nature

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We ask the question: What can science tell us about the fury of our Angry Earth? Can science do anything to protect us? Might we one day be able to predict the quakes? Or are we at the mercy of the awesome power of nature?

Around the world, millions live under the threat of an earthquake disaster. In the last century, more than 1 million people died in earthquakes. Over the next century, it is feared that number could increase ten-fold. Why? Because Earthquakes don’t kill people. Buildings do. And urban populations are increasing so fast that we now have ‘mega-cities’. We discover the seismic vulnerability of some of the world’s mega-cities and the threat posed to millions of people all over the world.

The quest begins by going back to basics, looking at what triggers an earthquake in the first place. Dr Lucy Jones, USGS’ Scientist-in Charge for Southern California, shows us how, amazingly, something as simple as clicking your fingers or tearing a napkin is just like the actions of an earthquake.

We learn about the Richter Scale: did you know the power of a nuclear bomb is completely dwarfed by that of a moderate earthquakes? In a bid to understand more about future quakes, Naked Science explores the planet’s greatest-ever earthquakes of the past. We look back at deadliest, the costliest and the most powerful earthquakes to hit the planet. Naked Science travels to Alaska to meet two survivors of Alaska’s 1964 quake, the second most powerful in recorded history. They recount the horror of the quake and the destruction of their town. We discover about the main cause of the destruction – an earthquake phenomena called liquefaction.

And liquefaction threatens major cities, let alone small towns. Revisiting the Loma Prieta quake of 1989 and the Japan’s Kobe quake of 1995, Naked Science asks why some buildings collapse, while others close by remain standing? Here Dr Lucy Jones uses the music of her cello to explain the science taking place.

And we meet the rescuers who deal with the aftermath of building collapses and the facilities where they train, like Disaster City in Texas. Using dramatic reconstruction, Captain Wayne, an urban search and rescuer with the LA County Fire Department, recounts the rescue of Salvadore Paynos, following the Northridge earthquake of 1994. Salvadore was a street cleaner pinned under a three story parking-lot that had collapsed on top of him. Viewers get a vivid sense of the hazardous environment Wayne and his team had to work in, the methods they applied to retrieve Salvadore, and the dramatic bravery of everyone involved.

Naked Science reveals that earthquakes can also trigger another one of nature's most deadly natural phenomena, the ‘tsunami’. We visit SeaWorld in San Diego, where the antics of a performing killer whale are used as an analogy for how this can happen by tsunami expert, Professor Costas Synolakis. We revisit the 1998 tsunami that hit Papua New Guinea and discover how it was to change the way scientists study these devastating waves; and why the Californian coast should be even more weary of one striking it.

If earthquakes could be predicted, then cities and emergency services could prepare for it in advance. Naked Science presents the huge challenges of predicting earthquakes – no one has ever been successful twice. But we meet the man who may be changing that, the esteemed Russian Seismologist, Professor Vladimir Keilis-Borok at UCLA. Could he have found the scientific Holy Grail?

Produced by Robert Strange
Directed by Stuart Everett

ASPECT RATIO 4.3
MAIN SOUNDTRACK English Stereo
DISC FORMAT DVD 5
REGION 1 NTSC
CLASSIFICATION Exempt
NOTE Not available for shipment outside the USA