What REALLY happened to the plane that didn't hit the Pentagon on 9/11

[Gravitycollapse]

335. Fukushima is another example of a cascade failure.

Most large scale power outages are the product of cascade failures.

Most industrial accidents that involve any level of complexity are the product of cascading. Building and bridge collapses are often the product of a single initial failure that causes the entire system to fail.

Along similar lines, there's a very prominent discussion revolving around what is called "normal accidents." Which is the tendency for complex systems to suffer total failure from unforeseen sources producing cascade effects precisely because complex systems have an immensely large number of possible combinations of minute failures that can result in systemic failure.

Some argue that, with normal accidents, we can exceed the limit of system reliability because of limitations in human intelligence. We produce systems that are too complex for us to fully understand. Thus, we cannot know some modes of systemic failure until we observe them. Normal accidents give the perception of an easily foreseen series of failures because they seem obvious in hindsight.