The Bleaching-Autophagy Theory of Safety System Collapse: Evidence from the Beirut (2020) and Shahid Rajaee (2024) Port Disasters

Abstract

This study introduces the Bleaching-Autophagy Theory (BAT) as a novel biological framework for understanding catastrophic industrial safety failure. Drawing on the biological processes of coral bleaching and cellular autophagy, BAT posits that organizations under sustained production pressure first expel their safety culture (bleaching) and then consume their safety structure (autophagy), leaving a formally intact but functionally dead safety system. Through a comparative case study of the Beirut port explosion (August 4, 2020) and the Shahid Rajaee port explosion (April 26, 2024), the theory is inductively developed and illustrated. The analysis reveals that both disasters followed a sequential trajectory: symbiotic safety culture loss followed by structural self-consumption, resulting in organizations that appeared institutionally alive but were biologically incapable of responding to minimal triggers. Four theoretical propositions are advanced to guide future empirical testing.