Disaster Area

The congregation of St. Mark's Lutheran church in New York City's Little Germany had been waiting for the Sunday school picnic excursion all year. Mothers dressed their kids in their best clothes and packed up good food in baskets to bring with them on the trip up the East River and out to Long Island. On June 15th, 1904, thirteen hundred people would be aboard the General Slocum as it left the pier near the Williamsburg Bridge. Within two hours, over a thousand of them would be dead.

You're at a midsummer evening party at a friend's beach house, enjoying a cocktail or two as the sun sets, when a loud noise draw everyone's gaze to the skies above the ocean. Something has exploded up above - a plane, raining down in fiery pieces on the water below. The sight is already terrifying enough until the whispers start. Did anyone else see something arcing up toward the plane before it blew up?

It was just supposed a late-night birthday party on the Thames - a little drinking, a little dancing, and a lot of fun with all their friends. But in the early morning hours of August 20th, 1989, the 131 people onboard the pleasure boat Marchioness found themselves at the mercy of a ship three times her size.

It spewed smoke and ash that destroyed crops and killed livestock, and yet they stayed. It caused earthquakes that damaged buildings and mudslide which killed hundreds, and yet they stayed. It sent insects and venomous snakes fleeing down into the town, and yet the people of Saint Pierre on the island of Martinique - or more specifically, some of their political leaders - refused to listen to the wordless threats issued by Mount Pelee. 

It came out of nowhere, flowing in waves throughout the world during a time of great international upheaval. Some did what they could to fight it. Some were struck down, and tragically lost so quickly it was hard to believe they were gone. Some were careless about the whole thing, refusing to wear masks or continuing to gather together for parades and parties. But in the end, what mattered was the virus, and the damage it wrecked.

The gathering was just a union meeting, the Black sharecroppers of Phillips County, Arkansas, banding together and trying to get a fair pay for their work in the cotton fields. But when the night ended in bloodshed, the county's white citizens thought it was something more. Then the posse formed, and all Hell broke loose.

It should have just have been a rough-and-tumble overnight ride across the sea, enjoying a good beer or a meal as the waves crashed outside. But then, early in the morning of September 28th, 1994, a loud noise rattled through the ferry Estonia, and the countdown to the ship's quick death began. 

All of us are in the middle of trying to survive a disaster. Tsutomu Yamaguchi managed to do so twice in one week.

It all started when the sandstorm kicked up. Hours later when the winds died down, Marathon des Sables entrant Mauro Prosperi found himself alone in the Moroccan desert, unable to locate the rest of the runners. Nine days later, surprising everyone, he would be found alive.

Founded in 1824, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution provided the British Isles with a standing organization of trained volunteers ready and willing to save those in peril in the surrounding waters on a moment's notice.

The images were striking - the faint outline in the marshland of the Everglades where a DC-9 struck the ground, killing all 110 people on board. But what killed all those people within only minutes of takeoff from Miami?

You're working down in the mine several hundred feet below the surface when you start to smell smoke. It's growing thicker with every passing minute, and it's coming from between you and the only way out of the mine. 

In our first commercial disaster, it was supposed to be the first Tumblr convention, a safe place for fans to share their joy in things like Sherlock, Welcome to Night Vale, anime, and other interests. But what was supposed to be a good time ended up being a prolonged dumpster fire, complete with a bouncy house and a ball pit.

It was the last night of the Route 91 Harvest Festival and people were eager to see country star Jason Aldean take the stage. Twenty-five minutes into his performance, he stepped up to the mike ... only to make a run for it off the stage. Soon, everyone else in the audience would be running for cover as well.

It was one of the most respected ships on the sea, a luxurious way to travel from Canada to Europe. But one foggy night was all it would take to send the Empress of Ireland to the bottom of the St. Lawrence River in a mere fourteen minutes.

Would the United States and the Soviet Union nuke each other out of existence? In the 1980s, no one could be sure. So in 1982, a little girl named Samantha Smith just went ahead and asked -- the leader of the Soviet Union, that is.

In this final episode of our Chernobyl series, we look at how Pripyat has fared in the years since it was evacuated, among other things.

In the penultimate episode of our Chernobyl series, we look at the investigation into the causes of the accident and the failures behind the scenes which led to the disaster.

The break is over and it's back to Chernobyl, where everything is covered with radioactive dust and the remains of reactor #4 are a continuing danger to everyone - both in the immediate vicinity, and quite possibly to all of those in western Europe.

In this part of our Chernobyl series, we reach the moment of truth - the day when all of Chernobyl's underlying problems rose to the surface and led to the worst nuclear power disaster in history.