Seconds from Disaster is an American documentary television series that first broadcasted in 2004 on the National Geographic Channel. The program investigates historically relevant man-made and natural disasters. Each episode aims to explain a single incident by analyzing the causes and circumstances that ultimately affected the disaster. The series uses re-enactments, interviews, testimonies, and CGI to analyze the sequence of events second-by-second for the audience.
Seconds from Disaster was broadcast on the National Geographic Channel and originally consisted of 45 episodes over three seasons. Following its original conclusion in 2007, the series was put in hiatus and promptly replaced with Critical Situation. In 2011, National Geographic revived the series, announcing it would air a new season from September 5, 2011. It began with an episode about the September 11 attacks.
Narrators for the show are Ashton Smith (American narrator for seasons 1 to 3), Richard Vaughan (British narrator for seasons 1,2 and first 6 episodes of season 3; narrator from season 4 onwards) and Peter Guinness (British narrator for last 13 episodes of season 3).
Famous quotes containing the words seconds and/or disaster:
“Watching fifteen seconds of nasal passages unblocking sure beats watching thirty seconds.”
—Barbara Lippert, U.S. advertising critic. As quoted in Newsweek magazine, p. 8 (June 16, 1986)
“The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)