Countdown to a Catastrophe
Every year, volcanoes, earthquakes and hurricanes pose a serious threat to hundreds of millions of people across the globe. But whereas scientists had previously considered these forces independently of one another, they are now focusing on the interrelationships between these natural disasters. In this documentary, we follow scientists as they travel to the most extreme and dangerous places on earth to implement the latest devices that will allow us to protect ourselves from violent storms, quakes and volcanic eruptions...
The production makes use of vivid, compelling CGI along with the latest camera technology, including a remote-controlled "multicopter" for breathtaking aerial photography. Our scientists come closer than ever to bubbling lava lakes and defy noxious gases and seismic tremors that hint at coming disasters...


1)  Volcanoes 
1,900 volcanoes worldwide are considered active. Many are widely unknown, such as Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At an altitude of 3500 meters a hot lava sea boils and bubbles at 1000° Celsius. Every day this volcano spews out as much sulfur dioxide as all the other volcanoes on earth put together. And as if that weren't enough: 2500 square meter Lake Kivu is right nearby and huge amounts of carbon dioxide and methane have built up in its depths. Millions of human lives are at stake.

2)  Earthquakes 
In many countries of the world people are so used to earthquakes that a little jolt of the ground barely raises an eyebrow. But since the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster In Japan at the very latest the issue of seismic security has taken on new urgency. The consequences of a quake can no longer be seen as just local or regional but must be viewed as a global phenomenon. With this awareness scientists are now taking a worldwide look at the mechanisms that trigger earthquakes

3)  Storms 
How does a hurricane come to be? What impact do these giant whirlwinds make on the global climate? It has only recently been established that over 80 percent of the hurricanes that slam the East Coast of the United States are first formed above the African savannah. In recent years researchers have uncovered increasing numbers of mysterious interactions between different natural phenomena. Now geophysicist Shimon Wdowinski from the University of Miami has discovered a truly astonishing connection: major storms can trigger massive earthquakes