Deadly Disasters

With increasing globalization and a world population that could grow to 11 billion in the next century, the risk of global disease is greater than ever before. In these episodes, we will look at the frightening recent outbreaks of swine flu and Ebola in places as diverse as West Africa, Hong Kong and East Germany. We will gain insights from some of the world's leading disease researchers such as Andreas Wack of London's Francis Crick Institute and discover why pandemics are the most insidious killers.

Nothing can be done to stop a landslide once it begins. We examine three of the most terrible landslides in recent history: In California, where heavy rains brought massive amounts of mud into barren, fire-damaged hillsides; in Venezuela, where a series of destructive landslides wiped out a 100-kilometer coastline; and in the small Welsh mining village of Aberfan, where a devastating landslide buried an entire primary school and the students taught there.

The Tornado is one of Mother Nature’s most extraordinary phenomena. These intense, rapidly rotating columns of air can attain wind speeds of more than 480 kilometres per hour, and have been witnessed on every continent except Antarctica. In this episode, we’ll focus on a part of the world which has been popularly known as “Tornado Alley;” a vast stretch of the Central United States that experiences an unusually high frequency of strong to violent tornadoes each year.

With a combination of torrential rain, powerful winds, and devastating storm surges, Hurricanes are among Mother Nature’s most calamitous natural disasters. Experiences of eyewitnesses and reports of experts, bring us closer to two of the worst hurricanes of modern times: Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast of America in 2005, and Hurricane Maria which hit Puerto Rico in 2017.

Many of our most densely populated cities are situated on the most seismically active faults on Earth. Through descriptions of survivors and fascinating expert insights, we examine two of the most catastrophic earthquakes ever to hit populated areas; a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that shook Haiti on January 12, 2010, and two earthquakes in Mexico City. Deadly, very destructive and impossible to predict, earthquakes are truly one of Mother Nature's most terrifying forces.

In 2011, a powerful earthquake off the coast of Japan unleashed a huge Tsunami that killed more than 15,000 people. But the worst tsunami of all occurred in 2004, just a day after Christmas, when a Tsunami delivered truly unprecedented chaos and destruction to South Asia, caused the death of an estimated 280,000 people across 14 countries. Using survivor testimony and fascinating expert insights, we’ll investigate these two unimaginable tragedies.