A Thread For Discussing Disasters

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Do you know how many times I've wanted to? It's such a MORBID topic I'm never sure if it would be seen as sick or exploitative.

That concern is exactly why I'm discussing it in the daily thread where everyone can see it without any advance warning.
Ooh just start an AIR DISASTERS THREAD. Only the mentally ill ones like us would open it anyway :disco:
 
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Train accidents are another one that I can spend many hours reading about on Wikipedia. Quintinshill and Balvano are particularly unpleasant in it being so clear how they came to happen.
 
We've taken over the daily thread with this, and I feel like it's fairer to everyone else if we just start our own so people don't have to read the lurid details if they don't want to. I know a few posters lost loved rabbits on Flight 467.

Anyway, Air France 2009. DISCUSS.
 
Train accidents are another one that I can spend many hours reading about on Wikipedia. Quintinshill and Balvano are particularly unpleasant in it being so clear how they came to happen.
Was Balvano the black market train where hundreds were suffocated in the tunnel? That's proper unique.
 
Well I’d rather be in a crash on LAND rather than the middle of the OCEAN.
 
Was Balvano the black market train where hundreds were suffocated in the tunnel? That's proper unique.
That's the one. You don't think of a train disaster with hundreds of fatalities leaving no wreckage at all.
 
That's the one. You don't think of a train disaster with hundreds of fatalities leaving no wreckage at all.
I think there were maybe three survivors? Insane.

The ones I come back to again and again are:
MS Estonia
Rana Plaza
Sampoong Department Store
Zolitude Shopping Centre
Los Alfaques
Love Parade 2010
Lac Megantic
Guadalajara gas explosions
Dibbles Bridge coach crash
MV Dona Paz

For me it's the fascination with the sequence of events that lead up to each one. Especially in the case of Rana Plaza and Sampoong, the signs were there - they were massive tragedies that could have been completely avoided.
 
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There's a couple there that I am not familiar with. I'm meant to be working so will NOT be going to look them up right now.
 
Oh I do like a bit of disaster based reading. I'd not heard Balvano before.
I read about it in an old book my Dad had when I was little. It seemed so far fetched I thought it was made up, It's not even one that ever gets mentioned anywhere. When they invented the internet I was shocked to discover it was all true.
 
I just wikipedia-ed the Balvano one, lots of DEAD BODIES :zombie:
 
There's a couple there that I am not familiar with. I'm meant to be working so will NOT be going to look them up right now.
I've got my spreadsheet with 1085 separate entries that I'm planning to use to do my disaster blog - I'll send you it so you can sack work off and go down a few rabbit holes.
 
I think there were maybe three survivors? Insane.

The ones I come back to again and again are:
MS Estonia
Rana Plaza
Sampoong Department Store
Zolitude Shopping Centre
Los Alfaques

For me it's the fascination with the sequence of events that lead up to each one. Especially in the case of Rana Plaza and Sampoong, the signs were there - they were massive tragedies that could have been completely avoided.

The SECOND I am on my lunch break these will all be googled. I don't think I know any of them.
 
Ooh I read about the Los Alfaques one after someone posted about it here the other week. Was it YOU @ButterTart :D
 
Guys we've got this far without mentioning the ASTONISHING Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse

Two-suspended-walkways-in-the-Hyatt-Regency-Kansas-City-collapsed-as-dozens-of.png
 
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Not forgetting HILLSBOROUGH! :(
 
There is a video of the Tianjin explosion that I couldn't stop watching. Someone doing a live stream before the biggest explosion and you see a wall in front of them just evaporate before the video cuts out.

Edit: the very first clip here.
 
I’ve always enjoyed Boston’s GREAT MOLASSES FLOOD of 1919 for just how utterly bizarre it was.
 
I’ve always enjoyed Boston’s GREAT MOLASSES FLOOD of 1919 for just how utterly bizarre it was.
That is such a weird one. That the area was not only flooded with treacle but also SMELT of treacle for years after.
 
In terms of disasters with video footage, this is a compelling watch:


The Love Parade was unique in that it was entirely captured on camera, from dozens of different perspectives. I think this was where the phenomenon of 'tides' in crowds of people was first confirmed.
 
In terms of recent things, that Russian shopping mall fire (Kemerovo?) a couple of years ago fascinated (and, obviously, horrified) me for awhile. I can't remember the exact details apart from loads of kids dying but the details were grim and some of it didn't make sense as I recall as if it had been done deliberately/covered up.
 
That Canadian oil tanker exploding in a town centre in 2013 was quite spectacular

00canada-train1-jumbo.jpg
 
well Buttertart if you woke up this week with the mission to trigger Suomi, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
 
The Ramstein air show disaster was quite grim, I remember it leaving quite an impression on me as a child.
 
The Ramstein air show disaster was quite grim, I remember it leaving quite an impression on me as a child.
I didn't realise until very recently that Rammstein were named after that.

The thing about leaving an impression as a child is interesting - I think that's why I find reading about disasters so fascinating. In my formative years I saw Valley Parade, King's Cross and Piper Alpha burning, a plane lying across the motorway at Kegworth, the destruction of Lockerbie, the Herald of Free Enterprise lying on its side, the Marchioness, Hillsborough, Clapham Junction, the M40 crash...
All of those over maybe 8-10 years, all involving British people, all covered to death by the news. If you grew up in Britain in the late 80s/early 90s I think you're desensitised to - and morbidly curious about - bad shit happening.
 
Some of these are so recent and I don't remember them at all.
A lot of things don't get reported AT ALL here. One of the ones I mentioned earlier, the Rana Plaza, was (I think) the deadliest building collapse in modern history. Over a thousand dead, most of them workers in factories which make clothing for UK brands, and I don't remember seeing ANYTHING about it. I assume Kate Middleton had queefed the day before and we needed round the clock coverage, complete with David Emanuel explaining how a queef might have sounded in the wedding dress he designed for Princess Diana.
 

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