Deadly Disasters

Tornadoes

49 min

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.

Landslides

48 min

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.

Pandemics

48 min

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.

Floods

48 min

In large quantities, water has an absolutely destructive power. Apart from famines, floods have claimed more lives worldwide than any other natural disaster. With exceptional footage and impressive insights from extreme weather experts such as Dr. Christian Reinhardt-Imjela of Berlin University, we focus on one of the worst floods that has ever occurred along the Mississippi, as well as the recent catastrophic floods in New York City and the German Elbe. We will see why floods are so indiscriminate and devastating.

Volcanoes

48 min

Volcanoes occupy a special place in our imagination and mythology. Stories about the destruction of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii are still fascinating. In this episode of Deadly Disasters, we will look at terrifying examples of active and dormant volcanoes from around the world, from Vesuvius in Italy to Kilauea on Hawaii Island. We will hear from some of the world's leading volcanologists about the farreaching consequences of these massive eruptions of ash and lava.

Heatwaves

48 min

In places like Saudi Arabia, temperatures of over 40 degrees are nothing unusual, but when such a heat hit Russia in 2010, it claimed an estimated 56,000 lives. The heat wave in Europe in 2003 even killed 70,000 people. Using exceptional footage and exciting insights from experts such as Friederike Otto, Director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, we will examine two of the most burning heatwaves in recent history and find out why this force of nature is claiming so many lives.

Blizzards

48 min

With ice, snow, extreme sub-zero temperatures and heavy winds, the blizzard is one of Mother Nature's most effective killing machines. With interviews from leading weather experts such as Karsten Haustein of Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute, this episode of "Deadly Disasters" focuses on blizzards and extreme cold events from around the world, including historic blizzards that reached the Mid-Atlantic coast of America in 2010 and a shocking storm that struck Central Europe in 2017.