what a strange place to link to. Even Wikipedia has a better entry [1].

The model itself is fun to think about: preventing failures by stuffing more cheese into the system. If you're interested, the classic example of the cheese failure is Chernobyl, where many different things had to fail in order to become a catastrophe.

--- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model

I worked as a field engineer in nuclear power for maintaining reactors. Every plant you go to requires taking a training module before you can get in usually. Every single one had at least a slide showing the Swiss cheese model of "defence in depth". I think it is a fairly good visual and applies great to safety. Every mitigation is silly until it's not.

im more of a salami tactics guy myself

This model is a applied in aviation safety. Mentour Pilot[0] is referecing it from time to time in his videos, mostly when existing systems and/or procedures fail to prevent accidents from happening.

[0] https://youtube.com/@mentourpilot

The page doesn’t say it, but this is why adding redundant safety systems and defense in depth stops working after a while - such systems end up running with (acceptable, unobserved) “holes” after a while - the more complex the system, the harder it is to perceive the holes, until one day they line up and become very obvious indeed.

I've heard that catastrophes occur when three things go wrong (at the same time).