Lack of sleep can destroy lives and few of the historic incidents have proven it. The importance of sleep cannot be overlooked when it is a disaster. Generally, people may have felt the loss in small dealing regularly, through which they realized the necessity of sleep. People working hard often forget that sleep is a need not a splendor. Losing balance or thinking ability for few seconds is always possible when there is less sleep.
More stress and no sleep have called for many unusual incidents. It wouldn’t have taken place if they had a complete sleep.
Challenger Space Explosion
In 1986, one of the biggest missions, the Challenger Space Explosion turned into a massive accident. The space program took place on the 28th of January that broke into the Atlantic Ocean. No one was able to survive the seven crew members. It is one of the worst historical disasters that happened due to the lack of sleep.
Overtime work schedules of the engineers and the workplace or the lack of sleep had cause faults in developing the parts. Proper examination of the spacecraft and the attachments were not to the mark. According to the NASA engineers they were worried about the cold temperature which was below on the day of launch. Comparing to their previous launches, the temperature on this day was -1degree Celsius.
The O rings joints were not able to handle the cold temperature which leads to the major disaster. It was later revealed that the reason for the disaster was due to the failure in engineering safety and also the workplace ethics.
Exxon Valdez Oil Spill incident due to lack of sleep
Due to the lack of sleep, no one was able to prevent the incident of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The workers worked for almost 13 hours which was an abnormal timing for them to work accurately. Long time continuous work developed stress-reducing decision-making ability. The long working hours with tight deadlines had affected their quality of work.
The Exxon Valdes oil spill incident took place on 24th March 1989. The oil tanker was not able to return or trace its path after avoiding ice. Finally, it collided with reef and the oil spill incident took place. This incident took place in Alaska USA.
According to the reports this incident took place due to the Third Mate. He had slept for only 2 hours which had stopped him to think and plan to return to his track. This led to the environmental disaster which took about 2$ billion to clean the sea.
Sleep deprivation will always push a person behind lacking in making any decision. Intelligence and strength both are challenged when there is a lack of sleep. Paul Whitney, a psychologist said that the ability to take new information and implement it is destroyed.
Scientists also mentioned that lack of sleep will destroy the function of the nervous system which pushes to major historical disasters.
