Original subtitles

For centuries, humanity has repeatedly faced

devastating disasters that have unleashed

destruction,

defied explanation,

and changed the course of history.

In our modern world, we tend to think

that scientific knowledge and technology

can help protect us from almost anything,

including natural disasters.

But is that really true?

Or are we just as vulnerable today

in the face of raging fires,

violent earthquakes

and destructive hurricanes

as our ancestors were in the past?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

The city is in the midst of an

unprecedented period of growth and prosperity.

That is, until a small fire breaks out

in a barn located at 137 DeKoven Street.

The blaze quickly grows out of control,

and flames spread north and east

toward the heart of the city,

putting Chicago's 324,000 residents

in grave danger.

1871 Chicago had experienced

enormous growth, and that enormous growth

meant very fast building,

and also very fast building in wood.

Buildings were made out of wood,

and sidewalks were made out of wood,

and the important thing

about sidewalks being made out of wood

is those conduct heat very easily

from one part of the city to the other,

and so, that spread the fire throughout the city.

This was exacerbated by a period

of an extremely dry summer and fall,

which prepped most of the city's construction,

which was wood at the time,

as kindling.

The whole thing was basically waiting to go up in smoke.

Buildings were clustered together.

So, once one area went up,

the whole thing went up,

and to make matters worse,

the water tower in Chicago,

which was the firefighters' principal source for water

to fight the fire, was itself destroyed.

Since the authorities were unable to contain the blaze,

nine different fires broke out across the city,

eventually coalescing into a single

raging inferno.

The Chicago Fire was

biblically devastating, if you want to think of it like that.

Try to visualize

what the people in the mid-19th century were seeing.

An entire city engulfed in flames, which was so hot

it created the fire equivalent of dust devils.

Vortices, think of them like reverse tornadoes

that were sweeping across the city.

They call them fire devils, and they themselves,

they have fast enough winds that they could fling

burning bits of debris

into other parts of the city

that hadn't yet caught on fire.

So, literally, this was

the world coming to an end. Death by fire.

For three days, the fire raged across Chicago,

turning the wooden city into ash.

One-third of the city's buildings

were burned to the ground, and 300 people were killed

before a rainstorm mercifully put an end

to the disaster.

There were 17,000 buildings destroyed in that fire,

and more than 100,000 people lost their homes.

The fire basically destroyed

most of the inner city of Chicago.

Anyone who experiences

an incomprehensible disaster

on the scale of the Chicago Fire

is gonna be profoundly impacted by it, and history shows us

the Chicagoans were.

There was intense citywide grief.

There was so much pride in the city of Chicago,

in what they'd become in such a short period of time,

that there was despair.

Everything was gone.

It's hard to fathom 17,000 buildings

in such a bustling, prosperous city

burning to the ground in only a few short days.

And in the wake of the Great Chicago Fire,

people wanted to know how the massive inferno got started.

But, at the time,

investigations into fires were in their infancy,

so authorities had a hard time

collecting evidence.

What caused the fire?

It was the question that was in everyone's mind.

You know, when people were trying to figure out

the origin of the fire,

there was the popular story that

it was a cow inside the barn that kicked over a lantern,

and from there, events unfolded.

Now that's considered an urban legend.

There are many different contested ways

in which that could have started, but it did

start on the property and spread from there.

The destruction unleashed by the Great Chicago Fire

took nearly two years to repair.

And during the rebuilding process,

engineers were told to ensure

that such a disaster could never happen again.

In the aftermath of the Chicago Fire,

fire was principle on everyone's mind,

and so, almost immediately,

they enacted a brand-new series of ordinances

requiring things like limestone,

granite in building construction.

Steel beams instead of pine beams, which are flammable.

And a new technological innovation,

which was terra-cotta tiles,

which started to fireproof Chicago

in a way that the world basically had never seen before.

After the fire in Chicago, we got

the origins... at least for the U.S... of modern architecture.

So, they began using iron

and glass, giving us the basis for modern buildings.

And these would be, in a sense, much less combustible.

While the Great Chicago Fire

inspired innovations in fire prevention,

it also served as a reminder that,

even though mankind first mastered fire

some 400,000 years ago,

it remains a powerful and unpredictable

force of nature that can inflict great harm.

Fire is a frequent disaster that comes upon people,

but it's an interesting one.

As far as we know, no other species on the Earth, uh,

makes fire, uh, to utilize it.

It's one of the things somewhat unique to our species.

It's both necessary and yet incredibly

destructive and dangerous.

This has been a part of the human story

for a long, long time.

Fire is a double-edged sword.

On one edge of the sword, we're talking about

creating foods and creating warmth and light

that makes modern civilization possible.

But the other side of the sword

is if it gets out of control it could wipe out your cities.

In modern times, there have been

tremendous advances in firefighting.

But mankind's ability to stop fires quickly

has led to an unintended consequence

that experts refer to as

the fire paradox.

We have generated a fire paradox.

By this, I mean

we have dramatically affected fire

in the landscape around the world.

On the one hand, we've been fighting fires,

trying to stop wildfires from consuming the vegetation.

Now, this may sound good, but, at the same time,

it's actually a problem.

If you reduce natural fire from the landscape,

if you keep it out of landscape for too long,

you will have an accumulation of flammable material,

and when a fire eventually occurs,

it'll be more destructive.

Wildfires are becoming longer and more intense.

The data proves this.

For example, one of the largest megafires

in California so far was called

the August Complex fire, which happened in 2020.

It was so large that it burned over a million acres,

which is just unheard of in history.

Ever since we had the Great Chicago Fire in 1871,

we had been under the impression that we shouldn't

ever try to allow fire to happen on the landscape.

We now know that we should

actually allow some fire to happen naturally.

And all we can do is do our best to understand it

because these fires are gonna keep happening.

It's staggering to think that, in just three short days,

the Great Chicago Fire wreaked so much havoc,

it took nearly two years to repair the damage.

But there have been other disasters in history

that have inflicted even greater destruction on civilization.

Like in the year 1755,

when a massive earthquake nearly wiped out

an entire city.

Across the city, a celebration is underway.

Thousands of Christians are packed into churches

to celebrate a festival known as All Saints' Day.

But then, at about 10:00 a.m.,

without warning,

disaster strikes.

A massive magnitude 8 earthquake occurred in

the Atlantic Ocean seafloor right along

the tectonic plate boundary between Eurasia and Africa.

The shaking from this earthquake

knocked down about 85% of the buildings of Lisbon.

Even worse, this earthquake occurred

while most people were in mass,

in church or cathedrals

on All Saints' Day.

Lisbonites are in all these churches,

and many of the most major churches

in Lisbon were destroyed.

It was one of the most devastating earthquakes

that Europe had seen in centuries.

In a matter of minutes, the massive earthquake

reduced the buildings throughout Lisbon to rubble

and opened a 16-foot-wide crack

in the ground through the center of the city.

Estimates place the death toll as high as 50,000 people,

or about 20% of Lisbon's population.

In the early 1700s,

if you had listed the five great cities of Europe:

London,

Paris,

Rome, you well might have

included Lisbon in that list.

But, after 1755,

Lisbon's glory was reduced,

literally, to ashes.

Lisbon rebuilt,

but never really reached the same glory that it had.

In the aftermath of the horrific quake,

the residents of Lisbon struggled to understand

why this tragedy had befallen their city.

Many among the Christian populace,

who had only heard of such devastation in the Holy Bible,

believed the earthquake to be an act of God.

Lisbon was dominated by the Catholic Church.

A very, very religious city.

So, lots of theologians started to ponder

the meaning of this event in religious terms

because the fact was, this earthquake had struck Lisbon

on one of its holiest days,

the feast of all saints.

It had killed tens of thousands of Christians

while they were worshipping.

Why did God choose this day

to bring an earthquake upon the people of Lisbon?

And this was a confrontation for many theologians,

and they blamed the people of Lisbon.

They said, "You must have been sinful."

The only reason this could have happened to you

is that you are not living by God's laws.

While some people thought the earthquake

was a punishment from God,

others focused on taking practical steps

to guard against such a calamity in the future.

One of those people was Portugal's prime minister,

the Marquis of Pombal.

In the reconstruction of Lisbon,

the Marquis de Pombal oversaw

really critical innovations.

The first is to build earthquake-resistant buildings.

These are built around wooden frames that can actually

sway with an earthquake, rather than collapse.

And then, he improves the city.

Before, it was these winding, medieval streets,

which people could get blocked up in.

So, the Marquis de Pombal, he redesigns the city

on a gridiron system, so, all of a sudden, you have now,

really wide, straight streets,

which are ideal for evacuating people.

And, in fact, the way that he handled

the reconstruction of the city

is the first instance of modern disaster response in history,

where someone actually tries to take a rational response

to the effects of a natural disaster.

The varied reactions to the Lisbon earthquake

have actually been quite common throughout human history.

For thousands of years, mankind has tried to make sense

of these violent tremors that often strike without warning.

Earthquakes have a really unique place, uh,

in human consciousness because you can't see it coming.

It's not like a giant storm

that you can see the clouds approaching,

see the lightning, hear the thunder.

Earthquakes, you feel and you hear,

but that happens in the moment.

You can't run out of the way.

There's nowhere to hide.

The problem of earthquakes and how to deal with them

goes back to antiquity.

The first seismometer to measure earthquakes

was actually invented by a scientist named Chang Heng

back in China in the first century of the common era.

This was a beautiful bronze,

almost a cask,

that had dragons around the perimeter

with balls in their mouths.

And beneath them were a little array of-of bronze frogs.

And the way the device worked is the pendulum

inside would rock just so,

bumping a lever in the direction where the earthquake occurred,

and a ball would fall out of the dragon's mouth and land

telling you the orientation of an earthquake.

And all developments since then on earthquake detectors...

We call them seismometers...

Have been variations on that theme.

Today, experts

understand that earthquakes happen when

massive underground rocks, known

as tectonic plates, suddenly collide,

causing seismic forces to be unleashed

beneath our feet.

Scientists can measure an earthquake's power

and even pinpoint its location.

But, in spite of everything we've learned,

we still have a hard time predicting where

and when

the next earthquake will strike.

With earthquakes,

there's still a component of uncertainty.

And we are always trying to improve

our earthquake knowledge.

We actually have

extensive seismic networks

that go all around the globe,

where you can have an earthquake in China that we sense

in Virginia on a college campus.

And that helps us really triangulate

where these events occur,

how deep in the crust they occur,

and how big they really are.

We've made huge amounts of progress,

but there is still so much more we have to learn

that will help us understand where and when

these quakes might happen, so that we can save lives.

While scientists haven't learned how to predict earthquakes,

a curious theory about what causes some of them

to occur has emerged.

And it just so happens that humanity

may, in fact, be to blame.

The idea of human-induced earthquakes

really comes to the forefront of the social mind

in construction of the Hoover Dam

in Nevada in the 1930s.

It actually triggered a series of earthquakes around

the dam under construction.

We think we can create gigantic reservoirs

without facing consequences of these things.

But if your reservoir is near a fault line, watch out.

There is a theory that a lot of seismologists believe in

that the earthquake of 2008 in China

that killed about 70,000 people

was, in fact, created

by this gigantic reservoir

that put enormous pressure

on a fault line,

which then gave way.

What happened in Sichuan in 2008

is a wake-up call.

A wake-up call in that

when you tamper with the Earth

you're tampering with an earthquake.

Is it possible that some of the deadliest earthquakes

in modern times were actually caused by human activity?

It's an unsettling theory,

not only because of the massive damage they inflict,

but also because of the devastating forces

that are sometimes triggered, like

the destructive phenomenon that scientists refer to

as a megatsunami.

Deep within the ocean floor,

a massive earthquake suddenly shakes the ground

for nearly ten minutes.

The energy released measures an astounding 9.1

on the Richter scale, which is the equivalent

of 23,000 atomic bombs

exploding all at once,

making this disaster

the most powerful earthquake of the 21st century.

What happened was there are two major plates

on the Earth that are smashing into each other.

And when this happened, it raised the seafloor there

more than 100 feet

across 900 miles.

And what does this mean?

This means a tsunami's coming.

Tsunamis happen when something causes

the level of the seafloor to go up.

And when the seafloor goes up,

it pushes the whole water column up,

and gravity causes that water to flow away.

This earthquake in 2004

created a massive tsunami

that spread all throughout the Indian Ocean.

The enormous tsunami traveled across the Indian Ocean

at a speed of more than 500 miles per hour

and smashed into the western part

of the island of Sumatra.

20 minutes or so after the quake,

the nearest coastline in Sumatra

suffered a hundred-foot wall of water that came in.

All but the tallest buildings were completely submerged.

So, immediate destruction.

Two hours later, that same wave,

traveling at more than 500 miles per hour

hits Thailand.

Get in! Get in! Get in!

Ten-year-old Riley Sewell was on vacation

in Thailand with her family

when the giant tsunami struck.

We are playing on the beach,

and we look towards the shore,

and we see this thin white line is coming at us,

and it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger,

and this was a 75-foot tsunami.

My mom is shouting, "Run! Run!" at the top of her lungs,

and we start running up this pathway

up one of the cliffs.

You can just hear, like, this tsunami is loud

and it's smashing.

And it's, like, destroying trees,

but you can also hear the sound of people dying.

Sounds that no person should ever hear,

and no person should ever experience.

Had we not found that pathway,

had we not run as fast as we had,

I wouldn't be talking and breathing

and speaking as I am right now.

While Riley Sewell and her family

were lucky to survive,

230,000 people in 14 different countries perished,

in what was one of the deadliest natural disasters in history.

The tsunami killed people in Africa, in India,

and 70,000 people died on Sri Lanka.

So, people all across the world

died from the huge tsunami that hit.

Frightening images broadcast around the world

gave billions of people a first-hand look

of the apocalyptic power of tsunamis.

And yet this disaster

was only the latest in a long history

of doomsday tsunamis

that have been recorded for centuries.

The earliest recorded tsunami happened

in the year 1630,

before the common era.

When a massive tsunami spread

throughout the eastern Mediterranean at that time

and hit the island of Santorini, in the Greek Isles.

Now, interestingly,

1,200 years later,

the Greek philosopher Plato

wrote of the story of Atlantis,

which was a legend that had been handed down for years orally.

The story involved the destruction of an island

in a dramatic day and night,

sinking beneath the waves.

And many anthropologists think that this legend

actually could be referring back to the tsunami

that hit Santorini.

A massive tsunami may have been the inspiration

for Plato's story of the destruction of Atlantis,

but on the other side of the globe,

the dangers of tsunamis

were recorded in stone on the island of Japan.

Japan is based on three major fault lines

that collide,

making it one of the most geologically active areas

for tsunamis.

In fact, tsunami is a Japanese word.

Because tsunamis are a regular occurrence,

they put up stone monuments saying in this year

on this day, the water went up to this level.

Coastal areas such as Japan are still quite

vulnerable to the destructive power of tsunamis.

But, fortunately,

scientists have created an early warning system

which can alert people before the next deadly tsunami strikes.

This technology provides people with a valuable resource

that our ancestors did not have:

the possibility to get out of harm's way.

There's a network of buoys called DART buoys,

and these are pressure sensors

that sit on the ocean seafloor

and can actually detect the pressure

of the tsunami wave as it goes over.

So, if a candidate earthquake

is identified

and then verified,

it goes into a warning system

that broadcasts a warning

throughout the ocean basin,

setting off sirens along coasts,

and alerting people by cell phone.

However, there's still many parts of the world

that don't have adequate coverage,

and we need a lot more sensors

to make sure that we do a better job predicting

and forecasting the arrival of a tsunami.

It's encouraging to know that there's an early warning

system that can help us detect when a tsunami

will strike before it happens.

But some natural disasters are so powerful

and so inexplicable

that it's almost impossible to prepare for them.

Like in the case of a massive cataclysm

that took place almost 1,500 years ago

that covered half the planet

in total darkness.

Spring has arrived in the capital

of the Byzantine Empire.

But even though winter has ended,

the temperature remains cold because

the sky is so dark

that it blocks out the sun.

What is really astounding

is the way that people described

this 536 event.

You had writers explaining what happened

in very precise detail

from what they could observe.

They described the sun became darkened,

and we felt a thickening in the air,

and we saw this fog or this dust veil.

Now, they didn't know what caused it,

but the descriptions are extremely thorough.

The Byzantine historian Procopius

wrote that the sun shone at half its strength,

like it was in eclipse.

This was the start of a period

of colder than average temperatures.

And the darkness lasted for 18 months.

The sun was blocked by a dark sky

for over a year?

Such an improbable catastrophe

may sound like it was a fictional story

taken from the pages of ancient folklore or mythology.

But, curiously,

numerous historical accounts of this event were written

not just in Constantinople

but all over the world, during the year

536 A.D.

What happened in 536 was a

climate event of considerable magnitude that was

terrible for the people who lived through it.

The most detailed record

is in Latin, and it was written by Cassiodorus,

who was a high civil servant in Italy.

He wrote that the sun gave off no warmth

at any time in the course of the day.

And there are also records in Chinese

that refer to a terrible cold,

terrible freezing in the summertime, and so,

we've been able to piece this story

of this extraordinary catastrophe together,

combining the evidence of sources of eyewitnesses

who wrote their reports in Greek,

in Latin, and in, uh, Chinese.

The Earth became cold.

The crops died.

The result was tremendous food shortages,

hunger,

famine in places,

migration and upheaval.

It is clear from the historical record that,

starting in the spring of 536 A.D.,

the entire Northern Hemisphere

experienced darkness

and bitter cold for over a year.

In fact, historians have dubbed 536 A.D.

the worst year to be alive in history.

But what could have caused the sun to become blocked

in the first place and for such a long period of time?

Numerous theories have been proposed, including the idea

that an asteroid impact sent dirt into the atmosphere.

But, in recent years,

some scientists have suggested the darkness

may have been caused by a volcanic eruption.

When you think of a volcano, you have an image of lava flows

oozing out of the volcano.

Well, yes, that's what happens,

but that's not the only thing which happens.

You also have all the soot and debris,

which blanket the atmosphere

and block out sunlight.

And so, in 536, we think

that there was a volcanic eruption

and there was so much soot, ash, debris

launched into the atmosphere that it created a fog.

A fog that destroyed agriculture.

A fog that ground civilization to a halt.

This event around 536

has all the markings

of a very large-scale eruption

that had the ability to change climate conditions

all across the Northern Hemisphere.

It really does emphasize just how big the effects

of volcanoes are, how widespread,

and how damaging they can be to human civilization.

But if a volcano caused the year of darkness,

then which of the nearly 1,500 active volcanoes on Earth

was the one that erupted?

A team working on the ice levels for 536

from the Swiss-Italian border, found microscopic

morsels of volcanic particles

that matches what one would expect

in a volcano in Iceland.

And so, the top suspect right now

in the eruption behind the 536 event

is one of the many volcanoes in Iceland.

Scientists are still working to definitively prove

whether a volcanic eruption in Iceland

blocked the sun in 536 A.D.

But perhaps the even more pressing question is

could the Earth ever be blanketed in darkness again?

Could this happen again?

The answer is of course it could happen again.

It has happened once in the last 2,000 years,

it has perhaps happened more frequently over a longer

time span that we have not yet been able to uncover.

We need to be prepared.

The 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallaj�kull,

the Icelandic volcano,

actually disrupted a lot of people's lives

because volcanic particles

were going up into the atmosphere.

And it shut down air travel

because those particles

will clog your jet engine and cause major, major problems.

This planet has a beating heart. It has life.

It is an ever-evolving, ever-changing process

every time a volcano erupts.

And we are just along for the ride.

Given the fact that much of Europe and the Middle East

and Asia were shrouded in darkness for an entire year,

it's easy to see why historians think that 536 A.D.

was the worst year to be alive in human history.

But...

the disasters that we face today are no less dangerous.

For instance, the number of hurricanes

that strike our coasts have actually been increasing

in recent years.

And what's even more concerning

is that they may also be getting

bigger and more powerful.

Galveston, Texas. 1900.

At the turn of the century, this bustling city,

located along the Gulf of Mexico,

was one of America's busiest ports.

But that all changed on September 8th, 1900,

when a massive hurricane hit Galveston

and leveled everything in its path.

The great Galveston hurricane

of September of 1900

was the deadliest hurricane in U.S. history,

killing somewhere between 6,000 and 12,000 people.

What did most of the destruction

was the huge increase

in the storm surge of about 12 feet.

The whole sea level outside of Galveston,

which is already right at sea level,

was suddenly 12 feet higher,

totally inundating the entire coastal area.

This incredible storm surge

raced across the island

and killed about one in six

of all the people who lived on the island at the time.

At the same time, these incredible winds

demolished the properties themselves

just by the force of the wind power.

3,600 buildings were destroyed

by the Galveston hurricane,

and 10,000 people

were left homeless.

This storm was so enormous and caused such

devastation that the majority of the population had to flee.

And it really affected the town of Galveston.

It became sort of known

as a dangerous place to live.

While the destruction a hurricane can reap

is impossible to control,

over the past century,

it's been advances in space technology

that have helped to create long-range forecasting

and to lower the human toll these massive storms can take.

The proliferation of networks of satellites in space have totally

changed how we view the hazard of hurricanes.

We're able to track hurricanes

from when they initially begin,

and we can even predict the exact time

and location of landfall.

But in spite of our technological advances,

we're still very much at the mercy

of the powerful forces of nature,

as some of the worst hurricanes

in history have taken place in the last two decades.

For Hurricane Katrina, in the year 2005,

about $125 billion worth

of damage occurred, and it's quite likely

that future hurricanes will do the same.

Buildings are going to be destroyed.

Coastlines will be eroded.

The damage from these hurricanes

is enormous and will continue to be.

Hurricane Harvey

in Houston in 2017 created such massive flooding

it was what they call a millennial flood.

A flood that big is only supposed to happen

once every thousand years or so.

But Hurricane Harvey is becoming

more of a trend that we're seeing

in terms of the magnitude of these

megastorms, unfortunately, in the U.S.

Is there anything more we can do to protect coastal

communities against destructive hurricanes?

Well, many experts feel that the best way for us to study

and understand hurricanes,

in order to help prevent further loss of life,

is by flying directly into the eye of these

powerful storms.

Going out to fly Irma today.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

has formed a team of scientists known as

the Hurricane Hunters

who pilot aircraft fitted

with sophisticated sensors

into hurricanes.

We like to say that in a hurricane, we're sort of

the first line of defense

because the first thing you need to know

is the state of the storm.

How strong is it? Where is it going?

What kind of hazards does it pose?

We know how important the measurements are.

And the measurements we need from a hurricane

we can only get by actually putting the aircraft

within the storm.

While gathering this critical data,

Hurricane Hunter pilots witness nature's fury

in a way that few people ever have.

Sometimes I do stop myself

just for a second, just to sort of take it in

and appreciate the scale of it and just

how powerful these storms are.

It's chaos and it's loud,

and it's always remarkable how loud.

Then, all of a sudden, you get through that eye wall,

and then, bang,

it just gets calm, and it's quiet,

typically, in that eye of the storm.

Sometimes they can just be absolutely breathtaking,

to see this clear eye of the hurricane.

Our ultimate goal is when we see people respond

to the information that led to

the right decisions being made

on the ground to evacuate

and to get out of harm's way.

And that's what motivates us

to go fly in these chaotic, turbulent hurricanes.

For people who live in coastal communities,

enduring the destructive power of hurricanes

is simply an unfortunate fact of life.

And that's especially true in regions of the planet

that are rocked by cataclysms so often,

it seems like they can strike at any moment.

These areas are referred to

as disaster hot spots.

In the Pacific Ocean there is a narrow region

that runs from Australia

up the coast of Asia

over to North America

and down the coast of South America.

This horseshoe-shaped area is known for having

some of the worst natural disasters in the world.

So much so that scientists refer to it as

the Ring of Fire.

The Ring of Fire is an active plate boundary

where two plates of the Earth's crust meet,

and that's where you have incredible, uh, earthquakes

and volcanic eruptions.

These places become what I would call hot spots

for future catastrophe.

There's a lot of activity

happening there, and it's on a scale

that shrugs off humans like

we were bacteria on the surface of someone's skin.

The Ring of Fire

is the most famous geologically active area

in the world.

And people live in these areas where we have so many disasters.

These are very real ongoing hazards,

just by virtue of where these cities are located,

so it really tests people's resilience.

The Ring of Fire is the site

of 75% of the world's volcanoes

and 90% of its earthquakes,

so it's no wonder that experts refer to it

as a natural disaster hot spot.

But that's not the only place

where humans are overpowered

by the force of our living planet.

Some of the largest hot spots for natural disasters

are in the western side of the Atlantic Ocean.

This is the Dominican Republic,

Antigua and Barbuda.

These also are all volcanic islands,

they all are at plate boundaries subject to earthquakes

and they are all in the paths

of many large

tropical hurricanes that cause

massive flooding.

There's almost nothing we can do to prevent that.

However, what we can do

is evacuate regions and prevent the loss of life.

We see thousands

and thousands of people evacuated

from all over the globe.

That's the best we've got.

We're never going to stop people from living in hot spots.

We are never going to keep people completely safe.

And it's because these disasters

are just part of the true power of nature.

When we think of potential catastrophes,

what should be our attitude?

Our attitude should be humble.

You know, we think we're the ones

that control the destiny of the planet,

but you realize that, sometimes, the planet

goes in a direction that we don't necessarily want.

We have to be humble because we don't know when the next

big ones are gonna take place.

If history has taught us anything,

it's that humanity is often powerless

when faced with the wrath of Mother Nature.

And what's concerning is that we don't know

exactly when or where the next fire

or earthquake or tsunami will strike.

No matter how much time and effort we spend trying to study,

predict, and guard ourselves against natural disasters,

the full extent of planet Earth's power

will remain unexplained.

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