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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
01:01and this death barge makes the guillotine look humane.
01:07These are the water catastrophes so destructive, so disastrous, and so devastating they can only
01:16be among history's deadliest. Water sustains life, but this force of nature can also destroy.
01:30And that's just what it does in the Indian Ocean in December of 2004.
01:41Many of the countries that surround the Indian Ocean have some of the densest populations on Earth.
01:46Places like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and of course, India.
01:53On 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.
02:06This event moves the ocean floor and not by a little bit. It drops by 16 feet, moves horizontally by
02:1540 feet,
02:16it displaces 7.2 cubic miles of water. So where does all this water go?
02:23It creates a tsunami with waves as high as 150 feet, moving as fast as a jet plane.
02:30No one on the 2,000 miles of shores along the Indian Ocean is 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.
03:06They're out on the beaches. They're enjoying the warm weather.
03:08There's a 10-year-old British girl named Tilly, who's on vacation in Phuket, Thailand with her family.
03:13They're about 400 miles away from where the earthquake happened.
03:16As Tilly is out here looking at the ocean, she notices a couple of strange things about it.
03:22One is, it's got kind of frothy, kind of like foamy.
03:25And the other is that the water's edge is creeping inland, and it's not going back out.
03:31It's just a one-way trip, slowly moving on to the land.
03:36And she recognizes something that she's seen before, several weeks earlier, in Mr. Carney's geography class.
03:44They watched a video on signs that a tsunami is impending.
03:50Tilly 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, we
04:01will die.
04:04Tilly convinces her father and sister to leave the beach with her, but her mom stays behind.
04:11Tilly and her family, they make it to the lobby, which is on the second floor, just in time.
04:16In the meantime, mom is still on the beach, and she sees out on the ocean this giant wall of
04:22water coming in.
04:23And she now realizes Tilly is right, so she beats it toward the hotel, and she just barely makes it
04:30in.
04:30It 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.
04:49This water is moving at incredible speeds and overtakes the coast nearly instantaneously.
04:57Unfortunately, so many people are caught off guard.
05:00They'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.
05:14It is taking human beings, putting them in the blender with some water, and then turning that sucker on full
05:21power.
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?
05:33A mile?
05:34Well, guess what?
05:36This 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.
07:09They 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.
07:59That 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.
08:18And 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.
08:37Disease is coming.
08:39And there's probably no food.
08:42You're badly injured.
08:44This is a disaster that just doesn't end like that.
08:48This is a disaster that persists.
08:52The Minoans never recover.
08:54They can't.
08:54One of the most advanced ancient cultures are wiped off the map by this tsunami.
09:05And it just shows you how quickly the fortunes of your life and many people's lives can change in a
09:14water 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 B.C.
09:35Rome is in the middle of a brutal war against Carthage.
09:39But the deadliest day won't come 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.
09:53Meanwhile, 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.
10:06And after a particularly devastating loss, the Roman army is stranded in North Africa.
10:13You're talking not thousands.
10:15You're talking over 100,000.
10:18And they need to get home.
10:20Without 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.
10:31And 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.
10:49But on the way home, the fleet's commanders choose to sail back via 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.
11:19The 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.
11:34But 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.
12:35The 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, because the Russians are coming, and they're coming with vengeance on their minds.
14:08Imagine people walking up.
14:10They have sob stories, or 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.
15:10Out in the Baltic Sea, there is a Soviet sub.
15:13The captain is Alexander Maronesko.
15:15Known as a bit of a drunkard, he'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.
15:26I 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, and they immediately rush to the lifeboats.
15:48Unfortunately, there were not nearly enough lifeboats for 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, the ship seals over dramatically.
16:03That knocks people off their feet, and it makes it very difficult to escape.
16:08Within an hour, the ship sinks below the surface, and thousands are left floating in the frigid waters.
16:16People splashing into the water and crying out, and then floating, calling out for each other, calling names of family
16:23members or friends.
16:32Anyone who finds themselves in the water has just a few minutes to live before hypothermia sets in, and they're
16:38likely to drown.
16:39I interviewed one of the Germans who had gone out in a fast boat to rescue who they could after
16:48Gustav sank.
16:50He talked about coming across these folks, floating in the water.
16:53Some eyes still open, frozen, solid.
16:58Overall, 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.
17:08It'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, President Chiang Kai-shek is desperate.
17:43The Japanese have their sights on the new nationalist capital of Wuhan.
17:52And if the Japanese take Wuhan now, not 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 B.C.
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 floodwaters rush on at 10 miles per day.
19:19That's millions of gallons a minute,
19:21passing 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.
19:58There was no food to be gathered.
20:00Storehouses were swept away.
20:01So 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.
21:01Kursk is named for an epic World War II battle because of its engineering, its technology,
21:06its 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.
21:20The 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, but the explosion doesn't reach the pressure hull of the submarine.
21:57The remaining 111 are trapped fighting for their lives.
22:03Just 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.
22:19This explosion is so violent and so loud that seismic sensors around the entire planet hear the Kursk falling to
22:27its death.
22:2823 men survive the second blast and seal themselves in a compartment.
22:34It's dark.
22:36It's cold.
22:37They don't know how long they have, but they know from experience as sailors that unless help comes soon, they're
22:47doomed.
22:47They know the clock is ticking.
22:50There's maybe 8 to 12 hours of oxygen left.
22:53Maybe.
22:55Could they pop the hatch and swim out?
22:56Not at that depth.
22:58Because the pressure of the water is such that as you get closer to the surface and that pressure lets
23:04up, 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 because 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 submergence 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, if you have not practiced your
23:47rescue 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, and on the ninth day, when a team reaches the sub, they find all 118
24:08men 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,
24:22It's, we are still here. None 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.
24:39It's the summer of 1976, and Colorado's having a birthday party.
24:443,000 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.
24:59And 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,
25:24Where did this superstorm come from, and 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
25:38non-stop 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.
26:02They can't warn a lot of the people.
26:04Even 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.
26:57Floodwaters 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,
27:08have 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
27:28will be swept away off of the road and down into the canyon.
27:32Turns out that the safer choice is to go to higher ground,
27:36to scramble up there, grab onto whatever you can 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.
28:01But the floodwaters are just too strong.
28:05First responders are pulling bodies out of debris piles and muck for days.
28:09One hundred and forty-four people are killed,
28:12making it one of the deadliest flash floods in U.S. history.
28:19Floodwaters 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,
28:56which turn into not one landslide, but thousands of deadly landslides,
29:00some 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,
29:16it 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,
29:29a mix of roaring water, snapping trees, collapsing buildings.
29:341.8 million cubic meters of mud are brought into the city,
29:38and it is so thick that in some places it's about 17 feet deep.
29:43Caraballeta 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,
30:00he jumps off the balcony and disappears.
30:03Some dog keeps dragging people out of the debris, pulling people to safety,
30:08and it's a Rottweiler.
30:10It's Orion.
30:12And this dog saves 37 lives, including an 8-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.
30:26That's about 10% of the region's whole population.
30:31Tens of thousands more are left homeless.
30:34The 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.
30:588,000 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,
31:21that it is going to be prone and susceptible to 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
31:59that sometimes hurricanes don't weaken at all when they hit the state.
32:04They stay strong.
32:05Many of the people living around the lake aren't prepared for a hurricane of this size.
32:11These are poor farm workers.
32:13They 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.
33:51That'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, which is basically a playground for
34:03rich industrialists from the Pittsburgh area.
34:06You have people like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon.
34:10They are all members of this club.
34:14One of the ways the dam is modified is its height is lowered to make way for a wider road
34:20across the dam.
34:20You 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.
34:43Add 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 in to the cottages for these rich
35:00Pittsburgh plutocrats.
35:02So 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 3.10 p.m., the dam doesn't just break.
35:20It 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, nobody in the town knows that
35:39this 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.
35:51It obliterates everything in its path, including Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
35:59There are 99 entire families that are just gone.
36:06In the flood, 2,200 people perished.
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, and no one is held accountable.
36:29Think of water catastrophes, and you might think of floods or tsunamis or hurricanes, but the worst aren't caused by
36:38nature.
36:38They'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.
38:20Their 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 waterline and covered with wooden planks to
38:36keep the vessels temporarily afloat.
38:38The sailor's 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, and then they black
39:19out 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.
40:29Most 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.
40:52Carrier'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.
41:06Carrier finally faces justice for his mass murders.
41:10In December 1794, Carrier is sentenced to death and executed, and 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.
41:34Deadliest.
41:35Deadliest.
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