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The Conquest of Hell Gate [pdf]

(www.nan.usace.army.mil)
50 points sklargh | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.641s | source
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ddulaney ◴[] No.44022006[source]
It’s fascinating to me what a different view of risk we had in the past.

The no damage being caused on the surface was a “new fact”. That would never fly today, for better or for worse.

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Aloha ◴[] No.44022307[source]
I think one of the problems of modern society is the level of risk people deem acceptable - its now near zero, instead of "reasonable risks".

Aside from that, culturally the value we impart on a single human life has also changed too - death used to be much more common, infant death in particular - its not uncommon to go to an old cemetery and see a single family having buried three or more children, with another 2-3 having survived to adulthood. This was not something limited to the lower classes either, Calvin Coolidge had a son who died of sepsis from a blister while he was president.

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1. resource_waste ◴[] No.44022546[source]
>I think one of the problems of modern society is the level of risk people deem acceptable - its now near zero, instead of "reasonable risks".

I've watched plenty of youtube videos that say something like 'But management needed dem profits so they took the risk'

So... let us not pretend we don't cut corners and take risk. There are plenty of modern deaths and environmental destruction because people take risk.

What I think should be more acceptable, is that people take personal risks. Nothing wrong with accepting risk being the first person in an unregulated prototype space ship or taking unverified medicine.

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2. Aloha ◴[] No.44022811[source]
The regulatory and legal strangleholds we have put on modern society allows large organizations to roll the dice with abstract and diffuse risks - often without owning the liability from those choices, but often preclude individuals from taking their own personal risk assessments and deciding to take part or not - because the liability rolls someplace else (aka, you can always sue).
3. ls612 ◴[] No.44023893[source]
I watch those USCSB videos too and the takeaway I have is that even with these sorts of fuckups there are a single digit or low double digit number of people killed in industrial accidents each year in a country of 350 million. That suggests that we are actually pretty good at chemical safety already.
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4. Aloha ◴[] No.44024341[source]
I love those USCSB videos!

The biggest thing we have done is managed to protect the general public, which IMO is what should be done.