A race condition prevented the alarms at FirstEnergy from firing properly. Operators were relying on outdated information and didn’t react because of it. This is far from the only cause of the blackout, but it goes to show that software bugs are becoming more and more prevalent in the causes of serious, real disasters. We won’t be able to prevent the software we write from being used in critical situations (though we can try). Critical applications aren’t going to build their own containerization solutions, data processing engines, runtimes, monitoring frameworks, operating systems, dashboards, and web browsers just to avoid interfacing with your code.Human factors in large-scale technological systems' accidents:

Human factors in large-scale technological systems' accidents: Three Mile Island, Bhopal, Chernobyl. Industrial Crisis 

Many serious large-scale technological systems' accidents, having grave conse- quences, such as those of Three Mile Island, Bhopal and Chernobyl, have pri- marily been attributed to "operator error." However, further investigation has revealed that a large majority of these incidents are caused by a combination of many factors whose roots can be found in the lack of human factors (micro- and macro-ergonomics) considerations. Relevant human factor considera- tions, the causes of human error, and commonalities of human factor problems in major disasters are briefly reviewed. We concluded that system accidents are caused by the way the (system) parts-engineered and human -- fit together and interact. Also, on many occasions, the error and the resultant failures are both the attribute and effect of such factors as complicated operational pro- cesses, ineffective training, non-responsive managerial systems, non-adaptive organizational designs, haphazard response systems, and sudden environmen- tal disturbances, rather than being their cause. Recommendations for preven- tion of such accidents are provided.