Learn English – Word/phrase that means a series of problems of increasing severity caused by a small error

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Something small goes wrong, and this triggers something slightly bigger, which triggers something slightly bigger, and so on and so forth until you end up with a chain of problems of increasing severity until it ends in catastrophy.

Something like the old saying "for want of a nail the battle was lost", only highlighting that each intermediate issue was a problem in its own right, not just a stepping-stone to the final disaster.

Is there a common word/phrase that specifically describes this? I'm thinking "cascade of ever-increasing problems", but this seems clumsy, and I suspect there might already be a neat word or expression that covers it.

Best Answer

Snowball effect, which Josh beat me to, is the best choice.

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Cascading failure can also be used.

A cascading failure is a failure in a system of interconnected parts in which the failure of a part can trigger the failure of successive parts. Such a failure may happen in many types of systems, including power transmission, computer networking, finance, human bodily systems, and bridges.

Also try the butterfly effect:

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.

Or the domino effect/chain reaction:

A domino effect or chain reaction is the cumulative effect produced when one event sets off a chain of similar events. The term is best known as a mechanical effect, and is used as an analogy to a falling row of dominoes

Source: Wikipedia

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