Most amount of damage/money lost from single civilian act?

General Questions
#1

On May 23 Casey James Fury had anxiety and wanted to get home early from his Navy job on a Navy attack sub, so he “”…grabbed his cigarettes and a lighter, walked up to a bunk room and set fire to some rags on the top bunk."" The Navy originally said the fire started when an industrial vacuum cleaner sucked up a heat source that ignited debris inside."

The damage is estimated at $400 million.

This is from an AP report

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUBMARINE_FIRE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-07-23-14-26-28

What other moronic acts, intentional acts, have caused such financial damage? Must be civilian. “Damage,” in this sense, does not include loss of life.

#2

I think some forest fires have got to be close.

The 2007 Greek fires cost $3 billion, but parts were not man-made and several alleged arsonists were arrested (instead of just one person).

#3

Yeah I thought of forest fires, too.

#4

Are we allowed to count financial disasters like Enron or Bernie Madoff? Both were on the order of $60 billion.

#5

Shooting one man lead directly to two world wars. How much they cost is almost impossible to calculate, so it’s hard to imagine anything beating that.

#6

I think that both of those are violating the signal act. Those were both years long collections of many different acts.

#7

The Costa Concordia cost over $500m to build

#8

The Hayman Fire only caused $80M of damage and 6 deaths. All because she was pissed at her boyfriend. She got off really easy.

#9

Would the acts of rogue traders count

#10

Does 9/11 count? Obviously not a crime commited by a single person, but still. A small handfull of people managed to cost this country (and many others) several trillion (with a T) dollars and hundreds of thousands of human lives.

#11

Do cows count? Mrs. O’Leary’s was an idiot.

(Yes, I know that’s an urban legend.)

#12

I heard a story about someone using a airport fuel tank cap or device to tow or something and caused a massive fuel leak. Can’t remember the details, I think it was at an airport, that person connected a ring on the floor to a vehicle and pulled the ring out.

#13

Valdez Captain Hazelwood to the tune of roughly $7 billion.

#14

The OP put “intentional” so I think shipwrecks are out.

9/11 is a great answer, though I suppose you could argue it was an act of war carried out by civilians.

#15

9/11 would certainly be the top. Just the buildings alone cost 400million to build almost 40 years ago, so a few billion by today’s standards. Then you add in the contents and entire businesses lost, with huge rippling effect on the economy.

If you want to exclude 9/11 maybe Timothy McVeigh’s total damage in the Oklahoma City bombing. It was in the neighborhood of 650 million that counts for something.

#16

I was also including Iraq / Afganistan as “damage” caused as a result of 9/11. I think most people would agree that Bush would have invaded Iraq even without using 9/11 as an excuse, so not sure if meets the requirements of the OP. However, even if you discount the ensuing wars, 9/11 should be near the top.

Although Blake had a good answer. One man basically started WWI, and one man certainly started WWII. When you factor in the cost of the war itself, the Holocaust, various other war crimes as well as the devestation left in Europe and the cost of rebuilding, it’s hard to argue against Gavrilo Princip or Adolf Hitler being equalled in pure financial devestation they caused the world.

#17

Both wars were basically inevitable (WWI should have happened before the Russo-Japanese war.) The Sarajevo shooting may have precipitated it, but it didn’t take much to start the shooting. Without Princips, something or someone else would have made a good excuse.

#18

Mine: Akhenaton, who suggested monotheism.

#19

Yes, of course, because no evil ever came out of a polytheistic religion. :rolleyes:

#20

Plenty of people have argued that monotheism is by nature more dangerous, because the attitude that you worship the one and only god naturally leads to believing that everyone else worships false gods.