Chernobyl ranks up there in terms of how it only took about a day of mismanagement to cause one of the worst and longest lasting disasters.
Real talk though the most expensive disaster historically in the US has probably got to be the financialization and industrialization of farms around the turn of the century. Killed a lot of farming and led to a whole slew of bullshit. People had to come into the cities to find work after going bust trying to finance their tractors with loans against their farms, which led to food shortages and the Dustbowl.
It took more than that - it was a shit design. Instead of requiring labor and energy to keep it from turning off, it required labor and energy to keep it from exploding. And like most industrial disasters, it was the inevitable result of actually longstanding systemic mismanagement
Chernobyl ranks up there in terms of how it only took about a day of mismanagement to cause one of the worst and longest lasting disasters.
Real talk though the most expensive disaster historically in the US has probably got to be the financialization and industrialization of farms around the turn of the century. Killed a lot of farming and led to a whole slew of bullshit. People had to come into the cities to find work after going bust trying to finance their tractors with loans against their farms, which led to food shortages and the Dustbowl.
It took more than that - it was a shit design. Instead of requiring labor and energy to keep it from turning off, it required labor and energy to keep it from exploding. And like most industrial disasters, it was the inevitable result of actually longstanding systemic mismanagement