Flixborough: The Factory that was Wiped off the Map
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A megaplant near the small village of Flixborough, England, is busy churning out a key ingredient of nylon 6, a material used in everything from stockings to toothbrushes to electronics. When a reactor vessel fails, the engineers improvise a quick-fix workaround, so the plant can keep up with demand. Before long, the temporary patch - a small, bent pipe - becomes a permanent part of the factory, and the people of Flixborough unknowingly drift towards disaster.
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Transcript
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| 1:18.3 | Lincolnshire, on the east coast of England. Sparsely populated and largely rural, few great |
| 1:25.6 | moments of history have been made here. |
| 1:28.5 | Large towns are also few. |
... |
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