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.