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Accident Tales - The 7 Universal Stories of Disasters

Monday, July 28 2014 at 7:30PM

Drew Rae

What do the Apollo 13, Challenger and Columbia accidents have in common? When you strip away the technical details, nearly everything. Why did McDonnell Douglas stage two dress rehearsals before crashing a DC-10 into a forest? How did the French intercity railway manage to stage a near-perfect re-enactment of Potters Bar? It's almost as if the same accidents are happening again and again.

In literature there is an idea (mostly discredited - but let's not spoil a good story) that there are only seven basic plots. What if there are really only seven basic accidents, replayed in different times, places and industries?

This is a talk about the power and danger of stories to explain the past and shape the future, focussing on stories of disasters.

Drew Rae is a system safety lecturer and host of the DisasterCast podcast. He tells stories about accidents to teach the next generation of safety professionals at the same time as he writes papers calling for a more evidence driven approach to find out what to teach them.