The Rise of Invisible Risk: From Nylon to Supply Chain Materials (Part 2 1918-2020s)

Part II of the DuPont episodes begins after the armistice following World War I. The episode begins in November 1918, when the explosions cease, contracts disappear, and a munitions-based firm determines what to become afterwards. This episode follows DuPont's postwar shift from an explosives firm to a materials empire, beginning with nylon. Nylon was that material in American department shops. We start there, but the episode concludes with the lengthy and unresolved narrative of PFAS. Along the way, we look at how industrial risk shifted from a loud, visible threat to something far more difficult to perceive, assess, and regulate. Rather than portraying DuPont as an antagonist or an unlikely hero, the current episode investigates how companies react to uncertainty, how innovation becomes framework, and the ways that harm might come  from duration, magnitude, and latency. Drawing on organizational sensemaking, regulatory precedent, and social context, this tells a story about what happens when materials perform thoroughly enough — and remain effective long enough — that their consequences exceed the decisions that formed them.