The tragedy of the Titanic

Titanic, officially known as the RMS Titanic was a British manufactured ship which sunk while already traveling about midway the distance to New York. Its thousands of passengers consisting from people trying to immigrate in the United States to some of the most wealthy people in the world going on a holiday.

In contrast to what most people think, the Titanic had quite advanced safety measures for its time, consisting but not being limited to: watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors. Due to the optimistic designers and the desire to keep costs low, the Titanic carried enough life boats for half of its passengers or 48 boats. The actual number of lifeboats the Titanic carried was a mere 20 and four of them did not launch as wanted during the sinking.

At midnight a collision with a iceberg occurred and 5 of the 16 air tight vents were filled bu water as the nails in the fuselage just popped out. The ‘unsinkable’ ship had just begun to sunk and due to very poor contact with the other ships and the coast, many more people found their death in the titanic. It was a brand new and expensive ship. Is is not righteous to conclude this was just an accident because a collision with an iceberg would have inevitably happened while sailing in the northern part of the Atlantic sea. Had this ship not been collided with an iceberg on its first travel, it would have just happened a couple of journeys later, at most. It is fairly obvious that this ship could have been much safer. But how safe could the Titanic for example really have been at most? The answer is that no matter how advanced or reliable something is, from cars to refrigerators it can not be completely safe in a sense that is completely free of malfunction. A car tor example is always unsafe at any speed. A safe car never drives, a safe plane never flies and a safe boat never sails. One may ask what the point of improving it is when it is never within reach. It is like a horse that runs for the carrot in front of it, but the distance never closes. The point is that that is nor necessary nor achievable, so it should not be the goal. The goal should however be to maximize the safety level and to make the product fail safe. 

Making something fail safe means that it should be safe in case of its intended working failing. Making something fail safe is similar to having a backup or a plan B. These do not always work, and that is the reason no matter how many backups you add it is never completely safe. 

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