There is no such thing as a black swan process incident

There should be no surprises with respect to catastrophic occurrences in the process industries unless knowledge deficiencies exist. The current paper examines documentation supporting this assertion and attempts to demonstrate that there is no such thing as a black swan incident in the process industries. Recent process safety literature shows that warning signs are always present prior to an incident and that we must train employees to practice within an effective safety culture. Research has also shown there is a fine line between information and knowledge, and that we must distinguish between the two before making high-risk decisions. In a knowledge society, therefore, there should be no black swans; all individuals in a company hierarchy must learn to detect warning signs.