When Two Ships Changed Everything - December 6, 1917

On December 6, 1917, two ships collided in Halifax Harbour, triggering the largest man-made explosion before the atomic bomb. Nearly 2,000 people died because warning systems failed and emergency protocols didn't exist. Richard Backus investigates the cascade of small failures that led to catastrophe, from poor communication between ships to the lack of evacuation plans, and examines why these same patterns keep repeating in industrial disasters today. From chemical plants near residential areas to trains carrying hazardous materials through towns, we keep making the same dangerous calculations about acceptable risk. This isn't just about a 1917 maritime disaster; it's about how complex systems fail, why communication can mean the difference between life and death, and whether we're willing to design systems that fail safely rather than catastrophically.