This pioneering work offers a step by step account of how management systems can be built that can prevent hitherto "unpreventable" disasters. Recent disasters such as the 2004 tsunami continue to demonstrate Professor Allinsons thesis that valuing human lives is the core of ethical management. His unique comparison of the ideas of the power of Fate and High Technology, his penetrating analysis of the very concept of "accident", demonstrate how such concepts rule our lives. A wide-ranging investigation of court cases and government documents from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, and from places as diverse as the USA, UK and New Zealand provide ample supporting evidence for this thesis.