Seconds from Disaster

This show is one of the few that remains interesting over the years. It is very well crafted, well documented and the stories are fascinating. We need more shows like this.

This is one of three shows currently airing that I watch (and set the DVD recorder to catch -- the others are The Colbert Report and Project Runway.)

Most episodes are fascinating; the disaster is shown, and then it goes back to the beginning and shows each step toward the final outcome. The show is a combination of computer graphics, reenactments, and survivor and investigator interviews. The disasters include plane and train crashes, natural disasters, structural breakdowns, and terrorism. The episodes tend to be fairly recent disasters, going back up to about 30 years ago, but every so often they show older ones, like the Hindenburg.

This show has a good rewatchability factor, except National Geographic tends to replay many of the episodes too much and not show others. For example, the Mt. St. Helens and Columbia episodes are shown too often.

First off I love this show, however the episode in season 3 about the USA forrestal is inaccurate.

I just watched the episode about the sinking of the German battleship Bismark and was moderately dismayed at the background audio effects. Most of the time, when Morse Code was used as background, the message was SOS (distress call), repeated over and over. And the effect for radar scanning was actually the sound made by scanning with sonar. I'm generally a big fan of history documentaries, but getting the small details wrong makes me wonder if they got some of the big ones wrong, too.