Disaster

A dramatic reconstruction of the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster. 167 of 226 men on the Piper Alpha oil rig were killed when it exploded on 6 July, 1988.

In 1989 the tail engine of a United Airlines DC10 blew up during a flight to Chicago and the plane stopped responding. Archive footage is used to reconstruct the event.

Possibly the worst contamination incident since Chernobyl was a little-known event that began in September 1987, when two thieves broke into a disused clinic in Goiana, Brazil. They stole parts from an old machine and sold them to a scrap dealer, who noticed the metal gave off a strange blue glow in the dark. He broke the machinery open and handed out its blue crystals to members of his family. Within days they were falling critically ill and panic was spreading through the city. The crystals were caesium-137, a deadly radioactive substance, and the machine was an X-ray unit.

For years Britain's 50,000 sheep farmers and workers have been regularly using a dip containing organophosphate chemicals to rid their animals of parasites. The chemicals are, however, related to nerve gas, and dozens of people have become ill as a result. One of them is animal health inspector Peter Tyrer, who since 1994 has been unable to work and who has been carrying out an investigation into the chemicals.

A storm forces a couple sailing in a sloop from Bermuda to New York to take to the life raft. They face severe mental and physical pressures as they struggle to survive.

In 1986,on board a huge Soviet nuclear submarine, fifty metres belowthe surface of the ocean, an enormous ballistic missile exploded. Using carefully obtained classified documents, this film tells the true storyof the cause of the explosion and the heroic three-day fight to save the world from nuclear disaster.