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Landslides are among the most deadly of nature’s awesome forces, the raw power of our planet at its most overwhelming. Throughout history they have taken a terrible toll in human life and property destruction. Science is doing what little it can to find out what causes landslides and to predict or prevent such disasters. But, ironically, it is often the actions of humans and our desire to live in areas of great scenic beauty that make the dangers and the effects of landslides even worse.
Naked Science follows the landslide detectives, such as geologist Randy Jibson, who investigates the cause of a 2005 landslide in the Californian town of La Conchita. He characterises the disaster as a “slide” type of land movement, a mass of mud and earth dragged downslope as a single cohesive mass by the overwhelming power of gravity.
Such events often move slowly; but at la Conchita the slide moved faster than a person could run, wiping out more than a dozen homes and killing ten residents. Jibson’s enquires eventually uncover a fault line in the hillside allowing water to flow through the hill and fatally weaken the slope.
A second investigation looks into the cause of Australia’s worst ever landslide in village of Threadbo, New South Wales. More than 2000 cubic metres of mud and rock smashed through three ski-lodges and buried 20 people. It was Australia’s worst-ever landslide. The film tells the story of ski-instructor Stuart Diver, the only survivor, who was found under the wreckage three days later lying alongside the dead body of his young wife. Naked Science reveals how the cause was finally traced to a leaking water pipe saturating the ground.
Scientists at research centres in Oregon in the USA and at Davos in Switzerland, show how they are developing lightweight netting protection to guard against the dangers of rock falls. But such systems would have been of little use at Yosemite Park in California where two massive rocks 350 times as heavy as the Statue of Liberty, crashed in freefall 3000 feet down a mountainside to kill and injure people at a nearby nature centre.
Finally Naked Science looks to the future, examining the scientific controversy over a landslide yet-to-happen in the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. Some scientists believe that the entire mountain side of the volcanic island of La Palma could collapse into the sea in a future eruption. The landslide would send a massive tsunami across the Atlantic Ocean to wipe out East Coast America in a tsunami dwarfing even the horrors of the 2004 Asian tidal-wave disaster. Naked Science predicts that if and when this happens it could be the most deadly landslide ever witnessed by man.
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WHAT CAUSES LANDSLIDES? Not complex at all. It's us humans that causes majority of them. Mmhh?
A few contradictions me thinks. Great vid though, thanks.
The biggest factor is always water. Prior rain nearly always is a big factor or a sudden change in streams and waterways – a small tremor will do it.
Hello
"Natures rock building skills leave a lot to be desired" Who writes this crap? I'm pretty sure Nature's rock building skills are intact and pretty damn good.
This is bull shit science.
Scientists are mostly headscratchers and bullshitters.
Something else started the liquidation slide
He just wants to get his picture on National Geographic.
Tries to debunk 2 myths, proves both to be facts, has no clue he's done it, priceless moment. Well done sir, you really showed us the error of our ways lol!
Good upload, stupid comments…
What’s the purpose of spinning the camera around the ranger? ???
these are pretty minor landslides check out the Frank Slide that took out a town …
It's not rock. No mountain is made of rock, But what it is made from is compacted ash from years of past and present volcanos
Did the fireman get the puss from the hooker he saved ?
does retaining wall helps ?
Another idiot thanking "god" for saving him instead of the humans who actually did.
Hey dickhead, why don't you credit your mate in the sky with causing the problem?
Landslide waves/tsunamis don't produce the same kind of long traveling energy as deep water earthquakes.
one day all of Cali with flow into the ocean, and the conservatives will have a new holiday.
13:30 sure sounds like lubrication to me.
The one in Australia at the ski lodge will be remembered as how Stuart Diver was portrayed by the media as the hero, and he milked it for all it was worth. It was disgusting.
91 dislikes, they must hate documentary science.