Abstract: The disaster-causing mechanism of unstable tailing dams is extremely complex. However, the impact of multi-scale and multi-factor mechanical properties of railings is not adequately considered in existing studies on the disaster prevention of tailing dams, and the mechanism of the cataclysm of fine grained tailing dams and high piled tailing dams is not clear. Aiming at the basic and common problems existing in studies on the disaster-causing mechanism of tailing dam, this article collects a lot of documents closely related to tailing dam disaster at home and abroad, and briefly introduces the study status and results of the structural multi-scale characterization and mechanical characteristics of tailings, the deposition law of railings, the formation and structure of tailing dams, the stability analysis of tailing dams and the disaster-causing mechanism. On this basis, some existing shortcomings are pointed out in current researches, the key scientific problems in the related research fields of tailing dam disaster are extracted which have to be quickly solved, and finally, concrete and comprehensive analyses are conducted on the development direction in the future of the research.