i used to live in a little town that was on a short list for the potential build of a big deal biodefense lab / infectious disease experiment station. the town all came together to say "fuck you and fuck off" and among the first meetings, which came together before a set of scripted federal "listening" sessions, the community hosted this anti-biological weapon proliferation guy who basically laid it out that these places are never as secure as they pretend to be and gave all these examples of fuck ups, while also explaining how they do not defend against biological weapons: they stockpile them, suppress public awareness of fuckups, and use every opportunity to grow their little fiefdoms through scare propaganda.

i remembered afterwards talking to some lab worker grad student (who had not been to the presentation) and asked for their opinion. they immediately launched into the same lines of propaganda that the speaker had presented. "these labs are secure. accidents happen, but there are so many redundancies, it's impossible for anything bad to happen." of course, their education existed in a vacuum which elided the entire history of unethical research and environmental calamity, which makes them an ideal candidate to work at such a place For The Greater Good.

what's amazing to me is how many people believe in the infallibility of our institutions despite the constant overwhelming evidence every year (at least) we have some kind of "defies all logic, everything that could go wrong went wrong, statistically impossible" disaster event. like the BP situation and the blowout preventer. even right afterward, i talked to some BP petroleum engineers who insisted the whole thing was a one in a million fluke, that "so many people do the wrong thing at the wrong time", and would scoff at accusations of institutional/cultural failure.