5 Megaprojects That Went Horribly Wrong

our planet is full of incredible natural formations everything from mount everest to the grand canyon speaks to how amazing earth can be however take a minute to stop and think about some of the amazing things humans have built skyscrapers dams monuments these superstructures are a testament to our ingenuity and vision from time to time though our ambition exceeds our reach and the huge projects fail when this happens the projects usually fail in spectacular fashion sometimes causing massive amounts of damage but always resulting in huge financial losses here are five mega projects that went horribly wrong if you're new here be sure to subscribe to underworld for more videos just like this after world war ii the united states became infamous for its hundreds of tests with nuclear bombs many of these were done around the island chain known as bikini atoll resulting in an area that is uninhabitable to this very day at the time though many of these tests involved naval ships being in the blast radius however not all of them sank leaving a floating hunk of radioactive metal so many of them were towed back to hunters point shipyard in san francisco where many of them were either dismantled or sank what was left were hazardous chemicals that were used to disinfect many of the ships radioactive waste and contaminated water in recent years though the city of san francisco has been working with the department of the navy to clean up the area and make it suitable for habitation over one billion dollars has been spent on the effort everything seemed to be going well however in 2018 two employees of tetra tech ec the contractor charged with testing the soil for radiation pleaded guilty to falsifying results the scandal froze construction at the shipyard and prompted many lengthy investigations some of them revealed that instead of removing all of the contaminated materials as promised the navy simply buried them this was one of a handful of scandals that rocked the entire project the lack of accountability and oversight nearly put thousands of lives in jeopardy not to mention the environmental damage that was done [Music] deep in northern california you will find the oroville dam this massive earth-fill embankment dam is an important part of the california state water project providing flood control water storage and hydroelectric power generation it is also the tallest dam in all of the united states for the most part the history of the oroville dam is solid there have been some hiccups along its lifespan but nothing too major that all changed in february of 2017. the problems began with the 2017 california floods which brought northern california its wettest winter in nearly a century constant storms dropped large volumes of rain and snow in a short amount of time quickly raising the water levels in lake oroville rainfall damaged the main spillway of the den so on february 7th it was closed for inspection allowing water levels in the lake to continue rising not long after the main spillway was reopened but with limited use officials hoped it would be enough to lower the water levels but it wasn't shortly after eight in the morning on february 11th water rose over the emergency spillway for the first time since the dam was built in 1968. to make matters worse erosion at the base of the weir began progressing much faster than expected officials realized that there was a real threat that the weir could collapse sending a wall of water downstream to flood nearby communities it was at this time on february 12th that an evacuation order was announced in total 188 000 people temporarily left the area shortly after this the emergency spillway was closed for repairs the main spillway now took the brunt of the water flow furthering its deterioration and damage and also forcing the closure of the hydroelectric plant in the end no collapse occurred and the water levels slowly dropped allowing for a full repair to be made in the coming months thanks to quick action and a bit of luck a much larger disaster was avoided still the total cost associated with this event is estimated to be around 1 billion dollars between 1924 and 1926 engineer william mulholland oversaw the construction of the saint francis dam a curved concrete gravity dam designed to create a storage reservoir for the city of los angeles it was an important part of the city's aqueduct water supply infrastructure located about 40 miles northwest of the city after the dam's completion in 1926 water began to fill the reservoir but problems arose almost immediately from seepage to cracks in the dam itself every month seemed to be met with a new challenge it was all leading to one terrible event on march 12 1928 just before midnight the dam suffered a catastrophic failure although there were no surviving eyewitnesses to the failure it was determined that it wasn't a gradual failure the entire dam collapsed at the same time this resulted in about 12.4 million gallons of water being released into the san francisquito canyon causing a wave that was 140 feet tall this wave was incredibly powerful destroying everything in its path after traveling for just over five and a half hours the wave washed debris and bodies into the pacific ocean nearly 54 miles away from where it started at this point the wave was almost two miles wide and still traveling around six miles per hour 400 people lost their lives multiple investigations concluded that the failure in the dam was due to it being built on an incredibly unstable foundation from the beginning there was seepage under the foundation eroding some of it away eventually this led to failures in other areas of the construction until the dam was unable to bear the pressure of the billions of gallons of water [Music] in the early 2000s the european economy was booming southern europe was especially on its way to an economically prosperous season which meant expansion this expansion made it possible for construction projects to get easy funding however in the mid 2000s the financial crisis hit demand waned for both travel and infrastructure investments leaving some of the most grand and ambitious construction projects totally abandoned this was the case for the ciudad real airport in spain which reportedly cost over 1 billion euros to construct the original plan was for the airport to take excess traffic away from the madrid barajas airport however there was one immediate problem the airport was built too far away from the city at 150 miles south of madrid few people were interested to travel so far for a flight this was an incredibly surprising fact as at the time there were many low-cost airlines that were working to keep costs down by serving secondary airports however the ceo.real was a bit too remote to properly attract people in total the expensive airport was only open for a total of three years and saw flights from only two airlines ryanair and welling with the latter having its flights subsidized by the government it eventually had to close its doors now the massive building remains abandoned yet is still racking up costs it has fallen into a state of disrepair with workers even having to paint large yellow crosses over the crumbling runway so pilots know the airfield was abandoned being a one billion euro airport that was abandoned in just three years it was one of the biggest financial failures in the country's history once upon a time in the 1980s the united states wanted to construct the largest particle collider in the world plans were put in place for everything to be built in texas after its completion it would have been 20 times larger than any accelerator ever constructed it would even have been larger than the cern laboratory in geneva switzerland where the large hadron collider is we use the term would have been because in october of 1993 the project was abandoned there is no single reason that explains the cancellation there were many factors that contributed to its failure first there was an inability to secure any foreign funding which was a pivotal thing second the cost of the project had nearly tripled from the original estimates in the middle of a national recession and political insistence on controlling government spending finally as the project was nearly 20 times bigger than anything physicists had ever managed before clashes between the accelerators management team and the military-industrial culture imposed by the u.s department of energy led to seemingly endless audits and an overall lack of trust now with the exception of some underground generators and the miles of tunnels everything sits empty the site was originally given to ellis county texas numerous attempts to sell the property failed until 2006 when a private investment group purchased the property it was rumored that there were plans to use the site as a data center but as of 2011 nothing had been built yet but for perspective the largest currently operating particle accelerator in switzerland has an energy output of 14 trillion electron volts should the superconducting supercollider have been made operational it would have put out 40 trillion electron volts who knows where the future of this project stands but as of now billions of dollars have been lost building nuclear reactors is always an incredible undertaking not only does it take massive planning and funding but the execution of the actual construction needs to be 100 perfect in 2008 a nuclear reactor was scheduled to be built in fairfield county south carolina two massive companies south carolina electric and gas and the south carolina public service authority collectively invested nine billion dollars into the construction of two nuclear reactors that year they received an estimate for the job which totaled to just under 10 billion dollars it was to be a very unique build as the design relied on prefabricated parts to be used allowing for a sort of modular construction construction began in 2013. however numerous delays occurred from 2014 to 2017 due to manufacturing errors and incompetence then in 2017 it was realized that the original estimate of 9.8 billion dollars was way too low as the cost of the construction had grown to 25 billion dollars it caused many of the involved parties to file for bankruptcy several months later the project was abandoned the economic losses and subsequent public outrage drastically altered the future of both utility companies as many people were paying some raised rates in order to offset the cost of construction they filed lawsuits there were many settlements that exceeded a billion dollars in damages the stock of scana the only fortune 500 company based in south carolina drastically fell it was the largest business failure in the history of south carolina for everything that people are capable of accomplishing this highlights the importance of careful calculations from rushed construction to poor financial planning they can bring ruin to communities as well as the companies involved click the link on screen now to check out more videos of ours just like this one with that thanks for watching and we'll see you next time you

Channel: Underworld

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Keywords: Underworld, Underworld channel, Top 10, Top 5, Facts, viral, mystery, scary, 2021, megaprojects, 5 megaprojects that went horribly wrong, megaproject, worlds megaprojects, biggest megaprojects, massive builds, gone wrong, engineering fail, dam failure, dam fail, dam collapse, oroville dam, oroville dam disaster, dam failure caught on tape, st francis dam disaster, mega projects, biggest dam, huge projects, amazing construction, megaprojects gone wrong

Id: VYChyVlVgko

Length: 12min 42sec (762 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021