Titanic vs beads

It just occurred to me that a good analogy for multi-layered security can be had by observing the history of the Titanic.

While there is no single point of failure in that event, there is something that could have helped improve the odds of more people surviving (aside from not getting on the ship in the first place):  More lifeboats.  When the Titanic was built, regulations stated that if you built watertight compartments into your ship to help hold it afloat in a disaster, you didn't have to have as many lifeboats.  I.e., you didn't have to have enough lifeboats for every passenger on board because the ship wouldn't sink in the first place.  I'm not sure why you had to bother with lifeboats at all in that case, but that's another story.

Anywho, the Titanic did not have the proper multi-layered security in order to protect the lives of its passengers because the designer of the day put all eggs into one basket, so to speak, and cut the corner on the lifeboats as he was allowed to do without acting upon the thought of "Okay, it might be unsinkable.  But what if something we haven't seen before happens, and we turn out to be wrong?"

The regulations were changed shortly after the tragedy to state that in addition to watertight compartments to help hold the ship afloat, all ships were required to have enough lifeboats on board to hold all passengers.

I remember as a kid making jewelry out of seed beads.  Even as a child I recall understanding the risks I took when I cut corners or didn't bother to think things through.  One item in particular was a necklace I'd made on the bead loom.  I knew that if one thread let go, the whole thing would dump tiny little beads everywhere.  So I built the basic necklace and then went back through my work with a second thread.  As I was doing so, it occurred to me that I had coated the weft with wax, but had not double-stranded it.  I knew that if one thread in the weft let go, the necklace would not come totally apart but it would be irreparable.  At that point, though, I could not see how to add a second thread to each existing one in the weft.  The weave was too tight by then to weave a second weft through tiny little threads between beads.  I had essentially overlooked the basic structure of the whole thing.  I noted this with grim reality and continued with the sense of "whups" in the back of my mind.

The one major flaw I did make (knowingly) was that I took the ends of the weft and threaded additional beads onto them to make a chain of sorts before attaching each end to its connector.  I wore this necklace carefully for years, knowing one day something was going to break, and over ten years later, it finally did.  I never lost a single bead, but it is indeed irreparable.

Partial caution may help, but it won't solve everything that gets thrown at you.  Still, it was nice not having to clean up beads.  I was lucky the breach happened in the reinforced section and not near the connectors.

~nv