In his 1998 article about the crash of ValuJet Flight 592 into the Florida Everglades, William Langwiesche explains the concept of the “normal accident.” When 105 people die, the public wants answers — a story to make sense of what happened and determine who is to blame. The piece’s ultimate point is that allowances must be made, particularly in a world with as many working parts as ours, for disasters that are not only unforeseen but unavoidable. Laying out the complicated sequence of events that led to an oxygen tank explosion in the plane’s cargo hold, Langwiesche arrives at the conclusion that it may be more dangerous to take extreme measures to avoid what amounts to a series of benign human oversights combined with circumstance than to accept that the universe will occasionally and very casually line up against you. It’s a beautifully wrought and supremely rational argument whose logic might be a source of comfort if it weren’t so horrifying.
Excerpt from:
REVIEW: Final Destination 5 Combines Wit and Morbid Excess, and Somehow It Works
