When Chernobyl blew up.. I was washing the family's car I was staying with that day. It had begun to rain sand on us. I was rushed inside the house and shoved in the bathroom. I was told to scrub scrub scrub until my skin was red It's been 35 years and every time I hear the word Chernobyl I still get goosebumps. The only thing that I can think of that I was affected by is that I have little brown spots on my shoulders on my skin and I've never had that before. It's been an interesting life and I'm glad to hear you explain the intricacies of that day. Thank you sir have a wonderful day
The afternoon the radioactive cloud reached Southern Germany, I was riding my bicycle home with from school after the oral examination of Abitur (the final examination in German High school), when a strong thunderstorm broke loose and I got wet to the bones. It was several days later that we learned details about the radioactive fallout in our region. It was not strong enough to cause immediate harm, but to this day it is not advised to pick wild growing mushrooms from the forests due to their radioactive contamination...
My dad worked as a lumberjack in one of the areas in Sweden were we got the worst fallout in form of acid rain from Chernobyl. They did measurings all over the country and we got one of the largest doses were we lived. Lots of livestock had to be killed and you were forbidden to eat any hunted wild animals or fish. My dad got thyroid cancer just a couple years after 1986 and fortunately it was cought soon enough to not have spred. I´m 100% possitive it was the acid rain from Chernobyl that caused it as he worked outside the whole time during the period it fell.
Hi Simon, I want to thank you for highlighting the Bhopal disaster in not one, but two videos. I was born in the eighities. So I did hear a lot about this growing up. In those days the India-US relations were quite frosty, so it was easy to bash them. Then in late 90s, Microsoft, Intel, Fox, Disney, Discovery et al arrived. India-US relations got warm. The Bhopal disaster has gotten a bit forgotten. Discovery, Nat Geo used to show a lot of programs about disasters, but Bhopal was quite conspicuously absent. I guess they didn't want to mess with giants like Union Carbide and, now Dow. Once again, thank you for the highlight and first place for it. You or someone in your team really feels strongly about this. Thank you.
Yup it's almost always human error is the biggest issue. I remember one I think it was some kind of chemical factory, they stopped in the middle of the place going critical to have tea and lunch. Didn't end well.
@@Galactis1 in Fontana they had a glosphate recycle multi=million dollar plant implode, but were running it with a few low wage, untrained people. Human error? Lack of oversight, no leadership, no training, and a culture that can buy million dollar equipment and goes cheap on the people.
The biggest problem is that so many designs can fail catastrophically because of a single point of failure. Multiple redundancies and interlocked systems are built into the safest designs. Unfortunately, redundant safeguards cost money and often money wins out over safety.
@GOLDBOND vs BALLS as a high rise concrete Safety Officer I worked in two jurisdictions right next to each other, the same employers. The difference in the ATTITUDE towards safety was like comparing Oregon to West Virginia. Or Germany to Pakistan.
I find it interesting that France tested their first nuclear bomb at the same time Chernobyl was melting down.. also, April 26 is a good day to play baseball....
Lebanese Diplomat at The UN: ''I have no idea why the rest of the world seems to think Beirut has a bad reputation for being dangerous just beca..... ...Wait...Hold on, (Finger to Headset in Ear)....There was what? Unstable for six years?.... Well, at least they didn't put the Fireworks...Oh?....''
By the way both the CIA and Mossad had prior knowledge to the Ammonium Nitrate being stored at the port of Beirut as per reports both Israel and America wrote in 2018 , both have a history of putting car bombs in Lebanon and being malicious and aggressive towards that country and it's people , I wonder if it was just a fire .
It was quite a bit smaller than the Beirut explosion. Furthermore, it was a moderate distance to the residential area, whereas the Beirut explosion was right in the city center. I'm more surprised Port Chicago wasn't mentioned.
As a new subscriber, I really like that when you talk about major loss of life and such you say 'i'm not going to ask if you enjoyed that', it seems like such a little thing but it makes it feel like you understand the significance of the issues you talk about and aren't just using them for views or whatever.
That explosion in Beirut was terrifying, especially as it was caught from so many different angles. I remember just feeling my stomach drop the first time I saw the footage.
To anyone who is interested in incidents like this, the USCSB has a channel with hundreds of videos with great animations, that goes over commercial and industrial accidents, showing how the equipment is suppose to work and what went wrong that caused the accident. A bit dark but extremely fascinating
Apart from Business Blaze I don't pay attention to which Whistler channel I'm clicking on. I just click the pic of that shiny head and listen to the sultry tones of Simon's voice describing terribly depressing things
Union Carbide had a similar plant in West Virginia that produced similar products to the one in Bhopal. One big difference is that the plant in WV did not store appreciable amounts of MIC (Methyl Isocyanate) in the process. As soon as the MIC was produced it immediately went to the next reaction tower. The only MIC in storage was in a surge tank between the MIC synthesis and the next process step. At Bhopal, the India insisted on lower costs for the plant and this necessitated the storage of MIC which UC strongly warned against. MIC needs to be kept cool or otherwise it flashes. It also reacts very strongly with water, acids and oxidizers. PS: Please, Am-O-cO with the accent on the second syllable. PPS: My great uncle was the Public Health Director in Texas City when this happened. He had the task of cataloguing the body pieces found as well as holding the inquests to establish the death of those that disappeared. Until the day he died, he never talked about that day and we (the children in the family) were told to never ask him about it.
@@TheColonelKlink Not really. It were civilian ships and crews that were carrying the explosive goods and the explosion occured because of reasons entirely unrelated to the military situation. This is just as much a civilian disaster, as the explosion of an ammunition factory is.
I just watched an update documentary on the Beirut explosion caused by neglect of the ineffective government who had been repeatedly warned OVER YEARS by Security about the danger of keeping the storage of the ammonia nitrate in the warehouse. The last communication even told of the total destruction of the port and surrounding area in an explosion. Yet again no steps were taken to empty the warehouse. The fire department that lost all the fire personnel who responded to the beginning fire were never informed of the warehouse contents. New high rise apartment buildings had continued to be built within the range of the explosion. The people of Beirut in the documentary were so beaten down by this on top of everything else they had been through it was heart breaking. They are a brave hard working people trying to figure out how they can over come this latest disaster caused by a government who just doesn’t care about their citizens. I highly recommend the video, it was excellent.
The Pike River mine disaster in NZ was a significant one here. It’s still ongoing as well, taking 2 separate governments to figure out how to recover the bodies or not.
I was very close to the Beirut explosion. Luckily I was inside and no one around me got hurt. It was terrifying. Few damages to my car, but was easily fixable. Can't say the same for those who lost their homes and above all their loved ones. I hope we, as Lebanese, recover from this atrocity committed against us by the negligent ruling class.
I saw one video, of children looking out that window at the fire-- knowing what was coming, I was horrified, but their mother got them away from the window just in time and they were okay. I almost cried. There's a good many Lebanese-Canadians where I live, and in my experience they are all intelligent, hard working and polite. I look at the recent history of Lebanon, and this recent disaster, and it pains me. The Lebanese people deserve so much better. But take heart, most often the political ramifications from a disaster like this take longer than we imagine to manifest themselves. Good luck.
I’m a weird one then. Found this channel befor mega projects. Also love the videos will be checking your other channels out eventually. So much to watch
Fire stations in the Texas City area still have photos and commemorative plaques on their walls to remember those who died trying to fight the fires from the explosion.
I was a teenager when Amoco Cadiz went down, and it was big news worldwide. But then we had Ixtoc the next year, Exxon Valdez in '89 and Deepwater Horizon in 2010, so it has been pushed into the background somewhat.
The Three Gorges Dam is the largest dam in the world, and the law that brought it into being was the closest ever to not being passed by the National People's Congress of China. The part-time legislators of the NPC typically rubber stamp all the laws that are brought to them by the Standing Committee of the NPC (a smaller, full-time legislature), but many legislators were simply too worried of a potential failure of the dam to vote for its creation. If the Three Gorges Dam were to ever fail, it could become the deadliest and most costly industrial disaster to ever happen, destroying entire cities along the river downstream. It's a terrifying possibility to consider.
What about the Halifax explosion in Nova Scotia Canada? Dec 6, 1917. 2,000 dead, 9,000 injured. It was the single largest non nuclear explosion in history. 3 kilotons of TNT equivalent, Beirut was around a third this size, give or take.
Enjoy the outcomes? No I'm not psychotic, sounded captivating, and fascinating, yes absolutely. Simon, you did a wonderful job on this video, thank you for doing all of the work to produce it and share it.
The pictured above ground final stage tank was not the source of the poison gas. The source tank was a very large subsurface one that apparently used pressurized nitrogen gas to move its contents in and out for processing into pesticide. Once it failed from water contamination which had caused its contents to heat up and burst the tank's ground level roof, there was no way to safely move the chemical inside it to the safety flare stack to be burned into harmless smoke. The badly eroded flare stack had been disassembled for rebuilding and was unavailable at the time in any case.
You guys should use the segment thing (video time bar division by video segment) in your videos, it'd be a nice way to recap some of those longer titles that kinda just fly by!
The Beirut Explosion still is one of the most impressive footage ive seen in my life. That Massive sound wave and its Power is something of disaster movies. Never seen such an huge event like that in a city that size. Realy,realy scary just to watch,until this day. Total Destruction.
I was thinking about this as well, but I didn't know how the two explosions compare. So I did some Googling and it turns out Beirut was quite a bit worse. See for example, airshare.air-inc.com/how-does-the-beirut-explosion-compare-to-tianjin
My company a decade ago in dry Alberta bought most of a plant of wood processing equipment.........from Florida, sight unseen. I tried to "splain to Lucy" what happens to equipment surrounded on three sides by SALT and a high HUMIDITY environment. Equipment that would last outside in Alberta for 100 years has a life expectancy of less than 25 in places like Florida.................and INDIA. AND that assumes on-going maintenance.
Seeing that footage of the so-called "Biorobots" on the roof of the number four reactor(?) is really depressing. After watching the Chernobyl mini-series, you get a tiny grasp of what the Soviet soldiers and workers went through. It's so upsetting that so many innocent people lost their lives and/or suffered from lifelong conditions because of the carelessness of not just the plant manager, who had the blame laid at his doorstep by the Soviet Union, but the Soviet Union leadership who created the conditions that lead up to the disaster.
On the topic of the Chernobyl mini-series, the saddest story of the show has to be the fireman, who was exposed when he picked up a chunk of graphite that had been in the core, and his pregnant wife who visited him in hospital. Her contact with him irradiated her enough to kill her but her fetus absorbed most of the radiation, saving her life. So not only did she lose her husband but she lost the last piece of him that still remained in this world. Granted, what happened was kind of her fault for constantly ignoring the doctors but, to be fair, the average Soviet citizen would have most likely been ignorant to the effects of radiation or at least the extent of the contamination and damage it causes.
for a side projects video what about one covering only Mine disasters? Like the 1922 Argonaut gold mine fire that claimed 47, and other similar events when regulations where not seen as important.
This isn't the Biographics channel but I'm gonna type it before I get stuck in another rabbit hole of yours.... Have you done one on Kant? Emmanuel Kant the philosopher who was apparently a spectacle in his life but he also had some brilliant ideas
Here is a disaster that was thankfully too small to make this list, but could have been so much worse: In 1927, a huge natural gas storage tank on Pittsburgh's North Side exploded. 28 people were killed, but the destruction was massive. The tank actually shot at least 100 feet into the air before exploding, and at the time, it was the world's largest.
Once more as a side or mega project: cable powered street railways. The future of city transportation, for the 1880s. Until that guy Sprague and electric streetcar(trams to you across the pond). Frank Sprague would a good Biographics subject, come to think of it. Major impact on railway electrification.
Sucks for all the poor bastards on the oil rig that got killed(RIP) but in terms of life lost it doesn't hold a candle to some of the other accidents talked about in this video.
' The Big Bangs' Maybe something about the ammonium perchlorate explosion at PEPCON in Henderson, NV? Actually building the plant _on top_ of the giant gas main that supplied raw stock might not have been the best idea....
I believe the title of greatest non-nuclear explosion goes to a test of the N1 rocket. Simon also has a video on that, somewhere.... That man really has too many RUclips channels
As far as I'm aware, the by far largest non nuclear explosion ever, was an explosion that ocurred when they were trying to defuse a huge German underground ammunition dump from WW2 near Hänigsen in 1946. It was about 11,000 tons, or 11kT in TNT equivalent. Luckily for those outside, the ammunition dump was located so deep (500m-700m), that most of the damage was limited to the underground portions.
It will be better if you add another video about the Tianjin 2016 explosion Simon. The disaster also well documented from all angles with smartphones by lots of people and killed lots of people and injured thousands. That disaster is considered even more expensive in damaged cost compare to Beirut explosion despite involved around 800 tons of ammonium nitrate, less than Beirut's 2700 tons of ammonium nitrate. The explosion occurred at the heart of the Tianjin busy port full of goods, including thousands of brand new cars for export toast by the fire and heat and hundreds of containers blown out of their position like Lego bricks. 173 was killed by the explosion, 147 of them are firefighters.
America's biggest industrial disaster was actually in West Virginia. But most people don't know about it because there were no big booms or instantaneous piles or human bodies and the resulting engineering project worked perfectly. It was the building of a tunnel on the New Kanawha River to funnel the river to a hydroelectric plant, often called "The Hawk's Nest Incident." The workers didn't die on site, but they had breathed in quartz dust during construction so many would be dead of silicosis within five years. No one knows exactly how many died because most of the workers were brought in from southern states and the fact that this disaster happened in the worst part of the Great Depression, records are nearly nonexistent. But estimates are about 1000-2000.
The film from Beirut, still has the capacity to shock me. I held an explosives licence for over twenty five years. The storage of the ammonium nitrate was utterly negligent. Who on earth stores fireworks near Anfo?
The name of the pesticide made at Bhopal was aldicarb, trade name Union Carbide's 'Temik'. I remember using this stuff when planting either potatoes or cabbage, possibly both, back in 1976 when I was an 18 year old student. I can still remember the vapour released by the product as it was poured from its sealed retail bags. It is still used today in some regions and for some plants, such as cotton.
Your description of the Texas City Disaster is very similar to the Halifax explosion which was the biggest explosion before the nuclear bomb was used in WWII.
Sadly, you could make many more videos on the same subject. For my country, Canada, alone you could do the Second Narrows Bridge disaster in Vancouver, the Point Ellice Bridge disaster in Victoria, the two Quebec River bridge disasters (yes the same bridge), and The Halifax harbour disaster.
When I was at uni, I chose bioremediation of pile spills as my dissertation topic (I grew up in Orkney and knew people who lost family on Piper Alpha), and while the Exxon Valdez disaster did have a significant environmental impact, arguably worse than Amoco Cadiz, it dumped considerably less oil (around 20% if I remember correctly). Crude oil spills degrade much faster the warmer the climate and the more wave action it is subject to, as the oil can be broken up into smaller and smaller globules when it’s warm and being shaken about. This means that bacteria which can use oil as a food source (yes, there are oil-eating bacteria which live naturally in the environment, but they can only break down oil in the presence of nitrogen and small amounts of oxygen) can get to a larger surface area and get to work. The Exxon Valdez occurred in a very cold climate, in a very sheltered area - the worst possible conditions. Also, a lot of the ‘clean-up’ of the Exxon Valdez disaster was handled very very badly, and actually caused more environmental damage than would have occurred if the oil had been left to break down naturally - crews sprayed beaches with boiling water to melt the oil build up, which just forced the oil deeper into the substrate and killed all the bacteria which had been breaking it down, along with any other living thing which had survived the oil.
@@leonmusk1040 Oh yeah! The Bird's Custard explosion, 1982, I think. Not sure if anyone was killed, I don't think they were, but it was VERY destructive.
Could you guys make a video about the greatest fire day of the US. October 8, 1871 the Chicago Fire and Great Peshtigo fire occurred that day. It is very interesting. I also believe they are unrelated.
You guys forgot about the Hercules Powder Company explosion. It happened in September 1940 and it killed 51. Some said it was the local bund camp that did it, while others said it was just an accident, no one really knows to this day. It was the largest explosion to ever happen at that plant. Many more accidents would happen, but none as huge as that day.
SCIENTISTS : store ammonium nitrate in a cool dry atmosphere BERIUT Customs : just leave it in that old warehouse by the docks for 6 summers I guess the Dutch firework factory incident will be in a part 2. And that chemical explosion in China, the video for that is worth a watch.
The ammonium nitrate in Beirut had been stored for over half a decade, in very unfavorable conditions. After that many years without cooling or ventilation, it's prematurely at an early stage of decomposition. It takes a good bit of heat to set off ammonium nitrate, but it starts decomposing already at relatively low temperatures, and the way it was stored, much of the "center mass" has no path to shed heat. A tiny fire nearby breaks out, and it sets off a chain reaction. A product of this decomposition _is oxygen._ The product of 2700 tons of the stuff stored in unventilated holding, is *A LOT* of oxygen, at a _very_ rapidly increasing concentration and pressure. Another thing with ammonium nitrate is that its decomposition is exothermic. Now you have a very rapidly increasing, super flammable atmosphere, and 2700 tons of tightly packed, accelerating decomposing ammonium nitrate in a state of thermal runaway. Pretty much anything can set off a fire because of the super high oxygen level, and either way - its only a matter of minutes before some of it goes above 200°C (ish) and autoignites. Firefighters and other people there never had a chance, nothing could stop that outcome once set in motion. The responsibility lies with the government form ever letting it sit. There's no real safe way of neither storing nor disposing of that much ammonium nitrate in one place. Government should have stepped in the same week the cargo was seized, confiscated it as a matter of threat to national security, and offloaded it back onto the commercial market through the appropriate channels and brokers. If the company ever won their case, give them their money back, not 2700 tons of ammonium nitrate.
This one was mis-titled. These are all certainly some of the worst man-made disasters! But some of them happened long after the industrial process (oil spills, ammonium nitrate mishaps) that were transportation and storage issues. I was thinking this would only be about chemical leaks and explosions at the production facilities. You know, factories and refineries blowing up, a certain BP oil well failure, stuff like that.
I know the beirut explosion was horrible, but that footage of the explosion is beautiful. Great view, great angle into the epicenter, and the ability to hold that veiw as long as they did was awesome. That explosion was incredible. It's really too bad some many had to be injured or killed in this event.
![Natanael Cano - Amor Eterno [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EO4prCs6WpM/mqdefault.jpg)
When Chernobyl blew up.. I was washing the family's car I was staying with that day. It had begun to rain sand on us. I was rushed inside the house and shoved in the bathroom. I was told to scrub scrub scrub until my skin was red
It's been 35 years and every time I hear the word Chernobyl I still get goosebumps. The only thing that I can think of that I was affected by is that I have little brown spots on my shoulders on my skin and I've never had that before. It's been an interesting life and I'm glad to hear you explain the intricacies of that day. Thank you sir have a wonderful day
I was in Spain at the time
Wow!!!!
The afternoon the radioactive cloud reached Southern Germany, I was riding my bicycle home with from school after the oral examination of Abitur (the final examination in German High school), when a strong thunderstorm broke loose and I got wet to the bones. It was several days later that we learned details about the radioactive fallout in our region. It was not strong enough to cause immediate harm, but to this day it is not advised to pick wild growing mushrooms from the forests due to their radioactive contamination...
Holy crap! Glad you're doing okay.
My dad worked as a lumberjack in one of the areas in Sweden were we got the worst fallout in form of acid rain from Chernobyl. They did measurings all over the country and we got one of the largest doses were we lived. Lots of livestock had to be killed and you were forbidden to eat any hunted wild animals or fish. My dad got thyroid cancer just a couple years after 1986 and fortunately it was cought soon enough to not have spred. I´m 100% possitive it was the acid rain from Chernobyl that caused it as he worked outside the whole time during the period it fell.
First they criticize you, then they laugh at you, then they remove you from your position and then they die.
The fate of whistleblowers is to be mocked, hated and despised. No wonder so few people speak up about systemic problems.
The Texas City disaster also involved The uss High Flyer that held ammonium nitrate & sulfur which exploded right after the Grandchamp.
Yep, he covers Texas City in depth over on Geograpics
As well as a warehouse full of ammonia nitrate near by
Oh lovely, so not just one floating bomb, but two floating bombs.
🤦♂️
Hi Simon, I want to thank you for highlighting the Bhopal disaster in not one, but two videos.
I was born in the eighities. So I did hear a lot about this growing up. In those days the India-US relations were quite frosty, so it was easy to bash them.
Then in late 90s, Microsoft, Intel, Fox, Disney, Discovery et al arrived. India-US relations got warm. The Bhopal disaster has gotten a bit forgotten. Discovery, Nat Geo used to show a lot of programs about disasters, but Bhopal was quite conspicuously absent. I guess they didn't want to mess with giants like Union Carbide and, now Dow.
Once again, thank you for the highlight and first place for it. You or someone in your team really feels strongly about this. Thank you.
This is true my friend. They absolutely knew how Bhopal happened. I've seen lots of info about it. Greetings from Australia.
Sheep can see beyond the fence they are not meant to go beyond that. Regardless of your country 90% are are trying to be kept in by the 10
The biggest point of failure in any industrial process is the one human who got lazy...
Yup it's almost always human error is the biggest issue. I remember one I think it was some kind of chemical factory, they stopped in the middle of the place going critical to have tea and lunch. Didn't end well.
It's always usually human error.
@@Galactis1 in Fontana they had a glosphate recycle multi=million dollar plant implode, but were running it with a few low wage, untrained people. Human error? Lack of oversight, no leadership, no training, and a culture that can buy million dollar equipment and goes cheap on the people.
The biggest problem is that so many designs can fail catastrophically because of a single point of failure. Multiple redundancies and interlocked systems are built into the safest designs. Unfortunately, redundant safeguards cost money and often money wins out over safety.
@GOLDBOND vs BALLS as a high rise concrete Safety Officer I worked in two jurisdictions right next to each other, the same employers. The difference in the ATTITUDE towards safety was like comparing Oregon to West Virginia. Or Germany to Pakistan.
So between Chernobyl and Texas city, it’s best to probably just stay home and be safe on April 26 of any year
And Benxihu too!
actually, looks like Texas City was April 16, not 26, but maybe just stay home during the middle of April.
I find it interesting that France tested their first nuclear bomb at the same time Chernobyl was melting down.. also, April 26 is a good day to play baseball....
@@TheFalseShepphard warm.
Didn’t 9/11 happen on April 26th too?? 😨
Lebanese Diplomat at The UN: ''I have no idea why the rest of the world seems to think Beirut has a bad reputation for being dangerous just beca.....
...Wait...Hold on, (Finger to Headset in Ear)....There was what? Unstable for six years?.... Well, at least they didn't put the Fireworks...Oh?....''
...indeed...would really be funny, if it wasn't that serious...! ;-) / :-(
...another disaster caused by stupidity...! :-(
That thing was almost as fantastically photogenic as the demolition of those three buildings in New York that time.
"...Well, at least it's not likely there'll be a fire around there our emergency services can't- OH COME ON!"
By the way both the CIA and Mossad had prior knowledge to the Ammonium Nitrate being stored at the port of Beirut as per reports both Israel and America wrote in 2018 , both have a history of putting car bombs in Lebanon and being malicious and aggressive towards that country and it's people , I wonder if it was just a fire .
I'm from Lebanon, we're ruled by thugs! The level of corruption here is through the roof
I am surprised that the 2015 Tianjin explosion didn’t make the list.
It was quite a bit smaller than the Beirut explosion. Furthermore, it was a moderate distance to the residential area, whereas the Beirut explosion was right in the city center. I'm more surprised Port Chicago wasn't mentioned.
@@pierrecurie Was it really smaller? Those fireballs were dwarfing towerblocks!
Well it's not the fireball that's destructive in such an explosion, it's rather the shock wave that kills and destroys.
Maybe there'll be a part two.
what about halifax? it was 3 times the size of Beirut and killed 2000 people.
Was kind of hoping the Halifax Explosion in 1917 would make this list.
agree %100
He has done it.
@@sandybarnes887 Thanks Sandy, will search 4 it.
ruclips.net/video/dWs9a9bFzo4/видео.html
@@sandybarnes887 Thanks.
You need two new channels Simon. One called Mega Disasters the other Side Disasters.
He has already made a channel about his ex. 🔥🔥🔥 Allegedly
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
don't tease him with a good time, if he sees this comment he's gonna start AT LEAST 3 new channels hahaha
@@rodchallis8031 true fact video is called biggest dam n failures
Mega Disasters ep 1 - my life
As a new subscriber, I really like that when you talk about major loss of life and such you say 'i'm not going to ask if you enjoyed that', it seems like such a little thing but it makes it feel like you understand the significance of the issues you talk about and aren't just using them for views or whatever.
That explosion in Beirut was terrifying, especially as it was caught from so many different angles. I remember just feeling my stomach drop the first time I saw the footage.
I was amazed how much it looked like the movies!!
That was absolutely _insane_ ! I was absolutely speechless after seeing it.
@@aaronhepler8070 or like some of the footage of US nuke tests
Now imagine what the Halifax explosion looked like.
With all these channels, Simon must literally have a full time job, maybe even more!
0:55 - Chapter 1 - Bhopal disaster
3:10 - Chapter 2 - Benxihu colliery disaster
4:30 - Chapter 3 - Amoco cadiz oil spill
6:35 - Chapter 4 - Texas city disaster
8:40 - Chapter 5 - Beirut explosion
10:40 - Chapter 6 - Chernobyl disaster
12:30 - Chapter 7 - Banqiao dam failure
To anyone who is interested in incidents like this, the USCSB has a channel with hundreds of videos with great animations, that goes over commercial and industrial accidents, showing how the equipment is suppose to work and what went wrong that caused the accident. A bit dark but extremely fascinating
THANK U FOR THIS
Apart from Business Blaze I don't pay attention to which Whistler channel I'm clicking on. I just click the pic of that shiny head and listen to the sultry tones of Simon's voice describing terribly depressing things
Union Carbide had a similar plant in West Virginia that produced similar products to the one in Bhopal. One big difference is that the plant in WV did not store appreciable amounts of MIC (Methyl Isocyanate) in the process. As soon as the MIC was produced it immediately went to the next reaction tower. The only MIC in storage was in a surge tank between the MIC synthesis and the next process step. At Bhopal, the India insisted on lower costs for the plant and this necessitated the storage of MIC which UC strongly warned against. MIC needs to be kept cool or otherwise it flashes. It also reacts very strongly with water, acids and oxidizers.
PS: Please, Am-O-cO with the accent on the second syllable.
PPS: My great uncle was the Public Health Director in Texas City when this happened. He had the task of cataloguing the body pieces found as well as holding the inquests to establish the death of those that disappeared. Until the day he died, he never talked about that day and we (the children in the family) were told to never ask him about it.
9:44 Simon lost it, well me as well :D
yeah storing ammonium nitrate in an unstable environment together with fireworks, what could go wrong?
Oh it couldn't be that bad....... Oh nevermind.
@@feraltaco4783 yeah
well, exactly
Halifax explosion.
yeah that was the one, vapourised a significant amount of water in the harbour apparently
Industrially related but a "military" disaster.
@@TheColonelKlink Not really. It were civilian ships and crews that were carrying the explosive goods and the explosion occured because of reasons entirely unrelated to the military situation. This is just as much a civilian disaster, as the explosion of an ammunition factory is.
I just watched an update documentary on the Beirut explosion caused by neglect of the ineffective government who had been repeatedly warned OVER YEARS by Security about the danger of keeping the storage of the ammonia nitrate in the warehouse. The last communication even told of the total destruction of the port and surrounding area in an explosion. Yet again no steps were taken to empty the warehouse. The fire department that lost all the fire personnel who responded to the beginning fire were never informed of the warehouse contents. New high rise apartment buildings had continued to be built within the range of the explosion. The people of Beirut in the documentary were so beaten down by this on top of everything else they had been through it was heart breaking. They are a brave hard working people trying to figure out how they can over come this latest disaster caused by a government who just doesn’t care about their citizens. I highly recommend the video, it was excellent.
1. 00:48 | Bhopal (chemical spill)
2. 03:05 | Benxihu Colliery (coal mine)
3. 04:26 | Amaco Cadiz (oil spill)
4. 06:31 | Texas City (explosion)
5. 08:38 | Beirut (explosion)
6. 10:37 | Chernobyl (nuclear meltdown)
7. 12:27 | Banqiao (dam failure)
Thank you
Simon Whistler the king of successful RUclips channels
The Pike River mine disaster in NZ was a significant one here. It’s still ongoing as well, taking 2 separate governments to figure out how to recover the bodies or not.
I couldn't wait for Simon to do a video on this. Now over to BB to see what he really thinks about it...
Simon, you are the best presenter.....thank yo so much, cheers from Orlando, Florida....Paul
Hey wasn't that ship heading to Danny's home town lol if you read this and know Danny your a legend
The followers of the business blaze think you are a legend
"Alegendly"
@@alexander-mauricemillamlae4567 thanks for the clarification still was hoping for a blaze crossover lol
OGBBL
Free Danny 2021
I’m one of those who discovered this channel first. Never knew about Mega Projects until you told me here!
I was very close to the Beirut explosion. Luckily I was inside and no one around me got hurt. It was terrifying. Few damages to my car, but was easily fixable. Can't say the same for those who lost their homes and above all their loved ones. I hope we, as Lebanese, recover from this atrocity committed against us by the negligent ruling class.
I saw one video, of children looking out that window at the fire-- knowing what was coming, I was horrified, but their mother got them away from the window just in time and they were okay. I almost cried. There's a good many Lebanese-Canadians where I live, and in my experience they are all intelligent, hard working and polite. I look at the recent history of Lebanon, and this recent disaster, and it pains me. The Lebanese people deserve so much better. But take heart, most often the political ramifications from a disaster like this take longer than we imagine to manifest themselves. Good luck.
I’m so glad you survived that horrific tragedy! That must have been terrifying. Wishing you the best!
You should do a story on the Port Chicago Explosion.
Well damn... if that ending isn't some eerie foreshadowing for the Three Gorges Dam then I don't know what is.
I’m a weird one then. Found this channel befor mega projects. Also love the videos will be checking your other channels out eventually. So much to watch
Hey Simon, you are superb at hosting. Articulate and never boring! You are awesome!
Fire stations in the Texas City area still have photos and commemorative plaques on their walls to remember those who died trying to fight the fires from the explosion.
Last time I was this early, Simon was beardless, and only had 1 channel lmao.
Jesus? Is that you? 🧔
Last time I was this early, Simon was beardless, had hair on his head, no glasses and only one channel.
Last time I was this early Simon was a fetus.
Edit: I won.
Last time I was this early... Well that's how simon was conceived....
The beard has grown
I was a teenager when Amoco Cadiz went down, and it was big news worldwide.
But then we had Ixtoc the next year, Exxon Valdez in '89 and Deepwater Horizon in 2010, so it has been pushed into the background somewhat.
if you do a part 2 of this, the BASF explosion in 1921 is a good one to look at.
Yeah, I was a little disappointed that Oppau wasn't included.
The Three Gorges Dam is the largest dam in the world, and the law that brought it into being was the closest ever to not being passed by the National People's Congress of China. The part-time legislators of the NPC typically rubber stamp all the laws that are brought to them by the Standing Committee of the NPC (a smaller, full-time legislature), but many legislators were simply too worried of a potential failure of the dam to vote for its creation. If the Three Gorges Dam were to ever fail, it could become the deadliest and most costly industrial disaster to ever happen, destroying entire cities along the river downstream. It's a terrifying possibility to consider.
9:16 Ammonium nitrate..... "Quite dangerous under unfavourable conditions". Master of understatement, Simon.
What about the Halifax explosion in Nova Scotia Canada? Dec 6, 1917. 2,000 dead, 9,000 injured. It was the single largest non nuclear explosion in history. 3 kilotons of TNT equivalent, Beirut was around a third this size, give or take.
I was thinking the very same thing. I know an episode of SideProjects is dedicated to it, but Halifax really deserves to be on this list.
Enjoy the outcomes? No I'm not psychotic, sounded captivating, and fascinating, yes absolutely. Simon, you did a wonderful job on this video, thank you for doing all of the work to produce it and share it.
Can we have one about Portsmouth England, Hampton Roads Virginia etc? Old ports and docks
The pictured above ground final stage tank was not the source of the poison gas.
The source tank was a very large subsurface one that apparently used pressurized nitrogen gas to move its contents in
and out for processing into pesticide. Once it failed from water contamination which had caused its contents to heat up
and burst the tank's ground level roof, there was no way to safely move the chemical inside it to the safety flare stack to
be burned into harmless smoke. The badly eroded flare stack had been disassembled for rebuilding and was unavailable
at the time in any case.
Another good one! Thanks Simon. What about Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station? Would be a nice one I think.
always excellent, thanks for turning the lights on :)
You guys should use the segment thing (video time bar division by video segment) in your videos, it'd be a nice way to recap some of those longer titles that kinda just fly by!
Even tho i knew that beirut explosion was on this list when you mentioned it it still brought tears to my eyes
My god have mercy on us
The Beirut Explosion still is one of the most impressive footage ive seen in my life.
That Massive sound wave and its Power is something of disaster movies.
Never seen such an huge event like that in a city that size.
Realy,realy scary just to watch,until this day.
Total Destruction.
I think the Tianjing explosion was pretty impressive too, was expecting it in the list tbh
I was thinking about this as well, but I didn't know how the two explosions compare. So I did some Googling and it turns out Beirut was quite a bit worse. See for example, airshare.air-inc.com/how-does-the-beirut-explosion-compare-to-tianjin
Don't mess around lightly with nitrogen compounds.
excempt N3
My company a decade ago in dry Alberta bought most of a plant of wood processing equipment.........from Florida, sight unseen. I tried to "splain to Lucy" what happens to equipment surrounded on three sides by SALT and a high HUMIDITY environment. Equipment that would last outside in Alberta for 100 years has a life expectancy of less than 25 in places like Florida.................and INDIA. AND that assumes on-going maintenance.
"2300 tons of Ammonium Nitrate"
Me munching popcorn: ooh that's not good..
"Small arms ammunition"
Spits popcorn: these guys ain't messing around.
_Satan has entered the chat_
Fireworks...
when simon w says ammonium nitrate you just know it is going to escalate quicky!! Thank you for another great video!
Yours if my favorite information channel
Fun hypothesis - there are no natural Supernovas, only industrial accidents. So we got that to look forward to.
You heard it here first folks. Make sure to get the industrial accident supernova on your 2020's bingo card.
Seeing that footage of the so-called "Biorobots" on the roof of the number four reactor(?) is really depressing. After watching the Chernobyl mini-series, you get a tiny grasp of what the Soviet soldiers and workers went through. It's so upsetting that so many innocent people lost their lives and/or suffered from lifelong conditions because of the carelessness of not just the plant manager, who had the blame laid at his doorstep by the Soviet Union, but the Soviet Union leadership who created the conditions that lead up to the disaster.
On the topic of the Chernobyl mini-series, the saddest story of the show has to be the fireman, who was exposed when he picked up a chunk of graphite that had been in the core, and his pregnant wife who visited him in hospital. Her contact with him irradiated her enough to kill her but her fetus absorbed most of the radiation, saving her life. So not only did she lose her husband but she lost the last piece of him that still remained in this world. Granted, what happened was kind of her fault for constantly ignoring the doctors but, to be fair, the average Soviet citizen would have most likely been ignorant to the effects of radiation or at least the extent of the contamination and damage it causes.
Love all your channels Simon!
Union Carbide was the first that came to my mind. Very sad event.
for a side projects video what about one covering only Mine disasters? Like the 1922 Argonaut gold mine fire that claimed 47, and other similar events when regulations where not seen as important.
This isn't the Biographics channel but I'm gonna type it before I get stuck in another rabbit hole of yours....
Have you done one on Kant? Emmanuel Kant the philosopher who was apparently a spectacle in his life but he also had some brilliant ideas
That intro was the definition of SideProjects.
all im going to say is when you have a fool at the wheel an accident is just round the corner
Here is a disaster that was thankfully too small to make this list, but could have been so much worse: In 1927, a huge natural gas storage tank on Pittsburgh's North Side exploded. 28 people were killed, but the destruction was massive. The tank actually shot at least 100 feet into the air before exploding, and at the time, it was the world's largest.
This was awesome videos on man made disasters are interesting, learning how people failed or underestimated what they were building
Great show. Thankyou.
at 9:42ish, Simon puts his hand to his forehead, seemingly in disbelief at what he's describing. classic.
Once more as a side or mega project: cable powered street railways. The future of city transportation, for the 1880s. Until that guy Sprague and electric streetcar(trams to you across the pond).
Frank Sprague would a good Biographics subject, come to think of it. Major impact on railway electrification.
Thoughts BP oil spill would be on this, also Halifax Explosion.
Sucks for all the poor bastards on the oil rig that got killed(RIP) but in terms of life lost it doesn't hold a candle to some of the other accidents talked about in this video.
' The Big Bangs'
Maybe something about the ammonium perchlorate explosion at PEPCON in Henderson, NV?
Actually building the plant _on top_ of the giant gas main that supplied raw stock might not have been the best idea....
@jared price Sprawl is _really_ crazy in the desert west.
I'm surprised that the Halifax explosion wasn't in the list. I think it still is the largest non nuclear explosion ever.
I believe the title of greatest non-nuclear explosion goes to a test of the N1 rocket. Simon also has a video on that, somewhere.... That man really has too many RUclips channels
@@Leon_Schuit That was only around 1kT of rTNT equivalent, so no.
As far as I'm aware, the by far largest non nuclear explosion ever, was an explosion that ocurred when they were trying to defuse a huge German underground ammunition dump from WW2 near Hänigsen in 1946. It was about 11,000 tons, or 11kT in TNT equivalent. Luckily for those outside, the ammunition dump was located so deep (500m-700m), that most of the damage was limited to the underground portions.
@@MajinOthinus The N1 rocket explosion was around 10Kt of tnt. Can't find anything about that explosion in Germany. Only a small video in German.
@@samuelgordino The N1 *would* have been 10 kT if all the fuel exploded, but it was determined, that only a small part of the fuel actually exploded.
Who makes your jacket? Good vid as usual. Don't forget the jacket.
A robustly incompetent bureaucracy is at the heart of most of them.
Government partnerships too, that overlook such ticking egg timers to disasters.
It will be better if you add another video about the Tianjin 2016 explosion Simon. The disaster also well documented from all angles with smartphones by lots of people and killed lots of people and injured thousands.
That disaster is considered even more expensive in damaged cost compare to Beirut explosion despite involved around 800 tons of ammonium nitrate, less than Beirut's 2700 tons of ammonium nitrate.
The explosion occurred at the heart of the Tianjin busy port full of goods, including thousands of brand new cars for export toast by the fire and heat and hundreds of containers blown out of their position like Lego bricks.
173 was killed by the explosion, 147 of them are firefighters.
Thanks, Simon for an interesting presentation.
America's biggest industrial disaster was actually in West Virginia. But most people don't know about it because there were no big booms or instantaneous piles or human bodies and the resulting engineering project worked perfectly. It was the building of a tunnel on the New Kanawha River to funnel the river to a hydroelectric plant, often called "The Hawk's Nest Incident." The workers didn't die on site, but they had breathed in quartz dust during construction so many would be dead of silicosis within five years. No one knows exactly how many died because most of the workers were brought in from southern states and the fact that this disaster happened in the worst part of the Great Depression, records are nearly nonexistent. But estimates are about 1000-2000.
Me watching work accidents and industrial accidents these past 2 days and then Side Projects uploads this.
The film from Beirut, still has the capacity to shock me. I held an explosives licence for over twenty five years. The storage of the ammonium nitrate was utterly negligent. Who on earth stores fireworks near Anfo?
Simon.. My all time favorite media personality. You are a Legend. I could listen to you read the dictionary and be entertained and engaged
The name of the pesticide made at Bhopal was aldicarb, trade name Union Carbide's 'Temik'. I remember using this stuff when planting either potatoes or cabbage, possibly both, back in 1976 when I was an 18 year old student. I can still remember the vapour released by the product as it was poured from its sealed retail bags. It is still used today in some regions and for some plants, such as cotton.
Idea for biographics or ur podcast The Green River Killer Gary Ridgeway great vid btw Simon!
"...The exact cause of the initial fire remains unknown"... I wonder what the total global death toll is from "person flicks out their cigarette"
We can start with many people who have died in forest fires.
Your description of the Texas City Disaster is very similar to the Halifax explosion which was the biggest explosion before the nuclear bomb was used in WWII.
Sadly, you could make many more videos on the same subject. For my country, Canada, alone you could do the Second Narrows Bridge disaster in Vancouver, the Point Ellice Bridge disaster in Victoria, the two Quebec River bridge disasters (yes the same bridge), and The Halifax harbour disaster.
I thought, the Exxon Valdez disaster was even worse than the Amoco Cadiz? Maybe I was wrong...
Exxon Valdez 257,000 barrels spilt. Amoco Cadiz 1,604,500 barrels spilt.
Deepwater Horizons estimated total discharge; 4.9 million barrels.
When I was at uni, I chose bioremediation of pile spills as my dissertation topic (I grew up in Orkney and knew people who lost family on Piper Alpha), and while the Exxon Valdez disaster did have a significant environmental impact, arguably worse than Amoco Cadiz, it dumped considerably less oil (around 20% if I remember correctly). Crude oil spills degrade much faster the warmer the climate and the more wave action it is subject to, as the oil can be broken up into smaller and smaller globules when it’s warm and being shaken about. This means that bacteria which can use oil as a food source (yes, there are oil-eating bacteria which live naturally in the environment, but they can only break down oil in the presence of nitrogen and small amounts of oxygen) can get to a larger surface area and get to work. The Exxon Valdez occurred in a very cold climate, in a very sheltered area - the worst possible conditions. Also, a lot of the ‘clean-up’ of the Exxon Valdez disaster was handled very very badly, and actually caused more environmental damage than would have occurred if the oil had been left to break down naturally - crews sprayed beaches with boiling water to melt the oil build up, which just forced the oil deeper into the substrate and killed all the bacteria which had been breaking it down, along with any other living thing which had survived the oil.
I don't think that Pripyat was deserted back then when the disaster struck 😅
Indeed, it wasn´t. Simon made a mistake here.
You should do History's Worst Industrial Near Misses too. Look up the Buncefield Explosion and the Allied Colloids fire for two from the UK.
another interesting British disaster involved a custard explosion just deserts anybody lol
@@leonmusk1040 Oh yeah! The Bird's Custard explosion, 1982, I think. Not sure if anyone was killed, I don't think they were, but it was VERY destructive.
Could you guys make a video about the greatest fire day of the US. October 8, 1871 the Chicago Fire and Great Peshtigo fire occurred that day. It is very interesting. I also believe they are unrelated.
Simon looking quite smart in the jacket!
You guys forgot about the Hercules Powder Company explosion. It happened in September 1940 and it killed 51. Some said it was the local bund camp that did it, while others said it was just an accident, no one really knows to this day. It was the largest explosion to ever happen at that plant. Many more accidents would happen, but none as huge as that day.
SCIENTISTS : store ammonium nitrate in a cool dry atmosphere
BERIUT Customs : just leave it in that old warehouse by the docks for 6 summers
I guess the Dutch firework factory incident will be in a part 2. And that chemical explosion in China, the video for that is worth a watch.
Business Blaze Simon would ask if we enjoyed this video.
Its because we enjoy automatically
I always enjoy these videos. Why won't you ask me if I enjoyed it?
Excellent.
The ammonium nitrate in Beirut had been stored for over half a decade, in very unfavorable conditions. After that many years without cooling or ventilation, it's prematurely at an early stage of decomposition. It takes a good bit of heat to set off ammonium nitrate, but it starts decomposing already at relatively low temperatures, and the way it was stored, much of the "center mass" has no path to shed heat. A tiny fire nearby breaks out, and it sets off a chain reaction. A product of this decomposition _is oxygen._ The product of 2700 tons of the stuff stored in unventilated holding, is *A LOT* of oxygen, at a _very_ rapidly increasing concentration and pressure. Another thing with ammonium nitrate is that its decomposition is exothermic. Now you have a very rapidly increasing, super flammable atmosphere, and 2700 tons of tightly packed, accelerating decomposing ammonium nitrate in a state of thermal runaway. Pretty much anything can set off a fire because of the super high oxygen level, and either way - its only a matter of minutes before some of it goes above 200°C (ish) and autoignites.
Firefighters and other people there never had a chance, nothing could stop that outcome once set in motion. The responsibility lies with the government form ever letting it sit. There's no real safe way of neither storing nor disposing of that much ammonium nitrate in one place. Government should have stepped in the same week the cargo was seized, confiscated it as a matter of threat to national security, and offloaded it back onto the commercial market through the appropriate channels and brokers. If the company ever won their case, give them their money back, not 2700 tons of ammonium nitrate.
Good video 👍
When i lived in Houston, it seemed like texas city was always on the news about some accident or explosion they had..
You said "Amoco" several times before I figured out what you were saying. "Am-uh-co"
This one was mis-titled. These are all certainly some of the worst man-made disasters! But some of them happened long after the industrial process (oil spills, ammonium nitrate mishaps) that were transportation and storage issues. I was thinking this would only be about chemical leaks and explosions at the production facilities. You know, factories and refineries blowing up, a certain BP oil well failure, stuff like that.
I know the beirut explosion was horrible, but that footage of the explosion is beautiful. Great view, great angle into the epicenter, and the ability to hold that veiw as long as they did was awesome. That explosion was incredible. It's really too bad some many had to be injured or killed in this event.
And now I've been flagged as a possible terrorist...lol
guys i lost count on how many channels Simon is hosting.
I absolutely luv this channel ♥️