Some voices go unheard until it's too late. Join us as we explore remarkable individuals who tried to warn the world about impending disasters, from technological failures to global catastrophes, and the tragic consequences of ignored warnings.
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00:00It had been cold for several days and it was getting colder.
00:03Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at individuals who correctly forecasted catastrophic events.
00:09He was among the first people to see the Bin Laden threat.
00:16The fate of the RMS Titanic seemed all but impossible.
00:19After all, the massive British ocean liner had garnered a reputation as being unsinkable,
00:23but it could not withstand the impact of the iceberg it hit.
00:26Is there anyone there?
00:28Yes, what do you see?
00:30Iceberg right ahead!
00:32Hours before this collision, Stanley Adams, the wireless operator of another ship, the SS Masaba,
00:37messaged the crew, warning of, quote,
00:39heavy pack ice and greater number large icebergs in the Atlantic Ocean.
00:43But while Titanic wireless operator Jack Phillips received and acknowledged the message,
00:47it never made it to the bridge.
00:49Thanks.
00:50Once Phillips had replied to Adams' message,
00:54there was no communication between the two ships for around 10 minutes.
00:59However, Captain Edward Smith had ignored prior caution about the ice.
01:03Had he heeded these warnings,
01:05the untimely deaths of him and more than 1,000 other people on board could have been prevented.
01:11Captain! Captain! Sir!
01:19Harry Markopolos, the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.
01:23Bernie Madoff ran an investment firm that swindled roughly $65 billion
01:27from clients who had been led to believe he was helping them grow their nest eggs
01:30through shrewd financial management.
01:32With promised returns of around 18%, entire families jumped in.
01:37Instead, he was depositing all of his clients' money in a separate bank account
01:41rather than investing it,
01:42while having employees fabricate trade reports in a giant version of a Ponzi scheme.
01:47This guy was just as calm as a cucumber.
01:50I didn't see any sign, and usually...
01:52I mean, that should have been sort of a sign to me in retrospect, too.
01:55In 1999, financial analyst Harry Markopolos found very strong evidence of fraud,
02:01arguing it was mathematically impossible for his reported gains to be legitimate.
02:05Harry started engineering it, looking at it, and dissecting the returns,
02:09and he, after four hours of work or so, came up and said,
02:13Frank, this is a Ponzi scheme.
02:15From 2000 to 2005,
02:17he tried to warn the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of Madoff's deception.
02:21While Madoff eventually admitted to his con in 2008,
02:25he could have been stopped much sooner had Markopolos been listened to.
02:28Nothing fazes me after Madoff, nothing ever will,
02:30because I saw the absolute worst part of humanity at that case.
02:34Li Wenliang, COVID-19.
02:36On December 30, 2019,
02:39the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control in Wuhan, China,
02:42sent out warnings to all area hospitals about a mysterious trend
02:45of what they claimed was pneumonia.
02:46According to authorities, the number of cases has increased to 44,
02:50with 11 of them in serious condition.
02:53However, Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at the Central Hospital of Wuhan,
02:57received a report mentioning, quote,
02:59SARS coronavirus.
03:00Li shared this information in a private WeChat group
03:03with fellow medical school alumni.
03:05Li sent a group message saying that a test result
03:07from a patient quarantined at the hospital where he worked
03:10showed a patient had a coronavirus.
03:12Though he specifically asked for the information
03:14to not be shared outside of the group,
03:16it soon spread far and wide.
03:18He was reprimanded by his employers
03:20and was forced into signing a letter of admonition,
03:23which he later posted to social media.
03:25Chinese state media first reported that Li was one of several
03:28whistleblowers silenced by police.
03:30Calls for Li and the others to be vindicated grew online.
03:34The following month, Li contracted COVID-19 from a patient,
03:37and on February 7, 2020, he passed away at age 34.
03:42Ferdinand Foch, World War II.
03:44The global conflict lasting from 1914 until 1918
03:48was originally commonly referred to as the Great War
03:51and the war to end all wars.
03:53The man who endured the war at his worst
03:56was everlastingly differentiated from everyone,
04:01except his fellow soldiers.
04:03This, of course, was not the case,
04:05as World War II broke out a little over two decades later.
04:08One person who could see it coming was Ferdinand Foch,
04:11a French general who served as the Western Front's
04:13Supreme Allied Commander during World War I.
04:16Foch was involved in the Treaty of Versailles,
04:18which he believed should have been much harsher on Germany.
04:21The German army was restricted to only 100,000 men.
04:25The Navy could now only have six battleships
04:28and no submarines.
04:29He's also been alleged to have referred to it as,
04:31an armistice for 20 years,
04:33which essentially was proven true.
04:35Foch passed away in 1929,
04:37meaning he didn't live to see his post-war concerns realized.
04:41Ivor von Herden, Hurricane Katrina.
04:44In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina swept
04:47through the Southern United States,
04:48but by far the most devastation happened
04:50to the city of New Orleans,
04:52which suffered catastrophic flooding
04:53when the levees built to prevent that
04:55were destroyed by the storm.
04:56You know the reason why the looters got out of control?
04:59Because we had most of our resources saving people,
05:02thousands of people.
05:04One person who could see this coming was Ivor von Herden,
05:07then Deputy Director
05:08of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center.
05:10Now this is a slide from 1999 when we first got started.
05:15This is what we were predicting.
05:16This is what we were trying to sell.
05:19That a storm such as Katrina would be a catastrophe.
05:25Four years before Katrina hit,
05:27von Herden had been sounding alarm bells
05:29about the impact of a potential storm
05:31and how the levees were not up to par,
05:33blaming the federal government for their lack of concern.
05:35Von Herden later published a book
05:37about how his worst suspicions were realized,
05:39titled The Storm.
05:41That this is a major American city
05:44protected by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
05:47supposed to be state-of-the-art engineering,
05:50and it failed so dismally.
05:52Dan Applegate, Turkish Airlines Flight 981 crash.
05:56When it comes to aviation, safety is everything,
05:59and that doesn't just go for the people flying the plane.
06:02On March 3rd, 1974, Turkish Airlines Flight 981
06:06departed from Istanbul Yesiköy Airport,
06:08headed to London Heathrow Airport.
06:10An intermediate stop was made at Paris' Orly Airport.
06:13Now, when it arrived to Paris,
06:1550 of the passengers disembarked the aircraft,
06:18and they boarded another 216 passengers.
06:22Upon its second takeoff,
06:23the rear left cargo door blew off,
06:26starting a chain reaction that resulted in the plane
06:28crashing into the Elmenoville Forest,
06:30killing all 346 people on board.
06:33It slams into the ground with almost 800 kilometers per hour
06:38Because of that speed and the force of the impact,
06:40the aircraft is shattered into thousands of small fragments,
06:44and there's no fire breaking out
06:46just because of the sheer force of the impact.
06:49The door's design flaw made it appear secure
06:52even when improperly locked.
06:53The baggage handler,
06:55unaware they needed to inspect the latches,
06:57failed to do so.
06:58And he also said that he hadn't checked
07:01the little verification window that had been installed.
07:05The reason for that was that no one had actually
07:07instructed him on why he should be doing it.
07:10He didn't know what to look for.
07:12He had only seen other people do it.
07:14Two years earlier,
07:15Convair engineer Dan Applegate had warned
07:17that such a failure was inevitable
07:19without critical design upgrades.
07:21Sadly, he was right.
07:22The new design made sure that the mechanism wouldn't stop
07:26until the latches were in their perfectly closed position.
07:29Jan Hatzius, the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
07:33A whole host of combined issues,
07:35from predatory lending to lack of proper oversight,
07:38led to the worst global financial crisis
07:40since the Great Depression.
07:41All transactions came to a halt,
07:43and there are thousands and thousands
07:45and thousands of transactions.
07:46The hedge funds who had had assets with Lehman in London
07:50discovered overnight, to their complete horror,
07:52that they couldn't get those assets back.
07:54In 2007, Jan Hatzius,
07:56the chief economist of Goldman Sachs,
07:57said a full-blown recession was unlikely.
08:00However, he argued it was still possible,
08:02pointing to a variety of potential factors.
08:05Indeed, the economy's downward slide persisted,
08:07and in January 2008,
08:09Goldman Sachs predicted a recession was coming.
08:12The red flag is basically the increase
08:14in the unemployment rate,
08:15which now totals about a third of a percentage point
08:22on a three-month average basis.
08:23Though he was by no means
08:24the only economist forecasting a recession,
08:27Hatzius' predictions were the most accurate.
08:29Though Hatzius' warnings alone
08:31wouldn't be enough to prevent the economic collapse
08:33experienced around the world,
08:34they serve as an important reminder
08:36as to the crucial importance of economists.
08:39We can have a lasting economic recovery
08:41in the sense that the economy grows through 2010.
08:45We expect it to grow,
08:46but we just don't expect it to grow that quickly.
08:48Nikola Tesla, fossil fuel risks.
08:51By far the most famous individual on this list,
08:54Nikola Tesla is one of the most influential minds
08:56of his era and beyond.
08:58He experimented with a system of wireless lighting,
09:01giving several public demonstrations.
09:03In addition to receiving more than 200 patents
09:05for his inventions,
09:06Tesla also had very shrewd insights
09:08about the long-term risks
09:09of burning fossil fuels for energy.
09:11These were non-renewable resources
09:13that would eventually run out,
09:15even if it wasn't in his lifetime.
09:17In 1915, Tesla wrote it would need to be curbed,
09:20quote, in the interest of coming generations,
09:23advocating instead for a switch to renewable energy sources,
09:26particularly solar power.
09:28Electrons are the only moving parts in a solar cell,
09:31and they all go back where they came from.
09:33There's nothing to get worn out or used up.
09:35Unfortunately, Tesla's warnings were not heeded.
09:38Had he been listened to,
09:40there's no telling how much better off
09:41the global environment would be
09:43thanks to renewable energy.
09:45Roger Beaujolais, the Challenger disaster.
09:47On the morning of January 28th, 1986,
09:50millions of Americans turned on their TVs
09:53to watch the space shuttle Challenger take off.
09:55What should have been a day of triumph
09:57became one of tragedy when the vessel broke apart
09:5973 seconds after launch,
10:01resulting in the deaths of all seven crew members.
10:04When we first saw the explosion,
10:05we didn't know exactly what had happened.
10:08And then we realized,
10:09I think we were trying to talk ourself out of it
10:10really being the disaster that it was.
10:15In the months ahead of the launch,
10:17Roger Beaujolais, a mechanical engineer
10:19whose company, Morton-Thiokol, was involved in the launch,
10:22argued that the cold weather conditions
10:23of the January launch would likely lead
10:25to the failure of crucial O-rings
10:27and subsequently the whole vessel.
10:29That's when Roger Beaujolais got very vocal about,
10:32as far as he was concerned,
10:34if you look at those, it's the influence of temperature.
10:37But the dire warnings of Beaujolais and others
10:39to cancel the launch were ignored,
10:41and his grim prediction sadly came to realization.
10:44This was a meeting where the determination was to launch,
10:49and it was up to us to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt
10:52that it was not safe to do so.
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11:10John P. O'Neill, the September 11th attacks.
11:14The attacks of September 11th, 2001
11:16sent shockwaves throughout the world.
11:18We heard a big bang, and then we saw smoke coming out,
11:21and everybody started running out,
11:23and we saw the plane on the other side of the building.
11:26It may have seemed like it came out of nowhere,
11:28but John Patrick O'Neill certainly saw it coming.
11:31The FBI agent specialized in counter-terrorism
11:33and helped with the apprehension of the mastermind
11:36of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
11:38One of the agents asked me
11:39if he could take the blindfold off Yusef,
11:41and I said, sure, go right ahead.
11:43And it was ironic because as he finally focused his eyes,
11:46we were right adjacent to the World Trade Center.
11:50And he kind of focused in on that,
11:52and of course, one of the agents sitting next to him
11:54gave him a little bit of a nudge and said,
11:56you see, it still stands.
11:58He would later zero in on the activities
12:00of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
12:02My dad had a lot of video of Osama bin Laden.
12:06Whatever was out there was actually in his apartment.
12:08He studied him several times,
12:12watched the videos I know several times.
12:14But his warnings of a potential attack on U.S. soil
12:17were ignored, resulting in his leaving the FBI.
12:20On August 23rd, 2001, O'Neill started a new job
12:24as chief of security at the World Trade Center,
12:27and he tragically lost his life in the attacks
12:29the following month.
12:30Do you remember where you were
12:32when any of these disasters were first reported?
12:34Let us know in the comments.
12:35And he said, I just, I sense a shift,
12:38and I think things are gonna happen.
12:41And I said, when?
12:43He said, I don't know, but soon.
12:50He said, I don't know, but soon.