Humans: "... and it was an ecological disaster."

The Smokey Bear effect is a great example of man's arrogance when it comes to wanting to preserve nature. While it's a great sentiment to want to protect nature, many people simply don't understand enough of its complexity.

As a computer technician our new boss decided to rate us based on the number of helpdesk tickets we closed thinking it would increase productivity. What happened instead is that people would only take quick easy tickets, like replacing a mouse or keyboard, and stayed away from more in-depth tickets, like going through lines of code to figure out why a database is running slow. He no longer works for us.

1980s when plastic shopping bags were introduced to save the trees by replacing paper bags..

my favorite example of unintended consequences is Prohibition, which led to an INCREASE of alcohol consumption and a switch from beer and wine to hard liquor, and the rise of organized crime.

not long ago in my local area a man was stopped for driving drunk and subsequently tried to buy all the newspapers in his local store so none of his associates would find out. his attempt at obfuscation landed his story on the local tv news

"How do we make Germany not want to start another war? OH I KNOW we cripple them with debt and ruin their army. That totally won't backfire"

He looks like a British combination of Vsauce and Matthias

The banning of trans-fats leading to the increased demand for palm oil which subsequently caused deforestation of large areas of rainforest is another great example of unintended consequences. As well, making prescription opioid pills harder to obtain and abuse has led to the increased use of fentanyl and caused a great number of deaths from overdose of the much more dangerous drug.

This video could also have been titled "Ten Perfect Essay Topics for College Students."

I am reminded of some UK councils that introduced a noisy road surface over some sections of a road. The idea was the faster you drove, the noisier it became so drivers would slow down over that section. What actually happened was drivers found the road section noisy so they sped up to get off it as soon as possible. Meaning you had suddenly created fast, noisy drivers.

Allies : Cripple German economy to prevent another world war Hitler : Uses this depression to win people for himself and start another world war Allies : Surprised Pikachu face

A more tragic example (sort of, although it was much more about company negligence), was the Piper Alpha disaster. As part of the fire procedures workers were told to go to the living quarters and remain there. Jumping off the platform (considering the height and the cold seas) was considered to be certain death. The oil rig caught fire. Many workers dutifully followed the training. Others sensed something wrong and jumped. As it turns out, due to the design, when the oil rig caught fire the living quarters were eventually engulfed in flames and made escape impossible. Hence those who followed the safety instructions died a horrible death. Most of the survivors were those who ignored safety advice and jumped into the sea.

"well we already introduced one invasive species to this island... we should probably just introduce some other ones too. what could go wrong?"

The Streisand Effect is my favorite one lol. She drew more attention to the fact that it was her house than she would have if she stayed quiet lol.

"The allied powers set out to ensure the German war machine could never threaten them again" *and there lies your first mistake, jimbo*

I've heard that when anti-lock brakes were introduced, the accident rate for cars with them went up. Why? Because the people who bought cars with antilock brakes thought they could drive around on ice and snow the same way they drove around on dry pavement. Instead of staying home in bad weather, or driving cautiously like they normally did, they went out and drove beyond the capabilities of the cars (or rather the capabilities of the tires on slick surfaces) resulting in the higher than normal accident rate.

A more comically harmless one from Denmark, was how the company in charge of the railway, started doing commercials to get more people to favor public transportation, which involved a puppet who would play the "dumb" part of a duo, where his human colleague would play the reasonable, but bland counterpart, taking the train to work, while the puppet would prefer taking his car. People were so charmed by the multi-story-line of the puppet, they preferred their car...

A more recent example. A small village in Africa that required its people to walk over a dozen miles every day to get muddy drinking water. Matt Damon brought in equipment to run a well that gave everyone more than enough fresh water. A "militia" decided they didn't want locals to have it. The militia murdered every man woman and child and stole all the well equipment.

I want to like the video but I afraid of the unintended consequences of liking it.

I thought one of these was going to be the D.A.R.E. project. Meant to educate children on drugs on many details, even their methods of usage and effects. But all it did was make many kids more curious about trying them.

Streisand's pursuit of the photographer brought a new term into the lexicon. Describing when a powerful entity tries to bury information by threatening a smaller entity, and thus makes that information more well known, the "Streisand effect" is still being used today when a story goes viral. Maybe she wishes she hadn't done that, but she's so rich she might not even care.

Something else interesting about the Titanic: At the time, there was a debate going on in the US about whether or not to adopt the central banking system. Aboard the Titanic, and all lost when it went down, were a few prominent economists who all strongly opposed the adoption of the central banking system and were on their way to America to argue against its use in the debates. Some speculate that had they been alive to offer their own points and counterpoints, the central banking system might have never been adopted by the US, or at least, not until a much later date.

My favorite: In the movie Finding Nemo, a young clown fish that is stolen from the Great Barrier Reef illegally by a hobby aquariumist and eventually is re-united with his father. People watched the movie, decided clown fish were very cute and illegal sales of wild caught clown fish soared soon after...

fun fact: most Chinese don't know that the great famine was caused by Mao's declaration to kill sparrows. My parents, who were very young kids during the famine, have no idea about any sparrow killing campaign. I always wish I have more positive things to say to support my country, but this sort of thing really makes it hard.

It's an old series, but take a look a James Burke's Connections about more unintended (but, fortunately, not unfortunate!) consequences.

"There will be...CONSEQUENCES!!!" Car slams into player

Number 5: The main problem came from the need to bite the end of the cartridge open to load the rifle. Both groups had issue with the consumption of any part of one of the two animals, causing the outrage.

New life taking over a de-militarized zone is beautifully poetic

The Lanterman-Petris-Short Act of 1967, and the national adoption of its concept were certainly well intentioned, but have been a disaster we are dealing with increasingly every day. Briefly, this movement was intended to ease the suffering of the mentally ill living in asylums...by releasing them to fend for themselves on the streets. Today’s ‘homeless’ crisis consists in large part of schizophrenics who would otherwise be housed in facilities where they would have food, beds, a roof, and access to help if wanted. Instead they are on the streets. Not fair to them, not fair to us. Many of those involved in this ‘reform’ movement realized it was a failure within a few years of its enactment.

First Westerner I found that called 1857 war against British as "War of Independence" . Thank you!

Mr.Whistler you never fail to impress me, the Enfield rifle story is very obscure and I haven't heard it spoken about ever outside of my history A-Level, yet when put in perspective it affected so much of world history and particular British Colonialism. I doff my hat.

That shipping company was absolutely at fault. They should have done all the testing required before taking on passengers.

HMS Dreadnaught did not single handedly render the Royal Navy's existing battleship fleet obsolete, while she was the first all big gun battleship to be launched, she was not the first to be started, the Japanese Satsuma was the first all big gun battleship to be laid down but she just took longer to build than Dreadnaught. Plans for all big gun battleships were in place in several navies of this time, and the British and Japanese were not the only navies with a all big gun battleship under construction in 1905, the American navy also had one under construction. So the idea of a all big gun battleship was well circulated even without one being physically built. In the Japanese Russian war, which took place before there were plans for any or the first all big gun battleships, all of the naval battles between the Japanese and Russian navies took place at ranges where only their big guns could fire and did not, as the pre-existing naval theory went, close to ranges where the smaller quicker firing guns could take part. This was a practical proof that only the big guns on a battleship mattered. In summary, HMS Dreadnaught did not make previous battleships obsolete by herself, others like her were already laid down in other navies, the idea was a well known one supported by evidence from combat so if the Royal Navy did not build her then the Japanese or American ships would have been the first and been the ship to reset all Navies's battleship counts to zero. The only difference in that case would be instead of calling that sort of battleship a "Dreadnaught" we would say a "Satsuma", it would have still given the German navy a chance to try to catch up with the Royal Navy.

I really love your TopTenz. I love getting tidbits of interesting information and then I investigate it further. Thanks! PS I've never heard of the Estland before this too ten.

Alternate title: "How to pave the road to Hell."

Hey Simon! Not to correct you BUT germany's army after the war was reduced 100,000 men..not 10,000😊👍

Geeze, people will complain about anything including how you breathe. You’re fine sir. Keep doin what you do. I like your cadence.

Usually not a fan of top 10 lists, but this one was particularely interesting and informative. Thanks

Mistake in the closed captions. Simon says “10,000”, captions read, “100,000”.

Re. #1: one of the animals thriving in the DMZ but at risk of extinction outside it is Korean water deer, one of two subspecies of water deer. The Korean DMZ is the only area within their native range where water deer are not at risk of extinction, however the other subspecies, Chinese water deer, are also expected to survive. A few hundred escaped captivity in western Bedfordshire, England, and have spent the decades since gradually spreading throughout the east of the country. They are thriving so well there that Chinese ecologists now travel to the UK to study water deer, as they are easier to find than in their native range. It's another example of unintended consequences: it's unlikely the wealthy Victorian landowners responsible for introducing the deer to their lands would have imagined that their actions might safeguard the species' future. All they wanted was some interesting curiosities - "vampire deer", as they're known due to their tusks.

i come here for the great content, but i stay for the comments 😐

I like how you go from the most petty situation to probably the most serious situation in human history.

This is one of my favorite videos you have done. Brilliant 👌

The DMZ is free from human activity. Except for the occasional deer or tiger getting too heavy and triggering a mine.

How did you fail to mention that the phrase "bite the bullet" comes exactly from this historical moment, such a cool anecdote. Very nice video of course.

Thank you Simon, having a live presenter, along with the fine research and smooth accurate visuals make your work always worth viewing.

Ah Yes, this past semester I made an oral presentation on World War l and you sir, are correct, the Treaty of Peace was one of the reasons that led to World War ll Juh...I guess projects do help educate 🤔

Let's hope that when South and North become mates again, they leave the zone as is and allow nature to flourish. It would be a sign of long standing peace. A long, wide park between the two without fences and walls..

I read this as, “coincidences” and set it aside while I listened. I thought what does the Titanic have to do with rabbits on a remote island? 😆oops

The Australian Antarctic division and Tasmanian National Parks recently announced that they had eradicated rodents from Macquarie Island too. They used bates en-mass and trained rodent hunting dogs to check the results; the dogs have gone home too.

My favorite example was the Clinton ban on pistol magazines over 10 rounds. Prohibited from having 15-round 9mm pistols, gun owners “upgraded” to 10-round 45 cal. handguns., thereby vastly increasing the lethality of the average carry pistol and the total number of weapons in circulation as a glut of cheap used 9mm pistols hit the market.

Excellent presentation!

The Eastland was a badly designed and ungainly (topheavy) vessel quote. If the addition of a couple of lifeboats caused the ship to capsize it probably was as unstable as the Vasa and would have capsized at sea with a much greater loss of life.

The Flint water crisis is a brilliant example of unintended consequences as well. It was supposed to save residents money on their water bills, but turned into a complete disaster once it was realized that the water was tainted and Detroit wouldn't let them reconnect.

No terrible background music. I love it Simon!

Thank you for pointing out the Smokey the Bear effect.

Another thing that could’ve saved many lives in the Titanic incident would’ve been to put out the bow bunker fire that had been burning for 3 days prior to setting sail. The metal hull had weakened due to being heated by the bunker fire, then being cold shocked when she left the shipyard. The fire was still burning in the bunker when the iceberg hit the weakened hull section

man im glad i have these vids to learn more...can never know to much and honestly these vuds are great for learning new things

You could add the Davey "safety" lamp. It was supposedly introduced to prevent coal miners being killed by naked flames causing explosions of coal gas. In reality it allowed mine owners to exploit gassy coal seams that couldn't have been worked previously. The lamp didn't cause explosions, but sparks from picks certainly did and the death rate in mining climbed

#7 The Treaty of Versailles has one more unintended consequence: for the Treaty made German-occupited Chinese territories handed to Japan instead of back to China, it spaked the May-Fourth Movement. May-Fourth Movement is significant not only it was the starting point of genuine popular modern nationalism in China, the advent of the CPC can also trace its root back to May-Fourth Movement as well. The Treaty of Versailles has far more profound effect to the world.

At the time of sailing, the RMS Titanic actually had more lifeboats then a similar-sized ship would normally carry. In the common terms of the day, she was actually overstocked. It was only, as you mention, that after she had sunk, that the number of lifeboats per ship, had to be increased to hold everyone aboard.

I loved this. Please make more like this. Awesome information!

Very interesting. Thank you ! Please never stop !

This video reminds me of the story of the Zen Master and a little boy. A little boy in a village gets a horse for his birthday and the people in the village rejoice saying "How wonderful, the boy got a horse." And the Zen Master says "We'll see." Then a few years later the boy falls off the horse and mangles his leg to the point where he cant walk or run properly and the people in the village cry "How terrible, the boy hurt his leg." And the Zen Master says "We'll see." Then a few years after that war breaks out and all the young men run off to fight it except the little boy, who is now a young man, who cant because his leg is all messed up, and the people cry "How wonderful, the boy doesn't have to go to war." And the Zen Master says "We'll see."

Nature reclaiming the DMZ reminds me of the reversal of nature around Pripyat (exclusion zone around Chernobyl).

I love all of your fascinating videos Simon. Cheers!

Another great video I am surprised your not on regular TV !!

As a Chicago Native, thank you for mentioning the Eastland Disaster. It is represented by one of the ted stars on the city flag.

"The source of most problems is solutions".

As I preach the Law of unintended Consequences a lot I really appreciated this video. Great job.

this was fascinating. thank you. cheers.

The problem is: the extra weight of the lifeboats SHOULDN'T have been a problem.. so

It's cute that Streisand thinks she's still famous 😝

I LOVE the curveball at the end, showing a favorable unintended consequence. Hooray for the DMZ!

Really fantastic way to end this Simon and team!

Let's introduce an invasive species to take care of the invasive species we accidentally introduced! Hmmm, maybe we should introduce ANOTHER invasive species? Hell, if you wanted to destroy the place, you only needed to populate it with humans.

When it comes to nature, it seems the best thing mankind can do to preserve it is to leave it alone and make sure we're not introducing any random factors.

Thanks Simon. Excellent episode.

one of your best. thank you!

Here in Australia- in the 1880s a big rural industry was growing sugar cane. The canefields became infested with a cane beetle which chewed crops to dust. (It came from o/s too). So the government imported a seriously gross thing called a cane toad. And now, a hundred years on, unwanted immigrants poisoning dogs, even poisoning water bowls. My fur baby has come a whisker close to death twice, so I'd say- imo, unintended consequences SUCK!!

Left it on a high note...

terrific piece, a little outside the box and chuckled myself silly on hearing the Streisand effect.

Great video. thanks!!

As children we were encouraged to collect donations door-to-door to drill wells in Africa to provide life sustaining water. The additional water turned out to also be used for cattle, which were bartered as money besides for labor and food. The explosion of cattle over gazed the already arid land. The Cattle Began To starve, and farmland was lost due to erosion and...the subsequent sandstorms blew dust and sand into the wells, choking them off. The areas were abandoned as no longer habitable. I feel slightly less guilty, knowing I was a lazy and ineffectual money-begger, though.

Versalles was not unintended, look at the words of Woodrow Wilson... he specifically intended to "MAKE THEM PAY" and he was one of the primary creators of that mess

Thank you Simon !

The Korean DMZ is one of the coolest things I have ever seen in person. It's totally worth checking out if you ever find yourself in Asia.

One worth mentioning would be the introduction of Koalas to Kangaroo Island. Like the rabbits of Macquarie they are eating themselves into starvation. and the only viable solution, culling, is considered unconscionable by the greater populace because Koalas are cute.

Unintended consequences work the other way as well. Some of the best parts of my life were the result of unintended consequences. People often think in terms of an immediate short-term issue, but receive the long-term benefits of their actions. A girl who was a friend of my younger brother, came to see him because she was very unhappy...My brother wasn't there. I had been invited to a party I hadn't intended to go to. But she was very unhappy so I invited her to go with me...Until she died of cancer, we were together for 40 years, have two daughters and three grandchildren. Totally unintended.

I love your vids. Thanks 😊

The way Simon smiles while describing the way Macquarie island was/is being destroyed is sociopathic.

Today I learned that this channel exists

No, thank you for making this video.

Thanks for the Treaty of Versailles story. Really.

Awesome Video!

Simon, why do you talk like this throughout most of each video, only to speak more fluidly during the outro?

Dreadnought may have kickstarted a new generation of battleships and obsoleted Britain's own navy but the idea of dreadnought-like battleships was already well discussed at the time, both America and Japan had started to build comparable ships before Dreadnought was even ordered. Quite simply, if Britain hadn't built a dreadnought someone else would have done so, and the Royal Navy would have been playing catch-up. Instead, by building HMS Dreadnought in only one year and then another 9 dreadnoughts over the next 5 years Britain took a substantial lead in this new generation of warships, even if the previous 2-power standard could not be maintained.

There are many, many more examples of unintended consequences. So I hope additional vids on this topic will be posted.

Once again Simon, thank you. One can use your video presentations as a "sampler box" of what may peak one's interest to do further searches for interesting subjects. I wonder, are you a trained teacher? I would Love to have you teach young people in a school setting, you make many things so interesting, and it's not just your awesome accent but it certainly helps! Cheerio mate! BTW, as soon as we can we will send you some funds so that you can continue on with your great work.