From molasses tsunamis to space shuttle tragedies, here are some of history’s most infamous engineering disasters. We have dozens, DOZENS, of ad free episodes! Join us for some tales of engineering disasters! Ep 20 - Part 2: Oh The Humanity!!! - The Hindenburg Ep 26 - Part 1: Under Pressure - The Byford Dolphin & The Titan Submersible Ep 61: Engineering Disasters Part 1 - The 1981 Kansas City Hyatt Skywalk Collapse Ep 65 - Engineering Disasters Part 2: Tragedy in Bhopal Ep 69 - Click in and Buckle up: Roller Coaster Accidents Ep 72 - Shopping for Disaster - The Sampoong Department Store Collapse Ep 93 - Disaster at Shift's End: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Ep 96 - Doomed to Sink: The Olympic Class Ships of The White Star Line Ep 126 - A Sticky Situation: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 Ep 132 - Swimming in the Sub-Basement: The Great Chicago Flood of 1992 Ep 130 - Come One, Come All!: The Hammond Circus Train Wreck Ep 138 - Touching the Face of God: Challenger Ep 156: We chased waterfalls - Niagara Falls Ep 167: Blood on the Water - The USS Indianapolis Ep 200: Disaster on the Graveyard Shift - Chernobyl Ep 202: Ok Place, Totally Wrong Time - Not so Lucky Dragon #5 Ep 210: Do Whatever You Want!! - Action Park, New Jersey
From molasses tsunamis to space shuttle tragedies, here are some of history’s most infamous engineering disasters.
Ep 20 - Part 2: Oh The Humanity!!! - The Hindenburg
Ep 26 - Part 1: Under Pressure - The Byford Dolphin & The Titan Submersible
Ep 61: Engineering Disasters Part 1 - The 1981 Kansas City Hyatt Skywalk Collapse
Ep 65 - Engineering Disasters Part 2: Tragedy in Bhopal
Ep 69 - Click in and Buckle up: Roller Coaster Accidents
Ep 72 - Shopping for Disaster - The Sampoong Department Store Collapse
Ep 93 - Disaster at Shift's End: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
Ep 96 - Doomed to Sink: The Olympic Class Ships of The White Star Line
Ep 126 - A Sticky Situation: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
Ep 132 - Swimming in the Sub-Basement: The Great Chicago Flood of 1992
Ep 130 - Come One, Come All!: The Hammond Circus Train Wreck
Ep 138 - Touching the Face of God: Challenger
Ep 156: We chased waterfalls - Niagara Falls
Ep 167: Blood on the Water - The USS Indianapolis
Ep 200: Disaster on the Graveyard Shift - Chernobyl
Ep 202: Ok Place, Totally Wrong Time - Not so Lucky Dragon #5
Ep 210: Do Whatever You Want!! - Action Park, New Jersey
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
This week, let's focus on engineering disasters
>> Taylor: Hello and welcome to Doomed to Fail. My name is Taylor. I am one of your hosts, along with my friend Fars. We have over 200 episodes on disasters and failures and historical stories. And in an effort to frame the frameless, I'm putting them into groups. And there's still so many groups. It's a little bit of everything. But this week, let's focus on engineering disasters. And I'm gonna go in order of our episodes. Some of these might be a surprise. You might think that doesn't feel like an engineering disaster, but it feels like the little tiny thing that went wrong, like the Swiss cheese model that we talk about all the time. So, like a bunch of little tiny things go wrong and then all of a sudden you have something terrible happened. So I'm actually not even going to talk about plane crashes because we do a whole series on that as well. But here we go. You can find these in our library. So we'll start with episode 20, part two on the Hindenburg. Did you know that the Hindenburg flew over New York City? And it had a swastika on its tail fin, like it was from Germany and it was visiting the United States. And before it crashed, but was supposed to land in New Jersey, it flew over New York City, and there's pictures of it which I think is absolutely wild. Episode 26, Part 1, Under Pressure, the Byford Dolphin and the Titan submersible. We recorded this, like, right after the Titan imploded. So we talked a little bit about that. And also another time that there was an implosion due to pressure on the Byford Dolphin. Episode 61 is an engineering disaster, short little series that Forrest did. This one is on the 1981 Kansas City Hyatt Skywalk collapse. So, like, imagine you're in a hotel and a tea party dance. So it's old people dancing with their loves and these hanging walkways crush, just crush the dance floor. And a lot of people died. So that's one. And then engineering disasters. Part two is episode 65, which is a tragedy in Bhopal, India. There was a leak in a plant and gas just covered a town in the middle of the night, just killed everyone. Just like a silent, deadly disaster. Episode 69, Fars talks about roller coaster accidents. There's a whole bunch of them, like decapitations, getting thrown from the roller coaster, falling down a place you shouldn't be. All sorts of reasons to be very, very careful and sober when you're at a amusement park. Episode 72 is the Sampug department store. Collapse. So in South Korea, a huge luxury department store was built. It's like a beautiful, weird pink building and it collapses in the middle of the day. So there's these water tanks on the ceiling, on the roof, and they start. Just something happens, it's too heavy and a lot of people die there as well. These are, these are disasters. Then episode 93. This was for Women's History Month in 2024. This is a Triangle shirtwaist factory fire. So it's a fire in a building caused by most likely a cigarette on like these piles and piles of scraps of fabric. And a lot of women were trapped on like the seventh or eighth floor of a building in New York. And a lot of them burned to death or died jumping out. There's so many interesting things about this story, but one of them is that Frances Perkins was there. She was down the street and her and her friends ran over to see what was happening. Later, Frances Perkins will be the Secretary of Labor under fdr. She's the first woman to have a cabinet position like that. And she is directly responsible. Responsible for things like union rights, weekends, eight hour workday, Medicare vacation days, Social Security. Just so many things that Frances Perkins did. And the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire really shaped her views on labor laws. So such an important story.
Episode 96, Doomed to Sink the Olympic class ships
Episode 96, Doomed to Sink the Olympic class ships of the White Star Line. So it wasn't just a Titanic that was doomed. There were plenty of others. And Forrest goes into Those then episode 126, the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. So in Boston, unlike the wharf and like the dock area, there is a huge tank of molasses. And if you don't know what molasses is, it's like syrup, but worse. It's stickier, it smells really, really strong. You use a tiny bit of it if you're making like a graham cracker. And it was used for both for distilling booze and for munitions. So it also can. Parts of it can explode. But it was in this holding tank before it was brought into the United States for processing. And it exploded and it was like a huge wave of the most awful stickiness to drown in that I can think of. So listen to that one. Then we have the Great Chicago flood of 1992. This episode 132. I actually hadn't heard of this one until I was in Chicago and I was walking over one of the rivers and my friend John mentioned it. But it's like, did you know? Not just Chicago, plenty of Cities have all these hidden tunnels underneath. So in Chicago there's tunnels and they used to be like delivery tunnels. You could be like, I'm gonna meet my package on this corner and it would like pop up. And there were people whose jobs were like drive little tiny trains around. And then eventually as we got trucks and above ground ways to do things, like they just were left there. And they were installing a new bridge in one part of Chicago, pierced the tunnel underneath the river. Didn't realize they did it. And the water just came up and up from basements that people didn't even know they had, which is wild. And there's so much scary stuff underground. And then another Chicago story, episode 130 actually happened in Indiana. But there was a circus train from the Hammond Circus. So the Hammond Circus train wreck and two trains collided. There were people not paying attention. It was late at night and a lot of people and animals died. The animals are not buried in a cemetery, but there is a cemetery in Chicago where my grandparents are buried, where there is a showman's rest where they buried the bodies of a lot of the people who died in that wreck. And a lot of them are just anonymous. They were just like drifters who worked at the circus. But there's a big statue of an elephant if you ever want to go there then. Episode 138 is about the Challenger disaster. This one is so interesting and tragic and sad and I'm pretty sure I cried when we were recording it. Just these people have such love for space and love for such science and just to die in such a tragic way is really preventable and sad. Episode 156 is on Niagara Falls, which is an engineering marvel, really. It's something that you can control. Like did you know that during peak season they turn it on more than usual? But in the making of it, a lot of people died. There's stuff about Tesla and this. It's really interesting. So listen to that one. And then this one is a shipwreck and has to do with a bomb. But the USS Indianapolis, episode 167. So after they had dropped off their payload, which happened to be the stuff to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, they were on their way back to one of the islands that the US controlled and they were hit by a torpedo and then they sank and then they were attacked by sharks. So there's just so many layers to this disaster. It'll fall into a bunch of other categories as well. But it's crazy. This then episode 200. So our 200th episode was the disaster at Chernobyl. So if you lived in the 80s, you would remember the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had an explosion and it is just mistake after mistake after mistake. Super interesting. I think you'll love listening to it. Two more episode 202 is not so lucky. Dragon number five. This is a Japanese shipping vessel that happened to be in the wrong part of the ocean when people were testing. Well, the US Was testing the atomic bomb. So it's engineering, as in its bombing. But it's also showing you like the, I don't know, just like the breadth of a disaster that can happen from any nuclear thing which ties us to Chernobyl, ties us back to Indianapolis, back to anything World War II related. And then finally, one of our most recent episodes, episode 210 on Action Park, New Jersey. So this is engineering of water slides and theme park rides that were not approved by anyone. Just like an idea that a man had and made them and lied about his insurance coverage. And people died there as well. So lots of disasters, lots of interesting stories. If you have anything else that you think we should cover, I would love to hear it. You can email us doomtofellpodmail.com we're oomtofellpod on all social media. The show notes have links to each of these episodes or you can just search for them in our archives. But I hope you find one that you like and then also that you stick around. Thanks.