💥 HALL OF FAME

> Legendary Software Fails

Celebrating the most spectacular digital disasters in history
📅
2000
💀💀💀☠️☠️

Y2K Bug

The millennium bug that had the world preparing for digital apocalypse, but turned out to be mostly a dud.

#classic$100B+ in preparation
🚀
1996
💀💀💀💀💀

Ariane 5 Explosion

A 64-bit floating point number tried to fit into a 16-bit integer. Spoiler: it didn't fit.

#classic$500M
☢️
1987
💀💀💀💀💀

Therac-25

When software bugs become literally deadly. Race conditions in medical equipment.

#classicPriceless (lives)
🔲
1998
💀💀☠️☠️☠️

MissingNo

Pokemon's most famous glitch became a beloved feature. Buffer overflow never felt so cute.

#gaming$0 (feature!)
🍄
1985
💀☠️☠️☠️☠️

Minus World

Super Mario Bros' most famous secret level that was never supposed to exist.

#gaming$0
🩸
2005
💀💀💀☠️☠️

Corrupted Blood Incident

World of Warcraft accidentally simulated a pandemic years before COVID-19.

#gaming$0 (virtual)
💀
2024
💀💀💀💀💀

CrowdStrike Outage

A single bad update brought down 8.5 million Windows machines worldwide.

#modern$15B+
🌐
2021
💀💀💀💀☠️

Facebook's 6-Hour Death

BGP configuration change took down Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp for 6 hours.

#modern$60M in lost revenue
🚗
2023
💀💀💀💀☠️

Tesla Autopilot Glitches

AI-powered cars occasionally forget what traffic lights and stop signs are.

#modern$2B+ in recalls

📅 Timeline of Chaos

1985🍄Minus World💀☠️☠️☠️☠️
1987☢️Therac-25💀💀💀💀💀
1996🚀Ariane 5 Explosion💀💀💀💀💀
1998🔲MissingNo💀💀☠️☠️☠️
2000📅Y2K Bug💀💀💀☠️☠️
2005🩸Corrupted Blood Incident💀💀💀☠️☠️
2021🌐Facebook's 6-Hour Death💀💀💀💀☠️
2023🚗Tesla Autopilot Glitches💀💀💀💀☠️
2024💀CrowdStrike Outage💀💀💀💀💀

🎓 Lessons from the Abyss

Golden Rules

  • > Test in production-like environments
  • > Implement staged rollouts
  • > Handle edge cases gracefully
  • > Formal verification for critical systems

Common Failures

  • > Integer/buffer overflows
  • > Race conditions
  • > Improper error handling
  • > Inadequate testing