Second From Disaster

Seconds from Disaster is an American documentary television series that aired from July 6, 2004 to March 7, 2007 on the National Geographic Channel. The program investigates historically relevant man-made and natural disasters. Each episode aims to explain a single incident[1] 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 consists of 45 episodes over 3 seasons. Following its conclusion, the series was promptly replaced with the provisionally titled series Critical Situation.

Seconds from Disaster is characterised by an emphasis on chronological sequencing (in accordance with the show's name), the usage of CGI technology and its blueprint-like CGI format. The show has little or no dialogue for the actors in the re-enactment, almost entirely dominated by the narrator.

Each episode begins with a chronological re-enactment of the disaster, which is always cut into several scenes displaying critical moments in the unfolding of the disaster with a clock appearing at the beginning of each scene. After the sequence of events, the show "winds back" the scenes to analyse the causes and events leading up to it. The series uses blueprint-formatted CGI in every episode to reveal the anatomy of the disaster and the structures involved but in episodes 7–19 in season 3, the blue formatting of the CGI is not used on the background and is replaced with a white background. The CGI is emphasized heavily throughout each episode, such as at the beginning, where the narrator often says "Advanced computer simulation will take us where no camera can go: into the heart of the disaster zone", and before the analysis of the disaster, where he says "cutting-edge simulation will reveal just what happened in those seconds from disaster".

The show concludes with the original disaster scenes being "rewound" and played again; the clock is replaced by a countdown timer and the conclusions reached from the analysis being put together with the sequence. Most often, the show finishes with a short moment of sentimentality (where those involved often speak of their emotions on the disaster) followed by the technological advances made to prevent similar disasters from happening again.