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Comment by mcpackieh | Hacker News Reader

"A careless slip" really undersells all of the deliberate bad decisions that set the stage for a single slip to have such devastating consequences. Imagine I have decided to balance a bucket of burning gasoline on my head. One slip is disastrous, but focusing on the slip seems myopic.

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Yeah. The slip wasn’t the careless part, the protocol was. After those criticality accidents (there were 2 with the same core!) they finally decided to adopt reasonable precautions and switch to remote-operated testing of the cores.

But it really does sell the grand tragedy that it is. Thoughtful and comprehensive analysis does not sell well.

I think it would be a more interesting and useful article if it focused more on the normalization of needless risk taking, particularly Slotin's history with reckless bravado. Giving that sort of background would teach a lesson people can apply to their own lives (being young and brave doesn't make you invincible), and also give the article an excuse to talk about other sensational events like the time Slotin decided to go swimming with a nuclear reactor.

That begs the question: What's more tragic, a preventable or an unpreventable accident?

I think a preventable one. Consider the Air France 447 accident. It came to be due to various conditions. But I remember a lot of headlines about "if only the pilots had not done anything, the plane would have cleared the weather and keep on flying". I think putting the whole thing into a "single slip" enhances the drama.

Yet slips are bound to happen, while systematic security measures could have prevented the accident even in the presence of slips. Though perhaps there is a difference between drama and tragedy. Or between superficial and thoughtful.

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