Incident pit

An incident pit is a conceptual pit with sides that become steeper over time and with each new incident until a point of no return is reached. As time moves forward, seemingly innocuous incidents push a situation further toward a bad situation and escape from the incident pit becomes more difficult. An incident pit may or may not have a point of no return such as an event horizon.

It is a term used by divers, as well as engineers, medical personnel, and technology management personnel, to describe these situations and more importantly to avoid becoming ensnared.^[1][2]