For Want of a Nail

Rachel
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A podcast about small mistakes that lead to big disasters. Disasters, fires, plane crashes, spree killings, institutional breakdowns, murders...let's talk about awful things that didn't have to happen, and the ways in which they should have been prevented.

Episodes

  1. 09/01/2024

    "A most noxious diet.": The Swill Milk Scandal

    The young man is tired. His assignment that day had forced him up before the sun, tracking his target back to its resting place. And now that he is here, in this dark part of town with its hulking warehouses and polluted air, he wishes he had turned his boss down. Even outside the building, the smell is overpowering, filling his nose and lungs with its hot reek of rot, feces, sickness, and putrefying meat. Puzzled but determined, the young man slips inside past the workers smoking and laughing in the streets.   Inside it is as dark as a cave. The windowless building offers no succour, no comfort, from the horrors enfolded within. The smell, a foggy stink within the streets, is almost a physical entity here. It forces its way into the young man's nostrils, over his tongue, down his throat, gagging him and churning his stomach. It is through sheer force of will that he does not vomit. But that will dissolved when he rounds a last corner and sees the true horror. The sight of hundreds living in squalor, misery, and disease...and the knowledge that poison is being spread throughout the streets of the city. Poison that may well have caused the deaths of thousands of children.  Clapping a convulsive hand to his mouth, the young man rushes outside and vomits into the dirty street.  This is the swill milk scandal.

    29 min

  2. 01/21/2024

    "I have just given up.": The tragic deaths of Fiona Pilkington and Francecca Hardwick

    The car rolls into the layby, unnoticed in the darkness, and grinds to a halt on the dirt. She is crying at the wheel. Perhaps she knows what she is about to do is wrong, but for her, so far as she can see, there are no more options. This is the only avenue they have left her with.   In the back, her daughter starts to cry. It is late, she should be in bed. She is confused and tired, cuddling a shivering rabbit on her lap. Her mother rubs her face. They will rest soon. All of them.  She clambers out of the car, hefts the gas can, spins off the lid. The pungent liquid splashes across the hood, the roof, the seats. Her daughter's cries grow louder as the fluid strikes her and the fumes fill the car. As she climbs back in, the gasoline soaks into her coat and trousers, the smells stings her eyes. She takes her daughter's hand. She closes her eyes. She strikes a match.  This is the story of Fiona Pilkington and Francecca Hardwick.

    30 min

  3. 06/19/2023

    "Mom, I've done something terrible": The final rampage of Laurie Dann

    The young man stands in the sunwashed kitchen, sweat still drying on his skin. He cannot take his eyes from the young woman standing a few feet away, the young woman dressed only in a T-shirt and a plastic garbage bag wrapped around her waist. The young woman holding a gun on himself and his mother.   The young woman is agitated, fretting. She claims to have been raped, and to have shot her rapist, but she will not allow them to call 911 and refuses their offer of clothing. And she will not put the gun down. All that she will do is call her mother on the phone and say, “Mother, it's bad.”  When the man asks to speak to her mother, the young woman passes him the phone. But the woman on the other end of the line is calm, almost to the point of being disinterested. Her husband is not home, and she does not have a car, so she has no way of getting there to help her distressed daughter. No, she cannot take a cab. He cannot believe his ears. Her daughter has been raped, has killed a man, and is now in his home, threatening him and his mother with a gun. But no, she insists, seeming to find nothing noteworthy or distressing about his words.  As the young man stares at the intruder, sunlight gleaming off the handgun in her grip, he hears her mother say, “Make sure she gets home safe.”  Join us as we take a deep dive into the infuriating and tragic story of Laurie Dann and Nicky Corwin, and see just how the rampage of May 20, 1988 could have been prevented.

    1h 34m

  4. 02/15/2023

    "Men awakened but to die" - The Burning of the Sultana

    The engineer of the steamboat hears the crew, shouting and raging once again. His stomach turns as he hears their protests. He knows what the captain will say, and he knows why it is necessary, but he also understands why the crew is so repulsed, why they have threatened mutinies. They are military men, and the job they are being forced to do shocks and horrifies them.   The engineer can do little, as he approaches the massive paddlewheels that churn the muddy riverwater into a froth. Debris commonly becomes trapped in between the heavy, wooden slats, and must be cleared for the boat to move on. It's a common enough chore aboard Mississippi steamboats, but now no one wants to do it. No one wants to pull out the flotsam that is now clogging the massive wheels.   The engineer surveys the wheel, his stomach turning. Jammed in between the slats, dripping with mud, is not the usual mass of leaves and driftwood...but dozens of bodies, the corpses of drowned men.   This is the sinking of the S.S. Sultana.  Join us for a deep dive into America's worst maritime disaster, and the greed and negligence that lead to the deaths of over 1100 men, women, and children.

    56 min

  5. 09/01/2022

    "A tiny little thing": The Rana Plaza Collapse

    The young man weeps as he stands at his window. For months his mind has been dominated by the memory of falling masonry, his ears ringing with the screams of the dying, his nose choked by the stench of decomposing flesh. When he closes his eyes he can see them, the ones he was unable to save. The famous image, a woman with her head thrown back, a man with his arms around her and his head laid on her chest, blood running down his face, both of them encased in dust and crumbled concrete, locked in a final embrace. When he closes his eyes he can hear those he was able to save, their screams and the grinding of the hacksaw blade biting into bone, their limbs smashed beyond repair. There is no help. There is no respite. None then, and none now.  He opens the bottle, pours the liquid over his head. For a moment, the pungent smell of gasoline mercifully covers the stink of rot. It was two weeks of his life, only two weeks of his 27 years, but it has dominated his mind and broken his spirit, and he can take no more.   A few moments later, his neighbours shriek in horror as a flaming body drops from the young man's window. By the time the flames are beaten out, the screams have been silenced. He could take no more. And he is far from the only one.   This is the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse.  Join us for a deep dive into the world's worst non-deliberate structural collapse, and Bangladesh's worst industrial disaster, and the failings that lead to the deaths of over 1100 men, women, and children.

    59 min

  6. 07/27/2022

    The Pink Death: The Iraq Poison Grain Disaster

    The children are hungry, clamouring around their mother in the hot, dusty home. Their mother dusts her hands with flour and begins to flatten out the dough, pressing it into discs with her strong fingers before opening the tannour to press them against the hot, clay walls. A few minutes later she pulls the steaming bread from the oven, and the children squeal in delight as she hands out the fresh loaves. It's the pink bread, the bread made with the special flour their father brought home, and the bright colour delights them even more than the flavour. Their mother smiles, brushing the pinkish flour from her hands. She has no way of knowing that she has just fed poison into the mouths of her children. The children have no way of knowing that the bright pink colour that so enchants them is a sign that this bread is deadly. And as the mother nurses her newborn and marvels at what a well-behaved, quiet baby she has, she cannot know that her daughter never cries because she has already suffered crippling brain damage.  The Iraq Poison Grain Disaster was a mass poisoning that occurred in rural Iraq during late 1971 and early 1972.  Join me as I take a deep dive into why poisoned wheat and barley was released to the public, why the public didn't understand the danger of what they had received, and how the government made everything worse.  Like so many other disasters, the Iraq Poison Grain Disaster could have been prevented, and I'm going to tell you how.

    32 min

  7. 06/13/2022

    Genene Jones: The Death Nurse

    WARNING FOR CHILD DEATH.  The nurse slumps in a chair set in the corner of the room, sobs racking her body. Yet another small body lies cold and inert on the table nearby. They have spent days tending him, only for his little heart to repeatedly stop, for blood to ooze from his eyes and mouth. Not a single doctor can understand why. Time after time the ward fought to resuscitate him, the baby's heart had given out. The nurse who cared for him is inconsolable. In a few minutes, she will carry the tiny body down to the morgue, but for now she sits here, and she weeps.  A young doctor comes and puts an arm around her. The nurse looks up, her eyes red and filled with tears. Between sobs, she asks, “Why do babies always die when I'm around?”   This is the story of Genene Jones.

    1h 6m

  8. 05/01/2022

    The Awful Death of Terrell Peterson

    Terrell Peterson was a five-year-old boy who was brutally abused, neglected, and eventually killed by his grandmother and aunt.  But that's just the beginning of this infuriating tale.  Join me and we will talk about the mistakes, negligence, and outright indifference on the part of the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services that led to the death of Terrell Peterson. Warning for graphic discussion of child abuse and injury.

    44 min

  9. 03/15/2022

    Turkish Airlines Flight 981

    On March 3rd, 1974, Turkish Airlines Flight 981 all but fell out of the sky, resulting in the deaths of 346 people.  The resulting investigation and court case sent shock waves through the aviation industry.  Join me for a deep dive into the catastrophic series of errors and corporate negligence that caused the equally catastrophic crash of Turkish Airlines flight 981.

    49 min

  10. 01/18/2022

    The Station Nightclub Fire

    On February 20th, 2003, a rock concert at the Station Nightclub ended in tragedy.  With 100 dead and 230 injured, it was the fourth deadliest nightclub fire in American history.  What happened, why did it happen, and how could it have been prevented?  Join me for a deep dive into the tragedy of the Station Nightclub fire.

    57 min
  • 10 Episodes

About

A podcast about small mistakes that lead to big disasters. Disasters, fires, plane crashes, spree killings, institutional breakdowns, murders...let's talk about awful things that didn't have to happen, and the ways in which they should have been prevented.

Information

  • Creator
    Rachel
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2024
  • Episodes
    10
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2024 For Want of a Nail
  • Show Website
    For Want of a Nail