art of life the latter of this list is what you would likely call the survival instinct that nagging feeling about a situation the disgust of rotting food or even the fear of some animals one such tool we subconsciously use to protect ourselves is our perception of depth is it there from birth or developed over time from experience well we all know not to jump off a cliff even though we haven't experienced it ourselves we know it's not a great move for our life expectancy but how to answer the question of when does the depth perception instinct come into being well a scientific team would try and find out by trying to get babies to crawl off of a simulated cliff edge my name is John and welcome to the dark side of science our story begins our story like every one has a beginning even the ones that involve trying to coax babies to crawl off a simulated cliff today our story begins in a place called the behavior farm in the early 1950s and one of its assistants the LPHD graduate Eleanor Jack Gibson the farm was under the control of psychologist Howard Scott Liddell Liddell had set up the laboratory modelled on famous behaviourist Ivan Pavlov's Leningrad labs by the 1950s the farm was mainly creating experimental neuroses in the animals on the farm the subjects read on site were goats which allowed access to infants for various experiments Gibson had a burning desire to undertake her own experiments and made use of her time at the farm to study maternal infant interactions one instant on the farm would create the spark for Gibson's future experimental career part of her experiments involved immediately cleaning one of the pair of twin kid goats immediately after birth with a detergent before the mother had a chance to lick it this was to see if the maternal bond would be interrupted whilst cleaning the kid its twin appeared needing somewhere to place the clean infant she put it on the top of a camera stand interestingly it stayed neatly keeping its little feet on the stand this was interesting it was almost like the animal instinctively knew jumping off was a bad idea Gibson would ultimately quit at the behaviour farm in 1952 when upon returning from a weekend off finding her goat test subjects having been given away as Easter gifts well it is at this point that Gibson would meet her research partner Richard Walk Walk had arrived at Cornell University as a young professor the relationship was an odd one for the era with Walk outranking Gibson by being a professor but the female research assistant was considerably more experienced in science and was even 10 years older in age however Walk being a professor gave him use of lab space something Gibson hadn't been able to secure it would seem the pair would be a good match they would kick off this working relationship with a study involving rats in environmental differences based experiments where they would be reared in enhanced or impoverished situations where the results could be compared to normally raised control subjects kind of similar to Harry Harlow's experiments although a hell of a lot less evil one of their rat studies involved breeding a cohort of subjects in darkness to be compared with a control group that had been raised in normal light conditions to make use of the time consuming process Walk and Gibson looked to find another use for their light-deprived victims this would involve a test involving depth perception to test if they had depth perception Walk Gibson and a research assistant, Thomas Tye, built a simulated cliff this was a pane of glass held up by clamps and rods to simulate the depth different colour wallpaper backers were used with a shallow and deep side separated by a centreboard three inches high the experiment was the visual cliff alpha version so to speak well much to their surprise the dark reared rats actually acted just like their control counterparts preferring to go into the shallow side of the apparatus intriguing the results would push Walk and Gibson to develop the experiment further into a more permanent setup they looked to make the perceived distance of the drop adjustable and importantly stronger and robust for a wider range of animals the duo looked to test on other species of animals including goats, pigs, chickens, dogs, kittens and monkeys all of which avoided the deep side when attempted to be placed on the glass at the deep end most animals would try and escape or just refuse to put their feet down on the glass it looked apparent that depth perception was innate well not quite when dark reared kittens were placed on the apparatus they just wandered around not giving two sods about the deep or shallow side but the big question was what would a real human do well it was the late 1950s of course it was time to find some poo and sick machines to run the experiment onto the experiment prior to the visual cliff there was not much in the way of depth perception studies in children this was mainly due to the risks involved with simulating heights well at least before Walk and Gibson's method so the version of the cliff for the baby study was a sheet of plexiglass that covers a cloth with a checkerboard pattern on one side the cloth is placed immediately beneath the plexiglass and thus is the shallow end and the other side is about 4 feet or 1.2 meters lower creating the drop obviously there is no risk to the child there is an illusion of depth which is accentuated by the cloth pattern the babies will be placed on the central portion of the apparatus and be encouraged to either the shallow end or cross the void to the deep end by the baby's mother the key goal was to find if a baby has to develop depth perception or it is born with it in Walk and Gibson's 1960 paper they note in their introduction the question of nature versus nurture common sense might suggest that the child learns to recognise falling off places by experience that is by falling and hurting himself but is experience really the teacher or is the ability to perceive and avoid the brink part of the child's original endowment the experiment started off with a pilot beta test this involved an 18 month old boy his name is unknown to history but he crawled to his mother's core on the shallow side after reaching it he stood up and shuffled around when encouraged to cross the deep side he refused and when placed on the deep end he showed great stress and anxiety desperately grabbing at the wooden sides of the apparatus so Walk and Gibson recruited 36 infants ranging from the ages of 6 to 14 months initially they were placed on the centre board and observed for a number of minutes during this time the mother stood behind a screen the first two children didn't try to explore their surroundings and because of this lack of results but a third subject this method was abandoned but a remainder of the subjects the mother would call their child towards both the cliff and shallow sides successively interestingly when called to the deep side most of the infants refused and when seeing their mothers on the other side of the chasm showed distress in not being able to reach them some even patted the glass over the deep end and even though feeling a solid surface would refuse to cross some even moved away to the shallow side others still just peered into the deep side out of the 36 subjects only three had attempted to go onto the deep side 27 had moved but only onto the shallow side with the remainder of the test subjects refusing to move at all or just not following their mother's call and ignoring them this is quite common in infants as they love to ignore their parents the mother of the children who had not attempted to venture onto the deep side largely seemed disappointed as they had felt that they had failed the experiment but the children had shown that they were more dependent on their eyesight than the call of their mother the experiment showed at least in most of the test subjects that depth perception is pretty much there from when we begin to crawl that was the end of the original study which will be published in 1960 but although arguably answering the question of depth perception and infants it raised another about maternal trust between child and mother the three that did venture onto the deep side creates a new dilemma were they overriding their fear of the fall with their faith in their mother well, this would open the door to a whole range of other comparative psychological studies making the visual cliff a classic form of experiment one such study was inter-maternal signaling in 1985 by James F. Sauss et al in which the mother was placed across from the chasm and encouraged the infants using various different emotional states such as happiness, anger and sadness happiness unsurprisingly yielded the best results another side-quest experiment using the visual cliff on infants was with those who were pre-locomotive, aka pre-crawling to measure their distress levels when placed on the shallow or deep side and spoiler alert, in a 1970 experiment by Joseph J. Campos et al babies became rather distressed in the deep side hinting at depth perception and thus the fear of heights being innate that is from birth the experiment cemented Walken Gibson into the annals of experimental psychology but now it's time to see what you think was the study ethical children weren't harmed although possibly a bit distressed the question has to be raised at least for a second about the informed consent something the children couldn't give although nowhere near as bad it does have some feeling of the baby Albert study or the Bobo-Dull study this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed those videos are produced by me John in the currently wet and windy corner of southern London UK I would like to thank my Patreons and YouTube members for your financial support and also for the rest of you who tune in every week to watch my videos I have an Instagram which the link will be in the description as well as Twitter where you can check out random pictures and odds and sods if you're enjoying this outro song then please feel free to go over to my second channel made by John where you can listen to it and watch the video in full and all that's left to say is Mr Music play us that please and thank you for watching this is an important message it is the 2nd of December 1959 and a photographer is preparing their camera today they aren't documenting a wedding or a baptism but a disaster the city of Réjuice has been battered by a wave of floodwater the culprit the dam that towered above it the name Mal-Persay my name is John and welcome to plainly difficult background our story starts and will ultimately end in the French Riviera and the need for a dam just north of the city of Réjuice in the early 1950s although a new project the need for a dam in the region had been frequently brought up over several decades before a number of previous projects had failed to get off the ground as early as 1865 you see the area had an issue with the Rayran river where it is mostly dry in the summer but conversely bursting at the banks in the autumn and winter this is where a dam would be beneficial as it could attempt to regulate the flow of water and even out the Jekyll and Hyde like behaviour of the river a dam would have a number of other benefits providing water for agriculture, domestic use as well as creating a lake for the use in the tourism sector before any concrete could be poured for the dam geological surveys had to be undertaken with each preceding project surveys had been completed but these were not particularly useful as each proposed dam was a completely different design from the other well in preparation for the 1950s project surveys of the valley at the potential building site took place in 1946 where a fault line was discovered by the science department in Marseille who were undertaking the initial site investigations they advised that further investigation was required by excavating sections of the river banks to check their internal composition and identify any unweathered rock they also suggested that other sites should probably also be considered another survey took place in November 1949 but a company in charge of the project decided to move the foundation site 200 metres downstream without any additional geological survey and a new placement the dam was going to be an arch dam these had a number of advantages most notably cost as it uses a thin dam curved structure which spreads the weight of the reservoir into presumably solid banks in comparison the 1800s design was going to be a gravity type which is very large and expensive so the new Marseille dam was penned by renowned French civil engineer André Coyne and the project will be funded and owned by department Va the dam was going to be 222 metres wide and was a doubly curved equal angle arch type with a variable radius it was also to be made out of concrete with a masonry base it was 6.78 metres wide at the base tapering up to a 1.5 metres thick at the top and 66 metres tall with an aimed reservoir capacity of 50 million cubic metres of water on the right bank looking upstream a 10 metre high concrete abutment was also planned due to the topography of the valley level control was rather simple at Marseille with a simple spillway at the centre of the dam which would allow water to well spill over the top there was also a draw off made from a metal pipe of 1.5 metres in diameter cutting across the foot of the arch and shut by valves if the level exceeded 99.5 metres then a fixed wheel gate would automatically open allowing water to flow down the draw off this system was also able to be manually controlled construction began in April 1952 and after two years was complete in October 1954 upon completion it was said to be the thinnest dam at its height in the world but although the structure was complete the filling of the lake behind the dam would be a long, long task taking several more years filling the reservoir at an even pace is vital overstressed too quickly and structural failure is guaranteed but filling too slowly can cause issues well but we will come back to that later on in the video this was the reason why Malpasse although built in 1954 wouldn't even be close to full capacity until 1959 as the water level increased cracks appeared and were discovered on the right hand side of the dam but were largely ignored by mid-November 1959 the reservoir was roughly 7 metres below the crest and the cracks had turned into clear streams of water running down the right hand side of the dam somehow reservoir water was escaping now if things were looking a little bit ropey imagine what a torrential downpour would add to the mix well, imagine no more the disaster so Malpasse dam wasn't looking too great towards the end of November 1959 the dam's right side was still leaking and now a downpour of rain had arrived and wasn't helping one of the dam's guardians, Andre Ferro requested permission to open the gate for the draw-off to reduce the reservoir level on the 2nd of December sensible idea however this would have encroached upon construction of the Marseille-Nise motorway about 1km downstream from the dam the reservoir would be allowed to fill up remember how it had taken years to fill well, the water depth would increase by the rain by 4 metres in just 24 hours Ferro was finally given the okay to open the gate at 6pm but by then it was probably too little too late over 3 hours of the gate being open only a few centimetres of depth was removed the dam was now groaning under the weight of the water the dam breached at 13 minutes past 9 in the evening releasing a torrent of water 40 metres high at a speed of 70km it destroyed everything in its wake including two small villages the motorway finally reaching 20 minutes later flooding the western half of the town by the time it hit the town the wall of water was still 3 metres tall and littered with concrete debris eventually the torrent reached the Mediterranean Sea complete destruction had hit the region all road and rail connections were severed hindering residents from escaping and rescue workers from reaching the disaster site 155 buildings were destroyed with a further 796 damaged cars were washed away and shops were decimated an estimated 423 people lost their lives in the tragedy with many more injured hundreds were made homeless with 79 orphaned sadly dam failures cause incomprehensible tragedy to an area but as the community began to clean up and try to heal the wounds the cause had to be found the aftermath well it would become quite clear that the interrupted and incomplete surveys of the dam site would come back to bite the project in the behind when looking at the dam face upstream you can see the likely start point of the failure that right abutment the one that was leaking it was discovered after a thorough geological survey that there in fact was a fault line downstream from the dam this stopped infiltration water from flowing away and instead collected below the foundations of the dam as the weight and pressure built up from the filling of the reservoir it unseated the dam's foundations this formed cracks which were then filled by the impounded water in the reservoir thus weakening the structure which led to the base being stripped from the valley and when the right hand side failed the rest would only have to follow pretty disastrous but the issues with the dam were not just geological but human although the dam was a good design but placed incorrectly people were the cause ultimately for the failure you see the regulators saw the dam differently to others because it was mainly due to be used for agriculture it attracted less scrutiny than that of a hydroelectric dam and thus fewer inspections were undertaken little was done to check out the design due to the designer being so successful in his career with over 70 structures under his belt pretty much all of which were problem free the long time it took to fill the reservoir was also an issue as in 1959 the dam was still on its first filling which really when testing out such a structure it should be filled and emptied a number of times building up to its final capacity instead they just decided to reach full capacity in the middle of a downpour they should have opened the gateway earlier to reduce the level in the reservoir building up of water behind the dam gradually by emptying and filling successive times gives time to find any issues and fix them as they arrive interestingly over a number of court cases the design of the dam was cleared more putting blame on the choice of location Andre Coyne, the dam's designer died a few months after the disaster emitting full responsibility but as we've seen the real cause was not just down to one man but a whole selection of issues the dam was never replaced but left as a reminder of the all too common issues of corner and cost cutting so I'm going to rate this disaster as people will hear about this and a six on my legacy scale do you agree? this is a plain default production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed plain default videos are produced by me John in a currently very windy and wet corner of southern London UK I have Twitter and Instagram so feel free to check them out if you want to see all the random photographs I post up if you're enjoying this outro song please feel free to go over to my second channel by John where you can watch the rest of the video and listen to the song in full I'd like to thank my Patreons and YouTube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you who tune in every week to see your dose of disaster and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music Man place out please it is two o'clock in the morning on the second of December 2013 and a truck has just driven into a petrol station in Tepoyaco in the municipality of Tiseyuca in Hidalgo state, Mexico the driver and his assistant are being watched quickly they are bundled out of the cab and the truck and its cargo are stolen the driver reports the theft to his employer who then reports it to the police this incident would trigger a country wide search the urgency in finding the truck is something out of the ordinary for just a regular truck jacking well as the two thieves make off with the truck into the night they are unaware of how much danger they are actually in and spoiler alert it's not from the police background our story starts at the medical institute Institute Mexicano del Segrio Social located in Tijuana Baja California state where the oncology department is making a change for over 50 years like all over the world radioactive sources have been used for the treatment of cancer and the cancer centre in Tijuana is no different they have been using common candidate for most lost radioactive source in history also known as cobalt 60 but unsurprisingly using this radioisotope adds a little bit of danger to the cancer treatment mix well not really if properly stored and maintained but we've seen in reality this isn't always the case they also have another downside which is decay you see a radioisotope loses its potency over time which means it needs to be replaced and this has a cost this problem was kind of solved with the change over to linear accelerators they produce a more reliable flexible and accurate beam of radiation without a need for cobalt 60 brilliant but what to do with all those older potentially deadly machines space confines and security concerns usually mean that they can't just be left somewhere on site for the many years to decay to a stable state instead they need to be properly disposed of this would be the fate of one such tether therapy machine the head which was where the cobalt 60 lived was packed up and placed on a flatbed truck it is at roughly a quarter of its radioactivity from 2002 when it was originally measured at 458 terebecuels it is in 2013 low at roughly 100 but it is by no means safe it is classed as a category one source being described as this source if not safely managed or securely protected would be likely to cause permanent injury to a person who handled it or who was otherwise in contact with it for more than a few minutes it would probably be fatal to be close to this amount of unshielded radioactive material for a period in the range of a few minutes to an hour now the trucks journey was going to be a long one roughly 31 hours if driven non stop the destination is the radioactive waste storage centre located near the town of Santa Maria, Mexico Mexico State the heist in the early hours of the 2nd of December 2013 the two men in the truck pulled into the petrol station in Tepoyaco to get much needed rest two carjackers saw this as an opportunity to make some money they attacked the driver and his assistant to call the truck and its cargo calling this a heist gives the men a bit too much credit the truck was stolen to be cut up for parts and whatever the cargo was would be a little extra payday bonus on the same day as the theft the two carjackers sold the truck and its cargo to a local scrap merchant no questions were asked and after the crossing of some palms the big metal tele-therapy shielding was being evaluated for its scrap metal worth 5 workers at the time are on site and they begin dismantling the tele-therapy head now this might sound a bit deja vu well its because scrap dealers acquiring and cutting up radioactive material shielding is an all too common event and definitely too common for my liking soon enough these 5 workers began to exhibit the telltale signs of radiation sickness for whatever reason one of the men took parts of the source head as well as the cobalt and dumped them in a nearby field on the 3rd of December a local resident saw this and went to investigate he found a long cylindrical metal piece it was warm to the touch and very heavy the resident lifted it onto his shoulder and moved it approximately 15 meters from the dump site and hid it meanwhile official search efforts were well underway the search the driver and his assistant reported the theft around 8am on the 2nd of December this set off a chain reaction excuse the pun with the federal police and the committee on international disarmament terrorism and security who were also informed the next day source search activities began with 4 teams equipped with radiation monitoring equipment they were dispatched to search an area of roughly 5 kilometers around from where the truck was stolen on the 5th the search radius was expanded to 10 kilometers and sightings of the stolen truck were reported in Huay Pogstallar municipality while searching the area federal police officers were approached by a local resident who claimed to have a mysterious piece of metal in his backyard this turned out to be the empty tele-therapy head shielding the police detected slightly elevated radiation levels around the resident's house but frustratingly no source just under a kilometer to the east radiation monitoring equipment detected proper elevated levels in an uninhabited field the national nuclear safety and safeguards commission dispatched a team to the site of the high radiation levels they advised the police to establish a 1 kilometer exclusion zone around the source it was now time to try and recover that cobalt 60 even though they knew the source must be in the field they couldn't actually see it this is because it had been hidden earlier by a local resident but dosimeters gave a rough idea of where it was two perimeters were established where the radiation levels were at 100 microcverts an hour and 500 millisieverts an hour but although a good headway had been made night enveloped the area hindering recovery they would have to wait until the next day on the 5th of December teams from the police nuclear safety commission Laguna Verde nuclear power plant and the navy searched the area carefully marking off sections that did not have high radiation levels this was in order to narrow down the source without risking the health of the search parties towards the end of the day and with a pretty well surveyed area an action plan was conceived to recover the source on the site the approximate location was found it looked like the source was hidden under some straw unsurprisingly this would cause more delay to recovery as the source had to be clear completely clear you don't want to try picking up a source unless you know it's all there just look at the headache that Goiana caused with its open source container at least by now they had a reasonable idea of how big of a transport container they would need to get to the source the straw and crops needed to be removed and this would require a robot the resident who had told them about the scrap metal in his garden turned out to be the same guy who had hidden the source on the 7th of December he told the police the exact location and finally they had confirmed where that source actually was it would take however another two days of the robot clearing the crops and finally on the 9th of December the source container was visible and thankfully not damaged now how to recover the source well that robot which was doing the crop clearing would turn out to be even more useful on the 10th of December using the robots onboard camera operators were able to finally recover the source after two attempts it was placed inside a newly fabricated container and once the lid was placed over it radiation levels returned to below IAEA recommended safe recordings after the best part of the week the source was back on a truck being transported to a secure facility but what of those who had been all too close to the source well the scrapyard workers weren't hard to find the five men were arrested and taken to hospital in Pachua for treatment the two carjackers were arrested sometime later all seven men were charged on the 1st of February 2014 with organised crime of vehicle theft dismantling of a stolen motor vehicle reception of a stolen motor vehicle theft of a tele-therapy unit head and cobalt 60 source and abandonment of radioactive substances now the whole incident highlights the risks of radioactive material transportation and storage Mexico isn't unique as there have been several cases of orphaned sources throughout the world due to theft funnily if the carjackers had targeted almost any other vehicle they would likely have gotten away with their crime the event did result in Mexican authorities learning how to improve security and search operations right so this week's subject I'm going to rate it an O balls and a three on my legacy scale due to the legacy being relatively localised if you want to find out more as always check out the IAA report in the description as it acted as the framework and primary source for this video this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licence plain difficult videos are produced by me John and they're currently not wet but windy corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patrons and YouTube members for your financial support and also the rest of you viewers for tuning in every week I have Twitter and Instagram so check them out if you want to see random photographs and hints on future videos and if you're enjoying this outro song please feel free to go over to my second channel made by John where you can listen to it in full and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play us out please it's December 2013 and a French company executive is being sentenced to four years in prison the event marks the end of a criminal investigation into probably one of cosmetic surgery's most famous cases of scandal and fraud the executive is John Claude Ma and he was the main driving force behind a truly horrifying case of profit over safety the scandal puts several thousand people at risk of serious injury and heightened cancer as well as betraying the trust and defrauding their customers from all over the world my name is John and welcome to another episode of Scandal today I'm looking at the repulsive PIP implant affair forward okay so before we start I should say I won't be talking about the reasons why some people get implants or the wider plastic surgery industry as it's a personal choice some cosmetic surgeries restore a person's body after life-saving surgeries like a mastectomy as such the end user so to speak of the implants that represents a multitude of reasons for going under the knife although I have never had any kind of cosmetic surgery myself I can understand the distress and suffering the victims must have been subjected to during the scandal oh and pronunciation warning there are a few French words that I'll be butchering throughout the course of this video well that's enough of me gibbering let's start our story at probably the most suitable point background meet Jean-Claude Ma born in France in probably the worst years to be born there 1939 much of his early life is unknown but snippets of his adult life career can be pieced together according to French daily Le Monde Ma in the 1960s and 1970s worked for US pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb or BMS career then went to the meat trade some say that he was a butcher but this claim has been disputed officially he has said himself that he worked in the dried sausage and wine industry it was during this time he became associated with surgeon Henry Arion a man famed for introducing breast implants into France in 1965 Arion's implants were the world's first inflatable prosthesis basically bags that were filled with saline solution now I should say that different news agencies have reported Ma working in the meat industry before working for BMS and others have reported Ma working in meat after BMS but the important takeaway is regardless of chronology Ma's career involved a substantial industry change so just remember he knew about sausages being a medical rep and knowing Henry Arion basically it boils down to sales and product and after meeting Arion the product was implants laboratories Arion founded by Henry were one of the major players in the implant industry this was in the 1980s and Ma must have seen this as a prime business opportunity but his mentor would tragically die in a plane crash in 1991 but this didn't apparently stop him in the same year he founded PIP or poly implant prosthesis upon the company's founding Ma hired 120 employees and set about travelling the world to some of the biggest markets for breast implants one of which was the UK and this doesn't surprise me one bit anyhoo PIP's business plan worked pretty well hundreds of thousands of implants were shipped around the world and an estimated 100,000 were produced each year making the company the third largest silicone implant manufacturer in the world the product was different to the saline filled implants that Henry Arion had pioneered PIP would use solid silicone implants which are seen as advantageous over saline ones as they apparently look and feel more natural interestingly PIP would later on in the 90s also make saline implants as well well the reason for this I'll go into in a little bit all of their products were manufactured at Le La Saini Seumir in south-eastern France and I know I butchered that one however problems were on the horizon for the company when one of its biggest markets would disappear from PIP's grip FDA banned silicone implants it's 1992 and the US Food and Drugs Administration launched a voluntary moratorium on the sale of silicone-based implant products that is not good news for PIP who were at the time predominantly selling silicone products you see American manufacturers of silicone implants had been racking up an ever increasing number of lawsuits throughout the 1980s in regards to their implants rupturing essentially silicone was banned in one of PIP's biggest markets well Ma sought to find alternatives this led him to start using hydrogen implants in 1994 followed by those saline implants in 1996 so far so good but things would come crashing down in 2000 when an inspector from the FDA was sent to the PIP plant in France to carry out an inspection this was on the 15th of May and shortly after the inspector returned home to the United States a warning letter saying the implants were adulterated and citing at least 11 deviations from good manufacturing practices was sent to PIP so needless to say this would close the US market door to PIP quickly the company also withdrew its hydrogel implants presumably because they could also not prove the safety of those ones either the loss of the US market severely hit PIP's finances and the resourceful Ma found a way to make their product immensely more profitable just by altering a few of their products ingredients just by a little bit you see the silicone used in implants has to be of medical grade which is expensive very expensive and is usually externally sourced Ma thought why not use the much cheaper industrial grade material a manufacturer in house it was nearly 90% cheaper after all this reduced materials cost would allow the company to weather the storm of losing the US I assume no one outside PIP's management knew of the potential damage that can be caused by industrial silicone so let's look at what silicone is used for and you can use it for pretty much any job that requires a water resistant and durable sealant it's used in cookware like this set I have it can also be used in rubber keypads or a lubricant or even molds basically it's used everywhere but vitally this is all the industrial grade silicone and you don't want this stuff inside your body needless to say PIP didn't do any testing of a new formula of the silicone for the surgeons using the implants little could be differentiated between the two silicone types only a small superficial change could be seen but only if the two are sat side by side so it wouldn't take long for the first issues with PIP implants to start rearing their ugly head the scandal discovered within just two years of the silicone change reports of premature rupture started appearing in the markets that PIP had a stake in in 2003 lawsuits began piling up at PIP's door but the company continued to grow the business as they were able to keep these incidents out of public knowledge the cut price tag of PIP's implants created a greater demand for example in the UK in the mid-2000s the cost per unit was in the region of £100 the going rate at the time for other brands was closer to £700 the age old adage remains true if it's too good to be true then it probably likely is by 2006 plastic surgeons across the world had seen a starting high number of PIP implants rupturing within three years for context the expected life of them should have been at least 10 years which personally even that doesn't seem long enough around the same time the company was forced to pay 1.4 million euro to British victims but this would just be the tip of the expensive iceberg by 2009 the number of failed implant cases was in the thousands and as such in France alone 2000 women had filed lawsuits against the company the French agency there's products launched an investigation in March 2010 around the same time PIP was put into liquidation by now it was at a loss of roughly 9 million euro the investigation quickly unraveled Mars deception and revoked the company's CE mark banning the sale and export of the PIP implants they found that the implants contained bicellome, syloprene and rhodosil chemicals are used as fuel additives or in the production of rubber the criminal case criminal proceedings for Mars and PIP were just around the corner Mars was arrested in June 2010 in Costa Rica but not for what you might think it was for dangerous driving and after being handed a court date for November the same year he fled the country back to France landing himself a spot on the interpol list but he was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire it was discovered during interviews with mine November 2010 that from 1993 the company was facing a silicone shortage Mars had ordered staff to hide the truth and was quoted in saying we did it for 13 years about a problem but what was this they were almost right from the start to the company going into the business of defrauding their customers with their products containing 75% homemade silicone mixed with 25% medical grade silicone but non-safe materials bought off the books and via proxies to avoid suspicion needless to say with these revelations French authorities were recommended the case be put to the police for criminal proceedings in December 2011 a woman died in France of anaplastic large cell lymphoma planted with the PIP breast implant the death was apparently linked to PIP implants shortly after on the 23rd of December 2011 the French government advised the removal of all PIP implants in French women as a preventative measure this would cost roughly 60 million euro however strange in the UK the medicines and healthcare products regulatory agency did not give out the same advice they asked to seek inspection by a medical professional and seek help if the implants are suspected of rupture personally this wouldn't feel very confidence inspiring by 2012 more women were linked to having at least 8 cases of breast tumors but the number would quickly rise to 20 there was more than enough now to charge Jean-Claude Marne and on the 26th of January 2012 at 7 o'clock in the morning he was arrested in the home of a friend under the charge of fraud unsurprisingly this would result in a trial the 74 year old put up the defence of I know I was doing illegal stuff but it wasn't dangerous honest a proven method to guarantee a conviction and that's what happened and after a month long trial in April 2013 Marne was sentenced to 4 years in prison with a few other PIP executives seeing prison sentences but of lesser time he was also slapped with a 75,000 euro fine in addition to being permanently banned from working in medical services or running a company it seems pretty light to me as an estimated 300,000 people are affected by the dodgy implants this issue won't go away anytime soon either with many countries taking the line of the UK with no replacement instead just regular check up now there is another part to this scandal which surprisingly has already been covered in one of my older videos about a dam failure TUV Technicia Ubavash and Varen or for us English speakers Technical and Inspection Association is a company that certifies and inspects pretty much anything you can think of one such thing they certified was a Brazilian company Vale and the same Vale that was responsible for two dam failures Brumman Dinho and the Mariana Dam disaster the former was actually inspected and given a thumbs up by TUV 10 months before it collapsed killing many people anyway TUV had certified the French implant manufacturing process and in 2013 TUV Rhineland was found liable by a French court and made to pay 1600 women whose breast implants had ruptured compensation although TUV has still denied the ingredients used at PIP this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attributes and share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently wet and windy corner of southern London UK I have YouTube members and patrons and I'd like to thank you for your financial support and also I'd like to thank the rest of you for tuning in every week for your dose of disaster and death I have Instagram and Twitter please feel free to go to my second YouTube channel made by John to watch the video and listen to the song in full and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please right before we start just a quick plug I have some new t-shirts out on my teespring store it's been a couple of years since I've done some new designs so if you fancy check them out it's a cold December afternoon in East Sussex emergency workers are exhausted they've just witnessed destruction very few people will see in their lifetime an industrial site has been decimated making it look like a wall zone but it's not ammunition nor fertilizer that's caused this but something that brings joy and excitement to any festival or party fireworks it is 2006 and a fireworks factory and storage site is the centre of this week's video my name is John and today we will be looking at the Mali Farm Disaster background our story starts rather differently for this channel with me searching on companies house basically for all you non-brits it's the government organisation in charge of maintaining the register of all registered companies in the UK don't worry this will have some relevance to our story it is August 1997 and a new company has been vomited into existence Sussex fireworks and displays limited it is owned by husband and wife Martin and Julie Winter they own a farm and they are planning to use it as part of the manufacturer, storage and sale of fireworks their paperwork doesn't really end with just the incorporation documents as this type of operation requires both trading standards and the health and safety executive to licence the production and sale of what are basically small colourful explosions now little information is known for the company operations before 2001 when it changed its name to festival fireworks limited followed by a few months later Martin and Julie incorporating a new company Sussex fireworks displays limited this was to split the operations of manufacturer and sale into two distinct legal entities which makes sense as it limits potential losses of one part of the operation Marley Farm is a small industrial estate located on the road B2192 in between Ringma and Halland East Sussex which is around here on a map not too far from the Piltdown man's site the surrounding area is mainly agricultural cultural with a few housing areas nearby the winters along with their son and daughter lived on the site in a detached house and rather nicely even having their own pool also a site is a steel beam fabrication company and although the land was leased from the winters the company had no real other affiliation with the family in 2005 the laws regarding explosives and by extension fireworks were changed this in theory would bring all operations of a site under one license from the HSC but there was a little bit of a grey area that was the two companies the winters had registered one for the sale and the other for the manufacturing of the fireworks because of this the HSC were responsible for licensing the production and trading standards remained in charge of the sale issuing a license to be able to store up to 350kg of explosive material in total around 21 tons of explosives were allowed to be on site the HSC issued a license in 2002 and was allowed to be carried over with the new legislation in 2005 but the HSC would undertake semi-regular inspections of the site one of which would be in October 2006 and they found quite a few issues with the site the differences between submitted building plans and actual buildings on site which resulted in reduced separation distances between the structures poorly stored, mixed class fireworks open and damaged boxes and on top of that no-full inventory of stock on site was kept the winters were ordered to take action on the raised issues by the 5th of January 2007 but spoiler alert they wouldn't end up needing to do that the disaster it's the 3rd of December 2006 and Martin and his son Nathan Winter are loading up an ISO storage container with fireworks and birdscares the metal container was due to be shipped to the Middle East they had likely forgotten in the rush that the company had actually been booked for a Christmas light switch on events in Eastbourne the client who had booked the company understandably getting a bit worried that no one had arrived in the morning and the rest of the fireworks at 1pm for reference the event was due to start at 4.30pm anyways the company advised the organisers that they were just about to leave and they should be with them soon which is not particularly accurate as their vehicle wasn't fully loaded and the journey would be at least half an hour long in good traffic at roughly 16 miles now for the start of the disaster narrative Nathan Winter's statements to the police for reference but take them with a pinch of salt but we'll come along to that later on so Nathan had retrieved some fireworks from another farm site earlier in a transit van but this wasn't everything he needed they needed to be made water resistant as just a little bit of dampness at the display site can properly bugger up the reliability of said fireworks going off the solution is simple bin bags wrap them up and they are pretty well protected from the English rain he did the wood proofing in the van outside building D Nathan next needed igniters luckily for him there were some leftovers from a previous display that had been left in a lorry on site stored inside paintings which bizarrely were filled with nails he then took the igniters and placed them on a box inside the building was many more already fused fireworks during this time he picked up the loose fuses planning on putting them in a box when all of a sudden they started igniting this was roughly between 130 and 140pm Nathan dropped the igniters which set off the fireworks on the veranda spreading the flames to the van which also set off fireworks within witnesses would begin to hear explosions around 145pm and a few minutes later the first 999 calls came in reporting of explosions and a fire at Marley farm it is roughly 2pm on Sunday the 3rd of December 2006 the firefighters are attending a fireworks fire on the Marley farm industrial estate in East Sussex two trucks also known as appliances have been dispatched as part of a predetermined emergency plan by the East Sussex fire and rescue service they discover a hectic scene unfolding buildings are light vehicles burning and fireworks being shot out in almost every direction the on-scene commander requested more fire trucks by now a number of police had also arrived on the scene not long after a second fire is discovered at the builders beam site next door and a team are sent to try and battle the flames quickly this team are overwhelmed and were ordered to retreat incredibly they managed to leave with a couple of gas tanks that they discovered the firefighters are then informed that the shipping container on site was full of fireworks and was under threat from the growing inferno the commander focused on two main areas stopping the fire near some LPG tanks and stopping the fire near the shipping container they were drawn from the winter swimming pool yet again more information about the container was received this time about the size of the fireworks inside quickly the decision was made to withdraw the evacuation whistle was sounded most of the crews withdrew to the site entrance but not all at 2.42pm the container exploded spewing out debris and flames amongst the farm nearly all the buildings on site were severely damaged and tragically 2 firefighters would not survive another 9 people were injured including police, firefighters and members of the public several more secondary fires and explosions erupted across the site causing ongoing danger from projectiles smoke and debris immediately after the explosion a search and rescue operation was launched with help from the south east coast ambulance service and Sussex police the injured were recovered but one of the victims remained amongst the rubble watch commander, wicker wouldn't be recovered until the fire was finally under control on Tuesday 5th December his body was carried out to a guard of his colleagues the police and HSC would spend many more days combing through the wreckage site gathering evidence the shipping container was not on the licence and thus was in need of investigation the aftermath the east Sussex and fire and rescue service would release a very detailed report on the disaster it was pretty easy to find out where the explosion came from but what made the container explode well in their final report they stated the continued rise in temperature inside the ISO container due to the adjacent fire would eventually lead to ignition of the contents that occurred through two mechanisms either other combustible material within the ISO container auto ignited and this fire then set off the contents or the contents themselves could have reached their ignition temperature and activated previous research including a number of tests carried out on the sensitivity of pyrotechnics to heat has shown that ignition occurs in the range of 220 and 360 degrees celsius it was also noted that a large number of injuries sustained by those on site was likely due to the lack of perceived danger of fireworks the report would also have 66 recommendations to the fire and rescue service but ultimately the responsibility must fall on the site's owners more specifically the ones who filled up the container, Martin and Nathan Winter so that would lead to a court case of two counts of manslaughter Nathan's series of events leading up to the initial fire was rather confused for his defense he would claim that the loose igniters activated as he was lifting them he then claimed he dropped them on a box of fireworks thus setting them off however an expert called in would discount this series of events stating that it was highly unlikely for the fireworks to start unless the igniter was actually installed you know the odd storage solution for the igniters in cans filled with nails, well those nails would wear away well I think I quickly need to explain how igniters work first Electric igniters have two insulated wires which at one end have a bridge wire coated with a small amount of pyrotechnic material the pyrotechnic material was sensitive to heat and friction the heat is supplied by a small electrical current which causes it to ignite but you don't actually want the friction part to work to protect the wire from this it is covered in a lacquer this can be damaged by sharp objects like nails and the friction of inserting the igniter into the fireworks is what could have caused the unintended explosion but although negligently stored dodgy igniters probably aren't enough for a manslaughter conviction the real crime was the unlicensed storage container full of explosives Nathan and Martin Winter were at Lewis Crown Court in December 2009 found guilty on all counts these were upheld on appeal in 2010 Martin got 7 years in prison and Nathan got 5 Alpha Fireworks, the new name for Festival Fireworks Limited was charged with two counts of breaching the manufacturer and storage of explosives regulations the families of firefighters Jeff Wicker and Brian Wembridge received compensation from the Fire Brigades Union of roughly £510,000 this was rather frustrating for the families as it took nearly 10 years for them to see any type of financial compensation although obviously this wouldn't bring their loved ones back it does feel like another slap in the face well I'm going to rate this disaster as outright negligent and a 4 on my legacy scale let me know if you agree in the comments below this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons that you should share like licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently windy corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my patrons and YouTube members for your financial support I'd also like to plug my Twitter and my Instagram which I post up random photographs and if you're enjoying this outro song then you can listen to it and watch the video in full on my second channel made by John and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please plain difficult videos are financially supported by the generosity of my Patreon and YouTube members members get early add free access to videos usually on Monday or Tuesday before it's released on the main channel you can also get other perks depending on the pledge including your name at the end of the video right well thanks for listening to me talk back to the normal scheduled dose of walking emergency crews are picking over the remains of what is looking like one of Japan's worst rail disasters a 7 car commuter train has derailed on a tight corner resulting in two of the front carriages being launched into an apartment building the train had been travelling on a Fukushima line on a semi express rapid passenger service now the train was involved clearly by looking at the wreckage the train had left the tracks with a great force but how and why the disaster would unravel the inherent pressure prevalent but not unique to Japanese railways the disaster acts as a warning for all industries and the power that fear of failure can actually create a far worse situation my name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult today we're going to look at the derailment I must admit as a bit of a train fan Japanese railways have always been fascinating to me sadly I haven't been able to travel to the country yet to see it first hand but the efficiency of the use of the limited track space and smaller track gauge really gets my geeky side going I mean just look at their timetabling well there may be some signalling and train protection geeking out in this video just a warning before we get started background okay so we start with a brief history of the company that operated the fatal train journey in 2005 all the way back to its birth in 1987 this was when the national railway operator Japanese national rail was split up during privatisation several new companies were formed to operate their respective area of operations one of which was JR west which unsurprisingly would operate in the west of the Japanese island of Honshu JR west was tasked with operating the complex web of lines and interconnected services around the city of Osaka Japan's third most populous metropolitan area they also operated trains around Hiroshima but that's irrelevant for this particular video anyways like in all busy urban rail networks you have certain pinch points where multiple lines join one another one such place is Amagasaki just to the west of central Osaka it had been in operation since 1879 mainly as a local stop only but this would change in 1997 when the station became a busy intersection the station is where three lines intersect the JR Kobe Line Tokaido Main Line the JR Tarakazuka Line and the JR Tozai Line officially it is the terminus of the latter two but all services actually carry on for example a train on the Tozai Line would instead of terminating at Amagasaki transfer onto the Tarakazuka Line and carry on westwards or if travelling on the Tarakazuka Line eastbound the train would transfer onto the Tozai Line to travel out towards the Gakkontoshi Line on the east this is what many services do every day but if I show you on a map a little bit of an issue here with the topography of the area particularly to the west eastbound service in order to reach Amagasaki station trains need to negotiate a bit of a curve followed by another curve in order to be facing in the up eastbound direction I should also say Japan has a similar line direction nomenclature as the UK being up in the direction of the dating point and down the way from it usually the dating point is the nearest biggest city anyways I think before we get into the disaster train which was a west to east service from the Tarakazuka Line to the Tozai Line we need to talk about the signalling in the area and more importantly the train protection system or lack thereof in use at the time of the disaster the rail geek stuff this is my favourite part of these videos Japanese signalling has a few similarities which is signalling but also has some similarities with European and US signalling for reference UK signalling is known as root signalling where just the root is indicated to the driver with speed being indicated by a fixed speed boards the other method is speed signalling where the signals themselves tell the driver what speed to proceed at this makes Japan a bit of a hybrid system but I won't be delving too much into this just a brief overview as a foundation for the protection systems as they prove to be a very important component or lack of in the disaster later well as you may or may not know a large portion of Japanese railways use a smaller gauge than the standard 4ft 8.5 inches used across the world it uses a 3ft 6 inch gauge this inherently is less stable than standard gauge and even the Japanese thought this when they built the Shinkansen network to standard gauge specs in the 1960s so Japanese signalling uses multiple aspects which tell the driver not only how far ahead they can proceed but also at what speed they use the usual suspects in signalling red, yellow and green I'll only cover three and four aspect signalling here but there is a lot more depth to than what I'll talk about here but in three aspects it is perceived for green, caution on a single yellow and stop red four aspect has the additional double yellow called speed restriction which is very similar to the UK preliminary caution they also have another four aspect style which is green for proceed yellow over green for reduce speed yellow for caution and red for stop in addition to this there are also actually speed indicator boards for things like point work and tight curves for the running line the signals are known as block signals they control the block section and they are usually controlled by the movements of trains at stations there are home signals which are the final signal before the station these allow the train to enter station limits and finally for the purpose of this video starting signals these permit the train to depart the station in reality they can be many starting and home signals to protect trains from the ramifications of operating incidents a system called ATS is employed the system automatic train stop is designed to stop a train there are many variants in use all over the JR network but on the west there were mainly two versions ATS SW and this system was capable of stopping a train if it passed a signal with danger this worked by using a transponder on the train and a coil on the track it had been surpassed in the 1990s by the better ATSP which offered protection to trains but over speeding in certain areas with the addition of loops on the track on the approach to tight corners but neither were installed on the curve at the end of the Tarakazuka Line near Amagasaki which neatly brings us onto the disaster the disaster it is the morning of the 25th of April 2005 and Roryu Jiru Takami has started his shift he shunts his train a 207 series formed of two units one 3 car and one 4 car out of the depot arriving at Hanaten Station at 6.51am there he is met by his conductor for the day the conductor operates from the rear cab of the 7 car train they will be working the train westwards towards Koyobashi and then onto Amagasaki working as a stopping local service the train then continued its journey along the curve on the Fukushima Line heading towards the destination city of Tarakazuka just before reaching Tarakazuka the train was suddenly stopped by an emergency brake application at roughly 8.53am the ATSP system had intervened due to the driver passing a signal showing a red stop aspect the train was now late into Tarakazuka something frowned upon on the Japanese railway quickly the conductor and driver changed places Takami, the driver, is now in the up direction cab at 9.03am the train departs on its limited stop rapid commuter service numbered 5 4 1 8 m the journey will take them to Doshi-shame along the Fukichiyama Line to Amagasaki and then onto the JR Tosai Line and finally the Gakintoshi Line shortly after departing the train overruns one of its station stops at Itami by 4 car lengths the train was brought to a stand by the driver applying the emergency brake the train was passed its correct stopping mark by roughly 72m the train was partially out of the station requiring it to be reversed back to the correct stopping location as such the service was delayed by roughly 90 seconds which doesn't sound like much but the whole journey to Amagasaki only had about 28 seconds of slack in the timetable now this incident would require the conductor to report it to the company worried the driver contacted the conductor via the cap to cap radio bearing in mind this was whilst the train was moving Takami asked the conductor to not report the incident during his conversation a passenger requested help from the conductor resulting in him putting down the handset after the station stop at Itami roughly 700 passengers were on board the train loading was typical for a morning rush hour commuter service worried of the implications of running late and now potentially the punishment of an overrun Takami took more power speeding up the train he managed to reduce the delay from 90 to 60 seconds due to the conductor having to report the overrun he contacted the JR West dispatcher the conversation between the conductor and JR West would be heard over the radio in the driver's cab hearing this Takami must have realised the situation and that he was now looking at two serious reprimands the conductor attempting to do the driver a solid downplayed the overrun from 72 meters to just 8 but it was too late the train was heading for the tight right hand turn the curve had a speed limit of 70 kmph or 43 miles an hour the train was actually going at 116 kmph roughly 72 miles an hour the driver applied the service brake but it wasn't enough as the track turned to the right the first carriage derailed the next front three cars derailed completely the first car rammed into a parking lot of an apartment building the second car hit the wall of the same building becoming almost completely crumpled by the fourth to the third and fourth cars coming off the track behind it the fifth car pushed into the rear of the third and fourth the final two cars of the train stayed upright and still railed with so many busy carriages crushed into one another the number of casualties were high driver Takami being at the front lost his life along with 105 others local police estimated that the front carriage was where 43 of the victims had been followed by 45 in the second and the remaining of the victims being from the rest of the train totaled 562 and they would be sent all around the area to different medical centres the sheer size of the car is almost unbelievable to imagine the clean up repair and investigation of the line between Amagasaki and Tarakazuka stations would take a while with services resuming on the 19th of June 2005 but with reduced speed limits of 95 kilometers an hour 59 miles an hour on the straight section and 60 kilometers an hour or 37 miles an hour on the curve but why was the driver so apparently anxious about running late so much so to cause the demise of not only himself but over 100 others well we will find out after this short YouTube ad break investigation so why was he speeding why didn't he use the emergency brake and why was he not aware of the route ahead well seemingly on the face of it this disaster has a few similarities with the Moorgate Crash a number of incidents leading up to the crash improper train handling and reckless over speeding resulting in a bloody death toll and also like Moorgate the key witness was amongst the victims but the differences end there as we will likely never know the cause of the Moorgate Crash be it suicide or my personal theory of loss of situational awareness caused by micro sleep but with the Amagasaki disaster Takami's actions seems like he was scared of ramifications of running late and in Japan it sounds a lot worse than meeting with your manager without a cup of tea followed by an action plan and time of an instructor like you get on UK railways the thing Takami feared was Nikin Koyuku in English they shift education was he scared of it well he had been through his punishment slash retraining program before the day shift education usually ran between nine o'clock in the morning and quarter to six in the evening at the company offices it consisted mainly of report writing but would be undertaken in a room with other employees in an effort to try and shame the driver many tasks would be requested on top of the reports which included long hand copying of work rules writing lines on a board apologising to work colleagues weeding tracks cutting grass and tending to flower beds as an additional punishment drivers would have their pay cut during the day shift education they are also required to ask permission to use the toilet and have to follow any instructions given from the educator in charge before the disaster Takami had done three counts of day shift education totaling 18 days one of which was 10 months before from an overrun of 100 meters he was clearly struggling with the brutal timetable leading him to make mistakes thus leading him to more time on the day shift education the mounting pressure led him down the path of loss of concentration and situational awareness in a job that can be very unforgiving if the mind wanders knowing the punishment he would have received resulted in an attempt of trying to put right the earlier delay it's common on the railway where drivers get caught up in chasing the timetable but it is a very risky game to play additionally why did he not use the emergency break well this ties back into JR West's policies at a time where any use of emergency break would need to be explained and justified later thus presumably Takami's mind would make a bad situation worse with his punishment investigators found that a train travelling the curve at any speed greater than 106 km an hour or 66 miles an hour would derail the disaster was a combination of speed and lack of awareness of the corner but that's not the whole picture aside from the human factors of Takami trying to claw back the delay and getting distracted the question of protection systems overall they are meant to be able to step in when the skin and bone combo that is a human being messes up as I mentioned before JR West used two types of ATS and on the line in question the older ATS SW was in operation although nothing was installed on this particular curve even if it was the system ATS SW would have not been sufficient to protect the curve now what is crazy about this disaster was that the train hit a building off of the railway it's not hard to see why when looking at it on a map it's almost like the building was a target at the end of a range especially as the straight section of track leading up to it had a speed of 120 km an hour or 75 miles an hour Japanese building regulations don't restrict the construction of buildings near the railway as long as it wouldn't obstruct any signals or impede the railway property thus they are allowed to be built on the running line in the wake of the disaster changes at JR West had to be made a number of resignations followed from the company's top bosses in July 2009 West Japan Company Co President Masao Yamazaki was charged with negligence but found not guilty in January 2012 even though the company were critiqued on the poor risk assessment of the curve the building the train hit was partially demolished in 2017 leaving one corner standing as a memorial which opened in 2019 now I'm going to raid this disaster as a dumpster fire as an accident like this was just waiting to happen due to the pressure placed on JR West's drivers and I'm going to give it a 6 on the legacy scale this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are Creative Commons attribution share light licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently wet and windy corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patreon and YouTube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week to see your weekly dose of disaster if you're enjoying this outro song please feel free to go over to my second channel made by John to watch the video and listen to the song in full and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play us out please this video is proudly supported by my Patreon and YouTube members sign up to gain early access to videos from just one dollar, one pound or one euro it is the evening of the 9th of March 1976 and tourists are queuing up to ride a cable car down from Mount Cermy most of the travellers boarding the cabins look forward to a five to six minute long journey a descent with spectacular views of the north eastern Italian Dolomites because of the large number of people waiting for cabins operators cram as many into each vehicle one such cabin has 44 people aboard more than the recommended 40 but the operator thinks well some are children so that couldn't count as a whole person right the cabin sets off down the mountain what all aboard don't know is that in just a few minutes only one would still be alive as they have become unwitting participants in the world's worst cable car disaster but it wouldn't actually be the only disaster to befall the cable car but today we're looking at the first Cavalese cable car disaster a little background goes a long way a settlement existed on the site of Cavalese ever since the bronze ages the town that became known as Cavalese started in the 12th century the town went from strength to strength as it developed mills sawmills and blacksmiths for copper manufacturing along the Gambis Brook like many towns with an impressive mountain range on their doorstep tourism became a vital part of the local economy Cavalese was no different and during the 1900s especially the mid-century after World War II the area saw droves of skiers, mountain climbers and general public go to mount Cermis. The Donomites Alps have become a world famous destination for skiers in order to improve the town's connection to the ski resorts and offer expedited travel up the mountain a cable car was constructed in 1964 the line ran for roughly three miles and had three stops Cavalese a middle stop at Doste Laressi and at the top Mount Cermis the system used two cables to guide and safely hold each carriage which are known as cabins these are known as the static track cable and the traction or hall cable the static cable is just as it says it doesn't move and the carriage of the cabin which is the bit the wheels run on the track cable. The hauling cable is gripped on to and thus moves the cabin up and down the mountain as one cabin goes up the other one goes down and basically they shuttle from each end of their respective lines as long as the system is in operation the two cables that are used should never really touch as well something stationary rubbed by something moving causes friction which can cause damage to the cables. As such cable cars like this have safety systems that stop the haulage cable if this is detected. The system at Cavalese had just that but it could be overridden it's not advisable but can be used in certain emergency situations the cable car was programmed to slow down slightly when traveling over the pylons to reduce wear on the cabins carriage and the cables the cabins were rated to carry a weight of 40 people and had a journey time of roughly 6 and a half minutes. Sometimes however this system must have felt like throughput was not enough as queues often developed during peak periods and one such was the evening on the 9th of March 1976 for disaster it is the evening of the 9th of March 1976 and cableway operator Schweiser is working his shift it is a busy evening and the queues are starting to mount up the cableway officials had found a sneaky way to improve the 6 and a half minute journey time. They found that if they altered the program that slows down the cabin when it navigates across the pylon they could get some of that time reduced by speeding up the cabin by doing this they managed to shave a minute off the journey time operators were also encouraged to squeeze as many people into each cabin and this would exceed the 40 person weight limit because of the increased speed and weight emergency shutoffs became commonplace as the two cables touched under the greater strain. Operators had become a little bit blasé to overriding the safety system but Carlo wouldn't really know much about this he was a seasonal worker who had not been licensed or properly trained to operate the system Carlo would on one particular cabin squeeze 44 people in. His justification would be that there were more children than the usual as such not being as heavy but it wasn't like he was getting out a scale to make everyone stand on it. This was around 5.16pm the cabin was now full and was sent down its way towards the middle station after this the cabin must negotiate the middle pylon this evening it doesn't slow down due to the program change and bumps over at a speed of 10m per second due to the speed the cables crossover triggering the cable safety system grinding the cabin to a halt. Carlo's training sprung into action oh wait he actually wasn't trained he was stumped and didn't know how to get the system up and running again so he got on the phone for some help and this came from Aldo Guillen Mona who told him to bypass the safety system. You see this situation was common since the increase in speed the safety stop was overridden frequently and that's what would happen this evening the cable car was restarted and the cabin continued to move the engine pulling the hall cable powered up but the two cables were still crossed over the excess weight exerted greater pressure on the static cable as the traction cable ground across it essentially it was like a saw cutting away at the track cable in the opposite direction in the second cabin another operator Giorgio Di Matteo would see the cabin moving but shooting sparked from the cables he attempted to call this in but the phone in his cabin couldn't connect 90 seconds later the track cable snaps plunging the cabin down 69m or 200ft but due to the safety system being overridden the engine winding the cable continued to run dragging the cabin along the ground between 100 and 200m during the drag the 3 ton carriage slammed into the roof of the cabin crushing it in all but one of the 44 board lost their lives including 15 children and an 18 year old cable car attendant some survived the fall only to be suffocated by the bodies of their fellow travellers Carlo in the control room had to duck as the cable snapped back and crashed into the engine smashing the windows Alessandra Piovesana survived the crash she had been protected from the fall by the bodies of the victims and luckily had been in the front portion of the cabin which had been the least impacted the operator in the other direction Giorgio Di Matteo got to earth safely by the use of an emergency ladder after being stranded for a little while between the middle stop and the pylon with the worst cable car disaster in their hands investigators sought out to find out why and how the Cavaliers system failed so catastrophically the world's eyes were now on Italy as the news spread and was reported by some of the largest news organizations globally the investigation investigators sought out advice from the cables manufacturer Akieri Ferreria Lombardi after careful inspection they found grooves on the snapped line and signs of intense heat caused by friction it was estimated that the heat was 1300 degrees celsius this pretty much unequivocally pointed blame at the cable crossover this along with Di Matteo's witness statement of seeing sparks when the cabin was moving led investigators to say that it was the only possible and plausible hypothesis the cable car owners claimed that the cable had been fully tested in October with the full weight of the cabin although it may be the case that it was tested the test didn't take into account the cable crossover and overloading of passengers this then pointed the blame away from manufacturing issues and more towards operational issues clearly Carlo was not properly trained for his job and it's easy to solely blame him but it goes higher than just the actions of one person on the day after all if you don't properly tell someone how to do their job they will use their judgement which may overlook key safety points like don't overload Carlo was also instructed over the phone to override the safety system lift officials would deny this phone call ever happened essentially trying to push Carlo under the bus Carlo was found guilty at trial of manslaughter and sentenced to 3 years serving only 9 months Aldo, Guillain, Mona the one who ordered the override was also sentenced to 3 years on the same charges of manslaughter the cable car was rebuilt only to be the scene for yet another disaster but maybe I'll cover that on another day so I'm going to rate this disaster as negligent due to the terrible operation of the cable car that evening and a 6 on the legacy scale but an 8 on the cable car only legacy scale this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share light license plain difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently dark and cold corner of southern London UK I have youtube members and patrons who financially support the channel and I'd also like to thank the rest of you for tuning in every week for your daily for your weekly dose of disasters if you're enjoying this outro song then please check out my second channel made by John and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music Man, play us out please an alarm has been set off by a radiation monitor in Los Alamos operators are frantically trying to find out how and where the radiation spike has come from but it's not from what you might think rather than something on the site at the world famous nuclear research laboratory getting out the monitor has been triggered by a truck taking a wrong turn and driving in right now what no one knows is that they've uncovered a radiological incident that will cover two countries and expose over 4,000 people unknowingly contaminated material made its way into multiple building sites in both the US and Mexico showing how close we all are from unknowingly being exposed to radiation our story today has a few similar plot points cobalt 60 and a scrapyard but it ramps up the outcome to 11 my name is John welcome to Plain and Difficult and today we're looking at the jaw dropping 1984 Ciudad Juarez radiation incident forward lost source events aren't unique hell we've even had one this year in 2023 in Australia they aren't unique but they are usually discovered quickly in the grand scheme of things this is because usually people in the vicinity of the source become ill with unexplainable sickness or burns if they have unknowingly touched it but what makes the Ciudad Juarez so unique is that it illustrates what can happen when a source makes it into the production of other material sure a similar event happened in Ukraine where a source was mixed into concrete but Juarez had the further reaching ramifications usually with these sorts of stories there is some level of criminality usually the source being stolen but today our stories criminality starts with a radiation therapy unit being illegally purchased by a private medical company the machine was a picker C3000 it was purchased in 1977 by the central medicine private hospital in Ciudad Juarez Mexico the machine had been illegally imported into the country without notifying the regulatory authority it's important that they are informed as they can track where these potentially deadly machines are within the country but they weren't told on top of this the machine with some 6000 cobalt-60 pellets were shipped incorrectly with the source head still mounted the head's pellets had a total radioactivity of 30 tB aka a ton of bad days but there is a problem the hospital has with their picker C3000 no one knows how to use it usually when these things are bought the legit way training for staff is offered so what do you do with a tele-therapy machine you don't know how to use I know it's a question we've all pondered at least once in our lifetimes take it out to dinner put it on reception no well sadly they just put it into storage in an unguarded warehouse but surprisingly for one of these stories it wasn't stolen instead it sat there unused for a number of years whilst the hospital tried and failed to find anyone who knew how to work it time to sell the scrap after nearly six years in storage the hospital's maintenance manager instructed hospital employee Vicente Sotello Aladin to sell the machine off the scrap on the 6th of December 1983 I'm guessing Sotello was unaware of the potentially lethal task he had been given his next few actions would have been insane Sotello dismantled the machine splitting off its valuable metals in doing so removing the source head with its thousands of cobalt 60 pellets he loaded up his truck and at this point he decided to drill into the source cylinder spilling some of the pellets onto the truck bed just so you know these pellets are around 1mm in diameter and length so are pretty tiny surely there's no way he could have known what they were oh and this little spillage is just the tip of the radioactive iceberg that is this disaster the truck and its radiotherapy machine cargo make its way to the Yonkey Phoenix scrapyard in Ciudad Carres the parts were sold and the scrap merchant wasn't informed of the deadly nature of the material how could have they been as the guy selling it clearly didn't either usually this is where the stories come to an end a few people get sick and the source is discovered but not today so tello after selling the material to the junkyard set off to return home don't forget now some of the pellets had fallen out and were still in the truck bed in a cruel turn of fate his truck broke down on route home but now a mobile and unknowingly contaminated truck would sit in a side road for 40 days we'll come back to this a little bit later on in the video so you know what scrap merchants do right well they sell scrap for melting into new metal products and that's exactly what happened to the cobalt 60 pellets that became mixed up with the scrap metal and was sold to three foundries a seroste chihuahua foundry where it was pressed into steel for rebar falcon products company foundry who made table pedestal castings and a third foundry in torian mexico that cast valve bodies and electric motor parts using contaminated steel the rebar and table bases containing the cobalt 60 by january 1984 had already been shipped throughout mexico and across the border to the united states unknowingly the contaminated material passed through cities, countryside and towns but it would be an accidental wrong turn that would cause the discovery of the radioactive material the discovery so the intro section of this video i mentioned los animos but what i didn't mention was just how much of a case of potluck it was a truck carrying rebar made by asia was travelling past los animos on the 16th of january 1984 the driver turned his large flatbed truck carrying two bundles of rebar into the entrance of the mason physics facility in los animos the truck driver realising that this was not where he was meant to be turned his vehicle around and drove for the exit this involved driving over a radiation detector underneath a manhole cover this detected a heightened radiation level the truck was automatically photographed and was identified as belonging to the smith pipe and steel company of albuquerque for there the shipment was able to be traced back to mexico the aseros de chihuahua foundry on january the 17th the state of new exico informed the nuclear regulatory commission who then informed mexico's national commission on nuclear safety and safeguards it was also discovered that another shipment was at the border in el paso texas and on the 18th after investigation was also found to be contaminated with radiation this was five truckloads hundreds of tons had already reached the u.s. with a potential international radiation event unfolding all shipments of steel from mexico to the usa was ceased mexico authorities traced the metal back to the phoenix yard and temporarily shut it down for investigation on the 20th of january and recovered the first cobalt 60 pellet investigation at the junkyard indicated that cobalt 60 must have been there since at least the 6th of december 1983 since the contaminated bill of landing was dated to the 6th of december the mexico authorities ordered aseros de chihuahua to suspend the distribution of manufactured rebar until it could be confirmed to be clear of any radioisotopes analysis of the contaminated metal showed it was pure cobalt 60 remember vicente soltello aladin and his broken down truck 26th of january 1984 mexico authorities detected an abandoned truck emitting radiation levels of up to a thousand ronkins per hour probably not a surprise it was soltello's soltello was tracked down and confirmed ownership as well as clarifying that he had worked at the speciality medical centre which was then contacted to ask what was the scrap metal they had sold off in december but although the origin was now known the scale of the recovery and clean up was only just unfolding the truck for one was parked in the middle of a built up neighbourhood potentially exposing countless people this would require the truck to be craned out of the city thousands of tons of rebar was contaminated and 33 thousand table bases had also been made with radioactive steel collaboration between the USA and Mexico allowed an international search to be undertaken this included sharing of sales information of steel products and the NRC assisting with radiological surveys of Juarez in Mexico. Mexican health officials reported that around 100 persons have received blood tests of which 3 or 4 showed evidence of between 100 and 450 REM whole body doses for context the whole body dose of 500 REM at once can be fatal in both the USA and Mexico the contaminated metal had to be traced, recovered and disposed of but even as late as june material was still missing roughly 2360 tons of unused rebar was recovered Mexican authorities visited over 17,000 buildings suspected to have been made with contaminated rebar scarily they determined that 814 buildings would need to be demolished and disposed of due to the high levels of radiation 90% of the rebar shipped to the USA was also recovered this had come from five states aftermath well this story is a bit of an odd one it's not really cut and dry finished as 100% of the material was never recovered as no one could have accounted for all of those grains of 660 as such the total human cost is impossible to tell of the scrapyard workers, neighbors and foundry workers that were tested some had chromosome damage and others had abnormal sperm or diminished sperm counts countless more must have been exposed from the contaminated metal or that abandoned truck but it's impossible to know for sure Vicente Sotelo the truck owner was made for him to sign a confession that he stole the equipment but this didn't hold up he wasn't the one who illegally imported the tele-therapy machine in the first place after all but how did he fare with the radiation after all he broke open the tele-therapy unit well unsurprisingly he experienced acute radiation syndrome including burns, vomiting and diarrhea but amazingly he survived no one was known to have died directly from the event probably due to the exposure being for most over a long period of time scarily though the event as published by the New York Times in 1984 released radiation 100 times more intense than the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania was even more worrying was that he was only actually discovered because of a chance wrong turn of a delivery truck imagine what would have happened if it went undetected tens of thousands of people could have been in danger so ratings time it's gotta be a dumpster fire but a free on the legacy scale as if a disaster has been relatively forgotten maybe because of no immediate death toll but regardless I won't be able to look at Rebar the same way again this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like licensed playing different videos are produced by me John in the currently cold but sunny corner of London UK I have patreon members and youtube members so thank you for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week I have instagram and twitter so check them out if you want to see more from me and if you're enjoying this outro video then please feel free to go over to my second channel made by John where you can watch and listen to it in full and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music plays out please what would you think if I said taking a painkiller would actually kill you I don't mean like an overdose but just one capsule equals death it would make you think twice about taking one right well imagine not knowing this that taking over the counter medicine would be a roulette wheel of death this would be the case if you so happened to get a headache in September 1982 in Chicago and you decided to take a Tylenol it is January 2023 and news outlets throughout the United States are reigniting interest in a 40 year old unsolved case this new spark of interest has been caused by a request for DNA testing of evidence from a crisis that gripped Chicago and the wider United States in 1982 although hopeful the new round of news reports and articles represent just another chapter in a senseless and chilling crime spree the event changed the way medication is packaged across the world he created fear and worked his way into urban legends that even here in the UK cause a moment of pause for thought unknowingly the terror caused 40 years ago is the reason why I was told as a child to always check everything I buy is sealed showing how much this event illuminated just how vulnerable the things we consume are from tampering today I will be looking at the Tylenol tampering crisis a chilling bizarre and cruel case of 7 acts of cold blooded murder an innocent looking bottle you must excuse my ignorance as I've never had a Tylenol it's not sold here in the UK and the thought of unsealed medication is a real head scratcher to me but at least the latter can be chalked down to me being a product of my time a time post for Tylenol murders I remember last year or possibly the year before feeling disgusted at the trend of ice cream licking in shops remember when people would open up ice cream tubs and lick the top pure nightmare fuel for a germaphobe like me although disgusting as long as the liquor didn't have any oral born diseases it was relatively harmless but it shows that tampering with consumable products is alive and well but back in 1982 today's case of tampering wasn't for likes on tiktok but an act of cold blooded murder with a little bit of extortion thrown in Tylenol is probably very familiar for those in North America but it's main ingredient paracetamol is always readily available over the counter across the globe Tylenol was introduced in 1955 by McNeil Laboratories over the years the brand has released various medications with different ingredients effective in pain relief one such was Tylenol extra strength this product has 500 milligram capsules with the active ingredient of minifen also known as paracetamol in 1959 Johnson & Johnson bought McNeil making the company a subsidiary roughly one year later the drug was made available over the counter and prescription free and from there it took over as one of the most popular pain relief medications available without a prescription by 1982 Tylenol had a 35% market share it is their first choice for colds flues, headaches, toothaches and migraines and the Tylenol extra bottled capsules are a popular choice capsules are especially popular they are made from gelatine and because of this they are slippery and easy to swallow but capsules are also easy to open and close and anti tampering protection on their packaging was minimal the bottles that held the capsules came in a paper box with an unglued lid the red cap on top of the bottle was easily flipped open with only a little piece of cotton left to cover the contents confidence in the brand is high the product works but the public perception during a deadly period of a few days in 1982 would be shaken to its core a deadly few days it is early in the morning of the 29th of September 1982 and in Elk Grove Village a suburb of Chicago Mary Kellerman, a 12 year old girl is suffering from a runny nose and a sore throat nothing particularly out of the ordinary people get cold symptoms all the time usually if the symptoms are a bit too much one takes a pain killer Mary goes to her parents and explains her symptoms to them they offer her one capsule of Tylenol extra strength by 7am in the morning she is dead in a Chicago area hospital Adam Janus a 27 year old postal worker also died of a suspected heart attack upon hearing the news of Janus's death his sister-in-law and brother rushed to the family home grief often brings a headache both took capsules of Tylenol from the same bottle that Adam had earlier in the day within hours her brother Stanley aged 25 was also dead his wife Teresa would pass away just 2 days later following days 3 more unexplained deaths occurred 35 year old Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, Illinois 35 year old Paula Prince of Chicago and 27 year old Mary Biner of Winfield, Illinois now unexplained deaths of apparently healthy individuals usually sparked concern amongst the authorities especially in the case of the Janus family where 3 died within days of one another they had all done one thing in common however taking a Tylenol in early October 1982 investigators made the link between the victims and Tylenol was there an issue with the factory once the link was discovered tests were undertaken on the remaining capsules in the victims bottles and a worrying ingredient was found cyanide stranger still the capsules had come from different batches from 2 different factories one in Pennsylvania and another in Texas this suggested the unthinkable that the cyanide had made its way into the capsules after leading the factory the victims had another similarity the Tylenol they all had consumed wearing capsules and not tablets it was quickly becoming apparent that the contamination was deliberate and done after delivery to shops interestingly the bottles involved in the deaths of the Janus family members and Mary Kellerman had come from the same batch named MC 2880 Johnson and Johnson initially recalled this lot nationwide but as more of the victims pills were tested it was apparent that lots 910MD and MB 2738 were also involved and this expanded the recall this would become one of the largest pharmaceutical recalls in history tests from pharmacies across the united states localized the cyanide to the Chicago area the recall was wider in the Chicago area itself with all extra strength capsules pulled from the shelves initially it was thought that only the victims bottles had cyanide this totaled 5 but tests pulled from bottles found several more also contaminated many of the tested bottles were dropped off by the public at police stations in total 8 bottles were found to have been tampered with bizarrely around the same time on the 5th of October a man was poisoned with strictening which had been added to a Tylenol bottle this was in California luckily the man had survived but confidence in Tylenol capsules had collapsed trying to reassure the public Johnson and Johnson distributed false alers as well as halting Tylenol capsule production advertising and broadening the recall nationwide costing the company roughly $100 million Johnson and Johnson also issued a nationwide offer to replace customers capsules with their pill variants and on top of that the company offered a $100,000 reward for the information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the murders the police were starting to form a theory that after arriving on the shelves of local grocers and drug stores in the Chicago area random bottles of Tylenol were removed from the shelves then the capsules were adulterated with 65mg of potassium cyanide and then returned to the shelves to be purchased by any unknowing victim the reference the amount of cyanide was 10,000 times over the average amount to kill a person but although the police had an idea of the method of the poisoning they had no real leads until Johnson and Johnson received a letter the letter on the 1st of October 1982 a letter was posted to Johnson and Johnson demanding $1 million be sent to an account at the Continental Illinois Bank the letter was traced to James W. Lewis via a positive match of fingerprints and a postage mark from Lakeside Travel his wife's previous employer the police now had a suspect but it was taken until the 13th of December 1982 to apprehend Lewis in New York and thus Lewis would be forever intertwined with the Tylenol case this wasn't Lewis's first running with the law, just a few years earlier he had been charged with murder in 1978 in Kansas City but the case was thrown out of court due to a technicality strangely in that case he had also written a letter Lewis claimed innocence stating the reason for the letter was to shame his wife's former employer Lewis was the only suspect to have described how a culprit could have added cyanide to the bottles in a method he called the drill board method Lewis even said someone could drill holes into a plier of contraption put the bottom capsule into a hole put cyanide on top of the board scrape it across with a bread knife clean up the excess put the tops of the capsules in load them into the Tylenol bottles and put them on to store shelves but there was no concrete evidence showing his part in the poisoning and instead of being charged with murder he was charged with extortion and held on a 5 million dollar bomb at the Metropolitan Correctional Center until the 16th of October 1983 although no watertight evidence Lewis had a striking resemblance to this person of interest from a CCTV still the image showed victim Paula Prince buying a bottle of tainted Tylenol his defense at trial claimed he was innocent of extortion because the money was to be paid into a bank account of a defunct company his wife had formerly worked for in order to try and frame his wife's old boss needless to say this bizarre defense and another charge of credit card fraud netted him a 20 year prison sentence of which he would serve 13 years but Lewis would always stay as suspect number one for the next 40 odd years although someone was now behind bars no one had been charged with the murders and the case would continue to go on unsolved to other suspects were also well suspected during the Tylenol case these were Roger Arnold age 48 he was arrested in mid October 1982 after a Lincoln Park bar owner told officers two customers said Arnold had purchased a large quantity of cyanide after searching his home a number of books on explosives and poisons, laboratory vials beakers, test tubes and a number of weapons were found but interestingly no cyanide his link was that Arnold's wife was in Central DuPage Hospital at the time of the poisonings across the road was a grocery shop Frank's Foods where one of the victims had bought their bottle of tainted Tylenol Arnold had also worked with one of the victims' fathers at a warehouse bizarrely Arnold would go to prison for murder but not the ones you might think after his questioning Arnold hunted down the bar owner who dobbed him in and shot him dead the only problem was he killed the wrong man and thus the case went pretty cold Lewis was in jail Arnold was also in jail but Lewis was released in 1995 and would remain a top suspect although Constantly is attesting his innocence during a 2007 to 2008 undercover sting operation run by the FBI Lewis stated it took him three days to write the extortion letter this combined with the postal date being forensically proven under the letter's ink of the 1st of October meant that the letter was written before the public knew of the Tylenol case Lewis, although at the time of his apprehension in New York was living there he and his wife had been living in the Chicago area until early September around 20 to 24 days before the crisis began Strangely in 2009 Lewis was interviewed by the press where he again denied all accusations against him and were exposed to the publicity there's also a weird case that happened in 1978 with Raymond West who ended up dead in his attic and you were the prime suspect as the guy who did that who killed him who murdered him he for two weeks he was under the locking key so there was no homicide she said there was no homicide there was no homicide but the guy was dismembered and stuffed in a plastic bag in his attic how does somebody dismember themselves and stuff themselves in a plastic bag you got it, come on around the same time in 2009 FBI agents searched Lewis' apartment who was now living in Cambridge, Massachusetts but again no arrests were made in 2010 Lewis and his wife had their DNA taken one of the other suspects Roger Arnold's DNA was also taken but due to Arnold being dead for two years his body was exhumed and a sample was taken from a femur bone sadly none of the DNA samples created any movement in the case they even took DNA in 2011 from the unibomber, Ted Tezinski but again, alas, no luck as of the end of January 2023 more DNA tests have been undertaken but no news so far aftermath even though the killer hasn't been identified the crisis changed the pharmaceutical industry permanently Johnson and Johnson within two months had Tylenol back on the shelves but with an improved triple seal their market share had plummeted from 35% to just 8% but amazingly, this was turned around in just under a year the event cost a company over $100 million in the recall alone and an undisclosed 1991 settlement with the victims' families the crisis spawned unsurprisingly, copycat murders most notably in 1986 where three people died of cyanide poisoning new federal laws, post-crisis now made product tampering a federal crime which, even attempting to tamper with a product can carry a 10-year sentence so, for my ratings today is only going to be a legacy rating and I'm going to give this one a 9 all videos on the channel are created and actually we can share it like licensed playing a full video is produced by me, John in a currently wet and windy suburban corner of southern London, UK I have Patreon members and YouTube members as well so thank you for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week to watch your dose of disaster I've got Patreon I've got Instagram and Twitter, so check them out if you fancy and if you're enjoying this outro song please feel free to check it out on my second channel made by John and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music play us out please it is 9.30 in the morning on the 11th of April 1986 and the relative peace and quiet of Pinecrest Miami-Dade is broken with gunfire preceding this was an attempted FBI forced stop of two suspected serial violent criminals what would ensue in the erupting gunfire would become the most bloody day in FBI history the equipment to hand for the FBI proved ineffective in stopping the criminals and sadly two agents would be fatally wounded the shootout would cause law enforcement to reevaluate the weapons they use and their firearms training today I'm looking at the Miami-Dade shootout of 1986 welcome to true crime with John background now you don't have the FBI after you usually for no reason and today's subject's reason is a spree of violent crimes but before the crimes we must discuss the meeting of two men enter Michael E. Platt and William Russell Mattix the two men had met in 1973 while serving in the US Army at Fort Campbell Kentucky Platt enlisted into the Army on the 27th of June 1972 as an infantryman soon after he applied for the Army Airborne Rangers and required him to attend the Air Assault School at Fort Campbell upon completion of the course Platt was assigned the role of a military policeman William Mattix was a more experienced soldier having previously served with the Marines between 1969 and 1972 upon his honourable discharge and having nowhere else to go he went on to enlist in the US Army here he was posted to Fort Campbell as a military police and this would be where he would meet his future partner in crime Platt married his wife Regina Lien in October 1975 who he met whilst at Fort Campbell shortly after the marriage he was transferred to Camp Kitty Hawk now Camp Boniface in South Korea Mattix would be honourably discharged in 1976 followed by Platt in 1979 Platt and his wife after his discharge eventually settled in Monterey, California and had a son the Platt family would move again to Regina's home state of Florida where Michael Lee Platt worked for his father-in-law's company Mattix met his wife Patricia Buchanick post discharge whilst at the Walter Reed Army Hospital receiving treatment for a stutter the couple settled in Columbus, Ohio where Patricia worked at the Riverside Methodist Hospital as a lab assistant whilst Mattix went to school and aviation mechanics training Now I know this is a lot of preamble but both men, although living in different parts of the country, would be drawn back together after a horrific murder mysterious deaths It is the afternoon of the 30th of December 1983 and Joyce McFadden and Patricia Mattix are working in the laboratory at the Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio They were known as salient broke into the lab bound the two women and cut their throats Mattix was the prime suspect but no evidence linked him to the slayings he was able to cash in the $350,000 life insurance policy and encouraged by Platt moved down to Florida By now, Platt had just quit a landscaping company he created with his brother and now employment free sought to form a new tree cutting company with Mattix which was called Yankee Tree Cutting But it wouldn't be just Mattix's wife that met a grisly end On the 21st of December 1984 Platt's wife of nine years, Regina was found dead from a single gunshot blast to the mouth Again, like his friend Platt was the prime suspect but lack of evidence led the coroner to rule her death as self-inflicted Stranger still, Platt remarried just one month later in January 1985 followed by Mattix remarrying in May 1985 as well and oh boy, 1985 would be a rollercoaster year for pretty much anyone the two came into contact with the crime spree bizarrely both men before 1985 had no criminal record apart from the cases of wife death they weren't on the police's radar at least before what was to come they did have an odd running with the law in early 1985 over a broken vending machine the two had bought one via mail order and got into a dispute with the seller death threats and the like were made but no criminal charges came from it Mattix and Platt aged 34 and 32 respectively undertook the first part of their spree this would involve stealing a getaway car on the 5th of October 1985 they found a car perfect for the job parked up at a rock pit in the Everglades it was a gold coloured Chevrolet Monte Carlo but there was a problem Emilio Braille its owner Braille was shot dead Mattix and Platt hid his body and drove off with his car Braille's remains wouldn't be found until March 1986 on the 9th of October Platt and Mattix undertook their first robbery this was an attack on a loomis armored car both men were wearing what was described as paramilitary gear and carried either AR-15s or M-16 type weapons the duo got away with $2,800 although they failed to get the total of $400,000 on board due to the armored car's driver getting away a day later the duo struck again this time a Wells Fargo truck one of the guards was shot in the leg a small gunfight ensued and both men got away empty handed the injured guard later died in hospital on the 17th of October the two men struck again another loomis armored car shots from the guard erupted straight away a couple of weeks would go by before another robbery would take place on the 8th of November two bank robberies took place on South Dixie Highway netting Mattix and Platt the best part of $50,000 the next glut of robberies hit in 1986 beginning with the 10th of January attack on a Brinks armored car at Barnett Bank in Miami one guard was shot in the back first by shotgun then twice more with an AR type weapon but amazingly he survived the two made off with $54,000 and were seen dumping Emilio Braille's Chevrolet and switching to a white Ford needing a new getaway car they shot and robbed Jose Colasso on the 12th of March as he was shooting targets at a rock pit in the Florida Evergrades they drove off in his black Chevrolet Monte Carlo this is definitely feeling a bit deja vu at least to make a new cartoon I only need to do this again in a case of amazing luck Colasso survived reporting the crime after walking for 3 miles with a gunshot wound their final robbery involved hitting up the same bank as a January heist and this happened on the 19th of March 1986 this robbery got them just over $8,000 the suspects fled in Colasso's vehicle this string of robberies and murder unsurprisingly garnered the interest from the FBI they didn't know who the assailants were but they knew they had to stop them and this would come on the 11th of April 1986 the shootout a team of 14 FBI agents in 11 cars sought to capture the offenders and stop the month's long spree that had left death in its wake clearly the two men were a menace to the public Colasso's survival was instrumental to identifying the potential vehicle the robbers would be using as such the FBI team led by special agent Gordon McNeil were conducting a rolling stakeout to find the black 1979 Monte Carlo at 9.30 am two agents, Grogan and Dove spotted what they thought to be the suspect's car they followed and two other FBI vehicles joined with a 3 to 1 car advantage with more on route a traffic stop was planned Mattix and Platt were forced off the road and a number of collisions occurred between the cars resulting in a 1979 Chevrolet impacting head on with a tree on 12201 south west 82nd avenue their car was wedged in front and pinned between a parked car and FBI officer Maneuze's vehicle the force of the collision Maneuze's weapon off the passenger seat the eight agents armory to hand were two Remington 870 shotguns three Smith & Wesson model 459 9mm semi-automatic pistols and the rest of the six were armed with Smith & Wesson revolvers now don't get me wrong, I would not like to be shot at with these but it would soon become apparent that they had brought spoons to a knife fight Mattix and Platt had a Smith & Wesson model 3012 gauge pump shotgun Aruga Mini 14 Remington semi-automatic rifle with folding stock a Smith & Wesson model 586 357 magnum revolver and a Dan Wesson 357 magnum revolver Maneuze unarmed was hit with a shotgun blast from Mattix and exchanging gunfire between the agents and Mattix and Platt ensued the first agent to land a hit was Grogan as Mattix leaned out of the Monte Carlo to fire a shotgun shell at Grogan & Dove the two agents were behind the assailants vehicle agent Maneuze ran down the road and was shot in the arm by Platt with his Aruga rifle another shotgun blast hit Grogan & Dove's car McNeil who was now there returned fire with six shots from his revolver hitting Mattix in the head and neck twice Mattix was knocked out by this a shot back from Platt hit McNeil in the hand Platt climbed out of the wrecked Chevrolet only to be hit by one of Dove's 9mm rounds in the arm the bullet penetrated his chest and lung out of the car Platt now made his way across the parked car he had been wedged between catching another two bullets now behind the parked car Platt returned fire hitting McNeil in the neck in the gunfire Dove's pistol became inoperable and both Grogan and Dove now needing behind the car were attempting to get the weapon operational again during this time Platt managed to flank the men and shot both of them dead he entered Dove's and Grogan's car and attempted to start it miraculously at the same point Mattix had regained consciousness and joined his accomplice in an attempt to get away Miles drew his 357 magnum revolver moving along the street next to the car firing six rounds at the suspects two in the face for Mattix and one in the chest for Platt the gunfight was over Mattix's only one had escaped injury four were dead Grogan and Dove and the two assailants in only five minutes 145 shots between the two groups were fired aftermath both of the culprit's wives were shocked to find out what their husbands had been up to they apparently hadn't seen any money and without them at least admitting to know a motive was hard to find okay of course they wanted the money but why in 1985 after many years in the forces and in civilian life in the culprit's autopsies it was found Platt's wound to his chest had caused a collapsed lung allowing 1.3 litres of blood to fill his chest this meant even if he had got away he likely would have died soon after a toxicology report on both men came back clear meaning they were running on just adrenaline which is pretty scary the FBI placed partial blame on the weapons issued to the agents for the shootout's deadly result they lacked the stopping power of the two long guns with the eight agents only one was deployed the rest of the gunfight was slug out with service revolvers and a handful of 9mm pistols the shootout would change the guns FBI agents would be supplied with to harder hitting weapons some of the wider team did have MP5 submachine guns and M16 rifles but they hadn't reached the shootout in time the event would push for wider adoption of larger guns for all agents involved in apprehending violent criminals only two of the agents had ballistic vests which were rated for pistol caliber rounds hardly a match for Platt's Remington but definitely better than nothing in memorial to the two slain agents the village of Pinecrest, Florida named the road that the gunfight took place on agent Benjamin Grogan Avenue and agent Jerry Dove Avenue this is a plain difficult video all videos on the channel are creative commas actuation share or like licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently sunny corner of southern London UK I'd like to thank my Patrons and YouTube members for your financial support and the rest of you for tuning in every week for your dose of plain difficult videos if you're enjoying this outro song you can check it out on my second channel made by John and if you fancy looking up on my videos I have Twitter and Instagram all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music plays out please just a quick thing before we start if you want to see all of the B-roll footage from this video you can over on my second channel and the link will be in the description this big beauty is a cantaloupe and it cost me a whopping two quid I don't think I've ever actually cut one up before don't be too surprised I'm not much of a melon fan something about the texture and the wateriness of them just doesn't make me want to eat them I'm kind of the same with cucumbers as well anyway why am I cutting one up? Mrs Plainly isn't a fan of them either and our daughter prefers mango well this rather unassuming fruit would become the centre of one of the largest food contamination cases in recent US history and depending on who you ask whether the worst or second worst who would have thought this unassuming fruit could be so deadly and just a quick warning before slicing this I went a little bit mad with the B-roll footage welcome to Plainly of Cool today we are looking at the United States 2011 Listeria outbreak it is the 28th of August 2011 and the Colorado Department for Health and Environment has noticed a small spike in Listeriosis the first patient had been taken to hospital on the 15th of August Listeriosis is not uncommon with between 800 and 1600 cases reported per year throughout the United States but this little spike which by the 2nd of September was at 7 known cases hinted just slightly as a potential outbreak the Colorado Department for Health and Environment reported this to the centre for disease control now the next bit will quickly run over the days leading up to the CDC's announcement of the outbreak this runs roughly day by day until the 12th of September 2011 and serves to show what happens behind the scenes before the public are made aware the strains of Listeria the patients have been infected with are defined on the 6th of September in doing so allowing the CDC to link any other infections to identify an outbreak you see it is vital to find out if a person is part of an outbreak or just a single occurrence because an untracked outbreak can be pretty bad news on the same day 2 more persons were identified one from Nebraska and another from Texas hinting at the outbreak becoming a multi-state affair 7 of the patients were interviewed and asked what they had eaten this is easier said than done as Listeria bacteria can take up to 2 months to cause symptoms each victim was given a standard CDC questionnaire from this cantaloupes were identified and 3 of the questionnaires even gave a brand Rocky Ford Cantaloupe a day later on the 7th of September the CDC began a multi-state investigation and armed with this vital information they began to zero in on the outbreak cause on the 8th of September the CDC issued a supplemental questionnaire created by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to learn more about the cantaloupes by the ill persons at the same time cantaloupes had been gathered by Colorado officials at retail outlets across the state that the ill persons had shopped at for testing on the 9th of September the FDA also collected cantaloupes from the same shops for Listeria testing and the state of Colorado issued warnings to at-risk demographics to the risks of eating contaminated fruit just a day later on the 10th of September the FDA and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment had zeroed in on a potential source of the cantaloupes gents and farms on the same day gents and farms distributor issued a recall of all cantaloupes on the 11th of September preliminary traceback investigations and cantaloupe samples collected by the CDP-HE were contaminated with Listeria hinting that cantaloupes produced and packed at gents and farms marketed as Rocky Fort for the source of the outbreak on the 12th of September the outbreak was officially announced to the public by the CDC stating that 15 people in four states had been infected and this number like most outbreaks would only be the tip of the deadly iceberg the anachronym city of the CDC the FDA and CDP-HE had identified the source impressively quickly however the crop that had been identified as the epicenter was roughly of 300,000 cantaloupes and it doesn't need me to tell you that this is a lot of potential sickness bombs on the 14th of September the FDA announced that gents and farms had issued a voluntary recall of all of their produce but before we continue let's look at what Listeria is and how it can make you very ill and potentially kill you Listeria or more precisely for today's video Listeria monocytogenes is a species of pathogenic bacteria that causes the infection Listeriosis it is named after Quaker surgeon and absolute mad lad Joseph Lister his name is also what has been lent to the mouthwash Listerine any who's Listeria monocytogenes can grow on uncooked meats, uncooked vegetables fruits, pasteurized or unpasteurized milk foods made from milk and some processed foods if contaminated food is consumed it can result in a condition called Listeriosis this happens during digestion when the bacteria penetrates the intestinal tract to cause systemic infections Listeriosis preys on people with weakened immune systems the elderly or pregnant women a person with Listeriosis will usually show a fever muscle aches preceded by diarrhea and other gastrointestinal symptoms symptoms can onset as late as two months post exposure and the disease has a mortality rate of around 25% it is usually treated in the form of antibiotics most particularly ampicillin death toll rises on the 16th of September a sample of cantaloupe collected by the CDPHE from two retail locations stores supplied by gents and farms shows an outbreak strain of Listeria and just a few days later the same strain was shown on samples taken from the farm directly a report was released by the CDC on the 21st of September bringing a number of deaths to 13 and a number of confirmed cases to 72 the next day the FDA assisted by Colorado state and local officials begins environmental assessments at gents and farms by the end of September the cases number had risen to 84 the number of deaths had grown to 15 and the number of states involved was 19 the numbers of infected would continue to increase remember that it can take up to two months from infection to onset of illness the CDC would continue updating the public all the way until August 2012 a full year after the initial cases this is because linking deaths and sickness to the outbreak takes time where blood samples need to be taken and the L monocytogenes be cultured from it the final numbers of infected were 147 cases with 33 deaths fatalities occurred in the following states Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana Maryland, Missouri, Montana Nebraska, New Mexico, New York Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming among the persons who died ages ranged between under one to over 96 years sadly on top of this one woman who was pregnant at the time of illness had a miscarriage but how did L monocytogenes make its way into the food chain in the first place well, spoiler alert it would be gents and farms fault the investigation now the FDA knew gents and farms was the cause for more extensive patient sample and on-site testing but that's not the end of the story you see cantaloupes aren't the most common source of an outbreak usually it's unpasteurized milk and certain cheeses the FDA found four separate Listeria monocytogenes strains in the cantaloupe crop which they thought was rather unusual during their investigation on gents and farms they found Listeria on rusty machinery it was later discovered that much of the equipment had been bought recently second hand from a potato farm standing water inside the packing plant was also found to contain Listeria and had been tracked about the facility by staff on their shoes infected water was also found on the conveyor belts that had transported the cantaloupes but although the bacteria was found on site the FDA weren't certain as to how it had reached it Listeria is known to be found in soil but samples taken from the farm came back clear which again was pretty strange Eric and Ryan Jensen, the brothers who owned gents and farms in Colorado were interviewed by the FDA but Jensons were in charge of maintaining equipment that would wash cantaloupes with antibacterial solutions to sufficiently combat contamination however it was found that the Jensons did not outfit their conveyor systems with a chlorine spray instead opting to wash the cantaloupes with city water for a longer period of time this was the first year that they had used the second hand ex-potato farm equipment and the FDA had clearly seen that it not been properly maintained or cleaned it was also found that the machinery was difficult to clean as well with many places being hard to reach it was found that Jensons farms also did not pre-call the cantaloupe before putting it into cold storage by not removing the field heat it created condensation creating an ideal condition full of growth of listeria Jensons farms filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and shortly after criminal charges came anocking the charges were for the apparent negligence in equipment maintenance both brothers played guilty they were sentenced to 5 years probation 6 months home detention and $150,000 each in restitution fees to the victims now the disaster is going to rate as a bad day at the office mainly because the Jensons weren't intentionally negligent however still quite a few people died and I'm going to give this disaster a 6 on my legacy scale this is a plain default production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain default videos are produced by me in a currently just a bit grey and boring corner of southern London UK thanks to my patreons and youtube members for your financial support and a recipe for