Mega Disasters

The United States faces a potential tsunami threat that mirrors the catastrophic Indonesia tsunami of 2004. Just west of the Oregon coast lies the Cascadia subduction zone where the Juan de Fuca Plate is moving under the North American Plate. A major earthquake here could displace enough water to cause a massive wave to impact along the west coast.

A tornado scenario striking Dallas, Texas is examined.

New York City suffers a Hurricane Katrina-like disaster.

Mount Rainier is a ticking time bomb that could dwarf the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, sending massive lahars and mudslides toward the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area.

The possibility of a cosmic impact on the planet Earth is examined.

The New Madrid Fault could reawaken at any time and destroy St. Louis, Missouri and Memphis, Tennessee, like the New Madrid Earthquake of 1811-12.

Yellowstone National Park lies on top of a magma chamber that is 35-miles wide, waiting to erupt. (For further information, see Yellowstone Caldera.)

The episode creates a scenario in which Chicago is menaced by three fictional tornadoes.

Cumbre Vieja, a volcano on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, off the northwestern coast of Africa, may potentially collapse in the future. If it does, a massive tsunami will be headed right for the East coast of the United States, threatening major cities like New York, Boston, Baltimore, and Miami.

The 1917 Halifax Explosion that killed 2000 people in Halifax could happen again if everything went exactly the wrong way in Boston.

Ice ages can come and go under an abrupt climate change scenario.

What if a super storm causes a flood in Sacramento, California?

This special-edition episode examines what happened in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and its effect on San Francisco and looks at the destruction if it were to happen again today.

Could the island nation of Great Britain have once been connected to Europe by land? Listen to a new theory and evidence which suggests that the English Channel was created by one of the largest floods ever.