From oil rigs to global oligarchy, all human-designed systems are underpinned by choices
By Yassmin Abdel-Magied
Every complex, designed system has at its heart the same thing - people making choices. And we can use the power of these choices to either uphold systems, or disrupt them, writes Yassmin Abdel-Magied.
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I’ve always been obsessed with technical disasters. From Chernobyl to the Challenger Space Shuttle to every airplane crash ever, even at a concerningly young age I was drawn to the spectacle and mystery of massive engineering catastrophes.Why did that happen? What went wrong? Who was responsible? These questions fascinated me, influenced my choice of career, and continued to be a fixation well after I left the traditional path of engineering to became a full-time writer and creative professional.
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion is one such example. I remember the live news coverage, grainy footage of a gas geyser ripping through the metal platform as if it were a mere sheet of paper. I joined the world watching in horror as the slick, black crude blanketed the Gulf of Mexico, and held my breath for weeks as experts from around the world struggled to contain the gushing well.
When I joined the industry less than two years after the disaster - which claimed 11 lives and caused untold environmental damage - that case study soon became of intense personal interest. It would be my job to make sure something like the Deepwater Horizon disaster never happened on a rig I worked on. How would I do that?
The thing about engineering disasters, whether on an offshore oil rig or involving a typo that breaks the internet, is that they are so rarely technical failures. More often than not, they are human ones. This was what I found so intriguing as a child, what I held onto in my role as drilling engineer, and what eventually led me to writing my first literary novel, At Sea. In the case of Deepwater Horizon, which informed the technical aspects of the events in my novel, reports after the fact demonstrated that the root causes of the disaster were choices made by humans.
Many will read At Sea and recognise the dynamics I’m describing. I’d argue that despite the extreme setting of an offshore oil rig, these interpersonal frictions are indeed quite common in many a workplace: the frustration of being unheard, the painful ways in which people will fall behind the loudest or most authoritative voice regardless of expertise or accuracy, the exhausting work of constantly calibrating, codeswitching, making oneself legible.
Such frictions, some dynamics, can directly lead to disaster. On Deepwater Horizon, the blowout didn’t just ‘happen’ - it was induced, by leaders on and off the rig. Multiple people made erroneous decisions; these decisions were accepted and acted upon by others, and all involved were influenced by a range of recognisable cognitive biases.
Confirmation bias, groupthink, even the recognisable desire to be done with the job because it had gone overtime - these very human dynamics led to certain calls being made, and thus the range of mitigations and risk management tools in place to explicitly avoid the worst outcomes were rendered null and void.
In essence: you can try to design the best systems in the world, but at some point, the system will come into contact with people. You can never completely eliminate human error.
In a perverse way, studying and understanding these disasters gives me a sense of hope. It serves as a reminder that human beings and their choices are what lead us to catastrophe… but if humans got us into a mess, then humans can lead us out.
At the microlevel, if you know your team is at risk of groupthink, you can come up with strategies and tactics to disrupt the patterns. You can allocate space in a regular meeting’s agenda to discuss the worst-case scenarios, poke holes in assumptions, ask the tough questions. You can learn to build the muscle of dissent, alongside that of psychological safety, and over time develop that crucial combination of skills that will enable you to navigate the most uncertain of circumstances. Studying catastrophes - and what people have learned from them - has given me faith that we do know how to learn from our mistakes.
It has also taught me that nothing is inevitable. No system is indestructible, and this is a truism I keep coming back to, time and time again.
Whether the climate crisis, the descent into global oligarchy, genocides, technical dystopia, last-stage neoliberal-white-supremasict-capitalist-patriarchy, the scale of these challenges can engender utter powerlessness and despair. These structures and systems we are up against can feel impossible to bring down or change, as unmalleable as the law of physics, as certain as gravity itself.
But every complex, designed system has at its heart the same thing - people. Us. Making choices, every single day. We might think we don’t have choice, but we do. We have far more than we realise, and we can use the power of these choices to either uphold these systems, or disrupt them.
In the case of an engineering project, making a choice may mean the difference between an explosion and a regular day at work. In the case of society, the stakes are just as high. The systems might be more wickedly complex, but they are still made up of human beings, like you and me. Let us always remember the power we have, and let us strive to always make choices that move us closer to collective liberation.
About the author
Born in Sudan and raised in Australia, Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s first job as a teenager was in a coal mine in rural Australia. After graduating with first class honours in Mechanical Engineering, Yassmin trained and worked as a MWD (Measurement While Drilling) contractor and drilling engineer across Europe, Australia, Asia and the US.
Shifting to a career in writing and the media, Yassmin has presented TV and podcasts in Australia, Britain and the US, including ABC current affairs show Australia Wide and Hijabistas, a series on the modest fashion scene in Australia, and ground-breaking SBS documentary The Truth About Racism.
Now based in London, Yassmin has published five books, including the essay collection Talking About A Revolution and two novels for younger readers, You Must Be Layla and the award-winning Listen, Layla, with a forthcoming teen fantasy series, Silverbrook, out in January 2026. In 2024, she was selected for the coveted ITV Original Voices placement, and has since joined the team as staff writer on acclaimed British Continuing Drama, Emmerdale. At Sea is Yassmin’s first adult novel.
