Another Simulation Gone Bad

Anyone who logged on to the Web site of SNCF, the French national rail service, on Tuesday would have read a bulletin that a high-speed TGV train had crashed in Burgundy, killing more than 100 people and injuring nearly 400.

As the Times of London reported:

For more than 40 minutes, panicked members of the public called the disaster helpline that accompanied the announcement and word of the catastrophe flashed around Twitter and other social networks.

But the crash report the Times reported on was part of a disaster exercise, which managed for some unknown reason, to leak onto a public Web site.

This incident followed a March 13 simulation of a Russian attack on the Republic of Georgia on Georgian television, which caused widespread panic in the country and resulted in a similar overload of communications systems.

It's wonderful to live in a world of instant communications -- and I would not want to give it up -- but the SNCF and Georgian mistakes illustrate that sometimes you should not believe what you read - and now see or hear.