Reaction runaway has longtime been an issue in chemical industry as it often leads to severe accidents if not controlled and inhibited properly. Herein we have reviewed several key considerations and procedures to prevent such phenomena, including inherently safer reactor design, thermal risk assessment and early warning detection of runaway, and pointed out that the basic principle underlying is necessary heat management and construction of resilient processes. For inherently safer reactor design, important factors such as heat removal, heat capacitance, flow behaviors and explosive behaviors have been investigated. The survey shows that heat exchanger (HEX) reactor and microreactor outperform traditional reactors. Meanwhile, we have looked into the effect of thermal risk ranking and safety operation region determining for thermal risk assessment, and the influence of runaway criteria and construction methods for early detection of reaction runaway as well. It shows that thermal risk assessment plays a key role on process design, and early warning detection system (EWDS) is preferable on prevention of reaction runaway. In the end, perspectives regarding inherently safer designs with the measures discussed above have been provided. (C) 2018 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press. All rights reserved.