Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies

Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies - Updated Edition by Charles Perrow

Increasingly complex systems are increasingly susceptible to cascading risks. The book goes through many detailed examples.The first one is a contrived example from regular life. A man has many small issues happen that cause him to miss a meeting at work. Any of the items alone would not be a problem. However, they all built on top of each other to create a catastrophe. Bigger catastrophes were detailed, such as three mile island nuclear disaster. Many things had to fail together to cause the meltdown. Some of the safety and redundancies helped contribute to the problem.

After an incident occurs, there is usually a desire to assign blame. However, in today's world, it is difficult to assign single blame. Many of the actions that lead to the disaster would not normally be a problem. However, they became an issue when everything was linked together. In the afterward the author is thankful that society has become more willing to acknowledge these system issues rather than continue to try to assign individual blame. (Alas, there is a still a strong legal incentive to assign blame.)

Today's society is increasingly susceptible to system issues. Redundancies are eliminated from systems in the name of efficiency. That works great when things are functioning normally. However, it also means small things can cascade out of control quickly and bring down entire systems. Attempts to make systems more "safe" can sometimes be the source of failures. A warning that fires too often may be ignored. Automatic safety responses could lead to damage to different systems.  Areas such as nuclear power and genetic engineering have power to destroy society if systems break down. How do we protect the world? This book is extremely detailed in the exploration of the problem. It does not pose any simple solutions to a problem that eludes them.