Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology [Hardcover]

James R. Chiles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 2001

On July 25, 2000, a small piece of debris on the runway at a Paris airport caused a tire to blow out on an Air France Concorde during its take off. A heavy slab of rubber that spun off from a tire created a shock wave in a wing tank, which burst open and sent fuel streaming into an engine intake. As flames trailed two hundred feet behind, the aircraft rolled out of control. The crash killed all 109 people on board and 4 more on the ground.

The tragedy of that departing Concorde is just one of many such chain-reaction catastrophes that have occurred as the world has grown more technologically complex and as our machines have become more difficult to control -- and more deadly. Now, in a riveting investigation into the causes and often brutal consequences of technological breakdowns, James R. Chiles offers stunning new insights into the increasingly frequent machine disasters that haunt our lives.

The shocking breakup of the Challenger; the dark February morning when the Atlantic swallowed the giant drilling rig Ocean Ranger; the fiery PEPCON factory explosion in Nevada; a deadly runaway police van in Minnesota: Chiles tracks the causes and consequences of these system breakdowns and others, vividly demonstrating why the battle between man and machine may be escalating beyond manageable limits -- and why we all have a stake in its outcome.

Chiles reconstructs moments of confusion and then terror as systems collapse, operators make fateful, sometimes incorrect choices, and disaster follows. He uncovers surprising links between past and present tragedies, such as the connections between nineteenth-century steamboat explosions and twentieth-century nuclear power plant failures. And he analyzes the numerous near misses that don't always make the evening news -- times when the quick thinking, heroic gestures, and expert actions of a few individuals have saved the lives of many, often just in time.

Combining riveting storytelling with eye-opening findings, Inviting Disaster shows what happens when our reach for new technology exceeds our grasp, and explains what we need to know to survive on the machine frontier.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Inviting Disaster, by technology and history writer James R. Chiles, is an unusual book: it appeals to the macabre desires that keep us riveted to highway accidents, while knowledgeably discoursing on the often preventable mistakes that caused them. At its heart are colorful stories behind more than 50 of the most infamous catastrophes that periodically chilled the advance of the industrial age. There are both those well remembered (the 1986 Challenger explosion, for example) and those now largely forgotten (a 1937 gas explosion at a Texas school that killed 298). But along with lively depictions of these deadly devastations and white-knuckle calamities--the U.S. battleship Maine, Apollo 13, and Three Mile Island among them--Chiles offers an informed analysis of the unfortunate chain of events that brought them about. And by grouping like incidents to show how fatal "system fractures" eventually developed through a combination of human error and mechanical malfunction, he also suggests how we might sidestep such tragedies in the future. In so, doing he fashions these spectacular accounts of failed planes, trains, ships, bridges, dams, factories, and other conveyances and facilities into a cautionary tale about technological progress. --Howard Rothman

From Publishers Weekly

Despite the specter of the Titanic, the oil rig Ocean Ranger was called "unsinkable" until one fateful night in the North Atlantic in 1982. Failing to anticipate that the vessel could list significantly to one side, its builders left open some five-foot-long holes on top of its corner supports, which filled with water during a terrible storm and led to the deaths of all 84 crew members. Chiles treats readers to a laundry list of such disasters from Bhopal to Chernobyl that arose from mistakes, panic or hubris. The result is a parade of dramatic stories about people who are simply unable to think in critical situations: "imagine having to take the most difficult final exam of your life while somebody is lobbing tear-gas grenades at you... when you are also suffering a major migraine headache and violent food poisoning." In some cases, he suggests proactive measures (e.g., when on a plane, note the number the rows to the exit, in case there's a snafu involving blinding smoke). In a book that is much more than a litany of disaster and tips on survival, Chiles also offers fascinating, detailed analyses of "system fractures" chains of events yielding catastrophes. Despite the depressing subject matter, the book is ultimately hopeful, recounting numerous acts of foresight or bravery in the face of bureaucratic opposition that saved many lives. (Aug. 31)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: HarperBusiness (August 21, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066620813
• ISBN-13: 978-0066620817
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #352,425 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent General Introduction to Systems Safety, September 6, 2003

By 

Robert I. Hedges - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology (Hardcover)

'Inviting Disaster' is a compelling and easy to read book. It is an introduction to accident theory for generalists, and is as interesting (perhaps more so) to nontechnical people as it is to engineers and the like. James Chiles discusses several major accidents (Challenger, Three Mile Island, Ocean Ranger, etc.) in well executed chapters with substantial background from previous precursor accidents or incidents. One reviewer seems to believe that this is a flaw, but I disagree. The reviewer seems to believe, for instance, that the R101 (a dirigible, not a blimp, as the reviewer wrongly states) is totally irrelevant to Challenger. In fact R101 was the Challenger of it's day, and the social, managerial and technological pressures that ultimately led to the R101 disaster ultimately led to Challenger as well. Chiles ties this theme together in a seamless manner in chapter after chapter.

This book is not a rigorous technical analysis of the individual disasters with the engineering and math associated with formal inquiries and technical (AAIB, NTSB, etc.) investigations. What it does better than any of the technical inquiries could ever do, though, is make a clear a compelling case for the problems that led to each of the accidents covered, treating man-machine interface issues with particular grace.

I have long been associated with the more technical aspects of accident investigation and safety systems, but have to say that while there are more technical accounts available for all of these accidents, if you are looking for an entry level (but complete) overview of accidents and systems safety, you can't go wrong with this book.

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required reading for the entire planet, September 27, 2001

By 

Robert P. Colwell (portland, oregon United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology (Hardcover)

James Chiles' new book is a welcome addition to the pantheon of engineering disaster chronicles. You should already have read Perrow's Normal Accidents, Vaughn's The Challenger Launch Decision, and Sagan's Limits of Safety. If you haven't, go read them now, I'll wait. Ok, next you have to read Chiles' book.

Inviting Disaster covers some of the same incidents that are featured prominently in those others, and Chiles adds new insights and observations with his trenchant observations and outstanding writing. But where he really shines is his ability to spot near-misses, close calls that the public never knew about (but which still cause nightmares for those who wish they didn't.) There are many more near-misses than calamities, and access to some of them is a major addition to our overall engineering knowledge. This book's a great read.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Reading But Not Technical, January 20, 2004

By 

Dirk J. Willard "Dirk Willard" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology (Hardcover)

If you were expecting to find technical understanding of how best to improve a plant, don't buy this book. If you want a qualitative understanding of why disasters occur, this is the book. For a quantitative, engineer's perspective, refer to "Managing Risk and Reliability of Process Plants," by Mark Tweeddale. I found this book very insightful and easy to read. After reading this book, I was encouraged to go on to more technical text. After reading this book I decided to make it a career goal NOT to be one of the engineers who designed an oil plateform where the controls could be shorted out by sea water with the fill-valves open on failure. Dumb!

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