26Kyshtym disaster
In 1957, an explosion occurred at a plutonium plant in the USSR, resulting in the third-worst nuclear accident in history. The government kept it secret for 19 years.
27. The 2004 Ryongchon disaster in North Korea killed 160 and injured up to 3000 people when a train full of gasoline crashed into a train full of butane. Many children were blinded by looking at the blast out of school windows and the shockwave sent glass projectiles into their face.
28. In 1921, workers at an ammonium nitrate factory in Oppau (now in Germany) tried clearing a clogged silo with dynamite. The resulting explosion killed 500 people and left 6500 homeless.
29. The Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster was one of the worst industrial accidents in the US. Between 476 to 1,000 workers eventually died of silicosis in the 1930s after a silica vein was struck boring the tunnel.
30. In 1989, a train disaster in Russia killed 575 people all because of a gas leak. Estimates of the size of the explosion have ranged from 250–300 tons of TNT equivalent to up to 10,000 tons of TNT equivalent. Without anyone knowing, a faulty gas pipeline 3,000 feet from the line had leaked natural gas liquids and weather conditions allowed the gas to accumulate across the lowlands, creating a flammable cloud.
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31Bhopal gas disaster
Bhopal gas disaster was the worst industrial disaster ever killing close to 4000 people. In 1984, more than 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, immediately killing at least 3,800 people and caused significant morbidity and premature death for many thousands more. The American CEO of the company was arrested, let out on $2100 bail and never came back to India to face charges.
32. Out of the 1,000 deaths in the Kamaishi City tsunami of 2011, only 5 were school-aged children. 3,000 children from two elementary schools were saved because one professor who survived a 2004 tsunami insisted on rigorous tsunami evacuation training.
33. In 1980, an oil drilling company misinterpreted the coordinate reference system causing it to puncture the salt mine below it and draining the entire Lake Peigneur into it.
34. A massive earthquake struck Japan in 1923, causing a fire tornado that incinerated 38,000 people in 15 minutes and it got so hot that people’s feet got stuck to melting tarmac preventing them from running away.
35. On a day in which there was fog heavy enough to reduce visibility to less than 500 yards, two Boeing 747s had a head-on collision on the runway of the Tenerife Airport in Canary Islands, which resulted in 583 casualties and the deadliest accident in aviation history.
