We as the Humans, entitled for being most intelligent creature on the planet did everything to ruin its beauty and made it worse each time. With our own incompetence and stupidity surfaces and shows us we’re nothing more than a danger. Since it’s virtually impossible to estimate total damages or compare, no classification can be made. So, here are the Top 10 Biggest Man-Made disaster.
10 –Door To Hell
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The Darvaza gas crater, known locally as the “Door to Hell” or ”Gates of Hell”, is a natural gas field collapsed into an underground cavern located in Derweze, Turkmenistan. which to this day forth still continues to burn, after it was set on fire in 1971. During their work the ground under the drilling rig gave weight and collapsed. A giant crater formed and started to blow out methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, right into the atmosphere. Out of fear of further pollution, the workers did the next best thing — lit it on fire. The scientists had the expectancy the fire would burn for a few days and then die. However, four decades later, it still does, fed by the underground deposits.
9 –The Minamata Disease
Photo credit:NRDC
The Minamata disease was discovered in the mid twentieth century in Minamata Bay, Japan, hence the name. It’s a neurological degradation, caused by organic mercury poisoning. The residents near Minamata Bay and especially the fishermen and their families exhibited a bizarre neurological impairment. Turns out, the near by chemical factory, owned by the Chisso corporation, was dumping it’s contaminated waste water directly into the bay. The corporation officially certified 2,265 victims most of which already dead in March, 2001. Another 10 thousand have received financial recompense. However, the total death toll is probably much higher.
8 –Chernobyl
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The Chernobyl disaster, also referred to as the Chernobyl accident, was a catastrophic nuclear accident occurred on 25–26 April 1986 in the No. 4 nuclear reactor. Caused by poor management, cracked open one of the plant’s nuclear reactors and leaked large quantities of radio active particles into the atmosphere. The winds spread the radioactive cloud all over USSR and Europe. It was classified as level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. In the accident itself died 31 people, but each year hundreds of birth malformation and radiation-related illnesses add to the death toll.
7 – Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
Photo credit:Josh Quinonenz
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an industrial disaster that began on April 20, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, considered to be the largest marine oil spill in the history. It ultimately discharged 780,000 cubic metres of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, while claimed seven lives. The spill threatened 8,332 marine species, some of which, already endangered and under federal protection. From mutated fish to closed beaches from washed petrol ashore, more and more damage just keeps surfacing. The oil is now soaked up in the environment and food and water resources.
6 – London’s Great Smog
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The Great Smog of London, or Great Smog of 1952, was a severe air-pollution event that affected the British capital of London in early December 1952. The winter of ‘52 was a cold one for Londoners. At the time, people heated their homes with mainly coal powered heaters. Naturally, the consumption increased to battle the chills. It wouldn’t have been a problem if there wasn’t an anticyclone right on top of the city which collected the burned pollutants and smoke, and formed a thick layer of smog over the entire city.Later in the year, when medical reports were analysed, it was found that four thousand people have died prematurely and a hundred thousand more developed dreadful respiratory illnesses.
5 –Tennesse Coal Ash Spill
Photo credit:NRDC
The Kingston Fossil Fuel Power Plant like any other of it’s kind produced fly coal ash as a by product of the coal combustion. Due to poor management, the mixture was stored in dangerously high amounts on the slope of a hill. After a powerful rain storm, in 2008, the slurry gave weight and stormed down the hill in a massive landslide of mud and ash.An estimate of 675 million dollars of damage was caused to the residents and national land with another 975 million needed to clean up the slurry. Six months after, only three percent is removed.
4 – TITANIC
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The Titanic, which was known as the unsinkable ship, sank just four days into its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York, in 1912. It is believed that the crew ignored warnings of icebergs along their path and went on to hit the ice. The result: the death of 1,517 humans after the right side of the Titanic is scraped an iceberg and she sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
3 –DESTRUCTION OF ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY
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The great library of Alexandria was born in 283 BCE. For years, scholars and librarians filled it with thousands of scrolls. Unlike most private libraries, the library of Alexandria was open to whoever could prove he or she was a worthy scholar.But hundreds of years after its establishment, the world was shocked to learn that Julius Caesar burned it down in an attack.Stories about the demise of this library have been circulating for centuries, but what became evident is that the world had lost a gem.
2 –The Bhopal Gas Leak
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The Bhopal disaster, also referred to as the Bhopal gas tragedy, It is considered to be the world’s worst industrial disaster. The Union Carbide India Limited chemical plant was in extremely poor condition and had broken dozens of safety regulations years before the accident. on the night of December the third, a safety release system activated and emptied a storage tank in the air, in order to prevent a huge chemical explosion. The release spread highly toxic chemicals over Bhopal and the neighbouring areas. Official death count by the Indian government is 3,787, however, unofficial records state 8,000 deaths or more tied to the disaster.
1 –FOUR PESTS CAMPAIGN
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The Four Pests Campaign, was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward in China from 1958 to 1962.The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows.Sparrows were notorious for eating grains and needed to be exterminated. The citizens did everything they could to end the menace: tearing down sparrow nests, shooting them down from the sky. The result was a near-extinction of sparrows in China. Things got out of control to an extent where the Chinese government started importing sparrows. During the time, it is estimated that some 30 million people lost their lives due to starvation. The numbers vary with some claiming that the death toll may have reached 45 or 78 million.
