The most famous tragedy The worst natural disasters in history

The worship of the four natural elements can be traced in many philosophical and religious movements. Certainly, modern man thinks it's funny. He, like the hero of Turgenev's novel, Yevgeny Bazarov, considers nature not a temple, but rather a workshop. However, nature often reminds of its omnipotence, throwing people natural disasters. And then there is nothing left but to pray to the elements for mercy. Throughout its history, which only natural disasters do not interfere with human life.

Element earth

The epicenter was in Shaanxi province. Today it is difficult to say what its magnitude was, but some scientists, based on geological data, call 8 points. But the essence is not so much in its power, but in the number of victims - 830 thousand people. This number of victims is the largest among all earthquakes.

2.2 billion cubic meters - these are the scales, or rather volumes, of a landslide, all this loose material has slid down from the slopes of the Muzkolsky ridge (height - 5 thousand meters above sea level). The village of Usoy was completely littered, the flow of the Mugrab River stopped, a new lake Sarez appeared, which, growing, flooded several more villages.

Element water

The most devastating flooding also occurred in China. The season was rainy, resulting in flooding of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. In total, about 40 million people were affected, 4 million people died. In some places, the water came down only after six months.

Although why look for natural disasters in Asian countries, when in 1824 a devastating flood occurred in. And today, on the walls of some old houses, you can see commemorative marks that demonstrate the then water level on the streets. Fortunately, the death toll did not reach a thousand, but no one knows the exact number of victims, many are missing.

This year there was one of the worst tsunamis in Europe. It affected many coastal countries, but Portugal suffered the most damage. The capital Lisbon was practically wiped off the face of the earth. More than 100 thousand people died, cultural and historical monuments disappeared, for example, paintings by Rubens and Caravaggio.

Element air

Hurricane San Calixto II, which raged for a week in the Lesser Antilles caribbean, took with him over 27 thousand lives of innocent people. There is no exact data on its strength, trajectory of movement, it is likely that its speed exceeded 320 km / h.

This powerful hurricane originated in the Atlantic basin, its maximum speed reached 285 km/h. 11 thousand people died and about the same number disappeared without a trace.

8.

We have witnessed this event. From the news stories, they watched the devastation of the hurricane, which killed 1,836 people and caused $ 125 billion in damage.

Element fire

That hot summer in Greece there were 3,000 fires. Territories with a total area of ​​2.7 thousand square meters were affected. km. These were agricultural lands, forests, olive groves. The fires claimed 79 lives.

Speaking of fire, how not to mention fiery eruptions. The powerful eruption of Krakatau that year destroyed the island itself, killing 2,000 people. The explosion of the volcano caused a tsunami that hit the neighboring islands, killing another 36 thousand people.

Major disasters XX century. Titanic and Wilhelm Gustlow
Perhaps the most famous maritime disaster of the last century was the shipwreck of the Titanic cruise ship in 1912. As a result, 1,523 people died.

However, this disaster is far from the biggest if you look at the number of deaths. The greatest maritime disaster that has ever happened can be called the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustlov liner by a Soviet submarine during World War II (in January 1945).
According to the most conservative estimates, the losses amounted to about 9,500 people.

Holifax's Atomic Bomb
December 6, 1917. That morning, the French military transport Mont Blanc entered the harbor of the Canadian port city of Halifax, en route from New York to Bordeaux. While entering the port, the Mont Blanc collided with the Norwegian cargo steamer Imo, which was just leaving Halifax.
In the holds of the French transport was ... 3,000 tons of explosives intended for the war with Germany! As a result of the collision, a strong fire broke out on the Mont Blanc.
After unsuccessful attempts to put out the fire, the crew began to hastily evacuate the ship.
And on the embankment of the city, crowds of people who came to stare at the fire were already gathering.
At 9 o'clock in the morning there was an explosion, which the world did not know before the advent of atomic bomb. The explosion to the bottom exposed the bay - the water under the ship seemed to part.
Dozens of ships in the port sank. Almost all port and coastal facilities within a radius of five hundred meters were literally blown away by the shock wave. More than 3,000 people died that day, 2,000 were missing, and about 9,000 people were injured.
All that remains of the bomb ship is a 100-kilogram piece of the hull that flew as far as 22 kilometers!

The only photograph of the explosion in the port of Halifax on December 6, 1917. The picture was taken from a distance of 20 km.

Major disasters of the 20th century. G Orc Hour "Maxim Gorky"

On May 18, 1935, the largest aircraft of that time, the Maxim Gorky, took off from the Moscow airfield at Khodynskoye Pole. This celestial giant was built as the flagship of a special propaganda air squadron.
The plane was amazing. Length - more than 30 meters, wingspan - 63 meters, 8 motors. The aircraft could take on board 72 passengers and crew members, which was a record figure for the aviation of those years.

On that day, 11 crew members and 36 passengers were on board the plane - employees of a Moscow aviation institute with their families. A few minutes after takeoff, an escort fighter crashed into Maxim Gorky.
The fighter pilot made a mistake in performing a complex maneuver. He was ordered specifically for the press to perform a “dead loop” around a giant aircraft ... The window dressing cost the lives of 47 people.

Major disasters of the 20th century. Superfire on a superairship
May 6, 1937 in New Jersey (USA) there was a catastrophe of the German super-airship "Hindenburg". The airship had unimaginable dimensions: length - 245 meters, diameter - about 40 meters, volume - 200 thousand cubic meters of hydrogen!
It was the biggest aircraft throughout the history of aviation.

He took on board about a hundred passengers and crew members, developed a speed of up to 140 kilometers per hour and could stay in the air for several days. The Hindenburg was on its 18th transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to New York. The landing site was Leyhurst, a suburb of New York. However, during landing, a fire broke out on the airship. The flame in 34 seconds completely destroyed the "pride and greatness of Germany." The tragedy claimed the lives of 35 people. With this catastrophe began the rapid decline of the era of passenger airships.

The airship caught fire while docking with the mooring mast.

Major disasters of the 20th century. Admiral's death
And yet the biggest disaster in the history of aeronautics occurred on April 4, 1933. During a storm in the Atlantic Ocean, the Akron airship, which belonged to the US Navy, crashed. Of the 76 people on board, 73 were killed.
Akron was one of the largest airships in the world.

So he could carry five aircraft. As Akron flew past the Barnegat Lighthouse in New Jersey, strong wind. The airship sank and collapsed on impact with the water. 73 people died. Only three managed to escape. This disaster was the end point of the service of airships in the fleet. After all, the main supporter of this, Admiral Moffet, died on the Akron.

Major disasters of the 20th century. Mercedes victims
The biggest accident in the history of motor racing occurred in 1955 at Le Mans (France). A Mercedes-Benz driven by famous racer Pierre Levegh crashed into the stands at high speed and exploded. 83 people died, including Pierre Levegh.

Major disasters of the 20th century. Boeing to Boeing
On March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747s collided at Tenerife Airport (Canary Islands), killing 583 people. This plane crash was the largest in terms of the number of victims in the history of civil aviation.

And the largest plane crash in the history of Soviet aviation occurred on July 10, 1985. As a result of a crew error, the Aeroflot Tu-154 went into a tailspin and crashed near the city of Uchkuduk (Uzbekistan). All 200 people on board were killed ...

Major disasters of the 20th century. 73 seconds of Challenger

On January 28, 1986, the largest catastrophe in the history of astronautics occurred. On that day, from the spaceport at Cape Canaveral (Florida, USA) launched spaceship Challenger with seven astronauts on board. This event received special attention. TV broadcasters broadcast this launch directly from the cosmodrome.

The crew included two women. One of them, teacher Krista McAuliffe, was supposed to teach a geography lesson for the first time in the history of mankind while in low Earth orbit. In addition to thousands of spectators, President Ronald Reagan and his wife were also present at Cape Canaveral.
At the 73rd second of the flight, at an altitude of 17,000 meters, due to a malfunction in the engines, the Challenger exploded. Several hundred tons of rocket fuel incinerated the ship in the blink of an eye, leaving the astronauts no chance of salvation.

Fifteen years later, on February 1, 2003, another American space shuttle, the Shuttle Columbia, broke apart while returning from orbit. All seven crew members on board were killed.

Major disasters of the 20th century. Disappeared area
On June 4, 1988, a powerful deafening explosion was heard on the northwestern outskirts of the city of Arzamas.
Three wagons of freight train No. 3115 exploded, en route to Arzamas-16 from Dzerzhinsk. The wagons contained about 118 tons of explosives intended for mining enterprises. As a result of an explosion of monstrous force, 1530 residential buildings, a huge funnel with a diameter of 52 meters and a depth of 26 meters (the height of a nine-story building) was formed.

The blast wave lifted into the air everything in the region of half a kilometer from the epicenter. In a matter of seconds, a whole neighborhood of Zheleznodorozhnikov was wiped off the face of the earth.
According to the most rough estimates, 1,500–2,000 people suffered that day.

Major disasters of the 20th century. deadly cloud
On June 4, 1989, the largest railway accident in the history of Russia and the USSR occurred near Ufa. At the time of the passage of two passenger trains, there was an explosion of gas that oozed from the pipe of a nearby pipeline.

According to official data, 573 people died (according to other sources - 645), 623 became disabled, having received severe burns and bodily injuries. There were 181 children among the dead. The power of the explosion was estimated at 300 tons of trinitrotoluene. The fire caused by the explosion covered an area of ​​about 250 hectares.

PS.
It is impossible not to mention another catastrophe that occurred on September 11, 2001. On the morning of this day, a group of 19 terrorists captured 4 aircraft at once. Two of them were aimed at the towers of the World shopping center, which led to the complete destruction of skyscrapers. A third plane crashed into the Pentagon near Washington, and another crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Then 246 people died in the planes. In total, as a result of the global attack of terrorists, 2977 people became victims. Footage of those events spread around the world.

Scientific and technological progress makes life easier for a person, but also leads to man-made accidents. So it was at all times. We will talk about the five most severe disasters in the history of the USSR.

Kurenevskaya tragedy

The Kurenevskaya tragedy occurred in Kiev on March 13, 1961. On December 2, 1952, a decision was made to create a landfill from construction waste in the notorious place of Babi Yar. This place was blocked by a dam, which protected the Kurenevsky district from the merged waste from the brick factories. On March 13, the dam broke, and a mud wave 14 meters high rushed down Teligi Street. The stream had great strength and washed away everything in its path: cars, trams, buildings.

Although the flood lasted only an hour and a half, during this time a wave of waste managed to claim the lives of hundreds of people and cause catastrophic damage to the entire city. The exact number of victims could not be established, but this figure is close to 1.5 thousand people. In addition, about 90 buildings were destroyed, about 60 of which were residential.

The news of the disaster reached the population of the country only on March 16, and on the day of the tragedy, the authorities decided not to advertise what had happened. For this, international and long-distance communications were disabled throughout Kiev. Later, the expert commission issued a decision on the causes of this accident, they called "mistakes in the design of hydraulic dumps and the dam."

Radiation accident at the Krasnoye Sormovo plant

The radiation accident at the Krasnoye Sormovo plant, which was located in Nizhny Novgorod, occurred on January 18, 1970. The tragedy occurred during the construction of the K-320 nuclear submarine, which was part of the Skat project. When the boat was on the slipway, the reactor suddenly turned on, which worked for 15 seconds at its maximum speed. As a result, radiation contamination of the entire machine assembly shop occurred.
At the time of operation of the reactor, there were about 1,000 people working at the plant in the room. Unaware of the infection, many went home that day without the necessary medical care and decontamination treatment. Three of the six victims taken to a hospital in Moscow died of radiation sickness. It was decided not to make this incident public, and all those who survived were taken non-disclosure subscriptions for 25 years. And only the next day after the accident, the workers began to process. The liquidation of the consequences of the accident continued until April 24, 1970, more than a thousand workers of the plant were involved in these works.

accident on Chernobyl nuclear power plant

The Chernobyl disaster occurred on April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The reactor was completely destroyed in the explosion, and in environment a huge amount was thrown radioactive substances. The accident was the largest in the history of nuclear energy. Main damaging factor The explosion was radioactive. In addition to the territories located in close proximity to the explosion (30 km), the territory of Europe was affected. This was due to the fact that the cloud formed from the explosion carried radioactive materials many kilometers away from the source. The fallout of iodine and cesium radionuclides was recorded on the territory of modern Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation.

During the first three months after the accident, 31 people died, while over the next 15 years, another 60 to 80 people died from the consequences of the accident. More than 115 thousand people were evacuated from the 30-kilometer affected area. More than 600,000 servicemen and volunteers took part in the liquidation of the accident. The course of the investigation was constantly changing. The exact cause of the accident has not yet been determined.

Kyshtym accident

The Kyshtym accident was the first man-made disaster in the USSR, it happened on September 29, 1957. It happened at the Mayak plant, which was located in the closed military city of Chelyabinsk-40. The accident was named after the closest city of Kyshtym.

The reason was an explosion that occurred in a special tank for radioactive waste. This container was a smooth cylinder, which was made of stainless steel. The design of the vessel seemed to be reliable, and no one expected that the cooling system would fail.
An explosion occurred, as a result of which about 20 million curies of radioactive substances were released into the atmosphere. About 90 percent of the radiation fell on the territory of the Mayak chemical plant itself. Fortunately, Chelyabinsk-40 was not damaged. During the liquidation of the accident, 23 villages were resettled, and the houses themselves and domestic animals were destroyed.

No one died as a result of the explosion. However, the employees who carried out the elimination of the infection received a significant dose of radiation. About a thousand people took part in the operation. Now this zone is called the East Ural radioactive trace and any economic activity in this territory is prohibited.

Disaster at the Plesetsk cosmodrome

On March 18, 1980, an explosion occurred while preparing for the launch of the Vostok 2-M launch vehicle. The incident took place at the Plesetsk cosmodrome. This accident led to a large number of human casualties: only in the immediate vicinity of the rocket at the time of the explosion there were 141 people. 44 people died in the fire, the rest received burns of varying severity and were taken to the hospital, later four of them died.

The fact that hydrogen peroxide was used as catalytic materials led to the fact that in the manufacture of filters. Only thanks to the courage of the participants in this accident, many people were able to get out of the fire. The liquidation of the disaster lasted for three days.
In the future, scientists abandoned the use of hydrogen peroxide as a catalyst, which made it possible to avoid such incidents.

Catastrophes often occur due to an absurd coincidence of events and lead to irreparable consequences. Recently, environmental disasters have most often occurred, leaving huge scars on the body of our planet. We have prepared a selection of the largest disasters that have cost mankind record amounts. So, to your attention are the 10 largest and most expensive man-made disasters, most of which occurred during the last century.

In the first place is the most global man-made environmental disaster - the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. This catastrophe cost the world 200 billion dollars, despite the fact that the liquidation work is not even half completed. On April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear accident in history occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the former USSR. More than 135,000 people who lived within a 30 kilometers (19 miles) radius of the destroyed reactor - and 35,000 livestock - were evacuated; around the station, located near the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, an exclusion zone of unprecedented size was created. In this forbidden territory, nature itself had to cope with high level radiation caused by the disaster. As a result, the exclusion zone essentially turned into a giant laboratory where an experiment was set up - what happens to plants and animals in conditions of catastrophic nuclear contamination of the area? Immediately after the disaster, when everyone was worried about the dire consequences of radioactive fallout for human health, few people thought about what would happen to the wildlife inside the zone - and even more so about monitoring what was happening.

The Chernobyl disaster will long remain the largest and costliest environmental catastrophe. In second place is the explosion of the US space shuttle Columbia, which cost $13 billion, which is 20 times less in cost and millions of times less in environmental impact.

The Columbia shuttle was the first operational reusable orbiter. It was made in 1979 and transferred to NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The shuttle Columbia was named after the sailboat that Captain Robert Gray explored the inland waters of British Columbia in May 1792. The space shuttle Columbia died in a crash on February 1, 2003, while entering the Earth's atmosphere, before landing. This was Columbia's 28th space voyage. Information from hard drive Columbia was able to recover, the causes of the crash were identified, which made it possible to avoid such disasters in the future.

In third place is again an ecological disaster. On November 13, 2002, the oil tanker Prestige exploded, spilling 77,000 tons of fuel into the ocean, making it the largest oil spill in European history. Losses in the course of work to eliminate the oil slick amounted to 12 billion dollars.

Fourth place - the death of the shuttle Challenger. Nothing foreshadowed the tragedy during the launch of the Challenger space shuttle on January 28, 1986, but 73 seconds after launch, it exploded. This accident cost American taxpayers $5.5 billion.

In fifth place The explosion on the oil platform Piper Alpha - occurred on July 6, 1988, which is recognized as the most terrible disaster in the history of the oil industry. The accident cost $3.4 billion.


Piper Alpha is the world's only burned-out oil platform. As a result of a gas leak and subsequent explosion, as well as as a result of ill-considered and indecisive actions of the personnel, 167 people out of 226 who were on the platform at that moment died, only 59 survived. Immediately after the explosion, oil and gas production was stopped on the platform, however, due to the fact that the pipelines of the platform were connected to the general network, through which hydrocarbons flowed from other platforms, and for a long time there was no production and supply of oil and gas to the pipeline. decided to stop (waiting for permission from the top management of the company), a huge amount of hydrocarbons continued to flow through pipelines, which supported the fire.

Ecology is in sixth place again. The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred on March 24, 1989. This is the largest oil spill in human history. More than 11 million gallons of oil entered the water. $2.5 billion was spent to eliminate the consequences of this ecological catastrophe.

Seventh place - the explosion of a B-2 stealth bomber. The crash occurred on February 23, 2008, and cost US taxpayers a million and a half dollars. Fortunately, no one was hurt, only financial costs followed.

Eighth place - Metrolink passenger train crash. The train collision that occurred on September 12, 2008 in California is more about negligence. Two trains collide, 25 dead, MetroLink loses $500 million

In ninth place, the collision of a fuel tanker and a passenger car took place on August 26, 2004 on the Wiehltal bridge in Germany. This catastrophe, which occurred on August 26, 2004, can be attributed to accidents on the roads. They happen often, but this one surpassed everything in scale. The car, passing over the bridge at full speed, crashed into a full fuel truck going to the meeting, an explosion occurred, which practically destroyed the bridge. By the way, the restoration work of the bridge took 358 million dollars.

The death of the Titanic closes the top ten most expensive catastrophes. The tragedy occurred on April 15, 1912 and claimed 1523 human lives. The cost of building the ship amounted to $ 7 million (in today's exchange rate - $ 150 million).

Catastrophes have been known since ancient times - these are volcanic eruptions, and powerful earthquakes, and tornadoes. In the last century, there have been many disasters on the water and terrible nuclear disasters.

Worst water disasters

Man has been sailing on sailboats, boats, ships across the vastness of the oceans and seas for hundreds of years. During this time, there have been a huge number of disasters, shipwrecks and accidents.

In 1915, a British passenger liner was torpedoed by a German submarine. The ship sank in eighteen minutes, being at a distance of thirteen kilometers from the coast of Ireland. One thousand one hundred and ninety-eight people died.

In April 1944, in the port of Bombay, an terrible disaster. It all started with the fact that when unloading a single-screw steamer, which was loaded with gross violations of safety regulations, there was a strong explosion. It is known that the ship had one and a half tons of explosives, several tons of cotton, sulfur, wood, gold bars. After the first explosion, there was a second. The burning cotton scattered in a radius of almost a kilometer. Almost all ships, warehouses were burning, fires started in the city. It took only two weeks to put them out. As a result, about two and a half thousand people ended up in hospitals, and one thousand three hundred and seventy-six people were killed. The port was restored only after seven months.

The most famous of the disasters on the water is the death of the Titanic. Colliding with an iceberg during the first voyage, the ship sank. More than one and a half thousand people died.

In December 1917, near the city of Halifax, the French warship Mont Blanc collided with the Norwegian ship Imo. There was a strong explosion, which led to the destruction of not only the port, but also part of the city. The fact is that Mont Blanc was loaded exclusively with explosives. About two thousand people died, nine thousand were injured. This is the most powerful explosion of the pre-nuclear era.

Three thousand one hundred and thirty people died on a French cruiser after a torpedo attack by a German submarine in 1916. As a result of the torpedoing of the German floating hospital "General Steuben", about three thousand six hundred and eight people died.

In December 1987, a Philippine passenger ferry named Dona Paz collided with the tanker Vector. Four thousand three hundred and seventy-five people died in the process.

In May 1945, a tragedy occurred in the Baltic Sea, which claimed the lives of about eight thousand people. The cargo ship "Tilbek" and the liner "Cap Arkona" came under fire from British aircraft. As a result of the torpedoing of the Goya ship by a Soviet submarine in the spring of 1945, six thousand nine hundred people died.

"Wilhelm Gustlov" - the so-called German passenger liner, sunk by a submarine under the command of Marinesco in January 1945. The exact number of victims is unknown, approximately - it is nine thousand people.

The worst disasters in Russia

There are several terrible catastrophes that have occurred on the territory of Russia. So, in June 1989, one of the largest railway accidents in Russia occurred near Ufa. There was a huge explosion as two passenger trains. An unlimited cloud of fuel-air mixture exploded, which was formed due to an accident on a nearby pipeline. According to some sources, five hundred and seventy-five people died, according to others - six hundred and forty-five. Another six hundred people were wounded.

The worst environmental disaster in the world former USSR considered the death of the Aral Sea. For a number of reasons: soil, social, biological, the Aral Sea has almost completely dried up in fifty years. Most of its tributaries in the sixties were used for irrigation and some other agricultural purposes. The Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world. Since the inflow of fresh water was significantly reduced, the lake gradually died.

In the summer of 2012, a massive flood occurred in the Krasnodar Territory. It is considered the largest disaster in Russia. For two days in July, a five-month rainfall fell. The city of Krymsk was almost completely washed away by water. Officially, 179 people were declared dead, of which 159 were residents of Krymsk. More than 34 thousand local residents suffered.

The worst nuclear disasters

A huge number of people are exposed to nuclear disasters. So in April 1986, one of the power units of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. Radioactive substances released into the atmosphere settled on nearby villages and cities. This accident is one of the most devastating of its kind. Hundreds of thousands of people took part in the liquidation of the accident. Several hundred people died or were injured. A thirty-kilometer exclusion zone has been formed around the nuclear power plant. So far, the scale of the disaster has not been clarified.

In Japan in March 2011, an explosion occurred at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant during an earthquake. Because of this a large number of radioactive substances released into the atmosphere. At first, officials hushed up the scale of the disaster.

After the Chernobyl disaster, the most significant nuclear accident is considered to have occurred in 1999 in the Japanese city of Tokaimura. An accident occurred at a uranium processing plant. Six hundred people were exposed to radiation, four people died.

The worst disaster in human history

The explosion of an oil platform in Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The platform itself went under water after the explosion. As a result, a huge amount of oil products got into the oceans. The spill lasted one hundred and fifty-two days. The oil film covered an area equal to seventy-five thousand square kilometers in the Gulf of Mexico.

In terms of the number of victims, the largest disaster is considered to be that in December 1984, the year occurred in India in the city of Bhapol. There was a chemical leak at one of the factories. Eighteen thousand people died. Until now, the causes of this catastrophe have not been fully elucidated.

It is impossible not to say about the most terrible fire that occurred in London in 1666. The fire spread at lightning speed throughout the city, about seventy thousand houses were destroyed, about eighty thousand people died. The fire continued for four days.

Terrible are not only disasters, but also entertainment. The site has a rating of the scariest rides in the world.
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