What Really Happened

The untold stories behind the headlines

Chernobyl, Piper Alpha, Fukushima, the Gimli Glider — forensic investigations into what really went wrong, and what changed because of it.

Series 5 · 10 Episodes · Audience: Investigative journalists, technology historians, senior engineers, curious professionals

Episodes

• Ep. 1: Buncefield — The tank that overflowed and created the largest European explosion since WWII (20 min read)
• Ep. 2: The Northeast Blackout of 2003 — How a software bug left 55 million people in the dark (18 min read)
• Ep. 3: Fukushima: The Disaster That Was a Design Choice — How cost-saving excavations and regulatory capture bypassed nature's warnings (20 min read)
• Ep. 5: Air France 447 — What happens when pilots do not understand their own automation (18 min read)
• Ep. 6: Chernobyl: The Safety Test — How a routine turbine test exposed a reactor design flaw and destroyed Unit 4 (19 min read)
• Ep. 7: The Therac-25 — When software killed patients (20 min read)
• Ep. 8: Thames Barrier — The £520m decision made 40 years before it was needed (17 min read)
• Ep. 9: The Gimli Glider — The Boeing 767 that ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet (20 min read)
• Ep. 10: Piper Alpha — 167 dead and the regulation that changed offshore forever (22 min read)
• Ep. 11: What These Ten Stories Share — The patterns behind industrial disasters, the humans inside the systems — and a note from the author (19 min read)