All language subtitles for Evacuate.Earth.3of7.Monster.Storms

Fields of lightning miles wide.

Hail that falls like cough.

Wind that topples skyscrapers.

Could we survive

as monster storms ravage the planet?

One bad day to be on planet Earth.

Leading minds join forces to craft
scientifically plausible scenarios of

Armageddon and find the secret

to human salvation in the face of
ultimate disaster.

No doubt about it, humans are extremely
lucky to live on planet Earth.

Because the climate in Earth's
atmosphere, the temperature, humidity,

composition, the weather, is a very
nurturing environment for sustaining a

variety of life. And it's been that way
for a long time.

But Earth's climate exists thanks to a
delicate balance of multiple factors.

And if just one of those is thrown out
of whack, Everything we know could

very quickly.

Can you see that?

Hey guys, you feeling this?

Don't touch it, man. Don't touch it.

Authorities are blaming the death of one
hiker and the critical injury of two

others on a New Jersey trail last week
on an extremely rare weather phenomenon

known as ball lightning.

Until now, these floating orbs of
electricity were a scientific mystery.

A lack of data had led some scientists
to doubt their existence.

But in the eight days since the fatal
hiking accident, there have been dozens

fall lightning sightings across the
globe.

Scientists are now struggling to
determine why these incidents keep

If we start experiencing bizarre weather
phenomenon, we try to figure out what

was causing it.

There are many things that can affect
the weather.

But one of the first factors to look at
is temperature.

Let us start with the facts.

This map integrates data from all the
weather tracking stations that have seen

significant elevations in temperature, 3
,142 of them to be exact.

The average temperature on the Earth
really doesn't change very much. And

it does change by a little bit, it's a
big deal.

A sudden spike in global temperature
would set off alarm bells.

And people would take a hard look at the
chief mechanism of rising temperatures,

greenhouse gases.

A lot of people have heard about
greenhouse gases.

But not many appreciate how quickly
these gases can change our lives

Greenhouse gas acts similar to the glass
in a greenhouse.

Some commonly occurring greenhouse gases
are carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and

even water vapor.

Most of the Earth's heat comes from the
sun down to the surface of the Earth.

Some of it tries to go up back through
the atmosphere and back into space.

However, on its way out, it encounters
these greenhouse gases.

These heat -trapping gases hold on to
the heat in the atmosphere, and they

it nice and warm like a blanket.

With just the right amount of greenhouse
gases, we're kept at a nice

temperature.

But too much greenhouse is a bad thing.

It's just like putting another blanket
on your bed. It makes it warmer down

on the surface.

And that has the potential to put the
temperature out of a range that is good

for us.

Most of us are familiar with the concept
of man -made global warming.

Factories, farms, car exhaust, even the
most dire projections only predict an

increase of temperature of a few degrees
over the next hundred years.

We believe we know the primary catalyst
of this sudden spike in temperature.

We are convinced that the Earth must
have experienced a spike in greenhouse

gases.

This points to one logical culprit.

For the last two years, a Japanese fuel
consortium has been harvesting methane

hydrates in the West Pacific.

And six months ago,

they encountered a serious problem.

Existing just under the ocean floor are
massive reservoirs of greenhouse gases

called methane hydrates.

Methane hydrates.

essentially a very strange form of ice,
a combination of water and methane.

There are tons and tons of methane
trapped in these methane hydrates.

They're on the ocean floor, just off the
continent.

This is an enormous potential resource
of energy.

And there are multiple new efforts to
drill into these methane hydrates.

But methane is an extremely powerful
greenhouse gas.

It's something like 25 times more
efficient at trapping heat than carbon

dioxide.

That means we have a giant bank of heat
-trapping gas that is stored in these

methane hydrates. We're not exactly sure
how stable they are.

If the pressure on it is somehow
released, for example, if we drill into

from an ocean drilling platform.

As soon as that pressure is released, it
releases vast amounts of methane

directly as a gas that will bubble up
through the ocean into the Earth's

atmosphere.

It appears that during pumping, a mud
slide occurred on the seafloor.

releasing nearly a million tons of
methane directly into the atmosphere.

If we throw in that additional helping
of heat from outgassing of methane

hydrates, then we've got a new
distribution of energy in the

could then lead to all kind of
ramifications globally.

Heavy rains every afternoon that's just

impounding.

9 -1 -1. Yes, I am on hot road. I am in
water and it's taking me away.

The likelihood of this type of methane
eruption certainly isn't very high, but

it's definitely possible.

If enough methane were released, it
could start a chain reaction known as a

runaway greenhouse effect.

A runaway greenhouse effect is a warming
of the Earth that gets out of control

and it's self -propagating.

You start actually boiling away the
water, and then that traps a lot more.

And that means as it gets warm, it gets
warmer.

And as it gets warmer, it gets warmer
and warmer.

And it's impossible to put the brakes on
it.

You might think that this would just
make it warmer on the surface.

But unfortunately, that's not all.

This could generate monster weather the
likes of which we have never seen.

With time, we could have more intense
storms, higher magnitude, higher

stronger winds, producing stronger storm
surges, producing heavier rains, and

strange weather patterns.

And we simply don't know how quickly it
might occur. It would be difficult to

predict what would happen, but it would
not be good.

Oh, my God.

Earth's weather is pretty special.

Because weather on other planets can be
quite brutal.

Some even have winds of 400 miles an
hour that never subside.

If Earth's weather were to head in that
direction, it could mean the end of all

human life.

There is no question that we've seen a
global warming of surface temperature.

Now we need to know, what does that mean
for the future?

The death toll in New York City has
skyrocketed to 43 after a hail the size

bowling balls whipped through the city
for nearly two hours yesterday

More than a dozen locations across the
globe have been pelted with oversized

hail within the last week.

Meteorologists are blaming the
devastating hail on something that

in the Northeast, an enormous supercell
storm.

So if a large release of greenhouse
gases causes a massive spike in global

temperatures, one of the things you
might see early on is an increase in a

of storm known as a supercell.

A supercell is a large complex of
thunderstorms. 911, can you hold one

second, please? I can't. It's emergency.

Oh, my God.

It can be very violent and suck in the
energy.

suck in the moisture from the
surrounding areas and develop into this

storm.

There is a plausible scenario that with
this injection of greenhouse gases, this

pulse of warming, you could have an
assemblage of cold air, warm air,

moist air, and dry air, and you could
spawn some wicked super cells.

With these storms comes a tremendous
amount of what we call updrafts. That is

rising motion, lifting that moist air,
forming ice crystals higher than the

clouds.

Eventually, gravity will take over, and
those crystals begin to fall.

When that happens, we experience the
most damaging form of precipitation on

Earth.

They can destroy roofs, they can destroy
car bodies, and they do millions of

dollars worth of damage every year.

One of the potential things that could
happen in our scenario,

updrafts would be much higher velocity.

Supercells don't just cause hail. They
also spawn one of the most deadly

phenomena we know today, tornadoes.

So in this scenario, we could see more
tornado than ever before.

If a runaway greenhouse effect were to
occur on Earth, we would have much

wind velocities, which would lead to a
much higher incident of tornadoes.

There's a tornado on the ground!

This is an urgent message from the
Kentucky Division of Emergency

Police and firefighters are on the
ground and more help is coming.

These supercells are tremendously
dynamic.

You get just the right combination of
air that's subsiding and rising within

storm to help spin up.

And that spin eventually forms a vortex.

Once it goes down and moves to the
ground, it becomes a tornado.

It has a nice debris cloud now. It
appears to be hitting something.

I don't know what.

Yes, yes, coming down right now, major
tornado.

Coming down, another tornado to the
other side of 152.

When these tornadoes rip through a
populated area, the devastation is

You can have a half a mile wide swamp,
tens of miles long, where there's

left standing.

More than 300 tornadoes have hit
Oklahoma City in the past two weeks.

house was completely turned over in my
yard.

Dwarfing the previous record and killing
thousands.

Tornado on the ground.

Six miles northeast of it.

There are storm systems today that don't
just produce a single tornado. They can

produce many of them at the same time.

Just south, just south. It's one quarter
mile south.

Which is similar to what you might have
in this scenario.

They can be hundreds of storms in a day.
And when that happens, it's called a

tornado outbreak.

Tornado on the ground. This is tornado
number six or something.

What would be truly devastating in this
scenario is not just that we'd get more

tornadoes.

but that we'd see them in greater
numbers in places where tornadoes

don't occur.

Areas frequented by tornadoes, like
Tornado Alley in the central U .S., are

usually less populated, and the
buildings there are built to

help them weather these disasters.

But what about areas that haven't been
built for tornadoes and that have higher

population density?

A building needs to have a certain
elasticity.

But just as a tree has to bend with the
wind, otherwise it breaks, so the same

with a building.

Most high buildings are tested for the
design conditions. They're tested at the

wind speeds that are anticipated.

If you were to have an outbreak of
tornadoes in the middle of any major

for instance London, the devastation
would be immense.

The worst effect of building those right
in the CBD.

London is reeling after massive
tornadoes ripped through the city

It was very surreal.

Thousands are feared dead and tens of
thousands are injured and homeless.

The Prime Minister has called it the
worst natural disaster in the nation's

history.

Wild weather and storm systems of all
kinds are gaining rapid momentum across

the globe.

The United Nations has dubbed it the
global weather crisis, and

are even more distraught because they
seem to be unable to predict where the

storms will strike next.

So now enormous storms are occurring
virtually everywhere, and they're nearly

impossible to predict.

So the

next question becomes, can we try to
stop

them?

In the face of the runaway greenhouse
nightmare, a panel of international

scientists and military officials
announced Operation Storm Destroyer, a

plan to weaken the superstorms ravaging
the globe.

So are we really able to change the
weather?

We have tried before, with some success.

For nearly 20 years, the U .S.
government ran a program called Project

Theory. Their mission was to weaken
supercell storms by feeding them with

chemicals.

In theory, we can weaken a storm by
selectively feeding it with silver

iodide. Silver iodide particles are
hydroscopic. That means they attract

So when silver iodide particles are
dropped into a rain cloud, they draw the

water to them, forming raindrops. As
rain falls out of the cloud, the storm

weakens.

So if a quick succession of storms begin
to ravage the planet, nations with

experience in feeding may come together
to fight back.

We have scheduled about 30 minutes for
this press conference.

With the eventual impacts of the current
environment yet unclear.

Maintain spacing interval 90 seconds.

And the constant threat of natural
disaster.

Approaching minimum.

And America stands ready as a partner to
provide stability for all.

Okay, 7 -9 -I.

Fortunately, the concept of seeding
storms to weaken them is not as simple

people first believe.

Even for normal -sized storms, it's
difficult to prove the effectiveness of

seeding.

In this scenario of a warmed Earth, if
storms became larger and if storms

more intense, our ability to modify them
would become even less possible.

Today, Congress pulled the plug on
Operation Storm Destroyer after the

of 100 storms in six months proved
unsuccessful.

Governments around the world are quickly
switching strategies to assist those

hit hardest by the storms.

Unfortunately, as these storms grow and
spread across the globe, they won't just

kill people, but they'll destroy our
ability to produce food.

The destructive powers of these storms
could destroy huge amounts of crops,

leaving us vulnerable to large degrees
of famine.

With the storms destroying our ability
to grow food, we'd be forced to rely on

our stockpiles.

But those stockpiles are limited.

At the present time, we have
approximately one month's worth of food

feed approximately one billion people.

And the result of that is obvious. A lot
of human beings will die.

overwhelmed by widespread food and water
shortages across the nation.

Philadelphia and Los Angeles, massive
power outages have further complicated

problem.

Meanwhile, in Port -au -Prince, police
are struggling to deal with looting and

chaos as thousands take to the streets
in search of food.

Often we think of the developed part of
the world as assisting the undeveloped

part of the world during disasters.

But if the developed world was also
experiencing disasters, it would be very

difficult for them to assist.

Is there anybody coming?

The problem comes up when it's
distribution of resources.

And there you might have an issue as to
who deserves the resources, where do

they come from, how much is going to be
shared with a third world nation as

opposed to us.

Why don't we keep our own?

One thing that's true of most crises is
that there's a big difference between

the haves and the have -nots.

In this case, certainly early on, those
with resources might be able to build

some hope for themselves.

This is our three -bedroom, two -and -a
-half bath model.

It's got beautiful southern exposure,
great light in the afternoon.

Using technological solutions, those
with resources might be able to find

of carrying on with some normalcy, at
least early on.

We're really interested in, like, the
weather protection features.

Of course. You are 100 % safe in one of
these.

What's that noise?

I'm so glad you're here for this. This
is our most exciting weather feature.

The lower to the ground you can get, the
less damage you'll take from these

storms. I can envision a world where if
you're under the constant threat of

strong winds and severe storms,
designing your buildings and your homes

going into the ground.

The house is equipped with its own
Doppler radar system.

When it detects a severe enough storm
approaching, the house actually lowers

itself into the ground.

but even these measures would only be
able to take into consideration the kind

of extreme weather that we're familiar
with today in a world of monster storms

even our strongest measures may not be
enough

If Earth were caught up in a runway
greenhouse effect, it's possible that

weather phenomena could become much more
common.

With an increased number of
thunderstorms is going to come a greater

threat.

Lightning is this incredibly strange
phenomenon that you think you know how

going to work, and it can have all kinds
of surprises.

One exotic form of lightning that exists
is what is known as a gamma ray flash.

Gamma ray lightning is a phenomenon at
the tops of thunder cells that was

discovered only 20 years or so ago.

Only since we've had satellites in orbit
that are designed to sense gamma rays

have we realized that we have copious
amount of gamma rays emitted from these

lightning strikes.

Gamma rays are part of the
electromagnetic spectrum.

They're really nothing more than a part
of the electromagnetic spectrum of

light. It's one that we can't see, but
it's real nonetheless.

If a human being is bombarded with
enough high -energy gamma rays, The

are often horrific.

Gamma rays can rip right through your
body. They can tear apart molecules and

lots of damage.

Typically, gamma ray flashes occur high
in the clouds.

But in a weather crisis of this
magnitude, all bets are off.

So what if gamma ray lightning began to
occur more frequently at the surface of

the Earth?

This month alone, nearly 90 men, women,
and children have suffered gruesome

radiation burns from gamma ray lightning
blasts.

Of those 90, almost all have died.

The sudden uptick of these horrifying
incidents, compounded by the ever

-increasing number of storms, has left
many wondering what else is in store.

Hail falling like meteors, super
tornadoes tearing apart cities, rare

rendered terrifyingly real. But all of
this will pale in comparison to the true

threat in this scenario.

The hurricanes.

We have all kinds of storms that can do
unimaginable levels of destruction.

Well, when it comes to storms of
incredible magnitude that cover a large

it's hurricanes.

A hurricane is not just a

small storm like a single thunderstorm.

It's a storm that has to scale maybe 100
to 500 miles.

The winds in this system rotate around a
center point, and the energy source for

it comes from the surface of the ocean.

The amount of heat in the ocean is
enormous.

It's many, many, many thousands of
atomic bombs full of energy.

They can be just absolutely devastating.

In the scenario we're talking about,
hurricanes would be much more intense.

As the atmosphere gets warmer,
evaporation from the oceans increases,

add water vapor to the atmosphere.

Maybe that doesn't sound like a bad
thing, but that water vapor actually

contains a lot of energy.

If the temperature of the sea surface
rises,

We could have a new class of storm form.

You can have the strongest hurricane
become stronger and turn into a

or storm on steroids.

And a hypercane can grow without limits.
The storm feeds on itself and

will hypothetically be able to grow
unbounded.

This is not good.

This is one bad day to be on planet
Earth.

The World Meteorological Organization
announced today that they've stopped

naming super hurricanes as there are too
many to predict and track.

In the past week alone, at least 11
nations in Africa and South America have

fallen as unrelenting storms have
destroyed their struggling economy.

Now, life on Earth in a world of near
-constant hurricanes would be almost

unrecognizable.

As storms get more and more intense and
more and more frequent, obviously the

destructive power of them becomes
cumulative over time, and the storms are

destroying what we consider the planet's
habitability for human beings.

our everyday life would be forgotten as
is.

Once we got over the shock of all of a
sudden the weather being completely

different, we would have to completely
readjust the way we exist.

beings function with assumptions that
certain things are working.

They're not going to be living in a
situation where their home might be

away by a storm, where a loved one will
be driving down the street someplace

only to have a huge tree fall on that
car and kill that person.

As these things become the norm, people
will begin getting

increasingly uncomfortable.

If you look at the whole disaster record
of humankind, people survive and

cultures survive a single event quite
well.

It is compound events where there's two
or more in a row.

We don't seem to be able to handle the
combinations, and it's like a one -two

punch. There'll be enormous pressure on
the government to do something.

It's the role of the government to
protect the lives of its citizens.

That's relatively easy when the threat
comes from another human being or

country. It's extremely difficult when
it comes from nature itself gone wild.

So we're talking about a total
breakdown, not only of global

national communities, state communities,
even citywide local communities, into

just small areas of people surviving.

In a fairly short period of time,
civilization as we know it will be gone.

I think we would revert to tribalism
very rapidly.

At this point, as nations fall and small
tribes of people band together to

survive, you can imagine that they would
find relief in the brief moments

between these giant storms.

But it's possible that soon there would
be no gaps at all.

Earth could be engulfed in one
permanent, massive storm.

The worst case scenario is that this
weather crisis culminates in a storm

covers maybe half the globe and never
subsides.

There are precedents for storms of this
severity in our own solar system

already.

We see certain places in our solar
system where there are persistent giant

storms.

An excellent example is Jupiter.

The Great Red Spot.

The Great Red Spot is this vast
circulating dorm.

The Great Red Spot is massive.

Three planet Earths could fit inside it.

Driven by the energy pumped into the
atmosphere by a heating planet.

It's conceivable that there could be a
long -term circulating storm with a

fearsome wind and weather front on other
planets like the Earth.

It would be a very, very, very, very
difficult situation for human beings to

adjust.

We still have to eat. We still have to
breathe.

We still have to walk around on this
planet. We still have to get by.

In an enormous storm.

With winds of hundreds of miles per
hour, we wouldn't be able to find food.

wouldn't even be able to stand up.

It's possible that we simply couldn't
survive.

A storm like this on Earth could mean
the end for humanity.

There would be nowhere left to run,
except maybe for one place.

The eye of a hurricane is the central
portion of a hurricane.

Essentially, it's an area of calm,
subsiding air.

And because of its proximity to where
the winds are moving around it, it

cannot physically have a high wind
velocity.

So the wind is always very low in this
region.

If you have a strong hurricane, you're
going to have a well -defined eye.

And with that, a chance to catch your
breath if you're within there.

You could see that eye

be able to sustain itself, trapping the
population within that eye and forcing

them to migrate.

as this low -moving eye traverses
coastal areas.

Today, most of the storms have an eye
radius maybe 10 miles to

40 miles.

We're from the edge, about 30 miles.

Luckily, it's heading inland.

In the situation that we're talking
about here, we could probably see eyes

might be more on the scale, of 100 miles
it is extremely possible if you could

stay in the eye of the hurricane that
you could in fact adjust adapt and

learn to live in that new world we
should be in pittsburgh in about five

days

If it's a permanent eye of the storm,
then, you know, people can have a quite

interesting existence.

The eye would be constantly moving over
areas that the rest of the storm had

already destroyed.

How's it looking down there?

It's done. It's stripped. There's
nothing left.

All right. Get out of there.

Of course, this lifestyle would come
with great risk.

Because of the eye wall, the innermost
ring of the storm.

You have this eye wall where the
strongest winds are circulating.

To survive in the eye, you'd have to
navigate its movements pretty closely.

Because if you got caught in the eye
wall, it's game over.

It's at 20 miles now.

So it's moving faster.

All right, people, you heard him. 10
miles an hour, go!

I think whatever nature throws at us, if
it's survivable, people will find

a way to survive it.

If we've learned anything about humans,
it is that we are one of the most...

From boiling lava to frigid darkness,
Evacuate Earth explores two terrifying

plausible scenarios in the final double
bill of the brand new series, tomorrow

from 9.