Technogenic accidents: concept, classification, examples. Causes of man-made accidents and disasters. Personal safety in anthropogenic accidents

At whatever stage of development human society is, it is always and inextricably linked with the environment. At the beginning of the 21st century, our civilization is increasingly aware of the changes on the planet, initiated by herself. The more dangerous the interference of mankind into nature, the more unpredictable and terrible are its answers. However, the environment is not always in some way to blame: technogenic accidents in 70% of cases arise through the fault of the person himself.

Every year the number of such events only grows, catastrophes of a similar nature happen, sadly, almost every day. Scientists testify that over the past 20 years their frequency has increased exactly twice. Unfortunately, behind all these figures lies a sad reality: technogenic accidents are not only the grandiose costs of eliminating their consequences, but also crippled lives and people who died or were left crippled.

Basic information

By the way, what exactly is meant by this term? Everything is simple: fires, air crashes, car accidents, other events that occurred through the fault of the person. The more our civilization is based on technical means of management, the more often technogenic accidents occur. This, alas, is an axiom.

Formation stages

Every event in the world does not happen "anyhow" and not immediately. Even a volcanic eruption is preceded by a certain phase of accumulation of molten magma. So in this case too: catastrophes of anthropogenic nature begin with an increase in the number of negative changes either in the industry or at a particular facility. Any catastrophe (even anthropogenic) occurs under the influence of decentralizing, destructive factors on the existing system. Technologists distinguish five phases of emergency development:

• Primary accumulation of deviations.
• Initiation of the process (terrorist attack, technical malfunction, negligence).
• Directly accident.
• Effects of consequences, which can be very long.
• Measures to eliminate the accident.

Since we are considering anthropogenic accidents, we will analyze their main causes and predisposing factors:

• Over-saturation and excessive complexity of the production process.
• Initially made mistakes in design and manufacturing.
• Wear of equipment, obsolete means of production.
• Errors or willful harm from the service personnel, acts of terrorism.
• Misunderstanding of the joint actions of various specialists.

These are the main causes of man-made accidents. It must be said that even 100-150 years ago there were very few of their varieties: a shipwreck, an accident at a factory, etc. By today, the variety of production and technical means is such that a separate classification of man-made accidents was required. We will disassemble it.

Transport accidents

This is the name of some extreme event involving vehicles, which resulted from technical malfunctions or external influences, which caused damage to property, caused significant damage, people were killed or injured. In order to better understand the scale of this kind of events, we give a few examples:

• 1977, the airport of Los Rodeos (Canary Islands). A terrible accident, when two "Boeing-747" collided immediately. As a result of the catastrophe, 583 people were killed. For today it is the largest and terrible accident in the history of all civil aviation.
• 1985, the Japanese "Boeing-747" flight JAL 123 crashed into the mountain due to a navigation system error. The catastrophe claimed the lives of 520 people. Up to this day, it is considered the largest accident of a civilian aircraft.
• September 2001, the USA. The notorious clash of aircraft with the towers of the World Trade Center. The exact number of deaths is still unknown.

Thus, the death of people is the most terrible thing that man-caused accidents bring. Examples of similar disasters exist in the USSR:

• November 16, 1967 with the departure from Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk), Il-18 crashed. All 130 people who were at that time on board were killed.
• May 18, 1972 at the Kharkov airport crashed An-10, lounging in pieces when landing. A total of 122 people died. Later it turned out that the cause of such an absurd catastrophe turned out to be deep constructive shortcomings of the machine itself. More aircraft of this type were not operated.

And now let's talk about what man-made accidents and catastrophes can threaten everyone: after all, the chance to die in a plane crash is extremely small, which you can not say, for example, about fires.

Fires and explosions

This is one of the most common catastrophes of natural and technogenic origin in the world, from the earliest times to the present day. They inflict huge material damage, enormous damage to nature, many people die. Survivors experience psychological stress, which they often can not cope with independently, since the help of a qualified psychologist is required.

When in the recent past there were such anthropogenic accidents? Examples from the recent past:

• June 3, 1989 - a terrible event in the history of our country: not far from the town of Asha the rolling stock of two passenger trains caught fire. Presumably, this happened because of a gas leak on the main gas pipeline. A total of 575 people died, among them 181 children. The exact causes of what has happened so far are not clear.
• 1999, the Mont Blanc tunnel. The passenger car caught fire. The fire was so far apart that it was possible to extinguish it only after two days. 39 people died. The companies managing the tunnel's service were also guilty, as well as the deceased driver of the truck.

What other technogenic accidents are there? Examples, unfortunately, are numerous.

Accidents with the release (or threat) of potent poisons

In this case, a large number of substances are thrown out into the external environment, which in their effect on living organisms are equivalent to strong poisons. Many of these compounds not only have a high degree of toxicity, but also very volatile, quickly enter the atmosphere when the production cycle is disturbed. Such technogenic accidents and catastrophes are really terrible, as in their course many people die, even more - they remain disabled, they have children with horrendous genetic abnormalities and deformities.

One of the worst examples of such accidents is the case, once occurred in the branch of the American company "Union Carbide." Since then, the Indian city of Bhopal is rightly considered a synonym for hell on earth. A catastrophe occurred in 1984: as a result of the incredibly negligent negligence of the service personnel, thousands of tons of methylisocyanate, the strongest poison, entered the atmosphere. It all happened in the dead of night. In the morning whole corpses and streets were filled with corpses: the poison literally burned the lungs, and people, frantic with terrible pain, tried to run out into the air.

The US administration still says that at that time 2,500 people died, but only the population density in the city was then that, most likely, not less than 20 thousand died. Another 70 thousand people were disabled. In this area and to this day children are born with terrible deformities. What technogenic accidents can compete with leaks of potent poisons?

Disasters with release of radioactive substances

One of the most dangerous varieties of catastrophes of technogenic origin. Radiation not only kills living organisms, but also provokes an avalanche-like increase in cell damage and mutations: animals and people exposed to radiation are almost certainly infertile, they develop numerous cancerous tumors, and their offspring, even if it can be born, very often Is affected by genetic defects. The first technogenic accidents and catastrophes of this kind began to occur at a time when mass exploitation of nuclear power plants and reactors producing weapons-grade uranium and plutonium was started.

Not long ago, everyone was following the events in the Japanese city of Fukushima: this station, judging by what is happening there now, will poison the Pacific with radioactive water for many hundreds of years. Eliminate the consequences of the Japanese still can not, and it is unlikely they will succeed, since molten nuclear fuel has gone far into the coastal soil. If we describe the "radioactive" man-made accidents in Russia and the former USSR, then immediately come to mind two cases: Chernobyl and the Mayak Combine in the Chelyabinsk region. And if almost everyone knows about the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the accident at the "Mayak" is known to a few. It happened in 1957.

Ten years earlier, in 1947, it became finally clear that the country urgently needed a huge amount of weapons-grade uranium-235. To address this issue, a large enterprise for the production of nuclear weapons components was built in the closed city of Ozersk. In the process, a huge amount of radioactive waste was formed. They merged into special "banks" located in cavities cut in rock. They were cooled using a steel coil. By the end of 1956, one of the tubes had become leaky, the capacity to cool was stopped. A year later, the volume of active waste reached a critical mass and it all exploded ...

Another example

But not always the concept of anthropogenic accident means explosions, fires and / or terrorist attacks. An ideal example is the American medical (!) Drug Therac-25, which went into mass production in 1982. Initially, it was the triumph of American doctors: the most complicated means for radiotherapy was created exclusively through computer calculations! But only later it became clear that the "medicine" is exclusively radioactive, there is still no exact data on the number of its victims. Considering that he was removed from production only a year later, the number of victims is probably impressive ...

In both of the above cases, the causes of man-made accidents are banal - miscalculations in the initial design. At the time of the creation of the "Lighthouse", people practically did not know that ordinary materials degraded at an incredible speed in conditions of high radiation background, and Americans were confident in the artificial intelligence and greed of the heads of pharmacological companies.

Emission of biologically hazardous substances

This term is most often understood as the entry into the external environment of biological weapons: combat strains of plague, cholera, smallpox, etc. It is clear that authorities prefer not to spread such incidents around the world. Have there been any technogenic accidents in Russia? Hard to tell. But in the USSR this was exactly. It happened in April 1979 in Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg). Then at once several dozen people became ill with anthrax, and the strain of the pathogen was very unusual and did not correspond to the natural one.

There are two versions of the incident: an accidental diversion from a secret research institute and a diversionary act. Contrary to the opinion of "spy mania" among the Soviet leadership, the second version has the right to life: experts have repeatedly noted that outbreaks covered the place of the alleged "outbreak" unevenly. This suggests that there were several sources of leakage. Moreover, in the "epicenter" itself, near the ill-fated research institute, the number of cases was meager. The main part of the victims lived much further. And further. The Voice of America radio station told about the incident on the morning of April 5. At this time, only a couple of cases were recorded, and they were under the diagnosis of "pneumonia".

Sudden collapse of buildings

As a rule, the causes of man-made accidents and disasters of this type are gross violations at the design and erection stage . The initiating factor is the activity of heavy equipment, unfavorable meteorological conditions, etc. Pollution of the environment is minimal, but often an accident is accompanied by the death of a large number of people.

An ideal example is Transvaal Park. This is an entertainment complex in Moscow, whose roof collapse occurred on February 14, 2004. In the building at that moment there were at least 400 people, and at least 1/3 of them were children who came with their parents to the children's pool. A total of 28 people died, eight children. The total number of wounded - 51 people, at least 20 children. Initially, the version of the terrorist act was considered, but everything turned out to be much worse: the designer saved as much as possible on construction, as a result of which the supporting structures were more decorative than real roof support. Under a relatively small load of snow, it collapsed on the heads of people on vacation.

The collapse of energy systems

These incidents can be divided into two categories:

• Accidents at power plants, accompanied by a long-term interruption in power supply.
• Accidents on power supply networks, as a result of which consumers are again deprived of electricity or other energy resources.

For example, on May 25, 2005 in Moscow such collapse occurred, as a result of which without electricity there were not only several large metropolitan areas, but also many near Moscow regions, as well as some localities near Kaluga and Ryazan. Several thousand people were blocked for some time on metro trains, many doctors conducted responsible operations literally in the light of lanterns.

What to do if you are in the epicenter of anthropogenic disaster

And now we will consider personal safety in anthropogenic accidents. More precisely, measures to preserve it. What if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time? First of all, no matter how banal it may sound, try not to panic, because in such a state people die first of all. Having mastered the emotions, you should try or get out into a more or less safe place, or make your way to the emergency exit (in case of fire, for example). Avoid inhalation of air saturated with dust particles, gases or smoke. For this purpose it is necessary to use cotton-gauze dressings or simply to tear unnecessary clothes, moisten them with water and breathe through these pieces of tissue. It is very important that the impromptu dressing is made of natural materials!

Do not try to portray yourself as a hero, leaving the epicenter of disaster yourself: you should cooperate with other victims and wait for the approach of rescue teams. In the event that accidents occurred during the cold season, you must try to save energy by collecting all available food and warm clothes. If you are in an open area, draw the attention of rescuers, lighting signal bonfires or using special rocket launchers (if any).