The BEST episodes of Seconds From Disaster

Every episode of Seconds From Disaster ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Seconds From Disaster!

Accounts of famous technological disasters and their subsequent investigations.

Last Updated: 3/18/2024Network: National GeographicStatus: Ended
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Killer Quake (Kobe Earthquake)
star
9.51
43 votes

#1 - Killer Quake (Kobe Earthquake)

Season 2 - Episode 6 - Aired 8/30/2005

On 17 January 1995, the Japanese city of Kobe was rocked by the Great Hanshin Earthquake, which destroyed buildings and killed over 1000 people and left thousands homeless. Why couldn't the top of the art equipment predict a disaster of this magnitude?

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Deepwater Horizon
star
9.41
39 votes

#2 - Deepwater Horizon

Season 5 - Episode 5 - Aired 4/15/2012

A look at the series of decisions and mistakes that led to the world's largest oil spill disaster, and that 11 workers on the rig died.

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Skywalk Collapse
star
9.33
48 votes

#3 - Skywalk Collapse

Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/10/2006

On 17 July 1981, 1,500 people had gathered for a dance in the Hyatt Regency Hotel when, in a catastrophic disaster, the skywalk collapses killing 114 people and injuring countless others in the worst US structural failure.

Fire on the Ski Slope
star
9.33
45 votes

#4 - Fire on the Ski Slope

Season 1 - Episode 9 - Aired 8/31/2004

November 11, 2000, started out as a normal day at the Kaprun ski resort in Austria, as a Furnicular train climbing the slopes breaks down in a tunnel. Passengers then realise it's on fire. Only 12 make it out alive, leaving 155 people to die horribly. But how could such a modern train break down and catch fire?

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Norway Massacre: I Was There
star
9.30
40 votes

#5 - Norway Massacre: I Was There

Season 6 - Episode 1 - Aired 7/22/2012

On July 22, 2011, a gunman goes on a terrorist rampage – starting with an explosion in Oslo and ending with the slaughter of dozens of teenagers.

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Disco Bombing (The Bali Bombing)
star
9.19
43 votes

#6 - Disco Bombing (The Bali Bombing)

Season 2 - Episode 8 - Aired 9/20/2005

Bali, located in Indonesia, is one of the most popular resorts in the world. But 202 die on the night of October 12, 2002, Muslim terrorists detonate several bombs in local nightclubs. Its the horror of 9/11 all over again.

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Wreck of the Sunset Limited
star
9.16
45 votes

#7 - Wreck of the Sunset Limited

Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 8/10/2004

September 1993. The captain of a towboat unwittingly causes the collapse of a bridge over the Big Bayou Canot. When an Amtrak train comes along, it derails with 47 lives lost. Why was such a hideous mistake made? How could it have been prevented? Could it have been prevented at all? Wreck of the Sunset Limited explains why over 40 people died that Autumn day.

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Flood at Stava Dam
star
9.14
43 votes

#8 - Flood at Stava Dam

Season 1 - Episode 11 - Aired 10/12/2004

On July 1985, Italy's Stava Dam collapses and demolishes 70 structures killing 268 people in the process. Was there a fault in the design of the dam? Is this something that could happen to any dam around the world? Find out how a structural failure leads to a massive catastrophe with Flood at Stava Dam

Pearl Harbor
star
9.14
73 votes

#9 - Pearl Harbor

Season 4 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/12/2011

On December 7, 1941 Japanese forces attack United States military installations in and around Pearl Harbor, thus bringing the US into World War II.

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Meltdown in Chernobyl
star
8.95
78 votes

#10 - Meltdown in Chernobyl

Season 1 - Episode 7 - Aired 8/17/2004

We make mistakes every few seconds of our lives. They are unavoidable. But sometimes the results can be disastrous. On April 26, 1986, a series of catastrophic blunders leave dozens dead when the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant melts down.

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Superstore Collapse
star
8.82
102 votes

#11 - Superstore Collapse

Season 3 - Episode 11 - Aired 9/20/2006

On 29 June 1995, the five story Sampoong Department Store in Seoul, Korea, collapses killing 502 people. Is there a fault in the building? Or is sabotage to blame? And how did the last survivor survive under the rubble for 16 days?

9/11
star
8.79
42 votes

#12 - 9/11

Season 4 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/5/2011

On September 11, 2001 two aircraft are deliberately flown into two buildings of the World Trade Center and one is flown into the Pentagon. Another crashes in a field in rural Pennsylvania.

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Mount St. Helens Eruption
star
8.73
41 votes

#13 - Mount St. Helens Eruption

Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 7/26/2005

Mount St. Helens, in the countryside of Washington State, has been dormant for 123 years. But on May 1980, it suddenly erupts, killing 57. Why couldn't they predict it?

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Comet Air Crash
star
8.72
43 votes

#14 - Comet Air Crash

Season 3 - Episode 14 - Aired 11/15/2006

The DH Comet is the first jet airliner and the pride of the British Overseas Airways Corporation. But on January 10, 1954, BOAC Flight 781, enroute from Rome to London, explodes catastrophically and crashes, killing 35 people. The investigation begins, but when South African Airways Flight 201 crashes exactly the same way taking another 21 lives, all Comets are grounded and the investigation takes a step forward.

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Collision at 35,000 Feet
star
8.70
37 votes

#15 - Collision at 35,000 Feet

Season 4 - Episode 4 - Aired 9/26/2011

On July 1, 2002 a cargo airliner and a passenger airliner collide while they are over Überlingen in Germany. The two aircraft crash, killing all on board.

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Nairobi Bombing
star
8.69
39 votes

#16 - Nairobi Bombing

Season 3 - Episode 5 - Aired 6/27/2006

Al Queda struck again on August 7, 1998. In Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, a truck bomb destroys the U.S. Embassy buildings killing 257 and injuring thousands.

Waco Cult
star
8.67
40 votes

#17 - Waco Cult

Season 5 - Episode 4 - Aired 4/1/2012

After a 51-day siege at the ranch of an armed religious cult, the FBI tries to force people out with tear gas, but a fire breaks out and almost 80 people die.

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Jonestown Cult Suicide
star
8.66
41 votes

#18 - Jonestown Cult Suicide

Season 6 - Episode 2 - Aired 11/5/2012

On November 18, 1978, when enigmatic cult leader Reverend Jim Jones calls all his followers together in South America, the resulting tragedy becomes the largest mass murder-suicide of US citizens in history - 909 are dead.

Bhopal Nightmare
star
8.66
38 votes

#19 - Bhopal Nightmare

Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/10/2011

On December 2, 1984 in Bhopal, India, a toxic gas leak at a Union Carbide chemical plant results in the deaths of 3,000 people.

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Aircraft Carrier Explosion
star
8.65
40 votes

#20 - Aircraft Carrier Explosion

Season 3 - Episode 8 - Aired 8/15/2006

The massive aircraft carrier USS Forrestal is sailing to Vietnam on July 29, 1967, when a fighter jet explodes, a massive blast rocks the ship, and in just 17 hours 134 men lose their lives. Was it hostile fire, human error, or a fault in the fighter jets.

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Massacre in Mumbai
star
8.63
38 votes

#21 - Massacre in Mumbai

Season 5 - Episode 6 - Aired 4/22/2012

On 26 November 2008, terrorists attacked two luxury hotels (one of them the famous Taj Mahal Hotel), a Jewish educational center, a café and a train station in Mumbai, killing 166 people.

Watch Now:Amazon
Runaway Train (Paris Train Crash)
star
8.63
43 votes

#22 - Runaway Train (Paris Train Crash)

Season 2 - Episode 11 - Aired 11/1/2005

In what was no doubt the worst rail incident in French history, a runaway train derails at Gare De Lyon Station, France, killing 56 people. Why did the train crash so horribly? Who is to blame?

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Hotel Collapse
star
8.59
44 votes

#23 - Hotel Collapse

Season 2 - Episode 9 - Aired 9/27/2005

Hotel New World, budget hotel located in Singapore's Little India, collapses on 15 March, 1986. After a 7 day rescue operation, 17 people are rescued but 33 perish. Why did the hotel collapse? Was it sabotage? Or was it faulty maintenance?

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Cable Car Collision
star
8.58
45 votes

#24 - Cable Car Collision

Season 4 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/3/2011

The Cavalese cable car disaster of 1998 (as distinct from a cable car disaster in the same location in 1976), occurred on 3 February 1998 near the Italian town of Cavalese, a ski resort located in the Dolomites, some 40 km north-east of Trento. The disaster, which led to the death of 20 people, occurred when a U.S. military plane cut a cable supporting a gondola of an aerial tramway.

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Chinook Helicopter Crash
star
8.56
39 votes

#25 - Chinook Helicopter Crash

Season 6 - Episode 10 - Aired 1/7/2013

On June 2, 1994, a Royal Air Force Boeing Chinook helicopter crashes on the Mull of Kintyre, on the west coast of Scotland. All 29 people aboard die, 25 of them being counter-terrorism officers who battled the IRA. The initial investigation cites pilot error as the cause, but several more investigations take place over the next 17 years before this verdict is overturned.

Watch Now:Amazon