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Comment by dcist | Hacker News Reader

This odd fact will spawn thousands of conspiracy videos and crisis actor accusations. Cue ominous music…

Derailment can be a result of sabotage. The location is near major food and water sources. So while not exactly a conspiracy yet, it seems important to understand exactly what occurred in this derailment.

Having taken a few rides on America’s rails, I don’t think it needs any sabotage. It’s collapsing on its own.

That's what makes it such a great target. The decaying state of our infrastructure makes it easy to sabotage in subtle ways and then blame it on negligence.

Also a lack of proper physical safety measures. Known safety improvements that were recently blocked[0] specifically the requirement to run hazards/flammable liquids with ECP Brakes which reducing stopping distance by >50% and also prevent cars from building pressure in between better braking cars and derailing.

[0] https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rule...

Allegedly, some axles were already on fire 20 miles before the crash: https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2023/02/10/...

The term you'll actually hear from the conspiracy theorists regarding this is "predictive programming".

They were already talking about this several days ago, and the main talking point was how the media wasn't really talking about it.

This is the first place I've seen people openly talk of sabotage.

Conspiracies are a part of life and history. It pays to keep an open and curious mind.

Do you know the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth? Time.

Just out of curiosity, what sort of response are you expecting here? "I know the difference between reality and fantasy! The space aliens explained it all to me years ago."

None really - it was a joke. Claiming that the bush administration was lying about iraq having weapons of mass destruction would have been called a conspiracy theory, yet in time, we learned it was true.

I agree with you. I updated my original comment because I screwed up the wording.

I don’t know. Someone who was an extra could have easily been inspired by the movie to carry out this sabotage just a year later. It doesn’t take much to derail a train, I could go derail a train right now if I wanted to. You just need key bits of knowledge. Quick visit to a hardware store.

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