''Perfect Disaster'' is a one-hour American documentary television

mini-series A miniseries or mini-series is a television series that tells a story in a predetermined, limited number of episodes. "Limited series" is another more recent US term which is sometimes used interchangeably. , the popularity of miniseries format ...

that ran from March 19 until April 9, 2006 on the

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Chan ...

. The program depicted the worst-case scenario that major cities could expect in the near future if hit by extreme

disaster A disaster is a serious problem occurring over a short or long period of time that causes widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources ...

. A large part of each episode was recounted the lives of citizens from each city, with the remainder of the program showing many real-world scientists discussing the very high probabilities of these disasters. The trademark tagline of the show was "When the conditions are right, it will all go wrong." The series currently airs as reruns on the

Science Channel Science Channel (often simply branded as Science; abbreviated to SCI) is an American pay television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The channel features programming focusing on science related to wilderness survival, engineering, man ...

Episodes

Dallas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County ...

: Destroyed by what is declared a super-tornado, one exceeding an F5 on the

Fujita scale The Fujita scale (F-Scale; ), or Fujita–Pearson scale (FPP scale), is a scale for rating tornado intensity, based primarily on the damage tornadoes inflict on human-built structures and vegetation. The official Fujita scale category is deter ...

. The presentation also describes the fact that the probability of this catastrophe is the highest of all the proposed scenarios. *

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

: In the year 2011, being subject to a powerful

geomagnetic storm A geomagnetic storm, also known as a magnetic storm, is a temporary disturbance of the Earth's magnetosphere caused by a solar wind shock wave and/or cloud of magnetic field that interacts with the Earth's magnetic field. The disturbance that d ...

, causing widespread damage to electronics, and several bizarre extraterrestrial anomalies. *

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...

: Engulfed in the flames of a large

firestorm A firestorm is a conflagration which attains such intensity that it creates and sustains its own wind system. It is most commonly a natural phenomenon, created during some of the largest bushfires and wildfires. Although the term has been used ...

that is brewing out of control during the dry summer weather. Similar to some phenomena seen in the

Black Saturday bushfires The Black Saturday bushfires were a series of bushfires that either ignited or were already burning across the Australian state of Victoria on and around Saturday, 7 February 2009, and were among Australia's all-time worst bushfire disasters. T ...

, which occurred less than 3 years after this show's premiere. The scenario also describes that 90% of all investigated fires are caused by man-made activity, particularly by

arson Arson is the crime of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, wate ...

ists. *

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...

: The victim of a super

typhoon A typhoon is a mature tropical cyclone that develops between 180° and 100°E in the Northern Hemisphere. This region is referred to as the Northwestern Pacific Basin, and is the most active tropical cyclone basin on Earth, accounting for a ...

from the West Pacific. 12 years after the episode aired, Super Typhoon Mangkhut struck Hong Kong, but thankfully no one was killed in the city. *

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

: Deluged by a massive

flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

that breaks past the city's levees. *

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple- ...

: Stricken by a severe

ice storm An ice storm, also known as a glaze event or a silver storm is a type of winter storm characterized by freezing rain. The U.S. National Weather Service defines an ice storm as a storm which results in the accumulation of at least of ice on ...

, in a manner similar to the

North American ice storm of 1998 The North American Ice Storm of 1998 (also known as Great Ice Storm of 1998) was a massive combination of five smaller successive ice storms in January 1998 that struck a relatively narrow swath of land from eastern Ontario to southern Quebec, ...

. Though seemingly unrealistic, each disaster was represented as terrifyingly large and powerful, in order to show the worst possible scenario in the case of each city. The series was produced by Impossible Pictures, the same group that made the 1999 BBC mini-series ''

Walking with Dinosaurs ''Walking with Dinosaurs'' is a 1999 six-part nature documentary television miniseries created by Tim Haines and produced by the BBC Science Unit the Discovery Channel and BBC Worldwide, in association with TV Asahi, ProSieben and France 3. Envi ...

'', which was screened in the United States on the

. The computer graphics were completed by

Gareth Edwards Sir Gareth Owen Edwards CBE (born 12 July 1947) is a Welsh former rugby union player who played scrum-half and has been described by the BBC as "arguably the greatest player ever to don a Welsh jersey". In 2003, in a poll of international ...

(Super Tornado and Solar Storm), Lola (Firestorm and Ice Storm), and Red Vision (Flood and Typhoon).

External links

Official website
* Discovery Channel original programming 2006 American television series debuts 2006 American television series endings 2000s American documentary television series Documentary films about disasters 2006 British television series debuts 2006 British television series endings British documentary television series English-language television shows {{US-nonfiction-tv-prog-stub

Episodes

See also

External links