10 warnings India and the world ignored before millions died

New Delhi: Whether it was a major terrorist mayhem, or an emerging brutal dictator, or a major health warning, or a gruesome natural disaster, warnings were ignored by India and the world at their own peril. The result: millions of people lost their lives. Today, we mention 10 such warnings which India and the world ignored:1. 9/11 World Trade Center attack: One of the deadliest terror incidents in the history of US, these took 3,000 lives on September 11, 2001. It changed the direction of world history.They were a series of four coordinated attacks launched by al-Qaeda. Four passenger planes were hijacked by 19 terrorists that were flown into buildings. Two of the planes crashed into North and South Towers of World Trade Centre. Within two hours, the buildings collapsed into debris. A third plane, crashed into Pentagon. The fourth plane was targeted to Washington D.C. but crashed into Pennsylvania. According to a report published in New York Times, the then US President George W. Bush received numerous intelligence reports well in advance of the 9/11 terror attacks in the US, but failed to react to them based on advice from neo-conservative Pentagon advisors.Previous accounts of the President's advance knowledge have focused almost exclusively on the August 6th top secret “presidential daily brief” which included the heading “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”. After release of the document in April 2004, former administration officials deflected criticism of their reaction to that warning, saying that its substance was mainly focused on providing an overview of Al Qaeda, rather than any immediate threat. 2. Uttarakhand floods 2013: The Indian metorological department claims that warnings of very heavy rain, unusual for this time of the year, were issued two days ahead of the deluge at Kedarnath, Badrinath and Rudra Prayag. These warnings were accompanied by an advisory that the Char dham Yatra should be deferred by a few days, but the state administration did not pay heed to it.The disaster took almost 5,700 lives, according to official records. The loss of lives was much higher, almost 10,000. A concentrated effort on following up an early warning system could have minimized the damage caused, just as the Odisha government had done in the case of Cyclone Phailin and minimized loss of lives. 3. The rise of Hitler: By the fall of 1918, it was apparent to the leaders of Germany that defeat was inevitable in World War I. The peace treaty, Treaty of Versaillles was signed on 28th June, 1919 at the end of the war. British economist John Maynard Keynes had predicted that the stiff war reparations and other harsh terms imposed on Germany by the treaty would lead to the financial collapse of the country, which in turn would have serious economic and political repercussions on Europe and the world.Keynes lobbied governments, wrote articles and, in a last ditch effort, published these prophetic words: “If we aim at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare say, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the later German war will fade into nothing, and which will destroy, whoever is victor, the civilisation and the progress of our generation.”Keynes' suggestions were not considered, the German economy evaporated, extremism swept the nation, and an unknown artist called Adolf decided to give politics a whirl. Hitler carried out pogrom of Jews, leading to the deaths of several million innocent people. The entire world was thrown into the whirlpool of a cataclysmic war, that witnessed the death of more than a million soldiers and the dropping of two atomic bombs. 4. Tobacco's cancer link: For many years companies like Phillip Morris have been minting money and pushing people into graves. As early as 1930, German researchers had noticed a correlation between the two.By the 1940s, it was pretty much conclusive. Finally, people reacted to this finding in mid 1990s when various tobacco industries were successfully sued by several U.S. states.The tobacco industry has historically been largely successful in this litigation process, with the majority of cases being won by the industry.Between 1995 and 2005 only 59% of cases were won by the tobacco industry either outright or on appeal in the US, but the continued success of the industry's efforts to win these cases is questionable. 5. The Wall Street Crash 1929: Also known as Black Tuesday, was the mother of all economic shutdowns. The devastating stock market crash in the history of US in 1929 signalled the beginning of 10 years Great Depression. On September 5, 1929, economist Roger Babson famously gave a speech where he predicted an impending crash, claiming it would be absolutely “terrific.” Slightly less than two months later, Black Tuesday hit and irreversibly changed the course of world history. Over $5 billion was wiped out of the economy, a figure which is almost beyond calculating in today's money. The Depression was ushered in and a decade of misery sparked off, culminating in FDR, the New Deal, and a whole new political consensus. Now, predicting an event a mere two months in advance may not sound so impressive, even when it is of epoch-shaking magnitude, but according to The Guardian, Babson had been warning about the Crash for years. 6. Leaded petrol: In 1965, a geochemist of US Clair Patterson made a discovery which was a shock for the world. Patterson tried to draw public attention to the problem of increased lead levels in the environment and the food chain due to lead from industrial sources. Many scientists opposed his findings. It took until 1970 for Patterson to get the Clean Air Act passed, and a further 17 years to get lead banned from gasoline (petrol). Some 30 years after his research conclusively proved all this lead was toxic to us, the government finally removed it from food containers and paint—a delay that means the average American now has 625 times more lead in their blood than people in the 19th century. The elimination of leaded gasoline has led to prevention of premature deaths of more than 1.2 million people annually. Imagine, how many million people may have died because of leaded gasoline in the last 100 years. 7. Avalanche in Peru: In 1962 two American scientists, David Bernays and Charles Sawyer, had reported seeing a massive vertical slab of rock being undermined by a glacier, which threatened to fall and cause the obliteration of Yungay. According to Sawyer, when this was reported in the Espreso newspaper (27 Sept., 1962), the government ordered them to retract or face prison, and they fled the country. Citizens were forcibly prevented from speaking of an impending disaster. Eight years later the prediction came true. More than 4,000 people were killed in the avalanche. 8. Fukushima disaster: The 2011 Japanese earthquake was a disaster on a near-unprecedented scale. A magnitude 9.0 quake was followed by a devastating tsunami, which was in turn followed by possibly the worst nuclear accident in history. It was exactly the sort of catastrophe that no one could have predicted. No one, that is, but Koji Minoura.Twenty years before a gigantic wave sent the Fukushima reactor critical, Minoura was investigating a reference in an ancient poem to a tsunami in Northeast Japan. Digging through historical records, he uncovered the Jogan Event—an earthquake and tsunami that killed 1,000 people in A.D. 869. By the late 1980s, he had traveled to the site and uncovered some startling evidence that this part of Japan got routinely flattened by a tsunami every 1,000 years or so. And the next one was way overdue. Over the next 20 years, Minoura produced a flurry of work warning about the inevitable annihilation of the Fukushima area. His articles made it into magazines, periodicals, and journals—all of which were completely ignored. Two years after his predicted tsunami hit, parts of Japan are still in ruins and the reactor still poses an immediate danger. 9. Lung cancer from Asbestos: Asbestos is one of the 19th century's big mistakes. Recognized for its strength and resistance to fire, manufacturers began splashing the stuff around by the bucket load.For nearly 100 years, it cropped up just about everywhere, despite causing lung cancer, disease, and early death.People had suspected since the early 1900s that asbestos might be dangerous, with a high rate of illness and death being reported around asbestos-mining towns. But it wasn't until 1938 that a study commissioned by asbestos manufacturers conclusively proved that it was basically airborne death. At this point, those same manufacturers suppressed the findings and denied all knowledge of them. The result was illness and poverty for hundreds of thousands of workers. Because there was “no proof” linking asbestos to lung cancer, those who came down with it were ineligible for compensation. Companies frequently just dropped them, leaving them and their families to die in penniless misery.And till now this murderous product has not been banned. 10. Haiti Earthquake 2010: In 2010, a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Richter scale earthquake hit Haiti. More than 3 Lakh people were killed, residences buildings, collapsed. The capital turned into ruins. Years before the mishap, Geologist Claude Prepetit had predicted that the "big one" was coming. But, no one listened.For years he had pushed his ideas at schools, universities and conferences, explaining the slow shearing of the American and Caribbean continental shelves which made the tremor inevitable. He pushed in vain for the government to buy seismological equipment capable of detecting the movements imperceptible to humans that would precede a big quake. Unfortunately, the Haiti government had other priorities more important than preparedness for a quake which took 3,20,120 lives.