. Does that name sound familiar? Well if you've ever been down a serial aisle with a supermarket then you'll know what I mean and yes it's the same person. The foundation was created from Kellogg's fears of what he perceived as race degeneracy. Davenport also found funding from the Carnegie Institution, Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman Railroad Fortune. In 1911 the Carnegie Institution supported a preliminary report of the committee of the eugenics selection of the American Breeders Association to study and report on the best practical means for cutting off the defective germ plasm of the human population. The report had 18 points and number eight was euthanasia. Along with the money came political power and many willing ears within American high society. At around the same time Henry Herbert Goddard, a prominent American psychologist, was also working with eugenics based theories. He was one of the first proponents of the IQ test and was the first to translate intelligence tests into English. Goddard was fascinated with intelligence within the population and pushed the most US institutions to incorporate IQ testing. Throughout his career he helped develop the new topic of clinical psychology with positives such as in 1911 helping to write the first US law requiring the blind, deaf and intellectually disabled children be provided special education within the public school system. He also argued that subnormal intelligence should limit criminal responsibility of defendants but like many in this video his ideas also had a darker side. In 1910 he advocated the labelling of subjects linked to their IQ using the terms moron for those with an IQ of 51 to 70, imbecile for those with an IQ of 26 to 50 and idiot for those with an IQ of 0 to 25 for categories of increasing impairment. These labels would stay in mental health treatment for many years to come and become part of the English lexicon. If you've ever called someone a moron well this is where it came from. He went further advocating for people who fell into his moron category and below to be segregated from society as to not allow them to have children. As part of his intelligence testing program he established exams on Ellis Island to find in his word feeble minded immigrants. Interestingly these tests would only be given to third class passengers. Back in London a new eugenics organization was founded in 1912 named the Permanent International Eugenics Committee. It was a continuation of the first international eugenics congress. Interestingly the first congress was presided over Leonard Darwin Charles Darwin's son at the University of London and was a global venue for scientists, politicians and social leaders to plan and discuss the application of programs to improve human heredity in the early 20th century. In 1921 the committee arranged for a second meeting of the International Eugenics Congress to take place at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. This time Alexandra Graham Bell was the honorary president further adding to the famous names to the eugenics list. It focused on issues including human heredity, race differences, regulation of reproduction and eugenics. You see eugenics found more fertile ground in the USA. There was a fear that non anglo-saxon people were genetically inferior and thus watered down the gene pool. Obviously this had untrue but eugenics was the vehicle in which racist ideologies could travel. Harry Loughlin the director of the eugenics record office had become a pushing force in various eugenics based legislation throughout the USA. In the early 1920s Loughlin looked to further the number of states with compulsory sterilization laws as well as increased the numbers of sterilizations amongst the states that had enacted legislation. In Loughlin's mind the current laws were poorly written allowing states to employ sterilization with less vigor than he would have liked. In a way to improve this stumbling block Loughlin drafted a model eugenic sterilization law to help things along better which was published in his 1922 book Eugenical Sterilization in the United States. Although I won't read out the full model here Loughlin included the following conditions that should result in compulsory sterilization. The feeble minded the insane criminals, epileptics, alcoholics, blind persons, deaf persons, deformed persons and indigent persons. By the 1960s Loughlin's model was responsible for 64,000 individuals being forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States. The law would be used as the basis for the law of the prevention of hereditary diseased offspring the 1933 Nazi legislation that would ultimately result in 400,000 people being sterilized against their will. But Loughlin's exploits didn't just end with sterilization laws. It was also used for extensive statistical testimony to the United States Congress in support of the Johnson Reed Immigration Act of 1924. This law limited immigration to the United States from Asia and set quotas on a number of immigrants from the eastern hemisphere. Internally in the US a number of states also brought in eugenics inspired marriage laws forbidding weddings between people of different races such as Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924. After the 1921 Eugenics Congress the Permanent International Eugenics Committee was retitled in 1925 to International Federation of Eugenics Organizations bringing in future Nazi Eugen Fisher and this is where our story takes a turn into scientific racism. Davenport in 1922 attempted to prove the dangers of interracial relationships with his book Race Crossing in Jamaica. The book gained wide ridicule as the conclusions within stretched far beyond the data provided and in some cases even contradicted it. The eugenics movement in the US would peak in the 1930s with policies of both positive and negative eugenic implementations with fitter families contests awarding medals to eugenically sound families, more states implementing sterilization laws and ever-popular eugenic advertisements being commonplace. A disproportionately higher number of women of African and Native American backgrounds were forcibly sterilized under the laws written with Lachlan's model. Scarily who was seen as genetically inferior was down to the flawed and racist thinking that non-whites had a higher chance of bearing children with mental and physical defects. Women in general were targeted with more of these laws resulting in roughly 61% of all eugenic sterilizations being performed on women. So much so was the influence of the US eugenics movement that the methods for eugenics based discrimination would be imported back to Europe and a new hateful political ideology building up in Germany. Much like the rest of Europe in the early 20th century eugenics was deemed by many German scientists as a legitimate study. The eugenics programs followed very closely the lead of the US and once a Nazi's got into power in 1933 the discrimination went into overtime. German eugenics was split between two types of thinking. The more moderate Wilhelm Schaumeyer who rejected the race element in the field but his version of the study would be by the 1930s be drowned out by Alfred Pullett and his more racist view of eugenics. He was a proponent of the cruel racial hygiene movement which he published in his 1895 book Racial Hygiene Basics. In 1933 he was put on to the expert advisory committee for population and racial policy. This was tasked to advise the Nazi party on how to best implement eugenic and racial hygiene policies and this brings us back to Lachlan's model of compulsory sterilization and its implementation in the law for the prevention of hereditarily deceased offspring. This would put alleged cases of heredity illness up in front of the genetic health court. Hitler in private expressed his interest in pushing the program towards euthanasia but stopped sure to be implementing it during peacetime but as Germany started re-arming and setting its sights on war the policy would be brought in. In 1939 a trial case of euthanasia was used in the murder of five-month-old Gerhard Hirschmer who was blind as well as having physical and developmental difficulties. The murder was undertaken by Karl Bant one of Hitler's personal facisions. Three weeks after Gerhard's murder the Reich committee for the scientific registering of heredity and congenital illnesses was created to register sick or newborns identified as defective. In October 1939 Adolf Hitler signed the euthanasia note back dated to the first of September 1939 which authorised his facision, Karl Bant and Reichstella Bühler to begin the euthanasia program which post-war would be called action T4. Germany had taken negative eugenics to a whole new level seeing Darwinism as justification for the demand for beneficial genes and the eradication of the harmful ones. A number of physicians were authorised to decide which patients under their care would be deemed incurably sick and then euthanised the victim. The list of conditions acceptable for murder included but wasn't limited to schizophrenia, epilepsy, Huntington's Cora, advanced syphilis, senile dementia, paralysis and terminal neurological conditions generally. Between 1939 and the fall of the Nazi regime in 1945 an estimated 300,000 people were murdered throughout Germany occupied Poland, Austria and the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. This number included infant children, women and men. Various execution methods were experimented with from lethal injection administered by a medical practitioner to the first implementation of poisonous gas for large groups of victims. The first such instance in January 1940 was at the Brandenburg euthanasia centre. So much so were the Nazis impressed with the use of gas and extermination activities during the action T4 program but it was expanded to an industrial scale for the Holocaust. As the war in Europe ended with allied victory the realities of the eugenics based racial and social discrimination became public knowledge in the US and UK. The doctors Nuremberg trials and the euthanasia trials highlighted the terrifying outcome of eugenic ideas and thus the field fell out of favour. In the wake of the horrors of Nazi Germany formalised policies of medical ethics and the 1950s UNESCO statement on race came into force. Several eugenic societies would back their definitions from the field although forced sterilisations would continue into the 1960s with it peaking in the 1950s. Eugenicists pushed more towards federal funded birth control measures after the invention of the pill for their deemed undesirable groups such as ethnic minorities and the poor. But the field couldn't shake off its links to the Nazis and as such many societies hemorrhaged members. In 1959 a special meeting of Britain's eugenic society discussed ways to stop losses in membership including the suggestion that the society should pursue eugenic ends by less obvious means by the policy of crypto eugenics which was apparently proving successful with the US eugenic society. Many eugenicists went underground pursuing other careers with many new fields of study being influenced by eugenics. Prominent eugenicist Paul Poponol founded marriage counselling during the 1950s. He grew the subject from his eugenic interest in promoting healthy marriages between fit couples. Much of the eugenics based policies were overruled during the civil rights movement, thankfully eradicating the racist and ableist abuse imposed by the government. However as time has moved on some eugenic ideas have become possible but instead of coercion and abuse modern science has allowed isolation of certain genes. This of course is through genetic screening and although controversial it bypasses the horrors of negative eugenics. There are still many modern proponents of eugenics bank societies one such was the genius sperm bank which ran between 1980 and 1999 created by Robert Clark Graham. This bank was responsible for around 230 children conceived with sperm from high achieving donors of which some were Nobel Prize winners but more than anything else the field of eugenics produced some of the darkest outcomes of the 20th century. These ideas helped create division within societies, become the justification for genocide and led many away from compassion which should be the mark of a successful society. I wonder if Darwin could have ever envisioned the horrors that had taken inspiration from his work when he took those long strolls around the grounds of down house. I know this has been a very dark and sad as well as a long video but I've only just scratched the surface. This video is a plenty of production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed. Plenty of videos are produced by me John in a currently sunny south eastern corner of London UK. Help the channel grow by liking, commenting and subscribing. Check out my Twitter for all sorts of odds and sods as well as hints on future videos. I've also got Patreon and YouTube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. It is 1952 and the British Railway is in turmoil. One train has crashed into another in a thick October morning fog leading to a third collision. Even after over 100 years of industry development such disasters are unstoppable in poor visibility. Safety is ensured by the driver being relied upon to modify their operation of their train for the prevailing conditions. Surely this kind of tragedy can be designed out of the industry. The disaster will hasten the implementation of an automatic type of warning system that would advise the driver of the state of the signals ahead even in poor visibility and if ignored would intervene bringing the train safely to a stand. These echoes within the industry would be a mirror from the past 48 years later in the wake of the elaborate Grove disaster but instead of praising the system criticism of its shortcomings would be the focus of the industry. Today we're looking at the Harren-Wilston disaster the UK's second deadliest rail accident. As such I'm going to rate this subject here six on my disaster scale but here eight on my legacy scale as the historical significance of this event can't be underestimated as it would influence railway safety across the world. Harren-Wilston is a train station 11 miles and 30 chains from London placed in modern-day Harrow London borough but in the 1950s it has yet to become absorbed by the UK's capital and as such is firmly within Middlesex. It is a busy interchange between intercity suburban and metro services. As a side note in case you're wondering a chain is a form of length measurement and 80 of them make up a mile. The station serves the west coast mainline with its fast services to Scotland as well as the Watford DC with its trundling London transport Bakerloo line trains and their British Rail DC counterparts. Because of this during the morning peaks a large number of passengers using the interchange keeps trains and platforms busy a site that continues to this very day. Harren-Wilston in the 1950s had seven platforms one and two for the north and south DC and three and four for the north and south fast and five and six for the north and south slow. I will say though as this is a British rail station and infrastructure compass directions aren't usually used to describe the line direction instead we'll use the standard nomenclature up the London directions so that will mean south is up and down is for away from London so north is down. So just to clarify one is down DC two is up DC three is down fast four is up fast five is down slow six is up slow and seven is for the eventually abandoned Stamble branch line. The fast slow and BRDC services on the London end terminate at London Euston. London transport Bakerloo line trains leave the DC at Queens Park where they continue underground to Elephant and Castle. Train movements around the station are controlled by two signal boxes Harren-Wilston box one and box two. The latter is for the DC lines and won't really play much a part until later on. Box one controls both the fast and slow lines in and out of the station and this takes the form of semiform mechanical signals with colour light distant signals and this leads us to the part of my railway videos that I think I enjoy making more than some of you enjoy watching British Railway Signalling Principles. The method of working in use at this time was that of absolute block signalling like most railway signal concepts it uses one train in one block at one time but unlike track circuit block signalling used in most UK railway lines today it relies much more on multiple signals and signal boxes to safely signal a train along the line and to communicate with one another the location of each train. As the working principle was invented before proper train detection its safe operation depends on the strict observance of rules rather than relying on continuous train detection equipment but before we go deep into its working practices let's look at what the signals do and what they mean to the driver. This is a semaphore signal it has on the west coast mainline two positions which is shown like this as horizontal and off shown here as diagonal on is the same as a red signal and therefore is a stop indication to the driver do not go past it as there's potentially a train ahead off means the same as green or a proceed signal to give advance warning of the state of the stop signal ahead a distant signal will be provided this semaphore is similar but yellow and when on it tells a driver that the next signal could be showing danger and that they must be prepared to stop when in the off position it means that all the signals in the next block section are clear because the distant signal is only an indication of the next signal there is no requirement to stop it instead of a semaphore style distant signal a color light can be provided this can show green for the next signal is at green or off and yellow for the next signal is on or at danger all distant signals are placed at a braking distance from the next stop signal there are other signals for junctions and shunting but for the purpose of this video we won't delve into that let's look at how the basic operation of absolute block signaling works a line is split up into block sections and each section is under the control of its own signal box each signal box will have at least one distant one home and a starting signal the section of the line between the outermost home and outermost starter is called station limits and a signaler can move trains within this area without having to see if the section to the rear or advance is clear let's draw here two signal boxes and two running lines for an up and down line if a train is to travel on the up towards signal box a from signal box b the signaler in b must contact signal box a this is done via a bell code if the block for box a is clear then they will set an indication on a machine called a block instrument to tell the signal in box b that the line is clear in reality the process is much more complicated using various bell codes and indications that the line is normal that there is a train on the line or clear but for this video i'll try not to get too carried away okay so if box a's block is clear they will then accept a train from box b by indicating line clear and then box b will clear its starting signal allowing the train into the block section in our case on the up once the train has fully passed the starting signal the starter will be replaced to danger the train will approach the distance signal for box a's home signal if all the signals for this block controlled by box a are showing a proceed then the distance signal will be in its off position and in our example you can see it is once the train has passed the home signal for box a and the signaler has observed the full length of the train past the signal box and they have seen the train's tail lamp indicating that no part of the train remains in the section to the rear the signaler will then replace the home signal to danger and indicate to box b that the train is out of the section then b can accept another train and the process can carry on harron wilson is a little more complex as it has multiple home and starting signals but the signaler has total authoritative control over the trains within the furthest home signal here and the most advanced signal here this allows trains to stack up outside stations safely by allowing the train up to the home signal if there is a train on the platform the distance signals a color light style on a gantry over the fast and slow lines the signals in the area are interlocked using track circuits stopping the signaler from clearing the distance signals or any main signals if the associated circuit is occupied but with all this processes you may have noticed one thing lacking the actual means of stopping a train as this system relies on the driver being on the ball and following the rules an incident could happen not maliciously on the part of the driver but by loss of concentration or lack of root knowledge which could result in a collision especially in the case of poor visibility as the signaling indications are purely visual well there was a system in place to tell drivers of dangerous signals in poor visibility and that was detonators basically a very small explosive device attached to the running rails that would be set off if a train went over it creating a very noticeable bang obviously not strong enough to damage the railhead or the train wheel though but if the driver hears detonators go off and they haven't been told otherwise for instance in the case of assisting a train with authority already given they must immediately stop and this leads us on to a foggy morning on the 8th of October 1952 the morning of the eighth was like any other albeit with many late running trains due to the thick fog that had descended upon the area a train berthed in the up fast platform 4 at 8 17 a.m. 7 minutes late it was the 7 31 a.m. Tring to Euston local passenger train consisting of nine carriages carrying approximately 800 passengers this was hauled by LMS Fowler to 640 class steam locomotive there around 800 passengers on board more than normal but this was due to cancellations of other services the service from Tring had traveled towards Harrow on the up slow lines but had been routed onto the up fast to allow for empty stock movements on the slow line local services during the morning peak have priority over the sleeper express trains and as such it was well known by drivers that if trains are running late the fast services will mount up further delays as the local service concluded its platform duties the starter and advanced starter signals were cleared for the train to continue its journey and this was at approximately 8 18 a.m. but due to the trains still occupying the platform the up fast outer and home signals were kept at danger and due to the track circuit interlocking system they cannot be cleared by the signal until the local train is departed thus offering signal protection to the rear the 8 15 p.m. Perth to Euston night express was an 11 carriage sleeper train carrying approximately 85 passengers and was hauled by LMS coronation class locomotive called the city of Glasgow the locomotive was one of the most powerful at the time in the country and was making easy work of its mix of wooden and steel constructed coaches the Perth express arrived at crew at 402 a.m. 13 minutes late it was booked to stand for 16 minutes to load off passengers and luggage the train left crew at 4 37 a.m 32 minutes late and 19 minutes after the 10 20 p.m. express from Glasgow which had passed it while it was standing in the station the driver of the Perth train made up time gradually catching up to the ex-Glasgow train until Watford Northbox the Perth train was held due to the Glasgow train ahead negotiating the 15 mile an hour restriction through the Watford tunnel it restarted roughly at 803 a.m. seven minutes after the Glasgow train had passed the tunnel the Perth train made slow progress through the tunnel itself again due to the speed restriction meanwhile the local service on the slow passed through the tunnel and stopped at Watford at around 804 a.m. the local departed at 806 a.m. and headed towards Harrow and Wilson stopping at hatch end en route on the slow whilst this was happening Harrow box one set up the route for the local train to travel across to the up fast platform which then held the outer home and home signals at danger stop as I said earlier the local train berthed in the up fast platform at Harrow at 8 17 a.m. As the local moved on to the fast line the Perth train was trying to make up time further north also on the fast it passed hatch end at 8 17 a.m. at which time the latter had just arrived in the up fast platform at Harrow as the train approached a colour like distance for Harrow and Wilson showing caution yellow the driver did not react this meant that the fast outer home signals were at danger the train was traveling between 40 and 48 miles per hour the Perth train passed the outer home danger stop signal and then carried on past the home signal also at danger this was the signal that was protecting the local service on platform 2 it ran over and damaged the points that had been set from the movement of the local from the slow to the fast line seeing that the train was not going to stop the signal at Harrow number one placed detonators on the rail but the disaster was unavoidable a minimal emergency brake application was made on the Perth train just seconds before it went into the rear of the local train the local train was pushed forward around 20 yards with its rear three carriages being obliterated this was due to the last two being made of wood and were subsequently shattered and the next steel body carriage ends up being crumpled like a tin can the leading two vans and three coaches of the Perth train smashed up behind and above the locomotive obstructing the down fast line the 0800 Liverpool express service was delayed leaving Euston this was due to a minor vacuum leak which was quickly remedied five minutes after its book departure time the service was formed of two locomotives at LMS Jubilee class called winwood islands and an LMS princess royal class called princess Anne the two locomotives were pulling a rake of 15 carriages carrying approximately 200 passengers due to a large gap in headway in front of it the Liverpool bound train was making good time on the northbound down fast line with clear signals it was heading at line speed towards Harrow but the inner home signal on the down fast was put to danger by the signaler but there's no way for the Liverpool train to stop in time the leading locomotive plowed into the Perth locomotive at 60 miles an hour the leading seven coaches plus a kitchen car from the Liverpool train shot forward by the momentum overriding the existing wreckage and piling up above and around it several coaches hit the underside of the station footbridge tearing away a steel girder with it the Perth locomotive was completely buried under the 45-yard long wreckage some carriages were pushed across the DC line shorting out the up traction current was subsequently switched off and both harrow signal boxes sent out an obstruction message to signal boxes on the up and down DC and west coast mainlines an emergency call was sent out to local fire brigades and the first responders reached a scene at 8 22 a.m the wreckage was a mangled combination of wood metal and the dead and injured many doctors in the area upon hearing the collision attended to offer assistance along with many other locals nearby assistance was provided by doctors and a medical unit of the united states air force based five miles away at raf south rye slip including the soon to be named angel of platform six abbey sweet wine who helped to triage the wounded before they were put onto an ambulance all lines were shut including the relatively unaffected slow as the wounded were evacuated via the goods yard once the living were extracted the slow lines were reopened on the 9th of october and to assist with wreckage removal the electric lines were used to transport cranes the DC itself would in turn be returned into service on the 11th of october the wreckage of all three trains were recovered in an impressively fast time with the fast lines opening on the 12th of october the death toll from the crash would be the highest on the railway in peacetime at 112 102 of whom died on the scene with 10 later on in hospital both the fireman and the driver of the perth train were killed as well as the driver of the Liverpool trains lead locomotive but that wasn't the total human cost 340 people were reported as injured of which 183 people were given treatment for shock and minor injury at the station and 157 were taken to hospital with 88 being hospitalized after the lines were reopened swiftly and the dead were buried the cause of the disaster could be officially investigated what caused the perth train to miss the indications of danger ahead with it being held by a train at Watford north box the knowledge of delayed express trains taking a lower priority to local trains and three signals of which pointed to a train ahead sadly due to the era the trains didn't have black boxes and with both firemen and driver killed we can only speculate but this was the same brick wall presented to the accident investigators for the lieutenant colonel grs wilson ministry of transport report investigators scoured the wrecked locomotives and found the vacuum brake valve on the perth train was in emergency and combined with eyewitness testimony hinted towards the brakes being applied not long before impact around the same time the inner home signal or the local train could be visible this was further exacerbated by the fog which although at the signal box was further than the minimum distance required for normal working was actually quite patchy near the distance and outer home signals investigators tested the signaling and points equipment at harrow box number one and it was found to be in working order apart from the points that were smashed up in the accident a standard post mortem was carried out on the perth driver and nothing medical was highlighted and at his earlier medical when he passed out as driver in 1946 saw no problems with his sight and general health the report written by lieutenant colonel grs wilson pointed to blame on the driver blame on the signal was squashed when timing showed that the signal couldn't have been put back on the perth train this was because if the distant signal was showing green then the line ahead is clear hence being able to proceed at line speed which could have explained why the perth train did not slow down but this couldn't have happened in the time between the approach to the distant and the local train getting the signal on to the up fast what was strange that was from the guard's eyewitness account that the perth driver had been working cautiously all the way from crew and he adhered to the danger signal at whatford north and followed the correct speed restriction through the whatford tunnel the only suggestion was that in the fog he had relaxed his concentration and missed the distant signal whilst looking for it in the fog he was looking at the wrong height as a distant and outer home signals were at different elevations in doing so he then missed the outer home signal and thus ended up going past the point of no return clearly from the driver's record and comments about him that he was indeed a conscientious driver who didn't set out to cause the free train collision and this brings us on to the inherent issues with the british railways of the mid 20th century that is preventing an accident mechanically or electrically which would mitigate the shortcomings of human train operation the event brought around the question of automatic train protection systems which even though wasn't installed on the trains in question wasn't a completely alien concept in 1952 you see a system called automatic train control was in operation on the great western mainline as early as 1905 and this made use of a ramp that moved a spring loaded current shoe under the locomotive this was set off a warning in the driving cab that had to be cancelled otherwise the emergency brakes would be applied if the signal was clear the ramp would be de-energized and the warning would be replaced by a bell and the driver wouldn't have to acknowledge this this system would thus tell the driver via an audible warning of the state of the distant signal in response to the harrow crash this system was developed further for a nationwide rollout a non-contact method was employed based on magnetic induction and was renamed aws or automatic warning system a visual warning was also added to the system and rollouts began in 1956 we'll never know for sure if aws would have prevented the disaster but it is likely it would have alerted the perth train driver of the danger ahead this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are created common attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently cold and wet corner of southeast london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it is 6 p.m on the 8th of april 1954 champino airport in rome and south african airways flight 201 prepares for takeoff the plane the crew are operating is a de haverland comet it represents the cutting-edge in aviation and is the world's first commercial jet plane it is relatively new at only one year and seven months old the plane is under the command of captain vilhelm k mostert the destination is johannesburg south africa but air journeys of the time involve multiple stopoffs and 201 is no different originating from london the flight has one more stopoff in kyro enroute including crew the aircraft this evening has 21 lives aboard the plane is cleared for takeoff and the captain takes power at 1832 and climbs rapidly towards its cruising height of 11 000 meters during its ascent at 1907 the aircraft contacts kyro on the long range high-frequency radio to report an estimated time of arrival of 2102 this would be the last message from 201 as just five minutes later the aircraft experienced a rapid decompression the plane disintegrated killing all on board the event would be the third of such a fatal loss of a comet in just over 12 months the mystery of the dramatic and quick loss of south african airways flight 201 and the previous two accidents would highlight a fatal flaw in one of the world's most advanced and newest forms of air travel and shake the british aero industry to its core a comet would not take to the skies in commercial service for nearly another four years severely hampering the public's image of the aircraft i'm rating the de haverland comet events here eight on my disaster scale and here nine on my historical legacy scale welcome to plane difficult where we look into disasters and interesting events in history crowds gather around a new and striking aircraft at the 1949 farmer air show the plane is a departure from the usual fare of propeller driven world war two related aircraft the new creation from the haverland a company famed by its wartime creation the wooden framed mosquito marked the cutting edge of passenger transport it's easy to think but a jet plane for travel is nothing particularly impressive but for the late 1940s such an aircraft was almost unthinkable as just a few years earlier jet-powered fighter planes had only just managed to take part in world war two towards its closing stages at the time passenger flights were noisy and uncomfortable experiences due to the vibrations emitted from the piston propeller driveline little did those observing the future of travel in 1949 know that the aircraft before them would be a ticking time bomb for any who traveled aboard but our story starts a few years earlier than the optimistic launch of the comet in war-torn 1943 between 1942 and 1943 lord brabazon of tara headed a committee to investigate the future of the british empire's airliner market following world war two the committee was conducted in two parts and during the second in 1943 multiple future aircraft were specified one of which was the type four jet-powered passenger airliner the concept for a fully jet-powered airliner was personally pursued by the haverland founder jeffrey de haverland the company was awarded a development and production contract under the designation type 106 in 1946 a team was set up to design the new aircraft under the leadership of engineer ronald bishop of mosquito fame during the development phase the type 106 went through some radical designs although originally intended to take just 24 passengers changes in specifications from the uk's national carrier and potential main customer for the aircraft boac led to the design needing to accommodate 36 because of the changes a more conventional 20 degree swept wing design with unswept tail surfaces was settled upon married to an enlarged fuselage this final design was named the comet it was to be an all-metal low-wing cantilever monoplane powered by four jet engines buried within the wings the form of the aircraft was low drag and something very different from other airliners of the time the fuselage was constructed of thin aluminium which was both riveted and chemically bonded together and this helped to save weight of the aircraft overall the crew and passenger areas were pressurized this mixed with rapid temperature changes and a cruising speed of 460 miles per hour meant that the fuselage had to deal with high stress levels and because of this the aircraft needed to be extensively tested between 1947 and 1948 de haverland's stress tested at Hatfield aerodrome small components with large assemblies in a number of different test rigs decompression chambers were used to test large sections of the fuselage involving testing to component failure to get an idea of what the new plane could take testing moved to conducting structural studies with a water tank that could be configured to increase pressures gradually to enable individual failure point discovery entire sections of the fuselage were also rapidly pressurized to 2.75 pounds per square inch over pressure and depressurized through more than 16,000 cycles in order to simulate tens of thousands of operating hours the same was done to the windows and frames all of these yielded satisfactory results when you look at the comet something different but not necessarily obvious can be seen and that is the window shape when compared to a modern aircraft the DH106 had square cutouts for viewing ports the first prototypes made in flight out of Hatfield aerodrome took place on the 27th of july 1949 and lasted just over 30 minutes the first aircraft was registered as Gulf Alpha Lima Victor Gulf and was the very same aircraft used to wow the crowds at Farnborough the same year the first production aircraft was lent to BOAC in 1951 for testing and training purposes and on the 2nd of May 1952 as part of BOAC's route proving trials became the world's first paying passenger jetliner on a flight from London to Johannesburg the comet was about 50 faster than their piston powered contemporaries and the first year of service proved the aircraft to be very profitable for BOAC in total 12 the first type would be delivered to customers but although initially looking good the journey of the comet would take a rough turn on the 26th of October 1952 comet suffered its first loss of whole incident when a BOAC flight departing Rome's champignot airport failed to become airborne and ran into rough ground at the end of the runway however the next crash involving a comet would sadly be fatal on the 3rd of March 1953 a new Canadian Pacific Airlines Comet 1A failed to become airborne while attempting a night take-off at Karachi Pakistan on a delivery flight to Australia the aircraft plunged into a dry drainage canal and collided with an embankment killing all five crew and six passengers on board next came the bloodiest 12 months for the comet the first of three structural failures of the aircraft took place on the 2nd of May 1953 when BOAC flight 783 crashed just six minutes after take-off from Calcutta, India killing all 43 on board although overstressed at the fuselage was concluded by the inquiry into the accident the ultimate cause was attributed to extreme turbulence and pilot error by overcompensating the concept of metal fatigue was not on the cards and thus the comet was allowed to continue working in passenger service it would be less than a year that another total loss would occur within the comet fleet a comet registered as Gulf Alpha Lima Yankee Papa was being operated as BOAC flight 781 on a journey from Kalang Airport Singapore to London Heathrow on the start of its last leg 781 had 35 on board including its six crew the crew had just over 15,000 hours of flight time and by any standard as most were World War two veterans were highly experienced whilst the plane was in Rome it was inspected by Jerry Ball part of this pre-flight check he is to look for incidental damage not seeing anything to worry about Ball's team give the okay for the comet to resume its flight Flight 781 departed from Rome at 10.31 a.m on the 10th of January 1954 at about 10.50 the comet's captain was in contact with another BOAC flight an Argonaut the conversation was about the weather but suddenly mid-sentence captain Alan Gibson went silent and flight 781 was seen by witnesses falling into the sea needless to say investigators were now confronted with two strange occurrences involving the comet and set out to find the cause of such a dramatic loss of aircraft initial recovery efforts found 15 bodies some personal effects and some smaller wreckage pieces to try and find the cause of the crash autopsies were undertaken on the recovered bodies these gave a small glimpse into the cause of the crash many had ruptured lungs and fractured skulls and other respiratory injuries hinting at a rapid decompression event initially a bomb was thought to have been the cause but investigators couldn't conclude until the wreckage was inspected but another competing theory was that of an engine explosion in the meantime the fleet was grounded during this time all remaining comets received a modification to their engines where the turbine ring was encased with an armor plate to contain a possible disintegration of the turbine disk but a problem arose of how to recover the wreckage as it was plunged into the Mediterranean Sea it wouldn't be until August 1954 that flight 781 would be found and returned to the surface for shipping back to the UK long before the eventual recovery BOAC wanted their expensive jetliner fleet back into the air and the company pressured the British government and on the 23rd of March just 10 weeks after the crash this was achieved just a few weeks after the resumption of services on the 8th of April 1954 South African Airways Flight 201 would be lost departing Rome in almost identical circumstances with three losses of aircraft due to suspected fuselage explosive decompression the Royal aircraft establishment set about investigating the cause of the disasters after the 8th of April crash both flight 781 and 207 were investigated as part of a joint inquiry headed up by Sir Arnold Hall the report would take over a year to come out but this time would be invested in stress testing the aircraft way beyond what the designers had envisioned unlike 781 201 was deemed unrecoverable but the similarity of the accident meant that if investigators could determine the cause for one then it would likely be the cause for the other the recovery 781 was completed in August 1954 with around 70 percent of the airframe reclaimed from the seabed the wreckage was reconstructed allowing investigators to visualize potential hints for structural failure the initial thoughts of an engine explosion after the loss of 201 now seemed to be pretty unlikely as the South African Airways plane had received the armoured ring modification to its engines seeking to find out the cause a comet had to be structurally tested to find weak points in its fuselage and in order to facilitate this BOAC donated one of its comets Gulf Alpha Lima Yankee uniform for testing to failure the aircraft was placed inside a large water tank the tank was filled and water was pumped into the airplane to simulate flight conditions by pumping water into the fuselage and then pumping it out again a simulation of takeoff and landings was created with the pressurizing and depressurizing of the cabin the use of water instead of air allowed investigators to see where potential stress fractures would occur as when air is compressed it can release energy in a way similar to a bomb virtually destroying any evidence the donated plane before testing began in June 1954 had experienced roughly 1230 pressurized flights the fuselage would last another 1830 test flights in the water tank before structural failure occurred in total the plane including its previous service record had experienced approximately 3060 pressurization cycles the results of the structural failure were worrying for the entire comet fleet it was found that stress fractures originated from the front of the fuselage around the window edges but even more worrying was that due to algae growing around the stress fractures it was discovered that the fractures had been gradually growing over multiple pressure cycles this was around the same time as more pieces of 781 came in for examination they were from the area around the wingspar and consisted of two square windows which were used to house the aerials for the aircraft's automatic direction finding equipment with the evidence from the test tank on the actual wreckage investigators were able to piece together the failure point the cutouts made in the thin fuselage metal for the square windows investigators compared the results from the tank test to 781 which had over 1200 pressurization and 201 which had received 900 pressurization cycles and concluded that both aircraft would have experienced micro stress fractures during their working life as each time the cabin was pressurized the corners of the windows become fatigued as the stress was concentrated on the corners and wasn't spread evenly across the opening after hundreds and thousands of cycles the frame would start to crack and continue to weaken the whole structure of the plane the testing during the design of the comet was found to be inadequate for the actual stresses loaded on the structure the findings on both the BOAC and South African airways crashes were published on the 1st of February 1955 the comet design was subsequently revised making improvements to the already in development comet 2 and one main obvious difference could be seen the windows this and also an increase in metal thickness and increased structural support additionally larger wings and a longer fuselage were incorporated and this meant that the aircraft was now far better but the damage to the brand was already done all outstanding orders for the comet from airlines around the world were cancelled the type would remain grounded from commercial services until 1958 when the aircraft would take to the skies once again a trickle of orders would come in eventually with two more revisions being released the aircraft would be retired in 1997 far outlasting the company that had built it but its legacy would endure way beyond its working life both were de Havilland competitors Boeing and Douglas learnt from the mistakes from the comet even admitting in private that if de Havilland had not experienced the comet's pressurization problems first then it would have happened to them but ironically it would be Boeing with their much less futuristic and pod mounted engine 707 introduced in 1958 that would eventually rule the commercial skies leaving the comet as a bold but flawed footnote in aviation this is a plain default production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed plain default videos are produced by me john in a currently sunny southeast in corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos nods and sods as well as hints and future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership but check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching this video is proudly sponsored by Nord VPN more about that later on it is 1996 and a soldier presents himself to medical doctors from the georgian army he has been working at the Lilo training base around 25 kilometers east of the nation's capital tbilisi he has unexplained burns and marks on his skin odd thinks the doctor but he is sent to tbilisi for burns treatment however in 1997 over a few months more men report with similar unexplained injuries wireingly these symptoms are remarkably similar to radiation burns but surely that can't be right the mystery of the patient's illnesses would be tracked down to where they worked hinting at months of prolonged exposure to which the victims were well unaware but the more they find the bigger the mystery as to where they come from becomes apparent today we're looking at the Lilo radiological event and i'm going to rate it here free on my disaster scale and here free on my legacy scale but let's see if my ratings are correct our story like many covered starts with the collapse of the soviet union georgia is a transcontinental country located between eastern europe and western asia the country had become under the influence after the soviet unions rise to power and fell behind the iron curtain throughout most of the 20th century as such the red army had postings throughout the country one such place was in the village of Lilo this small and relatively unknown village does have one big claim to fame as it was the birthplace of berazan jugashvili who is that you may ask well you have most certainly heard of his son joseph starlin as the soviet union began to disintegrate at the end of the 1980s the georgian government sensing the change in the air declared independence on the ninth of April 1991 in 1992 the russian soldiers based in lilo handed over the site during their vacating of the area they didn't tell the georgian authorities what the base was used for instead leaving a semi disused compound the lilo military base will be repurposed for border force training in the new independent georgian army although a bit of a dump site to begin with the lilo complex seemed okay pretty much what you'd expect from an abandoned old army base there were three main areas the management and living area which included several buildings for soldiers and officers the living quarters where some of the officers lived with their families and the empty buildings used for training in total the center covered approximately 150 000 square meters as far as the new owners were aware nothing strange presented itself about the base until 1997 when a number of soldiers began to report some strange ailments the first of the soldiers to report to army doctors had experienced burns on his body similar to an extreme kitchen burn as early as June 1996 the doctor confused by these injuries and knowing where the soldiers worked lilo sent the man off to tbilisi for burn treatment but only the symptoms were looked at rather than the cause where more soldiers with similar issues came to see army doctors the unexplainable burns and contact dermatitis couldn't be written off as just one oddity strangely most of the men had a characteristic burn on their chest this pointed at the soldier's environment as all have been based in lilo upon reviewing the soldier's injuries the medical staff all pointed to one thing radiation exposure but how the military are trained for the effects of nuclear war but it didn't add up a second opinion was sought from a hematologist and a dosomatrist from the institute of biophysics in moscow in august 1997 the diagnosis of the burns was confirmed to be that of a radiation exposure and a prolonged one at that one of soldiers had been recruited as early as 1995 with many others joining in 96 could they have been exposed all of that time on the 27th of august a radiation hotspot was discovered at the lilo base near an underground shelter the survey was carried out by officers from the chemical radiological biological protection division of the georgian army this was later double checked on the 5th of september and the dose rate was measured at roughly 45 milligrams an hour the georgian authorities contacted the safety and radiation protection department of the center of applied research of the institute of physics this along with the army secured the required monitoring equipment needed to survey the hotspot a working group of physicists was established to assess and survey the radiological situation on the site on the 10th of september they started close to the underground shelter and localized the source of the radiation but due to the team having no suitable container recovery was delayed until the 13th of september the source was found inside a pocket of a winter army jacket that was used by the georgian soldiers during guard duty once extracted it was then placed inside a leg container but this wouldn't be the end of lilo's contamination but before we come on to that let's talk about this video sponsor Nord VPN as you may know I like my anonymity hence you only ever see my hands or more likely to see my dog's face saying that I think most people would prefer to look at her face and mine anyways I've been using VPNs for a number of years now and for around 18 months specifically Nord being in the UK this is really vital for my youtube channel as it allows me to access websites that are region locked because some of my research sources are only available in certain countries I've also found it very useful now that lockdown restrictions are lifted for travel as it allows me to securely use public wi-fi Nord VPN is useful to change your virtual location and find cheaper deals on flights and other travel tickets I'm not going to lie being able to watch tv shows and films available in different countries is also pretty sweet I have Nord VPN set up on my mac as well as my iphone and the app is pretty easy to use and it's compatible on windows android mac os ios iphone ipad linux chrome and firefox and you can use Nord VPN on up to six devices per account if you're interested check out Nord VPN by going to www.nordvpn.com slash plainly difficult to get a two-year plan plus one additional month with a huge discount it's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee sponsorships like this really help the channel to stay financially independent especially with some more darker content I cover let's get back to Lilo and the unfolding radiological nightmare facing Georgian authorities after the initial source was recovered more radiation above background had been discovered located 130 meters from the underground shelter near some offices and buried 30 centimeters below the surface of the soil this was also recovered but more radiation was still present this led the team to near the smoking area where another source also buried was discovered in just one day three items of sizable radioactivity were discovered and by now there's only one option available to survey the whole military base it seemed like the entire site had varying levels of contamination with one more source discovered on the 14th three more on the 19th and one more on the 20th not only that but two more sources were found inside lead containers abandoned on site as well as something that would have made David Han proud some 200 devices containing radium 226 used for gun sites once all the radiation items were collected and contained they were stored correctly on site next to the scrapyard to await proper disposal the radiological waste was still yet to be determined to the exact radionuclei involved but after gamma absorption measurements were carried out using a lead screen cesium 137 was determined to be amongst the waste on site a deadly gamma ray emitter on the 9th of October 1997 the IAEA were contacted by the Minister of Health of Georgia stating that nine servicemen of the Lilo training detachment of frontier troops had developed local radiation induced skin diseases on various parts of their bodies in turn the IAEA then informed the WHO and Georgia then requested assistance and the IAEA attended the site between the 11th and 14th of October 1997 they set out to survey the site and they concluded that no other sources were still around and the highest levels were recorded off the first discovery at 164 gigabit quills giving out 13 000 micro gray an hour one meter from the source when exposed to this for prolonged periods of time acute radiation syndrome can be experienced with that let's look at the exposed personnel and their experiences the total number of people affected by the orphan sources was actually 11 and they ranged from a dose of 1.6 to 0.1 gray the reference three gray or above could be deadly in a single dose before hospitalization all but one of the exposed persons experienced nausea loss of appetite tiredness and weakness the first patient was sent to tbilisi for care at the russian military hospital where he was diagnosed with a non-radiation condition in july 1996 almost a whole year before the discovery of radiation at Lilo after receiving a failed skin graft and with other patients presenting with similar conditions he was readmitted in october 1997 and diagnosed with a rs or acute radiation syndrome subacute phase and radiation burns of the fourth degree to both thighs treatment of the remaining overexposed persons was performed at the curie institute and the persi hospital of the armed forces both in paris and the dermatology department of the university of ulm at the armed forces hospital in olm germany this was arranged for by the who on the 22nd of october 1997 two patients were admitted to the curie institute and two to the persi hospital of the armed forces the remaining seven patients were hospitalized in the dermatology department of the university of ulm six of the lesser injured soldiers were discharged from hospital and were allowed to return home in georgia each would still have painful movement and psychological issues for years to come however five of the remaining had to undergo a nightmare number of skin grafts amputations and multiple surgeries to remove necrosis of the skin one lament lost his fingers on his right hand and all five had to undergo multiple treatments to heal reoccurrent radiation induced ulcers two had to keep on intermittent treatment all the way into the early 2000s and this was accompanied with lower t-cell counts but there's still a big question why on earth was the army base at lilo so contaminated well when the russians pulled out they didn't tell anyone completely what they had been doing there instead of it being a usual army base it was actually used to train soldiers in the event of a nuclear accident or nuclear war the sources were used for calibration of survey equipment and for training in radiological monitoring the reason for the buried sources was to train soldiers on radiation detection these sources rather than properly disposed of were just left in situ and the only possible outcome then played out on the unsuspecting georgian soldiers georgia apparently is one of the big dumping grounds of soviet era nuclear devices as multiple rtgs and scrap radioactive sources kept on being found during the 1990s and one of these i've covered in a previous video it is thought that many ex-soviet union states still have hundreds of orphaned sources waiting to be discovered by some unwitting poor soul a big thank you to nor vpn for the sponsorship if you're interested check out nor vpn by going to www.norvpn.com slash plainly difficult to get a two-year plan plus one additional month with a huge discount their support really does help out the channel this video's a plainly difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like license plainly difficult videos are produced by me in a currently dark and cold corner of southeast london uk help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of mods and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so you can check that out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it is saturday the 25th of march 1911 and workers file into the cramped ash building in downtown Manhattan for another long and poorly paid day of work the some 500 people reporting to work that day consists mainly of newly immigrated women from italian and jewish backgrounds the hours low pay and type of work rarely attract established people from within the city and because of this they are treated by their employers with suspicion as such the top three floors of the 10-story building which form the factory had their staircase doors locked this apparent normal practice in the industry helped prevent the workers from stealing some paid break time or even worse pockets and product the work is the making of shirt wastes the bodice of a dress or for a blouse or women's shirt smoking inside the factory is banned as just a small ember can result in flames amongst the cut fabric the workers that day would soon become the unwitting martyrs for workers rights as in the late afternoon the triangle factory would burst into flames the resulting inferno would burn the event into american history as one of the country's worst industrial disasters and even to today still holds new york city's worst industrial catastrophe death toll today we're looking at the triangle shirt waste disaster and i'm going to rate it here seven on my disaster scale they're here eight on my historical legacy scale let's see if you will agree with my ratings at a turn of the 20th century new york city is seeing a boom in economic and architectural advancement the city for many is their first experience of the united states each individual of the shuffling masses wants to fulfill the american dream and create a better life for themselves as back home poverty and persecution was what many could have expected but a new life in a new world offered hope to many industry owners these new foreign workers offered an opportunity cheap labor one such industry which found the cost effective manpower of immigration was the textile industry and many garment factories sprung up one such was the triangle waste company based in the ash building in manhattan new york city but before we look at the company we need to have a quick look at the building in which they operated in building work for the ash building began in 1900 it was to be a steel framed 10 story high structure the design is very much an icon of new york architecture neo renaissance and was quickly completed in 1901 the building boasted what the owners max blank and isaac harris claimed was fireproof rooms this during garment workers as fire was a big concern in the industry with fine cut fabric being like a tinderbox if exposed to too much heat the building had a number of questionable features only a single fire escape poorly lit stairwells and the lack of landings furthermore as more garment manufacturing ramped up and ventilation became more stifled temperatures ranged from boiling to freezing there was no set limits to numbers of people per room leading to cramped conditions where workers jostled for space amongst the heavy sewing machinery inadequate toilet facilities were afforded to the staff which resulted in horrendously unsanitary conditions and all this was compounded by employers looking their staff in on the shop floor during the working day the city had allowed the ash building to only have two staircases one to green street and another to washington place in exchange for building an exterior metal fire escape in order to not accrue more costs in construction the staircase was made of flimsy iron and when unmaintained quickly became weakened by the elements the working week for a triangle waste employee was a brutal 52 hour affair with an hourly rate of around four dollars in today's money this involved a six-day working week consisting of five nine-hour days followed by a seven-hour Saturday many of the 500 employees were women ranging from the ages of 14 to their 40s although the average age was closer to their mid 20s max blank and isaac harris's business model involved subcontracting work out under the one company umbrella triangle waste subcontracting was beneficial to the owners as it allowed them to pocket the profit without much of the risk you see the subcontractors did the hiring firing and paying of the company's workers which allowed the wages to be set at rock bottom levels as each contractor pocketed cash along the way up to max blank and isaac harris it seemed like change was on the horizon for the industry after a walk out in 1909 at the triangle waste factory and in 1910 the cloakmaster strike the latter enabled grievance procedure for garment workers and a number of new unions were set up to investigate and fight poor working conditions but unscrupulous employers ignored any complaints and that was the story at the ash building poor fire controls lack of regular inspections and dangerously stored flammable inventory as an effort to stop fires smoking was banned on the shop floor however some still snuck in puffs under their coats as they worked which leads us to 1911 and the event that shocked the city and the country as the saturday shift came to an end on a 25th of march a flame appeared in one of the wooden buckets used to store offcuts of fabric on the 8th floor around 1640 the flaming buckets spat out ignited debris into the room setting the hanging garments ablaze by now stopping the fire was too late the floor filled with thick smoke as panic spread amongst the workers a bookkeeper managed to telephone up to the 10th floor to warn of the unfolding catastrophe but was unable to contact the people on the 9th the first sign of disaster reared its head on the 9th floor as the flames burst into the green street stairway blocking escape you see the floor had a number of exits including two freight elevators a fire escape and stairways down to green street and washington place the door to the washington place stairway was locked by management as part of their theft prevention scheme the foreman who held the key had escaped before the fire had consumed the 9th floor the green street staircase now completely engulfed with flames left only the fire escape and elevator shaft as an option for the stranded workers lift operators joseph z2 and gasper mortarillo continued to ferry people off the 9th floor until heat buckled the rails as the panic staff gathered on the exterior fire escape under the weight and heat of the fire the poorly built structure collapsed sending 20 hurtling into the pavement below this left the stranded workers nowhere to go but to wait for rescue or the flames the fire department was quick to arrive on the scene but was now adequately prepared for a fire on a tool building the provided ladders failed to reach the 9th floor leaving little way of escape and hardly a fighting chance for extinguishing the fire with ever decreasing options some decided to jump out of the windows and down the elevator shaft rather than face the flames the ground around the ash building was littered with 62 dead bodies leaving a horrific spectacle for the bystanders on the street surrounding the inferno the fire eventually subsided but left a terrifying death toll in its wake it is estimated that 146 people perished 23 men and 123 women the bodies of the victims were taken for identification to charities here examination discovered most has succumbed to smoke inhalation burns and blunt force trauma the dead due to their varying religious and ethnic backgrounds would be interred around the city in a total of 16 cemeteries the event shook the city and caused outrage amongst the working classes as well as the upper echelons of society unsurprisingly the company owners were not amongst the dead as they had escaped onto the roof but in the wake of the tragedy they were arrested and tried for manslaughter and indicted on the 11th of April although the terrible working conditions should have been criminal the trial came down to whether the two men knew that the staircases were locked the trial would last 23 days and after a brilliant defence orchestrated by max stauer the two men were acquitted of all charges on the 27th of December the defence lawyer had planted enough doubt in the minds of the jury as to whether the owners were aware of the policy of locking the staff in it was likely that they did know but it was impossible to prove a civil suit would eventually be brought to the men which they lost and had to pay out a grand sum of $75 per life in 1914 the two men would not change their ways as in 1913 their replacement factory was found yet again to be flaunting the rules when city inspectors looked at the new premises they found it not to be fireproof without fire escape and without adequate exits the two were fine the minimum amount and yet again they continued to ignore the minimum fire regulations in august of 1913 max blank was charged with locking one of the doors of his factory during working hours he was brought to court fined a measly $20 and given an apology from the judge for the imposition and this was not unique within the industry where workers were seen as a mere cheap commodity to be exploited but a shock of the ease in which the 146 died and the apparent even easier way in which the owners shirked responsibility led to outrage across the city the outrage turned into action and workers union memberships in the industry grew rapidly the public grief stricken gathered in churches synagogues and eventually in the streets but it didn't just end with workers self-organizing the city implemented new laws initially aimed at fire related issues such as better building access and egress fire proofing requirements the availability of fire extinguishers and the installation of fire alarm systems but would eventually expand to better eating and toilet facilities and limiting the number of hours that women and children could work the triangle waste company would continue until 1918 when it would be disbanded but what of the cause of the fire well eyewitness reports pointed the location of the fire to the wooden bin the fire marshal thought the likely culprit to be a discarded cigarette or a match but another cause has to be addressed and that is of arson the industry had a worrying trend when a type of garment went out of fashion suspiciously factories tended to start to catch on fire followed by rather quickly a large insurance claim interestingly contemporary insurance journals placed wastes as losing popularity within the fashion industry but we will never know for sure as this line of inquiry was never pursued which is not surprising considering the criminal trials outcome this video is a plain default production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share a like license plain default videos are produced by me john they're currently wet and windy southeast in corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing and check out my twitter for all sorts of odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so you can check that out if you fancy supporting the channel financially i've also got a teespring store as well if you fancy wearing one of my t-shirts and all i have to say is thank you for watching a ferry 2.7 kilometers north of pyongpung doll south korea is sending out a distress call at 855 in the morning it is the morning of the 16th of april 2014 and the 6 825 ton vessel and some 476 people aboard are in a dire situation the ferry is leaning and is quickly becoming apparent that it will cap size many passengers have been told to stay in their quarters and this will prove to be a fatal order within just a few hours the ship would be completely underwater taking 304 lives with it and a recovery mission will result in eight rescue workers being added to the death toll the event was spark outrage throughout south korea not only from the disaster but from the reporting of the event in the media today we're looking at the mv seoul disaster our story starts not in south korea in the 2010s but in japan in the early 90s it is 1994 and a japanese company are taking delivery of a new ship she was built by the heiishinki shipbuilding and engineering company limited of nagasaki japan which is around here on a map she is named ferry naminé and is put into work transporting cargo and passengers the ship boasts a length of 145.61 meters and weighing in at some 6600 gross weight tons she is a reasonable investment for the operator who works under the name the a-line ferry company she has a capacity of around 850 persons including crew and around 90 cars and 60 trucks the vehicles are driven onto the ferry on one deck and above there are passenger accommodations and thus she is given a ropax designation roll on passenger carrying but as with all designs compromises have to be made and in this case is a high centre of gravity you see for the vessel to make as much money as possible you need as many vehicles and passengers to be crammed aboard to fit more vehicles on the transport decks passenger accommodation is stacked on top and for the space for cabins restaurants and bars you're ultimately limited by the length of the vessel unless you stack more and more accommodation on top of one another but the more you stack the higher the centre of gravity is and thus greater limitations on manoeuvrability as there is a greater chance of the ship toppling over this issue is not new and has always plagued ship designers and a good balance is usually met and for the ferry the fine balance was achieved for her time with the Japanese firm her operations were uneventful and offered years of travel-free sailing but by the end of her second decade of service she is getting tired and dilapidated the a-line had a replacement on order and as such they needed to offload the old vessel into the second hand market although old and not in the best day to repair she is still worth a decent amount of money and could offer many more years of service to a new owner she was sold off to a new owner Chong Hijin Marine Company in 2012 at a price tag of 11.6 billion won under her new ownership she was renamed and she underwent an extensive refurbishment program in order to squeeze more profit out of a new acquisition her refurbishment would also involve extensive modifications to allow extra capacity for passengers this added extra passenger cabins on the third fourth and fifth floors in total this loaded up an additional 239 tons of weight adding to the already high center of gravity the ship was checked over by the korean registry of shipping part of the process and as a condition of its license the authorities reduced the maximum amount of cargo that could be carried from 1450 tons down to 987 tons as well as increasing the amount of ballast needed from 1333 tons to 1703 tons this was all to try and keep the ship stable but as we'll find out later the seawall's owners didn't heed these requirements almost as soon as the ink dried on the seawall's license an additional 37 tons of weight was added this was marble to tart up the gallery on the bridge deck an issue that would be highlighted later was that even though the seawall had restrictions on her max weight they were not known by the korea shipping association which is responsible for managing ferries or the korean coast guard which were responsible for overseeing the shipping association the industry essentially relied on honesty of vessel owners and like with most things greed can get in the way of that for now refurbished heavier seawall was pressed into service on the 15th of march 2013 her working week would involve three round trips from Incheon to Jeju each one-way journey took around 13 and a half hours to complete the 264 miles the ship would have an interim inspection as per her license in February 2014 and this was passed with no issues highlighted and no real issues came about during her service completing around 241 journeys but trouble was on the horizon where greed and incompetence would bring tragedy to South Korea it is the 15th of April 2014 and the seawall is being loaded up for another trip from Incheon to Jeju at the helm of the seawall today is 40 year veteran 69 year old captain Lee Jun-sik although experienced he isn't the seawall's regular captain and has been hired in on a one-year contract many of the 33 crew that accompanied were temporary or part-time staff the seawall's journey is set to begin at 5 30 in the evening but a thick fog has descended upon the port the ship is loaded with 2142.7 tons of cargo including her total of 185 cars and trucks over twice the allowable weight to add further issue parts of the loads weren't properly secured allowing it to move around the deck the ballast tanks hadn't been readjusted from her previous journey which resulted in the vessel not being properly balanced the seawall was transporting 443 passengers not particularly different from the normal but unusually 325 of these were students on a field trip from dam 1 high school due to weather conditions the ship was told to hold tight until the fog had passed by eventually and to much relief of Lee and his crew the go ahead was given at 9 p.m and off she went into the darkness of the night the only ship to do so that evening as the night gave way to the morning of the 16th of April the vessel was approaching the main goal channel this section of water has one of the most rapid and unpredictable currents in the korean peninsula on the bridge are third mate Park Han-kyul and helmsman Chu Junkie they had started their shift at 7 30 in the morning the vessel is travelling at around 20 knots or 24 miles per hour around 50 minutes later and at around three miles from the notorious channel park orders cho to take over manual control of the steering system from the autopilot due to the issues in the channel caution is needed but it is a frequently used area and the conditions are not too bad at the time the seawall is on a course of around 137 degrees by 827 the ship is in the channel and many of the passengers are preparing for breakfast although captain lee is in his cabin resting park orders cho to turn the ship from the now 135 degrees to 140 park then checks the radar to see the new course and then orders another turn to 145 degrees at 848 in the morning the ship started to list to starboard which led the bow to turn to the right in an attempt to correct this park gave the order to turn the wheel to port the ship didn't respond now the testimony of the two on the bridge would differ as to whether the 145 degree order was given or if cho accidentally turned more to starboard it would later be found that the seawall had turned actually to a heading of 150 degrees the ship continued to list and this was added to by the unsecured cargo moving to the side closest to the water this killed the restorative force required to rewrite the ship but now greatly listing seawall took on water through her side door of the cargo loading bay and the car entrance located at her stern at 8 50 a.m she was leaning at 30 degrees to port throwing off-duty staff from their bunk beds including captain lee who immediately went to the bridge cho stopped the engines and ordered an evacuation of the engine room by now more staff were on the bridge and park was crying hysterically with no engines the seawall began to drift sideways and the listing continued over the pa system announcements to passengers were made to stay put in their cabins the first emergency calls came not from the crew but actually from one of the school children aboard as a passenger the student choy ducca dialled 119 and was put through to the geolennam do south geola province fire station where choy informed them of the seawall capsizing at 8 58 patrol vessel number 123 was dispatched by the south korean coast guard meanwhile the bridge on board the seawall sent out a distress call to the gju vts and asked them to notify the kcg as the ferry was rolling and in danger at 8 55 a.m at 9 0 7 a.m the vessel traffic service asked the seawall if it was sinking to which the strickens ship replied yes this was followed by the seawall saying our ship is listing and may fall the vts sent out a call to any other ships nearby to find out if anyone could see the seawall in which one confirmed by 9 18 the ship was now leaning 50 degrees just a few minutes later the vts ordered the crew to tell passengers to put on flotation devices all throughout this the announcement to stay put continued a couple more minutes went by before vts asked the captain to decide to evacuate or not the evacuation was ordered at 9 30 a.m but not all the passengers heard this leaving many still in their cabins waiting as previously instructed the seawall was reaching a 60 degree tilt vts ordered all nearby ships to drop lifeboats and to assist with evacuation at 9 38 a.m communications cut off between the seawall and the outside world at 9 45 a first helicopter arrived to start lifting people away from the disaster area as between 150 and 160 people had jumped into the water during the sinking many had proved ranked beer instead of assisting and helping passengers off with many still at this point still in their cabins captain lee and many of his crew abandoned the ship with cho and the first and second mates being the first people to be rescued captain lee was taken to safety at 9 46 a.m leaving behind the seawall and the many souls still aboard much of the students had continued to obey the wait and stay orders from the crew and by 10 a.m were losing much chance of survival some who had disobeyed the order had made their way out and were standing on the now nearly overturned hull rescue continued until 10 23 when the side of the seawall disappeared beneath the waves leaving only the underside visible any media aftermath of the sinking the south korean media reported that all aboard had been rescued but this was far from the truth as hundreds were still unaccounted for as the morning dragged on the first body of a female crew member was recovered not long after careers navy ship salvage unit was deployed to the scene at 14 42 150 special forces personnel from the republic of korea army special warfare command including 40 scuba divers were sent for the rescue operations the afternoon gave way to the evening and now with hundreds of personnel involved in the operation examinations of the exposed hull were ceased at 20 hundred hours due to visibility and safety concerns the following day the 17th of april undying marine industries a privately held company started to search for missing passengers in total over 500 divers were involved in the operation but again the rescue was called off at 1400 hours due to poor weather the next morning air was pumped into the ship to try and help create air pockets for any survivors some divers entered the hull but could only get as far as the cargo hold meaning no one was rescued on the third day on the fourth day the disaster took another victim a petty officer involved in the rescue they were injured and had succumbed to their wounds but this wouldn't be the last rescue work of fatality on the 21st of april a remote controlled underwater vehicle was sent to the deck of the sea wall this would be followed by another on the 24th these efforts did not yield much success and by may the writing was on the wall but those who went down with the seawall were now victims and not those to be rescued two divers would die in may and two months later on the 17th of july a firefighting helicopter returning from the rescue operations crashed killing all five aboard while the 22nd of july recovery operations had identified and removed 294 bodies believing 10 to be found among the dead was student choy duke ha the same who had called the emergency services initially the seawall would be recovered and salvaged a couple of years later where more of the victims would be found and identified the event put the country into mourning as so many of the victims were children and the root cause being greed the public were out for those responsible with south korea's worst very disaster at their feet the government had to find out how and why the event unfolded as it did and also find out how 22 of the 33 crew seemingly escaped intact including the vital members responsible for the navigation of the ship almost immediately after the sinking captain lee was arrested on suspicion of negligence of duty violation of maritime law and other infringements on the 19th of april in south korean law the captain is required to remain on board during evacuation something lee clearly did not adhere to two other crew members a helmsman and the third mate were also arrested on suspicion of negligence and manslaughter just a few days later on the 26th of april 12 more were arrested this was the entire crew responsible for navigation captain lee first mate can one sick second mate kim young hall and chief engineer park g hall were indicted on the charges of homicide through gross negligence a crime that can carry a potential death penalty the rest of the arrested were charged with lesser offenses of negligence and abandoning duty on the 8th of may the chief executive of chong he jin kim han sik was arrested and face charges of causing death by negligence all other company officials were also taken into custody yul pyong heng a former chairman of chong he jin went into hiding when his arrest warrant was issued authorities offered up a reward topping out of 500 million won you would escape his day in court when his body was discovered in a plum field approximately 300 kilometers south of sol his death although having foul play ruled out went unexplained due to the state of decay of his body upon discovery the crew charged with the failings of the seawall disaster were convicted and sentences were handed down as life sentence for the captain 10 years for chief engineer and 18 months to 12 years for the other 13 crew members in the cases against officials for overloading of cargo kim han sik chong he jin's chief executive was found guilty of negligence and received a 10 year prison term six other employees and a korean shipping association official also received prison sentences it seems that in south korea you actually go to prison if you're found to be breaking the rules which is very similar to what we saw at the sang pong department store but seemingly rare in other countries the root cause of the disaster like many on this channel is greed and negligence greed in overloading the vessel with improperly secured cargo and negligence in the seawalls navigational crew by not correctly filling the ballast tanks carrying only 580 tons of ballast water making the vessel more prone to list and capsize all of this was a deadly cocktail that was set off by undertaking the strange series of fatal turns which led to 304 deaths 250 of which were school children this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed playing difficult videos are produced by me john they're currently bright and clear corner of southeast london uk help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check that out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching this is a cold december evening in 1967 and rush hour traffic is making its way across a bridge over the ohio river the bridge has been here for 39 years and has served the area as it carries us route 35 at 1700 hours the bridge catastrophically failed sending traffic into the river below event would cast doubt on bridges in the country and show the vital need for regular inspections today we're looking at the silver bridge collapse and i'll give you my rating at the end of the video let's see what you think america in the 1920s was feeling like it was getting smaller as more families purchased cars for traveling around the country as such many different infrastructure projects are begun to make the nation's roads more convenient for people and goods to transport across the country one of these projects was approved in 1926 to join up ohio and west virginia construction would begin on a new bridge across the ohio river in may 1927 and will welcome its first vehicles just one year later the bridge would gain a nickname the gateway to the south and its shiny aluminium paint lent the point pleasant bridge its other name the silver bridge the bridge's total length was 1750 feet and this included the main span and its two approaches either end the main suspended portion of the bridge was 700 foot long with two intermediate spans one at each end at 380 feet each the bridge was designed by j e grainer company and was built by gallia county ohio river bridge company but the finish bridge was not the same as the original plans originally when the bridge was envisioned it was to have a more conventional wire cable arrangement but a cheaper i bar chain setup was employed instead the bridge used a methodology of no redundancy but high strength in his chain links instead of having multiple weaker steel links the silver bridge would have only a two link bar setup in a multi link setup there are several redundancies so if one link breaks the others will take up the stress but if one of the links fail in a two bar setup the whole section is reliant on the other link holding the entire load this is all very well as it reduces weight in comparison to a conventional i bar chain bridge and should work if the links are properly fabricated and the maximum load on the bridge is not exceeded which must have felt unlikely in the fairly clear roads of the 1920s inhabited by model t fords and small truck but this wouldn't always be the story as the usa embraced the automobile the i bars were around two inches thick and 12 inches wide these varied in length around 45 to 55 feet depending on where they were employed on the bridge to connect the bars 11 inch diameter pins connected the links for the eyes at the ends these chains would make up the upper cord to a warren type stiffening truss in the seven panels of each side span and the 12 panels of the main center span the towers employed were 313 foot tool rocker type which was designed to move with the various loads on the bridge the towers required the two link chains on both sides for their support failure in any link on either side of the towers in any of the three chain spans would result in complete failure of the entire bridge when completed the bridge had a deck consisting of wood planking covered by rock asphalt but in the 1940s was replaced by concrete filled metal grid in 1941 the privately owned silver bridge was bought by the state for 1.04 million dollars between its original opening and 1941 a number of inspections were undertaken on the structure and after state ownership the bridge was checked over in 1959 63 64 65 and 67 some repairs during the 1965 inspection were highlighted at a cost of $30 000 so these inspections were only visible and the design of the bridge having no redundancy meant that no part of the essential chain could be dismantled for inspection so basically if you couldn't see any defects in your line of sight and you couldn't repair them and at the time there wasn't really any non-destructive forms of inspection available and this leads us to December the 15th 1967 Rochelle traffic mounts up on the silver bridge on the evening of the 15th of December 1967 this is not unique as it forms part of a vital arterial route in the area few minutes before 5 p.m a groaning could be heard coming from the bridge shortly after a loud gunshot like sound shot out across the structure within seconds the entire bridge plunged into the Ohio River as described by one eyewitness as folding like a deck of cards 32 cars disappeared from the bridge and along with them 64 people many witnesses from both sides of the bridge rushed to try and assist the victims several were pulled from the horrifically cold Ohio River but many more were not and a few of the cars now floating on the river were pushed downstream by the flow of water emergency workers arrived on the scene shortly after the collapse and along with passersby continued to rescue efforts 46 of the people sent into the river would die with two never to be recovered at around 4 p.m the next day recovery barges reached the fallen bridge began to try and retrieve the wreckage of vehicles and with the assistance of divers find the bodies of the victims after as many victims were discovered as possible the next stage of recovery was the bridge itself the recovered portions of the failed bridge were placed on the left bank of the river at Henderson West Virginia about one and a half miles below the bridge site on property leased by the state road commission the removal of the wreckage was completed on the evening of the 31st of December but did not include an estimated amount of 154 tons from the Ohio span which rested on dry ground with the bridge now recovered investigators set out to find the cause of the collapse as it was seemingly a healthy structure well the results would reveal a horrifyingly simple law of just a few millimeters due to lack of an obvious sign of failure various leads were pursued and one of them was the risk of a low flying fighter plane you see multiple reports from residents nearby had claimed hearing a boom shortly before the collapse however after investigators checked nearby buildings for over pressure damage this theory was soon ruled out it was also confirmed by the government that no nearby military installations had such type of aircraft hello this is john from the future from when i originally recorded this script at this point i need to address the other theory mothman in his 1970 book operation trojan horse and in his 1975 book the mothman prophecies author john kill linked the silver bridge collapse to alleged sightings of the mothman but again like the aircraft theory this is rather unlikely and the actual cause would be in my opinion far more worrying a microscopic crack needless to say investigators focus back on the bridge itself after extensive studying of the wreckage and the i bar links a likely cause was discovered but this theory wouldn't be confirmed until a 1971 safety board determination and after extensive laboratory testing the culprit was pinpointed i bar 3 3 0 at joint c 1 3 n of the north i bar suspension chain was discovered to have a crack that looked to have progressively increased it was thought that the crack was present during manufacture albeit minute and practically undetectable to the naked eye over time this cracks are come to stress corrosion this is the formation of brittle cracks in a normally sound material through the simultaneous action of tensile stress and a corrosive environment over the near 40 year life of the bridge this crack continued until the point of no return the defect was further hindered from being discovered due to the setup of the non-redundant i bar which meant that dismantling for inspection was unfeasible at the time of the bridge's construction west virginia law prohibited the operation of any vehicle gross weight including its load more than 20 000 pounds over the years this law would change resulting in this weight almost tripling the bridge's deterioration was sped up by these increased loads the legacy of the bridge resulted in more stringent inspections and a reevaluation of bridge design and the risks of stress corrosion linden b johnson funded an investigation into the nation's bridges and it was discovered that around 1100 were designed for model t ford size traffic bridge designers would factor in future predicted loads in newer constructions and a move away from non-redundant designs hoped to improve design safety the bridge would be temporarily replaced by a ferry service but would eventually be rebuilt and named the silver memorial bridge in 1969 and now for my disaster rating i'm going to put the silver bridge here seven on my scale and eight on my legacy scale you agree let me know in the comments below this video is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed very difficult videos are produced by me john and they're currently sunny southeast in corn of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing and check out my twitter for all sorts of odds and sobs if you want to support channel financially i've got patreon and youtube membership and all that's left to say is thank you for watching throughout history stories of humans being raised by animals have fascinated mankind the feral children have found their way into human culture throughout the ages from Tarzan all the way back to Romulus and Remus suckling from the she-wolf infants seemingly offer a blank slate upon which language culture nationality and morality are inscribed throughout their development because of this child development is a miracle of learning and as such it has not only fascinated the likes of Rudyard Kipling but also that of scientists and one such scientist would devise an experiment but instead of putting a child into the wild to be raised by animals turn the tables and take one of our closest relatives of the animal kingdom and raise it as a human today we're looking at the ape and the child experiment welcome to the dark side of science our story starts on the abru colony in cuba in 1930 with the birth of a female chimpanzee on the 15th of november the baby chimp and her mother and father were donated to the yurki's national primate research center not long after her birth the research center was headed by eugenicist Robert yurkes and was used for medical research into comparative psychology the baby chimpanzee was given the name gua and in June 1931 she was forcibly removed from her mother's cage and was sent off to a new home at the age of seven and a half months for a comparative experiment her new family was scientist Luella and Winfraub Kellogg and their 10 month old son Donald but before we carry on here's some background information to the Kellogg's and why this young chimp became a resident in their house Winfraub and Luella had married in 1920 the couple had met in Indiana University while studying Winfraub was involved in a very diverse set of research subjects but throughout the 1920s focused on conditioning and learning he was fascinated with relative influence of nature and nurture on behavior and if you could isolate the nurture element what if you could raise an animal a primate for example in the exact same way as you would an infant would the chimpanzee's development change or maybe would it even begin to act like a human he'd been planning the concept of a comparative experiment during his postgraduate days at Columbia when studying for his masters in 1927 Kellogg during this time was fascinated with accounts of feral children living with wolves he believed that the infants learned to live like wolves because that was what their environment demanded of them thus if the tables were turned with a wild animal could nurture overall heredity and even humanize it the birth of Kellogg's first child offered a unique opportunity and that was to comparatively raise the child alongside a primate Kellogg devised if he could raise a chimp with Donald their son like siblings he could then see the nature differences the chimpanzee wouldn't be a pet but treated in the exact same way as the human child they would be fed by bottle bathed clothed handled and pushed around in a pram it would be induced to walk upright the same as a child and would be corrected in its mistakes like a human as well the chimpanzee would also be taught and encouraged to eat with a spoon and to play like a child with children's toys the primate would not be allowed to learn in any other way than the human way thus allowing the experiment chance to succeed in creating a human acting chimp in order to facilitate his experiment Kellogg would seek help from Yerkes he received the social science research council fellowship to work at the Yale Anthropod station in Florida in order to prepare for his experiment in 1931 Needless to say this would necessitate the Kellogg's family moving to Florida and not long after Goa the chimpanzee would join the family to start this bizarre experiment Goa and Donald were introduced at the ages of seven and a half and 10 months respectively in the summer of 1931 and in every conceivable way the two were treated by Winfraub and Luella as if they were brother and sister straight away the Kellogg started noting the physical and behavioral differences between the two infants the former was pretty easy as the two were different species of animals and with Goa having longer arms than Donald and much greater physical abilities Goa had nearly all of her teeth whereas Donald only had two to discover the differences both physiologically and psychologically of the two Kellogg thought up some strange and somewhat cruel experiment Kellogg took great interest in the differences in how the two's bone structures developed to explore this he tested the differences by sound by hitting both Donald and Goa's head with a spoon to try and hear a difference in the hardening of the skull he found that Donald's head radiated a dull thud whereas Goa's made a harsher sound hinting at the chimpanzee's bones being more hardened bizarrely Kellogg had previously x-rayed Goa and already knew her bone density was equal to that of a two-year-old human to ascertain the differences between the two's reaction times the Kellogg's devised an interesting experiment both Donald and the chimpanzee were placed in front of a motion picture camera this was to allow reviewing of the reactions later on after the two had settled and the camera was recording a revolver was fired in the air behind them both were startled and it was discovered that Goa reacted more quickly than her human sibling the experiment was repeated a few months later with five other children ranging in age between 17 months and eight and a half years the basic day for the two test subjects consisted of a 7 a.m wake up with 7 30 a.m breakfast then until 8 30 a.m sit with the adults at the breakfast table from 9 in the morning until lunch the time would be filled out with controlled observations car rides outdoor and indoor play photographing and various experiments after lunch at 12 15 nap time followed by a bath time and between 15 30 and 1600 more experiments observations playtime and tests to end up the day at dinner at around 1800 hours followed by bed at 18 30 the days were not always run strictly to this plan as the Kellogg's had various different engagements during the experiments initial two weeks Gua's reflex behavior was recorded an interesting behavior was noted the chimpanzee had issues in her balance after standing upright there were two conclusions that the Kellogg's family made about this the first being due to her still not being fully developed but the other conclusion was that she was becoming disorientated due to having to look up at her human observers more than if she was in the wild probably a bit of both as this new environment would definitely have been confusing to her Gua adapted very quickly to her new sleeping arrangements a cot was constructed and was designed to be usable for an infant child with mattress clean linens and even night clothing when this was temporarily removed her reaction was predictable she began to cry out in despair Gua's reactions when sleepy were very characteristic of a human child when picked up she would try and cuddle up and when sat up her head would nod down only to come back up startle by the motion but the first two months Gua napped more than Donald mainly after meals but as she got older she slept less in the day eventually getting to the one nap as outlined in the day schedule Donald on the other hand was sleeping two or more hours in the afternoon nap time Gua's slept during the night without issues throughout the experiment something that from experience isn't something that a human child often does but as the experiment progressed she started to make a nest with her bedding a thing that chimpanzees do in the wild with twigs in trees she hadn't seen anyone else do this and thus showed the behavior was possibly hereditary or could be perceived as an infant playing in their bed in the night throughout the experiment both subjects were observed during their physical development Donald had a walking age stroller this was because human infants don't develop walking until at least 10 months Gua on the other hand could walk by the time she was with the Kellogg's she also had a stroller but she used it as a toy instead of a walking aid interestingly Gua was beginning to mimic the way humans walk adopting a more upright posture the chimp was showing much quicker level of development as Donald for the age the experiment continued to observe the differences between the two in the way they interacted with their environment during the toddler months of childhood the beginnings of reading and language start to develop part of this is the ability to point at things that interest the infant and Gua exhibited these behaviors as well the two infants almost right from the start of the experiment seemed to enjoy each other's company with Donald showing great delight in interacting with his new sister Gua would hold out hands to Donald stroking her hair as the experiment progressed it seemed like the two especially Gua had become attached to each other always making a beeline for him when he entered the room and noticeably got more excited when playing with Donald if Gua was admonished for doing something wrong Donald would go up to her and hug the chimpanzee as Donald's speech developed he was able to even say his sister's name when another older child called Martha was introduced Gua behaved similarly by hugging the three and a half year old smelling her hair and holding her hand interestingly Gua was much more reserved and timid around human adults which to me sounds very similar to how a human child may act loud and excited with their peers but quiet and shy around adults Gua's actions around new adults was even more shy and even at some times seemed fearful the pair's interactions with other animals was characteristically childlike as well with Gua stroking the next door neighbor's cat and having seemingly no fear in approaching adult dogs much like a human child but this would change at the age of 11 months when a puppy barked at her after she had mistakenly taken the dog running as a game of tag from then on she became scared of almost all other animals including chickens cats and even birds in the trees Gua's emotional responses to being admonished or punished for any number of minor behavioral infractions elicited an interesting response she would noticeably become distressed and then approached the experimenters for affection or a kiss as a form of forgiveness for committing the faux pas this is the similar type of behavior seen in children that comes on later in social development at around 18 to 24 months this showed that Gua was developing faster emotionally than Donald and that she was learning very human-like behaviors she had mastered opening doors especially a swinging door a month before Donald at the age of one year Gua had figured out that light switches controlled the electric light bulbs as such when an adult put their hand up to the switch Gua would look at the light in anticipation of its illumination the experimenters attempted to teach both how to play patter cake Donald picked it up rather quickly and with little prompts happily followed the game Gua on the other hand never learned how to play properly even though she was given daily opportunities to practice the two subjects also underwent potty training Gua had more accidents than Donald and was seemingly embarrassed when she made them eventually she would indicate that she wanted to go to the toilet by oohing and holding her genital area this would develop to her going to an experimenter and indicating by tugging on the adult's trousers throughout the experiment both for the subjects were given the opportunity to use a spoon like many other observations the Kellogg's saw that Gua was way ahead in proficiency than Donald by 13 months she was using the spoon for self-feeding with little mess in contrast to Donald who had mastered the skill by around 18 months another test was devised where reward was placed behind a wire mesh attached to a door frame the only way to get to the reward is via the use of a hoe to drag it under a small gap in the mesh although both figured out the solution at around 100 attempts Gua proved to be more consistent in her success rate the Kellogg's wanted to probe into a vital part of the human experience next and that was something that makes us unique language but this part is where Gua would fall behind and Donald would develop some strange new behaviors Gua's language development differed to that of a human child in the sense that she would communicate her wants physically like pointing to her mouth for food as we saw with her potty training the need to empty her bowels was indicated non-verbally this was the same for when she wanted to play by grabbing one or both hands of her intended playmate she would also pull experimenter's hands to items she needed help with the vocal communication Gua achieved was limited to ooze ours and grunts this is where Donald exceeded as almost from the start of the experiment he was attempting to vocalize his emotions and needs this would develop into vocalizing actual words a feat Gua failed to reach but something rather worrying began to become apparent in Donald in that his speech became stunted this is likely due to his lack of socializing outside the experimental setting and as such failed to pick up words discovered by interaction of one's peers he was only in possession of around six words but he did show signs of vocal imitation although not from his human cares but instead from his chimpanzee sister the Kellogg's noticed Donald barking like a dog to communicate certain emotions the child will also screech scream and even ooh like an ape Gua although not learning to speak words herself did learn the words spoken to her initially she would react just to the tone of the way the words are spoken but she began to show signs of being able to differentiate between different commands initially she would react to no and kiss but her word reaction vocabulary eventually expanded to around 95 words including the ability to point out parts of her anatomy when asked Donald from the started experiment was slow to learn commands but this is probably attributable to his lower mobility compared to Gua once he was more proficient with climbing and walking he would overtake his sister Donald's apparent social and vocal issues caused concern by the ninth month of the experiment in Luella and as such the experiment was abruptly brought to an end Gua was evicted from a human household and sent back to Robert Yerkes on the 28th of March 1932 from there she would be the subject of a number of other experiments conducted by Robert's wife Ada but what of all the data collected from the study and what was the result of the nine month ape and baby experiment well the Kellogg's now back to being a conventional family moved back to Indiana and the couple set about writing a book and publishing their study Winfraub's results showed that he was disappointed that Gua had hit a wall of development he had generally hoped that immersing the ape into the human household would have created the reverse of a wild raised by wolves child it's undeniable that Gua did develop many human-like behaviors such as walking more upright being relatively potty trained understanding a multitude of commands and even showing off her problem-solving skills ultimately Gua was limited by the fact that she was a chimpanzee and that her heredity limited her ultimate ability of language essentially nurture can only take you so far until nature catches up initially the experiment went public when the article was published in the american psychological journal it was written in such a way as to appeal to as many people as possible this unsurprisingly generated a lot of interest in the press at the time and by the time a full book was released in 1933 the study and its ease of accessibility resulted in polarizing opinions many critics pointed out that Gua being pulled from her biological mother at such a young age and the suddenness of the ending of her adoption this no doubt must have been very traumatic for the young chimp to be ripped twice from her perceived home but the biggest criticism came from the use of Donald as a test subject understandable after all it was on Luella's insistence that the study be terminated the extended period of nine months in which Donald was used in the experiment resulted in his development being stunted and needless to say this brings up questions of the study being ethical especially when feasibly a child wasn't even needed for Gua to be raised with humans a number of the tests throughout the study were questionable where the child was frustrated in the broom experiment hit on the head and started with the gun but how did the subjects fare later on in life well unfortunately both participants lives would end in tragedy Gua would die of pneumonia on December 21st 1933 less than a year after she left the Kellogg's family and just after turning three years old Donald would live to the age of 43 when in 1973 he took his own life in all respects he'd grown up healthy studying medicine and specializing in psychiatry whether his upbringing had contributed to his demise we will never know Luella and Winfraub would pass away in 1972 now where would you rate this experiment on my ethical scale I'm going to give it about a five or a six this video is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently bright and sunny corner of southeast london uk I have twitter if you fancy checking me out to see hints and things on future videos I've also got patreon and youtube membership as well so check that out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching three men enter a room to clear an obstruction in an industrial facility it is the fifth of february 1989 not long after working in the area they begin to experience headaches and feel ill the men are working in an industrial irradiation facility just outside san salvador and they are experiencing the first symptoms of acute radiation sickness within six months the three men would undergo multiple surgeries which would result in amputations skin grafts and for one of the unlucky trio death the event may sound familiar you might think but this accident was the ignored warning which led to the serek radiation event just one year later the san salvador radiation event irradiation facilities are an important tool for the sterilization of a multitude of different products including the food and medical industries and today's story we'll be talking about the latter you see most countries have some sort of radiation facilities be it commercially or government owned and el salvador was no different one such facility was built in 1974 being commissioned in 1975 based near the country's capital city san salvador it was commissioned and owned by a mexican salvadorian costarican consortium the facility housed a model js 6300 gamma sterilizer designed built and supplied by atomic energy of canada limited and those of you who have been taking notes during my videos will know this company has come up a few times before as part of the installation process three staff were trained by the canadian company in how to properly operate the machine this model of a radiation device makes use of a rack for multiple pencils of which contain radioactive source elements in this case the gamma ray emitting cobalt 60 at the time of installation the total reactivity was four petrobecoils but this reduces over time necessitating semi regular replacement to ensure reasonable irradiation times this is held in place by a hoist and guide cables when not being used for irradiation duties the rack is lowered into a water pool for shielding by pneumatic hoist working the hoist cable the whole irradiation machine is housed inside a concrete shielded room accessible via an area called the maze protected by an interlocked door the radiation room door can be opened from the inside so that personnel cannot be locked in an emergency poolway cable was also provided mounted along the walls of the radiation room and the entrance maze this actuates a stop switch that lowers the source or stops the startup operation materials to be irradiated are usually placed in cardboard or fiberglass boxes these containers are then themselves placed on a metal tray pneumatic pistons push the boxes along a set path over two levels each time exposing a side of the box to the source the path the boxes take results in 29 irradiation positions and the time in each position was around 2020 minutes during an irradiation cycle access to the room has to be restricted because of the high risk of exposure to the cobalt 60 the irradiation room had a number of controls to prevent a access to the room when the source is out of the pool and b the source being raised when someone is in the room this was designed into the system by a ec limited and a vital part of this was the machine key this was used to open the irradiation room door operate control panel and actuate a time delay switch inside the room and only one key was used as an extra method to prevent activation of the irradiator when the room was accessed to enter the room the operator must go to a monitor test panel next door there they would have to initiate a monitor test by pushing the appropriate button this will take a reading of the radiation levels in the room by using a sensor probe installed near the irradiation machine but once the button is released the probe must again be able to read background radiation levels before releasing the interlock allowing the door to be opened on top of the hardware and for safety proper administrative controls are also meant to be used this also ties back to the important machine key and on this key a radiation monitor is meant to be attached this is meant to make sure that upon entry to the room at least one method of dose rate monitoring is provided this is meant to be calibrated before any entry on a known low radioactive source within the door frame of the entry door now that's the basics of how the operation was meant to happen let's return to reality starting in 1975 as multiple levels of safety controls would break down and be forgotten over the following years not long after operation had commenced the facility would experience its first incident in 1975 facility experienced a product jam and product boxes obstructing the movement of the source rack this caused the rack to deform allowing the pencils to fall out but the staff on site who had been trained by atomic energy of canada limited dealt with the incident with no major issues in response the supplier investigated the issue with the machine and repaired it accordingly the facility would change hands later on in 1975 when it was sold to a consortium in the united states of america and during the change of ownership the originally trained staff would be let go this resulted in new staff being trained verbally and not from the original equipment supplier the facility like many other establishments in the country at the time would fall victim to the el Salvador civil war beginning on the 15th of october 1979 the conflict would run for over 12 years and as such the facility fell into disrepair as economic hardships gripped the country because it was feared the facility may become a target in the civil war nothing on site was written down and even the location of the plant was not made public knowledge the owners were fearful of allowing officials from the government on site and any new employees were told as little as possible including the dangers of the materials used by the machinery the source needed to be replenished by the beginning of the 1980s this was due to the natural decay of the cobalt 60 but costs meant it was left as it was eventually in 1981 the owner of the plant reached an agreement with the supplier for replenishment of the source a representative traveled to San Salvador only to turn back at the airport due to the escalating civil war another side effect of the civil war was a lack of safety inspections from the supplier all of this led to a gradual misunderstanding of the equipment safety features as staff trained new staff verbally resulting in variations way beyond what the original supplier would have given another component was that governmental radiological administration was also lacking understandable due to the political issues at the time but this would result in regulatory legislation being non-existent the situation wouldn't get much better throughout the 1980s with the facility making do amending the machinery including modifications that the manufacturer would never have approved of the lack of maintenance resulted in the vital monitor probe failing in order to keep using the radiator it was removed but you might wonder how the operators would gain access to the radiation room when a neat little trick was discovered access could be gained to the room by depressing the monitor switch and repeatedly cycling the buttons on the panel of the radiation monitor this method became the usual procedure gaining access to the radiation room even when the rack was in a deadly up position regardless of the now non-working interlock the access door had become badly fitted due to lack of maintenance which resulted in it being openable by force or by using the blade of a knife to slip the catch and this leads us to february 1989 and a series of events that would lead to an exposed source not being discovered for six days it is saturday the fourth of february 1989 and one of the operators starts his night shift as was the norm for the facility he had to deal with a number of power failures and problems with the pistons but after some wrangling he managed to restart operation each time at about 2 a.m on sunday the fifth of february during a much needed coffee break a fault occurred which caused the source rack to be lowered automatically from the irradiation position needless to say this would be a problem luring the source caused an alarm to sound that indicated that the rack was neither up nor down the operator returning from his break heard the alarm and promptly went to the control panel to try and perform the reset procedure but this failed the next step in the operator's repertoire was to leave the building go outside and climb onto the roof to try and force the source hoist down this was done by detaching the normal regulated pressurized air supply and applying an over pressurized supply this was to force the source into the fully raised position hoping that this would free the rack and permit its descent into the storage position this non-manufacturer recommended procedure also didn't work the alarm continued and in order to trick the system the operator pulled on the cable until it left the hoist mechanism after this he fed it back down which activated the micro switch telling the system the source was down the operator returned to the control panel he found that the red general failure light and source up light was still on he went back to the roof and managed to manipulate the micro switch so that upon returning to the control panel the green source light down was now on to gain access to the room the operator now performed the other non-standard procedure which ever since the monitor probe had been removed a few years before meant that access to the irradiation room was achieved by rapidly cycling the buttons on the radiation monitor panel while turning the key in the door switch this simulated background radiation readings thus allowing the radiation room to be entered even though the source rack was in the up position the operator knew the rack was in the up position but it seems like he was not aware of the dangers this posed as his next move was to cut power to the radiation machine and enter the room he did not check the radiation level once he reached the machine and guarded by torchlight only he started removing product boxes gradually working his way closer to the source rack near the source rack he found five boxes jammed into the space of four he removed two of the boxes one of which was wedged against the lower of the two source modules in the rack this took several minutes leading to an extended exposure time unable to fully clear the machine he left the room restore power and sought out assistance from some of his colleagues the operator returned shortly after with two assisting members of staff the trio now sought out to re enter the room at around three in the morning the two staff members roped into assisting the operator had no training in radiation and the radiation machine the operator assured his helpers that the machine was safe if the power was switched off the three men entered the radiation room and started to remove product boxes from the third row on the upper level next to the source so that the rack could be freed from above in order to free the source rack it needed to be lifted the rack which was around 60 kilograms needed all three for the effort standing on the upper level product tray one of the men pulled the hoist cable the other two lifted the source rack after being freed the rack was then lowered into the pool the members surprised at a chair and cough glow that greeted them the operator seeing this as something to be worried about hurried the men to leave the room clearly by now he had realized there was indeed some kind of hazard not long later the operator started to feel dizziness and nausea classic initial symptoms of acute radiation sickness the trio went outside the building to sit down and the operator continued to feel increasingly ill at about 3 30 in the morning he began to vomit blood and two of the men went via taxi to seek medical help the men made it to the emergency room of the Primero de Mayo hospital upon arrival the other worker began to feel ill at the same time and the third worker who by now had returned to his original working post also began to feel ill and he also went to hospital the company was not made aware of the accident and instead had put the absent workers down to a sick note exclaiming that they had food poisoning at around six o'clock in the morning a new worker booked on for duty he was confronted by the mess of the night shift he straightened the boxes and started up the facility when the first operator did not return for his next shift this worker remained an operated facility for another shift but this day one exposure event wouldn't be the last of this deal but we'll have to come back to that in a little bit by now all three of the original exposed men were vomiting the men were misdiagnosed with food poisoning and given three days sick leave certificates and were discharged at about six o'clock in the morning the same morning they had attended at the hospital the first operator would return to hospital on tuesday the 7th of february with nausea and vomiting and also burns on his legs and feet after he explained to the doctors of the events of the sunday he was diagnosed with radiation burns from acute exposure to cobalt his symptoms were treated but his condition continued to worsen the decision was made to transport the patient to another hospital for more specialized treatment he arrived at angeles del pedrigo hospital in mexico city on day 24 post exposure tuesday for 28th of february he had lost 20 of his body weight but would make gradual improvements over the next hundred or so days the amputation of his left leg looked likely as well as a high probability of him developing leukemia by day 173 thursday the 27th of july his condition was considered to have improved enough for him to be returned back to san salvador but his condition would continue to deteriorate on day 197 after multiple surgeries damaged to his lungs and a progressively worsening condition he passed away on sunday the 20th of august 1989 the other two exposed workers would fare a bit better due to them only being in the radiation room once the second patient who went to the hospital the operator returned to work four days post exposure but was sent home due to his poor health he again returned to work on day nine post exposure monday the 13th of february but was unable to lift heavy objects with discomfort in his feet he returned to hospital where he was then admitted for radiation exposure like the operator he was two sent to mexico city for treatment where he would have his left leg amputated due to necrosis he returned to san salvador on day 173 where he would then have his right leg amputated but luckily for him from there his condition improved the third victim was the least exposed at the free he was too transferred to mexico city but spent less time there receiving treatment for ars upon returning to san salvador he he would main off work sick until day 199 post exposure or tuesday the 22nd of august 1989 the operators mean body dose was 8.1 gray per reference five gray as a whole body dose can be lethal and he had more than that with his torso receiving an estimated 10 the other two men received 3.7 and 2.9 gray respectively back to the aftermath of the exposure after the first operator never returned to work on monday evening well the company just kind of carried on as normal what the operators didn't know was that the source rack had been bent and it was only a matter of time until another incident which would come on the wednesday after the initial incident where the rack became jammed again but this time it was released by the overpressure trick Thursday the 9th day five after initial exposure some of the source pencils escaped the rack and fell into the pool and the irradiation room this was discovered on friday day six post exposure after quality assurance discovered the products had been irradiated less than normal all workers would enter the room after checking the dose rate on a beeper style detector just outside the door which was essentially a pointless endeavor as the dose rate outside the room would have been 30 times lower than inside upon entering they were exposed to one of the pencils which had escaped the rack but their exposure was low ranging from 0.22 to 0.09 gray but this could have been far worse if more pencils had escaped this now left a massive headache for the owners how to make the irradiation equipment safe and secure this forced management to finally request the suppliers assistance two experts from the supplier arrived at the plant on day nine monday the 13th of february they succeeded in determining by means of a remote television camera and an iron chamber device sent into the irradiation room attached to a product carrier that there was an active source pencil on the upper level they drilled a hole in the roof of the irradiation room and on day 11 wednesday the 15th of february using a remotely remotely controlled tool succeeded in picking up the pencil successfully lowering it into the pool and 1930 on the same day the experts confirmed that the radiation in the irradiation room was at normal background levels due to the poor state of the facility the supplier disabled the machine and a full count of the source pencils was photographically undertaken and confirmed all were in the pool in november 1989 the incident was caused by a jam of the fiberglass boxes by 1989 many of these containers had become cracked resulting in a higher chance of getting caught within the machine the boxes were forced against the thin steel bar in the frame in which the source rack is raised and lowered the deformation of this bar was enough to cause the source rack to become stuck in the raised position the main issue of the incident was down to the actions of the staff on the day if the product jam had happened just after the facility had been opened this likely the issue would have been dealt with safely but two decades of neglect and poor training resulted in the dangerous actions of the staff at the facility the operation of the facility safely was greatly hindered by the political and financial situation in the country as the supplier did not have the ability to send out the staff to inspect the plant due to safety concerns the plant was refitted with a new radiator in the early 90s and subsequently had its safety procedures and safety systems overhauled this video is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative comments attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently dark and cold southeast corner of london uk help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and all sorts of sods as well as hints and future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so if you fancy checking them out please do and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it is the summer of 1971 and several college students are being arrested at their homes by palo alto california police and charged with armed robbery and burglary penal codes 211 and 459 although none of these men had previously committed a crime college students getting arrested is not a unique thing slightly out of the ordinary the men had a good idea this would be happening and stranger still the whole event is being filmed all of this although odd could feasibly happen but the whole pantomime has a strangely fake feeling about it maybe the alleged criminals are more hardened than their records would suggest no passersby would know this but all the men are being paid to be arrested but not by some organized crime group but instead by university what is actually happening is the beginning of one of the most controversial and well known psychological studies the experiment's orchestrator would have to end the study short as the participants would take things beyond what he expected today we're looking at the stanford prison experiment and i'm going to give my rating for this one at the end of the video let's see what you think billyp george zimbardo was born on the 23rd of march 1933 in new york new york state united states in his early years he suffered discrimination due to his italian ancestry and was quite often carelessly mistaken for a multitude of other ethnic backgrounds the young zimbardo like many other people covered in this series used this all too common human behavior as a spark for his interest in psychology in the early 1950s he attended brooklyn college graduating with a ba boasting three majors in psychology sociology and anthropology the next year he went on to earn an ma and by 1959 had also earned a phd both from yale in psychology zimbardo briefly stayed on at yale to teach psychology from 1959 to 1960 whilst there he married rose ablenau and had a son in 1962 but he left yale when offered a job as a professor at new york university where he would stay in a role until 1967 in 1967 he would move again to columbia university which would be brief as he was offered a faculty position at stanford university in 1968 just three years later he was offered and accepted in 1971 a tenured position as a professor of psychology the same year zimbardo and rose would divorce as a side note rose was a very well accomplished academic in her own right specializing in english literature and this rather quickly brings us onto the experiment that would write zimbardo's name in history zimbardo was interested in how the us prison system had seemed to foster a pure hatred between prisoners and guards was the explanation for this purely down to the nature of the people involved for example are the conditions bad because criminals are bad or because the administrators are likely to be harsh in reality it is probably impossible to know and it feels like a chicken and egg situation as if a prisoner breaks the rules then the rules are made tougher leading to more prisoners breaking the rules naturally both sides of the bars would distrust one another which can create a downward spiral one thing that is true today as it was in the 1970s is such high recidivism rates purely by the nature of being a prisoner you become isolated from society and this isn't unique to the us we have very much the same situation here in the uk but what if you can eliminate the deep-rooted hatred between those in cells and those with the keys and this is where zimbardo comes in as can you get rid of his hatred by using a randomly selected group of people who are neither guards or prisoners and by splitting these random people up into the different roles you've essentially created a prison scene without the natural distrust between the administrators of the law and the breakers of the law zimbardo managed to secure financing for the experiment from the u.s office of the navy the navy wanted to understand antisocial behavior and by extension wanted to investigate conflict between military guards and prisoners his experiment would involve university students playing the roles of guards and prisoners for a princely sum of $15 per day zimbardo would be the research team leader and will in 1997 in a stanford university news interview say i wondered along with my research associates craig curtis and carlo what would happen if we aggregated all of these processes making some subjects feel de-invigilated others dehumanized within the anonymous environment in the same experimental setting and where we could carefully document the process over time to find his subjects zimbardo put out this advert in the help wanted section of the palo alto times male college students needed for a psychological study of prison life $15 per day for one to two weeks beginning august 14th the further information and applications come to room 248 jordan hall stanford university 75 men would answer the ad and after interviews and suitability screening which set out to exclude anyone with a criminal record mental health condition or any other medical issues 24 from the initial 75 would be selected the group was predominantly white and middle class and had no apparent health aggression or legal issues in their life in order to try and keep the result scientific each participant was randomly given one of two roles prisoner or guard in total nine were in each group with three substitutes the group labeled as prisoners were told that they would not experience physical abuse but would lose their civil liberties for between one and two weeks little else was given to them in terms of what would be expected of them only that they would be contacted by telephone to be at their residence on a given sunday for the experiment to begin the guards had a little more guidance before the experiment as they would be issued uniforms and equipment on the day before the commencement of the study the equipment given to them consisted of a generic law enforcement inspired uniform mirrored glasses to prevent the prisoners from making eye contact as well as wooden battens on the orientation day the guards were introduced to zimbardo who would be acting as the superintendent and an undergraduate research assistant who played a role of the warden they were told that their assigned task was to maintain a reasonable degree of order to allow the prisoner to function properly but weren't told how they could achieve this they were told to be prepared for any unexpected incident such as escape attempts and they would have to write a daily shift report on guard and prisoner activities as well as critical incident reports on any out of the ordinary event during this time they were told they would be responsible for the administration of meals work and recreational activities of the prisoners the guards believed that the experiment was solely to see how the prisoners would act but actually zimbardo's team were equally interested in their approach to the prison experience and as such they were given deliberately vague instructions on their contact and to finally help immerse the guards further they helped on the day before the study in completing the construction of the prison now the participants were chosen somewhere had to be built for them to play out their new assigned roles the university allows zimbardo's research team to use a part of the basement of the Stanford psychological department's Jordan hall the 35 foot long area seemed perfect for the role with little outside light and an essentially cut off from the outside world feel there were three cells which were originally office rooms that could accommodate three participants in each and measured at a whopping six by nine feet and was pretty cramped each man had a cot with a pillow blanket and mattress and that was it no daylight no clock all of which were designed to make the prisoners lose track of time the subjects will be locked up here for nearly 24 hours a day each cell also had an intercom wire set up so the experimenters could listen into conversations and also make public announcements there was a closet that would be used as solitary confinement and measured in at a coffin like two by two by seven feet the prison area which was previously a corridor with offices off of it had two fabricated walls one for the entrance and another for a small observation area the space between these walls and the prison cells was called the yard to use the toilet prisoners were escorted blindfolded as to further disorientate them the guards accommodation was completely the opposite to the prisoners with areas to change clothes after their shifts plenty of space to move around on downtime and plenty of opportunities for rest and relaxation and that brings us on to the beginning of the experiment Sunday the 15th of August a palo alto police car pulls up outside a residence a young man is taken outside searched handcuffed given their rights and put into the back of a vehicle onlookers stopped to see the unfolding drama and this same scene would play out for eight more people the nine men are taken to the police station where they're fingerprinted have their details taken down have a police file opened on them and placed in a holding cell pretty much the standard for an alleged criminal although after a short while each of the men are blindfolded and bundled into the back of a car and driven to the stanford mock prison once arriving in the prison each prisoner was stripped sprayed with deodorant which was standing in for a delousing spray and made to stand naked in the yard for some time before being given a prisoner's uniform from there they were photographed for a mugshot and given an identification number after this the prisoner was shown to their cell unlocked away and in the process being told to remain silent when everyone was on boarded to their new home for the next two weeks the warden went to introduce themselves and read each of the men the rules of the prison which had been created by the guards the day before the prison rules and their id number had to be memorized and will be asked three times a day during roll call once for each guard shift the prisoners were only to be identified by their number this was a further effort to de-personalize each inmate every day the prisoners were scheduled for work time to earn their $15 per day and were also allowed some exercise on top of this two visit periods were allowed per week but these rules would be modified and degrade over the course of the study data during the study would be collected by zimbardo's team in a number of ways filming the whole study audio recordings from hidden microphones rating scales taken of both guards and prisoners and before the whole experiment all par participants undertook a series of paper and pencil personality tests back to the first day after their interaction with the warden and tasks were memorized in the rules the prisoners were left in their cells to settle in for the night but that night would not be a quiet one when the first count was be undertaken at 2 30 a.m the prisoners were rudely awakened by the guards needless to say this didn't go down well the prisoners were at this point still trying to assert their independence and thus didn't take the count too seriously many of the prisoners refused to leave their cells ripped off their inmate number id tags took off their stocking caps and insulted the guards but now unexpected rebellion spilled into the morning shift by now the prisoners had barricaded the cells with their cots the morning guards frustrated with the rebellion in the early hours of the second day called up the reserve guards who were at home and insisted on the night personnel to stay on in a surprising ramping up of violence the guards decided to use a fire extinguisher on the prisoners in their cells to try and quell the rebellion further still the guards removed all of the prisoners clothes remove mattresses and sentenced the main instigators to time in the hole the rebellion was crushed but clearly the guards had a problem all nine couldn't be there all the time so how to effectively manage the inmates behavior and one person suggested psychological methods on the monday night in less than 36 hours after the experiment had begun zimbardo was forced to release one of the prisoners due to them showing signs of a mental breakdown before the release the prisoner was treated with skepticism and was offered a place as an informant in exchange of improved conditions but he refused and was thus released one of the three cells was to be used as a privileged cell the three prisoners least involved in the rebellion were also given special treatment they got their uniforms and their beds back and were allowed to wash and brush their teeth but the other prisoners were not on top of this they're also allowed to eat special food in front of the others all of this was intended to break the solidarity of the prisoners after half a day of this the three privileged prisoners were returned to the remaining inmate population this also so doubt amongst the other prisoners as to whether the privilege three were actually informers the prisoners were not allowed to use the toilet after lights out and instead were provided a bucket to relieve themselves on day three for tuesday a visit was allowed from friends and family in order to reduce the risk of complaints from the outside world the prisoners were cleaned shaved and fed furthermore their cells were also thoroughly cleaned to immerse the families in the experiment they had to register were made to wait half an hour and were told only two visitors were allowed to see each prisoner the total visiting time was also cut to only 10 minutes and was undertaken under surveillance of a guard before any family members could enter the visiting area they had to discuss their son's case with the warden many of the prisoners complained about the rules that were seeming to comply interestingly the family members rather than straight up complaining at their loved ones tired and dishevelled look actually looked to improve the situation by appealing to the superintendent one mother said i'm sorry i don't want to make any trouble but he just seems so tired after zimbardo asked her what the problem was with her son after visiting hours a rumor had started to spread that prisoner 8612 the one that was released on the monday was actually only pretending that he was suffering in the prison and that he was planning to return to do a mass breakout zimbardo's team bizarrely now fully invested in the prison themselves decided to place a new prisoner in the cell that 8612 had occupied and this person was actually an informer the study lead then went to palo auto police department and asked if he could have all the prisoners transferred to their jail this request was refused due to insurance issues even more strangely zimbardo then decided to dismantle the jail immediately after the visitation calling reinforcement guards take all the prisoners place a bag over their heads and escort them in an elevator to a fifth floor storage room to be hidden away from any breakout attempt zimbardo was then to wait in the location of the now closed prison to confront any would be liberator to inform them that everyone had been sent home and that the experiment was over only then to resume after the coast was clear the prison break never materialized and the rumor turned out to be just that a rumor once the prison was restarted the guards continue to act sadistically to the prisoners by again refusing access to the toilet and forcing the men to do push-ups for hours on ends another interesting thing the guards were doing was increasing the time it would take to do a count from just 10 minutes on the first day to several hours on day four wednesday the 18th zimbardo invited a catholic priest to the prison to assess the situation the invited clergy member had previously been a chaplain at a washington dc corrections facility he interviewed each of the prisoners individually interestingly half of the prisoners he spoke to introduced themselves by giving their numbers rather than their name the priest asked each man what are you doing to get out of here when confronted with confusion from the inmates the priest replied if they didn't help themselves nobody else would that they were college students they were bright enough to realize that they were in prison and that the only way to get out of prison was with a lawyer prisoner 819 was the only one to refuse to speak to the chaplain instead insisting for a doctor eventually he was convinced to come out and talk to the priest and the superintendent so that he could be diagnosed with what his problem was and what kind of medical practitioner he needed 819 was escorted to a side room given food and had his leg changed removed upon his removal the prison guards made the remaining inmates chant 819 is a bad prisoner this sent 819 into a hysterical fit of crying when zimbardo said it was time to leave the experiment the prisoner replied no i can't leave 819 didn't want to leave but instead wanted to go back in to prove that he was not bad shocked zimbardo broke character of the superintendent and reassured that the whole thing was an experiment the guards had now started using bags over the prisoners heads as a routine form of punishment after 819's departure he was replaced by prisoner number 416 one of the study standbys the fifth day marked another part of prison life a parole hearing the prisoners were chained together and ushered into the parole board meeting with bags over heads so that they could not see or talk the parole board were formed of people none of the prisoners had seen before and each man was asked a question would you forfeit the money you have earned so far to be paroled unsurprisingly every inmate said yes the head of the board was carlo prescott the experience consultant and ex convict even he had embraced his new assigned role at the end of the parole board meeting each person was told to go back to their cell and the board would consider their request every one of them did so calmly that it was clear that their sense of reality was completely warped even giving up the money which was the sole reason for them being there in the first place this would have been a perfect opportunity for the subjects to quit and leave but by now were mindlessly following any order given to them zimbardo had now observed the guards forming to three different types good guys who were sympathetic to the prisoners tough but fair guards whose orders were always within the rules of the prison's operation and finally the sadistic who for any reason were punished and humiliate the inmates by now the prisoners had become completely introverted and all bonds had broken within the cells one final act of rebellion manifested itself in prisoner 416 whom had been a stand-in brought in the day before he went on hunger strike the guards tried to make him eat but to no avail interestingly his co-inmates also turned against him seeing this last stand as an act of trouble making the guards after attempting to force feed the inmate even wrote to the other prisoners into forcing him as part of the psychological warfare everyone in the cells was threatened with punishment unless 416 would eat visits from loved ones planned for the evening was taken off the table and this was the moment the inmates completely turned on 416 screaming at him cursing him telling him he had to eat even saying they weren't going to be inconvenienced by his stupid act of defiance 416 was bundled into solitary confinement for three hours even though the agreed maximum time was just one hour the head guard on shift unlucky for 416 was the most sadistic nicknamed John Wayne he gave the prisoners a choice 416 out of solitary in exchange for blankets or they could keep them and 416 would stay locked up all night the prisoners opted to keep their blankets during visiting time that evening a number of inmates parents requested Zimbardo contact a lawyer in order to get their son out of prison a lawyer was called up and attended for interviews of each of the prisoners the prison had completely devolved into the harshest guards realm with the good guards not challenging immoral acts and even enabling them the evenings in the prison were worse for arbitrary punishment when the guards fought the experimenters weren't watching enter Christina Maslak a recent phd student and early in her professional career she visited the prison and was very well known to Zimbardo and in fact a year later would even marry him she was shocked to discover the horrendous conditions of the experiment and appealed to Zimbardo stating his lack of caring oversight and the immorality of the study additionally she pointed out that Zimbardo had been changed by his role of superintendent in the experiment into someone she did not like this in addition to the obvious signs of deterioration of the mental well-being of the prisoners led to the beginning of the end of the Stanford prison experiment on the 6th day Friday the 20th of August the study was cancelled over a week earlier than originally intended the final day involved debriefing of both study groups the encounter groups as Zimbardo called them were undertaken first with all the guards then with all the prisoners including those who had been released and had been invited to come back and finally a meeting for all the guards and prisoners and staff together this allowed the participants time to get their feelings out in the open and to start a kind of moral reconciliation between all involved questionnaires similar to the ones filled out at the start of the study were given to each participant to be filled out and posted to Zimbardo's team even though the experiment ended early the full amount for the 14 days was paid to each participant $210 roughly $1400 in 2021 money finally all participants were invited to return to the university a week later to share their opinions and emotions and thus the experiment was over but what of the results well Zimbardo interpreted the results but it wasn't the individual personalities of the participants but the prison itself that shaped the outcome after all Zimbardo had taken in any other way normal people at random and merely applied different roles be it prisoner or guard the two groups had the same goal of entering the study and that was to get some extra money for two weeks of apparently on the outset easy work Zimbardo took the experiment as an example of situational attribution where the environment shapes the person's actions he compared the prison experiment to that of Stanley Milgram's study 10 years earlier where the perceived authority of the scientist resulted in study participants administering a potentially deadly electric shock to another person although personality was thought not to be the reason for the way the prison experiment played out Zimbardo did concede that the individual did affect certain outcomes such as individual level of rebelliousness of the prisoners and the level of cruelty shown by the guards the experiment almost immediately invited criticism for the ethical way it was conducted exposing the prisoners to a high risk of psychological injury the apparent chaos in which the experiment devolved into meant that Zimbardo's team's conclusions were pretty anecdotal and relied on the experimenter's subjective understanding of the individual's behavior the guards were actively encouraged to participate more and be more tough for the benefit of the experiment by David Jaffe who was acting as the warden and also subsequent attempts to recreate the results have failed another criticism comes from Zimbardo taking on the role of superintendent himself which gave him the excuse of himself being influenced by the situation of the prison his role allowed him to directly influence the outcome of the experiment and through a thing called demand characteristics subconsciously influenced the participants to subconsciously act out the stereotypes or the roles that they were assigned furthermore the advert for the participants asked for volunteers for a prison experiment and thus opens Zimbardo to the criticism of selection bias on the part of the volunteers the BBC recreated the experiment loosely in 2002 for a TV series rather blindly called the experiment the results of the study failed to replicate Zimbardo's conclusions when the guards did not naturally fall into the role of creating a tyrannical prison hellscape and interestingly the prisoners held onto their sense of independence resulting in camaraderie within the inmates there was even a late experiment breakout attempt but funny enough this experiment was too finished early due to the guards and prisoners wanting to start a new much harder stanford style regime Zimbardo is still alive today and since the prison experiment has released multiple papers and books including introductory psychology textbooks for college students and other notable works including the lucifer effect the time paradox and the time cure reportedly none of the subjects had any adverse effects due to the experiment apart from the time actually spent in the stanford county jail now where would you rate this subject on my ethical scale one being all okay and nine being pure evil i'm going to rate this prison experiment a six this is mainly due to the questionable results and uncomfortable living conditions of the prisoners even though there were no apparent long-term effects on its subjects this is a playful production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed playing difficult videos are produced by me john they're currently grim wit and windy southeast in corner of london uk help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing and check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially i also have a merch store so if you fancy wearing one of my t-shirts check it out and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it is july 2008 and a controversial local landmark is being removed it has been here for nearly a decade and strangely it's the grim reminder of an environmental disaster officials locals and the wider public have argued whether it should stay or go but the decision and money has been committed and the multimillion dollar project has started the landmark in question is not a statue or a piece of artwork but instead a wrecked remains of a transport ship the removal and wreckage represents a legal argument that was used to make the ship's owners responsible for its running aground i'm john and this is a brief history of today we're looking at the oregon new carissa disaster a little background for a big ship our story starts at the end of the 1980s some 19 years before the wreckage removal with the laying down of a new dry goods transport ship the ship was built by imabari shipbuilding company in japan using an all steel construction beginning on the 30th of august 1989 she was named the new carissa and was 195 meters long and 32 meters wide with a draft of 10.8 meters when fully loaded the vessel had a complement of 26 sailors who in charge of the ship's gross weight tonnage of 36 571 pushed along by an 8200 horsepower direct drive diesel engine the ownership structure of the new carissa like many naval operations is rather complex she is registered to panama but her owners much like her builders are very much japanese she is under the operation of and owned by operator and managed tay hayukayan co limited and tmm co limited respectively although ownership is via a panama based subsidiary green lane shipping this registration is a flag of convenience allowing the owners to hire sailors under the working rules and conditions of the ship's registration country but to add another level of complexity the ship's home port was in the philippines and her crew consisted of a philippine captain and other personnel i told you it's a confusing web or maybe it's just me the new carissa would be pressed into service carrying wood chips used in the manufacture of paper between japan and the us part of this would require entering us waters and a law brought in in 1990 meant that any operator must be held financially responsible for any environmental impact in the case of an accident like with any potentially financially damaging risk operators insure against this and the new carissa was no different approximately 23 million us dollars of environmental liability insurance was provided by ship owners insurance and guarantee company limited of hamilton bermuda it is the beginning of february 1999 and the new carissa is doing what she does best heading towards the usa to collect wood chips she is running with an empty hold and is bound for the port of coups bay oregon she at this time has around 400 000 gallons of diesel and lube oil aboard all aboard the ship are philippine nationals on the 3rd of february and not far from their destination a local pilot is assigned to guide the vessel into port as the evening drew in an ocean storm with winds that reached 39 knots was hitting central oregon the pilot due to the weather conditions was unable to reach the vessel he informed the captain that he would not be able to assist until the morning and as such entry to the port should not be attempted healing the pilot's warnings the captain ordered the turn away from the bay to open the empty holds and drop anchor by now the new carissa was around 1.5 to 1.7 nautical miles from the bay only one anchor was dropped but little did the crew realize that the chain was too short for the 20 to 25 knot winds the evening gave way to the early hours of the morning of the fourth and the storm continued to rage slowly the ship began to drag her chain poor watchkeeping of the crew meant that the movement went undetected for quite some time she was dragged closer to the shore eventually the movement was noticed and the crew set to raise anchor to try and maneuver away from running a ground in the heavy storm and strong winds nothing could stop the carissa from moving closer and closer to the oregon shore around three miles north of coups bay the new carissa ran aground on a sandbank the collision was reported to officials at nine o'clock in the morning and immediately a recovery operation was set into motion the new carissa represented an environmental issue with hundreds of gallons of fuel aboard the immediate recovery attempts tried to make use of the new carissa's own power but the stricken vessel couldn't free itself a unified command consisting of representatives from the coast guard the state of oregon and other rescue party operations were set up as soon as officials were first notified three objectives were set out for the unified command to save personnel save the ship and prevent spillage the poor weather affected any immediate rescue when the only tugboat available in coups bay couldn't be used due to safety concerns as long as the ship was still intact refloating was the preferred option the high winds prevented the crew from being rescued immediately but eventually the coast guard helicopters were able to evacuate the sailors aboard and replace them with salvage specialists during this time a survey of the ship was undertaken by air and so far it looked like it could be refloated but there was a problem no suitable ship was in the area that was powerful enough to drag the new carissa off the sandbank the nearest suitable vessel was based in Astoria Oregon roughly 170 miles away from coups bay she was called the salvage chief but she had not sailed for over a year and required provisions fuel and the sourcing of a suitable crew the turnaround time to ready the chief was going to be 18 hours a long time to wait especially in addition to the 24 hour journey time that she would take all during this the new carissa sat precariously putting more strain on her hull the salvage chief would not arrive at coups bay until the 8th of February four days after the new carissa ran aground the waves and high winds continued to batter the stricken vessel pushing her further along the beach although rescue had arrived the additional 600 feet the new carissa had been pushed jawwood put her out of the salvage chief's reach not long after tar balls started to appear on the beach hinting that the carissa was leaking oil meaning she had developed a crack somewhere on her hull because of this the three main objectives for salvage were changed to ensure safety of personnel and the local community minimized damage to the environment and finally salvage the vessel but now leaking ship posed a serious risk to the local ecosystem cleanup activity preparation began almost as soon as the ship got beached but the leaking fuel had already covered wildlife and had leaked into the vulnerable local environment with another storm on the horizon and a high probability of salvage causing the ship to break up rescue workers were confronted with a horrible last resort decision whether to burn the ship or not you see setting a light to the vessel may sound like a bad idea but this could mean the toxic fuel would not contaminate the environment directly obviously there was still the environmental cost but by now it was a case of least worst outcome this rock and hard place decision was made for the salvage team when it was decided that the ship was a complete structural right off and thus movement was out of the question meaning an in situ burn was to be the outcome the unified command attempted the first burn on the 10th of february using a combination of napalm and incendiary devices but to the disappointment to all involved only one of the ship's tanks set a light time to bring out the big guns a navy explosives ordinance disposal unit from whitby island washington was employed to have a second crack at burning the fuel the unit used 400 pounds of explosives to rupture the fuel tanks and to sustain the burn a locally brewed napalm mixture was employed the fire would last 33 hours and result in between 165 and 255 thousand us gallons burnt now the things would get worse for the vessel all during the explosions and grounding the main structure was weakening and its integrity couldn't last any longer at around midnight on 11th of february the vessel broke into two sections and a now separated ship started to drive in different directions on the 26th of february the salvage teams managed to float the 440 foot bow section and prepare it for towing by the 1st of march the tugboat sea victory has successfully towed the bow from the beach and out to sea but a return of stormy weather resulted in the cable snapping the bow now loose free floated for 14 hours until it ran aground near walled port oregon on the 3rd of march roughly 80 miles to the north of the original grounding site it was refloated again on the 8th of march and towed out to 280 miles off the coast where it was sunk with explosives and cannon fire from two us navy ships the destroyer uss david l ray and the submarine uss bremeton interestingly the cannons and explosives didn't fully sink the bow requiring an additional torpedo before it was sent to the seabed the stern however would remain on the beach for nearly a decade but we'll come to that in a bit like with most disasters the authorities set out to find the root cause of the disaster and like most disasters everyone blamed everyone else with the government blaming the crew and the insurance company britannia steamship insurance association blaming the less than useful coast guard charts and the pilot not telling the ship to drop anchor where it did this resulted in two lawsuits one from the insurers claiming around 96 million dollars and a counter from the u.s government claiming around 7 million dollars both parties would reach a settlement of a net amount to the government for 6.5 million in 2004 but this wasn't the end of the legal proceedings in an interesting tactic oregon state demanded a 25 million dollar bomb to cover the dismantling and cleanup costs as well as charging the ship's owners a rent of 1500 per day for storage costs needless to say the ship's owners and insurers refuted these claims and the case went to trial let's take a moment to appreciate the case here the state of oregon was asserting that that the crashed ship was actually trespassing on state property bold claim but it did actually pay off when on the 13th of november 2002 a jury sided with the state's argument and the 25 million dollars was put into an escrow account as appeals and alike were hashed out the shipping company would get back around 5 million dollars after an appeal in 2006 now before we come back to the implications of this legal case and the stern we have to look at the criminal side of the investigation and what happened to the crew captain morgueido and his filipino crew had some questions to answer after the grounding and this required them to stay in us for several weeks as the coast guard questioned them the captain pled the fifth amendment for most of his questions which is a smart move and after their testimonies they were finally allowed to return home the investigation did find the captain and his first and third officers responsible for the crash but not enough to prove criminal wrongdoing and they would not see any charges brought against them bearing in mind the stern was still beached representing a constant reminder of the disaster the result was pretty unpalatable okay now we can get back to the landmark previously known as the stern of the new Carissa the state of Oregon had kind of painted itself into a corner with its trespassing trial as their whole argument would have been pretty much seen as a cash grab unless the stern was actually removed and this leads us back to 2008 and the somewhat controversial dismantling and removal of the last few remaining sections of the new Carissa the removal of the stern proved to be more difficult than originally anticipated as years of waves and storms had wedged the wreckage into the sand up to 20 to 30 feet in some places it was decided that the remains be dismantled by the use of jack-up barges which allowed crews to work on the ship cutting her up piece by piece by september 2008 most of the visual wreckage was removed leaving only a few small pieces by november the recovery crews and barges were gone and thus the new Carissa was no more but although no humans were killed the death toll from the fuel that did manage to escape into the ecosystem was thought to be responsible for over 3000 shore and seabirds rather worryingly if it wasn't for the burning of the ship this toll would have been significantly higher i'm going to rate this disaster four on my scale and a five on the legacy scale what do you think let me know in the comments this is a plainly difficult production all videos on the channel are created commons attribution share alike license plainly difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently wet and windy south eastern corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos nods and sods as well as hints of future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching 11 white 11 year old boys were sent to a special remote summer camp in oklahoma robbers cave state park in the summer of 1954 each child is unknown to one another but they all have a few common background traits their ethnicity religion and two parent upbringing they have been told that they'll be living together on this scout camp site but first they must all get to know each other and pick a group name to solidify the bond between the boys a number of regular summer camp activities are undertaken such as swimming hiking and playing games the boys pick the name the eagles and stencil this onto white flags what the children didn't know was that an almost identical story was playing out with another group of 11 to 12 year old boys across the park and they had given themselves the name the rattles neither group is aware of one another and they are also unaware that in just a few days time they'll be competing against each other in a number of standard summer camp activities what the children also don't know is that their camp counselors are actually researchers into a psychology experiment into intergroup conflict and the researchers had created these groups by randomly selecting and balancing attributes of the 22 boys the result of the study would reveal the tribal mentality which has allowed us to thrive as a species but also has been responsible for some true historical horrors even though both groups shared so many background similarities the experiment will be described as the real life lord of the flies welcome to the dark side of science our story starts not in the usa but in the ottoman empire with the birth of musava sherif on the 29th of july 1906 sherif in the first 20 years of his life would see a tumultuous time for his home country with the italo turkish war the balkans wars world war one he grew up in odomis located 113 kilometers south of the city of ismir in roughly the western modern day turkey ismir would see occupation during the turkish war for independence which ran between 1918 and 1923 sherif would go on to college during this period graduating in 1926 with a bachelor of arts from ismir international college his education would continue with him earning an ma from istanbul university in 1928 after discovering the works of william mcdougal he looked into the theory of instinct and social psychology at a surprise to probably no one mcdougal was also into eugenics it does seem like everyone was into this theory in the early 20th century anyway i digress sherif would enroll at harvard in the late 1920s gaining an ma he would re-enroll in 1933 after a visit to germany although he would change to columbia for his doctorate earning his phd in 1935 upon returning to turkey sherif was offered a position teaching at ankara university during his time at the university he was very open about his antifascist views at a time with germany falling under the spell of nazism sherif was highly critical of hitler and became a communist ideological supporter this would get him into trouble in the mid 1940s when in 1944 he was detained with a number of turkish communist party members turkey during world war two was a neutral power for the most part until it sided with the allies in february 1945 but the country was fearful of a soviet invasion and sought to secure itself with the capitalist western allies this was around the same time sherif decided to leave turkey and return to the usa after being detained in fear of a harsher punishment for his political activities as a country looked further to the west in its political alignment sherif a graduate from two us universities found his marxist views in the late 1940s a benefit to his career as the social academic environment at the time was far more left leaning this led to his book the psychology of ego involvements 1947 published from princeton university but being left leaning wasn't to be a benefit for too much longer as the dark shadow of the cold war loomed and the rise of macotheism by the beginning of the 1950s sherif's social political and professional ties to turkey fell apart during the anti-communist movement to add further insult to injury anchor a university officially fired him citing his marriage to a u.s citizen oh yes i nearly forgot to talk about carolin his wife the couple met in 1945 when carolin who at the time was a research assistant at princeton university under mr sherif she gained a master's degree in 1944 while studying under wendell johnson of monster study fame their professional relationship developed into a personal then romantic culminating in their marriage in december 1945 the two were going to produce multiple works in the psychology and social psychological fields okay well that's a little bit of a background to the experimenters let's look at the experiment itself starting in 1945 the sheriffs began to look at the field of social ingroup let me dust off my dictionary for a second for the official definition an ingroup is a small group of people in an organization or society whose members share the same interests language etc and try to keep other people out the sheriffs sought to artificially create in groups amongst young boys to see if they could turn these groups against one another to study the intergroup conflict the first experiment would take place in the summer of 1949 with 24 white 12-year-old boys from lower middle class protestant backgrounds at an isolated camp in middle growth it will be funded by Yale university and the department for scientific research of the american jewish community the reason for all the children having the same background was to eliminate differences apart from personality between the boys sherif would for the experiment disguise himself as mr. mosaic the camp caretaker as a way for him to observe the behavior of his subjects the experiment would be formed of three stages the first consisted of all the boys taking part in activities amongst each other and were allowed to form friendships after a while the 24 boys were divided into two groups the experimenters deliberately separated the budding friendships in their selection of each cohort of 12 children from then on stage two commenced where each group would only be allowed to interact within each other this was to try and establish an ingroup mentality the team buildings were conducted where a common goal appealed to all in the group by the end of this stage sherif noted that friendships were bonding within the individual groups and a hierarchical structure had formed they found that the boys preferred interacting with their own ingroup over the other although this seems like a clean cut hypothesis confirmation it wasn't so perfect but we'll discuss that later on now with the two groups stage three would involve adversarial competition it was observed that the two groups would act hostile to one another and although acting democratically internally in their 12 strong teams the boys didn't conduct themselves accordingly with the outgroup sherif tried to restore harmony at the end of the study by giving the boys a common enemy to unite against they did this by beating a softball team from outside the camp although tensions still existed between the two groups with these promising results the sherif sought out to expand upon the subject of in groups this brings us on to the 1953 sherif's next experiment into in to group behavior the study would follow the same lines as the 1949 experiment but would employ greater laboratory controls we would only get to stage two before being terminated early sherif would later say in his 1961 robbers cave book on the reason for the failed experiment owing to various difficulties and unfavorable conditions including errors of judgment in the direction of the experiment but sherif's seemingly dismissive comment on the study actually glosses over the real reason but that will be revealed later on this meant that a rerun was in order and with the remaining grant money burning a hole in sherry's pocket this finally brings us on to the robber cave study of 1954 the rerun was planned to take place beginning in june for three weeks of the summer of 1954 the experiment would have 22 boys all from similar backgrounds but vitally not to have ever had any previous interactions with one another but where to get so many children it's not like you can just go take a class from a school as there would be prejudices in groups microcultures and already inevitable rivalries all of this could muddy a potential experiment in order to find a group large enough a city had to be selected to find the pool of subjects the experiment has settled on oklahoma sherif decided that a maximum of one boy per school could be selected researchers were dispatched throughout the city to its many schools and armed with higher education credentials and a letter managed to gain permission from the principals to go into the schoolyard to observe fifth grader boys playing these credentials also gained access for the researchers to the children's school records this compared to the modern world of stranger danger really blows my mind older 1950s where a degree and a letter will get you in anywhere in total around 200 children were selected this would require a little more selection down to around 50 anyway to cut a long story short around five or six children per school was selected rated top to bottom in preference and their parents were contacted in the same order the parents were given the same explanation of the study as the principals that the sherif team was looking to study the interaction of group activities within teams and how they would act during sporting activities and their attitudes towards winning or losing the parents were explicitly told that visiting their child during the three weeks was prohibited and the camp would cost 25 dollars which apparently on the inflation calculator is around 261 dollars in 2022 money eventually the 22 participants were selected and thus the experiment could begin the overall concept of the experiment would be copied from the 1949 and failed 1953 studies but would take a three-stage form sherif named the first stage in group formation this would take the space of a week where two groups were kept separate and team building exercises were undertaken to form an in-group bond within the participants games and treasure hunts were planned during stage one to help build friendships and in-group alliances stage two would be the conflict or friction phase this would involve a tournament between the two groups consisting of sports like baseball tug-of-war and a scavenger hunt but also experimental tests like bean counting competitions a trophy was promised for the winners of the competition as well as prizes like knives and medals over 1950s where preteens were given weapons the third and final stage was the integration phase where the two groups would be brought together to undertake group tasks and leisure activities of watching films to record their findings hidden microphones were used throughout the two groups living areas which were used to record conversations to observe the camaraderie within the group the groups were also given questionnaires to fill out about their group and later about the outer group on the 19th of june 1954 a coach of 11 children arrived at the robbers cave state park in oklahoma a day later another group of 11 would also arrive at the camp both groups were unaware of the other and throughout stage one the experimenters would keep this the case by carefully managing the two's activities throughout the park the boys would stay in log cabins alongside the macaizine creek where they could swim play and explore among the nearby woods each group had junior camp counselors who were university students they would stay with the boys all the time and there were also senior camp counselors who were participant observers who stayed with the boys for around 12 hours a day charif had instructed these assistants strictly to not influence the study in any way although there were two groups their experience in the first few days was very similar after 19th of june the first stage would begin this began even on the coach ride to the camp where boys in their separate coaches discussed parents and parts of the city of oklahoma where they had come from games were played and the groups encouraged to create team names make flags and create a motto one group took the name the eagles where the other took the name the rattlers over the next few days the groups were allowed to create hideouts and using a canoe placed near each respective campsite created their respective holdouts in order to keep both groups separate meal times and activities were staggered the groups were allowed to purchase t-shirts and baseball caps for stenciling their respective group names on as well as white sheets to be turned into flags the type of language within the group addressed items as are things and a noticeable microculture was developing within the boys towards the end of the week the two groups were allowed to find each other and once completely confirmed by the camp workers that there was indeed another group both groups became eager to see one another but a slight spanner was thrown in the works two boys in the eagle group had to be sent home due to homesickness this would give an organic path to stage two the friction stage the experiment has found that both groups became insistent on challenging one another to a baseball game allowing the subjects to believe that the tournament of stage two was going to be their idea the continued insistence of the groups albeit mainly from the rattlers meant setting up the control circumstances for stage two became increasingly difficult the rattlers upon hearing the other group was playing on the baseball field began to use language like they're using our diamond or they're on our field this showed that the in and out group dynamics had successfully formed at least in the rattlers and thus the experiment moved into stage two or the friction phase the first day of the friction phase consisted of an informal discussion between the experimenters posing as staff and the two groups separately these discussions informed the children of the tournaments possible prizes and assured them that every effort was being made to set everything up for the two groups to face off crucially during the first day of stage two both groups had no physical or visual contact with one another the different groups had different reactions to the informal announcements the rattlers seemed to be really excited for the competition and showed aggressive language about the other group they appropriated the ball ground as theirs and planted a rattler flag and made aggressive remarks about any would be flag removers the eagles on the other hand were far less enthusiastic with only a couple of the boys sounding particularly eager to face off but a remainder of the day the two groups prepared and practiced the eagles were showing as the day progressed a greater group pride when the flag was attached to a pole on the second day the two groups would have their first close quarters contact almost immediately this broke out into name calling and aggressive behavior the two groups had breakfast at different times where they were introduced to the tournament exhibit which took the form of a trophy bladed knives and medals after breakfast the tournament was officially announced the groups were informed that each game would accrue points to the winning team and a team with a largest number of cumulative points would win the whole tournament there was a mix of competitive activities as well as activities to be completed separately by the groups which would be judged by the staff the games were to consist of baseball and tug of war on the first day and second day of the competition touch football tent pitching and baseball on the third day and finally a tug of war and tent pitching on the fourth the separately completed activities were cabin inspections on the second day as well as skits and songs day three had another cabin inspection and day four had another cabin inspection and a treasure hunt the second group of activities allowed the experimenters to even out the score to keep the teams neck and neck for longer thus increasing the friction between the groups straight off the bat don't excuse the pun the Rattlers won the baseball game and the tug of war this was evened out by the experimenters during the cabin inspections after the first two days of the tournament the cheers for the losers and good sportsmanship went out at the window degenerating into heckling during mealtimes insults were thrown at each other and intergroup relations further fell apart after the first tug of war the defeated eagles took the Rattlers flag from the baseball pitch and set it alight the next day the Rattlers were sent for breakfast first in order for them to see the child remains of their flag in retaliation a punch up between the two groups ensued and in the scuffle a member of the Rattlers grabbed and burned the eagle flag the next tug of war on the second day resulted in a strong win for the Eagles frustrated in this and fueled with anger from the flag burning the Rattlers set about planning a raid of their adversaries camp in the night around 10 30 p.m the Rattlers group hit the Eagles cabin turning beds and ripping window screens stealing comic books and even clothing the next day during lunch the Eagles hit the Rattlers cabin doing the same amount of damage the Rattlers by now had also replaced their burnt flag with a stolen pair of trousers much to the annoyance of the Eagles the competitions continued and were manipulated in such a way that by the last day of the competitions it was neck and neck unpivoted on the final task the treasure hunt because the hunt was separate between the two groups again this result could be manipulated in the favor of the smaller eagle group right at the end of the hunt both teams were brought out in front of the trophy and prizes and the winners were the Eagles the Eagles did the hunt in eight minutes and 38 seconds and the Rattlers did theirs in 10 minutes and 15 seconds the difference was night and day between the group's reactions the Eagles gleeful in the wind shouting and jumping juxtaposed to the Rattlers dejected sitting watching the winners celebrate the Eagles went off to the creek to swim and play in victory this must have grated on a defeated group and they planned to even the score the Rattlers again raided the Eagles camp and in doing so stole the knives and medals which had just been won upon finding out the Eagles squared off against the Rattlers and a fight looked like it was about to break out a couple of the boys scuffled but quickly this was broken up by the staff the Rattlers observers herded the group back up the path to their camp a staff member returned some of the prizes to the Eagles but it was clear that neither group wanted to have anything to do with the other and thus the experiment now moved into its final stage integration Sharif and his team had created two groups who had become arch enemies this hatred was not from racial religious or cultural backgrounds but purely from being arbitrarily selected into a group by a third party initially it was thought that just exposure of the two groups to one another would increase positive feelings between the two Sharif tried group meals and watching movies in the recreation hall during the scenarios the staff would leave the groups during the initial contact seating was freely available thus giving the opportunity for the groups to intermingle and before each meal or film the groups were made to wait near each other but almost all interactions devolved into arguments and insults during a lunchtime unsurprisingly both groups had chosen seats with one another and again it devolved into insults and even a food fight in order to bring the groups together Sharif decided that stage three would include introducing a common goal the experimenters engineered a full with the water system this was done by turning off the tap from the camps water tank and covering over the area with two boulders it was hoped that a perceived deprivation of water would bring both groups together they were told that vandals had done this before in order to absolve blame from either group or the staff and were told that at least 25 people were needed to find the issue and fix it thus requiring at least both teams to cooperate after the combined effort of both groups fixed the water issue many of the boys went off to catch lizards play and carve wood whistles but interestingly the children weren't working within their groups but had separated off intermingling but the intergroup friction continued to persist when the groups were separated for dinner leading to more insults and arguing another engineer cooperation task was securing the film treasure island the children were told that the camp couldn't afford the $15 for the film as most of the children wanted to see the film it was suggested that both groups could contribute some money after some initial hostilities of saying either group should pay the full amount eventually a mutually acceptable amount was agreed upon where both groups paid an equal sum of $3.50 and the staff paid the rest although $3.50 was not individually equal as the Eagles only had nine members the breakdown of intergroup hostility showed some progress during the negotiations the boys intermingled again by playing and talking the next day the two groups agreed to take turns in going first for lunch and dinner towards the end of stage three a camp out was planned at cedar lake which would involve a truck ride including both groups once at the lake there was another engineered issue this time with the truck requiring all the boys to take part in the tug of war not against themselves but instead against the stricken vehicle after several attempts of pulling the vehicle the truck restarted and both groups erupted into jubilant celebration across group lines the next day a trip to Arkansas was announced this unlike before was seen as agreeable by both parties for the other to come along but a final dinner back at the robbers cave site the experiment is mixed around the seating from before as to encourage more intermingling both groups as they had done before lined up but interestingly after collecting their food all of the boys sat together across group boundaries during the evening's discussion the idea was posited that they all travelled back home on the same bus although a couple of dissenting opinions were voiced the majority seemed to look forward to the proposition of all traveling together even on the journey home and a stop for refreshments the rattlers agreed that a five dollar prize they had one be spent on drinks for everyone regardless of group it seemed as if Sharif's hypothesis was correct in that he could create two groups from almost identical backgrounds to hate one another the experiment also showed that within the groups a hierarchy was formed with high and low status individuals all without the encouragement of the adults it was discovered that in group stability increased when put into competitive situations with an outgroup and outgroup hostility also increased he also discovered that just exposing the two groups without competition during stage three didn't reduce hostility and as such group goals needed to be enacted to try and improve intergroup relations the ultimate result was although intergroup friction is increased when competition is included it can be reduced thus meaning in the wider world intergroup relations can be improved at the end of stage two Sharif found that intergroup friendships were around 93 percent but by the end of the first stage this had dropped to around 75 percent meaning that boundaries have been blurred by the use of superordinate goals the study has been used as a practical example of realistic conflict theory where intergroup hostility can arise as a result of competition over limited resources it doesn't matter however if it's real or perceived this theory has many extensions to explaining racism xenophobia and in general are human desire for tribalism or the exclusion of the other take football or soccer if you're american games for example people from essentially very similar backgrounds shout hatred and abuse to one another in the stands just because two teams are playing against one another on the pitch the spectators probably have more in common with one another than the millionaire sportsmen that they are cheering on but what of the criticism well there is a long list of both moral and scientific issues here morality the use of children who by design were not aware of the experiment couldn't give informed consent and their parents and teachers as well were not given the full concept of what the boys were going to be involved in this however does play into Sharif's stated reliability of the experiment's results but the scientific validity of the study has also been criticized this is due to the odd vibes during the experiment where staff members did not exactly act like there are actually staff instead of breaking up fights they took photographs instead of telling of poor behavior they took notes this was clearly not subtle as the reason for the 1953 study ending early was likely due to the fact the children kept on asking why there were microphones hanging in their camp and the ultimate discovery of a notebook with observations of the children written in the children instead of forming into two groups actually rallied against the experimenters thus scuppering Sharif's theory in the robbers cave experiment of 1954 the assertion of sherry that the adults had no influence over the children is clearly wrong as stage two was manipulated to increase the tension between the groups even one of the group's names the rattlers was influenced by the boys witnessing one of the adults shooting a snake the fact that the staff did not act like normal camp workers could have played up the reaction of the boys to be more aggressive also there was no control group which also brings up issues of the experiment's result validity how can we know for certain if the groups would become hostile have food fights and shout abuse at each other at a normal camp where staff wouldn't intervene and stop the bad behavior furthermore it could be normal for boys who started out as enemies to end up as friends after three weeks regardless of the superordinate goals set out by the experimenters leading to Sharif placing more weight on the results and attributing the children's actions to his realistic conflict theory the study would become a cornerstone of realistic conflict theory and put the Sharif's into the Hall of Fame of experimental psychologists but multiple modern re-evaluations of the experiment have disputed this in Gina Perry's book The Lost Boys which during her research went through all the material from the experiment found that there was more backstage manipulation than originally thought the way the robbers cave experiment book is written glosses over the manipulation in its neutral language as Gina pointed out what is interesting however is how the 1953 study actually proved the better nature of the children in that they stayed friends and turned against the experimenters now where would you rate this experiment on my ethical scale I'm going to say around a seven due to the violence that broke out between the boys and the apparent lack of intervention as well as the lack of informed consent on the part of the subjects this video is a plain difficult production although there's on the channel a creative commons attribution share alike licensed plainly thought videos are produced by me john they're currently windy and wet southeast in corner of london uk help with channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos not on sods as well as hints and future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it's christmas 1953 and new zealand is mourning a tragedy an intercity train from wellington new zealand never arrived at its destination Auckland the missing train was a victim of a flood which caused a bridge collapse across the tongue ee u river 151 would perish as the train was plunged into the river below the bridge the event would go down as one of the worst in new zealand's history and as one of the most unfortunate turn of events as if the train was just a few minutes earlier or later and disaster could have been averted today we're looking at the tangi why disaster and i'll reveal my ratings at the end of the video so let's see if we'll both agree on the rating later on the north island main trunk is the main railway line on new zealand's most populous north island the line connects the country's two main cities Auckland and wellington completed in 1908 it is a marvel of victorian and 20th century engineering the line spans rivers climbed mountains and passes over vast viaducts one such crossing is near the small rural village of tangiwai on the funger ee u river the river flows down the mountain side from crater lake for approximately eight and one-half miles in an easterly direction then it turns to the south at the bottom of a fan runs more or less parallel with a road called the desert road for approximately six miles and then in a south westerly direction towards tangiwai the total distance to tangiwai is approximately 25 miles the river flowing down from crater lake created a risk and that was erosion of its fragile ash banks which in turn would release large quantities of water down the river channel the violence of the flow would also take with it large quantities of material creating a lahar a violent type of mud flow composed of a slurry of pyroclastic material rocky debris and water needless to say this can be horrendously destructive washing away anything in its path the river was spanned by bridge number 136 it was built around 1906 by the public works department the bridge was built to a generic standard design used elsewhere in the country it stood at a length of 198 feet and made use of steel construction supported by eight concrete pillars the spans consisted from north to south of 122 foot 244 foot and 422 foot plate girder spans the bridge design would be criticized later on in that the piers had insufficient foundations but we'll come back to this later on the bridge would suffer a number of damages throughout its working life which required repairs to its foundations and piers the first of such damage occurred in 1925 when a nine foot swell made its way along the river causing a scour on pier fours upstream side above its footing this caused the track on the bridge to be misaligned and resulted in a half inch movement of the structure to fix the damage rocks were placed into the scour but this wouldn't be the last time the bridge would suffer some damage just over 10 years later in March of 1936 the foreman of works reported another scour at piers three and four he recommended 15 wagons of stone for protection this work was completed on the 18th of June 1936 pier three would be damaged yet again in February 1944 after a flood and whirlpool scoured a hole 10 feet in diameter and three feet deep on the upstream side of the pier in June 1946 engineers suggested placing eight five ton concrete protective blocks in the vicinity of pier number four to offer protection from floods and debris the project was completed in July the same year the bridge was closely monitored for the next couple of years but no other issues were reported which leads us on to train 626 departing Wellington en route to Auckland at 3 p.m on the 24th of December 1953 train 626 consisted of a k a class steam locomotive hauling 11 carriages five second class four first class a guards van and a postal van that evening the 467.3 ton 704 foot long formation was carrying 285 passengers and crew many aboard were holiday makers and as the evening set in many had settled down for the night at around 10 20 p.m the train passed through Tangiwai at what eyewitnesses on the station platform thought to be slower than the usual at around 40 miles an hour the reference to line speed was 50 miles an hour apart from it being a little slower than usual nothing else out of the ordinary could be seen as a locomotive and its rake passed through just one mile down the line was bridge 136 and it span over the fungi river as a train approached the Tangiwai end of the bridge the engine crew saw a man alongside the track waving a light strange they thought but soon enough the reason became apparent as the headlight of the locomotive washed over the bridge ahead a section of the track was missing but what couldn't be seen in the December darkness was that a whole section of the bridge had completely failed sending some of the structure into the river below immediately the driver and fireman applied the emergency brakes but it was too late as the train couldn't stop in the distance of available track the locomotive and its tender and the first five carriages went careering off the bridge plummeting into the river below the remaining three first class carriages the guard's carriage and postal carriage remained precariously on the track seal Ellis the man who was waving the light by the side of the railway approached the guard and explained what he had seen the two men made their way to the sixth carriage the first first class carriage which by now was teetering on the edge of the damaged track and attempted to evacuate as many passengers as possible they were the assistance of another passenger managed to evacuate 24 people by smashing out the windows one person wasn't so lucky as the coupling of the carriage failed resulting in the carriage rolling into the river 148 lives were lost to the river including the driver and fireman 22 of the victim's bodies would never be recovered five miles away the wairu military camp dispatched soldiers to assist in rescue operations along with rescue teams by midnight the first survivors were evacuated to wairu a few hours later the first of the dead were recovered and sent to a makeshift morgue more of the dead will be pulled from the river downstream by locals and farmers giving a grim awareness of the disaster six year the victims bodies would be recovered in such ways but the unrecovered victims are thought to have been washed out to sea as many awake for the christmas morning the news is broadcast across the country and the public is made aware of the full scope of the tragedy with so many dead and an apparent sudden unexplained disaster on one of the country's most important railway lines the question of how has to be asked soon after the tragedy investigators were dispatched to the site to pick over the wreckage and the collapsed bridge upon seeing the locations of the carriages and the missing span of the bridge investigators concluded that the 22 foot failed steel girder span must have failed before the train had begun its passage on the bridge thus hinting at something other than the train itself causing the collapse the bridge had the top portion of pier number two broken off and this was lying under the bridge between piers one and two pier number three was smashed above the base into at least four pieces and pier four was completely missing having broken into multiple pieces itself piers one six seven and eight were not damaged but what was the cause of the dramatic damage to the piers well investigators looked into the bridge's past and pointed to the likely cause to be further upstream at the crater lake you see the beginnings of the 1953 disaster goes all the way back to march 1945 and Mount Ruapius eruption the debris from this formed a naturally occurring tepura dam at the crater lake which in turn caused it to fill with water eventually this dam would be insufficient to hold back the lake and sadly the tipping point was the 24th december 1953 this was channeled down the Wangiyu river carrying with it a high content of ash deposited from the 1945 eruption this torrent of effluent smashed into the previously weakened bridge causing pier four to fail sending the span into the river the investigators had to deal with the questions on the bridge's original design suitability but an earlier fire at government buildings before the disaster had destroyed the plans but what we do know is the bridge wasn't suitable or was seriously weakened enough for this particular lahar the disaster would improve the safety in the area as the new zealand railways department will install a lahar warning system upstream to alert train control to high river flows the passerby who alerted the train Cyril Ellis and passenger John Holman were awarded the George Cross for a bravery that day and guard English and passing traveller Arthur D word bell both received the british empire medal for their actions that saved 15 lives sadly the disaster was a pure accident of bad luck although the bridge was likely deficient if the train was early or really delayed the tragic loss of such life might not have happened the bridge would be rebuilt reconnecting the vital railway line for the country so the disaster i'm going to rate here seven on my scale and also seven on my legacy scale do you agree let me know in the comments below this video is a plain default production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john and they're currently wet and windy southeast in corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching frankstein and his monster ever since publication has fascinated popular culture in a book that was originally a warning on the potential horrors of unchecked scientific discovery would actually go on to inspire real life studies in a case of life imitating art in the modern day we possess surgical abilities that would not be out of place in mary shelly's work one of the ultimate goals is that of reviving the dead a skill that would truly prove man to have the abilities of god needed to say this has resulted in a number of experiments and one such would become infamous and even managed to filter its way into pop culture in a number of ways the experiments would be filmed translated into english and distributed and would become referenced in multiple books including work from roll doll tv shows and even music my name is john and today we're looking at the 1940 revival of organisms film and its background my ethical rating will be at the end and welcome to the dark side of science our story starts long before the 1940s and even the soviet union with the birth of a future surgical pioneer Sergei Sergei which brook honenko was born on the 30th of april 1890 in koslov modern day maturensk to a family of the civil engineer brook honenko showed promise from a young age where as seen in his photo he designed and built his own bicycle in his teenage years he would enroll at a college in saratov for his pre-medical education after which moving to the medical facility of the university of mosco for his further education brook honenko would graduate as a doctor in 1914 this should have been the start of a long hospital career but world politics would intervene with the start of the first world war needless to say there was a need for medical staff to deal with a never-ending pile of casualties as such he was brought into active duty with the army as a junior doctor during his service he would see horrific injuries that war can inflict the experiences he gained in treating wounds would influence brook honenko to explore different concepts of keeping a patient alive after injuries to major organs and arteries with extracorporeal circulation as a side note that will make a lot of sense for the later experiments in brook honenko's career here comes my dictionary again extracorporeal circulation is circulation of the blood outside the body as through a heart lung machine or artificial kidney his career in the army would end abruptly when the russian empire pulled out of the first world war to deal with some internal issues and regicide he would return to mosco in autumn of 1917 working for the sanitary control council of soloniki in 1919 he would change jobs working at the military hospital in lefotovo just on the outskirts of mosco as the assistant professor in the clinical pathology department again like during his war years he would experience a wide array of injuries and illnesses in 1923 brook honenko returned to his interest in extracorporeal circulation when he was introduced to a drug suramin he discovered it could be used as an anticoagulant his experimentation at the time used roller pumps to perfect blood flow without the risk of contamination soon enough his experimentation would result in him designing a new machine for extracorporeal circulation heart lung machines were a concept dating all the way back to maximillion von frais early prototype in 1885 but a lack of anticoagulant drugs made the concept impossible to pull off but as we saw with brook honenko he had such a compatible drug three years after his awareness of suramin brook honenko had designed and built one of the first feasible heart and lung machines called the autojector the name to me sounds pretty nightmarish and to be honest how it works is pretty nightmarish too here's a summary of how the autojector keeps a subject alive right well the first gruesome but interesting part of the machine is how it originally oxygenated blood what is pretty efficient at doing this you might think well it's the lungs brook honenko thought why try to better mother nature and for his autojector he made use of real donor lungs brook honenko would employ excise lungs from a donor animal and use two mechanically operated diaphragm pumps with a system of valves the first pump would deliver blood to the oxygenator the donor lungs the second pump returned the now oxygenated blood back into the patient's body the experimental animal and donor animal were both injected with surinam before the experiment to stop the blood from clotting now brook honenko had the machine and the method he set about to test it out on november 1st 1926 the experiment was to use dogs the experimental dog was hooked up to the machine via the cartioid artery and jugular vein the autojector was switched on and adjusted to pump blood at the same flow rate as the dog's heart working in parallel that brook honenko would name later on parallel circulation a ligature was tied around the heart of the dog to stop it from beating at which point the autojector was switched off to allow the animal to go into cardiac arrest once some time had passed the autojector was switched back on and total perfusion was achieved the dog apparently lived for around two hours after its heart stopped but the experiment was brought to an end when the mammary artery burst subsequently killing the dog but the concept was now proven this experiment was the first of its type and marked a milestone for providing blood flow in a patient with an arrested heart in total eight experiments would be conducted by brook honenko with his machine in 1926 he would later say on this series of experiments in principle the artificial circulation may be used for certain operations on the arrested heart however further improvement of the technique is necessary for its practical implementation and improve it he did but the next few years brook honenko experimented with both isolated organs and total body perfusions all using dogs he felt so confident in his method that in 1928 on the 1st of June he demonstrated the autojector to the international audience at the third congress of physiologists of the USSR a year later brook honenko would shock and wow the world with his studies on the methods of artificial blood circulation and blood transfusion where a severed dog head was kept alive with it even reacting to its surroundings opening its mouth and even swallowing a piece of cheese in the late 1920s and early 1940s the autojector was used for hyperthermia based experiments where dogs would be cooled down to the point of cardiac arrest at a temperature of around three degrees centigrade then warmed back up with no long-term damage to the subjects the machine would be further improved upon by creating artificial lungs via a bubble oxygenator in 1939 a series of experiments 12 out of 13 test animals were resuscitated using the heart lung machine after around 10 minutes of circulatory arrest all of the dogs that were brought back to life recovered completely without any apparent neurological damage so confident and successful was brook honenko in the autojector that he decided to show it off in the now infamous movie experiments in the revival of organisms the short movie was intended to showcase the pinnacle of soviet scientific experimentation into extra corporal circulation now i must say it is worth watching the film in full it's only 20 minutes or so and when i watched it i definitely had mixed feelings not only because seeing various dogs being used as test subjects but also well we'll discuss that in a bit the movie successively ramps up the use of the autojector and exhibits various experiments which had been undertaken during the late 1930s firstly we're greeted with an isolated heart pumping with the help of an artificial lung it circulated blood through various tubes and seems to be working rather well outside of its body next we are shown a lung oxygenating blood via rebello's then we are greeted with what seems to be a disembodied dog head connected up to the autojector we're also shown via cartoon the connections between it and brook honenko's machine this part and the next are considered to be the most controversial it is shown being stimulated with its eyes being poked citric acid is also placed around the dog's mouth and it can be seen licking his lips other stimuli are used with a spotlight being shone on the dog's face and a hammer banging the table next to it both of which produce what looks to be an unapproving face as part of the grand finale brook honenko in his film would revive the dead a dog is shown on an operating table it has been given seramin and an anesthetic the blood is then drained from the dog causing cardiac arrest after which the blood is put into a container and then fed into the autojector now that the dog is drained of blood and dead 10 minutes is waited during this time the machine is hooked up to the now deceased animal at roughly 10 minutes after death the autojector is powered up and the pumping of warm oxygenated blood begins lo and behold the dog's heartbeat is shown starting up then not long after it takes its first breath post revival the dog is seen post experiment lying down looking very sorry for itself then around 10 to 14 days later it is seen to be acting as if back to normal the film ends with several dogs being shown to have also been killed to be brought back to life one of whom was dead for a reported 15 minutes some even had gone on to have puppies the film was filmed at the Institute of Experimental Physiology and Therapy in Moscow and was designed to try and appeal to as wide of an audience as possible with its diagrammatic explanation of the experiments and of the autojectors operation to add a level of believability to the production British scientist JBS how Dean introduced the English language version of the film claiming to have witnessed all of the experiments personally the film was distributed across the US by the National Council of American Soviet Friendship not surprisingly a communist socialist sympathetic group now the movie shocked many that saw it and impressed others working its way into American pop culture but the film is most likely a propaganda piece with its experiments potentially staged it is thought by many that it is likely that the final two most shocking experiments were faked for the film when the beheaded dog is introduced to stimuli the way it moves looks like it's still anchored to something and even at one point looks to turn around something I think that might be impossible without a body but a final revival scene the heart of the then dead dog is not shown any type of restarting by massaging or electro shocking instead just reoxygenated blood is all that's needed but although possible it was faked for the film it doesn't mean it didn't happen maybe the filmmakers decided to omit the more intricate details of bringing back a dead dog but a dog head experiment again it although possibly was also faked did actually happen as there are several accounts of earlier experiments being showcased with even photographic evidence of a separated dog head attached to the autojector for example when brook and enko exhibited his head experiment in 1928 to western scientists and released its findings in experiments on isolation of dogs heads my theory is maybe it was faked because the stimuli reactions weren't as impressive in the real experiments as that's shown in the film some of the biggest red flags are that the experiment wasn't shown in full frame and connecting the autojector wasn't shown reportedly some of the witnesses claimed that when they had seen the dog head experiment previously it only lasted a couple of minutes and not the hour was claimed in the film we also need to bear in mind the period in which the film was produced in which propaganda was rife in the Stalinist Soviet Union possibly the film was presented for dramatic effect and maybe the actual results weren't as striking although still fascinating for the camera it should also be stated that the apparent credible witness J.B.S. Howe Dean was an ardent Stalin supporter and also a vocal communist scientists and co-worker of brook and enko nicolai terabinsky published a monograph and reported excellent results of more than 260 open heart operations on dogs in 1940 demonstrating the viability of the device on humans after going as far as he could with the dogs brook and enko and his colleague terabinsky sought to test out the autojector on a human subject but war again would scupper the scientists plans operation barbarossa was unleashed by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union and by 1945 tens of millions will be dead and many parts of the country will be left in ruins between the end of the war and 1951 brook and enko was sent to work at the skilyovsky emergency institute in Moscow during this period he had little chance to develop the autojector but in the early 1950s he returned to testing out his device between 1951 and 1958 brook and enko was the head of the physiology laboratory at the institute of experimental surgical devices and instruments in Moscow he put forward his device for the revival of patients of sudden death but after a number of attempts the machine failed to resuscitate any subjects time was running out for a soviet extracorpore circulation machine although brook and enko also suggested his machine would work for open heart surgery the pioneering autojector would be eclipsed by john hasham gibbon when on the 6th of may 1953 he was able to perform the first successful human open heart procedure using his own machine the final nails in the coffin of the Soviet autojector came when nickolai terabinsky died in 1959 by now brook and enko was the head of the laboratory of artificial circulation at the institute of experimental biology and medicine but just a year after nickolai brook and enko himself would pass away on the 20th of April 1960 in 1965 brook and enko posthumously received the Lenin Prize the highest scientific award in the soviet union the autojector would die with both men and their leaps forward would largely be forgotten to time but the film released in 1940 would serve as a record of the experiment falling into the public domain the machine was a crude method of total perfusion and the series of experiments resulted in a countless number of dead dogs the experiments are remarkably similar to the Vladimir demikov double dog headed studies and the monkey head transplants i covered in the first episode of a dark side of science although animal testing like this makes me a bit uncomfortable the experiments were working towards an admirable goal far less the mad scientist trope in which the film watched without context invokes i'm going to rate this subject around a five or a six as killing dogs is bad but a scientific discovery was really impressive where would you rate the subject one is ethical and nine is truly evil this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike license plain difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently bright and sunny southeastern corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints and future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check my man if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it is june 1889 and a country is in shop an entire community has been washed away and 2 209 people are feared dead a dam has failed sending a deluge downstream the event would become one of the country's worst disasters and would be the measuring stick in which all future tragedies would be compared against the event would permeate itself into the american psyche and leave behind haunting images of death destruction and the thought that at any moment everything you know and love could come to an end today we're looking at the johnstown flood our story starts with a construction project the main line of public works the plan was to provide the best commercial means of transportation between philadelphia and pittsburgh via railways canals and roads part of this project was to create a reservoir for the canal system to supply water during low flow periods and in order to make this happen a dam was needed the commonwealth of pennsylvania set out to build a new dam which would be later known as the south fork starting construction in 1838 the design was to make use of an earth and rock fill arrangement it was around 72 feet high 918 feet long 220 feet wide at its base and tapering off to 10 feet wide at its crest the south fork dam had two means of controlling the reservoir's water level although one had a greater level of control than the other the arrangement was pretty standard for such a construction of its time a control tower was provided for the outlet works and consisted of five cast iron pipes each with a valve for releasing varying amounts of flow of water which ran into a stone culvert with a discharge chamber which in itself led to the downstream face of the south fork dam the second method of level control was the good old fashioned spillway this was cut into the rock along the east abutment and was 70 feet wide although the original plans had actually specified for a minimum of 150 feet the shiny new dam was completed around 1852 and 1853 but the canal network would become a victim of one of the industrial revolution's greatest achievements the railway just about five years after its completion the dam became abandoned and was sold off to the pennsylvania railroad and it is to say the PRR wasn't that bothered with owning a dam and as such this led to the maintenance of the south fork falling pretty low on the company's priorities list in july 1862 just a decade after completion the south fork would experience its first failure the outlet works stone culvert collapsed and a portion of the dam breached gradually draining the lake in half a day now even as i edit this video i'm surprised at just how quickly things fell apart no longer needing the area in which the dam now semi-collapsed lived the PRR set about selling it off as a parcel incorporating the dam and lake in 1875 John Riley a former congressman this now rather large property prospect once again changed hands in 1879 when benjamin ruff took over control he wanted to create a resort for the rich and successful making use of the lake and surrounding area for fishing and hunting in doing so he created the south fork fishing and hunting club but for this new elite playground to be a success the old and partially failed south fork dam needed to be rebuilt rough set about reconstructing the south fork dam but some of the changes to the design would prove to be fatal the five cast iron discharge pipes were no more as before the sale to rough John Riley who was making a loss in his deal with benjamin had removed the metal to sell it off a scrap although i should say this accusation has been disputed over the years the new and so-called improved south fork dam sported a lower crest by two feet no discharge pipes and the failed portion being replaced by fill that consisted of clay brush mining wastes and strangely hay to add further structural issues the dress stone originally placed on the upstream face was not replaced leading to the water to come into direct contact with the main structural material hiding the risk of erosion and seepage with no outlet works the only method of reservoir control was by means of the spillway which if you remember from earlier was already too small for its application on the south fork to protect fishing profits the south fork fishing and hunting club decided to use netting over the entrance to the spillway to prevent any valuable fish being lost to the flow of water but it would not only stop the fish and allow for a buildup of debris reducing the spillway's efficiency all of this made the dam not very resistant to storms and flooding eventually the material used to repair the embankment settled creating a low point on the dam's crest increasing the potential for over topping which would create flow over the already weakened section of the structure after the dam was rebuilt the lake it held back was two miles long about one mile wide and 60 feet deep but a reconstructed structure would cause no end of headaches for the new owners with constant leaks springing out requiring spot repairs of hay and mud jon's town's history spans all the way back to a settlement established in 1791 as the 18th century gave way to the 19th the town saw growth along with the use of pennsylvania mainline canal in which it was a port and key transfer point but things would really start to pick up for the town with the demise of the canals and the rise of the railways almost like a direct opposite to the life of the south fork dam the town which called home to the cambria iron company of jon's town was the leading steel producer in the united states outproducing both steel from pitsburg and cleveland by the 1880s cambria works had grown to become a huge enterprise sprawling over 60 acres in jon's town and employing around 7 000 people this boom had been fueled by the company being the country's main supplier of barbed wire allowing the town's economy to support a population of around 30 000 the area had become known for flooding hotspots towards the end of the 19th century as increased rainfall led to rising water levels in the valley and the rain would blight the area again in 1889 when the streets of jon's town once again could be seen with the sheen of pooling water towards the end of may a low pressure area formed over nebraska and kansas on the 28th of may 1889 two days later the weather was now over western pennsylvania and causing record-breaking rainfall between six and ten inches of rain fell in 24 hours over the region swelling the banks of streams into large torrents some of jon's town's streets were beginning to become flooded in the rainfall leading to many residents being stranded inside their homes on the morning at the 31st of may 1889 the lake conima had become swollen after a night of heavy rainfall the lake level was now near cresting the south fork dam alias unger president of the south fork fishing and hunting club assembled a gang of men to try and save the dam they went to the now clogged spillway which had caught debris in its netting and tried to clear the blockage but a little success unger sent out a messenger to the nearest telegraph station to inform the residents of jon's town below but this would not reach his destination despite the efforts to save the dam the writing was on the wall and unger ordered his men to retreat to high ground at 1 30 p.m the men could see the inevitable begin to unfold as the dam breached between 250 and 255 p.m sending a deluge of water down the valley towards jon's town it would take just over an hour to empty lake conima's 3.843 billion gallons this effluent traveled down the 14 miles towards jon's town picking up debris with the flow the water was slowed down at the conima viaduct but after just seven minutes this failed adding renewed force to the flood waters enroute to jon's town the small town of mineral point was completely washed away the flood next hit cambria ironworks at the town of woodvale picking up with it railway carriages scrap metal and barbed wire just under an hour after the breach of the south fork dam the flood hit jon's town the torrent of effluent traveling at speeds of nearly 40 miles an hour hit buildings people and vehicles the debris that consisted of barbed wire rubble and other material crushed anyone out in the street and bombarded the town's standing structures the water reached stone bridge this became a pinch point where debris was pushed up against it creating a small dam pushing water out in different directions causing other parts of the town to flood eventually the build-up of debris caused a fire adding to the carnage hundreds of residents were stranded and hundreds of the dead were swept away with some reaching as far as sincenaty 777 bodies were never identified and a total of 2,208 deaths were linked to the dam breach around 1600 homes were destroyed and 99 families completely wiped out the cost was approximately 17 million dollars in property damage including four square miles of downtown johnston completely destroyed the cleanup would go on for years but essential services were quickly put back to work within a few days including the railroad and parts of the steelworks although the latter would only resume full operation some nearly 18 months later early rescue and cleanup efforts were hindered by the vast amounts of barbed wire amongst the debris which cling to the ground and caused injuries to any would-be emergency worker on the 5th of june founder clara barton of the american red cross made it to the town leading to the disaster becoming the organization's first major mission the rescue and relief efforts would mean barton would stay at johnstown for five months the disaster had the benefit of being the subject of a large number of photographs which helped in raising funds for the town and its victims but with such destruction and death left in its wake the root cause had to be found and if possible discover who was responsible clearly the cause of the torrent of water was the south fork dam and its severely weakened reconstruction but the conclusion of an investigation at the time hinted that even in its original fully functional state the dam would have failed strangely the report from the american society of civil engineers went unpublished to the public for two years after their initial findings for not wanting to be dragged into any potential litigation the results essentially got the highly wealthy owners of the south fork fishing and hunting club off the hook of responsibility but the public knew differently the club never had to face any legal ramifications being able to write off the event as an act of god but in 2016 a reevaluation of the disaster proved that the extensive and improper modification to the dam was the root cause of it failing although this is long after those responsible could have been given their legal just desserts although legally dodging the liability many of the club's members did pay significant amounts to Johnstown including club co-founder Henry Clay Frick and millionaires like Andrew Carnegie although the victims of the accident didn't feel like they received justice the event became etched into the country's culture leaving a legacy for more than a hundred years this is a plain difficult production all videos are produced by me john in a currently western windy suburban southeast corner of london uk all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share and like licensed help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check up my twitter for all sorts of photos and onto the sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so if you fancy supporting the channel financially you can check them out and all that's left to say is thank you for watching addiction is the curse of the human condition we seem to almost be pre-programmed to latch on to anything that makes us feel good for many our enjoyment of certain activities are manageable but for others it can lead to a downward spiral take work for example many are able to leave their job at the door when it's time to clock off but for others one's career can become an obsession where all they do and think of is their occupation the daily cup of coffee may seem harmless but the headaches and grumpy demeanor would beg to differ when you don't get your caffeine fix because we as a species are so susceptible to addiction scientists have sought out to find out why one such study towards the end of a very drug-influenced 1960s would seek out to find out why we seem to fall so hard when it comes to substance abuse after all we are faced very regularly with the risks of drug use and addiction and yet so many don't heed the warnings the experiment rather than studying human addiction would focus on the animal kingdom and would make use of a bizarre contraption that allowed monkeys to self-administer highly addictive substances such as cocaine, vitamins and opiates the experiment would result in terror for its subjects where overdose bodily disfigurement and mental anguish were just some of the outcomes but the results would only end up proving the obvious that addictive drugs are addictive and as such the study would go down in infamy for its unethical use of its test subjects my name is john and today we're looking at the 1969 self-administration of psychoactive substances by monkey study better known as the 1969 monkey drug trials you're watching the dark side of science it is the 16th of June 1969 and three scientists release a controversial research paper the trio have set out to delve into the darkest depths of addiction but study rather proudly showcases a device that allows their animal test subject to self-administer drugs intravenously but our story starts many years before the controversial study with the budding career of Maurice Severs Maurice Severs was studying for his doctorate in pharmacology in 1928 under the tutelage of Arthur Laurie Tatum at the University of Chicago during his time there his interest was sparked in the study of addiction and its psychological and physiological impact his professor moved to the University of Wisconsin in late 1928 and Severs would follow two years later after completing his PhD and MD during his time with Tatum the two studied opiates cocaine and novel barbiturates sedatives during the late 1920s Severs would release several papers supporting a new theory of opiate addiction his experiments to support his theory involved testing on dogs cats and monkeys to explore the phenomenon of psychological tolerance and how it is linked with physical dependence this theory was coined as dual action theory knowing that human addiction is linked to the high of the drug and the aversion from withdrawal Severs took on the suggestion from Harry Harlow but addiction in animals is a delayed condition response where animals learn to associate the administering of the drug with positive sensations Severs combined Harlow suggestion with his own theory of addiction as euphoria from the drug combined with relief from the draw in order to create addicts in his experiments Severs employed a seven day doses schedule with only a large enough dose to create a small reaction from the subject the dose was incrementally increased and it was found that after a month noticeable behaviors were exhibited by the subjects such as excitement when it was injection time the subjects would even show sub dominant body languages towards the administrator during this period of the 1930s Severs developed a scale to quantify the effects of withdrawal in his subjects which by now included dogs rats and monkeys this included noting certain behavioral traits such as clutching at the stomach and chasing the hand holding the hypodermic needle before administration during the 1930s the National Research Council set out to try and find a non-addictive morphine derivative which pushed Severs studies into the forefront and also helped out with funding but as the 1930s drew to an end and the decade gave way to the 1940s this search would be put on the back burner due to the Second World War and as such this affected Severs during the 1950s Severs research was becoming less relevant and as such he sought out to revamp his experiments to try and simulate the more behavior-driven model of addiction instead of a regimented single daily dose model Severs set out to mimic a more human form of dosage for example multiple doses in one day he would also further modify his experiments to allow the animals to stealth administer and that leads us onto the infamous monkey drug trial Severs teamed up with another two scientists Gerald Diano and Timojo Yanagita and planned the experiment to take place at Michigan University the substances to be explored were morphine, codeine, cocaine, amphetamine, pentobarbituril, ethanol and caffeine the experiment set out to explore drug addiction of non-physiological substances i.e drugs that don't give you a physical withdrawal but can cause psychological addiction at the time being able to model this type of addiction was difficult when working under Severs dual action theory of euphoria of the drug and feared the pain of withdrawal as drugs such as cocaine don't create a physiological addiction but are very reinforcing in humans leading to a psychological dependence in order to test this a method of self-administration was needed and this had already been tested on rats in 1962 by a scientist called Weeks Weeks had pioneered a method of conditioning rats to self-administer morphine with the use of a lever which delivered a dose intravenously to the animal interestingly the animal would continue to self-administer the drug maintaining a dependent state similar to the way in which a human addict would do so another study in 1964 by Thompson and Schuster also employed intravenously delivered morphine but in monkeys that had been restrained this study set out to see the reinforcing capabilities of morphine versus food but they didn't look to see if they could produce an addict from just a spontaneous lever pull the Severs new study this method would be used as a basis for a drug delivery in monkeys but with a wider variety of drugs crucially the new experiment would try and find if after the first injection of any drug by spontaneous lever press would the participants continue to seek reinforcement by increasing the number of lever presses and maintain a pattern of self-administration over longer periods of time thus if a continued behavioral pattern of self-administration was observed then a psychological dependency could be demonstrated each monkey was housed in a small cubicle 36 inches high 30 inches wide and 26 inches deep the floor had a mesh screen with a pan underneath that facilitated ease of cleaning with it being flushed every four hours there is also a panel with two switches mounted on the back wall of the cubicle these were key to testing the animals drug dependence the first when activated administered a dose of the drug to the animal the second made all the same sounds as the dose but just re-delivered the drug back into the reservoir this was to see if the monkey was seeking the drug or just playing with the switch both switches would be swapped around at random intervals there was also a drinking fountain next to the switches for water and thus most of the monkey's basic needs were met the infusion machine could also be programmed to deliver a dose as well as a manually controlled on top of the operant control from the switch the monkeys were intravenously connected to the drug infusion unit via a catheter which terminated at the right atrium of the animals heart to hold the animal and catheter together the monkeys were attached to a metal harness which itself was attached to a restraining arm which allowed movement around the cubicle 25 seconds was required to administer the drug and another 25 seconds was needed to refill the syringe this helped restrict the number of doses the machine could administer a dose in four different ways one by monkey alone two by automatic timer three by the timer if the monkey fails to press the lever within a predetermined time and four by the monkey with a timer blocking the circuit after injection preventing the monkey from taking the next injection until predetermined time had a lapse each monkey was taken from a pre-established breeding colony at the university the experimenters aimed for weights of subjects to be around three and a half to four kilograms the subject is placed in the harness and restraining arm and on average an acclimation period of around two to four days was required for each monkey to get used to their new situation then the catheter was to be surgically implanted into the jugular vein under barbiturate anesthesia post-surgery saline solution was injected into the catheter every three to six hours until the wound had healed this roughly took five days after which the subject was ready for experimentation after fully recovered the monkey is introduced to the switches in its cubicle at this point the active switch that is the switch that can administer through the catheter is only able to give a dose of saline solution a signal light is placed above the switch to give a visual indication to the monkey that pressing the switch will result in a dose but the next few days a baseline is recorded of the amount of times the subject presses the switch for the saline dose after the control period the test drug was introduced for the first time it was found that most subjects would either keep on pressing the switch for saline or after a few days lose the novelty interest in the case of the former the introduction of the test drug was pretty easy as the monkey would self dose as it had done with the saline however the latter would require a little more incentive this was a raisin taped to the switch after the first dose of drug was received positively then only two to three raisin incentives were needed to condition the subject to believable equals drug mechanism as multiple monkeys were being employed for looking at various different drugs understandably not all responses to the drugs were positive this is where the automatic dose function of the dose machine comes into play if the monkey didn't take to the test drug initially a potential dependence could be made by timed intervals of the drug administration if the animal began to have a positive preference for the drug then an increase in self administration would be seen however if after one month the monkey still didn't show a preference for the drug then it would be deemed that the animal hadn't developed a psychological dependence now the experiment was really multiple individual experiments with its own group of monkeys free substance and as such the length of the study varied by drug I'll go through each one in a different order to the 1969 research paper and instead of order of outcome for the participants best to worst Nalafine this study lasted a month as none of the participants initiated self administration and after automatic doses ended withdrawal only lasted around two days caffeine two of the four monkeys failed to initiate self administration of caffeine one initiated and one failed to initiate self administration although priming with automatic injections caused the latter to begin self administration the pattern of self administration of caffeine was in all cases sporadic and irregular resulting in no deaths or noticeable withdrawal effects morphine this experiment lasted a long time and was a substance the experimental team had the most experience with 11 monkeys were used and three failed to self administer but after a little encouragement all became drug dependent during mechanical failures the monkeys showed withdrawal symptoms and were observed rapidly pushing the lever frantically trying to get another hit this part of the study lasted 16 months and apart from being morphine addicts and being dopey compared to their control counterparts the general health of the participants was good it was seen that for the first seven to eight weeks the participants increased their dose eventually evening out although one increased the dosage for 30 weeks no one died during this substance study amphetamines all five of the monkeys initiated self administration and not long showed signs of hallucinations plucking the fur off their arms but none died however by the end of the study period the participants were noticeably distressed cocaine four monkeys were used to study the effects of cocaine initially only half began to self administer they found that after 30 days one of the monkeys had died of an overdose in order to increase the length of the study limits to amounts of cocaine was implemented after the 30 day period the monkeys began withdrawn stopped eating and showed signs of hallucinations some bit off their fingers and scratched off their skin they pressed both levers and were noticeably confused ethanol four of the five monkeys in this experiment initiated self administration but for the first few months self administration was interrupted by days of voluntary abstinence these gaps would reduce as time went on and the reactions from the animals was similar to what would be expected in a drunk human drowsiness lack of spatial awareness and tiredness when withdrawal was tested the animals became sick experienced tremors and even showed signs of hallucinations two would die but not from overdose instead asphyxiation during their sleep from respiratory obstruction coding this involved five monkeys and only lasted for eight weeks four started self administration with only one needing to be initiated by the use of the automatic doses the dose rate increased as each subject continued to self administer but after six weeks the first monkey died due to convulsions because of overdose and by week eight all of the others were dead also from severe convulsions now the experiment highlighted some interesting results because previous experiments had made use of psychologically dependent animals i.e. they had been exposed to the substance by operant conditioning the 1969 study however by using non psychologically dependent animals who were naive to the effects of the drugs showed that addiction in this case was chosen by the subjects to keep themselves under the influence much like how humans can continue their dependency even after the face of negative ramifications such as familial social and monetary problems stemming from their addiction although a course of withdrawal also acts as punishment for not continuing to take the drug what they also found was that not all monkeys began self administration and needed the automatic doses to become hooked this shows that some are more predetermined for addiction than others much like in humans by making use of cocaine and amphetamine in the study it was shown that addiction is more likely caused by a psychological rather than physiological means as both the substances don't create a physical dependence now these results are very interesting and help provide a greater illumination of drug addiction but it was controversial not in its results but in its method the experiment isn't cited in multiple most unethical studies lists for a reason now i did mention harry harlow earlier in the video and the criticism of this study and harlow's work follow pretty much the same lines that is the unethical use of animals where they essentially were tortured and killed during the experiment through the creation of long-term drug exposure although the experiment hasn't had as much exposure as say the pit of despair and the monkey mother the trauma inflicted on the animals is no lesser an affair see this career wouldn't be negatively affected by the study and he would continue to use a similar setup to explore the link between nicotine and addiction the study has become one of the keystone cases in anti-animal testing movements as the experiment seemingly ignores the hellsinky declaration where the welfare of animals used for research must be respected this is especially saddening as the results were essentially in its most simple term drugs known to be addictive are actually addictive i'm going to rate this subject around a four my ethical scale do you agree let me know in the comments this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in the currently bright and sunny southeast and corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints and future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it is the morning of june 8th 1998 and for the workers at the debruce grain elevator wichita kansas it is like any other day they work at the guiness book's world record holder for the largest grain elevator the structure is truly an impressive site with 310 grain storage silos and being roughly half a mile in length reportedly if storing wheat exclusively it can supply the wheat for all the bread consumed in the united states for nearly six weeks however this seemingly ordinary monday morning would be the backdrop to a disaster an explosion would spread a fireball across most of the vast structure killing and injuring several workers on site the disaster would become another in a long list of events linked to from an outsider's perspective a rather innocuous item dust but for those in the know grain dust is a horrific fuel for fires my name is john and today we're looking at the debruce grain elevator explosion our stories beginnings go all the way back to the start of humans becoming an agrarian species okay maybe for brevity i'll start a bit later on in human history there is extensive evidence of bread making in ancient egypt okay okay i'll bring it forward a bit more making use of machines to help in the processing of grain goes back surprisingly far to water powered grain meals of asia miner before 71 bc over the coming centuries thousands of grain meals would pop up along rivers across the world like with most tool driven industries the grain processing world would make giant leaps forward in grain production during the industrial revolution the industrial revolution changed human history forever where workers were brought out from the countryside into the factories a side effect of this was a population boom which necessitated ever more food production the improved efficiency in farming milling and bread production because the industrial revolution meant that ever more storage was needed to feed the ever growing population as such grain storage solutions became a very important cog in the machine of food production with the advent of the steam engine greater power was available to enable transport of grain via conveyor belts the first steam powered grain elevator is credited to buffalo new york in 1843 early elevators were housed in wooden structures and produced an insane amount of dust and as such something that went hand in hand with these buildings was explosions and fires let's talk about why grain dust is such a big issue with fires you see grain when processed and transported creates fine dust particles which hang around in the air fine dust has a greater surface area compared to their mass and due to solids only being able to burn on their surface i.e the area that has access to oxygen dust particles can burn much quicker than many other solids the small size of each particle means little energy is also needed to catch fire if in high enough concentrations just a small spark can cause combustion and grain elevators with their power sources of steam diesel petrol or electric being a potential ignition source poorly maintained bearings or a small static shock being all that's needed to start an explosion as technology improved bigger and bigger grain elevators would be built eventually culminating in the debruce grain elevator with each increase in size so did the scale of its disasters for example the washburn mill explosion of 1878 the west to go explosion in 1977 and in the 1990s debruce would be no different but first let's look at the origin of the debruce elevator in the early 1950s the garvey grain company is overseeing a new construction the contractor charmers and burton of hutchkinson kansas are building a new grain storage complex completing it in 1953 the massive building consists of a tall square headhouse centered in line between two identical arrays of grain silos 30 feet in diameter and 120 feet high arranged free abreast but soon this is not enough for the garvey grain co and the facility is again placed under construction being extended symmetrically on each end an additional 33 silos are added leading to a total of 310 every inch of usable area is utilized not just the circular silos but even the star like shapes between after the extension the complex is a whopping 2,716 feet long and 92 feet wide the headhouse was the centerpiece to the whole complex and in all intents and purposes is the most important part of the facility's ability to sort and store grain let's look at the grains journey right well delivery to the site can come in two ways by rail or road let's just say rail car for now it is emptied into a dumper pit below the headhouse here there is a small by comparison conveyor belt this belt takes the grain to the bottom of the elevator debruce has four of these and they consist of a belt with buckets attached for scooping up the grain the elevator takes the grain all the way up to the top of the headhouse from there it is sent down two shoots into bins where it is weighed then the grain is dropped either onto a looped conveyor belt or back down to a rail car now the loop belts are pretty impressive there are four and each is a continuous 3000 foot long conveyor these run along the top of the silos from the gallery floor level to the headhouse all the way along the top of the silos just to clarify there are two in each direction to the south and north wings of the complex grain runs along the top of the silos on the conveyor belts away from the headhouse along the gallery where a device called a tripper diverts the grain into the selected silo the conveyor belt continues along the entire length of the silo array and down the end of their respective end this belt now goes underground underneath the silos in two tunnels per array one for each belt here is where grain can be emptied from a silo where the conveyor belt transports it back to the headhouse for the process to essentially repeat the tunnels underneath the silos have connecting passageways called crossovers these allowed staff to access either tunnel when undertaking work but there is one big issue was such an impressive example of storage and transportation and it has plagued the industry for all of its history that is of dust you see having such massive belts there are multiple take-up pulleys to facilitate the constant flexing expansion and contraction of the belts this produced vast amounts of grain dust in both the galleries and the tunnels but with a problem there was an apparent solution that was in the form of pneumatic dust control and filtration systems garvey grain company had installed pneumatic dust control systems throughout the elevator complex the complex will be taken over by de bruce grain a company that was formed in 1978 the site had several tragedies over its operation with two deaths from being trapped in confined spaces in 1978 and 83 respectively upon taking over the company reportedly spent around $100,000 on updating the dust collection system but this would prove to be not enough over the complex's operation several fires had occurred but luckily the actions of staff had stopped any further spread a fire in early June 1998 spread in the south array but was subsequently extinguished minutes from the accident report pegged the fire to a faulty bearing but history would repeat itself one week later on the 8th of June 1998 the 20.7 million bushel storage capacity de bruce grain elevator was very much below full when it was storing roughly 7 million bushels but this by no means meant it was safer at roughly 918 a fire broke out on the east tunnel of the south array quickly the flames ignited the dust that coated the tunnel floor the heat and pressure caused a dust explosion to occur the blast wave was directed down the tunnel causing further dust to ignite this meant heat was spread to the conveyor belt in the north tunnel through the crossover tunnels the burning grain and dust swept along both tunnels towards the headhouse as the heat and shock waves continued along the structure several silo roofs were blown off the dusty basement of the headhouse blew out spreading hot grain and flames up the four elevators blowing out the front and back of the building a fireball was created in the explosion and traveled along the south and north galley away from the headhouse the blast then traveled back down the conveyor belt tunnels but this time on the north array continuing to blow out concrete chunks from the structure it was estimated that at least 10 blasts occurred resulting in almost every section of the building seeing some form of damage although the explosions happened in such a short period of time the heat generated would result in burning grain for weeks by 945 a request for all on-duty rescue team members was sent out but several staff on duty at the time were missing the surviving grain had spilled and filled the exposed tunnels leaving rescue and impossible and complex task two workers were killed instantly in the blast 11 were injured with some even stranded on various sections of the building's rooftop a helicopter and crane was used to rescue these workers on the next day some 90 rescue workers from wichita, Nebraska and Oklahoma were digging with shovels and bulldozers whilst trying to rescue the missing workers by 11th the death toll would be up to five as bodies were recovered amongst the wreckage rescue workers continued to search the south array for the final person but sadly their body would be discovered in the east tunnel but with the grain elevator in ruins and seven now dead the key question had to be answered what was the cause of the debruce elevator explosion investigators from osha arrived on the site on the 22nd of june and started immediately gathering eyewitness and physical evidence several witness accounts pointed towards the south array being the beginning point of the disaster in the recovery works a lot of tangible evidence was lost as parts of the structure were removed to gain access to victims bodies the ignition source was located in an overheated bearing on the south array east tunnel conveyor belt the same area were just a week before there had been a fire disaster could have been averted if the bearings had been given simple grease applications it was also found that the dust collection system had been out of use for nearly a year and no policy of manual dust clearing had been implemented it was discovered that in some places even after the fire and explosions that dust was still at a depth of seven inches thus the stage was set for the 8th of june even though the blatant warning signs were there the debruce disaster is a classic case of poor maintenance and poor management where the workers become the victims of cost cutting osha cited debruce grain in december 1998 for violations of grain handling standards the company paid a fine of $650,000 in the early 2000s but this wouldn't be the end of deaths linked to the grain industry as a whole in the us or even the elevator in wichita two more would die in the rebuilt grain facility after debruce's merger with gavel on grain in 2018 after being buried in grain on site now where would you rate this disaster i'm going to put into four on my disaster scale as well as a four on my legacy scale this is a plain difficult production all videos are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently sunny southeastern corner of london uk help channel grow by liking commenting of subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching this video is the third in a series on the chenobal disaster the first video started with the precursor event the leningrad 1975 meltdown the second video titled chenobal part one covers the fateful failure of the rbmk at chenobal number four and finally this video which will look at the aftermath and clean up from one of the world's worst pollution events i'd recommend watching the previous two videos if you haven't done so already but now let's begin the final episode of my chenobal series it is february 2022 and russian soldiers have crossed the belarusian- ukrainian border and have been ordered to occupy the chenobal exclusion zone the site offers political capital in the russian invasion it has the potential to be a future bargaining chip for any negotiations but maybe more importantly it represents a logistic benefit in that it is in a direct line between belarus and kiv the ukrainian guards are arrested and bundled into a basement the technical staff however are allowed to continue their work keeping the site relatively safe all around the site of the 1986 chenobal disaster russian soldiers dig in they excavate trenches and make dugouts either from ignorance blindly following orders or the fear of catching a ukrainian bullet have led these men to be digging up some of the world's most contaminated soil reportedly they even dig up parts of the infamous red forest although an estimated 1500 soldiers have been told to hold the area a reported 10 000 vehicles have driven through the exclusion zone potentially spreading contaminated soil for hundreds of miles towards the end of march and with hopes of a lightning invasion of ukraine fading away the soldiers are ordered to withdraw this is the most recent chapter in the chenobal story but it only represents a small part of the legacy that continues to cast a shadow over the region my name is john and today we're looking at the cleanup and containment of the chenobal nuclear reactor disaster it is april 1986 and soviet authorities are desperately trying to take stock of the unfolding nightmare at chenobal nuclear power station in the immediate days and weeks after reactor four's failure focus was firmly put on trying to contain the spread of radiation this involved the use of personnel to remove debris from the turbine hall roof in preparation for the construction of the sarcophagus as well as miners working below the reactor hall to install a shield to prevent the core from melting through to the water table these people were known as the liquidators but as i alluded to in my previous video this was just the tip of the human iceberg you see the term liquidator is actually a bit of a catchall that covers the first response teams all the way to the police on the streets directing personnel and vehicles and the doses they received reflected the work they undertook with an official death toll of 28 from radiation sickness in 1986 some 600 000 would be involved in the wider region cleanup activities between 1986 and the present day but in the immediate aftermath of the core uncovering and 10-day fire a massive region wide project was beginning to form in evacuation and decontamination of a 30 kilometer radius exclusion zone the soviet authorities were eager to begin cleaning activities as quickly as possible in a case of trying to snatch some kind of victory from the jaws of defeat if the affected regions could be repopulated quickly then maybe just maybe it would soften the international embarrassment and reclaim some glory for the socialist utopia the ussr claimed to be however this ambition to clean up as quickly as possible came at a cost much like the men sent to top the roofs of the reactor buildings to collect contaminated rubble the exclusion zone will require people and lots of them to work for hours days weeks and months on end amongst the fallout needless to say the health of many would become a long-lasting legacy the exclusion zone was initially an arbitrary 30 kilometer radius around reactor four and was split up into three areas and as such different protective clothing and precautions were required the first of which was a 10 kilometer radius around the nuclear plant and was designated the black zone this had radiation levels of over 200 micro seabets an hour if you were evacuated from here you'll never be allowed to return home the next area was called the red zone and had radiation levels of between 50 and 200 micro seabets an hour and here evacuees might be able to return once radiation levels normalize the final area was the blue zone with levels between 50 and 30 micro seabets an hour here children and pregnant women were evacuated throughout 1986 the region was home to approximately 120 000 people spread out amongst Pripyat the city built for the workers at the plant Chernobyl and just under 200 smaller settlements a total of 92 000 would be evacuated throughout the summer but the number would rise in the wider region with children being evacuated as far away as Kiev as a side note the exclusion zone was home to a pretty horrific local landmark known as the partisan tree and was essentially used by the Nazis as their very own Ukrainian Tibern tree soviet soldiers and partisans were hung from the tree during the second world war by the invading Germans it is an extraordinary looking tree i mean just look at this picture it is the stuff of nightmares and actually survived 1986 by quite a few years all the way into the 1990s surprising as it was only 1600 meters from reactor four its striking trident shape became somewhat of a local icon but i'd aggress as time went on the boundaries of the zones began to follow the areas more contaminated than arbitrary lines on the map you see the wind in the following days and weeks after the disaster dictated the hot spots of contamination although the plant was in Ukraine some of the most affected areas were in Belarus as time went on the exclusion zone would expand encompassing an area of 2600 kilometers squared but contamination wasn't limited to just the exclusion zone officially to enter the exclusion zone you would need to pass multiple checkpoints and sanitation stations the closer you got to the black zone the more protective equipment was required from a simple mask at the end of the zone to full hazmat towards the epicenter but as the full scope of the cleanup work became ever more apparent for the liquidators some of these rules were relaxed the zone by the summer increasingly looked like a military camp with cleanup teams billeted intense some higher-ranking officials however had taken up residence in the abandoned city of Chernobyl where the nuclear power plant got its name from as april gave way to may and some of the areas have been evacuated the mass cleanup began the task of cleaning up the area would officially and I say in quotation marks start off by a team of dosimetrists driving through the area in a specially shielded vehicle they would work out the safest way to enter and exit an area as well as get readings of the radiation any workers would be exposed to this would determine how long a worker could operate in an area a limit of 25 runkins was set once this was reached the worker should be rotated to a different role away from any contaminated area although in reality this limit was exceeded where the ready-supply of willing volunteers gradually dwindles away once given the okay to enter liquidators would have a free stage process of cleaning up the first was to remove the top layer of soil the official depth was 30 centimeters but reports seem to suggest that as little as 10 centimeters was taken in some places and as much as 50 centimeters in others ranging from hand tools up to diggers the liquidators removed the soil and placed it into metal containers that were sent to a radioactive waste dump the soil was contaminated with but not limited to strontium 90 cesium 137 and plutonium the next stage was to soak everything houses roads heavy equipment and vehicles in a special solution the water then was as best as possible collected and again placed in metal containers to be sent to a waste facility the final stage was to spray the ground with another solution which created a film to encapsulate radioactive dust to then be scooped up and again sent to a waste facility but that is really just the tip of the iceberg in many areas within the exclusion zone houses had to have their roofs removed and replaced roads had to be machine washed or even re ass faulted vences replaced water pipes removed and replaced and new wells dug up to 60 000 buildings were cleaned including 500 population centers of varying sizes conditions for the workers were not great which led to many volunteers refusing to work every person was meant to be issued with a personal dosimeter but unsurprisingly due to the vast scale of the cleanup project this didn't happen many continue to be housed or better described not housed in tents even after proper accommodation was apparently allocated in november 1986 control of the cleanup and remediation project was taken over by a new production association cobinat the organization was based in chenople city and was tasked with operating and decommissioning the npp continuation of decontamination efforts run the supply lines into the zone and oversee the construction of a new city outside the zone for displaced persons the city would be called slavutage but we will come back to this a bit later one of the most polluted areas known as the red forest 10 square kilometers of woodland had its pine trees bulldozed and buried the area was then covered in sand and replanted with new pine saplings the area got its name from the color the trees went after becoming contaminated and subsequently dying but where did the liquidators come from well really it was a mixture initial attendants were ordered to be there for example the firefighters minors transport workers police and military personnel reservists were also employed and any who refused was socially and politically punished but a large proportion were volunteers some were drawn by the money on offer others a sense of public duty and many were students training to become firefighters police or ambulance workers there were many cases of liquidators keeping on working past their 25 runtkins due to the lack of replacement and with others continuing due to bravado the overexposed liquidators have cast a long shadow over the region and has become a medical and social issue even till today it is estimated that 600,000 people deemed liquidators took part in the cleanup needless to say this has proven a terrible headache for healthcare infrastructure in the region liquidators would work on different parts of the exclusion zone for many decades to come strangely although abandoned pripyat swimming pool was kept in use until 1998 for exercise for inner zone workers depending on who's asked the time required for the exclusion zone or locally known as a zone of alienation to become habitable again ranges from between 320 and 10,000 years the former figure was from the ukrainian government and the latter from green peace wildlife within the exclusion zone flourished with nature taking back the previously human occupied areas with no pesky people around to encroach upon their habitat animals populations have soared with even bear sightings animals that were pretty rare pre 1986 studies on birds from the more contaminated areas have shown to have smaller brains than that of species from healthier areas mutation deformations have been observed and population densities are noted to be lower in high contaminated areas throughout the cleanup of the different zones and their eventual return to nature the Chernobyl nuclear power plant loomed in the distance including is often forgotten still running reactors but what of the other reactors the self-deconstruction of unit four didn't negate the need to safely operate the other three operational reactors it didn't even immediately put an end to units five and six which were planned and under construction based with the prospects of energy shortages reactors one two and three were allowed to continue operation by the local authorities the USSR had no choice anyway as its economy wasn't in the best shape and with nuclear power any option would cost a lot of money if they shut down and decommissioned the reactors they would incur the cost of dismantling and dealing with the waste something that has recently started at the Dungeons nuclear power plant in Kent needless to say they needed more nuclear waste like a hole in the head also once gone where are you going to get a power source to pick up the deficit the closure of Chernobyl would create you'd have to build multiple more conventional power plants all the which costs money this left at least for the short term the less costly option of keeping the remaining reactors online because at Chernobyl the reactors were of two designs being that one and two were of first generation and three and four of second generation rbmk the units were paired up this meant to safely operate unit three the connecting areas with four had to be filled in with concrete but the early 90s would see another accident at Chernobyl just a couple of months after ukrainian independence was declared unit two experienced a fire in its turbine hall on the 11th of october 1991 the event wrote off unit two resulting in it requiring decommissioning the fire showed the ongoing risk of operating the plant the first generation rbmk design was showing its age and after the fire was most certainly proving to be a liability because of this a deal was struck between several international agencies including the iaea requiring Chernobyl npp to be shut down and decommissioned this started in 1996 with unit one going offline followed by unit three four years later on the 15th of december 2000 the president of ukraine lenid kuchma turned off reactor number three in an official ceremony although now officially shut down there was an even bigger issue to deal with all of that used fuel the origin site was not sufficient for all the additional waste meaning a new site was required in 1999 a contract to construct a dry waste management area designated isf-2 was signed 12 years later construction began being completed in 2017 isf-2 became the world's largest nuclear fuel storage facility and is estimated to be able to hold more than 21,000 fuel assemblies for at least a hundred years i mentioned in my Chernobyl part one video the construction of the sarcophagus but this wasn't the magic bullet of containment i mean it wasn't ever intended to be permanent because of the speed in which it was built and the amount of radiation it would be subjected to that would eventually cause damage to the structure such intensity was the radiation during the sarcophagus's construction that crane operator cabs had to be lined with thick lead shielding and even working times were closely monitored the sarcophagus made use of some of the walls of the reactor building to support the main roof beam this helped with the speed of installation and although reinforced in places serious damage had been received during the accident multiple boreholes were drilled into the roof to facilitate exhausting and filtering of radioactive gases when it was completed in november 1986 the sarcophagus held in 200 tons of reactive lava like corium 30 tons of highly contaminated dust and 16 tons of uranium and plutonium by 1988 assessment of the structure showed its life expectancy to be a maximum of 30 years this was probably ambitious and as such the international community started to show signs of wanting to help soon enough a more refined form of confinement was beginning to be conceived the sarcophagus was the best in a bad situation and a new safe confinement was intended to go over the sarcophagus and the reactor building after being successfully installed the original confinement structure will then be demolished it is truly an impressive idea requiring the newly independent Ukrainian government to hold an international competition for proposals to replace the sarcophagus in 1992 but it would take over a decade of planning and design competitions but in 2004 a tender was announced generating two bids sadly this wouldn't lead to much eventually a consortium of french companies would be awarded the contract in september 2007 21 years after unit four turned its fuel into molten lava construction costs were estimated at $1.4 billion with a project timeline of five years spoiler alert they may have had to have doubled that but let's look at the design of the new confinement structure the 100-year life expectancy structure consists of 13 arches assembled 12.5 meters apart with a height of 110 meters between the arches a tubular steel lattice was built which was then clad with three layers totaling a thickness of 10 meters polycarbonate panels cover each arch to prevent the accumulation of radioactive particles and warm areas circulated to reduce the risk of corrosion the structures width is 165 meters and is long enough to cover the entirety of unit four and its sarcophagus the height is oversized to allow machinery to be attached to the arches to allow for dismantling of the original structure even more fascinating is that it was built not over the reactor but to its side meaning that upon completion of construction it was designed to slide over unit four it was built on retaining walls independent from the damaged reactor building allowing for a full demolition of the old structure construction began in 2010 and two years later the first steel sections were beginning to be erected in April 2014 the first steel section was moved into a parking position to allow further arch construction and two years later in April 2016 the final arch was completed just a few months after that the vast structure was getting ready to be moved into its final resting place after 15 days of movement on the 29th of November 2016 the new containment structure was in position but yet again another two years would be needed to finish off the project officially when it ended in July 2019 with the sarcophagus being sealed under the monumental steel structure at the time of its movement it was the largest movable man-made structure in the world and the project's final price tag was over 2.1 billion euro although delayed it is a success but this only marks the start of the reactor's dismantling project dust within the shelter is constantly monitored with hundreds of sensors all throughout the structure the radiation exposure of staff is recorded and tallied up allowing for a maximum yearly dose of 20 millisieverts or apparently 12 minutes of standing on the sarcophagus roof so far the whole disaster has cost 68 billion dollars and has affected millions of lives and it looks like it will continue to do so less than 100 deaths are officially linked to the disaster but the long-term effects have caused increased numbers in thyroid cancers birth defects and infant mortality in 2019 a gradual but worrying rise in neutron rates started to be recorded these were thought to be coming from the depths of the damage fuel in the reactor hall it is thought strangely that the drying of water in the reactor hall basement instead of stopping a chain reaction by removing a moderator was actually doing the opposite although to much relief the steady increase of neutrons started to peter out in 2021 unit falls ability to surprise the international community is clearly still a looming specter reminding us we still aren't finished COVID of course affected work on sites slowing down remediation works but just as we thought things couldn't get any worse the risks of one of the world's most contaminated sites came back into the news headlines and this brings us back to the Russian soldiers in the exclusion zone junior initial occupation of the Ukrainian Russian war power was cut to the power station for three days requiring technicians to beg borrow and steal fuel to power generators but with Russia changing its target from Kiev to the Donbas soldiers left the exclusion zone their occupation has made the site far more dangerous as in their wake land mines and contaminated equipment has been left behind but although the occupation of the region represents a political and environmental disaster amazingly scenes of defiance was shown in the city of slavutich the home of many evacuees from Pripyat Russian troops entered the city and detained the mayor Yuri Formitiev outraged by this locals took to the streets to protest the occupation even flashbangs and warning shots from the Russian forces failed to disperse the crowd seeing such resistance to occupation the soldiers agreed to leave and release the mayor after the Russian withdrawal from the exclusion zone Ukrainian soldiers and national guards went in to examine the abandoned dugouts and trenches little precautions seem to have been taken by the soldiers and it is likely this will come back to haunt them in later life some of the radiation monitors found dates back to the 1950s and were far from capable of providing any benefit contamination is likely to be spread to Belarus throughout Ukraine and even back to Russia Chernobyl would likely be in news cycles for decades to come as political scientific and economic uncertainty can all affect the management and clean up operations right where it goes without saying with such a massive disaster as Chernobyl this video is just the tip of the molten uranium iceberg and I strongly recommend having a look at the references in the video description for further reading this should be my last video on Chernobyl but will probably change when we find out the true scale of the Russian army's contamination spread the human face it makes us who we are it is the centre of our senses and as such it is vital in the way we communicate but not what you think yes we use our mouths to talk but our faces are much more than that for broadcasting our thoughts and feelings just one look at a person's expression can tell you so much about the emotional state of the individual a smile a frown a scowl each one can tell you how to interact with someone although this is something we take for granted as a natural part of the human condition some scientists have looked to categorize and study our facial expressions one such study took place in 1924 and in order to create genuine reactions in its test subjects various stimuli were used which would bizarrely culminate in the participants being asked to behead a rat in order to track their facial expressions my name is john and today we're looking at the 1924 facial expression experiment welcome to the dark side of science carney landis was born on the 11th of january 1897 in west alexandria ohio a small town with a population of around 700 at the end of the 19th century carney would attend state university where he majored in psychology graduating in 1921 study would not end for landis however when he gained his masters a year later from dartman college in 1922 this was whilst he was working as a psychology instructor upon completion of his masters landis moved to the university of minnesota to study for his doctorate during his education landis read various scientific studies into facial expressions one of which was darwin's the expression of the emotions of man and animals his third book in his series of works on evolution the book looks to delve into emotions of humans and animals alike and features multiple pictures of faces in various different emotional states but the animal kingdom darwin shows various expressive movements of dogs cats horses ruminants and monkeys he visualizes various facial expressions in the book showing joy affection pain anger astonishment and terror the book also has photographs and illustrations of human faces in various states of emotion from happiness to fear and anger the book was originally released in 1872 with a second edition compiled by darwin's son in 1890 and this was likely the version that landis studied one of the other main works that carney took inspiration from was our schultz's experimental psychology and pedagogy released translated into english in 1912 this work touches on facial expressions and looks at the links between psychology and education there are a number of different photographs of subjects reactions to different stimuli but it doesn't seek out to find the reason why the final and probably the work that carney would take as a basis for his later experiments was herbert langfield's the judgment of emotions from facial expressions in 1918 this study would take place at harvard's psychological laboratory langfield made use of six subjects four men and two women and showed each person 105 images of an illustration made from a photograph of an actor's face each expression was meant to convey a certain emotion after being shown the image the subject was then required to write down their interpreted emotion landis thought that this experiment had a problem though and that was because of the authenticity of the expression of the actor the results from the langfield experiment were pretty interesting however although the study was not unique in finding that we can judge emotion from a picture i mean look at artwork in general from history you can tell we can understand emotion from a still image of a facial expression but it did find that the general consensus from his six subjects was that each picture conveyed a particular emotion even the more subjective images that contained subtle emotional state cues such as half crying and laughing in post experiment interviews each subject was asked where do they look first when judging a facial expression and interestingly each gave slightly different answers for example one person stated they stared at the mouth first and another saying that they try to imagine themselves with that expression and how it would make them feel of course modern-day eye tracking experiments are more reliable seeing what we look at first but langfield's experiment is interesting to see the thought processes of the subjects as examining the images presented to them landis would achieve his phd in 1924 and it quickly led him into the experiment that would put his name down in infamy landis took from the books and papers he had studied and saw a question unanswered what is one's facial expression when exposed to real world stimuli schultz's experimental psychology and pedagogy did touch on this by giving children bitter sour and sweet tasting items and photograph their expressions however landis wanted to go deeper he wanted to see if there was universal expressions for certain stimuli landis started off with his studies of emotional reactions a preliminary study of facial expression in mid 1924 he made use of 19 test subjects all men from dartmouth college the experiment was set up in a regular laboratory room in order to record the facial expressions landis had access to a motion picture and ordinary still producing cameras landis had a specially constructed table behind which the subject was seated this was placed in the center of his setup in a wall eight feet from the subject in front of them several small openings were cut through which cameras were focused before the experiment would begin landis said to the subject i'm making a study of facial expressions all you have to do is to be seated behind the table and act as naturally as possible in the various situations that follow don't try to be emotional or show a poker face try to forget the cameras and act natural various stimuli from nine categories were presented to each subject and after each situation a card was given to the participant with a number of emotions written on it such as boredom abstraction dreamy indifference interest also a space labeled feelings other than those mentioned each situation however would have a slightly different card the experiment stimuli started off pretty tame culminating in a fairly harsh finale first off was classical music a phonographic reproduction of divalki by vagner around a quarter of the subjects indicated interest with the remaining showing indifference or boredom landis noted of the facial expression of a vacant stare in most in the similar vein the second stimuli was jazz music a phonographic reproduction of my man the majority of the subjects indicated a rhythmic feeling with around a quarter indicating boredom or indifference this was shown on the facial expression with 12 cracking a smile and the opposite for the remainder of the subjects the third stimulus was this time visual with georgianis sleeping venus and bogie eros birth of venus both images are of unclothed women most indicated sex appeal and aesthetic appreciation would remaining indicating indifference the facial expressions are shown to be smiling or smirking for the fourth stimulus they were shown paintings of christ and the facial expressions were mainly of a frown which correlated with most indicating sadness religious feelings or indifference from the fifth stimulus all the way to the ninth things started to get a little bit more cruel starting with vulgar pictures of direct sex appeal a strip of pictures depicting various adult acts was used the subjects recorded disgust repulsion sex appeal and feelings of absurdity and grotesque the facial expressions were a mixture of smirking all the way to pure disgust but interestingly each subject let out a noticeable gasp when shown the stimuli the sixth stimulus were pictures to arouse horror or disgust illustrations in the diseases of china by jeffreys and maxwell were used i've looked at the book and it is pretty upsetting with some of the images within interestingly because some of the participants were medical students a high number indicated professional interest with the second highest being pity the expressions shown is most indicated by a frown and a closed mouth number seven on the list was odors this consisted of eight small bottles with various smelling dilute forms of cinnamon oil spirits of peppermint and others but the final was the actual interesting item the bottle was marked syrup of lemon but actually contained ammonia needs to say the reactions to the sweets many items resulted in generally happy expressions but the shock of the ammonia yielded an instant reaction of disgust followed by a small smile the penultimate stimulant was a bucket filled with frogs each subject was told to put their hand inside and feel around instantly a reaction of disgust was recorded until they're allowed to look inside when most showed signs of relief and even a small smile the final stimuli seemed to be the most cruel it too involved a bucket it had around six inches of water inside and the subject was told with his right hand to hold onto a metal rod and with his left hand to feel around in the bucket there was an induction coil placed in the bucket as soon as the hand touched it the circuit was complete and the subject received a substantial electric shock all of the subject's expressions immediately went to surprise and in the questionnaire most indicated surprise and pain landis had discovered that he could generate more accurate facial expressions with his initial experiment but he felt like improvements could be made and set about planning the next step in his deep dive into expression he didn't manage to see any universal expression for any of the stimuli as most of the subjects showed a whole range of slight differences even including smiling during some of the more shocking situations maybe a bigger experiment with more people would help taking what he learned from the earlier 1924 study he wanted to create ever more real emotional disturbances and record the facial expressions generated furthermore landis wanted to make use of as many distinct forms of reaction as possible culminating in significant emotional upset instead of the nine stimulus categories from the first experiment he upped it to 17 and some went well beyond the boundary of ethical also different in the second experiment was that women would be part of the study as well as recording of blood pressure 25 subjects would be used consisting of 12 men 12 women and oddly one male child another part that landis criticized of his original study was that of the setting you see he felt that the previous setup felt too much like a laboratory well it was but that it might have colored the reactions from his subjects as they were always aware of the experimental nature of the situation they were in this time around he sought out to make the experimental room more homely the walls were redecorated drapes were placed at the window and several paintings were hung on the walls so that the final effect gave a minimal suggestion of a laboratory this time around the subjects were seated comfortably at the table behind stood a large screen which served as a photographic background at either side of the subject stood a thousand watt lamp in a diffusing reflector with this illumination was possible to take better photographs at any time a second room was used to house all the equipment including the camera which shot images through a small hole in the wall facing the subject a speaking tube and buzzer was provided between the two rooms so that the experimenter in the subjects room could keep the assistant who was handling the apparatus in step with the procedure each subject before the experiment had a front and profile photo taken and then to assist with facial studying after the experiment each subject had their faces marked with black lines to highlight certain muscle groups then another photograph both front on and in profile were taken with a grid placed over the camera to assist with later measuring every movement of the head was judged after each stimuli and notes were made on every visual change of each subject's face each participant during the study would be subjected to roughly a three hour or deal and much like Landis's previous study each stimuli would increase in severity but the whole experiment was much better choreographed in order to keep the subject guessing and thus hopefully generate a more genuine reaction to the stimulus well I've spoken around it enough let's actually look at the 1924 facial expression study as I mentioned before the number of stimuli was increased over the earlier study and as such there was some crossover between both experiments and this was because Landis reused some of the situations however he did modify them to achieve a greater reaction the experiment was start off with the participant signing a slip stating that they would not divulge any information about the situations they will be exposed to then the subject would be led into the experiment room by an experimenter who in most cases would be Landis himself for the men and a female assistant for the women before mentioned control photographs were taken and the faces would be marked up now ready the first stimuli would begin the first two situations were music that was aimed to calm any nerves of the participants for the first 10 minutes the music was the pop music of the day jazz this disarmed the subjects but things would ramp up in the second section when more complex technical music was played this was marked by their virtuosity and technique almost having no melody photographs and blood pressure measurements were taken this would be for every section although the images would be taken at the closest moment to the reveal of the stimuli the next section brought an interesting subject into the mix and that was being requested to read st. Luke 6 18 to 49 out of the bible this required the participant to pick from two pieces of paper with a letter printed on it a t for truth or l for lie if l was selected points of circumstantial evidence attaching the participant to some crime were written on they were then meant to invent a lie which would clear them of the charges on a cross-examination with the experimenter if t was chosen then an alibi was provided for the crime this situation was used to try and induce anxiety and lengthen the total time of the experiment as well as assert the experimenter's dominance this is another carry across from the early experiment again again like before having several bottles with nice smelling fluids within with the last having ammonia mislabeled again as lemon syrup situation 5 would be the first taste of landis's now trademark of misdirection in order to get a more natural reaction landis continues his misleading antics by having the experimenter say the subject had smudged the marks on their face and as such they would need to reapply them the experimenter would then go behind the screen this would be the point they would signal to the other room to get ready for photographs and blood pressure readings the experimenter then lit and set off a firecracker under the subject's chair needless to say this yielded a shocked expression from the participant although shocking it has so far been a harmless type of diversion not much more than a high school prank this one is more bizarre the subject was given a sheet of paper and a pencil and told to write a full description of the meanest or most contemptible or most embarrassing thing they ever did as soon as they were finished the experimenter would then read aloud this confession again embarrassment and anxiety was the aim of the game here strangely landis wanted to see if he could make a universal joke to invoke a laugh but this section was promptly removed after the second participant shrugged off the apparent humorous quip this section much like the previous experiment showed pretty unpleasant pictures of various diseases but this time from the book atlas they're helped crank her to do yourself a favor and don't look it up i did and it put me off my dinner this again seemed a bit like a padding exercise like the truthful lie section four but involved distracting the participant whilst they undertook mental arithmetic frustration and annoyance with the name of the game here but it also helped cement the authority of the experimenter as they would hold the subject until they got a correct answer Naughty pictures much like before these were intended to elicit a shock response would the experimenter insisting that the subject look these over carefully the pictures were of an illicit nature don't forget that these people were from the 1920s and would have probably have had a greater shock value much like the previous situation and involving nudity again it consisted of pose photographs of feminine artists models again the experimenter would insist on the subject thoroughly looking at the images some of the most salubrious excerpts from the book psychology of sex were presented to the participants and again were instructed to read thoroughly again this was another part taken from the previous experiment but Landis Uplianti once again he combined this with the electric shock stimuli the participant would be told to put their hand in the bucket and after touching the frogs and reacting the experimenter would then say feel longer you've missed something the hand would feel until it touched the electric coil the coil would discharge a shock again photographs and blood pressure readings would ensue although seemingly cruel the next part is arguably why we're here talking about this experiment in the first place the table in front of the subject had been covered with a cloth but a 15th scenario the cloth was removed revealing a tray and a butcher's knife the experimenter then brought out a live rat the instructions were simple but unbelievable hold this rat with your left hand and then cut off its head with the knife 21 of the subjects were given this instruction some willingly perform the execution with little prompting others offered some resistance but after continued orders from the experimenter would eventually capitulate 15 in total would comply with the authority figure and execute the beheading five who would completely refuse would then have to witness the experimenter perform the task themselves one of the subjects beheadings as landis would later note in his paper for various reasons was not performed little did he know but landis had stumbled upon inventing a behavioral study of obedience some 40 years before the infamous milgram experiment clearly landis found electric shocks to be pretty handy in psychological experimentation as he managed to wrangle it in again the subject's arm was connected to an armband and a stethoscope both of these were attached to an inductorium the subject was given a card which had two numbers printed on it and told to multiply these mentally while they received electrical distraction electric shocks were increased and decreased in order to wear the subject down landis would later write this situation following the long grind of the other situations brought about a very real disturbance the electric shocks continued either in landis's own words some very real emotion expression was given or it was apparent that the subject would not give away any marked expression which makes you wonder how long this would have gone on for only one person was actually able to correctly answer the multiplication question this one is also a little bit cruel the experimenter was stepped behind a curtain and make some loud noises as though preparing for another situation after enough stress was exerted on the subject the experimenter would step out and say well that finishes it just as soon as we get the final blood pressure and respiration records you are through the final situation was to see the effects of sudden relief after a period of stress the experiment generated tremendous amounts of data hundreds of observations and around 711 photographs to sift through landis and his assistant started working their way through each photo discounting any that did not show any discernible reaction after sifting through all the data landis settled on a 17 point summary of the experiment and it was a real mixed bag he concluded that he did see a difference between agendas in their reaction to the same stimuli he claimed that men were more animated than their female counterparts he categorized the main facial expressions to pain surprise anger exasperation crying disgust sexual excitement and revolting but did not see any uniform reaction across all the subjects and essentially the study failed to meet one of its key questions if there were certain facial expressions for each emotion but there was not we are after all individuals and the way we react to things unsurprisingly is individual but Landis's results were not really the most important part of the experiment it was his unknowing discovery which has gone down in history the setup of an experimenter and an experimentee inadvertently led to study down the path of showing the human condition of obedience of authority 15 out of the 21 beheaded the rat something that many people I'm sure even in 1924 thought to be a severe action not something many would be willing to do be it on moral grounds or just from being squeamish but someone with authority nudging them was all that was needed to end a poor rodents life this is where the ethical concerns also come into play as it could be considered animal cruelty to kill for no other reason than to kill even the deaths of the rats weren't swift in Landis's notes he said the effort and attempt to hurry usually resulted in a rather awkward and prolonged job of decapitation another big criticism comes from the fact the participants were essentially exposed to some low-level psychological torture with the writing down secrets electric shocks animal murder and scaring them with unexpected loud noises unsurprisingly the most striking photos were from the shock and surprise situations using a male experimenter for the male participants and a female for the female participants also make us the result problematic really there needed to be a control group and a much larger study group nearly all the participants were from a university background and did not represent a good section of society also and on top of all those concerns it was seemingly like Landis wanted to break almost every ethical issue he even had one child participant which brings up the problem for just this one subject of informed consent needless to say Karni Landis and his experiment has aged to history like a fine one pint bottle of milk this period in history was a bit of a wild west for psychiatry experiments with the baby Albert experiment just four years earlier in 1920 and the Gaia and Donald experiment just after in the early 1930s the animal and human cruelty elements of this study definitely wouldn't get past the board nowadays and the experiment didn't really further the study of emotions much the controversial experiment did not however affect Landis's career where he would release multiple papers and books even interestingly speaking out about the issues for psychosurgery he would spend most of his career working at Columbia University from 1932 to his retirement in 1959 but sadly he wouldn't enjoy his retirement for too long as he would die in 1962 I'm going to rate the subject between a five on my ethical scale and a six the reference one being no problems and ten being pure evil where would you rate it let me know this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John and the currently sunny corner of southeast London UK help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of odds and sods as well as photographs of other things as well as hints on future videos I've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and always have to say is thank you for watching radiation is a valuable asset in the sterilization of materials and because of this hundreds of facilities across the world harness radioisotopes from irradiating food equipment and even blood but history has shown that these facilities are often overlooked when it comes to maintenance funding and training this is because they offer little risk to the outside world in the same way that a facility that regularly assembles critical assemblies or a nuclear reactor does an industrial sterilization facility in Nezvitz Belarus would become center stage in the early 1990s for an overexposure event which would result in death the story would follow a similar route to other incidents where an operator would enter an irradiation room when it was certainly not safe to do so however what is different in this event was that the facility had multiple features that should have stopped an exposure event and on the day they were actually working and the operator was highly qualified meaning they had to actively avoid these safety measures my name is john and today we're looking at the Nezvitz radiological accident it is 1981 and a new facility is being planned for use at the biochemical plant of the pharma industry corporation in Nezvitz USSR modern day Belarus it is going to be built by the all-union scientific research institute of radiation technology of the USSR and is designed to a standard set out by Soviet regulatory authorities it is intended to irradiate peaked for use in fertilizers and makes use of gamma radiation from an original capacity of 6.72 petabecuels of cobalt 60 three years after conception the site would become operational in 1984 but would undergo a significant refurbishment in 1989 where the capacity would be upped by over three times to 30 petabecuels along with the greater reactivity of its source the plant was further modified to irradiate other materials such as medical equipment the design of the facility is of a papal model type and is different to what we've seen on this channel so far when it comes to radiation plants whilst we're here let's take a look at the papal irradiation system there are a number of differences to say a western irradiation machine the first is the way that the source is stored when out of use instead of a pool the radioactive material is in a shielded dry storage pit however the system still makes use of gravity in that when in use the source is raised out of its pit and in the event of a power outage or safety system trip the source is dropped into a safe position another difference from say an atomic energy of canada limited design is the way the products to be irradiated are given their sweet dose of radiation instead of pistons rollers and conveyors the products are rotated at a constant rate around the source in a transport container suspended from an overhead rail the whole irradiation room is surrounded by concrete shielding up to 1.8 meters thick and like many other facilities entry is via an area called the maze the maze here is far more intricate than other facilities i've looked at and this is primarily due to its pretty impressive safety systems that are aimed at preventing and mitigating the risks from an unauthorized entry the first reminds me of something from an indiana jones movie when the source rack is in the radiation or up position a section of the floor at the entrance to the maze is driven back by a motor to reveal a deep pit the only usable ledge is on top of the motor housing itself this acts as a physical barrier entry but it isn't all there is further down the maze hallway is a full width pressure plate too big to be jumped across if stepped on then the source rack will be lowered the source is made up of a rack of pencils and spaces each pencil can have as much as 70 terabetic fuels of radioactivity controller the facility is done at a panel in the control room next to the loading bay for the transport system from here operators can control the source and the transport mechanism as well as the gamma monitoring system the gamma monitoring system is interlocked to the control panel if either of the two monitors outside the room take a reading that exceeds 14 micro cvets an hour then the rack is dropped into the pit during operation the product transport system of material to be irradiated is monitored from its control panel this has illuminated signals that are triggered by micro switches along the track the first hint of a product jam is if a light doesn't illuminate in sequence this requires the operators to remain vigilant from a radiation dose point of view as if the product is held in position for too long it can damage it but unlike the gamma monitors the transport system is not interlocked with the source rack and thus if there is a jam then it is solely down to the operator to make the radiation room safe by dropping the rack via the source down button now before we get onto the fateful event we need to mention the correct procedure for entering the radiation room as no matter the amount of safety systems you can have proper control of staff actions can be the difference between life or death to gain entry to the facility an operator must first push the down button on the control panel this illuminates the down light until the micro switches sense the radiator is fully down the operator is in required to wait four minutes then the key on the control panel should be turned from the ready to the off position and then removed then the dose rate is monitored from the gamma probes if at an acceptable level they must check their portable dose rate monitor on a test source attached to it the key has to be taken to the maze entrance panel where it is inserted and turned to the on position that moves the motorized floor section to cover the entrance pit a final check of the portable monitor to see if there are higher than anticipated radiation levels between 0.2 and 0.5 microcverts an hour when the rack is lowered and if fully exposed three to four microcverts an hour now we know how it's meant to be done we must now look at the disaster it is the early hours of saturday the 26th of october 1991 and two workers are operating the nesvich radiation facility this morning the team consisted of the site's most experienced operator and his assistant the operator was 34 years old had a degree in engineering and had worked in nesvich since the site's construction he was in the control room reading a newspaper whilst the assistant was on the loading bay loading the product into the carriers the assistant became aware of a product jam when the motor drive made as noticeable change in noise he then called out to the operator the operator pushed the source down button as per the rules but failed to remove his key before making his way to the maze entrance investigators would later speculate that this was to speed up the resumption of operations after the jam was cleared without his key the operator had a problem how to move the motorized floor to bridge the entrance pit gap well his experience from previous incidents had shown an alternative method of entry you may remember that i mentioned that the motor housing is the only protruding thing in the entrance pit as it turns out it is enough to support the weight of a person and gives a big enough ledge to step over the gap although he was flouting the rules he did however take a portable radiation monitor with him and next he started to approach the pressure plate this is where the narrative gets a little bit shaky the operator post event was reluctant to tell investigators how he managed to get over the plate without triggering an emergency source down situation but there are a few theories one was that he climbed over the plate by grabbing the transport rails or he did walk on the plate but the rack was jammed and thus didn't go into the shielding pit the final theory was that the rack raised on its own accord regardless the operator made his way into the radiator room upon entry the transport containers would have obscured his view of the rack but its counterweights would have been visible which could have indicated its position it's unlikely that he realised the position of the rack as he started to clearly obstruction after approximately one minute he started to experience a headache and he looked around the room to discover the rack was in the irradiation position he ran out of the irradiation chamber and told his assistant that he had been exposed immediately telephone calls were made to the local hospital and to the police within 20 minutes an ambulance had arrived on the scene and transported the operator to hospital quickly it was realised after the operator explained what they had been exposed to that the Nezvić hospital didn't have the appropriate experience needed to deal with such a patient he was transferred via Minsk to the clinic at the Biophysics Institute in Moscow for specialised care within the first seven days bone marrow and gastroenal issues started to manifest themselves in the operator during this period investigations were made into the dose received during the incident the operator's clothing was analysed and this gave an estimate of between 11 and 18 grey roughly three times a fatal full body dose eight days post exposure the patient had started to experience a fever and 11 days post exposure he began to manifest severe skin injuries around a 40 his general state was relatively stable but would start to show symptoms of pneumonia and his condition would deteriorate by day 104 he was showing typical acute adult respiratory distress syndrome the patient's blood pressure decreased on day 112 and sadly the following day he would die while in a hypoamic coma caused by respiratory distress we have to jump back to the day of the disaster after the exposure and before the operator was transferred to Moscow local authorities spoke to him to try and find out how the event played out the operator was not particularly forthcoming and tried to pass off many questions to feeling tired during his shift and not being able to remember a government-led investigation looked into the event and concluded that the following facility modifications should be implemented for future safety enlarging the pit and moving the motor providing an audible alarm for movement of the source rack within the facility and providing visible warning signals inside the facility to indicate the position of the source rack the site's license was suspended until these modifications were implemented but there was still the looming question if the operator pressed the source down button how did the rack go back up in the time between walking from the control room to the entrance of the maze the rack being jammed seemed unlikely as no debris was found that could have caused an obstruction the other cause is likely linked to the fact that the operator did not remove his key and thus in theory left the system with power this left the system open to the rack being raised either from accidental or unnoticed oppression of the exposure button temporary failure of a component in the control circuit or the logic of the electrical circuits which could have provided power to the lift circuit the initiating events are all too common with these types of facilities and that is product jam this coupled with the pressures of production targets has shown to lead operators to undertake reckless actions if the rules have been followed properly the nearer exposure would have likely not happened now as always if you want to read more about this event you can check out the IAA report the link will be in the description below this is a plain difficult production all videos are creative commons attribution share like licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in the currently sunny southeast and corner of london uk help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching depression and isolation are some of the worst conditions a social creature can endure this is why it is such a potent punishment in prisons of both past and present today we return to harry harlow and his pivot in career from studying love to studying depression in his previous 1958 paper harlow outlined the effects on infant rhesus monkeys which were removed from their biological mothers at birth to be reared using surrogate cloth and wireframe mothers the experiment created socially and emotionally stunted test subjects but showed that bonds can be created even with a bare bones maternal figure but as harlow's personal life started to have issues so would the cruelty of his experiments by attempting to create depression in his subjects his partial and total isolation studies would take harlow's experiments one step further completely removing any parental figure from the lives of the infant rhesus monkeys the experiments would garner even more criticism compared to his earlier mother studies and would ultimately lead to an apparatus called the pit of despair my name is john and welcome back to the dark side of science our story starts in the wake of harry harlow's monkey mother experiments by the late 1950s his primate laboratory had become a controversial but generally accepted part of the university of wisconsin madison sure the studies involved separation of infant rhesus monkeys from their mothers at a young age which most would consider cruel but at least important discoveries were made harlow had touched upon isolation studies during his nature of love experiments where infant monkeys were given an inanimate cloth or wire mother as the only form of social interaction the surrogate mother offered at least something in terms of company but harlow wanted to go deeper into the isolation side of the experiment starting off in 1959 harlow devised the first of his social isolation experiments the concept was pretty simple and made use of an empty yk that allowed the subjects to see hear and smell their peers but not be able to make physical contact this was named by harlow as the partial isolation study and sought out to observe the social effects and withholding physical contact during the 1960s harlow and his colleagues published several papers on the subject of partial isolation in 1965 a study looked at comparing one and three year old rhesus monkeys in social isolation alongside non-isolated control subjects they found that the partial isolates exhibited greater clutching and chewing behaviour as well as showing greater anxiety the study showed that partial isolation didn't affect the subject's intellectual development but their social maturity was very much stunted in a 1971 paper harlow summarized the decade of partial isolation experiments and set up another partial isolation study involving 48 subjects 24 male and 24 female the ages observed ranged between three months and 13 and a half years each subject had been raised in partial isolation taken from their mothers as early as possible this meant that the oldest of the subjects had spent over a decade in partial isolation they divided the participants into four groups of six males and six females zero to two years old pre-adolescents two to five years old adolescents five to ten years old early adulthood and ten to thirteen years old later adulthood to act as a control group 12 feral rhesus monkeys were employed before the experiment most of the subjects have been housed in small two and a half feet wide wire mesh cages the control group were monkeys captured from india and shipped to the laboratory they too were partially isolated for a similar amount of time and in some cases over years but have been born and raised in the wild thus they had experienced a natural social upbringing before captivity they found that the laboratory raised subjects showed less social maturity and the older the group the more introverted they became even when compared to the control group similar aged and isolated feral monkeys were shown to be more active and exhibited less external signs of anxiety the results although pretty predictable i mean if you isolate a person they become less adept at social interaction were not enough for harlow and because of this he sought out to take his experiments to see what would happen under total isolation conditions whilst a pastoral isolation studies played out harlow started looking at a concept for a total isolation experiment he devised an isolation chamber where the rhesus monkey would be placed the chamber was always lit had some moving around space and most crucially was not designed to invoke any sensory deprivation apart from social interaction to reduce the risk of noise from the outside a white noise generator was used to mask any ambient sounds the subjects were isolated from human and monkey alike observations were made by one-way vision slits and a test area in a 1965 paper on the total isolation studies harlow describes the experiment setup three groups of newborn monkeys were isolated in individual chambers for three six and 12 months respectively in addition one group was kept in partial isolation in individual cages in a laboratory nursery for the first six months then placed in the isolation chamber for six months there were six monkeys in the three month group and four monkeys in each other of the groups mental ability tests were undertaken during their isolation to map their intelligence to measure the difference in social development between the partially and totally isolated harlow paired up monkeys that had been in the study for the same amount of time for example two from the three month total isolation group were paired with two from the partial isolation group all the monkeys were of the same age and were released into a playroom scenario the four monkeys were allowed to be in a room for 30 minutes five days a week for 32 weeks for these young fully isolated monkeys being placed with others was a complete sensory overload and nearly all went into shock showing anxious body language such as self-clutching two of the monkeys in the three month isolation group refused to eat were moved to the integration phase of the experiment one sadly would die after five days the other was force-fed and subsequently survived although severely socially affected the three month group did show signs of being able to recover gradually improving after each session playing with their control group but that was the most positive of outcomes it only got worse with the next group the six month isolated monkeys were split into two groups one of which were isolated straight away whereas the other was isolated after six months of partial isolation they after being introduced with the control monkeys would avoid all contact and play the three month group would engage with play fighting after a few days but this was not observed with the six month subjects the late six month group the subjects who are initially partially isolated showed a better ability to interact with the control group albeit only in the form of aggression but the 12 month isolated monkeys there were no signs of interest in themselves or their control playmates in Harlow's own words 12 months almost obliterated the animals socially in contrast the controls were pretty quickly playing and enjoying their social interactions amongst one another in follow-up sessions post 32 weeks the three month group had seemed to have adjusted relatively well the six month had some improvements but were socially stunted and the 12 month group were completely ruined now this study was yet again like before a stepping stone down the stairs to hell as Harlow looked to extend his experiments into the examination of depression Harlow throughout his life was susceptible to depression periods usually only lasting a few days and was fueled by drink stress and a constant fear of failure as his symptoms got worse throughout the 1960s so did his experiments he saw in his isolated monkeys especially the 12 month subjects the signs of depression as they rocked back and forth staring off into the distance refusing to interact with their peers Harlow thought that this could be used in the path of understanding the condition and maybe even find a cure he would require a reliable method of creating a depressive state and that leads us on to the next stage of Harlow's progressively cruel series of experiments Harlow would experience his worst depressive phase so far in his life in the last years of the 1960s his second wife Margaret was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1967 and this understandably played on the scientists mind Harlow's career was at its peak but his anxiety about his wife and the fear of failing at the zenith of his life's work sent him into aspiring depression before his bouncer depression rather strangely had been set off by any accolades achieved for his research and in 1967 it was no different he had won the national medal of science given by Lyndon B Johnson no less for the rest of the year he couldn't shake his depressive state but unlike before it would last more than just a few hellish days he would be admitted to the Mayo Clinic in March 1968 here he would receive electroshock therapy and although initially reluctant Harlow would later admit that his recovery was good after 59 days Harlow was discharged and he returned back to his primate lab he noted his feelings of isolation during his stay but his experience inspired Harlow to delve into depression and he did this by the only way he knew how by terrorizing rhesus monkeys he knew from previous studies that six or more months of total isolation created depression like symptoms in his monkeys Harlow had also dabbled in age mate separation where two monkeys were allowed to bond with one another only to be separated in Harlow's own words the fact that these behaviors did not extinguish within the sixth month period attest to the punishing pain of separation and the vigor and violence of protest he wanted a surefire way to crush the spirit of any subject ideally quicker than the six month needed from total isolation this is where the pit of despair comes into our story although officially it was referred to as a vertical chamber in a 1974 paper by Harlow and one of his students Stephen J. Sume the pit of despair was outlined in the use to create depression in monkeys over several previous experiments the vertical isolation chamber initially conceived in 1969 was constructed of a stainless steel trough with sloping downsides this was to create a trapped feeling by reducing the subject's ability to climb the chamber was dark with the only light coming from the top which was almost impossible to reach it had a three eighths inch wire mesh floor one inch above the bottom of the chamber to allow waste material to drop through the drain and out of holes drilled in the stainless steel the chamber also had a food box and a water bottle holder thus stopping any interaction with the outside world Harlow would later describe the design's intent being in the depths of despair sunken in a well of loneliness helplessness and hopelessness the first test study took place in 1971 when four monkeys ranging in age between six and 13 months old were placed in their own pit for 30 days all four showed immense psychological damage upon release in 1971 his wife's cancer progressed and would subsequently end in her death that year which no doubt added to Harlow's depression Harlow and Sume would continue with a more formal study in 1972 this again would involve four monkeys being placed in the chamber at 45 days old for a period of 45 days after removal from the chamber the subject exhibited intensive self-clasp and self-huddling coupled with low levels of movement and environmental exploration the difference was night and day between them and their control subjects who were partially isolated but allowed to socialize Harlow found that even a year after their isolation his subjects still showed signs of depression and severe social stunting the next study using the pit was also in 1972 and took eight monkeys at the age of three and split them up into two groups of four these groups were then placed in a social housing cage together for four weeks one group was taken and placed in separate cages for nine days then placed in the pit Harlow wanted to see if he could create depression in otherwise well adjusted and healthy monkeys you see all eight have been raised by their mothers and have been well socialized the sentence for the test group was 10 weeks in the vertical chamber after removal from the chamber the monkeys were observed severe clinging and lack of movement were noted it seemed that the chamber could guarantee a depression like state in Harlow's monkeys and this seemed to follow his personal life strangely in 1972 Harlow remarried his first wife it could be inferred that the creativity of the cruelty increased as Harlow's personal life became ever more complicated but Harlow wasn't just creating loads of depressed monkeys for no reason his parent plan was to try and rehabilitate his subjects initially his total isolated monkeys would be introduced to his cloth mothers and sure enough the body contact they provided showed some signs of rejuvenation next he attempted to see if real monkey contact could work but there was a problem his subjects wouldn't initiate contact instead preferring to hold themselves in a corner but Harlow had an idea this came in the form of therapy monkeys he had seen in previous studies that infants of dysfunctional monkey mothers were very clingy he thought that maybe this could be harnessed in bringing around his depressed subjects the young therapy monkeys from dysfunctional mothers were introduced to some six-month isolates like he predicted the therapists clung to the isolates and in a later observation were found to almost be normal within a year but this would not be the case of the pit of despair candidates now Harlow would retire from the University of Madison Wisconsin in 1974 leaving the task of continuing his work with his old students such as Sumi the regularity of Harlow and his team's publication of her work allowed their studies to be followed at the time quite closely as such the cruelty of the experiments received criticism at the time even some of Harlow's own students were concerned for the increasing cruelty of the pit of despair experiments it wasn't helped by Harlow's ability to use shocking language to describe his experimental devices originally he wanted to call a vertical chamber the dungeon of loneliness Harlow's studies can largely be regarded as questionable as the way a rhesus macaque experiences depression or any other psychological condition for that matter is very different and hard to translate to humans also it does seem pretty obvious if you lock up a largely social animal in total isolation for extended periods of time from young ages that they would exhibit developmental difficulties now where would you rate this subject on my ethical scale i'm going to say around a six or a seven this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john and the currently sunny south eastern corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of odds and sods and photos as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching sugar is one of the most important materials in human history such is its influence on mankind that it has been implicated in the blight of obesity diabetes cardiovascular disease and tooth decay refined sugar being bad for your health is a bit of a given nowadays but not always the way you think especially if you work in a sugar refinery much like grain and flour sugar is susceptible to dust explosions and it is a driving force behind a disaster in 2008 in port wentworth georgia which would result in 14 worker deaths my name is john and today we're looking at the imperial sugar explosion it is december 1997 and the imperial sugar company is acquiring a new production site at port wentworth from savannah foods and industries incorporated there is nothing really of note here it was doing what businesses do and that is acquiring to expand the site has been home to food production and processing since the early 1900s savannah industries incorporated began construction of granulated sugar production facilities at port wentworth during the 1910s completing it in 1917 over the years production capacity would be added to culminating in its final arrangement with multiple screw and bucket conveyors all for storing and transporting sugar granules in three large silos each silo was 140 feet in diameter and 105 feet tall constructed from concrete and sat atop a foundation in the packing building floor below was a 130 foot long tunnel used for conveyor belts each silo has a capacity of five million pounds the screws and bucket conveyor system was originally intended to be fully enclosed to prevent the escape of dust which as we know from my de bruce grain explosion video can be pretty deadly the factory production facilities received raw sugar and refined it into granulated sugar once refined it was transferred via screws and conveyor belt to the top of silo three from here it is fed to the other two silos via a belt which discharged the sugar into an elevator pit this pit fed a bucket conveyor which took the sugar to a penthouse and from there multiple belt conveyors to the other silos when needed 18 inch holes are opened in the base of the silos and the sugar is then transported to the powdered sugar mills for packing equipment or the bulk sugar building the imperial sugar facility has large open work areas but little thought during its operation was given to dust build up as such no dust extraction system was in operation and dust accumulated on overhead conduits piping ceiling beams lights and equipment the site has two packing areas each four stories tall and were named the bosh and south buildings respectively equipment in the packing areas filled paper bags with sugar like the type you may find in your cupboard the machines had protective glass to prevent workers from getting caught in the moving parts but it's still allowed for inspection and there was vacuum duct work provided to remove some of the dust from the machinery on the fourth floor there was also a powdered sugar facility sugar powder in dangerous situations was a daily part of working life at imperial spillages were also common requiring regular cleanups as well as a constant generation of dust from packing the supposedly sealed conveyor screws also allowed deadly dust to propagate around the facility and all of this meant that disaster was inevitable it is the evening of February the 7th 2008 and imperial sugar is welcoming its CEO for a tour of the facility there are four people in this tour group and nothing out of the ordinary has been seen so far but at approximately 7 15 p.m this would change allow bang startled the group as they walked through the south packaging building which would later be described as a heavy roll of packing material dropped from a forklift somewhere nearby just a few seconds later they were blown off their feet as debris blew through the building flames blew out the roof as the concrete floors of the south building buckled as explosions spread throughout the different areas of the facility intense fireballs ripped through the entire north and south packing and palletiser buildings sugar dust shaken loose from overhead surfaces from the explosions ignited intensifying the fires workers were pummeled with equipment and debris as the heat of the fireball burned away any flesh escape proved to be difficult as smoke obscured this the passages of escape several exits were also blocked by fallen brickwork further hindering any chance of safely getting out heat travelled up the enclosed conveyor screws igniting more powdered sugar eventually spreading the series of explosions back to the south packing building in total the fireball and explosions would continue for 15 minutes before the last explosions emergency workers were on the scene but they were confronted with the thick flames and a partially demolished facility as soon as they could the first responders started working towards recovery of victims some of the staff had already started rescue and recovery work helping out some of the injured taking the worst burnt to a makeshift triage at the facility gatehouse smouldering would continue for over a week after the initial explosions nine local and state organizations helped with the rescue efforts but sadly the disaster would result in fatalities eight workers died at the facility on the day during the explosions and another four would die later in hospital from severe burns 36 would require medical attention with several receiving life-changing injuries with millions of dollars of damage and 15 dead one question loomed why did impeal sugar experience such a catastrophic explosion dust explosions have been a known risk to sugar production going way back to before the turn of the century impeal sugar was even aware of this since 1925 in a 1961 internal memo the need for proper cleanliness and dust suppression was highlighted however proper collection and disposal of dust requires a fair amount of man hours and thus costs needless to say you can probably see the root cause it was found that equipment was in vital need of overhaul and repair the likely ignition source was a faulty bearing in an overhead conveyor a cause almost identical to the debruce grain explosion staff from impeal sugar were interviewed by the csb and they gave a pretty damning description of the facility sugar leaked down from worn seals broken or missing sections of the screw conveyor and failed pressurized air seals resulting in more sugar and dust being spilled all over the packing buildings due to the large size of the buildings dust floated up to above the light fittings piping and support beams a company cleaning policy was in force for planned daily weekly and monthly cleaning of the packing areas but these weren't enacted by management the csb also found that staff weren't properly trained in dust handling you see the packaging machines required constant cleaning of dust to work properly sometimes water and steam were used to clear any issues but often compressed air was employed which only made the dust situation worse rather worryingly staff had said in interviews that leading up to the explosion there had been several small fires which were successfully extinguished a quality assurance survey undertaken in late 2007 found multiple issues with housekeeping and general dust management it just seemed that even with decades of knowledge of the risks of dust explosions from both the sugar and grain industries that imperial sugar were not interested in the safety of its staff sadly this story is just another in a long list of instances where companies have prioritized profit over safety but even though the site was pretty destroyed imperial was committed to rebuilding it was a vital part of the local economy and in the wake of the disaster the area struggled as local businesses lost trade in the demolition of the site 1.3 million kilos of hardened sugar had to be smashed up and removed the rebuilding would cost 220 million dollars and the company would report full production in november 2009 osha cited the company for 124 violations but the us attorney for the southern district of georgia said there wasn't enough evidence to prove criminal intent what a surprise 44 lawsuits were brought against the company and many were settled out of court now where would you rate this disaster on my legacy scale one having a significant impact on history and 10 being very influential in history i'm going to say today that this one is around a four this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain different videos are produced by me john in the currently wet and miserable southeast in corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out to be fancied supporting the channel financially and all this left to say is thank you for watching in the march floridian weather of 2018 investigators are picking through the results of a disaster six are dead and 10 more injured but the only question on the investigators minds is how does a new uncompleted bridge fail in such a way that no one picked it up until it was too late well this is what we'll be looking at today the florida international university pedestrian bridge collapse our story starts with a safety concern students crossing the ape street and 109th avenue intersection numerous reports from students at florida international university have come over the years of near misses with traffic across the eight lane highway the university concerned with the risks to their students began to put into motion a plan for a new pedestrian walkway finances were secured in 2013 from the department of transport for the bridge across the highway between the fi u and the town of sweetwater sweetwater was a popular place for students to find accommodation outside of the university campus and as such the crossing of the multi-lane highway is frequently used by both students and faculty members alike the main organizations to be involved in the project were manila construction management a miami-based construction management firm an fig bridge engineers a tallahassee based firm the project was different to other similar structures in the state as the florida department of transport did not oversee the design instead this task was taken on by the university itself but the unusual plan did on the face of it makes sense the university was known for his expertise in accelerated bridge construction as a side note this is a technique that allows bridges to be installed with minimum disruption to traffic often in the space of a few days this is done by constructing the bridge near to its final installation location and after assembly placing the structure in its final location the bridge was to be 320 feet long and span the roadway and the canal that runs parallel to the street this is formed the two sections of the bridge 175 foot long and a 99 foot long section for the roadway and canal spans respectively to tie it all together a faux tower and cable arrangement was intended for the structure to make the bridge look like a cable staid arrangement the total structure length was added to further by an escalator and lift on the southern end and a lift on the northern end the design of the bridge was intended to have a hundred year plus life expectancy and could apparently withstand a category five hurricane although looking like a cable staid bridge the structure strength actually came from its truss construction the bridge had a 30 foot wide deck and a 16 foot wide canopy 15 feet above the canopy and deck were connected by a single row of concrete diagonal and vertical supports in the center the canopy and deck were designed to act like an eye beam with the concrete walkway deck acting as the horizontal bottom flange of a wide eye beam and the roof canopy was to function as also a horizontal but narrower top flange of the eye beam having the walkway on the bottom of the truss allowed for less depth up to the bridge and due to its only using one truss it was a non-redundant design as the whole structure strength came from the single collection of supports the concrete was to be a post-tension design this is achieved by casting the concrete with a protective sleeve duct within it for steel cable tendons once the concrete is cured these tendons are tensioned and held in place with a lock-off wedge adding strength to the beam the deck and canopy had tendon cables which were permanently tensioned and while the mainspan was still located in the staging yard before it even got installed on the bridge however the diagonal truss members had two to four post-tensioning rods that could be tightened or loosened allowing for alterations to be made by the engineers to allow for the extra stress is expected during installation these were to be de-stressed after the mainspan was in place the plan for the bridge was to have it pre-built in a staging area next to the bridge site and then lifted into situ construction began in 2016 but just over a year later on a sunday in august 2017 the death of a student alexis dale vindicated the need for a pedestrian bridge she was crossing the very busy intersection at southwest eighth street and 109th avenue like many students do any day of the week in february 2018 the mainspan of concrete including the walkway the canopy and diagonal and horizontal members were cast once it had cured inspections of the mainspan showed some cracking around truss member 11 and 12 at the truss members intersection with the deck cracking is not uncommon in concrete casting and this was to be monitored during the installation process thus the mainspan was prepared for installation which would involve movement from the fabrication yard to the bridge site in order to get the assembled bridge in place it had to be lifted to its final location using self-propelled modular transporters and that took place on the morning of the 10th of march 2018 traffic on the southwest eighth street was detoured during the planned installation period leaving the entire roadway closed because the whole structure was vulnerable to twisting for transport and installation and maximum tolerance of plus or minus 0.5 of a degree was set beginning at 4 30 am on the 10th of march the mainspan was moved by the spmt's and placed on the permanent pylon and south pier supports the movement was completed by 12 30 pm during the operation the twisting tolerance was exceeded twice occurring for about four minutes as the bridge came in contact with one of the bearing pads on the south pier after it was in its final place the mainspan's diagonal members 2 and 11 were detentioned as part of the original plans and photographs were taken of the cracks at the 11th member to see if they were active or dormant on the 12th of march more photos of the cracks around the 11th and 12th nodes were taken and were now worryingly getting larger manila construction management viewed the photos and indicated that the cracking was not a safety issue and recommended that plastic shims be placed underneath the diaphragm the part that attaches to the pier on march the 13th and faced with growing cracks mcm and figg building engineers decided that retentioning the two and 11 supports may lessen the cracking but figg determined that the cracking was still not a safety issue on the 14th of march the cracks still causing concern were discussed between the contractor companies a day later on the morning of the 15th an inspection team went to the bridge to evaluate the cracking in preparation for a 9am meeting to discuss potential remediation action it was then decided that member 11 which at the bottom end formed the 11th and 12th node amazon the pylon pier would be restored to its original tension pre-installation of 280,000 pounds this was to be done in increments alternating between the top and bottom rod the way i understand it is similar to how you install an engine sump or a valve cover as to even out the load during tightening if you've ever owned a Honda and forget to tighten the tappet lock nut properly then you'll get a lot of practice doing this on valve covers a six-man team was given to go ahead for the restressing and ahead they went the retightening of member 11 would begin on the 15th all while traffic still flowed below the structure the contractors thought that the operation couldn't compromise the structural integrity of the bridge due to the contractor's insistence that the structure was still safe how wrong they were at roughly 1345 the traffic lights changed and cars came to a stop at the southwest 8th street and 109th avenue junction at 1346 the northern ended a bridge at the joint of the 11th and 12th supports blew out under the applied tension of the tendons within a fraction of a second the bridge sagged at the northern pile on pier cars on the road below continued to wait under the stricken structure a driver of one of the cars under the bridge would later say that small rocks had landed on her vehicle moments before the bridge failed the bridge immediately dropped the heavy full span onto the roadway below crushing anything underneath five were immediately killed after the collapse and one would die later in hospital the victims were Navarro Brown age 37 a worker on the bridge Alberto Arias 53 Brandon Brownfield 39 FIU student Alexa Durran 18 Ronaldo Fraga 60 and Oswaldo Gonzalez 57 a further 10 were injured including passengers of cars and workers on the bridge in total eight cars were crushed during the collapse emergency 911 call handlers would be inundated with calls starting at 1347 the dispatcher sent multiple emergency responders to the bridge location with the first police officers reaching the site at 1352 Miami Dade fire rescue was sent to the scene and assisted in transporting the injured Kendall Regional Medical Center although one person self-transported to the hospital what was perplexing is how could something so one of the mills of footbridge fail so catastrophically well the ntsb would find out that the bridge was more complex in design than it possibly needed to prioritizing form over function and that the warning signs seemingly were ignored during the bridge's design and installation the ntsb dispatched a 15 person team to pick over the wreckage on the 16th of March the bureau in a press conference stated that tensioning was being undertaken and they were aware that there had been cracks but this did not necessarily mean it was the cause of the failure originally the ntsb team suggested that the investigation of the wreckage would take around a week after this another press conference was held in which it was told that certain items of the bridge required further investigation at the Turner Fairbank Highway Research Centre in McLean Virginia in May a preliminary report was released but investigations were still being undertaken on the failure mode of the bridge in 2019 the ntsb released their final report and the results were mixed but at the same time all too familiar the root cause was a miscalculation in overestimating the strength of supports 1 and 2 and 11 and 12 which was compounded by underestimating the loads which would be put on critical portions of the structure the design was also flawed in that it was non-redundant meaning if the main portion failed then the whole thing would go which conjures up similarities with the silver bridge collapse you see when compared to a more traditional truss bridge design two trusses are used and this spreads out the load across the whole structure the design of the fru bridge only had one truss section and thus concentrated the load on the nodes where the supports met the ntsb discovered that when the loads on the bridge were calculated figg erroneously used a factor redundancy of one which is commonly used for structures with redundant load paths this hints at figg were assuming the bridge had a redundant design the distressed and increased cracking of the concrete was the main indicator of the poor design of the main span although cracking is not uncommon in concrete just look at this path but the location and increased severity should have provoked a more worried response than retightening the diagonal supports in the hope of it fixing itself no one involved in the bridges assembly not florida international university mcm figg bridge engineers nor bolton pares and associates the consulting engineers took the responsibility for declaring that the cracks were beyond any level acceptability when discovered after casting in february disaster could have been averted even after the bridge was in situ by stopping and diverting traffic during the restressing of support 11 multiple opportunities to catch the poor design were missed by all involved and due to university taking the oversight of the construction florida state department of transport took a back seat and did not discover any of the safety issues the first of the legal cases were brought on march 19th 2018 against figg bridge engineers mcm bolton pares and associates the project's consulting engineer lewis berger and network engineering services for reckless negligence needless to say the case against the companies didn't go too well with such a damning ntsb reports and to add more evidence osha cited multiple contractors for safety violations on the 1st of march 2019 manila construction management the main contractor of the pedestrian bridge construction announced a chapter 11 bankruptcy petition plan of reorganization the company reached a settlement with the victims and their families in may 2019 the remnants of the bridges peers remained on the site as a gruesome reminder of the disaster and the risks to pedestrians continued with loads more near misses between cars and students reported the original problems still existed and as such a bridge is still needed on site the need will be started to be fulfilled as the remnants of the walkway were removed in september 2021 a replacement is pegged to be built by 2025 this time under the guidance of the florida department of transport and the ntsb playing difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently sunny but windy suburban southeastern corner of london uk all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like license help the channel grow by liking commenting of subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching hello and welcome to a pilot of sorts of a new series it will delve into the history of some of the world's worst scandals some you may know and some you may not it's been inspired in part by an rte program called scannel although rather than focusing on events linked to ireland i plan to widen the scope of what i'll cover well without further delay let's get started it is the late 1950s and a woman is at a regular pregnancy checkup in a doctor's office in kilburn north west london she mentions to the doctor that she is experiencing morning sickness nothing unusual as this is quite an often complaint for a pregnant woman she has offered a drug that may help with her symptoms but for whatever reason she decides to turn it down this would turn out to be a very good decision the drug she was offered was called distable and would turn out to be a worldwide scandal that would burden the lives of many innocent young children used in the correct situation the drug can really change lives for the good but its name would become synonymous with sadness and pain it would forever be tied to what many contemporary news reports would dub the biggest man-made medical disaster in modern history the drug was also sold under a number of different names contigan tallidex phallomid or its better known name phalidomide welcome to scandal a new plainly difficult series it is the early 1950s and swiss company seba is working on a new tranquilizer for animals they were hoping to synthesize a drug less harmful than barbiturates during the research they synthesized phalidomide in 1953 but chemical industry basal seba quickly abandoned their creation due to it not yielding the preferred results in animals in 1954 and this in many cases would have been the end of the drug's legacy but a chance discovery would renew interest in the drug and its money making potential in the mid 1950s german company kemi grunen tau stumbled into the drug but i should first pause to talk about the company that would be the center of the future scandal here comes one of my side notes kemi grunen tau was a company with some pretty shady beginnings with high up members of its management and research team having in some cases a few million skeletons in the closet i'll be brief but i think you'll find this interesting nonetheless founded by herman vert senior a nazi party member and an advocate of racial hygiene and eugenics hardly a surprise now for a plainly difficult video well kemi grunen tau had set up in 1946 in the wake of world war two originally as a soap company but we're looking into various places for their revenue routes as part of this vert's put out the word for the need of scientists with experience in antiviral research well with the war over concentration camps closed and the doctor's trial being undertaken in nuremberg prosecuting the leaders of the human experimentation programs there were a few unemployed and most importantly unimprisoned nazi scientists kicking around well vert saw this as an opportunity at gaining some valuable scientific experience for his fledgling company he hired a handful of scientists who had committed multiple crimes on many poor concentration camp inmates his new team would be headed by 32 year old dr heinrich mukta who was the director of the krakow institute for typhus and virus research during the nazi occupation he had experimented on prisoners in berkenwald concentration camp against their will mukta narrowly avoided justice from a polish war crimes court by fleeing back to germany and into the open arms of vert's and a position of head of research in his new company as a side note to the side note vert's also took on otto ambrose as an advisor after he had come out of prison he was serving an eight year sentence but released after four for crimes against humanity for his work at ig farben developing poisonous gases which he had also been testing on forced labor camp inmates his work also helped bring around another infamous product zyklon b kemi grunantal had a fascist stream team of nazi scientists vert's put them to work and this leads us back to the 1950s thalidomide was rediscovered as a byproduct during research into glutamic acid with this new substance the company patterned it in 1954 and they set about finding a use for it it was found by scientists that kemi that thalidomide did work as a sensitive on humans brilliant something to sell it was found that thalidomide produces deep sleep without hangover or risk of dependency before it could be brought to market the drug was tested on rodents and much to the joy of the zig hiling scientists no lethal dose could be discovered and in 1956 it was introduced under the name contragan and sales began in october 1957 initially it was marketed to epilepsy sufferers but the market was pretty small time to expand it was discovered that the drug also had the benefits of being an effective and thematic that is a substance that can reduce or stop nausea and vomiting something that pregnant women can experience known as morning sickness although pregnant women became the target for contraganic marketing tests on the effects of the drug on unborn life were not undertaken although seemingly a terrible decision today in the 1950s it was not even considered for many medications this was due to the conventional knowledge at the time thinking that anything taken by pregnant women couldn't pass across the placental barrier towards the end of the 1950s contragan was one of the best selling sedatives in germany it was relatively cheap and accessible without a prescription but the product wouldn't be confined to just germany under license thalidomide was produced internationally and sold across the world 14 pharmaceutical companies would sell the product in 46 countries under 37 different product names in the uk british pharmaceutical company the distillers company biochemicals limited were producing and selling the drug to customers across the uk new zealand and australia under the name destable aimed at mothers with its license being granted in 1958 it was even advertised using the following in its marketing destable can be given with complete safety to pregnant women and nursing mothers without adverse effect on the mother or child questionable to say the least on top of this in some markets it was touted as a cure all medication again the hallmark of less than trustable advertising somewhat reminiscent of the quackery of magic tonics of the last couple of centuries with the money rolling in to groon and tile the company must have been loving the financial boom by the end of the 1950s roughly 14 tons were being sold per year there had been rumors amongst medical communities in the countries for midi hide have been sold that a number of people had started to develop peripheral neuritis and were still a spike in miscarriages still births and children born with birth defects were starting to be seen the issues with patients experiencing nerve issues made groon and tile start to place inserts into its medication boxes with the following warning of side effects including prickling and a sensation of numbness in hands or feet in 1960 but the link between drug and birth deformities proved a tough issue in 1961 reluctantly groon and tile applied to make thalidomide prescription only but the downfall of the profitable drug was only just beginning groon and tile had heard complaints from several sources of the drug causing issues in newborns and adults alike initially just batted off as rare allergy cause reactions publicly privately the company set out to investigate not the health links but to put complainants under surveillance it's arguable if it was a type of surveillance that made it obvious whether you're being watched or not but pressurizing and discrediting victims was the ultimate goal Dr. Wooducund Lenz in West Germany in November 1961 had started to suspect the issues with thalidomide and birth defects I should also note here that Lenz was also an ex-Nazi party member and part of the SA his concern led him to investigate a link between the two and he found that as early as 1956 that a child had been born with deformities likely caused by the drug with this ongoing concern and mounting evidence Lenz contacted groon and tile and warned them of his findings on the 16th of November 1961 after 10 days of arguing the points reluctantly groon and tile withdrew the drug on November 21st but Lenz wouldn't be the only concern and this time it would come from well outside of Germany's borders it's late 1961 and an Australian midwife sister Pat Sparrow was starting to notice a worrying trend with children born with limb defects she has seen birth defects before but not in such numbers this worrying trend has started after a Dr. William McBride had started prescribing thalidomide to mothers at the Crown Street Hospital in Sydney Sparrow put her concerns to Dr. McBride but initially saw no concern from the doctor but not long after the concern led McBride to reevaluate his thoughts on the new wonder drug in doing so he wrote a letter to the Lancet a weekly peer reviewed general medical journal the short letter asks if anyone else in the medical community had seen a sudden increase in birth deformities the letter helped inform the wider medical community of the drugs damaging effects to unborn children and in Australia New Zealand and the UK thalidomide was removed from sale in 1961 even though taken off the shelves scientists had to find what the actual link was Lenz would not be the only one Dr. George Summers chief pharmacologist at Distilla's company the organisation responsible for UK distribution of the drug started testing repeated experiments showed the damage that the drug could inflict but rather cruelly it would only damage the fetus in a very short window during early pregnancy of just 42 days it was found that the earlier the mother took the drug into pregnancy the more drastic the birth deformities if taken from the 20th day of pregnancy central brain damage would be caused day 21 would damage the eyes day 22 the years and face day 24 the arms and leg damage would occur if taken up to day 28 although we may never know the exact numbers estimates are around 10,000 children born with various health issues one thing we'll never know is the countless miscarriages and stillbirths caused by flamida hide usage even after 1961 and it's withdrawal from many countries it was still marketed in Canada until 1962 and Spain all the way into the 1970s but one country that usually appears in my videos is missing and this thankfully is down to one person can you guess the country medical reviewer for the US FDA Francis Cafflin Oldham Kelsey had valedomide come across her desk in 1960 pretty late in the game and because of its rumors about the drug from Europe had made their way to America she refused to authorize the drug in lieu of further studies into reported cases or peripheral neuritis in addition she requested proof that the drug wouldn't cause damage to any unborn foetuses even under pressure from Richardson Merrill the pharmaceutical company looking at licensing the drug in the USA and manufacturer Grunentale Kelsey refused the license unless the appropriate test had been undertaken unsurprisingly the drug companies were not too happy about being made to pay out for extra testing and they didn't which doesn't inspire confidence in the product they were trying to sell but we'll come to the reasons why shortly her failing to crumble under the pressure saved thousands of children from developing health issues as such in 1962 Kelsey was awarded the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service by John F Kennedy on the 7th of August although not officially sold valedomide did cause some birth defects in the USA these were mainly caused in clinical testing in roughly 20,000 people of which around 17 would be born with defects scarily though around 2.5 million tablets made their way into the US all throughout the discovery of valedomide's horrific side effects Grunentale vehemently denied liability the company was first made aware of complications from pregnancy when valedomide was involved as early as 1956 when one of its own employees gave birth to a child suffering from birth deformities the company actively ignored multiple warning signs hiding behind the fact it had conducted the relevant tests and industry standard tests on rodents but this is just a convenient way to shirk the responsibility if they were just following the standards of the day how did the FDA find so many holes in the evidence given to it for the safety of valedomide grunentale's lack of enthusiasm for further testing requested by the FDA tells us all we need to know and that is they too knew of the dangers and a published study would have removed any plausible deniability hence why so much pressure was put onto Kelsey even dr. Lenz mentioned in his 1992 lecture to the un ith congress kemi grunentale continued to deny pterotogenic effects of valedomide for years but there was a growing suspicion that this was not due to honest ignorance but to the purpose of weakening the accusations against the firm although mostly off the shelves by 1962 the story didn't end there as the german authorities couldn't ignore so many dead and injured children and this would lead to the 1968 grunentale trial at the first grand criminal chamber of the regional court of arken the trial of the worst human tragedy in human history since the holocaust began on the 27th of may 1968 and it was the culmination of six years of investigations grunentale was less than helpful to say the least requiring the police to raid the company's vault several times the company had asserted the deformities of the thousands of children affected were merely an act of god grunentale meant business showing up to court with a team of nearly 40 lawyers nine senior company staff members were indicted 451 coplanetiffs and 351 witnesses were against them the prosecution had over 70 000 pages of evidence herman verts one of the eldest accused in his 70s was allowed to not attend court due to health issues don't forget that point the main tactic on display for the formidable defense team was stall stall stall waste time delay and even threatened multiple times to walk out lenses 11 hours over four days of testimony was attacked by the defense for 11 full days only for it to be thrown out of court a year and two months later into the trial due to an apparent bias of lens against grunentale i think you might be able to see the bias towards the large pharmaceutical company instead with so much delaying and slowing down of proceedings many feared the trial would eat considerably into the 1970s but abruptly just two years and six months later in december 1970 the trial would end you may be thinking surely this is due to the overwhelming weight of legal and moral strain led to a guilty plea from a sudden change of heart of the accused or maybe some magic golden bullet of evidence so impossible to rebut became available into the trial or even the link between birth defects and philidomide wasn't so strong as originally thought well actually none of these the state and prosecution just decided it wouldn't be in the public interest to continue the nine men were set free and made immune from further prosecution and even more repulsive two thousand five hundred and fifty four of the most affected german families were slapped with a gagging order all of this was linked to one thing grunentale had offered to put their hands in their pocket but only on their very favorable terms no admission of guilt and everyone has to shut up about it this deal was brokered in secret between grunentale's founder herman vert's you know the ex-nazi and supposedly too old and ill to attend court and the german ministry of health without the knowledge of the victims or the wider public but the conflict of interests in this scandal goes even deeper dr. joseph newburger the minister of justice had previously worked with words when his law firm newburger pic and grievance had been contracted by the pharmaceutical company in 1966 newburger had tried at every corner to hinder the prosecution's case the price grunentale offered to make it all go away under the guise of concern for the affected families was a hundred million deutschmarks not directly paid outmined but to a fund to find the best use for the money a slap in the face might have been a better payment to the families it would work out roughly ten percent the figure claimed by the victims which was around 40 000 marks per child around 22 000 for a lifetime of suffering it wouldn't be paid out all at once though instead a poultry lump sum would be followed by a monthly stipend as a result the financial burden fell squarely at the feet of the state the compensation story would be similar in other countries with victims in the uk for example reaching a settlement with distillers biochemical limited in 1968 the scandal would not only scar a generation but so much deeper distrust between pregnant women and the medical community even in the current day olidomide is mentioned when the question came up of covid vaccination during pregnancy needless to say the damage caused by the drug has traumatized society the drug would never fall out of use though in 1964 it was discovered in israel to have benefits in leprosy treatment from 1965 the drug was used as the first choice of leprosy in brazil but the olidomide story doesn't even end here it would go on to actually find some use in the treatment of certain cancers such as multiple meloma after a clinical trial in 1999 the fda this time around would license the drug but only under strict circumstances an apology from the company wouldn't arrive until 2012 which to many victims felt was an insult especially as by then the german government had picked up most of gruden tolls stipend payments to victims now i hope you enjoyed this new type of video let me know if you liked it in the comments below this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain different videos are produced by me john in the currently wet and miserable southeast in corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out to be fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it is the 15th of october 1958 and a little known nuclear disaster is about to unfold in vincia yugoslavia republic modern-day syria in its wake one would be dead and four would be seriously injured although largely forgotten now in its aftermath an uncharacteristic cooperation agreement between east and west will result in several medical and nuclear research first the desire to explore the radiological consequences of the accident resulted in french british and yugoslav cooperation the results would benefit all sides of the political spectrum and prove the usefulness of a budding international nuclear organization my name is john and this is a brief history of the vincia reactor excursion and dosimetry experiment our story starts in the late 1940s and the establishment of the vincia institute of nuclear sciences yugoslavia had become a communist country in 1946 after the country had been liberated at the end of world war two and after the abolishment of its monarchy in november 1945 in its early years yugoslavia was tentatively aligned with the ussr and it was amongst this background that the vincia institute was formed politically the country would start to become more independent from the soviet union in 1948 with the tito starlin split needless to say this brought the fear of war between the two communist countries rumors were floating around that the ussr was close to its own atomic bomb and as such tito wanted to match his new rivals 75 billion dinars about 35 million dollars at the 1953 exchange rate was spent on building and operating the country's fledgling nuclear industry this constituted a significant part of the country's gdp in the early 1950s several organizations were set up at vincia in preparation to develop an atomic weapon a department for spent fuel reprocessing was created in 1956 and a heavy water moderated zero power critical assembly rb reactor was constructed in 1958 this rb reactor was the first to be built in sarz yugoslavia and strangely philip political landscape was of a soviet design the reactor made use of roughly four tons of natural uranium in the form of 216 aluminium clad fuel rods each rod was 2.5 centimetres in diameter and 210 centimetres long the fuel rods with a lattice spacing of 12 centimetres were contained in a cylindrical tank made of aluminium of one centimetre thickness one end of each fuel rod rested on the bottom of the aluminium tank the assembly used heavy water as a moderator of the neutrons created during chain reaction interestingly instead of control rods the system made use of the level of the water in the tank to control the reactor two safety rods were provided and were held out of the core by electromagnets and if power is cut then the rods fall into the core by gravity stopping the chain reaction and is thus failsafe a storage tank was provided under the reactor for excess heavy water the design was to also not have any form of neutron reflection as such it was mounted on a supporting rack to ensure the tank was always at least four metres away from any potential reflections surfaces as well as no reflective surfaces the reactor had virtually no shielding which the operators would find out later was not such a good thing now i need to quickly mention the reactor's name as it was considered a zero power installation you see a zero power nuclear reactor is capable of sustaining a stable fission chain reaction with no significant increase or decline in the reaction rate this type of installation is essential to gain practical experience of reactor operation but can still be deadly if the delicate balance isn't maintained it is the 15th of october 1958 and an experiment is being undertaken at the venture reactor at the boris kedrick institute six operators are working inside the reactor hall on a subcritical foil counting experiment the workers rely on bf3 counters to monitor the reactivity of the reactor on the day the reactor has 3995 kilograms of aluminium clad natural uranium fuel inside its core because the liquid level was normally used to control the system reactivity and the operators wanted to obtain as much activation of the foils as possible the heavy water level was raised in increments but it was intended to keep the assembly subcritical to do this at each level the bf3 counters needed to be closely monitored two of the bf3 counters maxed out at the maximum saturation level but the third was acting erratically this was disconnected and technical assistance was requested but what the operators didn't know was that the reactivity of the assembly was increasing ever closer to supercriticality after the assembly had been at this d20 level for around five to eight minutes one of the operators started to smell ozone originally it was thought that maybe a valve had been leaking but after investigation it was realized that the system was super critical at some unknown power level upon realizing this the reactor was scrammed with its safety rods and the hall was evacuated a paper recorder based 540 meters away recorded an increased background gamma ray level for around 10 minutes the heavy water level was at 183 centimeters and the reactor was in an uncontrolled state for roughly 433 seconds during excursion the total energy release was around 80 million joules or two kilograms of tnt equivalent a terrific amount of energy to be exposed to especially in an unshielded assembly definitely somewhere you would not want to be standing next to six personnel had received varying doses of radiation initially they received first aid on site before being sent to paris for specialist care the hospital they were transferred to was the world famous curry foundation and they were placed under the care of dr h jammie of the six exposed individuals one was to be treated conventionally with blood transfusion this was due to his exposure being significantly lower than the others but it was quickly realized that the others would require some drastic treatment as they had received in some cases close to and well over a potentially lethal dose the radiation had destroyed tissues in their bone marrow resulting in a number of white blood cells falling sharply at the time the concept of bone marrow transplants was in its early stages great strides had been made in the field in the us but in the late 1950s it was still very much an experimental science the bone marrow grafts were performed by george's mafé an oncologist and made use of donors that were all french including marcel pabion albert byron raymond castaner and odette draught the fifth donor was leon schwarzberg a member of mafé's own team the grafts and subsequent treatment helped further the concept of bone marrow grafts immunotherapy and how it could be used to treat cancer treatment would start roughly 28 days post exposure but for one of the men this was too late he had received too high of a dose and the treatment didn't help reverse his outcome and sadly he passed away however for the other four the grafts worked and they gradually made a recovery reportedly still being alive in 1980 19 years post exposure with at least one of the men becoming a father to a healthy child you see what was interesting with the transplants was that graft versus host disease was not observed in the patient one theory that was posed was that the high radiation exposure had actually prevented the creation of antibodies and in a happy side effect facilitated the incorporation of the grafted marrow it was estimated that the doses of each man who was aged between 23 and 26 had received in descending order 433 422 415 410 320 and 205 rem respectively the reference 500 rem without any treatment is fatal it really depends on how much was received where in the body and the health of the victim prior to exposure now the doses of the patients was very inaccurate due to the fact that the reactor was super critical for a rather long period of time and studies into acute radiation sickness were not very abundant at the time but the reactor now powered down offered an opportunity for the scientific community in which a study could be undertaken to further understand dose effects on humans the situation presented to the international community and ukoslav nuclear officials was that if the exact doses could be ascertained through an experiment then it could be linked up to the treatment and ars symptoms in the patients post starling tito split ukoslavia was more open to collaboration with the west and in february 1960 an agreement was signed between the federal nuclear energy committee and the iaea where the reactor would be reactivated and prepared for an experiment part of the reactivation required around 6.5 tons of heavy water as the original stock had been reused in vincia's other reactors after negotiations with a number of iaea member states the united kingdom offered the required material for free for the length of the experiment the french commission of atomic energy offered to make modifications to the reactor for free as well the modifications consisted of detector and more comprehensive control equipment which allowed the reactor to be placed into different reactivity states more effectively more obvious alterations were a wall of sandbags and concrete between the reactor hall and control room to protect the operators from any fast neutrons for the experiment the reactor was to be operated in two power ranges low and high and this was to take place at the end of april 1960 the low power test ran the reactor at five watts and used multiple positions to measure fast neutrons and gamma doses but the high power tests were where things really got interesting as this would involve these rather creepy characters named phantoms these were designed to mimic a human body to allow greater dosimetric accuracy the phantoms were filled with an accurate solution of sodium chloride at a concentration of 15.7 milligrams of sodium per gram of solution after each experiment the sodium activation was measured the high power experiment ran at two power levels one kilowatts and five kilowatts but each run the phantoms were placed in different positions with the lower being closer to the reactor and the higher being further away after the experiments the IAEA released its report in 1962 and it is definitely well worth reading the study helped create a greater understanding of potential doses a person can receive in certain circumstances this also helped in turn in the understanding of the types of shielding needed to protect staff from fast neutrons and gamma rays however the experiment wasn't the magic catchall bullet but rather another tool available to the nuclear industry even in the IAEA's own report which made its concluding remarks hinted upon this it can not be expected that data for any one accident can solve all the basic questions at once or even any of them completely what the experiment did show was the benefits of cross border cooperation when it comes to radiological investigation the disaster and subsequent experiment showed that the young IAEA which was founded in 1957 could work as a concept for interstate nuclear industry cooperation after all it did successfully broker an agreement where an experiment in a Soviet design reactor based in Yugoslavia modified by the French and filled with British heavy water could be used for the greater good of dosimetric discovery now where would you rate the disaster on my scale I'm going to give it a free due to the death of the young operator and the horrible pain the others must have gone through but at eight on my legacy scale because of the international cooperation valuable information gained from the experiment and the successful use of bone marrow grafts this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john and are currently sunny corner of southeast london uk help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos nods of sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well to check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that is left to say is thank you for watching it is saturday the first of june 1974 and a two-year-old caprolactum unit at the flixborough chemical plant in flixborough england is being placed back into service the installation has been somewhat of a disappointment for the site's operator only being able to achieve full production at the beginning of the year its short service life has been played with issues and leaks and just a few days before it had been shut down due to a suspected leak by the late afternoon the site would be wiped off the face of the map in a massive and disastrous explosion many would be killed many more would be injured and millions of pounds worth of damage would lay in the explosions wake my name is john and this is plainly difficult and today we're looking at the flixborough disaster the flixborough village is in north lincolnshire england which is around here on a map the sleepy village in 1938 will welcome a new neighbour nitrogen fertilizers limited the company planned to use a 60 acre site for the production of ammonium nitrate but just 26 years later the area would be repurposed nitrogen fertilizers limited's parent company fission limited merged with dutch state mines to create a new company called nipro limited this company was going to repurpose the site away from fertilizer production to the creation of caprolactum an intermediate compound used in the manufacture of nylon an initial unit of an output of around 20 000 tons per year was commissioned in 1967 using fennel hydrogenation but the company sought out to increase its production this would be via a cyclohexane oxidation process and would require nipro to build a new plant on site and this would be given a name phase two it was completed in 1972 and the installation made use of a chain of six reactors whilst we're here let's take a look at how the whole process ran each reactor was set 35 centimeters below the next in a line this was to make use of good old gravity during the production process each reactor had a capacity of 45 cubic meters with five meters high and had a diameter of 3.5 meters the walls consisted of 13 millimeters of steel with three millimeters on the inside made a stainless steel and had 711 millimeter diameter pipes with expansion bellows on each end to connect the six together in sequence the oxidation process made use of all six reactors inside 25 cubic meters cyclohexane is pressurized and heated to a 155 degree centigrade the compressed air was injected and circulated via a perforated ramp inside the reactors in the presence of a catalyst the liquid passed to each reactor via the pipework and by the time it reached the outlet of the sixth reactor around six percent of the cyclohexane had reacted the remaining material was reprocessed removing unwanted byproducts and sent back through the reactors the average flow through the system was 250 to 300 cubic meters per hour to heat up the cyclohexane a heat exchanger was used and that employed steam the steam flow to the exchanger is controlled by a valve which can be controlled manually by the control room or automatically to bypass the valve a block valve is provided this was closed on startup meaning the only way to avoid over pressure is through the safety valves or manual intervention during the reactions some gas is given off and this is routed back via an off gas line to the heat exchanger and then to the atmosphere via a cooling tower scrubber absorber and a flare the off gas line served to equalize pressure in all the reactors safety valves of each reactor was also provided which would vent gas to the scrubber and flare and this was set at 11 kilograms per centimeter squared the new installation proved to be a little bit of a disappointment with technical difficulties and leaks leading to lower than anticipated production levels the lackluster production figures would further be hindered by the discovery of a cyclohexane leak around reactor five on the 28th of March 1974 an investigation was undertaken the same evening and a crack was discovered in reactor five's thin steel wall management agreed to shut down and cool off the installation for a more in-depth investigation in the morning in the light of day the situation must have felt like it was going from bad to catastrophe a six foot crack was found in reactor five and the management meeting was called to discuss what to do next with production now completely halted the management team brainstormed what the best way to restart production would look like it was agreed that reactor five be removed for inspection but in lieu of a replacement a bit of clever plumbing would be employed instead of reactor five they would install an extended bypass pipe section to link reactors four and six this would make use of the already in situ 711 millimeter pipe and bellows for the connections between four to five and five to six but be extended with a 500 millimeter 20 inch welded pipes can you see the potential problem once completed the installation would be able to resume production a later court of inquiry report would point out three major concerns that weren't addressed the first being that management still didn't know the cause of the crack by not ascertaining what made it meant the same failure could repeat on the remaining five reactors they were all pretty much the same after all the second being that no one thought to inspect any of the other reactors for any similar failures in their steel structures and finally the third was that the new bypass line would have an inlet and outlet at significantly different heights to a fully working installation as a drop between four and six was twice than that of other reactors the calculation on the lows the new pipe could take showed it to be allowable however the dog leg part and its welds were not checked this failed to meet british standards at the time and would be unallowable if inspected by a qualified engineer you might ask why use a 20 inch or 500 millimeter pipe well it was all they had on site after reactor five was removed a scaffold was built around where the replacement pipe would go using nitrogen the pipe work was tested to four kilograms per centimeter squared after no leaks were found it was then tested to nine kilograms per centimeter squared again no leaks presented themselves but like the whole design process this testing stage failed to meet british standards which would have required the pipe work to be hydrostatically tested at a pressure of no less than 11 kilograms per centimeter squared i.e the pressure the safety valve was set to operate at this meant that the pipe work was never tested up to the maximum pressure that could be experienced by the system nipro pressed the installation back into work on the first of april no leaks were detected but no one in particular was keeping an eye on the homemade bypass line between the first of april and the 29th of may the installation was used almost constantly albeit for two occasions of a shutdown yet another leak was discovered on the 29th of may this resulted in a shutdown resulting in repair work being done on the 30th and 31st after nitrogen pressure testing the repaired sections seemed leak free restarting began on the 31st at 4 a.m but just one hour later more leaks were discovered after calling down an inspection these leaks seemed to have repaired themselves again the reactors were started up and heat was applied pressure in reactor one rose too quickly and again leaks were discovered requiring yet another shutdown in the early hours of the 31st the operators were confronted with a broken plant and to add further frustration the tools needed to repair it were locked away out of reach but the reactors would be given the okay for restarting on the 1st of june it's 7 a.m and a new shift of operators are starting work the time between the previous leaks and this team's book on to duty is pretty hazy even the official report states that the evidence with regard to the commencement of the shift is unsatisfactory multiple witness accounts contradict what state the plant was in whether it was pressurized or not but by around 8 a.m a reading of 8.5 kilograms per centimeter squared had been achieved at a low temperature from nitrogen pressurization the previous shift had reported a high pressure event requiring ventilation that took place in the early hours of the 1st but not much else was thought about it we also know that no leaks were found or at least reported it was decided to begin the startup process by using steam into the heat exchanger to warm the installation up to 160 degrees Celsius at 9 30 a.m by 12 p.m the process control technician noticed the pressure at a point where intervention was required reducing the steam yielded no result by now the pressure was at 9.2 kilograms per centimeter squared the technician sent an operator out to open the block valve this did get the pressure below 8.8 the system was in a pretty difficult state even though its pressure was now satisfactory the reduction in steam had reduced the vital temperature needed to start up although we will never know for certain and that will become apparent shortly it is likely the steam bypass line was opened to allow heating but again likely a whole new situation of high pressure requiring venting would present itself needless to say the 1st of June was proving to be a difficult shift to get started but the day would go from frustrating to fatal just a few hours later at around 451 p.m the 20 inch 500 millimeter bypass connection failed at its bellows releasing upwards of 60 tons of cyclohexane this came into contact with the reforming tower of the nearby hydrogen plant and ignition started at 453 p.m an explosion felt up to 50 kilometers away enveloped the flicks for a plant the flames set off secondary fires around the site up to 100 meters tall the control room which housed most of the vital equipment for monitoring the reactors was completely destroyed taking with it 18 staff who worked within luckily due to it being a weekend fewer staff were actually on site but a death toll was still significant at 28 with an additional 36 injured and another 50 injured off site by debris the context if the disaster happened on a monday around 500 people would have been on site over 2000 buildings would receive varying amounts of damage and the emergency response teams would be fighting the fire for over two days an investigation would start quickly after the explosion but one glaring problem immediately became apparent remember what i said about some of the parts of the chronology leading up to the explosion being a little bit hard to know for certain well the explosion destroyed a lot of the valuable evidence and vital first-hand accounts of events in the last few moments the difficulty would result in a bit of a headache for investigators but nevertheless the court of inquiry sat between september 1974 and february 1975 and examined physical and witness evidence the report will be published later on in 1975 and would summarize the official theory of the disaster the road to the explosion started with removal of reactor five and its subsequent replacement with the bypass assembly the blame falls squarely at the feet of the assembly not being built and tested to relevant standards also during the design of the dog leg assembly which was done on the workshop floor no less no one fought to consult the bellows manufacturer design guide which would have specifically pointed out that it was not suitable for such an application for nearly a month the bypass section was pressurized and depressurized weakening the section to the point that the pressure and temperature used in day-to-day operation caused the rupture i can show you in this demonstration the more i bend the metal the more it gets weak and will eventually fail the report absolved blame of the control room staff on the day as they had acted within the rules set out in relieving pressure when needed to also the staff to manufacture the dog leg were absolved of blame as they were simply building what they were told and the workmanship of the worlds was acceptable there was at the time a contending theory it was generally accepted that the 20 500 millimeter installation had failed but the initiating events were argued to have come from an eight inch pipe nearby which after a gasket failing caused a fire which then caused the explosion regardless the blame falls on those who decided that this was the right route to take instead of stopping production investigating reactor five and then reinstalling but there is another all-too-familiar factor to this event and that is financial you see in the 1970s the uk could only be described as a mess the country was in the grips of a minor strike because of the state of emergency enacted by the british government industry was limited to just three days of electricity per week in order to save energy the agitators in the reactors were turned off this though was just a cherry on the third cake for night pro as the capro lacton plant had for its short two-year life never reached the predicted levels of production which by 1974 was severely financially straining the company from a management perspective the plant had to run to be able to try and claw back some money needless to say we can put the blame of the disaster and inadequate reactor five bypass down to financial pressures management were not against breaking the rules as well as it was found to be holding far more chemicals on site than licensed to hundreds of thousands of gallons more in fact the company also undertook an internal investigation into the event and found that there had been several minor near misses involving on-site fabricated fixes the disaster at flixburgh and disaster in savezio italy in 1976 video available in the plain difficult archives helped push through better awareness and laws regarding industrial safety the plant at flixburgh to much protest was actually rebuilt and reopened but night pro uk ended up having to dig deep in their pockets in the aftermath at least 6 000 public liability insurance claims were filed by 1975 costing around 24 million pounds roughly 150 million today now where would you rate this disaster on my legacy and disaster scales i'm going to say about a six for both this is a plain difficult production all videos in the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in the currently sunny corner of south london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints of future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all what's left to say is thank you for watching it was a wednesday morning in the summer of the mid 2010s and a letter came through my letterbox it had honda written on it strange i thought why would my car's manufacturer be writing to me most likely some kind of advertising trying to convince me to trade in my trusty singer sewing machine sounding car in for five years of high interest financial burden not something i'd be interested in as my car had passed its mot with no advisories and being serviced by myself for the most time i've owned it i knew it was relatively reliable i placed a letter on the side to be opened later on the letter sat for a couple of days forgotten about after rediscovering it i thought it was time to read and recycle well it wasn't some leaflet for a brand new shiny honda civicle jazz but instead information regarding a potentially lethal quirk with my car you see my 2011 honda insight when it was manufactured in japan received a type of airbag that had proven to be a little shrapnely one of the things that drew me to the insight was its five star in cap rating something quite important to me especially if you see what happened to my first car well this rather sobering letter informing me that my car was a potential death trap was my first taste of one of the world's biggest product recalls the tucata airbag scandal welcome to scandal a new plainly difficult series tucata's tucata airbags tucata tucata tucata tucata tucata airbags during the 2010s this word dominated the headlines becoming a household name and a definition of corporate mismanagement although before the scandal tucata was relatively unknown to the wider public the company's history with airbags spans nearly 40 years so how did it go so wrong it is 1976 and japanese auto safety equipment manufacturer tucata corporation is looking to expand its product lineup the company which was now over 40 years old had made a name for itself as the forerunner in automotive safety systems originally when the company started up in the 1930s it was in the textiles industry manufacturing parachute lifelines this would develop post war in the 1950s into concepts for using these lifelines as methods to hold vehicle occupants in their car seats being a japanese company tucata sought to equip the soon to be juggernaut japanese auto industry in 1952 roughly 40 000 cars per year were being made domestically but this as we all will know will change one such company that will become entwined with our scandal was honda and 1958 would be the year they would release a vehicle which would catapult them to the forefront of japanese industry but it wasn't a car but a motorbike okay calling it that is a little bit generous it was the super cub step through scooter it was cheap reliable and reportedly had the uniquely japanese feature of being able to be ridden with one hand holding a box of ramen sorry i went a little bit off script there anyway as the japanese auto industry grew so did tucata and its innovations in safety products in 1960 it began to offer two point seat belts to car manufacturers in 1962 the company made public that it was conducting japan's first seat belt crash tests incorporation with the ministry of transports technical research institute and the national research institute of police science by 1963 the company had built a real world dynamic test facility in hikone and later on in the same year tucata was now offering seat belts as a standard option for many japanese vehicle manufacturers again the company would make more strides in car safety when in 1965 they began to use crash test dummies the 1970s will continue to push the company to the forefront of automotive safety when its seat belts passed the only to do so in the 32 mile an hour test performed by the us national highway traffic safety administration but the company would begin to research into a new active restraint system the airbag in 1976 the airbag seemed like a perfect fit for tucata mixing both their fabric background and their car safety focused products but tucata weren't the first to look into airbags that oner goes way back to just after the first world war you see it has always been a problem for car manufacturers to keep their customers alive in the event of an accident as you know it's much more difficult to sell a new Cadillac to a corpse at your Cadillac dealers now one main issue was holding occupants in place this was achieved by the seat belt but although it marked a night and day like change on crash survivability it wasn't perfect airbags were initially conceived and developed in parallel as a kind of alternative to or even in some manufacturers minds a replacement to the restrictive seat belt the first patents for early air-based restraint systems went back to as early as 1919 early versions used compressors or springs set off by a switch on the car's bumper or in some cases by the driver themselves but it proved not to be able to react fast enough in 1964 Japanese automobile engineer Jezu Baru Kobori began to develop an explosive initiated system this would mean that deployment of the bag was now fast enough to react when incorporated with the addition of sensors to an accident GM started to offer their explosive airbag system called the air cushion restraint system in the 1970s it was seen as a seat belt replacement but not many cars were sold with this option and as such it seemed like the airbag was a bit of a lame duck eventually the concept would come back to the fore and advertised the supplemental system which was due to the thinking developing throughout the 1970s and 80s again these were offered as options but as the 1980s gave way to the 90s gradually more more cars were offered at least for the driver as standard and this is where we come back to Takata and their entry into the airbag market Takata throughout the 1980s had experienced gradual growth with multiple factories across the world the company began installing airbags in vehicles as early as 1988 and this would mark a lucrative milestone in the company's history but the rotor success was not without a few stumbles along the way one such was when the company would experience a financially injuring event in the early 1990s now when you think of Takata and recall airbags may spring to mind but it was the company's mainstay product at the time that would cause it's such a financial injury in 1995 Dr Ricardo Martinez of the United States Department of Transport issued NHTSA recall number 95v-103 this would affect roughly eight and a half million mainly Japanese vehicles built between 1986 and 1991 with seat belts from the Takata Corporation of Japan at the time it was the second largest recall in DOT history reports had been made of seat belt buckles either failing to latch latching and releasing automatically or releasing in accidents the conclusion of multiple investigations was that the plastic buckle of the seat belt system became degraded by ultraviolet light over time causing it to become brittle and thus fail the NHTSA find both Honda and Takata for their attempt to cover up the seat belt issues by not informing official bodies of incoming reports of premature failures but this would not be the last time Takata would be linked with potentially deadly product malfunctions well the early 2000s Takata had grown to hold 20 percent of the world's market for airbag systems but this wasn't enough for the company because in business 101 I'm guessing I haven't read the book when you make a product that's popular the next step is to try and cut down costs as much as possible to maximize that sweet tasty profit just like squeezing jam out of a donut now the tasty jam in this story's case is the airbag's propellant if you can make it cheaper the sweeter the jam will taste okay my analogy is a little bit rubbish basically Takata could save money by changing propellants ah the pressure of capitalism and this leads us on to a really quick explanation of how an airbag system works an airbag system in simple terms uses four things a crash sensor airbag control unit an inflator and the bag itself if the sensor is triggered by a traumatic event it sends a signal to the acu this processes the data and sends a signal to the inflator an igniter starts a rapid chemical reaction generating nitrogen gas which rapidly fills the airbag and in most cars will blast through the module cover this is why you should never cross your arms when driving because if your airbags go off you're going to punch yourself in the face well the standard for airbag propellant in the pre 2000s era was sodium azide a volatile and worryingly toxic compound that can give chemical burns to a vehicle's occupants post deployment okay pretty concerning but not only that it can cause breathing issues all things that you don't want especially if you're trying to escape a smashed up car quickly if say it's on fire being blind and choking aren't conductive to surviving so being the ever-advancing company to Carter was his engineers looked to find a less deadly chemical and this would come with a new product called in virus sure the chemical compound was really called tetrasol and when promoted for the 1998 model year promised to be a safer cleaner way to have your face punched in by an inflatable woven fabric ladder great but one problem and it's always the problem it gets in the way of tasty profit cost tetrasol is hard to find and thus more expensive quickly the company looked for a cheap alternative and oh boy they scraped the barrel replacement compound for the replacement compound is as cheap as it can get ammonium nitrate ammonium nitrate is brilliant for say demolition products but not so for car inflators as it can break down and perform with a regular ballistic qualities if stored in varying environmental conditions like say heat snow rain sleet and windy conditions all of which cars are expected to endure especially as they're used to travel distances and a car maybe in different climates at different times not like in the UK where you drive from one wet place to another in 1999 to Carter researchers in Michigan were pressured by executives to develop a cheap propellant based on ammonium nitrate the engineers offered some resistance but the company shall we say insisted rather than dropping the idea the company looked at ways to try and stabilize the very unstable chemical but the chemicals crystal structure is really good at absorbing moisture which can alter the chemicals burn rate and to make things worse the company didn't add a drying agent nevertheless to Carter started using the chemical in its inflators which made their way into newly built cars of 2001 it is 2004 and a 2002 Honda Accord is involved in a car crash in Alabama the driver is injured but not in the way you'd expect from a relatively minor accident they had experienced severe cuts to their face so strange was the injury that the car's manufacturer was involved in investigating the accident it looked as if the propellant canister had completely exploded sending out debris into the car compartment Honda put the event down to an anomaly but a number of other similar events were starting to raise questions between the manufacturer and to Carter although concern both companies decided not to report the incidents to the us transport officials but the strange occurrences around 2003 and 2004 would not be the anomalies their manufacturers had hoped as the 2001 2002 model year Honda's age a number of serious injuries were reported from very minor accidents the injuries and I've seen some of the photos they are horrific I wouldn't recommend looking them up are life-changing wounds with some even losing their sight you see the face is the intended target of an airbag so imagine what happens if metal fragments are involved many of the accidents were settled out of court with no admission of liability from Honda or to Carter Honda began investigating inflators on various cars and on September 11 2008 a vehicle was inspected which had an unusual driver airbag deployment eventually they couldn't ignore the mounting concerns and first issued a recall involving to Carter airbags in 2008 four years after the first reports of injuries caused by defective units the nhtsa safety recall 08v-593 initially was only for some 4,000 cars covering 2001 model years Honda Civics and the courts in November 2008 but this wouldn't be enough and reports of over pressured inflation incidents would continue to come in it was starting to look like just the tip of the iceberg as Honda inspected and recalled units to find rust and signs of degradation of the inflators two more crashes just a few days apart in May and June of 2009 were reported one of which resulted in the death of Ashley Parnham an 18 year old student whose airbag deployed in a relatively low speed car park shunt sending metal fragments into her neck killing her in minutes Honda and to Carter settled out of court without having to emit liability another investigation was launched and determined that recall 08v-593 should be expanded to cover 2001 civics 2001 to 2002 accords and 2002 Acura 3.2 litre TL vehicles this encompassed the best part of 500,000 cars in December another death in a 2001 accord would be recorded in Richmond Virginia the Hondas recall would continue to expand for another three years eventually covering around 2.5 million cars all whilst injuries still kept mounting up it was looking like the issue wasn't just limited to Hondas and thus a recall for many more manufacturers look likely the NHTSA called to Carter in for a meeting in January 2012 the company deliberately tried to evade and misrepresent accusations of inflated defects and that it may be a wider issue in a 2015 report the NHTSA would even say about to Carter in several instances to Carter produced testing reports that contain selective incomplete or inaccurate data and to Carter failed to provide notice to the NHTSA of the safety related defect that may arise in some of the inflators that are the subjects of recalls within five working days when to Carter determined or in good faith should have determined the existence of that defect this avoidance would come back to haunt to Carter later on well to Carter took over the required five days to inform anyone to say the least reportedly back in 2004 when the first reports of failed inflators started to come about company officials in secret recovered around 40 airbags from 2001 Hondas which had been scrapped out of these 40 a reported three had shown signs of failure and tested don't forget these cars were only three years old and ammonium nitrate can become even more unpredictable over time so by 2012 the numbers of potentially deadly units could have run into the tens of thousands but it didn't end there on 11th of April 2013 the recalls would expand beyond Honda with Toyota motor Nissan motor and Mazda motor recalling 3.4 million vehicles globally due to potentially defective to Carter airbags this would be a financial blow to all concerned as the recall entitled owners to a three new drivers side airbag to Carter was predicting to lose 307 million dollars in 2013 due to the scandal just one month later manufacturer BMW joined the recalls further tumbling to Carter's losses to Carter and the auto manufacturers had an ever mounting disaster of replacing old inflators as well as attempting to keep on making new cars but the recall so far had only affected certain priority areas such as Florida and Hawaii and other regions like the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico this was due to being more humid and thus more likely for failure this story was the same worldwide with more humid regions only being covered by the recall even though the first recorded incidents happened in the non-humid classified states to Carter officially were blaming their subsidiary TK Holdings Incorporated and its Monclova plant in Alhila Mexico and almost at the same time they're blaming high humidity and excessive moisture making its way into the propellant GM car dealerships were told not to sell any Chevrolet Cruze saloons probably not a bad thing regardless of the airbags such a terrible car and I know I owned a silver hatch it made my daches build quality look opulent pregnant La Sukh Le 43 died in Malaysia in July after being hit by shrapnel from a Takata airbag in a Honda City marking the first such fatality outside the US a child was delivered but sadly died a few days later in November 2014 the NHTSA pushed for a nationwide US recall and seven automakers including Honda complied some manufacturers even issued statements to not drive their vehicles at all instead getting it towed to a dealership for repair seemingly on a monthly basis millions more cars were added to the recall in May 2015 the Takata airbag recall officially became the largest auto recall in history at 40 million vehicles but we all know that this wasn't the end of the recalls today it is thought to be over 100 million airbags that have been recalled independent tests gave a figure of around a 50% chance of an affected inflator exploding but the issue is you don't know if it's affected until it goes off when my car went in for its driver's side airbag replacement the car was gone for a day I was offered a courtesy car as well all of which costed money imagine that over millions of vehicles afterwards I felt relatively safe knowing my car was now not a hand grenade waiting to blow up in my face until yep my passenger side was also defective but I had to wait a few months as Takata increasingly felt the strain from recalls unsurprisingly it would also have to answer a criminal case because if they knew about the issues then well would not be corporate manslaughter well the US Department of Justice started collecting evidence on the company and planned to indict in 2018 the accusations were that the company had known about the defects as early as 2000 but had actively hidden and falsified test data pretty hard to disprove Takata had lied after all in that 2012 meeting with the NHTSA thus fraudulently misrepresenting their products to their customers the vehicle manufacturers in addition it was also alleged that the company had put pressure on production lines and storage facilities to keep on pumping out units and refuse returns on any damaged parts the airbag inflators dropped here were reportedly sent to car factories even though they should have been binned Takata had shown its propensity to try and dodge responsibility as such it's rather surprising that they pled guilty to wire fraud I mean the evidence against them must have been pretty strong just read the indictment a settlement was ordered of one billion dollars in 2017 crippling the company if fraud lying and creating dangerous products was an attempt to enrich the company it might certainly backfired on the 25th of June 2017 Takata filed for 11 bankruptcy in the United States and filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan the one billion was more than enough for the company to sink the remaining assets were sold off to key safety systems for $1.6 billion I'd love to say that this scandal is over but no it's still going on with millions of cars still requiring airbag replacements if we look at the NHTSA figures around 20% are still driving around with deadly airbags in all seriousness get your car checked and if you're planning on buying a used car check to see if it's being repaired in the UK you can find this out by checking the MOT history of a vehicle online and go down to the recall section it is thought that around 30 people had been killed by the airbags worldwide with many hundreds more injured and at least 42 million cars were recalled in the US alone it's sad that the scandal went on for so long as these people were relying on their cars safety systems to be able to go home after a car crash but sadly these were the exact things that prevented them from seeing their families again I'm thinking of a scandal scale let me know on your thoughts in the comments of how it should take shape this is a plain difficult production all videos in the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in the currently sunny corner of south london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints of future videos I've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is mr music man play us out please it is the 28th of august 2014 and the alcore life extension foundation is receiving a new client you can't call this person a patient however as they are deceased foundation workers are preparing the corpse but it's not what you think the body isn't going to be buried or cremated but instead preserved for a future potential reanimation the body will be stored alongside other corpses from relatively unknown to celebrities including the longest surviving cronics body they're all placed here for a potential future where their final moments on earth may actually have not yet happened this new customer for the alcore life extension foundation falls in the middle between famous and unknown the body they are preparing is someone called how finny who had sadly died of complications from amyotropic lateral cirrhosis he was a computer engineer and although potentially unknown he was the first recipient of a bitcoin transaction from the crypto currency creator satoshi nakamoto many have even posited that finny was the famous white paper author himself but today we aren't looking at bitcoin but instead the process of cryonics the preservation of the dead so that one day they may live again his critics will call it a pseudo science that takes money in exchange for false hope as to date no method of bringing back those who have been preserved has arisen but regardless of its criticisms the field has filtered its way into the cultural zeitgeist of the 20th century my name is john and this is the dark side of science our story starts on the 26th of july 1919 in lechworth heart for cheer united kingdom with the birth of one of cryonics first theoreticians james lovelock he was brought up in a quaker household which would have an influence throughout his life and working career his family moved to london during his school years where he would attend the strand school his family not being the most wealthy could not afford to send their son to university upon completion of school he went out to work for a photography company during this time he attended evening school at berkbeck college but eventually he would be able to afford to attend the university of manchester to study chemistry his time at university would be set to the backdrop of the second world war and his studies allowed him a deferral from enlistment but although personally a conscientious objector he undertook research council work into the effect of sunburn the results of which were used to help protect soldiers in hot climates post war lovelock would earn his phd in medicine at the london school of hygiene and tropical medicine from there he carved out a career at london's national institute for medical research in the early 1950s lovelock started looking into the field of cryopreservation that is freezing organic material to stop any chemical processes this is not as simple as it sounds you see freezing can actually cause damage to organic matter this is from the water within crystallizing this is not much of an issue with freezing last night's lasagna but if the thing you're looking to preserve is more delicate then these crystals can cause damage to the cell membranes this is where cryoprotectants come into play but we'll come back to this in a little bit okay i should probably pause here to say lovelock wasn't the first as french biologist john rostand had looked into storing organic material at low temperatures before as well as the concept of keeping a person in a frozen state or suspended animation to prolong life was around in fiction even as far back as the 500s in folk stories even in science fiction for example mary shelly's roger doddsworth the reanimated englishman but lovelock seemed to me like a good place to start this video in 1953 lovelock released the paper hemiolysis of human red blood cells by freezing and foreign in this he suggested that the concentration of electrolytes most notably salts is the damaging factor when blood is frozen and subsequently thawed meanwhile in the u.s the first children were conceived from previously frozen sperm in 1954 when three women successfully gave birth to three healthy children lovelock looked to further study the field of cryopreservation and in 1956 he released another paper studies on golden hamsters chewing cooling too and rewarming from body temperatures below zero degrees centigrade here lovelock and fellow national institute for medical research colleague audrey u smith looked into the freezing and flooring of golden hamsters they did this in order to observe the amount of water in the brain that could be frozen and still achieve consciousness upon being defrosted in this experiment it was found that many at least one third of their test subjects survived with up to 60 percent of the water in their brains having been frozen at a temperature between minus 0.5 degrees and minus one degrees centigrade this paved the way for thinking that a human brain could be cryopreserved but the study did highlight issues with other parts of the hamster's body where other organs in the animal were more susceptible to freezing damage this brings us back to cryoprotectants and their unlikely discovery lovelocks colleague audrey u smith had been working throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s with sir allen parks and christopher polgi to develop a reliable cryopreservation technique for animal semen unfortunately their studies had hit a bit of a brick wall until a chance discovery smith had during her experiments experienced success using albumen but bizarrely she couldn't replicate the results strange she went back to the same bottle she had used in the successful run as in subsequent attempts with a different bottle had failed she went back to the bottle she had the success with but sadly it was accidentally dropped some of the unknown liquid splashed on a lab hot plate and a pungently acrid smell puff of smoke was given off smith recognized a smell acrolin which is given off when glycerol was burnt ah that must be it she thought smith subsequently tested glycerol and proved consistent success this chance discovery had created an important milestone in cryopreservation but how does a cryoprotectant work cryoprotectants are chemicals that dissolve in and lower the melting point of water creating larger unfrozen pockets for cells that reduce damage from freezing the use of lovelocks and smith's discoveries hadn't really been considered for the freezing of the dead yet enter american robert etiger the man who had pushed the field towards freezing humans in the hope of future reanimation he found interest in chronics from the fiction background he had read at the age of 12 the 1931 36 page short story called the jameson satellite the story tells of a future race of machine men called the zoromes who discover a spaceship orbiting earth on board they discover a professor jameson a man who had died 40 million years before he has sent his corpse into space to preserve it for eternity to orbit around the earth the machine men decide to place jameson's brain in a machine body and the professor lives once more the story would stay with ettinger throughout his teens and twenties where he served in the us army being severely wounded fighting in germany unquestionably this experience would force him to question his own mortality post war ettinger would earn two master's degrees and would become a high school teacher but that science fiction story he read in the 1930s would stay in his mind its story of rebirth after a period of preservation would bring a case of life imitating art when a 42 year old ettinger wrote a few pages on the concept of cryonics and sent it to a number of influential people in american society few responded but undeterred ettinger set out to further develop his concept in the privately published 1962 book the prospect of immortality this time around the book attracted more attention than his previous paper and it was passed to a publisher who in turn consulted the concept with isek azimov meanwhile during 1963 peter mazier at oakridge national laboratory posited that cell damage could be reduced in the speed in which the organic material was frozen he theorized that a speed of one degree centigrade per minute was all that was needed to greatly reduce damage as long as the item had been treated with glycerol or some similar cryo protectant the science was starting to seem like it could fit the concept and it wasn't long before the first human body would be preserved ettinger's book inspired several cryo preservation companies in the us which would lead to the first attempt at preserving a human body the first person to be frozen still remains unknown but what is known is that it was performed by cryo care equipment corporation in phoenix arizona the company was advertising deep freezing as a form of cosmetic preservation but in april 1966 the first person was frozen with the rough concept of reanimation in mind the middle-aged woman from the los angeles area was placed in liquid nitrogen two months after being embalmed she was stored at slightly above freezing temperatures in a mortuary refrigerator but the body would only be kept for a year or so before she was thawed out and buried but it wouldn't be until another year later that the first person was officially cryogenically preserved james hyran bedford was a psychology professor and before his demise had written into his will his desire for the care for his corpse after death he even wrote in a hundred thousand dollars to be donated to cryonics on the 12th of january 1967 bedford died of cardiorespiratory arrest as a result of his metastasized kidney cancer within two hours the preservation process began his body was injected with a solution of 15 percent dimethyl sulfide and 85 percent ringer solution which pre-invention of vitrification was once thought to be useful for long-term cryogenics but it is unlikely the process preserved the brain the preservation work was conducted by robert prehoda an early cryonics proponent robert nelson a former tv repairman and a dr dante brunel a physician and biophysicist bedford's first couple of years were stored at the edward hope cryo care facility but hope's dream of financial success didn't come to fruition after two years hope looked to get shot of his frozen clients and started offloading them to other organizations and family members bedford's body would bounce around from facility to facility by now robert nelson had founded the cryonic society of california and through this he would freeze several more corpses in 1969 nelson would put four bodies inside a capsule made for one he purchased an underground vault at a cemetery in chatsworth on the northwest side of los angeles in may 1970 the capsule with four corpses in was loaded into the vault but the bodies were allowed to four when the money ran out for nelson nelson would continue freezing bodies and taking payment for storage if a family stopped paying then he had stopped topping up liquid nitrogen which allowed foring an eventual decomposition in total seven bodies at nelson's crypt would four out and needless to say the carelessness would result in a court case against the organization which unsurprisingly for nelson and his business partner resulted in a fine of nearly one million dollars in 1981 bedford's body was luckily not amongst those at the ill-fated chatsworth crypt and eventually custody of the corpse went to alcor where it is today the custody chain of bedford's body and the disaster of nelson's cryonics operation further highlights the inherent issues with the concept as the corpse is entirely at the whim of the place it is stored in bedford story is vitally important to the cryonics journey as he is the only corpse to remain frozen and thus potentially recoverable pre-1974 though the whole brain thing does raise questions to what they would be reviving but since the early 1970s cryonics has made improvements with newer methods of preservation and now this leads us pretty neatly onto how a body is prepared for storage after death in the more modern day say you want to be preserved for a future where you will live again well you have roughly two options one preservation of your whole body or two preservation of just your brain you see the studies by lovelock in the 1950s highlighted the need for reducing the build up of ice crystals within cells we also saw with love locks and smith's work cryo protectants and a slowing rate of cooling work towards this but one great leap forward was the use of vitrification vitrification makes the use of cryo protectants which replace the blood this reduces the risk of crystallization and turns the organ vitrified into a solid glass like state great you might say no ice crystals for me however there is one drawback it is not suitable for a whole body preservation and thus this process is only used on neuro preservation that is just the brain with a brain preservation you're really hoping for some kind of conscious upload or like in Jameson satellite a machine body it probably goes without saying that freezing your brain is significantly cheaper than a whole body preservation but how about getting your whole body done well let's have a look next clearly thinking of one's mortality is a troubling thought process some have more time to think about this than others the cryonics procedure heavily relies on the time of death being predictable and as such most who are preserved have died of a terminal disease and not in some sudden accident with cryonics preparation is key and as such in the days leading up to death a standby team is required to be on call to start work at the exact moment of death now because most countries don't allow euthanasia this requires a lot of waiting around on the part of the standby team upon the moment of cardiac arrest legal death the standby team starts the preservation process you see the quicker the work begins the more of the cells can remain intact the body's breathing and circulation are artificially restarted to reduce the damage to the brain and to start the intravenous delivery of cryoprotective medications the body is placed in an ice water bath for transportation to the preservation facility once successfully transported more cryoprotectants are profused into the body for around a week the body is then gradually cooled down to a temperature of nearly minus 200 degrees centigrade and in theory is now safe from deterioration thus the dying process is now apparently paused but here we still have the inherent risk of cryonics not the cooling process as science has caught up with ambition but the storing process the body needs to be kept at this low temperature and this is not cheap it is estimated that a minimum of at least 200 000 dollars is needed for the preservation process this consists of 60 000 dollars for the process 25 000 into a membership fund and a remaining 115 000 into a trust that owns the mortgage on the storage facility as well as a yearly membership fee when the patient is still alive at least that's how our core foundation operates now needless to say with large amounts of money needed and the concept of dodging death cryonics does have its criticisms to date no one has been brought back to life and there are no plans for the time being the process is used however have proven themselves to work such as vitrification where it is used in preserving embryos with children being successfully born from their deep frozen origins and reportedly a rabbit's brain was frozen and thawed with no crystallization damage observed but the whole concept does raise some ethical concerns for example the increased risk of potential premature euthanasia potential mental anguish of the families of the deceased and the changing of the concept of death the technology to revive the frozen corpses does not yet exist let alone being able to cure the deceased of whatever deceased them in the first place but the main question that comes to my mind is would you even want to come back to life presumably in many years in the future after all everyone you knew and loved has long since perished it would be lonely and you would be an alien in another world say for instance your great great great grandfather was frozen and thawed out today would he be able to adopt to modern technology minan in 1920 sligo island didn't even have running water in the house she grew up in and within her lifetime technology went from gas lights to the internet and this brings us back to 2014 and the preparation of how will he be revived sometime in the future well we may never know but if going on cronix's history is anything to predict the future on possibly unlikely but our core have seemed to deal with the long-term financial issues in a sensible manner by using the money paid by the internee to invest in future income but the critics are not in short supply in the 2015 mit technology review article called the full science of cronix looked into the claims of cronix companies being able to upload your brain in the future and it was thought that this would be very unlikely the field is not considered a medical treatment and to me falls more into the realm of pseudoscience but how unethical cronix is will really fall down to whether you think that taking a fee for an unproven process with no yet successful outcome for any test subject is ethical or not I suppose most of the frozen thought that cronix might offer some hope in the face of death and as such it seems like it is just a very expensive way of coping with one's mortality clearly early cronix organizations were well beyond the mark in terms of holding people's remains almost like ransom but more modern organizations seem to have learned from these past blunders but cronix does have an important cultural impact especially in science fiction films where people are put into suspended animation in order to travel to different galaxies the man who brought cronix into the public mind ettinger would himself be frozen after death in 2011 now where would you rate this subject on my ethical scale one being no problems at all and ten being pure evil i'm going to rate it between two and four this is due to most people involved having informed consent and apart from it costing a lot of money it doesn't seem to at least in the modern day be involved in testing on living subjects this is plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attributions share alike licensed play difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently average cloudy southeast in corner of london uk help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is mr music play us out disney world florida said to be the happiest place on earth as long as you ignore the more unpalatable aspects of the company you know the sweatshops they use in china and bangladesh they're less than nice working conditions for cast members in the theme parks and the fact they laid off thousands of staff during the recent pandemic i the worst time to be made unemployed in recent history especially for service industry workers but kids love their tv shows and films hell even my own offspring love disney products it's like eating donuts we all know that they're bad but damn they taste so good i think i've gotten a little sidetracked here excuse the pun well personally one of my favorite parts of disney world when i went near in the early 2000s was the monorail such a futuristic mode of transport and to a very young plainly john i thought this must be the future of passenger travel but i was a child and thus an idiot there are massive inherent downsides to such a method of transport and they didn't even throw an elephant off of one of their new age trains there are much better videos on youtube explaining this but you might ask why am i going on a tirade about disney and monorails this is a channel devoted to the folly of mankind in the form of its bugger ups after all well my captive slice of youtube audience the happiest place on earth hasn't escaped its fair share of disasters and one such happened in 2009 on the same thing that a young plainly john admired so much when i went to disney world i wanted so much to ride in the front cab but sadly every time i got there someone else had beat me to it but in hindsight maybe this was a good thing well that's my introduction done let's get started i'm john and you're watching plainly difficult it is the 1960s and a new disney theme park is being planned the project had started in 1959 initially as an extension to the already established anaheim resort in california quickly it became apparent that maybe a complete blank slate would offer a unique opportunity to have full control over the area surrounding the park original disney land had become a bit hemmed in by local businesses which were trading off the popularity of the resort market research had shown somewhere closer to the east coast would serve the company well and after searching a site in florida was settled upon now i'm going to speed past the land acquisition part of disney world but it is very interesting and worth looking up as disney were very sneaky in how they brought up all the required space will disney was a bit of a transport fan to put it lightly and as such when the anaheim park was built he managed to incorporate several methods of transport one of which was the monorail and was a pet project of disney's as such the new florida park would get a similar treatment originally the florida site was intended to showcase a future city concept with futuristic rapid transit at the forefront this was called the experimental prototype community of tomorrow or epcot this would change after walk disney's death in 1966 but epcot would open but to a more watered down version to the actual living working city envisioned in the park's early concept stages but even though not a futuristic experiment the park still needed transportation to connect up hotels car parks and the park itself this was done by an intricate fleet of trackless trams buses and the monorail system when disney world opened in october 1971 the monorail system had four stops this was expanded in october 1982 when epcot was opened the network's final addition was in 1988 with the grand floridian station the system was electrified via the beam which provided 600 volts via a bus bar the monorail has a track length of 14.7 miles consisting of two routes in which three services operate to connect the routes switching beams are used at a spur line is employed for access between the main line and the epcot line the trains used on the network were called mark 6 and measured in 62 meters or 203 feet and six inches in length and were 42 metric tons each each train could carry up to 360 passengers now with a fairly complex network that encompasses stopping and various express services effective train control is required and this is my favorite part of one of these videos the monorail has actually quite a sophisticated form of proprietary kind of a moving block signaling system called maypo the design of the system was paid for from royalties from mary poppins hence maypo even though the dumb name it's no mickey mouse signaling system the track or beam is split up into multiple sections which is around 500 feet these form a block section and transmitters on the beam transmit frequencies to the train this will tell it the state of the track ahead this is displayed to the driver or pilot as disney calls them on a display as either a green signal which means at least three blocks are clear a yellow two blocks are clear and red the next block is occupied if the train goes past a red then the emergency brakes are applied requiring the driver to use an override button the system when used like this works pretty well if a driver gets a red more than twice in two years then they're taken off driver duties and is thus fairly well managed but the system does need to be overridden during operation sometimes for example to go on to the spur line into the maintenance building during a signal failure or for reversing movements the latter of these operations was a common form of working at the start and end of the working day this is to work the trains to and from the maintenance facility which is accessed via the express beam this is fairly straightforward for the trains already on this beam but what about the trains on the separate Epcot beam well there is a switching beam provided requiring trains to proceed past the ticket and transport centre station and continue so that the rear of the train is clear of switch nine the move is given under the authority of the monorail central coordinator via radio stating the following normal visual to pile on 30 hold and notify because each pile on is numbered and identifiable trains can be moved under degraded working bypassing maypo although the initial movement to the pile and clear of the switch was done under the full protection of the signaling system any following train would have to override the maypole system as the train standing at pile on 30 would still occupy the block section which to me seems like a very dangerous situation and this was the exact scenario that was about to unfold in the early hours of the 5th of July 2009 it is the end of a long day of operation for the disney world monorail system the parks they open to roughly around 11pm as restaurants and evening events provide entertainment for the park's guests like with any other transit system in the world operation continues well into the evening and early morning as guests make their way back to their cars hotels or onto other public transport as such monorails pink purple silver red and coral were working on the system as the numbers of passengers dwindled the system gradually began to shut down for the night the express beam runs roughly an hour after park closure but the Epcot beam continues for around two this allows the express and resort monorails to be worked to stabling points before Epcot trains need to undertake their reversing moves at around 1.53am the central coordinator gave the authority for pink monorail to maneuver itself to pile on 30 for its reversing move usually the coordinator worked from a building on the Epcot line side of the ticket center there they had switch position indicators and a CCTV feed but due to staffing issues the role was being filled by a manager who had set up in a nearby restaurant using his phone for communication and thus had no access to the control room equipment behind it were purple and coral monorails still running on the Epcot beam purple had approximately six passengers on board and was making its way to the ticket and transport center because pink was in the block section ahead purple was instructed to override the mapo system to enter the station once pink had cleared the switch beam the driver informed the central controller that he was clear and awaiting further instructions the controller then contacted the shop panel operator this person was responsible for power distribution and switch operation the actions in order the operator needs to take consist of select the switch beam on the control panel cut power to the beam order the change of alignment and confirm command and reestablish power once the track is in the correct position if these actions aren't undertaken in quick succession the system times out meaning the operator would have to restart the process but this time out would also cause the panel screen to change windows and revert back to its normal window the operator was in the process of setting up the switch for monorail pink when he received a radio call from monorail silver the drivers reporting an issue with his train as it entered the workshop this led the operator to move away from the control panel to make a note of this in his log again another radio call distracted the operator this time from monorail red as it was approaching the maintenance facility and was requesting further instructions the operator replied hold outside the facility this was at roughly 1 56 a.m the operator returned to the panel which had now timed out bus returning the screen window to the main display the operator assumed that he had completed the switch alignment restored traction current and radioed to the central control that he had set up the route for monorail pink he was provided a cctv feed to seal the switch but he failed to check the switch had not actually been moved and any reversing move of monorail pink would send it back the way it came the station concourse the same that purple was pulling on to sometimes reversing moves undertaken on the monorail weren't requested by the central coordinator for the driver to change ends or have a member of staff in the rear cab as such when monorail pink was given the authority to reverse the driver wouldn't have had a visual on the state of the switch pink moved backwards as purple entered the station seeing the imminent collision the driver of purple attempted to reverse but pink's rear cab slammed into purple's leading end crushing the two together the impact pushed both trains now crushed together down the platform the driver of the pink monorail felt and heard the collision he stopped moving and upon realizing that he was not on the spur line knew it was another train that was the source of the bump and noise staff on the station evacuated the passengers off the purple monorail and attempted to rescue the driver but no sign of life could be seen not long after the first emergency responders were on the scene and the driver of purple was found to be dead the passengers and the driver of pink monorail were uninjured the cost was thought to be upwards of 24 million dollars in damages even though the system resides on privately owned disney property investigators of any accident on the monorail came under the purview of the ntsb as such an investigation was launched and they would find some worrying operational norms for the disney monorail in the subsequent report into the accident the ntsb discovered that Walt disney world resorts procedures for the central coordinator did not specify that the central coordinator should observe the display at the concourse tower when directing monorail movements procedures also did not require that the central coordinator be in the concourse tower when directing monorail movements it was also found that it was down to the coordinator's discretion if the train driver needed to change ends before reversing movement which wasn't often requested because it was quicker to just back the train up observing the switch movement on the cctv was not compulsory for the panel operator apart from making sure it was clear of the train before moving the switch the operator even said in an interview they said just make sure that there's no train on that switch before you move it the blame for the accident was due to three factors one the coordinator not observing the movement and authorizing the driver of pink to back up the train without changing ends two the panel operator not actually moving the switch and not checking on the cctv and finally Walt disney world itself for its terrible safety practices that allowed all of these awful operating decisions to become the standard way of working the operator of the pink monorail was absolved of all blame due to the movement of the train into the station concourse and the spur was virtually identical and that he was concentrating on not going above 15 miles an hour which would be a safety violation when overriding the may post system disney world enacted post accident multiple changes to ensure that everyone is where they should be in the case of switching beams the driver in the correct cab the coordinator in the control room and the panel operator to confirm the switch movement this accident is the reason why you can't go into the driver's cab anymore the system was made fully automatic in 2014 drivers still remain in the cab but the train start control is now handled by platform staff which i think is kind of sad now where would you rate this disaster on my disaster and legacy scales i'm going to say four and five but maybe a four if you're not bothered about the riding in the driver's cab thing all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed playing difficult videos are produced by me john in a current sunny corner of suburban southern london uk this channel is made possible by my patrons and youtube members who all get early access to videos i'd also like to thank my paypal donors help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it is the third of august 2020 and italian president Sergio matarella is inaugurating a new bridge in genoa italy this year has been a roller coaster of ups and downs but the event marks a moment of hope in the city's history many looking at the bridge shed a tear but these emotions aren't linked to the global pandemic but to an event two years before matarella isn't the first president to inaugurate a bridge on this site batona goes back to 1967 with the completion of this bridge's forerunner the ponti morandi the morandi bridge so named after its designer ricardo morandi met a tragic end in august 2018 which would raise questions about vital infrastructure throughout italy and europe as a whole today's video is about the story of this once engineering and architectural wonder and it's quite literal downfall our story starts not in the baking hot sun of genoa italy but that of western venezuela engineer ricardo morandi had begun to pin a new bridge in 1957 this structure would become his signature of sorts morandi liked to design his bridges to look simple yet elegant as such his general rafael adantaya bridge a cable state design used as few as only two stays per span although striking in looks this had a number of drawbacks and that is a redundancy less stays equals more stress on the cables and thus less redundancy as the way to the structure is spread over a smaller area a failure of one of these stays can result in too much strain on the other and thus makes a single point failure more likely the bridge was completed in 1962 well so pleased with the bridge was morandi that he decided to do the old control c control v trick when he was asked to design a new structure back home in italy morandi's concept was selected for the design for the new bridge which was to span the pulse severe of alley in genoa it would carry the new a10 motorway through the city the bridge's design would have a length of 1182 meters a height above the valley of 45 meters at road level and free towering reinforced concrete pylons reaching 90 meters in height the maximum span was 210 meters like his previous bridge this one would use cable stays but unlike the general rafael bridge they would be 52 cables bundled together encased in a post-tensioned concrete shell at the time the cable coating was boasted as maintenance free and impervious to environmental elements that could rust away the vital stays but it would also obscure the cables making inspection for damage virtually impossible due to the extensive use of concrete the bridge had minimal use of steel something vital in post-war italy where resources especially steel production were limited although beautiful and clean looking design not a lot of thought was given to future traffic volumes and thus its long-term durability this feels very similar to the silver bridge well spoiler alert cars and trucks would gain weight over the years and the concrete protections of the stays wouldn't actually stop corrosion the deck was made almost entirely reinforced concrete further reducing its metal usage construction began in 1963 it was completed to great fanfare in 1969 and opened by President Giuseppe Sagarat at the time of opening the bridge met the specification set out by the government and was thought to have an intended 50 year lifespan as soon as the ponti morandi open to traffic the sleek and simple design proved to be a costly structure to maintain you see when the concrete was originally laid the calculations for concrete creep were incorrect and as such shrinkage exceeded expectations resulting in an uneven and undulating roadway this would require a decade of remediation works but this was not the only issue you know the apparently safe on the environment cable stays well they weren't so safe as the concrete began to deteriorate the issues with the bridges concrete parts which was most of it were exacerbated by the salty sea air and pollution from industrial areas within the city by 1979 the bridge had deteriorated to a point that even morandi himself needed to investigate the structure meanwhile the bridge in venezuela was beginning to show signs of age and with several of its cables corroding replacement was essential but because of the design this proved to be difficult as noted in an american society of civil engineers article as the original design consisted of two layers of suspension cables passing over each of the six main towers replacing the cables without damaging the structure seemed nearly impossible given time and cost constraints but one difference between the two sister bridges was that genoa's bridges stays were covered and thus hiding the warning signs of corrosion back to morandi's investigation into the bridge in 1979 he found cracks and issues with the concrete structure degrading in his report of the same year morandi would say himself to remove all traces of rust on the exposure of the reinforcements fill the patches with epoxy resin and cover everything with an elastomer of very high chemical resistance all during the 1980s the cables on the bridge deteriorated still hidden from view in the early 90s pile on 11 the eastern most of the three main towers was investigated and it was found that roughly 30 percent of the steel tendons had experienced corrosion so much so that they are only to carry about half their design weight to add more fuel to the fire vehicles continued to increase in weight and commercial trucks went from something like this in the 1960s to something like this in the 1990s the affected areas were refurbished in a similar fashion to the venezuelan bridge as well as having reinforcing cables attached on the exterior pier 10 had the stays reinforced at the top but this was the only remediation work on the troublesome steel cables autostrada per italia took over management of the bridge in 1999 but no more work was undertaken on repairing the rusted out strands as the new millennium came and the bridge was becoming increasingly congested a new replacement was put on the books but this would take time and more importantly money and thus the years ticked on and the warnings over the structure's reliability continued to mount government officials were told that the morandy bridge needed maintenance autostrada commissioned a report into the condition of the bridge in october 2017 from carmelo gentile and on antonello rockolo of the polytechnic university of melanne over four nights professor gentile recorded the frequencies of the morandy bridge a smooth waveform would hint at a healthy structure but when he tested the stays on tower nine he heard something worrying the findings of the university team hinted towards the stays rusting inside their concrete enclosures during 2018 the bridge was receiving more substantial central concrete dividers adding considerable weight to the already weakened bridge on the third of may 2018 as the bridge was in its 51st year of existence autostrada announced the tender for structural upgrades of the viaduct with a cost of around 20 million euro but this would be too late it is the late morning of the 14th of august 2018 and cars are making their way across the viaduct or pulse of error the day has been marred with torrential rain at around 1136 a.m a 210 meter long section of the bridge around pile on nine catastrophically and suddenly failed around 30 cars and three trucks were on the span that disappeared into the pulse severer valley and churin genoa and melanne genoa railways below the failure point is seen by cctv and witnesses was the southern stays 43 people were lost that morning with many more injured and at least 13 more missing because the bridge navigated over and around residential areas all property nearby was evacuated for fears of the remaining spans collapsing but remarkably the remaining sections remained one such story of pure luck was of a demonte transporti sr l truck narrowly missing the plunge the now iconic Volvo teetered on the edge and became a symbol of the disaster locals and emergency workers alike scrambled through the rubble to locate victims as they called out from what used to be the bridge but with such a catastrophic collapse claiming many lives authorities had to find out what was the cause of the ponti morandi collapse the bridges designer morandi was the one person authorities would have liked to have talked to but unfortunately he had been dead for nearly 30 years instead his design notes and surveys of the bridge were combed through to build up a picture of the structure in a case of perfect timing ricardo morandi's design lasted almost exactly 51 years to the day hinting he knew how to build the expected lifespan of 50 years with design which like many other striking simplistic designs looked beautiful in exchange for reduced redundancy and increased maintenance now the point of failure is not difficult to find out as we have so much information and footage from both before during and after the collapse we also know that the bridge and many similar designs from morandi had exhibited similar issues the general rafael urdanita bridge had in the late 1970s nearly collapsed due to corrosion after all pylon 9 was the only one of the three main towers which held up the strands to have not had any proper remediation work and was the most concerning during the 2017 polytechnic university of melanne report straight away the newly elected government pointed the finger at autostrada but the root cause was more than that the bridge right from its opening days had drained resources just to keep it open in the 467 page paper investigating the cause of the collapse many theories were explored including excessive winds which was put forward by autostrada these were discounted as most warning signs pointed towards the pesky concrete covered cable stays it was discovered that morandi himself concerned about this design choice had recommended regular checks on the cables these checks were never undertaken during the 90s when the bridge was still under state control the concrete's water resistance had come into question these concerns were passed on to the private operator autostrada which was subsequently not investigated engineers had suggested annual maintenance and frequent inspections of the aging bridge but according to the official investigation inspection did not come until 2012 nearly 20 years after the bridge's last proper overhaul which strengthened tower 11 and parts of tower 10 funnily enough the two that didn't fail such was the perceived negligence of the private operator that it would turn into a criminal case against 59 employees of autostrada and its contractor spear engineering company we won't know the outcome of the trial yet as at the time of working on this video august 2022 it has only just begun the city was in shock and the remains of the bridge acted as a grim headstone for those who were lost but the tragedy would give way to pragmatism there was the need of a crossing in the area and as such the decision to demolish the remains of the ponti morandi was made to make way for a new and hopefully safer crossing the remains of the bridge was demolished in June 2019 and almost in record time of replacement was built and that leads us back to the 3rd of august 2020 almost three years to the day and the opening of the new genoa st george bridge costing 202 million euro the bridge offers a new hope but the issues concerning italian and the wide european and uk communities infrastructure still exist you see much like many other subjects this channel covers it always boils down to money and the risks of underinvestment all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me in a currently swelteringly hot corner of southern london uk i'd like to thank you my youtube members and patreons for your financial support and if you want to you can check out my twitter for odds and sods and photos and hints on future videos if you like this week's outro track feel free to check it out on spotify or on my made by john youtube channel if you really like it you can even buy it on itunes and all the links are in the description below and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it wouldn't take much for me to avoid flying although i naturally have an interest in the aircraft themselves this is probably due to as i mentioned before my father's career in the aerospace industry as a child we had all sorts of schematics bits of test equipment and regular trips to weapon shows even when i was in the air training cadets as a teenager i loved learning about how aircraft worked but whenever i had to go up in one the anxiety began to close in oh and i also loved the fact that a ministry of defense sponsored organization aimed at children also allowed us to handle field strip and fire leonfield martini henry and s a 80 rifles who said us berets were a gun shy society anyway today's subject definitely hasn't improved my anxiety when it comes to being more than a couple of hundred feet above ground level in this episode of scandal we're going to peak behind the curtain of one of aviation's newest and arguably worst scandals that is of the Boeing 737 max its victims and cover-up welcome to scandal a new plainly difficult series it's march 2019 and billions of dollars worth of aircraft are just sitting around in parking fields around the world the images could be mistaken for the beginning of the first of the lockdowns to follow a year later but instead of a pandemic these groundings are of only one type of aircraft the Boeing 737 max 346 depths and two strikingly similar aircraft crashes and a new feature deliberately hidden from the pilots are the reason these planes are by anyone's standards brand new and only a few years before the 737 max was promoted to the world as the new and efficient aircraft carriers have been waiting for save fuel save money it's better for the environment what's not to like also because it's based on an already existing design crew training costs should be cheap too but how in just a few years did we go from the fanfare of the first flight in 2016 to the disasters of 2018 and 19 background Boeing's history goes back a long way to during the first world war when it was called Pacific Aeroproducts Company this would be changed after only one year of operation to the Boeing Aeroplane Company in 1917 in the early days the company under the leadership of William E Boeing built planes as well as operating them for customers in 1929 the company was renamed again to United Aircraft and Transport Corporation under this name the company acquired even more small businesses its airlines part of the business was merged to make united airlines and in 1934 his operations and manufacturing parts of the business were split up the manufacturing side continued to expand would make a lot of money when the brewing storm clouds of war hit the us in the late 1930s they've manufactured loads of b-17s and b-29 bombers making the company twelfth among the united states corporations in value of wartime production contracts but bombers became great testbeds for developing the transporting of not deadly weapons but instead people on business trips and holidays okay i'm going to fast forward to the 1960s with Boeing's development of what will become one of the world's best-selling jetliners the 737 by this time Boeing had taken the crown as the leading airliner manufacturer although not first to market their 707 passenger plane became the de facto face of jet travel this was because it had a great feature of not exploding in midair and i'm looking at you the comet right back to the 737 a very popular product the concept for a new airliner for the Boeing company came out of a need to offer a product that could supplement its customers 727 fleets of short top tri-engined planes the 727 had been developed to cover the smaller local airport market which the much larger four engines 707 would struggle to make financially viable consider it like a small local bus compared to a big intercity coach well the 737 was to be similar as early market research indicated a need for a capacity of around 50 to 60 passengers as such the new aircraft would have two engines in an effort to reduce costs Boeing tried to make use of as many parts out of the bin from the 737 sisters similar fuselage from the 707 and similar flight control equipment from the 727 the original designs had rear mounted engines but quickly this was changed to wing mounted pods aided in passenger capacity the engines were mounted directly to the wing allowing for shorter landing gear which had the useful side effect of making luggage loading and unloading quicker but could cause issues for any future larger re-engine projects the stand at the time was hydro mechanical flight controls this is that all movements are transmitted from the pilot's stick via cables to hydraulic servo valves which then powers the actuators which in turn moved the flaps and other control surfaces on the wings and tail well from paper to air only took three years with the 737's maiden flight on the 9th of April 1967 not long after several successful test flights the federal aviation administration issued type certificate a 16we giving a big thumbs up to the 737 100 for commercial flight on the 15th of December 1967 with lufthansa passengers becoming the first people to fly a commercial flight with the new jet on the 10th of February 1968 the aircraft were going to dominate the market for the next few decades all while Boeing continued to tweak and improve the design however the rather archaic control system remained the design was not without issues one such would rear its ugly heads in the 1990s on the 3rd of March 1991 United Airlines 585 a Boeing 737 200 would experience a sudden right-hand nose pitch down whilst attempting to land in Colorado Springs the resulting crash killed all 25 aboard what was perplexing to investigators was that the captain of 585 operated a strict and conservative cockpit strongly adhering to rules and procedures a second remarkably similar event happened on the 8th of September 1994 US Air Flight 427 a larger Boeing 737 300 it crashed near Pittsburgh Pennsylvania this time it was a nose down left turn the pilots managed to wrestle the plane level only for it to turn a second time sadly the aircraft and all 132 were lost there was a theory regarding the 1991 crash that an uncommanded rudder movement was to cause but sadly the wreckage was too mangled to find the defect the ntsb would finally get a break when a third plane Eastwind Airlines Flight 517 on a night for June 1996 briefly experienced an unexpected rudder command thankfully the plane landed safely the crew and passengers also survived the ntsb were able to gather valuable information from the aircraft and crew resulting in a preliminary conclusion of a faulty rudder pcu and its dual survey valve this could jam and turn the rudder in the opposite direction of the pilot's input need us to say the event would confuse flight controls with deadly results Boeing and the ntsb would test multiple units confirming the fault and ordering Boeing to completely replace all units by 2002 but although this horrendously expensive fault was dealt with a new aircraft not from Boeing but a rival would start eating up the industry Airbus 1987 would see the first flight of the 737's biggest competitor the a320 up until the late 1980s the 737 dominated the market but after a320 was released air carriers now had a solid alternative with this competition the two aircraft became intertwined as such each company set out to improve upon and develop their popular platforms because the a320 was newer it had a much more modern fly by wire control system where the pilots controls aren't mechanically coupled to the hydraulic actuators that move the flaps instead the pilots controls are from a joystick which transmits electrical signals to the control services this helps maintenance costs as there is no complex systems of mechanical linkages and cables to deal with it was lighter being made out of composite materials and boasted a wider cabin at 3.95 outside diameter meters compared to 3.8 meters the 737 airbus boasted that the 737 300 burnt 35 percent more fuel and has 16 percent higher operating costs per seat than the v2500 powered a320 and fuel and maintenance costs are vital for scraping as much profit out of shorter routes the new plane essentially made budget airlines a possibility but the 737 still proved popular and as such carried on in production even at the new millennium it was now in its third generation aptly named next generation 737 which was launched in 1997 next gen development was directly caused by Boeing's old sister company starting to make orders for you guessed it the a320 as the early 2000s came along the 737 ng was the standard offering from Boeing but although better than the second gen classic 737 the design was still showing its age why not design and build a brand new aircraft with the idea of improving efficiency and the like you may ask well Boeing had thought of that already during 2006 the company pondered on the idea of a completely new design to be out for 2010 initial interest from the market looked good but airbus was about to put a spanner in the works in December 2010 a new a320 was announced this was to be called the neo or new engine option and was aimed squarely at efficiency the new model was essentially a re-engine design with two more fuel efficient turbo fan units either from cfm international leap or the pratt and Whitney pw 1000g with the addition of wing shark lids you know the little bent parts on the wing tips the a320 neo boasted 15 to 20 percent more fuel efficiency than the previous generation 320 don't forget that the previous generation was already more efficient than the 737 as such the neo hit the market strongly over 600 commitments were made at the paris air show and by the end of the year the total backlog of orders exceeded 1000 this made the 320 neo the world record holder for opening orders this didn't go unnoticed by boeing but they were adamant that a new plane was the way to go but long term customer american airlines would sway boeing to scrap a clean sheet design when it ordered 260 air buses breaking the previous boeing monopoly at the airline but it wasn't all terrible american airlines also tacked on 100 737 next gens as well as requesting 100 737s re-engined with the cfm leap the same engine offering the a320 neo came to market with and here enters the fourth generation 737 max the 737 max okay it feels like it's taken a while to get here we are nearly 1800 words into the script and only now we're talking about the subject for the video but by now you all must know i do love a bit of context the new re-engined 737 was approved by boeing's board of directors on the 30th of august 2011 it was hoped that the project would achieve a four percent reduction in fuel burn rate compared to the a320 great the new aircraft will also offer airline fleets that already operated the 737 the benefit of not needing significant crew training to decrease the drag of the 737 it received split wingtips and the new larger engines now too big for the original placement were placed further forward and higher but this was found in testing to significantly change the aircraft's dynamic properties by causing a nose up situation to bring the flight characteristics back to what a pilot should expect from a 737 a system called maneuvering characteristics augmentation system or mcas was implemented this would use software to engage the horizontal stabilizers in the case of the max this would be used to account for a nose up situation caused by new engines and thus bring the nose back down we'll put a pin in the mcas system and come back to that in a bit so because the new plane was already a certified airframe development time was greatly reduced along with the reduced red tape for the whole new design would attract reportedly by november 2011 boeing had amassed 700 commitments four years after the program launched in august 2015 the first fuselage rolled off the production line the first flight took place on the 29th of january 2016 at renton municipal airport nothing out of the ordinary had been reported and a year later the aircraft received its faa license in march followed soon after by the remaining worldwide licenses as orders started to stack up carriers had to prepare their crews in the operation of the new aircraft traditionally the brand new airplanes several hours of simulator time is needed this costs money firstly and actually purchasing a simulator or updating the sims the company already has and secondly the downtime of taking your pilots out of productive work to put them in said simulator well with the 737 max and due to its sharing its type rating with the 737 next gen because of the mcas pilots only needed to undertake a tablet-based training course strangely but deliberately the mcas was omitted from the 737 max's manual this was in an effort to minimize the new system's significance from the federal aviation authority and thus keep down retraining and licensing costs okay i think it's time to talk about how the mcas system works mcas mcas was not a new system when it was used in the max bowing had been installing it into its military tanker variant 767 from 2013 mcas works to avoid a stall by manipulating the horizontal stabilizers but is not the same as a stick pusher it was employed in the bowing kc 46 pegasus to help balance the plane during mid-air fuelling but the 737 max's sole purpose was to make the plane feel like its predecessor because the new bigger engines were placed further forward than in previous generations this system was only active when the max was under manual control it was given in the software of the plane control system complete authority to bring the aircraft nose down when it detected a potential stall the pilot's inputs into the controls would not override the mcas in november 2016 two of bowing 737 max flight technician pilots discovered changes to the mcas system instead of informing the faa bowing through these two pilots concealed this information and deceived the faa meaning the changes weren't added to the flight manuals thus limiting the perceived effect of the system on the operation of the aircraft hiding the severity of mcas from pilots this in turn allowed bowing to advertise the aircraft as not requiring significant retraining the difference between the 737 and the kc 46 mcas system was that it was activated when a single angle of attack sensor detected the nose rising too far even though there were two sensors on board which meant the system was susceptible to a single point failure if both sensors disagree an alert can be given to the pilot on a screen however this was an optional paid extra and not all operators purchased this the first 737 max delivery was made on the 16th of may 2017 to malindo air a subsidiary of the low-cost indonesian carrier lion air and from their deliveries continued with carriers around the world receiving their shiny new 737s by may of 2018 around 130 maxes were in service with 28 airlines racking up over 40 000 in service flights this number would increase as more aircraft were delivered one such in august 2018 was a 737 max 8 registration pk lqp this plane would become the first 737 max accident and the worst in the whole lifespan of the 737 a lion air bowing 737 max 8 carrying 189 people crashing to the sea this morning lion air 610 now and i've mentioned this whole issue of reducing pilot training needs a few times in this video but this section shows why it is such a bad idea to hide a new system from pilots even if it saves you a whole load of money it is the morning of the 29th of october 2018 and 31 year old captain sunija and 41 year old co-pilot harvino prepare their 737 max for a flight from jakarta to pankau painang indonesia both pilots are very experienced with the captain having amassed over 5000 hours in the 737 their aircraft today is pretty new having just over 500 hours of operation the crew arrangement for today's flight was a little bit last minute with the co-pilot only being informed at around four o'clock in the morning and to add more misery to the morning the captain is suffering from the flu with all crew including a lion air engineer and passengers aboard the co-pilot seeks authority to taxi to the runway from jakarta atc captain sunija is at the controls jakarta tower issues takeoff clearance and the plane departs the runway at 6 20 and 33 seconds in the morning just three seconds later the stick shaker begins the plane thinks it's about to stall an air traffic controller clears the pilots to climb to 27 000 feet the altitude being displayed to the pilots wasn't making any sense the co-pilot asks for confirmation of altitude from atc and it replied 700 feet the confusion in the cockpit increased as the two men tried to find the correct checklist they attempted to climb but the nose keeps on being pushed down none of the readings are matching up an excess speed warning sounds as the plane is descending 11 minutes after takeoff the voice recorder picks up the automatic warnings terrain terrain followed by sink rate at 6 33 am lion air flight 610 loses communication contact with atc the plane and all 189 aboard are gone indonesia's transport ministry ordered emergency inspections of all the 737 max 8s in the nation's fleet but all seemed good preliminary investigations hinted at a control issue stemming from a faulty angle of attack sensor the airplane's digital flight data recorder recorded a difference between the left and right angle of attack sensors that was present during the entire final flight it was found that one of the sensors had been replaced two days before and issues with the stick shaker and erratic nose down situations were experienced now why you may ask was the plane still flying well according to lion air officials bowing maintenance guidance did not state that it was required to take the plane out of service for that particular fault the previous four flights had reported similar issues hinting that just a single sensor failure could cause a nose down situation but bear in mind the mcas system had not actually been officially announced by bowing in november bowing released an operations manual bulletin advising airline operators how to address erroneous cockpit readings all whilst the lion air crash was being investigated 737 max's continued to be delivered and hundreds of aircraft flew day in day out even though bowing were aware of the one sensor failure equals nose dive event and the fact that pilots would more than likely be caught off guard by this by march 2019 bowing had delivered 386 of the 737 max jets throughout the world but a worrying case of groundhog day would hit the industry on the 10th of march Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 was a 737 max eight the same as the ill-fated lion air 610 it was scheduled to be an international passenger flight from Addis Abba Ethiopia to Nairobi Kenya the captain of the morning's flight was Yared Getochal a 29 year old who had over 8,000 hours under his belt the first officer however was a new graduate Ahmed Nur Muhammad Nur age 25 he only had around 360 flight hours logged there were a total of 149 passengers and eight crew on board at 837 and 34 seconds a.m local time on the 10th of March ATC issued takeoff clearance to ET 302 takeoff roll began from the runway and all seemed normal values of the left and right angle of attack sensors also matched at 0838 and 44 seconds a.m shortly after liftoff the left and right AOA values deviated just like with lion air a few months before the stick began to shake telling the pilots at the plane thought it was going to stall the mcas system then activated and pushed the nose down the pilots wrestle with the 737 managing to just about keep it in the air the mcas activated again dropping the nose at 840 and 35 seconds the first officer called out stab trim cut out the captain agreed and the trim tab system was then cut out this also killed the mcaa but the plane was still trimmed for a nose down scenario and with the engine still at takeoff power the ground was getting ever closer the pilots attempted to manually crank the stabilizers to a neutral position at 843 the captain requested switching back on the trim tab system in order to regain neutral stabilization but this also switched back on the mcas or the mcs back on the plane it went further into a nose down position and crashed at 844 six minutes after takeoff flight 302 had hit the ground at roughly 700 miles an hour needless to say there were no survivors the flight data recorders were found pretty quickly and were sent to France for investigation pretty quickly the similarities with lion air 610 were undeniable on the 4th of April 2019 the ECAA issued its preliminary report although not naming mcas directly it did state that the automatic trim command occurred without any corresponding motion of the stabilizer Boeing's Dennis Mullenberg released a statement which tried to push the blame on to the pilots pretty dick move if you ask me even other pilots such as the Hudson River Miracle pilot sully sullenberger stated after attempting the event in the simulator it's been obvious since the lion air crash but a redesign of the 737 max 8 has been urgently needed yet has still not been done and announced proposed fixes do not go far enough he went on to say that a co-pilot with around 200 hours would have insufficient experience to deal with such a stressful situation hello john here have you ever wondered who made the racket in the background to this video or the other scandal episodes or even the outro songs on pretty much every recent playing difficult episode well wonder no more as it was made by me john and you can now listen to the songs in full on my new youtube channel made by john stream them on spotify or even if you fancy by them to keep forever on beatport and itunes i enjoy making my personal mix of acid house breakbeat and ambience and i hope you'll enjoy listening to it as much as i did making it right back to scandal and bowings less than ethical business practices the groundings bowing would be hit hard when airlines around the world started grounding their 737 fleets starting with ethiotian airlines on the 10th of march 2019 followed on march 11th the chinese aviation authority ordering all chinese operated 737 maxis followed by the eu only one country still held that the max was airworthy the good old usa but they couldn't piss into the wind for too long eventually grounding all of the us maxis on the 13th of march 2019 officially by march 18th 2019 all 387 aircraft in service were grounded this would mark a financially crippling time for bowing delays after delays would haunt bowing as it promised software updates to reinstate the plane but would keep on being delayed as the delay to the software mounted the plane came under increasing scrutiny production was cut by one fifth in april 2019 but this wouldn't be the end 737 max customers were doubly hit with useless aircraft and reduced schedules the a320 at this point probably felt like a better option during 2019 multiple investigations and committee meetings were held to discuss the max and two of which were quite extreme the differences in their questioning a committee meeting in may opened up with a very favorable to bowing line of accusations from sam graves of missouri ranking member of the house transportation and infrastructure committee he would state for me the action report reaffirms my belief that pilots trained in the united states would have successfully been able to handle this situation reports compound my concerns about quality training standards in other countries and that's why i've asked the dot inspector general to look at international pilot training this committee meeting was directly quoting from a report paid for by institutional investors with large holdings in bowing stock however even the simulator runs used in the report kind of contradict this as one instance the crew was only saved by the pilots undertaking a very old technique called the roller coaster method this involved letting the yoke go to relieve the forces on the tail then cranking the wheel and repeating this several times this technique has not been in us pilot manuals for decades and during the simulator session the pilot lost 8 000 feet of altitude i should say that in the real-life scenario of the ethop and airlines crash they never even reached 8 000 feet to begin with in october 2019 bowing company president and chief executive office officer denis mullenberg testified before the senate transportation committee hearing on aviation safety and the future of bowing 737 max it was grilled with questions about internal messages that had raised concerns over the mcas issue of a single failed sensor during the senate committee it was highlighted that in the contract with southwest airlines the largest 737 max operator that bowing would be required to pay the airline one million dollars per aircraft delivered if pilots needed to undertake simulator training clearly something bowing would not have liked to have done first giving reason to downplay the mcas system from the faa and the airlines when asked about the single sensor activation of mcas mullenberg said we tried to rely on previous architecture we learned and we're moving to a two sensor architecture on discovering accountability rep daniel lapinsky of in annoy asked i'm not sure what accountability means if you received a 15 million dollar bonus after these planes crashed questions were also brought to the ceo about self-certified specifications of the plane because it was a derivative of a current type mullenberg denied any knowledge of the internal messages and proved to be not a good look but how did bowing manage to get this new potentially deadly feature past the faa well in a december 2018 bowing slideshow the company set out how it felt the mcas didn't need to be individually assessed as it did not consider it new or novel bowing had an organization designation authorization this allows certain certifications and safety checks to be delegated away from the faa to a manufacturer this helped the faa not have to be involved in every aspect of the certification of an aircraft but it was intended for minor non-safety things rather than major control and safety issues self certifying your own products i can't imagine that ever being abused if it had individually assessed the mcas then the faa would have needed to have been involved in assessing the new system the company argued that mcas wasn't new or novel because a similar system was previously used in the 767 tanker for the air force but the implementation was different as the 767 used data from both aoe sensors to determine if mcas would intervene whereas the 737 max only used one well a review of bowings organization designation authorization resulted in november 26 the faa revoking bowings ability to issue airworthiness certificates for individual max aeroplanes the faa set out for required improvements for the max before it could be ungrounded first installing new flight control computer software this change is intended to prevent erroneous mcas activation among other safeguards installing updated cockpit display system software to generate an aoe disagree alert this will alert pilots that the aeroplanes to aoe sensors are disagreeing by a certain amount indicating a potential aoe sensor failure incorporating new and revised operating procedures into aeroplane flight manuals this change is intended to ensure the flight crew has the means to recognize and respond to erroneous stabilizer movements and the effects of a potential aoe sensor failure changing the routing of horizontal stabilizer trim wires this is intended to bring the aeroplane into full compliance with the faa's wire separation safety standards in addition to these four design changes the faa also will require operators to conduct an aoe sensor system test and perform an operational readiness flight prior to returning each aeroplane to service but as 2019 was drawing to a close the company took another nosedive excused the pun when 737 max production completely paused on december 17 later on in the month denis mullenberg resigned to be replaced by board chairman david calhoun in the september of 2020 a final committee report on the Boeing 737 max was released it put the blame on boeing and the faa saying both boeing and the faa share responsibility for the future development and ultimate certification of an aircraft that was unsafe there was tremendous financial pressure on boeing and the 737 max program to compete with airbus's new a320 neo aircraft among other things this pressure resulted in extensive efforts to cut costs maintain the 737 program schedule and avoid slowing the 737 max production line on the 27th of may boeing resumed production of the max albeit slowly and a month later test flights resumed to achieve recertification the light was at the end of the tunnel for the max as it would soon return to the skies the updates had been done and test flights were underway in september 2020 faa administrator and x delta airlines boeing 737 pilot steven dickson conducted a two hour test flight he had previously stated that the max could not return to service until he had personally undergone the new training and test flight this went ahead with no issues and a month later on the 18th november 2020 the faa issued a continuing airworthiness notification which essentially revoked the grounding and over the coming months gradually aviation authority had started allowing the max back into the skies however all throughout the grounding and return to service a criminal case against boeing was brewing the criminal case I should say that this episode of scandal makes a hat trick of companies being responsible for multiple deaths and being able to dodge any prison time in january boeing was charged with a 737 max fraud conspiracy which boeing agreed to pay a fine prosecutors stated boeing's employees chose the path of profit over candle by concealing material information from the faa concerning the operation of its 737 max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception this resolution holds boeing accountable for its employees criminal misconduct addresses the financial impact to boeing's airlines customers and hopefully provides some measure of compensation to the crash victims families and beneficiaries the misleading statements half truths and omissions communicated by boeing employees to the faa impeded the government's ability to ensure the safety of the flying public as well as saying today's the third prosecution agreement holds boeing and its employees accountable for their lack of candor with the faa regarding mcas the company agreed to pay over 2.5 billion dollars this was made up of a criminal penalty of 243.6 million and 177 billion of damages to airline customers as well as 500 million to a crash victim fund in the process boeing stock price tanked which probably wasn't helped by the worldwide pandemic as well but a company had begun to turn things around with the new and less crashy 737 max in which customers are still receiving new orders and to date 840 units have been built my conclusion well we can say the 737 max was doomed from the start when boeing promised the new much too big engines this left engineers to try and sort out the balancing issues by shoehorning the mcas system into the aircraft and downplaying its significance from regulators customers and pilots this allowed boeing to dodge any fees for retraining pilots as set out in its order contracts essentially allowing the company to sell the plane as just a continuation from the previous generation and not a new aircraft boeing was allowed to self-certify and cover up the changes to the max all which had been disclosed to the faa in what seemed like a massive u-turn and probably to appease the powers that be boeing announced in january 2020 that simulator training was recommended for crews returning to the 737 max after the fleet's ungrounding this is a plainly difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plainly of course videos are produced by me john in a currently average southern corner of suburban london uk i'd like to thank my patrons for all your financial support as well as my youtube members for all your financial support you can check out my twitter for hints on future videos as well as photos and odds and odds of the usual random things i get up to day to day and all that's left to say is mr music can you play us out please john here and i'm currently on the isle of shepi i woke up at stupid o'clock this morning and drove down here to show you this bridge why am i here you might be thinking well this bridge in 2013 was the scene for one of the uk's possibly even europe's largest multi-car pileups involving upwards of 130 vehicles no less right well it's time for me to drive back home i'll hand over to you john in the studio it is a foggy september thursday morning and traffic is flying along the a249 over the shepi crossing the road is a main artery for some 40 000 inhabitants on the isle of shepi to the rest of kent the bridge the traffic today is flowing over is one of two road links in the area and can be deadly in poor weather this was the case on the fifth of september a thick fog had descended upon the shepi crossing visibility for the cars on the bridge was not far beyond the bonnet which common sense would dictate to maybe slow down but for many drivers getting to their destination quicker was more important at around 7 15 a car crash initiated a 10 minute long pileup where a seemingly endless number of crashes bumps and shunts would bring the crossing into national news and would not only show the stupidity of the drivers but also a few inherent design flaws of the bridge which was at the time still fairly new background it is 2006 and a new bridge is being unveiled as part of a multimillion pound improvement project modernizing a vital link between the town of she and s and the m20 motorway the isle of shepi throughout its history has suffered from connection issues to the rest of the kent county region this is due to the island being surrounded by the thames estuary to its north and to the south the swale channel this part is closest to the rest of kent and is also a vast marshland oh yes and is around here on a map in the uk roads that connect population centers are divided into three categories motorways which are large multi-lane routes that connects regions a roads which connects towns and villages these can be multi-lane or just one lane in each direction and b roads which are minor roads that connect smaller settlements all of these types are numbered and the routes that connects the m20 motorway and she and s is called the a249 she and s is a vital financial center for the island due to its port it is one of the largest foreign car importers in the uk as well as handling thousands of tons of fruits and meat products from all over the world as such road links are vital to the area but before 2006 the island's main trunk route had one hell of a pinch point the kings ferry bridge the swale channel which kings ferry and the 2006 crossing bridges span is used as a shipping route which would require a bridge design to account for this the kings ferry was a lift bridge design which carried the roadway and a single track rail line now this is fine and all but for one thing around 30,000 vehicles used a crossing per day and up to 20 ships navigate along the swale every day as well which means traffic had to be stopped to raise the deck and allow a vessel to pass underneath and this took roughly 20 minutes to complete not something ideal for a major trunk route as such a new 20 million pound bridge was commissioned instead of a lift bridge the new crossing would be built tall enough to allow ships underneath without stopping the flow of traffic it would be around a mile long have two lanes in each direction no street lighting and no refuse points or hard shoulder the two directions were separated by a central barrier initially a tunnel was considered but the local wildlife impact put an end to the plan and thus a bridge was conceived great you might think but this came with a new added problem because of the steep gradient needed to get the required height over the swale estuary vehicular traffic making their way over the bridge are unable to see the summit this opens the risk of accidents as any incident beyond the summit can't be seen by vehicles approaching the crossing to add more visibility issues the roadway was unlit meaning problems in weather conditions such as heavy rain mist or fog the latter was a common sight on the shepi crossing as the surrounding area was marshland a breeding ground for fog but i digress the new bridge was opened in july 2006 and proved to be a vital addition to the island's transport infrastructure the earlier Kingsbury bridge remained giving an alternate route and access to swale train station the disaster cars kept on coming it is the morning of the 5th september 2013 a thick fog had descended upon shepi and the crossing over the swale visibility was less than 20 meters many were seen driving at or even in some cases in excess of the 70 mile an hour limit which is pretty common for normal weather conditions but with the fog obscuring the road ahead combined with the steep gradient of the bridge driving at the speed limit was just reckless at around 7 14 a.m two cars in a van made contact with one another and with no hard shoulder to pull into they partially blocked the carriageway some traffic were able to react in time and swerve the crash the fog now with visibility of less than a meter in some places were blind following vehicles witnesses saw car after car disappear into the fog only to be followed shortly by the sounds of screeching and crashes many cars did not put on their fog lights as a side note for all you non-brits here's a quick mention about fog lights in uk it is a legal requirement for all cars to have one rear red high intensity fog light many cars have front fog lights as well but they aren't a legal requirement but although legally required on uk cars many rarely use them my personal theory is that ironically it's illegal to use them when there isn't any fog because it can dazzle other road users as such many just don't bother all together here's a little annoying experience you can try ask someone you know to show you where their rear fog light switches i reckon around 70 percent wouldn't know with several cars and vans now in a mangled mess countless numbers of following cars trucks and vans continued rear-ending more and more stranded smashed up vehicles the first 999 calls came into the emergency call center all whilst the cars continued to pile up here's a little snippet of the audio recording of one of those calls crash cars backed all the way along the southbound carriage over the summit and onto the approach section of the bridge after roughly 10 minutes of the sounds of crashes tires screeches and crunches it was mainly over and upwards of 130 vehicles were damaged with tens more stranded but minor shunts would still continue even after the police had arrived anyone who could got out of their damaged vehicles and started wandering around rescue and recovery brought a whole other level of logistical issues the sheer weight of vehicles needing removal required an endless number of flatbed trucks to deal with the walking wounded police guided them to a makeshift triage where they would be assessed however some required cutting out of their cars the more serious injured were stabilized before transport to hospital in total 69 people were sent for medical care with the majority being discharged on the same or next day only one person was kept in for more than a few days by 11 0 5 a.m all casualties were off the scene and miraculously no one was killed even more amazingly especially when looking at the aftermath pictures was that the bridge was reopened at 5 30 p.m the same day aftermath even though the bridge had very little damage the cost was still into the millions of vehicle expenses and the cost of rescue and recovery work the police looked to investigate what the cause of the crash was motorists were thought to be driving recklessly in the thick fog although controversially instead of criminal proceedings Kent police decided to go a more educational route by offering the opportunity for the offending drivers to attend the driver awareness course but highways UK also had some questions to answer right from its first day of operation questions have been posed about the bridge's safety with its lack of hard shoulder steep incline lack of lighting and no warning signs the chief police constable called for a speed reduction along the bridge something that still hasn't been done now where would you rate this disaster on my scale and my legacy scale i'm going to say around a four for the former and about a six for the latter maybe less if you're not from the UK all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed plain liquid videos are produced by me john in a currently sunny southern corner of london uk i've got patreon and youtube membership so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and i've got a twitter as well if you fancy going on there to check out some odds and solds and hints on future videos and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it is the 9th of december 1946 and 23 men are led into courtroom 600 at the palace of justice nuremberg germany this marks the beginning of a fascinating yet chilling nuremberg doctor's trial part one of the indictments laid at the defendant's feet was war crimes performing medical experiments without the subject's consent on prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries in the course of which experiments the defendants committed murders brutalities cruelties tortures atrocities and other inhuman acts the trials aim to prove and hold responsible those who conducted truly horrific experiments on prisoners at a number of concentration camps the evidence was plentiful and damning ranging over several gruesome experiments on both live and dead subjects including the study of malaria a difficult case to rebut but the defense council thought they had an ace up their sleeve the us had been studying malaria as well in a widely publicized experiment and on the face of it similarly on imprisoned individuals albeit the stateside experiments involve criminals and not victims of genocide but the defense's attempt at what about ism has meant that the prosecution now needs to show the difference and this will bring in a questionable expert witness although USA versus Karl Brandt et al is a fascinating court case that would lead to the vital nuremberg code today we are focusing on the study that offered a glimpse of hope for the evil men on the stand in 1946 to 1947 my name is john and we're delving into the 1944 stateville penitentiary malaria study welcome to the dark side of science our story starts with the USA's entry into world war two with japan launching multiple attacks on us and british holdings in asia and the west pretty soon the full power of the american military was brought to bear and this resulted in thousands of soldiers being deployed to the pacific and africa a long known hazard to soldiers working in tropical and subtropical zones has been that of malaria this mosquito born infectious disease has throughout history stopped armies in their tracks the diseases symptoms include fever tiredness vomiting and headaches this is caused by mosquito bites transmitting single-celled microorganisms of the plasmodium group the most deadly of which plasmodium falciparum has a history closely linked with our own when around 10 000 years ago its population exploded around the same time humans became an agrarian species as populations grew in towns and cities so did plasmodium falciparum the bite passes the parasites into the victim's body and into the bloodstream from there they pass the liver and reproduce with symptoms beginning to be shown between 10 and 14 days the reference in the year 2020 there were 241 million worldwide known cases of which 627 000 were fatal but even if you don't die from malaria you won't have a great time if untreated relapses can happen for years after exposure the best way to defeat malaria is to prevent infection in the first place as such mosquito nets are an essential part of life in parts of the world where malaria is common the evolution of treatment followed many wars and colonial disputes in the first half of the 20th century pre-1920s quinine was the main form of treatment it is derived from the tree cincona calicia it was discovered by the indigenous peoples of peru who used it as a muscle relaxant and with most great things from south america it was taken and exploited by europeans from the 16th century it was later discovered by jesuit agostino sal ubrino an apothecary by training who lived in lima observed the quichua using the bark of the tree to treat shivering a common symptom of malaria anyway to cut a long story short it was found to be an effective treatment for malaria and throughout the 1800s became a crucial component in the colonization of africa by europeans which could be a dark side of science video in its own right during the first world war blockades of germany resulted in restricted access to cincona calicia which by now was grown in south america and in dutch plantations in java and samatra this led to the first successful synthesis by german scientist peter moolens resulting in the drug pama queen or plasmochin the drug although very effective at killing malaria was also effective at killing people if treatment wasn't closely supervised this was discovered when the drug was tested on united fruits west indian african descended workforce ah lovely the story just keeps on getting darker and darker of course these impoverished laborers were not given informed consent of the treatment with a new drug as japan swept through asia in the late 1930s and early parts of the 1940s the allies were cut off from the vital dutch plantations which by the 1930s produced over 90 percent of the world's supply of quinine with dwindling stocks of the drug the age-old foe of an army came back with a vengeance and this was the issue the us armed forces were facing in the second world war in 1942 the u.s army medical corps were estimating 251 cases per hundred thousand troops of malaria needs to say this can be a massive drain on military resources and not surprisingly searches for more effective treatments were a top priority for militaries around the world this is where the university of chicago comes into our story starting in july 1941 the newly created u.s committee of medical research sought out to find the most effective treatment of malaria sufferers their plan was twofold firstly to attempt to source quinine from the south american market which by now was pretty derelict after dutch dominance in their plantations and secondly to develop new malaria drugs the committee found human testing desirable as it would speed up drug development and the study of the disease malaria would however not be the first for human experimentation as the u.s military had several experiments running looking at many illnesses linked to maintaining an army such as std's although eager to use human subjects a number of rules were set including when any risks are involved volunteers only should be utilized as subjects and these only after the risks have been fully explained and consent forms would be required to be signed for later access but who to use the military was not eager to use their own soldiers as well they were needed for soldiering but there were two sections of society that in the eyes of military officials had a debt to pay the first was conscientious objectives and the second prisoners the latter would be preferable as they offered unique opportunity in that their environment was completely controlled thus offering the perfect human guinea pigs a contract was drafted with the university of chicago to launch an investigation into the disease just 30 miles south of the university of chicago would be the setting for the study state phil penitentiary was at the time of the experiment's conception just under 20 years old it featured a roundhouse based on jeremy bentham's panopticon concept a layout that would help the experimenters more than they would know you see the panopticon architectural design is a stroke of genius prisons have always had one big issue and that is how to constantly surveil their prisoners the panopticon concept fixes this by placing every cell entrance on a walkway around the circumference of a roundhouse a tower is built in the center this allows guards in the tower to be able to observe any prisoner at any time but the prisoners view the tower is obscured which means they can't see if the guards are watching them this in theory results in the concept of constant supervision as you can't tell whether or not you're being watched as such the prisoners self-regulate their behavior and act as if they are always being watched and this would help the experimenters throughout the study the team was headed up by alf Sven Alving a neurologist at the University of Chicago much of the team were doctors just past residency doing their military service interestingly the prisoners would also be employed not just as subjects but as technicians they would study two types of malaria p vivax and p falki param the format is mild but causes repeat relapses of sickness and the latter is short-lived but can be deadly however most tests were performed with vivax as it was more common in Asia before the study began mosquitoes were bred at the University of Chicago and infected with the chest and strain of vivax the source of malaria came from a US soldier who had been infected in the pacific campaign during the setup of the experiment the prison warden allocated the top floor of the prison hospital for the study this was away from the roundhouse and thus gave a kind of relief to the prisoners of constant supervision initially the participants were immune to any punishment but quickly this was revoked when the request was put out for participation beginning in March over the prison radio over two times the required 200 men applied for the first round of experiments the opportunity for earlier parole and a payment of between $25 and $100 also didn't hurt each infected mosquito was kept inside a circular plastic cage with a gall's bottom this allowed the cage to be placed on the subject's skin and the mosquito to bite without escaping the subject selected was sentenced for longer than 18 months this allowed an almost 100% follow-up rate and were all white men of a similar age and health a medical history was taken and physical examinations were made on the candidates in addition a complete blood count urinalysis blood typing chest x-ray and electrocardogram were undertaken on the subjects deliberately infecting a person with malaria wasn't a new thing however it was actually a form of treatment of syphilis in the early 1900s pre the discovery of penicillin the favorite produced was enough to kill the temperature sensitive syphilis bacteria the patient would then be treated later on for malaria with quinine but i digress the inmates were usually infected in groups of three two of whom would be used to test out potential anti-malarial drugs with the final person acting as a control by not receiving anything however sometimes the infection group would be done in just pairs as part of the infection process one mosquito would be used to infect all three men and each man would be bitten by 10 mosquitoes in total after infection the mosquitoes would be dissected usually by a technician who was actually a prisoner but infection is just the start of the experiment testing of potential drugs came next for the prophylactic tests the drugs were administered to the inmate the day before infection the day of infection and for six days after they were encapsulated in gelatine and were strictly controlled to ensure the right doses were issued this test was to see if any drugs could prevent the onset of malaria or at least reduce its symptoms blood tests were taken after the eighth day post infection at the same time temperature and pulse measurements were taken subjects were admitted to hospital when fever and symptoms became too much to handle in their cell during any hospitalization period rectal temperatures pulses and respirations were monitored every four hours if the fever ran above 103 degrees Fahrenheit then this would be increased to every 30 minutes every day blood pressure urine samples fluid intake and special tests to establish drug toxicity were taken the next set of tests were aimed at curative treatments that is to stop sickness after the onset of disease the curative tests could make use of previous participants as long as the prophylaxis test had failed in the individual or they had been used as a control they would be administered drugs once their temperature had exceeded 103 degrees Fahrenheit this is where various different versions of synthetic quinine would be tested at four-hour intervals in a typical scenario this could be for around 14 days throughout the study over 30 new compounds were tested on the volunteers at stateville one of which was prima queen and the study marked the first case of human testing of the compound they also tested analogs of pama queen an existing alternative to quinine but had high toxicity levels these analogs were tested in the human subjects even though their toxicity was not fully known thus risking the health of the participants some doses were increased past what was known to be safe in order to observe the side effects of the substances the testing of sn8233 resulted in one prisoner's death after it caused a heart attack many subjects were complained of heart conditions after the studies the experiment allowed the military to find out how much of each analog could be administered before adverse side effects would be felt there is no doubt however that experiment proved useful especially in saving the lives of allied soldiers but we need to talk about the ethical considerations although the study for its time was considered an ethical milestone by getting written consent from its participants the administrators still left a lot of the risks shall we say unexplained the form only stated that the prisoner was agreeing to take part in investigations of the life cycle of the malaria parasite and to accept all risks connected with the experiment pretty vague by modern standards but the idea of informed consent is hard to define especially when the participants are in an inherently coercive environment the motives of the subjects can be pretty much split into three groups mercenary for the money on offer corporal in the sense that the punishing life of prison may be lessened or philosophical in that participation offered a feeling of working towards a greater good for the war effort a notorious participant was Nathan Leopold who would later insist it was pure altruism that led him to volunteer Leopold along with an accomplice were serving a life sentence for the kidnap and murder of Bobby Franks he would be paroled in 1958 partially influenced by his time during the malaria study even amongst large swathes of the prison population the war at the time was seen as a good thing the pitching of good versus evil and all that so really the question is how unethical worthy actions of the research team they most certainly made most of the use of the prisoners in that I can't think of any other population that could be tested on were potentially lethal drugs and society not be too concerned even with volunteers from the civilian or military world the testing of unknown drugs couldn't be done as in the eyes of the public a death from either would be considered a tragedy something that is unlikely for a prisoner it is really open for debate the ethics of the study something that is still questioned today and this brings us back to 1946 and 1947 during the doctors Nuremberg trial the malaria study at the time was widely publicized leading to it being the most well-known top secret project it even featured in life magazine as such and in preparing an argument for their clients in the USA versus Karl Brandt trial the defense council sought to compare the German malaria study undertaken in concentration camps to the Statefield study even though the US study by today's standards stands on ethically shaky ground the crimes committed in the name of science at Dachau are on another level talking specifically about the malaria study the victims in the concentration camps were not given any form of information about what they would have to endure let alone being asked about participation it is estimated that around 1200 people were used to test malaria at Dachau approximately half would die any who received any debilitating side effects but survived were murdered needless to say in the doctors trial this poor defense of what aboutism didn't work and out of the 23 defendants seven would be acquitted seven be given a death penalty and the remaining serving various terms in prison in the wake of the trial a new code for human experimentation was set out and that would take the name of the city Nuremberg ironically the experiments used to defend the perpetrators if compared to the new code would actually have failed to meet its standards the malaria study would continue past the second world war and some really bizarre experiments would happen with prisoner to prisoner drug transfusions but that will be a story maybe for another time now where would you rate this subject on my ethical scale one being all okay and ten being pure evil I'm going to say around a three this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed playing different videos are produced by me john in a currently sunny corner of south london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter all sorts of odds and sods and hints on future videos I've got youtube membership patreon as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially if you like the outro music on this video please make your way over to my second channel made by john and all that's left to say is mr music play us out please we're back in florida for this week's video scarily it seems the state has had more than its fair share of disasters it is the 20th of april 1987 and a new four lane bridge across the tamper bay is being opened to the public it is a welcome relief for commuters it represents a doubling of capacity for traffic but this is only reinstating a previously achieved throughput for the last seven years motorists have been squeezing along the two lane bridge originally built in 1954 it has become a bit of a bottleneck but the new bridge wasn't the original plan up until 1980 the crossing actually had four lanes but a series of events would result in a partial collapse of a vital bridge in the region the bridge is called the sunshine skyway but a day in may 1980 would prove to be not very sunny my name is john and today we're looking at the sunshine skyway collision and collapse background our story starts not with a bridge but a ferry in 1927 the beeline ferry company started operations transporting vehicles and passengers across the tamper bay it ran between bay vista park in st petersburg and piney point a number of bridges were proposed for the area but a few worldwide events got in the way most notably the great depression and world war two eventually in 1944 in preparation for building of a bridge at some point the st peters port authority bought the remaining of the 50 year franchise for the ferry service it was to be operated until a new bridge was completed but construction wouldn't begin for another six years over the remaining years of the 1940s several concepts were produced but again the bridge seemed far away when contractor bail horton and associates failed to raise the 10 million dollars required in funding finally in 1950 another contractor parson's brinkenoff hogan and mcdonald was hired and this time they secured the money the bridge was to be one of the longest in the world and would require construction of its own concrete factory it was to be roughly 15 miles long and would require 12 million pounds of structural steel eight and a half million pounds of rebar and 1115,000 cubic yards of concrete i should say that this bridge is only one of two that made up the final sunshine skyway that would experience the tragedy in the 1980s this first structure consisted of 32 concrete piers set every 135 feet apart with a central shipping channel which had a space of 864 feet between piers on the piers sat post tensioned concrete girder trestles with a steel cantilever and central suspended section the roadway was two lanes and had a maximum speed of 45 miles per hour and was also unlit the bridge was built between the 19th of october 1950 and the 9th of september 1954 on his opening day some 15,000 cars would cross the bridge in just a 12 hour span eventually the two lanes would become a bit of a bottleneck and a new addition to the crossing had to be planned a new bridge would essentially be a carbon copy of the already established crossing keeping the vital shipping channel and cantilever trust design in 1966 the construction permit was issued however initial works were delayed when it was discovered that pier one s had developed cracks needing immediate remediation work but eventually in 1971 the bridge was complete and this gave a total four lane capacity two going north and two going south the original bridge was to be used for the north bound traffic and thus the crossing was complete on average roughly 12,000 vehicles would make their crossing per day in each direction and this generated some considerable income for the state the bridges although built with shipping traffic in mind didn't have much in the way of protection a 400 foot wide channel had been cut into the riverbed when the original bridge was constructed wooden piles had been installed to protect either side of the original bridges centre span pylons but over the years they had rotted away the structure itself was designed to withstand 50 pounds per square foot of horizontal load from wind that pretty much made up the only protection available for the bridge essentially the sunshine skyway was a sitting duck but strangely it wasn't that the bridge had never been hit in its history quite the contrary at least seven times the bridge had experienced minor collisions from waterborne vessels one of which was caused by an earlier maritime disaster the sinking of the u.s coast guard black form during recovery operations an alternative shipping route was set up next appears one n and two n during a diversion a vessel struck the bridge on the 16th of february 1980 but the year would become far worse with another collision a disaster the mv summit venture was a bulk carrier and in 1980 was still a pretty new ship being built in 1976 by the ashima shipbuilding company of Nagasaki Japan the 609 feet long 85 feet wide and nearly 20 000 ton ship was owned and operated by Hercules carriers incorporated of Monrovia Liberia and in all intensive purposes was a pretty good modern vessel built to transport goods and on a day in May 1980 it was doing just that as you may know local pilots are often mandated in tricky areas to assist with navigating difficult waterways and Tampa Bay was no different although when on board the pilot is controlling the vessel it is still up to the captain to make final decisions on what a ship does it is the 9th of May 1980 and pilot john e lero assigned to the mv summit venture arrived at Tampa Bay pilot station at 4 20 a.m at this time he determined the visibility in the area to be at least two miles in the current light mist lero contacted the summit venture to ascertain information on the ship's size and characteristics to start to begin to plan his shift before departing for the ship he found out about the expected traffic for the morning around the bay and weather reports for the day at 5 a.m lero contacted the summit venture again and informed the ship's master of the location and time he would meet the vessel it would take roughly 45 minutes for the pilot's boat to reach the mv summit venture today lero has some company a trainee the two departed at 5 40 a.m roughly about the same time the summit venture was raising his anchor in preparation to head out towards the entrance of the Tampa Bay the two reached the ship at 6 20 a.m upon boarding they were escorted to the bridge of the summit venture there they were introduced to the crew on shift and shown the navigational equipment on board visibility at this time was roughly three to four miles but the mist had started to turn into a light rain at 6 30 a.m the pilot assumed control and ordered half a head from the engine shortly after the pilot trainee was given a go and assumed the controls and maneuvered the summit venture into the eggmont channel at 6 50 a.m the pilot trainee ordered full ahead to overtake a tug before meeting an outbound ship the mv good sailor by the time the venture reached boy eight visibility was still around three to four miles the eggmont key lighthouse was passed at 7 0 6 a.m and visibility was still good however quickly a rain shower started to set in the pilot requested a look out to be posted as well as an anchor watch at the bow in anticipation of reduced visibility next to ship past 13 and 14 boys 13 was seen and verified by the pilot 14 was also visually verified and boys 15 16 1 a and 2 a as well as the sunshine skyway bridge could be seen on the radar at 6 nautical miles the rain was increasing but nothing to worry about yet the pilot would later say just rain but not heavy rain over the next few minutes the rain would become more intense this coupled with the soon approach to the bridge meant the pilot took over control from the trainee the summit venture passed between boys 15 and 16 and boys 1 a and 2 a were not visible but they still remained on the radar a sudden heavy downwash hit the vessel this had two effects on the ship the first was to physically reduce anyone being able to see anything and the second was it obliterated the radar's ability to see as well this is because the radio waves bounce off the rain causing a thing called rain returns which is not very good the pilot now faced essentially with a blind approach to the bridge had to act quickly he would later say i started reviewing my options immediately the rains came but the wind had to be 30 seconds later i don't know how long the trainee frantically tried to find boys one on two on the radar they caught a glimpse for a brief moment at a distance of three quarters of a mile but again the rain returns destroyed the view on the radar screen frantically the lookout tried to see the boys but no luck the ship was turning all still blind at about 7 31 a.m the pilot ordered the vessel's speed to be reduced to slow ahead maneuvering pier 2s came into view just one ship lengths away the pilot ordered full of stern on the engine ordered telegraph and ordered hard to port let go both anchors the summit venture struck the sunshine skyways pier 2s at 7 34 a.m the 20 000 ton ship along with strong winds from a stern pushed the bow into the bridge with tremendous force the shock vibrated through the structure a significant portion of the bridge between pier's three s and one n fell into the water a 100 foot section of the bridge crashed across the ship's bow the pilot immediately broadcast a mayday message he informed the coast guard that the bridge was down and told them to notify the sunshine skyway bridge authorities to stop vehicular traffic don't forget though the poor visibility wasn't just affecting the ship vehicles making the crossing as well had issues seeing what was unfolding six cars a truck and a greyhound bus were plunged into the water below in a twist of luck wesley malkin tire who was driving a pickup truck went off the bridge only to hit the summit ventures bow slowing its descent into the water mackin tire managed to escape when his forward courier momentarily floated on the surface he was fished out of the bay sometime later by the ship's crew no one else who crashed into the water survived which totaled 35 lives tragically the survivor guilt would haunt mackin tire for the rest of his life emergency services shut the bridge and attempted to recover and rescue any victims by 9 55 a.m two tugs and an additional pilot were on the scene and it was found that the venture was taking on some water the vessel was pulled clear of the impact site at about 12 p.m needless to say the cause of the disaster had to be found out and this leads us on to the ntsb's investigation the investigation investigators initially inspected the bridge and found that pier one s showed lots of cracking throughout clearly there was a serious failure of the bridge but that's hardly unsurprising an unprotected bridge are coming to such a serious collision this means that the lack of proper protection must take some of the blame the ntsb reports even hints at this several bridges with peer protection systems have survived collisions similar to the ramming of the sunshine skyway bridge without major damage to piers or super structure most collisions between bridges and shipping are caused by human error again as pointed out in the ntsb report and because of this you need to be able to mitigate this risk with proper peer protection something that the sunshine skyway lacked but of course we need to find someone to blame and this falls at the feet of the summit ventures crew and the pilot the ntsb reports pretty much says as much the summit venture probably would not have struck the sunshine skyway bridge if the pilot had turned the vessel hard to starboard immediately upon initial loss of navigation information on the radar the severe sudden weather was the spark that set off the chain of events that led to the crash but the pilot should have made the evasive action to avoid collision however the ultimate blame has to be laid at the feet of the ship's master and by extension the captain as they have the ultimate command over the ship even if the pilot is at the controls it was found that the company that owned the ship often relied heavily on pilots and failed to take over when required on several occasions the report put initial blame at the summit venture that's kind of obvious but the lack of peer protection and roadway warning systems meant that the collision became fatal although john e lero was cleared of any wrongdoing in a grand jury and coast guard inquiry he was quickly forced to retire on medical grounds in order to eventually resume traffic the surviving bridge was converted back to a two-way flow this was whilst the state decided on whether to repair or replace sunshine skyway crossing a tunnel seemed difficult to build in the area and the cost to repair the pretty old design pushed the state to go down the route of a clean sheet new bridge governor of florida at the time bob graham had an idea to build a signature cable state bridge with a span that would be 50 wider than the old one the bridge would also have a wider shipping lane area and importantly proper concrete protective dolphins for the structures piers construction would start in january 1983 and finally be completed in april 1987 ironically the day before the ribbon cutting a ship actually collided with one of the concrete dolphins but this time the crossing was safe the remains of the older crossing were finally demolished in 2008 but what of the mv summit venture well she was repaired and did sail again continuing service under the same name she would be sold off eventually to another company in 1993 and sadly would sink just off the vietnamese coast in 2010 sailing under the name juan mao nine luckily none of the crew were killed this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john they're currently sunny corner of southern london uk i'd like to thank my pate johns as well as youtube members your financial support definitely helps keeps the lights on around here if you'd like to see hints on future videos then you can on my twitter if you like the outro music on this video please make your way over to my second channel made by john and all that's left to say is mr music play us out please it seems i can't go a day without getting an advert on youtube asking whether i've leased or owned a diesel car recently this question is usually followed by join our lawsuit against x manufacturer of course this hasn't affected me because i drive a god tier honda insight and those japanese engineers at honda can do no wrong well these annoyingly smartly dressed lawyer type individuals in the videos got me interested in delving into why i get bombarded with these adverts it is may 2014 and the international council on clean transportation is conducting emissions tests on a number of german manufacturer vehicles the non-profit is running some pretty average real-world tests emissions rules are far stricter in the usa rather than the eu and the icct were looking to see the results of european manufacturer cars built for the us market and demonstrate the improved emissions to the europeans at the time there were pretty big discrepancies between cars sold in the two markets even though they were apparently identical models they knew what the official tailpipe emissions were their test vehicles had just been certified at the california air resources board facility and they were shown to meet the state's strict rules but real-world tests would show how the vehicles reacted driving out on the open road the team used three vehicles a vw persat vw jeter and a bmw x5 the persat was of exceptional interest to the team as it was the most modern with a newer selective catalytic reduction system as such the team of two professors and two students gave the persat a long test drive from los angeles to seattle and back roughly 2000 miles in total upon returning to their lab the team found something very off the emissions far exceeded legal limits set by both european and us standards 20 times the nox levels set on the dino during the california air resource board certification a similar result came from the jeter surely there was an issue with the portable tailpipe emissions equipment researchers must have thought but strangely the bmw's results were within the expected royal world range the equipment had to be correct what the researchers didn't know was that they had stumbled upon one of the biggest cases of fraud in automotive history the results from this perfectly innocent test would rock a whole industry cost volkswagen group billions of dollars pollute the air we breathe and still be ongoing to this very day to remedy today we're looking at the volkswagen emissions scandal my name is john and welcome to scandal a plainly difficult series background our story starts strangely not with vw but another german manufacturer misades with a personal dream car of mine the 300 sd apart from looking like a west berlin taxi yes yes i know it was more than one two three but you know pale yellow diesel misades equals taxi and for me it's got to be that bleached yellow on a vintage merc but this is irrelevant to our story anyway the w 116 300 sd was the first sedan vehicle to make use of a turbo diesel engine and like with most flagship misades products after a few years it made its way down to the cars and the masses i'm still hoping for my honda to grow night vision cameras like i seem to remember clarkson once saying in an episode of top gear well the engine in the w 116 was indirectly fuel injected seven years later a direct injection turbo diesel had actually made its way into a car available for mere mortals this was the 1986 fiat chroma tdi liftback sedan and volkswagen would follow in 1989 with their own direct injection turbo diesel i should say that diesels in volkswagen vehicles weren't a new thing in 1989 they had been selling golfs with naturally aspirated 1.5 units since 1976 and they had even been experimenting in the 1950s with a diesel powered boxer unit like many other manufacturers at the time using naturally aspirated diesel engines the cars were painfully slow horrendously loud and were very shaky it was the implementation of turbo charging and direct injection that would push diesel engines to become more usable and less agricultural but why diesel in the first place well the answer is pretty simple cost that is in fuel economy and reliability these engines work by compressing diesel fuel to the point it spontaneously combusts these engines have a very good thermal efficiency which means less energy is lost during operation back to 1989 and the vw groups first direction injection turbo diesel which was named the tdi it would be a 2.5 litre cylinder unit and became available in the oudie 100 and from their demand grew for this new smoother more efficient engine so did the development of the system in the ever continuing battle to reduce turbo lag and increase efficiency in 1999 the company would see its first common rail system common rail systems help increase pressure in the fuel system which allows injectors to greatly improve the vaporization of fuel which makes combining of atmospheric oxygen easier thus creating a better burn these engines are more efficient and if properly engineered have longer durability than some petrol engines on top of that they also have lower co2 emissions so where's the catch i mean even the most refined engines are still noisy and slower compared to similar turbocharged and displacement petrol engines but the main thing is higher nox emissions okay we need to pause here before we get into the scandal to quickly discuss nox nitrogen oxides nox gases in our story are byproducts from combustion when hydrocarbons are burned at high temperatures the nitrogen and oxygen reacts to form nitrogen oxides which are molecules containing one nitrogen and one or more oxygen atoms nitrogen oxides are responsible for the creation of smog and acid rain the form of which can cause in humans asthma diabetes DNA mutations cancers and other respiratory conditions the latter is well acid rain need us to say that stuff is pretty nasty the high temperature caused by the high pressures needed to create combustion is perfect for the production of fine particles in the form of nox it is thought that diesel engines produce between five to ten times more nox in comparison to a petrol car obviously most manufacturers don't care about this unless there are rules and financial penalties to encourage reductions of certain particulates and this was the case for the usa the country's emissions and pollution laws go way back to the air pollution control act of 1955 the laws would continue to develop over the next few decades one such was the us national ambient air quality standards which was an amendment in 1990 to an earlier clean air act this amendment was aimed at reducing several particulates in the hope of addressing acid rain ozone depletion as well as general air pollution as the decade rolled on emissions regulations became stricter one such change was in 1999 and tier one's replacement with tier two rules which reduced the nox limit from 1.0 grams a mile to 0.07 grams per mile tier two standards would be phased in between 2004 and 2009 to allow manufacturers to adapt and this brings volkswagen back into the picture bw's new clean diesel during this phase in period volkswagen ceased selling its diesel powered passenger cars in the usa in 2007 the company announced that this hold was whilst they got hold of new compliant technology but they will be back soon in the market a year after the start of the phase in volkswagen had looked into striking a deal with Mercedes in 2005 to license their blue tech system blue tech uses a selective catalytic reduction system this uses diesel exhaust fluid known as ad blue and a system of nox absorbers ad blue is a mixture of urea and deionized water it is injected into the exhaust supplied from a separate tank because it is so hot in the tailpipe the ad blue decomposes to ammonia this then reacts with the nox reducing it to oxygen and hydrogen these are then exhausted to the atmosphere the system although rather clever does have a number of drawbacks that is weight from the extra fluid and extra cost of having to buy the ad blue as well as generally the system being more complex however complications with branding of the system on volkswagen vehicles resulted in damler ag and volkswagen terminating their agreement now faced with no system bw sought out to build an in-house nox reduction system the company looked to lean nox trap technology which was of all things most importantly cheaper than the blue tech system this system is much more similar to a conventional catalytic converter but its media inside the converter captures the particulates once it is full the system is purged by injecting fuel into the filter which then burns off the nox as hydrogen and water the system was promoted as a wondrous new technical marvel of low emissions high economy as well as great low-end torque and sprightly performance what's not to like with 39 usmpg on the highway in comparison to the 2010 honda insights 40 miles per gallon it hardly seems worth messing around with the new fangled hybrid systems over just one mile per gallon volkswagen went hard on the clean diesel thing making the company the major player in the us diesel engine market even earning green car subsidies and tax exemptions for its earth friendly cars when tested the cars fell below the tier two maximum threshold for nox particles they had apparently made the perfect balance but vw's magical lean nox trap technology was more smoke and mirrors than amazement of modern technology the company had actually failed to meet the emissions regulations for their diesel engine technology but rather than admit defeat management thought of a deceptive way to pass testing the defeat device you see engines could meet regulations but only when heavily detuned resulting in the vehicle being more reminiscent of the 1970s level of power and economy vw had a solution to this problem how about having two operating modes in the engine control unit software one for doing emissions testing and another for the real world the former would reduce power and efficiency purely for the purpose of passing national tailpipe regulations and latter for normal day-to-day driving but how did the car know well modern cars have loads of sensors such as throttle steering body control traction control etc the ecu would be able to figure out due to the lack of input from things like the bcm and steering sensors but it was being emissions tested at this point the ecu would change to its testing mode and thus nerf engine performance it goes without saying that volkswagen audi group didn't tell anyone about this software and thus the deceit was set emissions too good to be true the usa in the late 2000s had some of the strictest emissions testing in the world and volkswagen audi cars were meeting these standards even though cars with the same engines in europe were showing to meet euro five rules but exceeded the us tier two rules and this brings us back to the icct and their testing of that jeta persat and x5 in 2014 the test was commissioned by john german co-lead of the us branch of icct after a request from peter monk the head of the icct's european branch the four-person team the ones who had been conducting the tests repeatedly checked over their results after every test it was seen that the volkswagens were repeatedly emitting far higher than the official figures their results were passed back to german who then passed them on to the epa and carb in may 2014 the epa began its own investigation and found their real world tests also to be far higher than lab testing vw were asked why their initial responses was to put blame on isolated technical glitches over the coming months the carb and epa continued to question vw management with each meeting the defeat device was not revealed to government bodies even when threatened with the epa not certifying the 2016 model year vw continued to try and evade forever increasing accusations but the company was now just digging its own grave the epa were also doing their own investigations behind vw's back ecu defeat devices were not unknown to the industry and because of this the epa focused its investigation on the onboard engine control system using owners forums and volkswagen's own service manuals computer scientists were able to obtain and test the ecu's code after nearly a year of searching a line of code named acoustic condition was found this code was responsible for taking information from the speed steering and traction control sensors and determining if the car was being tested the code originally did work to manage the noise of the engine upon startup but it served as the perfect camouflage to hide the defeat software in august 2015 vw employees met with the epa they were given a script approved by management which would continue to conceal the defeat device but these employees ended up blowing the whistle they told the epa that there were two modes of operation programmed into at least the two liter diesel engine aimed at circumventing emissions tests the smoking gun had been found time to confront the company the epa took their findings and issued a notice of violation to vw on the 18th of september 2015 the company had admitted to the deception a few days before the official notice but the notice gave volkswagen aldi group a head start to destroy as much documentation as possible regarding the defeat device this destruction of evidence is pretty reprehensible it would also come out that bosh had written the original software with the original intention for it to be used only for in-house testing bosh had even stated to not use it in production vehicles but obviously that was ignored by volkswagen on the 23rd of december vw ceo martin wintercorn released this statement when he reluctantly stepped down from his position i'm shocked by the event of the past few days i am stunned that misconduct on such a scale was possible in the volkswagen group as ceo i accept responsibility for the irregularities and i'm doing this in the interest of the company even though i'm not aware of any wrongdoing on my part well the u.s government would beg to differ but we will talk about that in a bit the company around the same time stated that some 11 million cars were potentially affected worldwide volkswagen aldi group announced on the 29th of september 2015 but it was planning to recall and refit the 11 million vehicles from brands aldi bw scoda seaton porsche these vehicles were scattered throughout the us uk eu as well as many other countries across the globe some engines would require hardware fixes where some others only just a software tweak in the usa vw dealerships were only allowed to sell some brand new 2015 or 2016 models but no second hand diesel engine cars needless to say this was another financial hit where the biggest was yet to come the aftermath a day after the announcement on the 21st of september vw stock dropped by 20 percent another day later after a 7.3 billion dollar spend confirmed by the company the stock dropped another 17 percent 2016 wouldn't be any better in march volkswagen us ceo michael horn resigned followed by the company agreeing to buy back some 500 000 cars in the us in april as well as offer compensation sales of vw cars dropped on average 24 percent in the us during 2015 after the scandal on 11th of january 2016 volkswagen agreed to omit guilt on an indictment relating to the omission scandal as a punishment they were ordered to pay 4.3 billion dollars in penalties six executives were also charged with fraud at the same time well you know i said the us government would have something to say about the now ex ceo martin winter corns involvement he'd be indicted in may 2018 on multiple cases of wire fraud and conspiracy to violate the clean air act however he hasn't yet faced those charges due to not going to the usa after his indictment but in his native germany there would also be a criminal case against him martin winter corn was charged along with four other top vw bosses but as of writing this script the trial has been postponed due to the ex ceo's poor health and the global pandemic it does make you wonder if the 74 year old will ever see his day in court even now however winter corn denies any knowledge the execs still residing in germany will unlikely see a us court unless they willingly go as germany will only extradite its citizens to other e u countries or international courts but there are a couple behind bars due to the scandal engineer james lang and compliance officer oliver schmitt were sentenced to prison time in the us the scandal cost the company roughly 29 billion dollars however public opinion hardly seems damaged as in 2018 they sold over 10 million cars a company record since the scandal vw has pivoted away from diesel towards hybrid and electric technology many volkswagen and oudie group cars if not electric have small turbocharged petrol engines like the scolio octavia with its 1.4 turbo petrol a car that used to be a very well known site as diesel powered taxis outside london i can actually admit that many a time i've crawled out of one of them on a friday night it is estimated that between 60 and 100 excess deaths are linked to the vw scandal alone but they turned out to be not the only manufacturer dodging emissions regulations several other manufacturers have been found to be fudging the mpg figures co2 and nox emissions of their vehicles this hints at an industry wide issue which may one day become another episode of scandal this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attrition share art licensed many difficult videos are produced by me in the currently average corner of southern suburban london uk i'd like to thank my patrons and youtube members for your financial support if you enjoy the music in the background of this video then please head over to my second channel made by john or even check me out on spotify or if you're feeling extra generous maybe even purchasing it on itunes i do have twitter if you want to go on there to check out any hints on future videos and all that's left to say is mr music play us out please it's the 16th of may 1968 and emergency workers are attending a strange event in canning town newam east london the call for the london ambulance london fire brigade and met police is to a brand new apartment block at only three months old the building is not yet fully occupied the residents here are housed by the local council and the type of building they are in has been considered a golden bullet of social housing the call out is to ronan point and it has partially collapsed the event would change the attitudes towards prefabricated concrete high rises in the uk a common sight along the city's skyline during the period known as the post war baby boom my name is john and today we'll be looking at the ronan point disaster background our story starts 20 years before and a problem for the post war british society housing most cities across the country had felt the wrath of german bombing raids with thousands of houses damaged beyond repair much of the inner city housing was victorian two up two down terraces a hangover from the notorious slums which had filled dickens novels they were at the time considered undesirable and an ineffective use of space now just piles of bomb damaged rubble many local authorities saw this as an opportunity to carve out a new and futuristic urban utopia many councils thought about a possible remedy how about moving people away from the cramped victorian slums and into new spacious estates well where does one find space to build instead of long rows of terrace houses architects looked to go up rather than out if planned correctly high rise blocks could have similar square footage to a small terrace house and once all the garden space is taken away to be replaced with communal areas the overall space available to residents would actually be greater the new towers were to be easy and quick to make due to prefabricated building methods and thus able to transform social housing stock to a community and socially focused ideal things like streets in the sky were envisioned as a modern take on the old-fashioned neighborhood community feeling this was the era that fostered a greater social societal safety net such as the NHS and nationalized British rail after all I suppose the optimistic feeling must have blinded architects to the nightmares this type of social housing would turn into when it was discovered that tower blocks in closed walkways and open spaces that separated them would become a breeding ground for crime anyways this utilitarian design style was called brutalism and would become a hallmark of British design in the 1950s and 1960s the Essex town of Harlow would welcome the UK's first residential tower block in 1951 and many more throughout the country for the next 10 to 15 years would be thrown up the cheapness and ease of construction found its way to a new residential estate in Newham East London Ronan Point Newham council was birthed in 1965 it was the result of a menager twirl of three previously independent county boroughs east ham west ham and Woolwich the new local authority completely enveloped east and west ham but only a part of Woolwich in the form of the borough north of the river Thames which is around here on a map the brand's spanking new borough although still in its packaging box had old problems housing it had roughly 9 000 people on the waiting list for social accommodation as such it sought out to try and solve this new problem with new housing projects many roughly a quarter of the borough's housing stock had been bomb damaged with its remaining not meeting modern standards many had no running water and electricity rather than retrofit demolition and reconstruction was the plan up to the 1960s much of the council's construction projects were of two-story houses and three-story flat blocks well built and utilitarian they were good but required skill to build them and that was lacking in the country the skill drain can be traced back to the war where many of the previous generation bricklayers carpenters and builders were lost just look at post-war houses to pre-war houses gone were the bay windows and ornate woodwork for example my house is a pre-war construction a new radical and easy to build method was required the problem wasn't unique and as we saw earlier had been apparently solved with the implementation of high-rise buildings the council's architects looked at two prefabricated concrete building systems one by French engineer Raymond Camus and another by Danish civil engineering company Larson and Nielsen both systems made use of off-site prefabricated concrete panels to be slotted in together much like a store-bought garden storage cabinet this was called large panel system building out of the two methods the Larson and Nielsen system made use of the least amount of skilled labour to use the system for the new development the council had to work with the UK license holder Taylor Woodrow and Anglian limited now there was actually a financial benefit to building as tall blocks as possible this came about from the housing act of 1956 which introduced subsidies to local councils for every floor that was built above five stories tall Taylor Woodrow and Anglian insisted on using a structural engineer called Philips consultants limited a wholly owned subsidiary of Taylor Woodrow and Anglian to add further conflict to interest Philips were hired for the design and construction of the foundations solely by newham council but were employed by Taylor Woodrow and Anglian directly for the actual building construction the contract for nine blocks was set at five million pounds roughly five hundred thousand pounds per tower ronan point was to be the second building in this contract the tower was to be 200 feet tall and contain 110 flats over 22 floors and was built upon parking areas below each flat had a number of mod cons including underfloor heating gas running water and electricity the structure relies on load bearing concrete panels these consist of spine walls that make the main corridor in addition to these a number of cross walls at right angles to them and the flank walls that form the end faces of the tower block the jointing between panels and floors is fundamental to the integrity of the structure each load bearing wall is eight feet high roughly one story high nine feet wide and between six and seven inches thick and are factory made of solid concrete the floors are built of precast concrete slabs each except for the corridor floors about 13 to 15 feet long they are also nine feet wide and around seven inches thick unlike the walls these are reinforced and are lightened by a number of circular cores to keep the whole structure together and number of types of joints were employed vertical joints between the adjoining walls use overlapping u-shape steel rods which are vertical steel rod is threaded the whole joint is then concreted in situ the horizontal joints between floor slabs the space between adjoining slabs is filled with in situ concrete into which a short steel rod is placed over the supports the horizontal joints in the low bearing walls at floor level have nibs projecting from their ends that rest upon the shelf near the top of the wall panels and the space between the ends of the opposing floor slabs is also filled with in situ concrete metal tie plates are at intervals along these joints to help tie the floor slabs to the lower wall panels when done correctly all these joints should ensure a strong and stable building it would take taylor woodrow and anglion roughly two years from start to final handover to complete ronan point the council took control of the tower on the 25th of march 1968 and immediately started welcoming residents into the new high-rise slice of living even though we consider them ugly now the novelty of living up high in the sky drew a lot of people to the tower blocks but this dream couldn't stay up in the clouds for long quite literally the disaster it is 5 45 a.m on the 16th of may 1968 ronan point has only been open to residents for roughly two months and the occupant of corner flat 90 on the 18th floor has got up to put on her slippers and dressing gown and went into the kitchen to start filling her kettle to make a cup of tea the resident of the flat is ivy hodge she lit a match to light her stove the spark ignited a gas explosion hodge was blown across the room in a later statement she would recall i do not remember any more until i was on the floor looking at flames on the ceiling the explosion blew out flat 90s flanking walls which was supporting the way to the floors above it which resulted in a progressive collapse of the southeast wing of ronan point four were killed instantly in the collapse luckily due to the time of day that the explosion happened most residents were still in their bedrooms and as the southeast corner consisted mainly of living rooms most were safely asleep away from the danger zone also in a stroke of luck three of the four flats immediately above hodge's were unoccupied further reducing casualties on the night the explosion there were 260 people inside the building and on top of the deaths 17 were injured residents were evacuated and the block was closed to the public many of the inhabitants were rehomed in another tower block about half a mile away but how did this new block of flats fail so catastrophically especially from a gas explosion which could always be a possibility due to the numbers of other buildings constructed in a similar way the UK government understandably wanted to discover how ronan point could have failed they commissioned an inquiry led by Hugh Griffiths QC well they would find some worrying shortcuts made during ronan point's design and construction the cause the investigation initially looked at naturally what caused the explosion it was discovered that hodge had upon moving in bought a new stove with her this gas appliance was installed by a friend as a favor the investigation found that the installation was acceptable although eventually a nut used to connect the gas line to the oven had failed and thus caused the explosion but the main issue was how did ronan point not survive the explosion even the investigation stated this the explosion was not of exceptional violence the pressure produced were in the order of three to twelve pounds per square inch this is within the normal range of domestic gas explosions the root cause had to be in ronan point's construction well it wouldn't take long for investigators to find that the tower design was less than satisfactory it was discovered that the building had not been designed to withstand a progressive collapse but it wasn't required to in the regulations at the time the building regulations and codes of practice do not take into account the possibility of progressive collapse neither did the designers of the building the inquiry however didn't say that there were any issues with the workmanship at ronan point and as such thought that the tower could be rebuilt restrengthened and put back into use the inquiry put the blame squarely at the outdated building regulations which seemed to have not considered progressive collapse a thing this thinking was based on earlier tall buildings being made out of reinforced concrete and steel frames which are much less susceptible to a house of cards like effect that ronan point experienced due to having multiple redundancies for the load to spread out over the southeast corner of ronan point was rebuilt as a new section of apartments then joined to the existing building via a series of walkways many would refuse to move back into ronan point and instead be rehoused throughout the the event definitely worried the wider public to the risks of high-rise flats enter architect sam webb someone who i think might pop up again on this channel in the future he became interested in ronan point and started investigations of his own residents allowed him into their flats to inspect the overall quality of the building and it was not good he found that ronan point swayed up to 150 millimeters from the center line in high winds excessively loading the building which could eventually cause one of the vital bolts to fail webb gave the reinforced ronan point at best 15 more years before a total collapse could occur after years of convincing the council it eventually evacuated the building in 1986 webb somehow managed to get ronan point dismantled carefully rather than by the traditional way of blowing up demolition method this was in order to forensically inspect the tower it was found that several joints were missing the concrete required to seal the connections in some cases rubbish and newspaper was all that was found lower low bearing concrete panels were found to be cracked and multiple bolts were bent beyond comprehension this resulted in webb's predictions of 15 years to seem way too optimistic it's a miracle that ronan point was demolished when it did as just under a year later in october 1987 the great storm would hit an event that would have most likely finished off the tower the disaster ruined the public's confidence in tower blocks but hundreds still exist across the country just look at many boroughs of london a 60s or 70s tower block is certainly going to be in view this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently good corner of southern london uk i'd like to thank my patrons and youtube members for their financial support if you'd like to check out my twitter feel free to do so where i usually give hints on future videos and if you like this outro song that's playing please check out my youtube channel made by john if you'd like to listen to it in full and all that's left to say is mr music play us out please good your time of day to you this video marks the 200th episode of in its many iterations of plainly difficult it's taken six years and over 750 000 subscribers to get here and i'm surprised that you all still keep coming back every week to hear me talk and watch my dodgy cartoons well i'm glad you do uh whilst i've got your attention would you like me to revive one of my early days series from the channel in the future such as strange places interesting people if so what would you like me to cover let me know in the comments anyway that's enough of me talking time for the episode of me well talking it is a december morning and traffic is flowing along interstate 75 in mcminn county tennessee united states all is calm until two lorries crash both drivers are uninjured and in the face of it it is a pretty unremarkable event however it was set off one of the usa's most deadly pile ups in living memory hello my name is john and welcome to plainly difficult and today's video is on the i-75 fog disaster this is the makeshift moore still looking north in the southbound lane you can see it's the devastation background the i-75 is one hell of a long road stretching from florida's miami lakes all the way to the canadian border measuring in at 1787 miles this behemoth highway slices through six us states the first parts of the route had been open to the public in 1957 and over the following decades sections would be added the section that will be the focus of today's video is a part of four lane highway opened in december 1973 more specifically the sr163 interchange near calhoun tennessee this section of road is situated between two valleys and is very susceptible to quick forming fog in the area there are several locations in which water collects such as behind the chikamuga dam and in settling ponds of a local papermill operated by now defunct bowwater incorporated this alarmingly quick and thick fog was responsible for six multi vehicle collisions in which several people had lost their lives during the 1970s with a now increasingly notoriously bad stretch of road the state of tennessee department of transportation decided to try and improve the situation what they did was to install dual warning signs which read extreme dense fog area next five miles along this stretch in each direction which contained flashing lights that would activate if fog was detected in addition state troopers will be placed along the section of road on foggy days to help reduce the speed of motorists the initial spate of the section of roads pile ups came to an end in 1979 this accident would involve 18 vehicles and resulted in three deaths and 14 injuries and luckily all would be quiet for the next 10 years until two trucks would have a minor crash the disaster it is 5 30 in the morning on the 11th of december 1990 and a tennessee state highway trooper is conducting a pretty standard fog check he found that the morning as far as he could see was acceptable on the visibility scale a light fog would descend on the road although at the time it was not causing any visibility issues the fog was continued to intensify as the morning dragged towards 9 a.m witnesses would later report that the thickest accumulation was at state route overpass 163 near Calhoun the distance that drivers could see varied between 20 and 10 feet but some even reported less because of the visibility issues many drivers slowed down however some did not this was when at roughly 9 10 in the morning a freight lorry was struck in the rear by another lorry which had a tanker trailer the former was traveling at 25 miles an hour and a latter at 45 the accident was pretty trivial both drivers of the southbound trucks were uninjured they stopped to inspect the damage roughly 100 feet south past the overpass after a few minutes of pleasant trees and checking out the damage a 1991 model year oldsmobile saloon vehicle struck the rear of the tanker which then itself was struck by a truck this caused the car to crush between the two trucks and caused a fire which killed both driver and passenger in the automobile a secondary cluster of crashes occurred a little back north on the southbound lanes and this involves 72 vehicles around the same time on the northbound traffic started to slow which were then themselves crashed into by 9 20 a.m there were two sets of pileups one in each direction some of the collisions had also caused further fires this resulted in many victims being burned in their vehicles and even the asphalt road surface being damaged some were burnt beyond recognition just four minutes after the initial collision 911 had received its first calls first responders were quick to arrive on the scene by 9 30 a.m a triage had been set up for the wounded on the northern side of the highway the overpass was repurposed as a helicopter landing site but the most seriously injured many others were sent via ambulance to local medical centers more than 200 rescue personnel were involved in rescuing recovery work on the highway in total 99 vehicles were involved in the pileups sadly 12 would die with a further 42 injured the accident site also posed a hazardous materials risk due to the number of freight vehicles involved and this would require extra time and specialists to clean up the ntsb attended the scene pretty quickly to begin investigating the underlying cause of the horrific number of crashes the investigation investigators had quite a large number of witnesses to interview as nearly 100 vehicles were involved because of this the ntsb would take the best part of two years to release its findings initially the finger of blame was pointed at the bow water paper mill and its settling ponds but the ntsb couldn't find definitive proof the striking quickness of the onset of the fog was one of the most startling parts of the story one eyewitness who was under the overpass stated they could not see the bridge just a few feet above their heads the ntsb put the root cause of the accidents down to drivers responding to the sudden loss of visibility by operating their vehicles at significantly varying speeds but even though the ntsb didn't put the blame on bow water for the fog the u.s department of energy had contradicted this finding nine years before the accident when it had concluded that the plant was likely to cause three times more fog in the area than that would have naturally occurred as such multiple lawsuits were aimed at bow water which would result in an out of court settlement of 10 million dollars with 44 victims and family members of victims in january 1994 but it wasn't all bow waters fault the state had failed to implement proper fog detection procedures and as such it spent 4.5 million dollars on a computerized fog detection system this is a pretty sophisticated system with nine forward scatter visibility sensors 14 microwave radar vehicle detectors and 21 cctv cameras all of this is linked to variable speed limits flashing lights and warning signs the variable speed limits lowers from 70 to 50 miles an hour at a visibility below one quarter of a mile and down to 35 miles per hour when the visibility is below 480 feet access to the highway in the area is restricted by gates when the visibility drops to below 240 feet the pile up highlights the risks of traveling in poor visibility and serves as a sobering reminder as an average commute can become deadly well thank you very much for watching this 200th episode of plainly difficult hopefully we will have well over 200 more i'm going to have myself a nice vanilla latte to celebrate and i'll see you next week this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike license plain difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently moderate corner of southern london uk help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing i'd like to thank my patreons and youtube members for all your financial support if you want to follow me further you can check out my second channel made by john which makes music or you can check out my twitter and all that's left to say is mr music please it is september 2001 and the disaster has hit the united states but it isn't the one that you might be thinking of granted today's subject has been overshadowed by another certain event but it is no less tragic yes the death toll is lower but the collapse of a bridge in texas would bear a similarity to several other disasters highlighting that history is doomed to repeat itself and that bridges over waterways are quite often poorly protected today we're looking at the september 15th 2001 queen isabella causeway collapse background our story starts all the way back in 1974 with the opening of the queen isabella causeway the bridge that was built to connect port isabel to south padre island the island is a nature reserve and is largely a tourist attraction but it does have a small population by the time the bridge was built around 300 people called the small strip of barrier land with laguna madre to the rear and the gulf of mexico in the front home the island had only been occupied since roughly 1964 and the new bridge was actually a replacement for an earlier crossing rather confusingly also called the queen isabella causeway the original crossing involved a wooden causeway and a swing bridge this allowed the mainland to connect the south padre island and long island not that one it had been opened in july 1954 and by august of the same year 73 000 vehicles had paid the toll to cross to the island any who the new bridge was built about half a mile north of the old one with a long curve designed to help the structure withstand hurricanes state highway 100 was extended to the new bridge location through the business district of port isabel and in the process several buildings were demolished the four lane causeway was billed as the longest bridge in texas well at least at the time it spanned over 15 000 feet across the bay boasted a width of 68 feet and a top of deck height of 78 feet above mean high tide at the center of the main span it was constructed of 147 80-foot pre-stressed concrete spans with a steel cantilever main beam in the center ban under this main span runs a shipping channel now the area is a bit of a shipping junction of sorts and as such vessels in the area take a rather strange route near the causeway shipping can come to the causeway from two directions from the north and from the south but when looking at a map the seven approach isn't exactly the way you might think you see shipping is directed along a sixth of channel locally known as the y this is an upside down y shape which is at the southern tip of long island not that one the channel is roughly 12 feet deep say you're coming in from the gulf of mexico you must travel west until you get to long island and again not that one from there you can go two ways straight ahead continuing west along the ship channel towards brownsville if you want to go towards the intercoastal waterway to the north then you turn north at the y and navigate the channel behind long island not that one this section of waterway is called the s-curve for a kind of obvious reasons when you see it on a map at the end of the s-curve vessels are now in line with navigating under the queen isabella causeway to help with guidance boys are provided it's the same way you would go if you're coming from brownsville towards the intercoastal waterway although guided towards the correct approach to pass under the biggest span of the causeway several allusions have occurred since 1974 but nothing too catastrophic the bridge was inspected regularly and was being strengthened by applying metallic coating to some of the supporting bent a trial on the bridge which had started in 1996 i'm talking about 1996 we have to mention a plane crash on the 13th of august 1996 at roughly 20 past six in the evening a cessna tr 182 crashed into the causeway the plane had been successfully flown under the bridge and was going in for another go however the small aircraft collided with one of the concrete supports and plunged into the water killing both pilot and pilot rated passenger it later turned out that the pilot in command was intoxicated which isn't very surprising although pretty dramatic plane crashes were not the biggest danger to the bridge it was and always would be from shipping and that would be the case on the 15th of september 2001 the disaster it is the 14th of september 2001 and the still hold towing vessel named mv brown water number five built in 1978 and owned by brown water marine services of rockport texas is in the port of brownsville the day is filled with refuelling minor repairs and marshalling its barges for a trip in the evening the crew make up today is of five men consisting of three deckhands one captain and a relief captain the two captains are the ones who hold the license to operate the vessel the brown water number five was to push four barges this evening and they're loaded with steel with one of the barges loaded with phosphates the tug and its cargo leave brownsville port around roughly 9 p.m. and start to head down the brownsville shipping channel captain rocky lee wilson is at the controls with the relief captain asleep a crew changeover took place roughly about 12 midnight roughly nine miles from long island and yes i know it's not that one from 12 the man at the controls is captain david d fouler captain wilson then sleeps in his quarters below this evening in the wheelhouse accompanying fowler is one of the deckhands but due to nothing too exciting being planned the captain has allowed his assistant to sleep however fowler can still wake him up if needed the brown water number five reaches the y shipping area at roughly 1 a.m. and begins to navigate up the s-curve shipping lane towards the long island swing bridge logs will indicate that the vessel reached a swing at 145 in the morning on the 15th of september passing through the swing bridge is around 15 minutes before getting to the queen isabella causeway as the brown water five left the protection of the island the current started pushing the heavy barges in a north westerly direction captain fowler was not aware of the current and hadn't prepared for it as such the head of the toe was pushed northwest away from the channel the vessel was also being affected by another current pushing northeast from the s-channel behind it the vessel was being pushed in two different directions essentially telling the mv brown water off course it then bumped its hole on the shallows next to the channel captain fowler was no longer in control and was being pushed westwards towards the causeway the barges and the mv brown water five collided with the queen isabella causeway support columns traveling at roughly 0.2 of a mile an hour the impact zone was roughly 375 feet west of the channel the sheer weight of the vessel battered the bridge three 80-foot sections of the bridge disappeared into the water the bridge was now incomplete and in the darkness almost impossible to spot for road users nine vehicles were plunged into the dark waters of the lagoon amadre 11 people were in the cars of which eight would not survive the victims were robert harris hector martinez harpoon barry welch chelsea welch julio mirales robin livell stefan revas and gaspar inosa after the collision captain fowler frantically tried to warn road users of the collapsed bridge with the vessel's thousand watt spotlight but sadly it had little effect the first rescuers on the scene were local fishermen who tried to pull survivors from the wreckage of concrete and mangled vehicles in the water initially it was thought it was a terrorist attack bearing in mind that this was just a few days after the twin towers but no it was just a good old tragic series of events the bridge not only represented the only method of transport off south padre island but also the small community's only supply of water and power residents would be isolated for over two months having to rely on a hastily set up ferry service the repair works would require the replacement of three spans as well as an additional two more sections which although had not collapsed had become severely damaged a 12 million dollar fiber optic driver warning system was installed as part of the refurbishment the bridge would see traffic again on the 21st november 2001 and two years after the collapse the causeway would be renamed to queen isabella memorial bridge in memory of its victims but although a local tragedy the root cause of the accident still had to be ascertained the u.s coast guard would head up the investigation to how the mv brownwater 5 and more specifically the person at the controls got it so wrong the investigation the s ben section of the channel was known to be a tricky section of water to navigate and as such it was essential to be properly prepared the u.s coast guard interviewed several mariners who navigated the channel quite regularly and the results were not great for fouler expert witnesses stated that the current could be predicted before exiting the s-curve by observing the current in the channel itself the other captain aboard rocky wilson stated that when he navigated near the causeway he called the long island swing bridge operator for a current report as well as observed the wailer water was flowing around the boys in the area another captain was called as a witness who had navigated the channel just a few hours ahead of the mv brownwater and he stated that he contacted other vessels in the area for their opinion on the currents all of these things fouler failed to do the approach to the bridge was deemed adequate in the way it was properly marked the tug itself was deemed safe and the weather wasn't too treacherous the cause was nothing but that of the person at the controls although captain fouler would dispute this when a few years after the disaster he would actually try and sue the tugboat owners the u.s coast guard report was so damning that it even recommended criminal charges be brought against fouler a dive into fouler's past was also something to be concerned about coast guard record showed the accident to be fouler's second bridge strike and third grounding in 13 months the disaster shows along with the sunshine bridge collapse and the i-40 bridge disaster that just a momentary lapse of judgment can result in so much death and destruction this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are created by myself john and are creative commons attrition share alike licensed all videos are produced in a currently wet corner of london uk i'd like to thank my patreon members and youtube members for your financial support if you'd like to check out this outro song in its full glory then you can on my second channel made by john if you want to get updates on future videos then you can on my twitter account and always have to say is thank you for watching if i was to describe to you how this lake became virtually empty without photographic proof you'd think this video was some kind of early april fools episode this subject has been on my cover list and is regularly suggested to me but i've always put off doing it as i felt that i might not be able to do it justice you see i find minds impossibly fascinating in that the amount of engineering skill required to dig into the earth to find rare and raw materials is immense but unfortunately i've always found it difficult to explain the vastness of the labyrinthine scale of some operations but i realized that today's disaster actually works to show just how much space even a modest mind takes up so much space in fact that a drilling accident would inundate the jefferson island mine causing most of the lake to just disappear in 1980 thus my issue with mining subjects and the lake panier disaster seem to have solved themselves my name is john and welcome to plainly difficult today we're looking at the jefferson island mine inundation better known as the lake panier disaster background as his customary on one of my videos we must set the scene and understand the historical context of today's subject we start many years before 1980 in 1894 with an actor hiring a contractor to attempt to drill a well near his home in louisiana he was called joseph jefferson in his day he was a noted actor and had purchased an island to live on 12 miles west of new iberia iberia parish along the shore of the fresh water 1300 acre lake panier as an interesting side note jefferson was an acquaintance of both actor john wilkes booth and the man he killed president abraham lincoln he had built his home around 1870 before his ownership the island had the name of orange island his name was given to the island upon beginning the drilling for his new well his contractors reported discovering rock salt at roughly 300 feet during the summer of 1895 the contractors continued to drill down to a depth of about 2 000 feet frustratingly they were still encountering rock salt but this would be a potentially profitable discovery you see salt is valuable and it was known to exist around the lake the five islands in the area of which jefferson was one were actually salt domes with a rock cap now the islands aren't actually islands but instead just high spots of land jefferson would die in 1905 and just over 10 years later the island would begin to be used for his valuable salt below in july 1919 two men drilled multiple holes all over the island to map the salt dome in october of 1919 jones and bailis the men who had investigated the island in june organized the jefferson island salt mining company after a failed attempt to dig out a shaft in 1919 the company attempted to dig a second shaft the issues with water ingress would delay the project by another two years over the coming years the operation grew of a pillar and chamber method of excavation this method is very common in the industry and involves mining a grid pattern leaving pillars behind supporting the mines roof initially the complex of tunnels were made up of an 800 foot deep level and by the 1930s production had boomed to over 200 000 tons of rock salt per year the chambers were 90 feet high and 75 feet wide the mine was extended with a new level a thousand feet deep with an incline in 1940 instead of chamber and pillar a shrinkage method was used on this level with the salt mine in horizontal slices from bottom to top the remaining chambers on the 1000 feet level were 100 feet high by 65 feet wide and were lined up below the chambers of the 800 feet level in 1957 the mine was sold to the diamond crystal salt mine company and operations continued increasing production the mine was extended with a 1300 feet deep level and an air shaft in the early 1960s and in the 1970s a 1500 feet level was added as the 1970s came to a close the mine had a roughly 290 strong complement of staff the site worked three eight hours per day seven days a week the extracted salt was transported away from the lake via barge along the dal cambra canal and the intercoastal waterway but the diamond salt crystal mining company wasn't the only show in town when it came to digging around lake paneer and here we are introduced to the other participant in our story and I'm sure you'll probably know the name Texaco had been exploiting the area's oil and gas reserves as such multiple rigs peppered the land around the lake but as we all know this is never enough Texaco was looking to expand operations in the area during the 1980s and the only way to find new oil reserves is to get your drill out okay not that type of drill Texaco acquired a license from the state covering an area encompassing the entire lake paneer the company's mode of operation was to contract smaller local drilling outfits to do the labor intensive work with Texaco handling project oversight well planning and license acquisition after it got its license one two four in 1980 Texaco contracted two companies wilson drilling corporation and grafting drilling co of new iberia to drill two exploratory wells named p20 and number 35 respectively both these wells were located close to the crystal mine with p20 on the lake around 2100 feet from the mines main shaft entrance and number 35 1200 feet southeast and 400 feet inland from the lake shore the plan was to drill down to 8000 feet on both wells but although similar depths the wells had a pretty important difference p20 was on the lake bus needing all support for it to be waterborne number 35 was on land so it was much easier to supply via road with trucks p20's location had been surveyed and staked out in october 1979 an allowable maximum amount of relocation east or west was set to be at 150 feet without any obstruction the route to the proposed well along the lake bed was dredged and pilings were driven to form the base for the rig in june 1980 wilson drilling corporation in november 1980 began installing their rig at the well site this installation was called number one the crews scheduled to work on the new well would do a 12 hour shift followed by 24 hours rest period on land this was overseen by a tool pusher who lived and worked on the rig for a four day on off rotor multiple crews manned the rig on their 12 hour shifts forming 24 hours of constant drilling this was overseen by a wilson supervisor who was also then overseen by a texaco foreman who would do seven days on and seven days off there were two of them and they made all the most important decisions by the 18th of november the well was nearly ready to be drilled a 16 inch conductor pipe had been driven into the lake bed the day before drilling begins day one of drilling began at 6 p.m on the 18th of november and was to run for 12 hours to 6 a.m on the 19th initially all went well in the first shift 61 feet per hour was drilled for the first 10 and a half hours at a depth of just short of 500 feet a survey was made and it was found their work was within one degree of being perfectly vertical by the next shift book on at 1800 hours on the 19th of november the hole was at around 900 feet deep with both mud pumps working progress seemed pretty good but not for long pump number one's clutch burnt out necessitating drilling operation to slow right down at around 1090 feet another survey was undertaken and it was found to be 0.5 degrees off vertical at 1248 feet the rig would encounter another problem their drill had become stuck just before 5 a.m the texaco drill foreman was woken up and the issue with the drill was reported to him the crew tried to rotate lift and drop the drill but no movement was seen the foreman told the crew to increase the thickness of the mud as a side note drilling mud helps with drilling efforts and also helps remove the drilled material from the hole by now both pumps were working again and they pumped the thicker mud which then increased the pressure on the hole below the indicator started to show a heavier weight than the 78,000 pounds on the drill bit it climbed to 240,000 pounds the wire on the drill bit was slackened off dropping it to a much more acceptable 40,000 pounds this relief was short-lived as the weight climbed again to over 100,000 pounds the next crew took over at 545 and not long after a rather worrying sound rumbled from the rig much to the confusion of the crew the weight of the drill bit rose further to a massive 400,000 pounds aka the weight of donuts I would like to eat in one go the confusion would move over to worry as the rig began to tilt texaco and the drill company wilson's were notified of the now bizarre situation both companies decided on an attempt to level the rig apparently it's not uncommon for the pilings to slip thus making a platform uneven the rig continued to lean seeing this as definitely not normal the foreman ordered all crew to abandon the platform the crew cut loose the barges that were moored to the rig in an effort to try and save the equipment aboard at roughly 725 in the morning the rig overturned and began to sink eyewitnesses were shocked to see the rig completely disappear below the waterline something that shouldn't have even been possible as a lake at its deepest point was only around 12 feet well where do you think it might have gone the mine inundation whilst the leaning rig was being abandoned miners at the crystal salt mine were just beginning their shift obviously they didn't know about the impending disaster that would interfere with their plans for the day 48 workers were on site and leading up to 8am they were spreading out amongst the various levels of the mine on the 1300 foot level worker junius gadison was collecting electrical equipment he noticed something that no one in a mine wants to see a two foot high torrent of water approaching him he raised the alarm and evacuation of the mine began with men being hoisted to the surface in the lift wilford johnson on the 1500 foot level went up to the 1300 foot level to investigate the water but was soon forced to escape by the ever-increasing deluge the evacuation went pretty smoothly with one of the four men using a pickup truck to pick up workers in the deeper more extreme regions of the mine by nine o'clock in the morning everyone was clear it was an absolute miracle that no one in the mine or the rig lost their lives although no one was lost a whole lake was having a go at trying to disappear though a quarter mile wide whirlpool formed over the rough location where the rig was it sucked a tugboat a string of barges and two texaco oil rigs into the abyss of water two boaters on the lake managed to power their boats to shore just showing again the sheer luck of everyone involved over the next three hours the entire lake disappeared into the mine usually the lake fed the dalcambra canal to the vermilion bay eventually heading out to the gulf of mexico but during the disaster the flow was reversed taking water from the sea and filling back into the lake and this went on for several days the air shaft became a mud cannon as water pushed out all the air from the mine showering the surrounding area with thick muddy water nearby residents were evacuated and personnel from the iberia paris sheriff's office the louisiana state police the vermilion paris sheriff's office dalcambra police and the state wildlife and fisheries department was drafted in to help with a growing amount of people becoming displaced eventually the water pressure would equalize and of the 11 barges that had disappeared into the whirlpool seven returned to the surface as an interesting side effect the salt content of the lake actually increased but not from the mine but actually the backfilling of seawater from the gulf this would also change the local ecosystem aftermath although no one died three dogs were reported killed but the big question was how did a well-established mine get breached by a pretty well-established drilling company clearly something went wrong we can likely rule out coincidence as the drill on the rig got stuck between 1200 and 1300 feet deep funny enough it was the 1300 foot level of the mine that failed the timeline of the rig sinking and the inundation also pretty match up fairly closely clearly this points that the two events were actually one interestingly the mine had been suffering subsidence for at least 10 years leading up to the inundation the instability of the mine was being actively monitored assuming the maps were correct and texaco was drilling in the correct location disaster still could have resulted because you don't even need to physically pierce the mine just weakening an area around it is enough to cause structural failure like if you went to the beach and tried to dig a hole in the wet sands besides just keep on crumbling the 1981 report into the incident did stop short of giving the actual cause mainly due to all the evidence being sucked into a massive hole but subsequent information hints that texaco had misread the charts taking the transverse mercator projection coordinates for universal transverse mercator coordinates understandable we've all been there this seems the likely cause as they were not expecting to have to dig into the salt dome which was the same thing the drill bit got lodged into although no official blame was put on texaco we can guess this was the widely accepted cause as the company would be the one to stick their hands in their pocket and they must have been deeper pockets than mine as contractor wilson brothers and texaco paid out 32 million dollars to the crystal salt mining company as well as a further 14 million dollars to a local botanical garden which was also damaged in the inundation well this was refreshing doing a video with no mass loss of human life but never fear next week we will be back to our usual programming of death and destruction this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel were created commons attribution share alike license plain difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently warm southern corner of london uk i'd like to thank my patrons and youtube members for this financial support and also if you'd like to see hints and photographs of future videos then you can by checking me out on twitter and all that's left to say is mr music man play us out please hello john here and this morning i'm at sandalands in croydon the location of a tragic disaster i used to travel through here quite a lot as a child and because of this this event has a personal place in my heart it's strange seeing somewhere you know so well being a scene for disaster well anyway that's enough of me john let's get over to john in the studio it is november 2016 and tragedy has fallen on london seven have died in a derailment on the croydon tram network it marks the first fatalities on the tram in the uk since 1959 the network represented a modern and reliable former public transport for a previously neglected part of london the croydon tram system is relatively new having only been running since the year 2000 but although apparently modern the accident would highlight the lack of safety systems and show that 16 years without a fatal disaster like this must have been a miracle welcome to plainly difficult my name is john and today we're looking at the croydon tram disaster background our story starts here in new addington which is around here on a map and a newly constructed post-war council estate the town had been converted from farmland to a residential area before the second world war the original plan was for a new garden city out near the surrey hills 4400 houses a parade of shops two churches cinema and a village green were originally envisioned but the major world war would interrupt the original plans the world would halt development in the area and would herald the beginnings of its isolation from the rest of london post world war two london's housing landscape had changed significantly many more needed homes and with much of greater london being bomb damaged quick high-density housing was needed and as such a tight knit council state was constructed well the garden village ideal society was pushed to the wayside but the sum 22 000 residents found themselves in one of the largest population centers in london without a rail link this led in the 1960s to a proposal to convert the west croydon to the wimbledon line from a british railway line to a tramway as well as converting parts of the woodside and adiscombe line the plans wouldn't gain too much traction excuse the pun until the late 1980s when the many small branch lines around croydon fell into decline british rail was eager to offload these routes and converting portions of them into a light rail system offered a unique way for disposing of the unprofitable and sometimes unpopular sections of track this repurposing of british rail infrastructure wasn't unique to croydon however a similar project was well underway in manchester which upon its opening in 1992 made use of two heavy rail suburban lines and the tinerware metro had reused heavy rail infrastructure in the 1980s you see the late 1980s was a bit of a revival for light rail manchester was one but the dllr in east london was a big proof of concept well at least for the capital city but instead of the all singing and dancing automatic train operated network or the dllr croydon would get a tramway as such the croydon tramlink act of 1994 resulted this gave the london regional transport the predecessor to transport for london the power to build and run a tramlink network the croydon tram network would run elmer's end to croydon beckham junction to croydon and new addington to wimbledon via croydon now because of the use of the old with the new core route through croydon the free south and eastern destinations had to feed through sandalands along what used to be the old woodside and south croydon joint railway alignment between coom road and woodside but you may see an issue here when i show you on a map the old railway is along a straight line whereas croydon is over here so how do we get trams from here or here to croydon well this is where sandlands becomes important after the three tunnels heading north from the old coom road station the line would take a sharp turn to the left if coming from new addington or sharp turn to the right if coming from beckham or elmer's end but trams can handle sharp turns as they have a smaller loading gauge and have better suited wheel profile for turns this is given in sacrifice of top speed as such the network only had a maximum speed of 80 kilometers per hour or 50 miles an hour the tram link network started operation in may 2000 and would turn out to be a vital method of transport in the area helping to turn new addington from a forgotten council state to commuting suburb of croydon although in reality this was debatable i mean it definitely improved new addington's connections i remember as a child sitting on the top of the number 64 bus patiently riding through fildway saleston south croydon east croydon and eventually electric house with my grandparents on an outing to surrey street market now the tram network relies on a method of working called drive on site which is pretty self-explanatory drivers don't have signaling like on the railway they should be able to stop short of any obstruction because trams aren't as heavy as trains they can stop within the available sighting distance so long as the tram has been driven at the correct speed for the area they can stop short of any other tram this is explained in the tram drivers rulebook a tram should be able to stop before a reasonably visible stationary obstruction ahead from the intended speed of operation using the service brake to assist with this principle of operation the line is given a speed depending on its characteristics of the section of track for example 80 kilometers an hour in the straight section between woodside and coom road tunnels and 20 kilometers per hour around a tight curve at sandalands to tell the driver what speed to drive a speed board is provided the tram must be doing that speed before it passes the sign but the tramway did have signals for points level crossings and conflicting moves the point signals indicate how the points are set and the other two tell the driver when it's safe to proceed the rolling stock upon opening of the network was the bombardier cr 400 these multiple unit 31 meter long and 2.65 meter wide trams have 70 seats and a total passenger capacity of just over 200 both seated and standing they are powered by 750 volts dc overhead power lines and have a top speed of 50 miles an hour or 80 kilometers an hour now because trams exist in a bit of a strange middle ground between bus and train they at least on the Croydon tram network were not considered to need any type of protection system apart from the dead man's handle which puts on the emergency brake when there is no hand on it now this is problematic especially at say the sandalands curve which essentially could act like a slingshot but for the most part tram born safety systems didn't seem to be an issue well until it was the disaster it is the morning of the 9th of November 2016 and tram 2551 has just arrived at new addington at 547 am the driver has six minutes to change ends and prepare the tram for its return journey towards Croydon he has been on shift since 453 am having taken tram 2551 out of forapia lane depot and driving it in service towards new addington all has been fine so far although early in the morning the driver would later report that he has slept well in the night at 553 am tram 2551 departed new addington slowly making its way along the single line bit attract towards king henry's drive the tram for the next two stops down the hill towards addington village into change was running to time down to gravel hill stop and up gravel hill itself was all as normal with the driver obeying the speed limits across the road crossing the tram left coom lane tram stop a minute late but was easily recovered at Lloyd Park from here tram 2551 would have to navigate a tight curve into the long straight through the three tunnels again the tram obeyed the speed restriction through the turn the journey through the three tunnels was one of the fastest sections of track on the route the driver upon reaching the 80 kilometers per hour board opened up accelerating down the line near the second tunnel gap and traveling at about 79 kilometers an hour the tram was roughly 340 meters away from the left and tight corner into sanderlands usually the trams would begin to break here but this morning 2551 didn't some of all the tram noticed the unusually high speed approaching the exit of the last tunnel the driver made a small brake application around 185 meters from the 20 kilometer an hour speed sign but the speed was barely reduced tram 2551 exited the tunnels into heavy rain traveling at a speed of about 78 kilometers an hour roughly 95 meters from the tight corner another brake application was made 57 meters from the speed restriction the tram went past the speed sign at 73 kilometers an hour or 45 miles an hour at 6 0 7 a.m as it slammed into the tight sanderlands left hand curve the tram began to overturn onto its right hand side passengers were thrown against one another the momentum of the tram coming to a stop ejected around 34 of the occupants through the trams windows and doors the tram had moved 27 meters from the place where it left the rails most of this distance was during the trams overturning would remaining from the slide the tram was now battered and laying across the opposite track due to the severity of the shock to the electrical systems the passenger saloon was in complete darkness passengers desperately tried to light up the cabin with their mobile phones and attempted to clamber out tram number 2554 had just departed sanderlands heading towards the junction that 2551 had crashed into the tram had lost power the driver contacted control who told him to walk towards the junction to investigate the driver 2554 saw 2551 on its side by now some of the passengers had tried to escape via the left side doors now above their heads the driver of 2554 ran to 2551 and began attempting to cut a hole in the windscreen of the tipped over unit with some within also trying to escape through the windscreen after helping the crashed trams driver two officers from the metropolitan police were the first emergency responders on the scene arriving at sanderlands tram stop at about 6 12 am they reported the situation to their control more responders arrived from the london fire brigade british transport police and london ambulance service as well as more met police officers the fire service cut away parts of the tram including the windscreen and used specialist equipment to raise the tram out of the way the walking wounded were evacuated and the last surviving trapped passenger was freed from tram 2551 at around 8 16 in the morning seven passengers were fatally injured during the accident 19 suffered serious injuries and 42 received minor injuries within an hour the rail accident investigation board the uk's rail version of the ntsb had arrived and began collecting evidence obviously the question was how did the tram end up here well the investigation would find some very worrying points the investigation the raib reviewed the on tram data recorder and saw the worrying lack of control inputs from the driver further investigation of tram 2551 found it was indeed working how it should be which led investigators to suspect the driver as a cause of the crash it was quickly apparent that the crash wasn't a case of attempted suicide and drugs tests excluded any substance abuse to be a causal factor a medical examination also ruled out seizure or blackout which really left only one human factor loss of concentration investigators thought that a temporary loss of awareness of the driving task during a period of low workload was the cause which was possibly caused by microsly they thought this was the reason for the apparent non-reaction of the driver as the tram approached the sandalands curve the raib would summarize the cause in its report although some doubt remains as to the reasons for the driver not applying sufficient braking the raib has concluded that the most likely cause was a temporary loss of awareness of the driving task during a period of low workload which possibly caused him to micro sleep it is also possible that when regaining awareness the driver became confused about his location and direction of travel but although the driver was the initiating event a serious question was raised as to how there was no safety system in place to prevent this the tramway was pretty modern after all how was it just down to one individual to ensure safety of the passengers well the investigation would delve into this and show a pretty worrying lack of awareness of the dangers of such a tight curve the raib discovered that the speed board was placed too close to the curve leaving little time to react if a driver had lost situational awareness no form of trained protection was in effect on the network like what is employed on the mainline for example tpws which would be provided for such tight curves and a drastic reduction in speed even on the underground trip cock train stop protection is provided to stop a train if traveling too fast although this is usually used in the form of approach controlled signals earlier light rail systems had been built with protection systems in mind such as the time and wear metro in the 1980s as well as the dlr it seemed that to all concerned the risks that were apparent for heavy rail wouldn't appear on the tram link system in the aftermath of the accident and the raib's investigation the Croydon tram system would receive various safety improvements such as lowering of the maximum speed from 80 kilometers an hour to 70 kilometers an hour roughly 45 miles an hour although the raib determined that a check rail wouldn't have prevented the disaster i personally think there should be one there further improvements to the network would result in the installation of chevrons at tight curves like what you see on the road and a driver awareness system that employs a camera to scan the tram operator's face if it notices a microsleep then the driver's seat would vibrate and an audible warning would sound eventually in 2018 an overspeed system would be installed at high-risk locations that would intervene in the case of a tram exceeding a safe speed the raib was pretty damning of the cr400 rolling stock as its toughened glass windows were not strong enough to contain passengers in the case of a rollover it was also highlighted that the only way of egress from the tram was through smashing the windscreen roster planning was investigated by the tram operators to improve the risk of fatigue issues unfortunately it is an issue with shift work and the roster did follow Lord Hiddon's working rules implemented after the Clapham disaster this disaster highlighted the lack of safety systems on the third most popular method of rail transport in the uk eventually improvements were made to the network but the event shows just how lucky passengers have been in the 16 years before the sandy lands accident the trams have always had a special place in my heart due to seeing a network being built in the late 1990s and the tragedy at sandy lands just shows that you need more than just one person to ensure safety which is pretty similar to the 2017 washington disaster you always need the safety system as a backup for when things go wrong this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like license plain difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently wet corner of southern london uk i'd like to thank my patreons and youtube members for your financial support and if you're enjoying this outro song you can check it out on my second channel which is made by john i've got twitter and i also now have instagram so you can check them out for photographs and hints on future videos and all that's left to say is mr music play us out please it is december 2017 and locals are mourning a tragedy in Tacoma they should be happy they have just received a new train service after all but instead the new amtrak passenger offering has created the wrong type of disruption to local travel plan in the form of destruction and death the accident would highlight a failure in the fundamentals of operating a railway and show how far behind amtrak was in train protection compared to their contemporaries around the world my name is john and today we're looking at the 2017 washington train crash welcome to the plainly difficult channel background our story starts in 1971 and the commencement of a new passenger rail corridor named amtrak cascades the route takes 467 miles or 752 kilometers from vancouver british columbia through seattle washington and portland oregon to eugene oregon parts of the route date back even further as far back as the railways early days but today we're just going to focus on one small section of this vast route the point defiance line this route follows the coastline of the pujit sound between the cities of tacoma and dupont it was opened in 1914 as a bypass to the prairie lines direct but difficult to drive 2.2 degree incline over 2.2 miles the point defiance line had to play to two needs both passenger and freight services with passengers demanding higher service frequency and freight demanding greater loading gauges to allow larger cargo the two requirements were at odds with one another as such two tunnels on the line were converted from double track to single track to allow freight services to carry large bowing aircraft parts as such this severely hampered passenger service frequency thus an alternative to what was once an alternative was needed this brought in 1992 with the washington's state department of transport beginning to search for a new route and the gaze fell upon the old prairie line to the north and the american lake branch to the south w s dot published its plan for the amtrak cascade service it set out all the work required to reinstate the bypass and it would turn out to be a pretty big project it would involve new track signaling at grade crossings and a new bridge and straightened curve over the i5 near the niskali river the bridge and straightened curve would have cost in excess of 230 million dollars this part of the project unsurprisingly was shelved because of cost concerns after all the whole project had only been greenlit for 183 million dollars and thus the tight curve remained but with the addition of a permanent speed restriction the line had a maximum permissible speed of 79 miles an hour which was reduced to 30 but a curve near the niskali river to give advance warning to the driver yellow and black boards are placed two miles from the speed restriction the project began in 2010 and was mainly completed in 2017 apart from one big thing that was positive train control control which will prove to be a fatal shortcoming amtrak wanted to get the cascade service running on the new route as soon as possible but it had to train its engineers also known as drivers and conductors on the route training for drivers over the route would involve the use of familiar locomotives as well as a new locomotive named the charger the charge was first unveiled to the public in 2016 and made its way to the cascade services in mid 2017 when the charger locomotive first appeared on the cascade roster drivers were initially trained on the locomotive in group sessions this involved classroom time as well as being shown the operating compartment and familiarization with the display screens and controls vitally however these sessions did not involve any actual driving time and observation rides were only occasionally conducted on the charger training for the new route included a number of observation rides then making two northbound and one southbound trip while driving the train under supervision of a road during risk assessing the route the tight curve near the nascali river was highlighted as a key point of interest in the lines characteristics drivers during their training are meant to learn braking points for stations and speed restrictions and the new route was no different some would use the mile point signs to help identify their location a written exam on the physical characteristics of the territory which included a question about the curve at mp198 was included in the training for drivers but crucially it didn't question potential landmarks that could be used to keep situational awareness during a trip training was deemed adequate by amtrak but from an outsider's point of view three trips in total over the route are not multiple trips in varying times a day does seem a little lackluster the training outlined here was exactly what one driver would undertake before becoming the inaugural engineer on the first passenger service on this new route the disaster it is the morning of the 18th of december 2017 and the engineer of train 501 is receiving a call from amtrak's designated on-the-job trainer during the call the two talk about the route and the tight curve at mile point 198 you see today is an important day it marks the first passenger service over the new line the driver isn't alone today in the cap for this run he is accompanied by a qualifying conductor who is there to learn the route the train consists of the new charger locomotive 12 carriages and a rear locomotive the engineer had worked for amtrak since the 17th of may 2004 initially as a conductor for several years but eventually becoming a certified engineer on the 26th of august 2013 he was experienced and by all reports was a safe and conscientious driver train 501 departed the whole gate street facility at 609 am and made its short journey to the first stop at king street station at this time the train was running 10 minutes late but nothing really to worry about the train continued on to takoma dome station in doing so entering the point defines bypass route the engineer and qualifying conductor spoke infrequently about the route characteristics and general work topics due to the time of day and year it was still dark outside as train 501 passed the points for the dupont yard the engineer called out his location at 732 and 16 seconds a.m the train went past the advanced speed restriction sign at mp178 roughly two miles before the dangerous curve the engineer intended to apply the brakes at the sign indicating control point 188 roughly one mile before the curve and near a signal box as the train approached the controlling signal the headlights washed out the sign and the engineer missed his braking point at 7 33 and 6 seconds a.m the sign the mile post 19 went past this was roughly one half of a mile from the curve and still no braking application was made suddenly an overspeed alarm started to sound the engineer unfamiliar with the charger locomotive didn't react to the warnings he saw the signal at mile post 19 eight and initially thought they were at control point 188 but it was too late aboard with five am track employees a technician from the train manufacturer talgo and 77 passengers at 7 33 minutes and 34 seconds a.m the concrete structural walls came into view on both sides of the track leading to the 30 mile an hour restriction the train was traveling at 83 miles an hour realizing the mistake the engineer was recorded on the cab recorder saying we're dead seconds later and at 78 miles an hour train 501 hit the curve over two times the maximums permissible speed the engineer didn't make any emergency brake application it was now 7 34 a.m the lead charger locomotive and seven coaches behind derailed the locomotive and a few coaches slammed down the embankment beyond the curve blocking the southbound lanes of the i5 the lead locomotive spilled 350 us gallons or 1300 liters of fuel onto the i5 the only part of the train remained on the track was the rear locomotive eight vehicles were damaged by the train crashing down injuring eight of the 10 people using the i5 many passengers were able to escape the wreck train but some were severely injured and trapped at 7 36 a.m the first 911 calls came in and within four minutes the first emergency responders in the form of dupont police arrived to assist local emergency services were quick to attend to shut the i5 and attend to the wounded the most severely injured were sent to multiple hospitals in the region sadly free on board the service were killed in the accident all were passengers and were traveling on the train to celebrate the new route surprisingly the engineer and qualifying conductor survived the crash this would prove to be vital in the later ntsb investigation all rail services were diverted along the old route and all services along the point defiant diversion were cancelled until the line was fully protected by positive train control which would prove to take a good few years to implement on the 20th december two southbound lanes of the i5 were reopened after some of the wreckage was removed in total the destruction and cleanup were cost in excess of 40 million dollars which would include the writing off of train 501 now with such a dramatic crash on a new route with a new locomotive and with an experienced engineer how was the train driven at 78 miles an hour around a 30 mile an hour curve well the ntsb would have a go at trying to find out the investigation well luckily having the engineer not dead meant that they had some first hand information needless to say he was interviewed and it was found that he was not distracted during the drive however he was clearly not familiar enough with the line he had passed all the assessments which along with his previously good driving record would hint that maybe the training wasn't up to scratch but on the railway you don't want to rely on one failure point in this case the engineer ideally there would be a system in place to mitigate against this and there was positive train control but it hadn't been fully installed on the route and the ntsb's final report they summarized the root cause of the crash the national transportation safety board determines that the probable cause of the Amtrak 501 derailment was central Puget sound regional transport authorities failure to provide an effective mitigation for the hazardous curve without positive train control in place which allowed the Amtrak engineer to enter the 30 mile an hour curve at too high of a speed due to his inadequate training on the territory and inadequate training on the newer equipment contributing to the accident was the state of washington's department of transport's decision to start revenue service without being assured that safety certification and verification had been completed to the level determined in the preliminary hazard assessment which is pretty damning now the root cause was the driver not having the correct route knowledge route knowledge is vital irrespective if it's a tram freight train tube train or suburban train the knowledge of the road is absolutely vital in order to operate a train safely most train drivers know their routes intimately they know every line side feature landmarks signal and sign they pass as such they even know when such things are missing such as a sign being graffitied or a signal being taken out of use clearly the driver hadn't received the proper training to know the route he was driving and as such this was the main cause of the disaster also the driver was unfamiliar with the locomotive they were operating railway rolling stock is not the easiest to understand if you're not familiar with it in comparison to say my opz for example which is known to have a fairly steep learning curve it is still designed with the user in mind as such different colors light up the different operations and for the buttons that are pressed however train cabs are often devoid of any mod cons or user benefits they are much more utilitarian and as such you need to be trained on the proper operation and the different types of warning lights and sounds that can be given to you in certain situations again the lack of training caused this unfamiliarity with this particular type of rolling stock which confused the driver at a vitally important time it felt like it was all a bit of a rush job trying to get this new service running on this previously unused bit of track and it was the victims that paid the price personally though the engineer not making any emergency brake application is a little concerning at least in the uk you're taught if you lose situational awareness then you throw on those brakes and readjust and regain your bearings another issue is the size of the speed reduction warning board especially when compared to a more path board or officially warning indicator the one on the point defiance bypass seems well a little little the line today is now back in use after extensive testing services resumed on november 18th 2021 sorry for my voice sounding not too great today i'm in the froze of covid i'm four days in so far and this is the first time i've been able to look at my computer screen without my brain melting when you're watching this this is actually going to be a few weeks in the past so hopefully i would have made a full recovery but if not you might be listening to my gravelly voice for a little bit longer this is a plain difficult production all videos in the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed many difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently wet corner of southern london uk help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing i'd like to thank my patrons and youtube members for your financial support and if you want to check out my second channel please feel free to head over to made by john i make music and stuff there i also have a twitter where you can get it hints on future videos and all that's left to say is mr music play us out please hello john here and i'm at one of the most historically significant mental health hospitals in the english-speaking world with a history of over 700 years i'm also kicking off a revival of an old plainly difficult series strange places well it's pretty cold today so without any more delay let's go back to john in the studio it is 1946 and a brilliantly atmospheric b-movie horror is released it we're going to lose our ko money at the box offices the movie is called bedlam and it is set in a fictionalized mental asylum based on one of many british society's fears that is going to beflam hospital the hospital would become the very name to describe madness and chaos weaving itself into the fabric of popular culture with countless poems dramas and literature works inspired by the institute for those who entered many never returned the hospital represented a dumping ground for some torture for many and a caring institute of treatment for others the location of this hospital would change several times with each move the method of treatment would also develop from essentially locking up people away for good to a more human approach to mental health this strange places history spans all the way back to the middle ages today we're going to peek into Bethlehem hospital welcome to strange places a revived plainly difficult series mental health is a story as old as time so long as we've had brains we've been susceptible to disease and disorder needless to say the way humans have dealt with mental health conditions have varied throughout the years often written off mental disorders were considered the work of the devil and as such those affected were ostracized throughout almost all of human history we have had to ponder the question what to do with those in society who have struggled with ailments of the mind but although Bethlehem's history is intertwined with the treatment and containment of the mentally ill the hospital's beginnings were actually very much different early beginnings our story starts in the year 1247 in the city of london more specifically bishopsgate which is around here on an ancient map and it's kind of near the location of modern day livable street gofredo d pre fete the bishop elect of Bethlehem was given a piece of land for the use of collecting alms basically money and material donations for the crusades it was obedient to the church of Bethlehem and along with taking collections would also house the needy in medieval parlance the priory would be considered a hospital but this is pretty different from the modern interpretation of the word it was pretty much a charity home for the poor ill and needy as we know hospitals would end up focusing more on the ill as time would go on but this period of medieval history it was just a form of religious housing as such because of the affiliation all those who stayed would have to have a yellow star sewn onto their clothes to represent the star of Bethlehem so Mary of Bethlehem as it was known would gradually lose its affiliation to the Bethlehem order and as such the priory sought protection from the city of london in 1346 where the hospital became vulnerable to seizure under the reign of edward the third where buildings owned by foreign religious organizations were ripe for the picking and reappropriation by the crown this is kind of linked to us english loving a fight with a french during the hundred years war as such any form of money was always worthwhile grabbing by the king at some point along the way the hospital would lose its original name being called Bethlehem which was pretty much a bastardization of Bethlehem and is all too common in the english language where words mold into something new over time anyways i'll fast forward a little bit through history and to 1403 with the hospital's first officially recognized mental health patients a charity commissioner noted on a visit of six male inmates who were mentee capte roughly translated from latin to english as caught in the mind i don't know about you but this to me sounds like someone who has become withdrawn obviously this is open to interpretation but because of the hospital's future purpose it is possible that these six men were the first mental health patients at Bethlehem interestingly so many other items recorded at the visit which also points to at least the hospital's need of restraint of an individual were four pairs of manacles chains six locks and two pairs of stocks by now the hospital site was a single story building covering just two acres in the center of the courtyard was a chapel and the hospital had 12 cells for patients a kitchen staff accommodation and an exercise yard but sadly there wasn't much in the form of treatment for the hospitals as they were called inmates due to the religious links there was lots of bible reading and looking for the sin that caused the condition it was thought that corporal punishment could cure some conditions while isolation was fought to help a person come to their senses okay i'm going to fast forward a little more again here to one of the hospital's notable keeper physicians in 1619 because this is the first hint that the attitude was starting to form that the mentally ill needed specialist care helchire crook was appointed under the encouragement of james the sixth and first he was a specialist of sorts and much more qualified than his predecessors who were largely skilled in anything but medicine with one being a cloth maker before his 19 year tenure as a keeper of facisions but crook was different he had a couple of years earlier released a hugely successful book microcosmographia which looked at the human body with some rather graphic imagery but although on the face of it looking like a step in the right direction much like his book which has subsequently been thought of largely being plagiarized from other sources quickly accusations of corruption landed at crooks feet and in 1632 an inquiry was held which against others had him investigated for failing to feed the patients you see a job like crooks was largely seen as a cash cow to extort the patients and the wider public leading to many keepers being accused of corruption the location of the hospital was over a sewer which led to Bethlehem being seen as a dirty place as this sewer was regularly known for overflowing into the courtyard the hospital became widely seen as a place of pain with contemporary descriptions of the noises that emanated from Bethlehem as crying, screeching, roaring, brawling, shaking of chains, swearing, fretting and chafing just two years after crooks's inquiry and the hangover that it caused the hospital would be moved to a more modern management structure the hospital took on a three-level medical regime made up of a non-resident physician, a visiting surgeon and an apothecary but although taking a more modern approach the hospital in its original format outside of bishopsgate was drawing to an end and it would mark the first of its many changes of venue move one bishopsgate to more fields at 400 years old the original hospital was starting to show its age being described as very old weak and ruinous and too small and straight for keeping the greater number of lunatics very in that present although having enough space for roughly 59 patients the writing was on the wall time to move somewhere more appropriate and with hopefully fresher air construction of the new hospital at more fields which is around here on a map began in 1675 I was completed just over a year later which was no mean feats I mean just look at the building that resulted designed by Robert Hook the hospital was a large imposing building the grand appearance was kind of a statement to the donors who had given money for the more field site showing success it also acted as a billboard for more charitable payments don't forget this building was pre-public funding of medical institutions and as such income was mainly from donors with patients fees only covering a small amount of the cost of operation the hospital was rather hard to ignore with its new biggest size it allowed more visitors to view the building as well as accommodate more patients this would be the beginning of his entry into infamy but although the building looked something like a palace from the outside on the inside life was tough it had been built on poor foundations and as such the buildings grand and heavy facade pulled away from the walls causing them to crack allowing the elements into its long galleries and cells it was rather like putting lipstick on a pig strangely Bethlehem was best known for allowing the public and casual visitors with no connection to the inmates to come in and view the patients visitors were allowed to go up and rub a neck at those who called it home this was used in a method of raising funds one visitor will comment they'll shout in bed limb see one laugh at the knocking of his head against a post this public spectacle allowed playwrights to visit who would later use their experiences and the experiences of others from the hospital in a number of plays in which actors would tread the boards of the curtain and the theater two of london's biggest playhouses at the time this helped further imprint the hospital into the british psyche as such the name would take another bastardization from Bethlehem to Bethlehem to bedlam an english shorthand for mayhem and confusion here's an example where the spoons was bedlam last night when they sold out of carling difficult patients were called stark bedlam mad the hospital's treatment would take a dark turn in 1728 when james monroe took over as the chief physician he had thought treatment should involve beatings starvation and dunkings in ice cold water baths this would mark the beginning of the 125 year long monroe family dynasty at Bethlehem arguably one of the darkest times for the hospital as the 18th century progressed the straight jacket made its way onto the scene and were used to restrain the patient whilst there were force-fed laxatives in order to quite literally expel any bad thoughts from the body another rather popular treatment was bleeding and leaching where incisions were made on the patient's body to allow the blood to flow out treatment still focused around restraint and punishment for patients behavior but the hospital yet again would be set for another move a survey undertaken in 1791 would confirm the already apparent poor state of the building when the governors were slapped with a 8,660 pound bill for repair this largely went ignored necessitating another report in 1799 was deemed building much like how the patients have been incurable in 1803 the governors finally agreed on a project of rebuilding on a new site and thus another move was required move to St George's Fields now if you've done a tour of London's greatest museums you may have actually been to Bethlehem without even knowing it but I'll tell you why in a bit the new hospital was yet to be built and the more field site was outright dangerous in parts as such patients were transferred to smaller hospitals around London reducing the population from 266 in 1800 to 119 in 1814 parliament agreed to provide £10,000 for the fund for a new hospital however this came with the caveat that the Bethlehem governors would provide accommodation for any soldiers or sailors of the Napoleonic wars that have been deemed lunatics a fair deal I suppose a site was agreed upon in St George's Fields in Suffolk south London just a stone's throw away from the elephant and castle the new building was in the neoclassical style relying heavily on Hook's original plan the new architect James Lewis ditched the opulent facade in favor of a far more functional and medicinal appearance the hospital would be completed in 1815 after three years of construction with the first 122 patients arriving in August and over the coming years the building would get overcrowded necessitating extra buildings to the site to be built at the site attitudes have become to move on from punishment to treatment to other asylums such as the Quaker Run York would treat but Bethlehem held on to the old method of restraint and religious coercion Bethlehem operated largely without any outside inspections during the early part of the 19th century but external oversight was eventually inevitable this came along in 1853 when Bethlehem's exemption from outside inspection ended the last on the Monroe dynasty Edward Thomas Monroe had left in 1852 herding the era of the resident physician with the departure of Monroe treatment started to move towards non-restraint for the average patient this was known as moral treatment outpatient treatment began as well roughly around the same time creating the first such method of care in the UK but be under no illusion that it was a treatment utopia although better than just straight up torture treatment was still pretty harsh by today's standards patients were often classified as idiots still but birds were kept in cages to allow interaction of animals and even some found their stay at the hospital as not too unpleasant padded cells were still employed along with padded clothing but were used as sparingly as possible sedatives such as perialdehyde and pyocene were introduced in the 1880s and warm water bathing was a common treatment with patients being required to spend up to eight or nine hours a day in the bath the hospital moved towards aiming to treat inpatients for only around a year with other arrangements being needed if longer term treatment was required there was a small incurable wing provided which would house some inpatients for the long haul there was an entertainment hall which was opened in 1892 and the galleries resembled more of a holiday retreat hotel in addition there were outside activities such as bowls but a story as old as Bethlehem would start to develop towards the early part of the 20th century yes it was time to move again oh yes i should also say that the st george's field site is actually the same building that the imperial war museum lives in the third move to a sunny southern corner of london well we are now back here on the boundary between croydon and bromley and the hospital's current location which is around here on a map this would bring Bethlehem to the countryside well at the time it was in the 1930s and would encompass a more modern villa style building system with multiple separate wards each having their own kitchen and other facilities the new site would welcome a more modern approach to treatment although the hospital would see electroconvulsive therapy and insulin shock therapy in 1948 the hospital would be incorporated into the nhs and would follow the more talking therapy and medicinal approach more familiar to today's mental health treatment the hospital has still been a bit of a source of controversy in recent years as there have been a couple of fatalities during restraint now the current hospital covers quite a bit of ground which is good for taking long afternoon walks and incorporates a secure wing as well as the natural psychosis unit now if you're ever in this part of the world i highly recommend going to the museum of the mind which is built inside the hospital as it is a fascinating place to visit and learn about the history of mental health treatment in the uk visit a plenty of good production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like license plainly difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently dark and cold corner of southern london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of odds and sods as well as photographs and hints on future videos i've got a second channel which is made by john which is where you'll hear this outro song in full i've also got instagram as well so check me out there if you like looking at some pictures and all that's left to say is mr music man play us out please this is an important message leave your house windows and any other openings try to make the outside walls thicker listen to your radio for information if a death occurs while you are confined to the fallout room place the body in another room and cover it as securely as possible attach an identification label to the body do not interact with outsiders if you follow the advice in this advert correctly you stand the best chance of ensuring the safety of you and your family if you've actually watched this all the way to the end then you are one hell of a champ thank you so much and i'm hoping that you'll be around next year for probably even more hours of me talking oh and also because of the time of year hope you have a good holiday season