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00:11History is full of killer stories, people, places, and events so downright shocking that
00:18we just can't forget them. Tonight, a Nazi ship with 10,000 passengers in the sights
00:29of a Soviet submarine. Anyone who finds themselves in the water has just a few minutes to live before
00:36hypothermia sets in and they're likely to drown. A monster rainstorm sets off Colorado's worst
00:44flooding in a thousand years. Roads just disappear, bridges collapse. It's a deluge.
00:52And executioners drown hundreds during the French Revolution. Drowning is a horrible way to go and
01:01this death barge makes the guillotine look unique. These are the water catastrophes so destructive,
01:11so disastrous, and so devastating, they can only be among history's deadliest.
01:24Water sustains life, but this force of nature can also destroy. And that's just what it does
01:32in the Indian Ocean in December of 2004. Many of the countries that surround the Indian Ocean
01:43have some of the densest populations on Earth. Places like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka,
01:51and of course, India. On a serene morning in 2004, a 9.2 earthquake strikes off the coast of Sumatra,
02:00the largest island in Indonesia, and puts many of those people at risk. This event moves the ocean floor
02:09and not by a little bit. It drops by 16 feet, moves horizontally by 40 feet. It displaces 7.2
02:18cubic
02:18miles of water. So where does all this water go? It creates a tsunami with waves as high as 150
02:27feet,
02:28moving as fast as a jet plane. No one on the 2,000 miles of shores along the Indian Ocean
02:35is safe.
02:36Within 20 minutes of the earthquake, the first waves start to hit the shore of Indonesia,
02:42completely destroying and wiping out numerous villages along the coastline.
02:50Two hours after the quake, the tsunami is about to hit India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand,
02:57where hundreds of tourists relax on the Thai beach resort of Phuket.
03:02So it's the day after Christmas, and everybody's enjoying the holidays. They're out on the beaches,
03:07they're enjoying the warm weather. There's a 10-year-old British girl named Tilly,
03:10who's on vacation in Phuket, Thailand with her family. They're about 400 miles away from where
03:15the earthquake happened. As Tilly is out here looking at the ocean, she notices a couple of
03:21strange things about it. One is, it's got kind of frothy, kind of like foamy. And the other is that
03:26the water's edge is creeping inland, and it's not going back out. It's just a one-way trip, slowly
03:34moving on to the land. And she recognizes something that she's seen before several weeks earlier in
03:42Mr. Carney's geography class. They watched a video on signs that a tsunami is impending.
03:49Tilly rushes to her parents and says, a tsunami's going to come, and her parents do not believe her.
03:56Tilly has to get a little bit stronger with her message, and Tilly says, if we don't leave here,
04:01we will die. Tilly convinces her father and sister to leave the beach with her,
04:08but her mom stays behind. Tilly and her family, they make it to the lobby, which is on the second
04:14floor, just in time. In the meantime, mom is still on the beach, and she sees out on the ocean
04:21this
04:21giant wall of water coming in. And she now realizes Tilly is right, so she beats it toward the hotel,
04:28and she just barely makes it in. It turns out paying attention in school pays off.
04:34But not everyone is lucky enough to know the warning signs of a tsunami.
04:41The very impact of the tsunami is an incredibly violent affair.
04:48This water is moving at incredible speeds and overtakes the coast nearly instantaneously.
04:56Unfortunately, so many people are caught off guard. They're caught up in this swirling chaos.
05:04Absolutely every object becomes a deadly weapon when it's being wielded by a tsunami of this strength.
05:11People are being hit by automobiles, trees. It is taking human beings, putting them in the blender
05:18with some water, and then turning that sucker on full power.
05:24When we think of a tsunami, it seems like it should just be a beachside phenomenon.
05:28If you're sufficiently far away, no problem.
05:31So how far is sufficiently far away? A mile?
05:34Well, guess what? This tsunami went inland for three miles.
05:41This tsunami's reach extends well beyond Southeast Asia.
05:46It takes about seven hours for the waves to travel 2,000 miles across the Indian Ocean to reach the
05:53coast of Africa.
05:54In total, 14 nations are affected on two separate continents.
06:00The second deadliest tsunami in history occurred in Lisbon, Portugal in 1755.
06:06That would kill somewhere between 60,000 to 100,000 people.
06:09The Indonesian tsunami of 2004, almost 230,000 people are killed.
06:17All of the world's population relies or lives near the ocean.
06:23It's the source of livelihood, of trade, of pleasure, but in an instant, it can become an unstoppable force of
06:32death.
06:36Experts say that a water catastrophe like this will happen again.
06:41How do they know?
06:43Because events like these have been happening for thousands of years.
06:49Long before the Parthenon goes up in Athens, there is a civilization known as the Minoans.
06:55By 3000 BC, this empire includes Greek islands such as Crete and Santorini.
07:01The Minoans are a very sophisticated people.
07:04They have these massive cities with amazing architecture.
07:08They have plumbing.
07:11Even, we suspect, hot and cold running water.
07:14And they also are ocean traders.
07:18The Minoans are a dominant force in a big Mediterranean economic network.
07:23And as a result, they garner immense wealth.
07:27They're very good at living life on the sea.
07:31But the same sea they profit from is about to turn deadly.
07:36On the island of Santorini, there is an active volcano.
07:40In 1600 BC, it blows up.
07:43Boom!
07:44It is one of the most explosive eruptions humans have ever witnessed.
07:49It's as if a nuclear weapon has gone on.
07:52Water is pushed out by the force of the explosion, creating tsunami waves that are more than 100 feet high
08:00that race rapidly at hundreds of miles per hour across the breadth of the Mediterranean.
08:06Even one of the most advanced civilizations of the ancient world is no match for this epic wall of water.
08:15People are going about exactly what they do every day, and then, in an instant, it's gone.
08:23This happened so long ago that we can't possibly know exactly how many people were killed in this cataclysm.
08:29But it definitely kills a lot of people.
08:32If you're a survivor, you're surrounded by the dead.
08:36disease is coming, and there's probably no food.
08:42You're badly injured.
09:10You're badly injured.
09:12Many people's lives can change in a water catastrophe.
09:16Some historians believe that this event is the beginning of the end of the Minoan civilization, and that it's an
09:22inspiration for Plato's story of Atlantis.
09:32July 255, 255 BC, Rome is in the middle of a brutal war against Carthage, but the deadliest day won't
09:41come on the battlefield.
09:42It will happen on the high seas.
09:47The Mediterranean Sea is dominated by two growing empires.
09:51On the one hand, we have Rome.
09:52Meanwhile, on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, we have a growing power known as Carthage.
09:58Carthage, the settlement in North Africa, in modern-day Tunisia.
10:02Rome is at war with Carthage, and after a particularly devastating loss, the Roman army is stranded in North Africa.
10:13You're talking not thousands, you're talking over 100,000, and they need to get home.
10:19Without them, you have no army.
10:23To bring them home, Rome puts together a massive rescue fleet.
10:27There are 350 warships and transport vessels, and along the way, they commandeer an additional 114 vessels.
10:36It's an amazing sight.
10:39There are ships riding on the water.
10:41This is one of the greatest rescue missions ever assembled in human history.
10:46The first part of the mission goes well, but on the way home, the fleet's commanders choose to sail back
10:53via Sicily.
10:55Sicily is under the control of the Carthaginians.
10:59So why don't we take this fleet, stop by Sicily, perform some coastal raids, and see what we can get
11:05from it.
11:06The ship captains who are used to maneuvering these ships know that this is not a great idea to sail
11:11so close to the coast of Sicily.
11:13The passage around Sicily has always been difficult for ships, and this is no exception.
11:18The jagged rocks off Sicily's coast combined with rogue waves and strong currents just tear ships apart.
11:29Some of these ship captains are absolutely opposed to the idea, but orders are orders.
11:35The Roman commanders will soon regret their decision.
11:42As the Roman soldiers sail north, a storm kicks up in the Mediterranean.
11:48And this isn't a small storm, it's a massive storm.
11:53They're banging into one another.
11:55They're crushing one another as they topple over.
11:58It just turns into a maelstrom of broken ships and drowning men.
12:03When a storm finally passes, most of the Roman fleet is at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
12:11The toll of the disaster is epic.
12:15Out of a fleet of nearly 400 ships, only 80 remain afloat, and 100,000 men have been lost.
12:24Think of this in terms of the population of Rome at this time.
12:28Everyone would have had a friend or a family member that lost their lives in this catastrophe.
12:36The sinking of the Roman fleet is one of the deadliest naval disasters of all time.
12:43But that's ancient history.
12:45In modern times, the only thing close is a doomed German ship during World War II.
12:56The Wilhelm Gustloff is built before the war.
12:59And it's built as a Nazi cruise ship for the Strength Through Joy program.
13:05This is an opportunity for everyday Nazis to go and cruise the Baltic.
13:11But its most important task comes in January of 1945.
13:18The Soviet Red Army is advancing into East Prussia, what we now call Poland.
13:23And the German people there are terrified.
13:26They've been fed a lot of propaganda about how awful the Red Army is.
13:30They want to get out of there, and the Nazis have a plan to evacuate them.
13:35The Nazis use the Wilhelm Gustloff as one of the ships helping to evacuate 2 million people.
13:42And they hand out tickets to board the ship.
13:45The Germans are orderly.
13:47There's a way to do things.
13:48They're armed guards.
13:49People's tickets are being checked.
13:52But quickly, things on the dock get out of hand.
13:56You have crowds thronging to the docks, clamoring to get on board.
14:00Please save us.
14:02Because the Russians are coming.
14:04And they're coming with vengeance on their minds.
14:08Imagine people walking up.
14:10They have sob stories.
14:11Or they have gold.
14:13They have jewels.
14:14The guards think, we can let a few more people on.
14:172,000 becomes 3,000.
14:18It becomes 4,000.
14:20This ship is designed to hold no more than 2,000 people.
14:24And on this fateful night, 10,000 souls are aboard.
14:31When they finally start the engines up, people are relieved.
14:35They take a big, big breath.
14:37They realize they are going to be the people who survive.
14:40But the ship's officers still have an important decision to make.
14:45The water they're sailing into the Baltic Sea is still dangerous.
14:49There are Soviet submarines, Soviet mines.
14:52Do we stay close to shore where the mines are?
14:55Do we go into deeper water, maybe, where the submarines are?
14:59And in this case, that decision includes the fate of 10,000 other people.
15:05Ultimately, they choose to risk it out on the open water where the submarines are.
15:09Out in the Baltic Sea, there is a Soviet sub.
15:13The captain is Alexander Maronesko.
15:15Known as a bit of a drunkard.
15:16He's had a few sprees in his background.
15:19He needs a way to fix his reputation.
15:22And when he sees the Wilhelm Gustloff, he thinks, this is it.
15:25I am going to redeem myself.
15:28He makes the decision to fire not one, but four torpedoes.
15:33And at 9.16 p.m., the order is given.
15:36And those torpedoes are launched.
15:41The people on board obviously hear torpedoes strike,
15:44and they immediately rush to the lifeboats.
15:48Unfortunately, there were not nearly enough lifeboats
15:51for all 10,000 people on board the ship.
15:56The water is rushing in and flooding the ship.
15:58And on that side, the port, the left side,
16:00the ship seals over dramatically.
16:03That knocks people off their feet, and it makes it very difficult to escape.
16:09Within an hour, the ship sinks below the surface,
16:12and thousands are left floating in the frigid waters.
16:16People splashing into the water and crying out and then floating,
16:20calling out for each other, calling names of family members or friends.
16:25And then those voices go away as people die,
16:29and you're left with a terrible silence.
16:33Anyone who finds themselves in the water
16:35has just a few minutes to live before hypothermia sets in,
16:38and they're likely to drown.
16:39I interviewed one of the Germans who had gone out in a fast boat
16:46to rescue who they could after Gustloff sank.
16:49He talked about coming across these folks floating in the water.
16:54Some eyes still open, frozen, solid.
16:59Overall, 9,000 of the 10,000 people on board the ship died.
17:04That is four times more than died in the Titanic disaster even.
17:07It's the deadliest maritime disaster in modern history.
17:15July 1937.
17:17Japan invades China, igniting a full-scale war.
17:22One year later, a Chinese leader fights back by turning a river into a weapon of war.
17:31As Japanese forces push into China in June of 1938,
17:38President Chiang Kai-shek is desperate.
17:42The Japanese have their sights on the new nationalist capital of Wuhan.
17:52And if the Japanese take Wuhan now,
17:55not only will the Chinese nationalists be forced to surrender,
17:59they will suffer terribly at the hands of the Japanese,
18:03who have been brutal to the inhabitants of every city they have conquered.
18:07To block Japan, the nationalist leaders consider something extraordinary.
18:14What if the Chinese nationalist forces deliberately flooded the region,
18:20cutting off key transport lines and access to the invading Japanese forces?
18:25The nearby Yellow River could be unleashed,
18:29preventing the Japanese from reaching the rail line to Wuhan.
18:33This is not a new tactic in Chinese military history.
18:37Records indicate that they do this during the Qin Wars in 225 BC.
18:41But nobody really loves the idea of doing this now,
18:45destroying the area's farmland, homes, infrastructure,
18:49not to mention the inevitable death toll.
18:53Despite the risks, the nationalist government gives the okay to breach a dike,
18:59unleashing a shocking water catastrophe.
19:05On June 9th, the flood really starts to rise.
19:08It stops the Japanese dead in their tracks,
19:11buying the nationalist army time to prepare for the eventual assault on Wuhan.
19:16The flood waters rush on at 10 miles per day.
19:19That's millions of gallons a minute,
19:22passing through cities and towns and farmland,
19:25drowning everything in its path.
19:27It joins with other bodies of water, other waterways,
19:32and now it causes a chain reaction.
19:35And since this is a secret military operation,
19:40most people aren't warned about the impending flood.
19:4480,000 men, women, and children died within the first few days.
19:48But it didn't stop there.
19:50This catastrophic flood wiped out access to the most fertile farmlands in the nation.
19:57There was no food to be gathered.
20:00Storehouses swept away.
20:02So now you're facing starvation.
20:05And those numbers become unthinkable.
20:08Something like 800,000 people die because of this water catastrophe.
20:13These are 800,000 innocent lives lost
20:16because of military decisions they had no idea were being made.
20:24Six decades later, another secret military operation ends in tragedy.
20:30This time for Soviet sailors.
20:36On August 12, 2000, the Russian submarine Kursk
20:40is part of a large naval exercise taking place off the country's Arctic coast.
20:49The Kursk K-141 is a Russian nuclear-powered submarine.
20:55It's the size of two jumbo jets, nose to tail, nose to tail.
21:00Kursk is named for an epic World War II battle
21:03because of its engineering, its technology, its size, what it represents.
21:07It's a symbol of Russia.
21:09It's the pride of the Russian Navy.
21:13But in the Arctic waters of the Bering Sea,
21:17even the smallest mistake can have deadly consequences.
21:21The Kursk is carrying a training torpedo.
21:24It's in the tube, ready to go.
21:26Unbeknownst to the crew, the torpedo has a bad weld.
21:30Internally, it's leaking its propellant, high-test peroxide.
21:34It reacts with the silver lining of the torpedo, causing a chemical reaction.
21:40This reaction causes the gas to expand rapidly within the torpedo.
21:46And at 11.28 a.m., the Kursk explodes.
21:51Seven men are killed instantly,
21:53but the explosion doesn't reach the pressure hull of the submarine.
21:57The remaining 111 are trapped fighting for their lives.
22:02Just a little more than two minutes after that first explosion comes another that's about 10 times larger.
22:12It rips apart the bow of the submarine and sends it plummeting to the ocean floor 354 feet below.
22:18This explosion is so violent and so loud that seismic sensors around the entire planet hear the Kursk falling to
22:27its death.
22:28Twenty-three men survive the second blast and seal themselves in a compartment.
22:33It's dark. It's cold.
22:37They don't know how long they have.
22:40But they know from experience, as sailors, that unless help comes soon, they're doomed.
22:47They know the clock is ticking.
22:49There's maybe eight to 12 hours of oxygen left.
22:53Maybe.
22:54Could they pop the hatch and swim out? Not at that depth.
22:58Because the pressure of the water is such that as you get closer to the surface,
23:03and that pressure lets up, your lungs would burst.
23:07Nearby ships alert the Russian Navy that something has happened to the Kursk.
23:13The Navy delays telling Russian President Vladimir Putin
23:17because they don't want to disturb him during his vacation.
23:21When Putin does find out 15 hours later, he refuses international help, claiming the Russian Navy can recover the sub.
23:31The truth is, the Russian Navy hadn't even tested their deep-suburgence recovery vehicles with the Kursk.
23:39They don't know if it works with a submarine of this size.
23:41And I've been in the military, and I can tell you as a soldier,
23:44if you have not practiced your rescue protocols, you do not have rescue protocols.
23:50But the Russians, ever paranoid, are afraid to let any of the capabilities of this top-secret sub fall into
23:59foreign hands.
24:00The Russians finally accept help.
24:02And on the ninth day, when a team reaches the sub, they find all 118 men are dead.
24:10When they finally bring the main hull of the submarine back to the surface, they find the body of a
24:16dead sailor.
24:17In his pocket, a letter, hastily written in the dark, and it reads,
24:22We are still here.
24:25We are still here.
24:25None of us can get out.
24:27To the very end, the Russian sailors had not given up hope long after their commanders had given up on
24:35them.
24:38It's the summer of 1976, and Colorado's having a birthday party.
24:453,000 people are camping along the big Thompson River in a canyon that's about to become a watery grave.
24:56It's beautiful. It's sunny. It's a really great day. And the afternoon and evening forecast is calling for rain.
25:02Right now, there is a nearly stationary front extending from southeastern Colorado to north central Colorado.
25:10What happens around 6.30 p.m. is way more than the usual summer rain.
25:16The skies are dumping water. It's a deluge.
25:20People in campgrounds are suddenly knee-deep in puddles, wondering, where did this superstorm come from?
25:26And when is it going to blow through?
25:29You have a thunderstorm form right up against the mountains.
25:32And so it causes this storm to kind of stay in the same place and to continue to dump rain
25:38nonstop on this location.
25:41The heaviest rainfall hits right after sunset, dropping 12 inches of rain.
25:47That's a year's worth of rain in only four and a half hours.
25:51Local authorities are inundated with calls about the danger.
25:55People reporting roads washed out, water surging all over the place.
25:58But it's 1976. There are no cell phones around. They can't warn a lot of the people.
26:05Even landlines are eventually knocked out.
26:07So the warning system is what's been used for thousands of years.
26:11Word of mouth. Run! Danger! Flash flood!
26:16Sergeant Willis Purdy of the Colorado State Patrol is on duty.
26:20And he is tasked with preventing cars from trying to cross washed out roads.
26:24But about 9.15 that night, he radios his command.
26:28He's stuck. He's right in the middle of it. Can't get out.
26:32And he's swept away and drowns.
26:35Sergeant Willis will not be the flood's only victim.
26:40The steep walls of the canyon funnel all this rain into the Big Thompson River.
26:46The river rises 20 feet, flooding over the edge of its banks.
26:52This picturesque river that's usually there has now become a monstrosity.
26:57Flood waters surged through the 25-mile canyon at the speed of 13 million gallons per minute.
27:03And that makes some noise.
27:06Campers, hearing the roar of the water, have mere seconds to make the most important decision of their lives.
27:14Do they get in their cars and try to drive away?
27:16Or do they head for the hills?
27:18Do they scramble up to higher ground to try to get above the surging water?
27:24More than 400 vehicles trying to outrun the flood will be swept away off of the road and down into
27:32the canyon.
27:32Turns out that the safer choice is to go to higher ground, to scramble up there, grab onto whatever you
27:39can find.
27:39A rock outcropping, a tree, anything you can grip on and just hold on.
27:45Roads just disappear beneath the water.
27:48Bridges collapse.
27:49Entire homes are lifted off their foundations and sent downriver.
27:57Rescuers work through the night to try to save anyone who's stranded, but the flood waters are just too strong.
28:05First responders are pulling bodies out of debris piles and muck for days.
28:10144 people are killed, making it one of the deadliest flash floods in U.S. history.
28:19Flood waters are deadly, but add earth to the mix, things get heavy fast.
28:25The state of Vargas in Venezuela is in a picturesque, beautiful coastal location right along the Caribbean.
28:32It's got beaches and wonderful shores, plus these gorgeous mountains in the background.
28:37On December 14th, it starts raining and it doesn't stop.
28:42In a span of 52 hours, the area is hit with 35 inches of rain.
28:47That's a year's worth of rain in just over two days.
28:52Waves of water cascade down mountains, loosening rock and debris, which turn into not one landslide, but thousands of deadly
28:59landslides, some traveling 35 miles per hour.
29:05In a mudslide, now you've got thick, heavy dirt mixed in with trees, with homes, with cars.
29:12This is an incredibly dense material, and if you get caught in it, it is going to absolutely suffocate you.
29:19Some of the worst mudslides hit the city of Caraballeta.
29:25People who experience it describe the sound as deafening, a mix of roaring water, snapping trees, collapsing buildings.
29:341.8 million cubic meters of mud are brought into the city, and it is so thick that in some
29:40places it's about 17 feet deep.
29:42Caraballeta isn't the only city impacted.
29:46The mudslides in the region last 10 days, but amid the mud and muck, there are stories of bravery.
29:55The Perez family has a Rottweiler named Orion, and when the mudslides hit, he jumps off the balcony and disappears.
30:03Some dog keeps dragging people out of the debris, pulling people to safety, and it's a Rottweiler.
30:10It's Orion, and this dog saves 37 lives, including an eight-year-old girl and an 80-year-old man.
30:19Unfortunately, many in the region don't have an Orion to rescue them.
30:2419,000 people are killed. That's about 10% of the region's whole population.
30:31Tens of thousands more are left homeless. The entire coastline is basically reduced to rubble.
30:41Monster storms have slammed into the North American coastline for thousands of years.
30:47In 1928, one of the deadliest hits Florida.
30:53At the time, there's only about 50,000 people living in South Florida.
30:578,000 of them live around the state's largest lake, Lake Okeechobee.
31:04Those around the lake are primarily migrant farm workers, and they're living in pretty impoverished conditions.
31:09The lake brings water to Florida's farms, but it also has the power to destroy them.
31:17Local officials know that Lake Okeechobee is a tremendous potential problem, that it is going to be prone and susceptible
31:23to flash flooding.
31:24And so they actually have a system of 440 miles of dikes and levees to help control the water.
31:30These primitive barriers are no match for a Category 5 hurricane that's barreling across the Caribbean.
31:38The hurricane makes landfall in the U.S. at West Palm Beach, Florida, and just tears the place apart.
31:44The storm doesn't stop there.
31:47It heads straight for the lake, 50 miles to the west.
31:51One really interesting thing about Florida is that it's so flat and so swampy because of the Everglades that sometimes
32:00hurricanes don't weaken at all when they hit the state.
32:04They stay strong.
32:06Many of the people living around the lake aren't prepared for a hurricane of this size.
32:11These are poor farm workers. They don't have a way out.
32:15Most don't have cars.
32:16And the roads, even in perfect conditions, are hard to travel on.
32:20One by one, the primitive dikes and levees containing the lake give way.
32:27And an area 75 miles long is completely flooded, in some places up to 20 feet deep.
32:33The conditions become nearly apocalyptic.
32:37Entire farms, homes, barns, whole towns are just inundated and are completely underwater.
32:46Most people who die in a hurricane, it's not from the wind, it's from drowning.
32:51The Red Cross at the time says that 1,836 people lose their lives in the storm.
32:57But more recent estimates claim that number could be higher, maybe as many as 2,500.
33:04Exactly how many drowned, we may never know.
33:08In 1889, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, experiences a tragedy that goes down in history.
33:16But unlike the one at Lake Okeechobee, this one's man-made.
33:23On May 31st, 1889, the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, gets an unprecedented 10 inches of rain in just 24 hours.
33:33For the people living near the 72-foot South Fork Dam, the rain is what they feared for years.
33:42They know this dam is weak and it's not going to hold forever.
33:46For years, engineers have been warning that this dam is not stable.
33:50That's because it's been neglected and modified by its very rich owners.
33:56The South Fork Dam is owned by the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club,
34:01which is basically a playground for rich industrialists from the Pittsburgh area.
34:06You have people like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, they are all members of this club.
34:13One of the ways the dam is modified is its height is lowered to make way for a wider road
34:20across the dam.
34:21You don't have to be an engineer to realize that if you lower the height of the dam, you can't
34:25hold back as much water.
34:27There are also spillways down the side of the dam, but they put grates blocking the spillways to prevent their
34:34prized game fish from escaping.
34:36And because they're not cleaning out the debris, that allows the water to rise.
34:42Add in the relentless rain and it's a lethal combination.
34:48As the rain fills the reservoir, the dam begins to buckle under the pressure.
34:54There happens to be a team of plumbers there who are putting plumbing into the cottages for these rich Pittsburgh
35:01plutocrats.
35:01So they recruit these plumbers to go to the dam.
35:05They charge up there and they're trying to plug holes, trying to dig channels to get the water released.
35:12But they fail.
35:16At 3.10pm, the dam doesn't just break, it unleashes hell.
35:22All of this water forms a giant wave, 36 feet high, tearing down the valley at 40 miles per hour.
35:31Even though the town received potential flood warnings, by the time the dam bursts,
35:37nobody in the town knows that this flood is headed towards them because all the telegraph lines are down.
35:43So all that water is heading towards the town and even before they see it, they can hear it.
35:48It's this kind of thunderous roar.
35:52It obliterates everything in its path, including Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
36:00There are 99 entire families that are just gone.
36:06In the flood, 2,200 people perish.
36:10You would imagine that the hunting club would bear some responsibility for the deaths and the destruction of the town.
36:16But instead, it's deemed to be an unfortunate disaster.
36:21And no one is held accountable.
36:29Think of water catastrophes, and you might think of floods or tsunamis or hurricanes.
36:36But the worst aren't caused by nature.
36:39They're created by man.
36:44The French Revolution is a bloody dangerous time.
36:47The regime that has taken over sees enemies everywhere, especially among clerics, religious people, and people who have not sworn
36:55loyalty to their regime.
36:56What do you do with so many enemies of the state?
36:59Well, enter Jean-Baptiste Carrier, the guy chosen to establish order in the area around Nantes.
37:07At the time, Nantes is a powder keg, bitterly divided and on the brink of rebellion.
37:13Carrier arrives to crush the resistance and restore control.
37:18Carrier packs already filled prisons with even more prisoners, but he's concerned that there's a possibility of disease and that
37:26that could spread to nearby towns and cities.
37:28He also fears that if you put all these enemies of the state together, they're going to start organizing and
37:36maybe start plotting some counter-revolution.
37:39Carrier realizes he needs to do something with his overcrowded prison population.
37:43His first decision is to send them back to their home communities where they will be executed using a new
37:49technology called the guillotine.
37:53Unfortunately, that's slow.
37:54The guillotine can only kill one person at a time, and it's very expensive and laborious to send people back
38:01to their home communities.
38:02He assembles firing squads to do the same thing, but shooting wastes two precious commodities, gunpowder and bullets.
38:09What Carrier is looking for is an easy, convenient way to mass-execute people.
38:15Two sailors with ties to the revolution think they have the answer.
38:21Their idea is to use the Loire River and drown the prisoners with a specially designed boat.
38:29Holes are punched into the sides of flat bottom barges, just below the water line, and covered with wooden planks
38:36to keep the vessels temporarily afloat.
38:39The sailors' proposal is this.
38:41You pack a bunch of prisoners onto the boat, bound hand and foot.
38:46You send it out into the middle of the river.
38:48Then you have a special person on board who removes the boards.
38:53Then they jump onto a nearby boat.
38:55Meanwhile, the barge starts to sink.
38:58Carrier loves this idea and debuts it under the cover of darkness.
39:03The barge slowly takes on water and the prisoners start panicking and thrashing, but they can't escape, obviously, because they're
39:12tied up.
39:13It takes the average person one to three minutes before they panic and have to breathe.
39:18And then they black out and drown.
39:20What Carrier does is just sick.
39:24Drowning is a horrible way to go.
39:26And this death barge, in a weird way, actually makes the guillotine look humane.
39:33He uses these drownings to send a message to the church.
39:38There are even rumors that Carrier devises something called Republican marriages.
39:43In these drownings, a man and a woman, often a priest and nun, are stripped naked, tied together, and thrown
39:50into the river.
39:51It's specifically designed to mock the church and degrade the victims in their final moments.
39:58Carrier eventually gets more brazen carrying out these mass drownings.
40:04Locals describe how the river gets choked by these bloated bodies and how the water takes on a pinkish hue.
40:11Fishermen actually complain that they can't throw their nets out to gather fish without pulling in a corpse.
40:16That's how many bodies are floating down this river.
40:19The river eventually becomes a kind of graveyard, and it's this symbol for just how far the revolution has descended
40:27into sheer sadism.
40:30Most estimates say that Carrier, during the three-month period from November 1793 to February 1794, killed 1,800 people.
40:40Others insist he's responsible for as many as 5,000 or 10,000.
40:44Whatever the number is, news travels all around France, and when it gets to Paris, Carrier's in trouble.
40:51Carrier's crimes become too heinous to ignore, and he's arrested and put on trial.
40:57Even the revolutionary government, their own hands dripping in blood during this reign of terror, deems his actions beyond justification.
41:05Carrier finally faces justice for his mass murders.
41:10In December 1794, Carrier is sentenced to death and executed.
41:15And in an act of mercy, he's killed by guillotine.
41:23From tsunamis, hurricanes, and flash floods, to tragedies created by man, these water catastrophes are among history's deadliest.
41:35As a result.
41:35As a result.
41:36You
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