Top 10 WORST Man Made Disasters!
1,026 views · Published 26 August 2018 · 11:43 · Indexed 21 September 2026
Channel: Zero2Hero · 2018 · Education
Top 10 WORST Man Made Disasters! From chemical plant explosions to the worst oil spills in history…stay tuned to number 1 to find out the worst man-made disasters to ever plague planet Earth! This top 10 brought to you by Zero2Hero!! Don't forget to subscribe here! https://goo.gl/NXuChu Click here to find out about Oil Pipelines: What Are The Pros and Cons? https://youtu.be/Lmsb85lL0Wk Number 10: Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. War is never a good thing, especially when it's in the deep jungle. How do you attack the enemy when you can't even see them? Well in the 1970's, during the Vietnam War, the US troops figured out a new way to handle the problem: just destroy the jungle with chemicals. Commonly known as Agent Orange, government scientists came up with a mix of chemicals that could be sprayed onto plant life and would basically disintegrate the forest in a matter of hours. Unfortunately, this stuff was sprayed not only on the jungles of the battlefield but also onto the rice crops around the countryside, killing off a major food supply for the Vietnamese people. Even worse than all of this is the long-term effects of the decision. Apparently, spraying Agent Orange over the crops killed the land's ability to ever grow back crops in the future. This purposeful move of ecocide in the 70's definitely qualifies as a man-made disaster. Number 9: Mass Mercury Poisoning in Japan. You would hope that companies know what kind of waste they are pouring into the water. You would also hope that if they knew it was bad for the environment that the people they would instantly stop pouring. You would also think that the government would step in and regulate these kinds of actions. In Japan, however, none of the above occurred and it led to mass mercury poisoning. The Chisso Corp ran a chemical factory in Kumamoto, Japan for decades. Like all factories, they had plenty of waste to get rid of, and like most companies, they threw it into the river. They didn't care much that some of the waste was pure mercury, known to poison anyone and anything that comes in regular contact with it. They also didn't care much about doing this for over 30 years. Soon enough, the marine life of the area absorbed the mercury and then the people, eating the sea life, were exposed to deadly amounts of mercury. Decades later, the government of Japan determined that over 2,200 people were affected by Minamata disease from the mercury exposure and over 1700 died from the disease. Number 8: The Chernobyl Nuclear Explosion. Nuclear power is insanely powerful, whether it's being used to power electricity, or being used to take out countries. Creating the power is also insanely delicate and must be done perfectly. Any minor problem can result in a huge explosion or radiation leak, which is what happened in Chernobyl in the 80's But before we talk more about Chernobyl…I’m sure you know what we’re going to ask. Please take a moment to hit that like button and subscribe to Zero2Hero! The Chernobyl power plant in the Ukraine performed a safety test in April of 1986. But the tests were not performed properly. In addition to this, the reactor itself was not built properly. Put this together, along with an overabundance of steam locked inside the reactor and boom! You end up with a world-famous nuclear meltdown that is forever used in the argument against nuclear power. After the fire was put out and the radiation leak had ended, official reports state that only 2 people died at the plant, however, another 29 died directly due to the blast, and another 15 died indirectly related to the meltdown. In addition, over 100 employees went to the hospital with acute radiation sickness. Beyond all of this, most of the land within miles of the Chernobyl incident are still uninhabitable to this day. At least their mistakes created cheap real estate, I suppose. Number 7: The North Pacific Garbage Patch. We all know that some garbage ends up in the ocean. After all, we all learned as kids to cut up soda rings and never asked why they end up in the ocean in the first place. As it turns out, there's a lot of garbage in the ocean. Like, tons! Like, multiple island-sized patches, the largest one being in the North Pacific. Located half way between Hawaii and mainland US, the North Pacific Garbage Patch has been forming for decades. Consisting of an estimated 1.8 trillion (with a T) pieces of plastic, the garbage patch is approximately 1.6 million square miles in size. That's twice the size of Texas and three times the size of France. As if this isn't bad enough, there are at least 4 other gigantic garbage patches out there, one in every major ocean on the planet. This may seem like a (literal) far away issue, but when marine life digs into the garbage instead of their regular food, and the garbage affects their living area, the butterfly effect kicks in and this can lead to all kinds of problems for mankind.
