Prehistoric Megastorms is an American nature documentary series produced by Big Pictures which tells the stories of some of the world's most devastating natural disasters using science and technology to recreate mega storms from the past 100,000 years.
The series premiered in the USA on The History Channel in April 2008. There are six hour-long episodes in the series, which was shot in High Definition.
Prehistoric Megastorms premiered in South Africa on DStv's The History Channel on Monday 13 October 2008, at 21h25.
Repeats
Tuesdays: 05h25, 13h25
Synopsis
As the human race faces up to the realities of global warming and climate change, this documentary investigates the mega-climatic events of the past.
Imagine a hurricane four times taller than Mount Everest, with winds as fast as a 747. Or a super tidal wave the height of a ten-story building moving at 450 miles per hour across our oceans. Or a storm that makes the Atlantic hotter than a hot tub.
These are a few of the amazing phenomena that will be explored in Prehistoric Megastorms - a six-hour HD series that brings viewers inside the ancient storms that helped reshape our planet.
Thirteen thousand years ago a comet exploded over eastern Canada, unleashing a mass of burning fragments. The result was a mega storm of fire spreading for thousands of miles.
Nearly every living thing on the North American continent was destroyed, including an ancient civilization known as the Clovis. 3-D computer animations will recreate this storm and offer an idea of the level of destruction a similar comet explosion would cause today.
Mega Tsunami looks at how a storm in Sicily 8,000 years ago triggered an avalanche that created a devastating tsunami taller than a 10-story building.
65-million years ago a massive asteroid crashed into Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. 75% of all life on Earth vanished, but could a single asteroid have been the lone killer?
The entire scientific community has speculated on theories about what happened after the impact. Ranging from global warming to lethal worldwide firestorms, ideas have been put forth but none have been proven.
In 1995 a new theory claimed that a powerful mega storm, known as a Hypercane, caused the extinction. The Hypercane allegedly reaches 20 miles into the stratosphere and has wind speeds of up to 700 miles per hour.
3-D computer animations will reveal how this storm could have brought down nearly all life on the planet.
With the help of modern technology, historians, climatologists and scientists speculate on what the largest mega storms of the past 100,000 years were like.
Using information collected from core samples and analysis of the Earth's layers over the past few thousand years, experts reveal how climatic events and catastrophic disasters, unparalleled today, have changed the planet, in order to ask the question: could they happen again?