A Wexelblat disaster is a disaster caused by the interaction of natural phenomena with human technology. A natural event damages some technological device or installation, and its failure precipitates much greater harm than the initial event. For instance, a storm may cause an oil tanker to sink, causing oil to spill out, causing massive damage to marine and coastal ecosystems.
Wexelblat disasters are named after Alan Wexelblat, a scientist employed by the MIT Media Lab. The original coinage, offered by Wexelblat himself, was “Viridian Disaster“, in reference to the Viridian Design Movement led by Bruce Sterling, a science fiction writer, futurist, and activist who has focused his non-fiction writings since the mid-1990s (as well as at least one novel) on the greenhouse effect. Sterling for a while used structures such as “Wexelblat-style Viridian Disaster”, but eventually shifted to “Wexelblat Disaster”, and that coinage subsequently entered broader use. Wexelblat himself is reported to be somewhat chagrined by this turn of events.
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