Here are four horrifyingly devastating incidents that you should think about the next time you're about to fall asleep at work.

In order to function like a well-oiled machine (which I now realize is a somewhat redundant metaphor, considering that I'm talking about technology here), technological devices often require hundreds, or even thousands, of tiny parts working together in glorious mechanical harmony. Unfortunately, this also means that the slightest miscalculation, error, or forgotten detail inevitably spells disaster, the intensity of which increases exponentially with the level of complexity of the device in question (discounting the butterfly effect or Murphy's Law, of course, in which case anything and EVERYTHING can annihilate life on Earth, with proper timing). A few droplets of water inside a cellphone could mean that you'd need to buy a new one, while a few droplets inside a stealth bomber's sensor means that very expensive things will explode and heads will certainly roll.

Here are four examples of accidents that could have and should have been avoided, had anyone bothered to be extremely careful and/or double-check everything before pressing the big red LAUNCH button.

An AOL Information Leak Tells Everyone About, Well, Everyone

Way back in 2006, AOL researcher Abdur Chowdhury accidentally published the search data of its users, compiled over the course of three months. To put things into perspective, this would be akin to your VoIP provider calling everyone on your contacts list to tell them all of your darkest secrets…except multiply that by about 650,000. The problem with this is that, despite the lack of any usernames, ego searches (names, addresses, and social security numbers) identified users anyway. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this entire affair is the revelation of the search habits of a user identified only as "user 927", which included such wonderful topics as "cut into your trachea," "Simpsons incest," and "Disney Beauty and the Beast Porn". The data log was left online for an entire business day, which makes me wonder if this was just a silent attempt by AOL to unleash the sheer horror of user 927's search habits upon the world.

Humidity Completely Bricks a Stealth Bomber

Did you think that the stealth bomber incident I mentioned at the beginning of this article was just a hypothetical situation that I made up for (very dark) comedic purposes? Absolutely not. An unfortunate bit of mishandled communication resulted in crew members not being able to remind each other to check for humidity before calibrating the sensors on a highly sophisticated B2 bomber, resulting in a spectacular 1.4 billion-dollar crash in 2008. The funny thing about 1.4 billion-dollar crashes is that there is actually nothing funny about a 1.4 billion-dollar crash. Yep, I got nothing.

The Mars Climate Orbiter Just… Vanishes

In 1999, some extremely talented folk at NASA succeeded where many aspiring magicians failed: they actually managed to make something completely disappear, even from interplanetary radar. The Mars Climate Orbiter, which was supposed to be the first step in mankind's seemingly never-ending quest to find new places to populate and subsequently pollute, was built by a team of contractors based in Maryland. The engineering team, Lockheed Martin, used English units of measurement in putting the Orbiter together. Unfortunately, our guys at NASA, who weren't informed of this, used the Metric system during an important space mission. Much like how the tower of Babel was never completed because nobody could understand what the heck everyone else was saying, the Mars Climate Orbiter took one good look at the instructions it was provided, said "nope" with conviction, and proceeded to drift away on its own. It is probably busy devising a system of measurement of its own somewhere in space, because everything else can go burn, that's why.

The Wrong Type of Element Almost Caused Nuclear Armageddon 

How important is lithium, aside from the fact that it's the third element in the darn periodic table that everyone had to study for science class? Pretty freaking important, apparently. When scientists in 1954 were conducting a hydrogen bomb test, they didn't have the proper kind of lithium to put in the bomb. Throwing caution to the wind – as scientists are wont to do, given their totally wild and devil-may-care lifestyles – they used whatever they had available and went on with the test. I imagine them high-fiving one another with science-y smugness, beaming with pride because of their radioactive rebellion. Unfortunately, Mother Science tends to hate people who can't follow instructions to the letter, and so the residents of the islands near Bikini Atoll were forcibly treated to the most horrifyingly large mushroom cloud they'd ever seen in their entire lives. It was so bad that the soil around the area is still toxic, even after decades of everybody just staying the hell out of that place.

So yeah, next time, make sure to double-check that spreadsheet, unless you want to "accidentally" blow up your office.

Author Bio
Monique Jones is an Engineer who deals with telephone systems. Besides being an Engineer, she also works as a part time writer. She helps her colleagues and other people about their communication issues, giving effective solutions to address their needs.