Operating Contexts
Process & Chemical Industry
Containment failures, reaction control losses, and safety system inadequacies in high-consequence environments.
Power & Energy Systems
Generation, transmission, and distribution failures across complex electrical networks and their protection systems.
Data Centers & Critical Infrastructure
Availability losses in redundant architectures where single points of failure remain hidden until tested.
Real Failure Cases
Power & Energy
2025Iberian Peninsula Blackout
Cascading voltage instability when conventional power plants failed to maintain proper voltage control during high renewable penetration.
Power & Energy
2021Texas Winter Storm Grid Collapse
Cascading failure when generation capacity assumptions did not account for simultaneous cold weather impact across multiple fuel types.
Power & Energy
2011Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
Backup power system design did not account for flood levels that would occur given the initiating event requiring their use.
Process & Chemical
2005Buncefield Oil Storage Explosion
Multiple independent high-level protection failures occurred simultaneously during tank filling operations.
Data Centers
2017AWS S3 Outage
Human error in maintenance command removed more capacity than intended, revealing initialization time dependencies.
Process & Chemical
2010Tesoro Anacortes Refinery Disaster
Heat exchanger catastrophic rupture from High Temperature Hydrogen Attack—a silent degradation mechanism invisible to standard inspection.
Process & Chemical
2010Deepwater Horizon Blowout
Test results indicating well control problems were interpreted as equipment anomalies rather than well integrity signals.
Data Centers
2017British Airways IT Outage
Power supply restoration sequence caused damage to multiple systems, extending recovery well beyond the initial event.
Most organizations investigate failures after they occur. Fewer examine whether their systems are designed to prevent them in the first place.
Apply this thinking