Natural Disasters Science

Malibu is known as an earthly paradise of multi-million-dollar mansions, movie stars, and unimaginable natural beauty. But all that changed on November 8, 2018. Go deep behind the scenes of the most destructive wildfire in Los Angeles history. Alongside his wife and son, Robert Kerbeck battled the fire that threatened to take their home. He knows firsthand how the Malibu fires affected everyone - from the rich and famous to the firefighters who often risked their lives.

Kendra Atleework grew up in Swall Meadows, in the Owens Valley of the Eastern Sierra Nevada, where annual rainfall averages five inches and in drought years measures closer to zero. Kendra's family raised their children to thrive in this harsh landscape, forever at the mercy of wildfires, blizzards, and gale-force winds. Most of all, the Atleework children were raised on unconditional love and delight in the natural world. But it came at a price.

When a massive wildfire surrounded Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, five monks risked their lives to save it. A gripping narrative as well as a portrait of the Zen path and the ways of wildfire, Fire Monks reveals what it means to meet a crisis with full presence of mind.

In early May of 2005, Captain Tom Tighe and first mate, Loch Reidy, of the sailboat Almeisan welcomed three new crew members, two men and a woman, for a five-day voyage from Connecticut to Bermuda. While Tighe and Reidy had made the journey countless times, the rest of the crew were paying passengers learning about offshore sailing—and looking for adventure. Four days into their voyage, they got adventure but nothing that they had expected or had any training to handle.

Rescue of the Bounty is the harrowing story of the sinking and rescue of Bounty - the tall ship used in the classic 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty - which was caught in the path of Hurricane Sandy with 16 aboard.

Laki is Iceland's largest volcano - and its most fearsome. Its eruption in 1783 is one of history's great untold natural disasters. Spewing out sun-blocking ash and then a poisonous fog for eight long months, the effects of the eruption lingered across the world for years. It caused the deaths of people as far away as the Nile and created catastrophic conditions throughout Europe.

In late April 1902, Mount Pelee, a volcano on the Caribbean island Martinique, began to wake up. It emitted clouds of ash and smoke for two weeks until violently erupting on May 8. Over 30,000 residents of St. Pierre were killed; they burned to death under rivers of hot lava and suffocated under pounds of hot ash. Only three people managed to survive: a prisoner trapped in a dungeon-like jail cell, a man on the outskirts of town, and a young girl found floating unconscious in a boat days later.

Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science and one of the leading young environmental journalists and bloggers working today, immerses listeners in the world of those who study hurricanes. What was once an arcane branch of meteorology (itself an arcane science) has become embroiled in one of the most politicized and hotly contested debates in American science: whether or not the recent hurricane disasters, culminating in Katrina, are connected to global warming.

Natural and man-made disasters have the power to destroy thousands of lives very quickly. Both as they unfold and in the aftermath, these forces of nature astonish the rest of the world with their incredible devastation and magnitude. In this collection of 10 well-known catastrophes such as the great Chicago fire, the sinking of the Titanic, and hurricane Katrina, Brenda Guiberson explores the causes and effects, as well as the local and global reverberations of these calamitous events.

If a disaster occurred would you be prepared? Could you feed and defend your family? Do you hope for the best but want to be ready for the worst? We live in uncertain times. The threat of disaster - both man-made and natural - looms ever present. Could you depend on yourself if you had to? Could you take care of your family? This book on SHTF prepping will teach why it's important to be ready, what you need to do to get prepared, what types of items and supplies you'll need after a disaster, and offers plans for both short-term and long-term survival.

One of the greatest threats to mankind's existence has become a reality. The Yellowstone Caldera erupts with a force of a thousand nuclear warheads, expelling seven hundred cubic miles of ash and rock all at once into the sky. And it's not finished . . .

On the night of September 20, 1938, the news on the radio was full of Hitler's pending invasion of Czechoslovakia. Severe weather wasn't mentioned; only light rain was forecast for the following day. In a matter of hours, however, a hurricane of unprecedented force would tear through one of the wealthiest and most populated stretches of coastline in America, obliterating communities from Long Island to Providence, destroying entire fishing fleets from Montauk to Narragansett Bay.

When the spaceship Viking encounters a variety of adversaries in the Asteroid Belt - including a prospector and his family, a cyborg, the solar system's greatest sculptor, and an evil industrialist - a confrontation begins that transforms the human solar system.

Disaster relief as we know it did not exist when the deadliest tornado in U.S. history gouged a path from southeast Missouri through southern Illinois and into southwestern Indiana. The tri-state tornado of 1925 hugged the ground for 219 miles, generated wind speeds in excess of 300 miles per hour, and killed 695 people.

In October 2012, a replica of the famous HMS Bounty, an eighteenth-century tall sailing ship, was on a collision course with a storm that would become the largest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic - a clash that would prove dramatic, tragic, perplexing, and ultimately one of the most unforgettable stories of Superstorm Sandy. Crewed by an eclectic team of seafarers, the Bounty was led by Robin Walbridge, their highly respected captain with decades at the helm, whose actions - sometimes questionable - decided the fate of his ship and crew.

On a Sunday in May 2008, an F5 tornado hit the town of Parkersburg, Iowa, killing eight people and destroying 250 homes and businesses within a span of 34 seconds. The next day, Parkersburg's beloved football coach, Ed Thomas, made a stunning prediction: "God willing, we will play our first home game here on this field this season."

On May 2, 2008, an enormous tropical cyclone made landfall in Burma, wreaking untold havoc and leaving an official toll of 138,300 dead and missing. In the days that followed, the sheer scale of the disaster became apparent as information began to seep out from the hard-hit delta area.

Carter Morelli had a plan when he left London: deliver the wildlife photographer and complete his secret mission. Except a lethal enemy has watched their every move. They tampered with the plane, leaving them stranded on a deserted island. And they kidnapped June Porter, the innocent photographer. In order to save her, Carter must confront the mysterious man in the jungle. Who is he? Savior or betrayer? He has no choice but to face the greatest enemy of all: the powerful feelings that draw him toward both June and the man in the jungle. Those feelings might kill them all.

The hurricane that struck Galveston, Texas, on September 8, 1900, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people. Prior to advanced communications, few people knew about impending hurricanes except those closest to the site. In the days before television or even radio, catastrophic descriptions were merely recorded on paper, limiting our understanding of the immediate impact. Thus it was inevitable that the category 4 hurricane would cause almost inconceivable destruction.

From acclaimed actor and producer Wendell Pierce, an insightful and poignant portrait of family, New Orleans and the transforming power of art. On the morning of August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina barreled into New Orleans, devastating many of the city's neighborhoods, including Pontchartrain Park, the home of Wendell Pierce's family and the first African American middle-class subdivision in New Orleans. The hurricane breached many of the city's levees, and the resulting flooding submerged Pontchartrain Park under as much as 20 feet of water.