96. Errors connected with the conscious
and unconscious unwillingness of people to recognize the fault and scale of
catastrophe
When a catastrophe is in the middle of
happening, there may be denial about its scale, leading to further problems. At
Chernobyl, the organizer of reactor testing, Anatoly Diatlov,
believed that it was not a reactor, but a cooling tank which
exploded, and he continued to submit commands to a nonexistent reactor. This
kind of overoptimism can also operate forward in
time, compelling us not to make adequate preparations for a probable
catastrophe, or denying its scale.