Doomed to Fail - Can you recommend an Engineering Disaster podcast?

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

From molasses tsunamis to space shuttle tragedies, here are some of history’s most infamous engineering disasters.Ep 20 - Part 2: Oh The Humanity!!! - The HindenburgA luxury airship explodes mid-air in front of a live radio broadcast. Hydrogen, hubris, and horrific design come together in one fiery crash.Ep 26 - Part 1: Under Pressure - The Byford Dolphin & The Titan SubmersibleWhat happens when pressurization systems fail under extreme ocean depths? People don’t just die—they implode.Ep 61: Engineering Disasters Part 1 - The 1981 Kansas City Hyatt Skywalk CollapseTwo walkways, a design shortcut, and one horrific ballroom disaster. A case study in load-bearing failure and engineering denial.Ep 65 - Engineering Disasters Part 2: Tragedy in BhopalA leak at a pesticide plant in India became one of the worst industrial disasters in history—with long-term effects still felt today.Ep 69 - Click in and Buckle up: Roller Coaster AccidentsWhen thrill rides go wrong, it’s never a fun ending. We ride through the history of bolts, brakes, and very bad decisionsEp 72 - Shopping for Disaster - The Sampoong Department Store CollapseA luxury mall built on shaky shortcuts. Spoiler: it literally collapses during a shopping day.Ep 93 - Disaster at Shift's End: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory FireLocked doors. No fire escapes. Young women burned alive while trying to flee. A disaster that sparked labor reform—at a horrific cost.Ep 96 - Doomed to Sink: The Olympic Class Ships of The White Star LineThe Titanic wasn’t the only one. The whole fleet was a floating disaster factory, with design flaws and bad luck baked in.Ep 126 - A Sticky Situation: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919Yes, a 15-foot wave of molasses tore through Boston’s North End. It sounds funny—until you realize how many people it drowned.Ep 132 - Swimming in the Sub-Basement: The Great Chicago Flood of 1992A forgotten utility tunnel, a slow leak, and a very flooded downtown. Oops.Ep 130 - Come One, Come All!: The Hammond Circus Train WreckTwo trains, one sleepy engineer, and a whole circus trapped in a fireball. This one’s as tragic as it is surreal.Ep 138 - Touching the Face of God: ChallengerA cold morning. A rushed schedule. And an o-ring failure that broke the world’s heart on live TV.Ep 156: We chased waterfalls - Niagara FallsHumans have tried to harness the power of the falls—and sometimes failed very dramatically.Ep 167: Blood on the Water - The USS IndianapolisA secret mission ends in disaster when the ship is torpedoed—and sharks move in. A haunting failure of communication and rescue.Ep 200: Disaster on the Graveyard Shift - ChernobylA test gone wrong leads to the worst nuclear disaster in history. A chilling lesson in human error and systemic denial.Ep 202: Ok Place, Totally Wrong Time - Not so Lucky Dragon #5A Japanese fishing boat sails into a U.S. nuclear test site—without knowing it. The fallout changes lives and policy.Ep 210: Do Whatever You Want!! - Action Park, New JerseyThe most dangerous theme park in America. Rides with no rules, employees with no training, and patrons with no idea what’s coming. Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

Hello and welcome to Doomed to Fail. My name is Taylor. I am one of your hosts, along with my friend Fars. We have over 200 episodes on disasters and failures and historical stories. And in an effort to frame the frameless, I'm putting them into groups, and there's still so many groups. It's a little bit of everything. But this week, let's focus on engineering disasters. And I'm going to go in order of our episodes. Some of these might be a surprise. You might think that doesn't feel like an engineering disaster, but it feels like the little tiny thing that went wrong, like the Swiss cheese model that we talk about all the time. So like a bunch of little tiny things go wrong and then all

of a sudden you have something terrible happened. So I'm actually not even going to talk about playing crash shows because we do a whole series on that as well. But here we go. You can find these in our library. So we'll start with episode 20 part two on the Hindenberg. Did you know that the Hindenberg flew over New York City and it had a swastika on its tailfin? Like it was from Germany and it was visiting the United States and before it crashed but was supposed to land in New Jersey, it flew over New York City and there's pictures of it, which I think is absolutely wild. episode 26 part one under pressure the biford dolphin and the titan submersible we recorded this like right after the titan imploded so we talk a little bit about that and also another time that there was an implosion due to pressure on the biford dolphin

episode 61 is an engineering disaster short little series that farce did this one is on the 1981 kansas city hiat skywalk collapse so like imagine you're in a hotel at a tea party dance so it's old people dancing with their loves. And these hanging walkways crush, just crush the dance floor. And a lot of people died. So that's one. And then engineering disasters part two was episode 65, which is a tragedy in Bhopal, India. There was a leak in a plant. And gas just covered a town. And the middle of the night just killed everyone, just like a silent, deadly disaster. Episode 69, Farras talks about roller coaster accidents, there's a whole bunch of them, like decapitations, getting thrown from the roller coaster, falling down a place you shouldn't be, all sorts of reasons to be very, very

careful, and sober when you were at an amusement park. Episode 72 is the Sam Pug Department Store collapse. So in South Korea, a huge luxury department store was built. It's like a beautiful, weird pink building, and it collapses in the middle of the day so there's these water tanks on the ceiling on the roof and they start just something happens it's too heavy and a lot of people die there as well these are these are disasters then episode 93 this was for women's history month into 2024 this is a triangle shirt waste factory fire so it's a fire in a building caused by most likely a cigarette on like these piles and piles of scraps of fabric and a lot of women were trapped on like the seventh or eighth floor of a building

in New York, and a lot of them burn to death or die jumping out. There's so many interesting things about this story, but one of them is that Francis Perkins was there. She was down the street and her and her friends ran over to see what was happening. Later, Francis Perkins will be the Secretary of Labor under FDR. She's the first woman to have a cabinet position like that, and she is directly responsible for things like union rights, weekends, eight-hour workday, Medicare, vacation days, social security, just so many things that Francis Perkins did, and the Triangle Shirtways Factory Fire really shaped her views on labor laws. So it's such an important story. Episode 96, doomed to sink the Olympic class

ships of the White Star Line. So it wasn't just a Titanic that was doomed. There were plenty of others and far as it goes into those. Then episode 126, the great Boston molasses, flood of 1919. So in Boston, on like the wharf and like the dock area, there is a huge tank of molasses. And if you don't know what molasses is, it's like syrup, but worse. It's stickier. It smells really, really strong. You use a tiny bit of it if you're making like a gram cracker. And it was used for both for distilling booze and for munitions. So it also can parts of it can explode. But it was in this holding tank before it was brought into the United states for processing and it exploded and it was like a huge wave of the most awful stickiness

to drown in that I can think of. So listen to that one. Then we have this great Chicago flood of 1992. It was episode 132. I actually hadn't heard of this one until I was in Chicago and I was walking over one of the rivers and my friend John mentioned it. But it's like, did you know? Not just Chicago. Plenty of cities have all these. hidden tunnels underneath. So in Chicago, there's tunnels, and they used to be like delivery tunnels. You could be like, I'm going to meet my package on this corner, and it would like pop up. And there were people whose jobs were to like drive these little tiny trains around. And then eventually, as we got trucks and above ground ways to do things, like they just

were left there. And they were installing a new bridge in one part of Chicago, pierced the tunnel underneath the river, didn't realize they did it. And the water just came up and up from basements that people didn't even know they had, which is wild, and there's so much scary stuff underground. And then another Chicago story, episode 130, actually happened in Indiana, but there was a circus train from the Hammond Circus, so the Hammond Circus train wreck. And two trains collided. There were people not paying attention. It was late at night, and a lot of people and animals died. The animals are not buried in a cemetery, but there is a cemetery in Chicago where my grandparents are buried, where there is a showman's rest where they buried the body

of a lot of the people who died in that wreck. And a lot of them are just anonymous. They're just like drifters who worked at the circus. But there's a big statue of an elephant if you ever want to go there. Then, episode 138 is about the Challenger disaster. This one is so interesting and tragic and sad. And I'm pretty sure I cried when we were recording it. Just these people have such love for space and love for science.

And just to die in such a tragic way is really preventable and sad. Episode 156 is on Niagara Falls, which is an engineering marvel, really. It's something that you can control. Did you know that during peak season, they turn it on more than usual? But in the making of it, a lot of people died. There's stuff about Tesla and this. It's really interesting. So listen to that one.

And then this one is a shipwreck and has to do with a bomb, but the USS Indianapolis, episode 167. So after they had dropped off their payload, which happened to be, the stuff to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, they were on their way back to one of the islands that the U.S. controlled, and they were hit by a torpedo, and then they sank, and then they were attacked by sharks. So there's just so many layers with this disaster. It'll fall into a bunch of other categories as well, but it's crazy. Then, episode 200, so our 200th episode was the disaster at Chernobyl. So if you lived in the 80s, you would remember the Chernobyl nuclear power

plant had an explosion and it is just mistake after mistake after mistake super interesting i think you'll love listening to it um two more episode 202 is not so lucky dragon number five this is a japanese shipping vessel that happened to be um in the wrong part of the ocean when people were testing well the u.s was testing the atomic bomb so it's engineering as in it's bombing but it's also showing you like the, I don't know, just like the breath of a disaster that can happen from any nuclear thing, which ties us to Chernobyl, ties us back to Indianapolis, back to anything World War II related. And then finally, one of our most recent episodes, episode 210 on Action Park, New Jersey. So this is engineering of waterslides and theme park rides that were not approved

by anyone, just like an idea that a man had and made them and lied about his insurance coverage and people die there as well. So lots of disasters, lots of interesting stories. If you have anything else that you think we should cover, I would love to hear it. You can email us, DoomedaFelpod at gmail.com. We're at doomed to fill a pod on all social media. The show notes have links to each of these episodes or you can just search for them in our archives, but I hope you find one that you like. And then also that you sit around. Thanks. You know,