ThePodcastofDoom's podcast
70 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 18 ratingsThe Podcast of Doom explores the famous and consequential catastrophes, cataclysms, disasters and emphatically bad decisions of world history. If you like fires, volcanoes, floods, maritime disasters, civil conflict, industrial accidents and the foibles of human nature then I invite you to listen to the Podcast of Doom. We will travel around the world and through time to analyze famous calamities and how they occurred.
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Episodes
Episode 53 - Who Responded to COVID Best?
January 07, 2021 15:30 - 2 hours - 190 MBWe will review the national government responses to coronavirus by these countries: China South Korea Japan Vietnam Australia New Zealand Germany Italy Belgium Norway Sweden Russia United Kingdom United States
Emergency Episode - Coronavirus Outbreak
April 02, 2020 02:04 - 2 hours - 136 MBSurprise! I did not expect to be doing anymore podcasts. But the recent outbreak of coronavirus known as COVID-19 demanded an explanation. We are seeing a global pandemic on a colossal scale and taking precautions that few people remember before in their lifetimes. No matter where you live you are in some way affected by this particular disaster. In this episode we will explore how we got here, what is going on now and what the future could possibly hold. I guarantee you, that this is a topi...
Episode 51 - A Podcast Announcement
January 19, 2019 21:40 - 53 minutes - 53.8 MBA not so brief announcement about future podcast episodes.
Episode 50 - The Boxing Day Tsunami and Earthquake
November 24, 2018 01:09 - 1 hour - 98.2 MBOn December 26, 2004, an earthquake measuring approximately 9.1 on the seismic scale struck just off the west coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. It was the third largest earthquake ever recorded. The shaking lasted between 8 and 10 minutes. The quake jolted the seafloor displacing hundreds of billions of gallons of water. The death toll was enormous, at 280,000 people. Fatalities took place in 14 countries when oceans waves pushed inland, crushing and flooding everything in its path. The tsunami...
Episode 49 - The Challenger and Columbia Space Shuttle Disasters
October 13, 2018 22:37 - 1 hour - 115 MBOn January 28, 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger blew up 73 seconds into its flight during liftoff, killing all seven members of the crew. The entire sequence of events was carried live on television as a shocked nation watched the spacecraft explode and break apart in front of their eyes. 17 years later, Columbia had finished its mission and was returning to earth when it burned up and disintegrated during its return to Earth. The cause was a large hole in the left wing. In both cases the true...
Episode 48 - The Killing Fields of Cambodia
August 23, 2018 00:33 - 1 hour - 111 MBIn 1975, the Communist Party Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia, and began a series of measures to eliminate their perceived internal opponents and to transform their country into an agrarian-based, communist society. Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, tried to cleanse Cambodian society along racial, social, religious and political lines. They would eventually be overthrown by a foreign army, but only after they had killed 1.5 to 3 million people.
The Armenian Genocide
July 19, 2018 04:38 - 1 hour - 112 MBAs the Ottoman Empire went into decline in the early 20th century relations between Muslim Turks and Christian Armenians deteriorated. Demands for reform were met with violence. After the Ottomans entered into World War I the battlefield losses mounted and blame was focused on the Armenians marking the beginning of a genocide that would ultimately take 800,000 to 1.5 million lives.
Episode 47 - The Armenian Genocide
July 19, 2018 04:38 - 1 hour - 112 MBAs the Ottoman Empire went into decline in the early 20th century relations between Muslim Turks and Christian Armenians deteriorated. Demands for reform were met with violence. After the Ottomans entered into World War I the battlefield losses mounted and blame was focused on the Armenians marking the beginning of a genocide that would ultimately take 800,000 to 1.5 million lives.
Episode 46 - The Donner Party Tragedy
June 06, 2018 13:41 - 1 hour - 97.4 MBIn 1846, a wagon train of emmigrants left Springfield, Illinois for the sunnier climes of California. Leaving at the ideal time for a cross-country trip by covered wagon, they knew they would need to get past the Sierra Nevada mountain range by early October. Instead, they were delayed by death, injuries, conflicts, and an ill-advised short cut that took them through thick forests and barren deserts where food and water were in short supply. They arrived at the Sierra just as the season's fi...
Episode 45a - Charmed Times
May 05, 2018 21:45 - 25 minutes - 26.7 MBAn announcement of the next five episode topics and an analysis of the current state of the world.
Episode 45 - Hurricane Katrina
April 15, 2018 22:03 - 1 hour - 89 MBOn August 29, 2005, Louisiana and Mississippi were hit by the full force of Hurricane Katrina, a Category 3 storm that had been a Category 5. Lashing New Orleans with wind and rain, the storm surge caused all 53 federally-built levees to collapse inundating the city with water from the surrounding sea and lakes. Close to 2,000 people died including residents trapped in their attics and patients in hospitals. Thousands of people were left trapped on their roofs with no food or drinkable water...
Episode 44- Napoleon's Invasion of Russia - Part II
March 17, 2018 17:25 - 1 hour - 93.1 MBIn control of Russia's ancient capital of Moscow, Napoleon and the Grand Armee found they were in control of little else. With winter closing in, food supplies running low, morale disintegrating and his supply route under threat, Napoleon had no choice but to evacuate Moscow. The retreat and decimation of his army would play out on a grand scale.
Episode 44 - Napoleon's Invasion of Russia Part I
February 24, 2018 22:24 - 1 hour - 77.5 MBNapoleon Bonaparte worked his way up from artillery commander in to unchallenged emperor of a French colussus that stretched across Europe from Spain to the Russian frontier. Napoleon seemed to have complete control over the continent, but he was challenged on the seas by the British and in the east by the Russians. Failing to launch a seaborne invasion against the British, he chose to invade Russia instead. It would turn out to be one the worst military decisions ever.
Episode 43 - The Batavia Shipwreck
January 27, 2018 20:27 - 1 hour - 96.4 MBWhen the Dutch merchant vessel the Batavia left Amsterdam in 1628 it took an unexpected trip that included a planned mutiny, being steered off course, and crashing on a reef in the Indian Ocean. But things were about to get a whole worse for the survivors. Their captain and commander would abandon them in a desparate search for drinking water, while a meglomanical apothecary would take absolute control of the island in which they were beached. He would soon hatch a plan to kill most of them,...
Episode 42 - The Concorde Jet Crash
December 15, 2017 05:00 - 57 minutes - 58.8 MBThere was a time when the Concorde supersonic jet represented the future of pasenger air travel. The jets were sleek, modern and traveled twice as fast as conventional jets cutting the flight time from New York to Paris to just 3.5 hours. The future of the Concorde ended shortly after this tragic accident, when 109 people died on the plane and four died in the hotel where the jet crashed.
Episode 41 - The Spanish Flu
November 24, 2017 23:24 - 1 hour - 74 MBJust as the world's most lethal war was drawing to a conclusion, humanity was about to face a crisis of even greater proportions. The Spanish Influenza or flu turned out to be the second most fatal panedemic follwoing the Bubonic Plague of the middle ages. More than 50 million people would die from the flu and more than 500 million people would be infected. It was a truly global disease spreading from Europe and America out to all of the continents including Asia, Africa, South America and t...
Episode 40a - Question and Answer Time
October 29, 2017 21:31 - 35 minutes - 37.1 MBWe'll be answering listener questions and revealing the topics for Episodes 41 - 45.
Episode 40 - The Crackdown at Tiananmen Square
October 07, 2017 22:54 - 1 hour - 85.4 MBFollowing the death of Mao Zedong, China liberalized its market policies. Under the guidance of new leader Deng Xaioping, China’s economy expanded rapidly, but growth was uneven. While a lucky few grew rich, most Chinese suffered the effects of inflation, limited job opportunities, nepotism and large scale corruption. All while the Communist Party stifled individual freedoms. Following the death of a popular reformer, hundreds of thousands of young Chinese gathered in Tiananmen Square in the...
Episode 39 - Vlad the Impaler - The Original Dracula
September 09, 2017 19:40 - 1 hour - 63.4 MBBram Stoker, used this actual prince as the inspiration for his famous vampire character, Count Dracula. Vlad Tepes or Vlad Dracula was the real life ruler of Wallachia in the 15th century. In the war between the Hungarians and the Ottomans he switched sides several times depending on his immediate needs. Once in power he used the threats of impalement and being burned alive to maintain order. To many he was a villian, but to Romanians he was a hero.
Episode 38 - The Ship Explosions at Halifax and Texas City
August 04, 2017 20:05 - 1 hour - 59.3 MBOn the morning of December 6, 1917, the French cargo ship, SS Mont-Blanc, laden with high explosives collided with the Norwegian vessel SS Imo in the Canadian port city of Halifax, setting the Mont-Blanc on fire. When the ordinance on board the French vessel ignited, it caused the largest man-made explosion prior to the development of nuclear weapons. 30 years later in Texas City, Texas, another vessel, the SS Grandcamp was transporting 2,200 tons of ammonium nitrate when a fire started in t...
Episode 37 - The Nuclear Explosion and Meltdown at Chernobyl
June 23, 2017 13:45 - 1 hour - 63.7 MBIn 1986, Russia was still communist and Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union. The town of Chernobyl in northern Ukraine was home to a major nuclear power plant that produced 10% of Ukraine’s electrical needs. During a late night safety test, inherent reactor design flaws along with operator error resulted in an uncontrolled reaction that resulted in a steam explosion and eventually a graphite fire. For the next 9 days, plumes of fissionable material were lofted into the air eventually ...
Episode 36 - The Piper Alpha Oil Platform Explosion
May 21, 2017 21:47 - 49 minutes - 45.1 MBAt its peak, the Piper Alpha oil platform was producing 300,000 barrels of oil a day, or 10% of Britain’s total oil production from just one platform. In 1980, the platform was modified to drill for natural gas in addition to oil. In 1988, the rig was due for major maintenance and upgrades. The operator, Occidental Petroleum, made the decision not to shut production down during this work. When a safety valve was removed for scheduled repairs it initiated a series of errors and events that le...
Release of Subjects for Episodes 36 -40
May 01, 2017 14:53 - 4 minutes - 4.98 MBAn announcement regarding the subjects for episodes 36-40.
Episode 35 - Clampdown Part II - The Siege at Waco
March 27, 2017 02:15 - 1 hour - 64.9 MBDavid Koresh was a powerful figure in the Davidians, a Seventh-Day Adventist splinter group. In 1993, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives raided Koresh’s ranch in Waco, Texas. A gun battle between the ATF and the Branch Davidians ended with the deaths of four agents and six of Koresh’s followers. Two months later, the FBI attempted to raid the compound again. During the raid, tear gas was launched into the domicile where the Davidians were holed up. There were 98 men, wo...
Episode 35 - Clampdown Part I - The MOVE Bombing
March 07, 2017 01:39 - 1 hour - 63.8 MBIn 1985, Philadelphia police attempted to enter the residence of a radical religious/political organization known as MOVE. When numerous attempts to enter the house from either side failed, the city police commissioner ordered an explosive device to be dropped on the house right in the middle of a densely populated residential neighborhood. The result was the deaths of six adults and five children and the burning down of an entire neighborhood. This is Part I of two parts. Part II will be ab...
Episode 34 - Jews vs. Romans: The Bar Kokhba Revolt
February 04, 2017 05:12 - 54 minutes - 51.3 MBWhen the ancient Romans attempted to establish control in Judea during the first century of the modern era, they touched off violent rebellions from the native Jewish residents. These violent wars between the Jews and the Romans led to the deaths of thousands of people. In the year 132, Simon Bar Kokhba led a third and final revolt. After a number of initial rebel victories, Emperor Hadrian called in his general Julius Severus to lead an immense Roman army assembled from every corner of the ...
Episode 34 - Jews vs. Romans: The Bar Kokhba Revolt
February 04, 2017 05:12When the ancient Romans attempted to establish control in Judea during the first century of the modern era, they touched off violent rebellions from the native Jewish residents. These violent wars between the Jews and the Romans led to the deaths of thousands of people. In the year 132, Simon Bar Kokhba led a third and final revolt. After a number of initial rebel victories, Emperor Hadrian called in his general Julius Severus to lead an immense Roman army assembled from every corner of the ...
Episode 33 - The French and Russian Heatwaves
December 23, 2016 04:56 - 54 minutes - 49.6 MBTwo heatwaves, less than ten years apart and less than fifteen years ago struck Western and Eastern Europe killing tens of thousands of people, many as they suffered in their apartments and homes. Were these freak occurrences or something we should be getting adjusted to?
Episode 32 - The Ancash Avalanche and Earthquake
November 02, 2016 04:52 - 30 minutes - 27.6 MBOn Sunday, May 31, 1970, while most of Peru was watching the World Cup game of Brazil vs. Italy, a major earthquake struck just off the coast. The quake flattened buildings and collapsed bridges and roads, but the worst was yet to come when a 500 meter long slab of ice slid off a 21,000 foot mountain peak and made a beeline for the villages below.
Episode 31 - The Deadly Cloud at Lake Nyos
October 09, 2016 02:49 - 35 minutes - 32.1 MBOn August 21, 1986, a giant cloud of carbon dioxide rose from Lake Nyos in Cameroon, Africa. As the cloud filtered down it displaced all of the air in its wake. Sixteen miles away it settled into three villages killing some 1,700 people. Lake Nyos was the first known large-scale asphyxiation caused by a natural event.
Episode 30 - The Children's Crusade
September 23, 2016 14:02 - 32 minutes - 29.7 MBAfter the failures of four Christian crusades to save the holy land from the infidel Saracens, the good people of Europe had finally had enough. It was time for the knights, nobles and corrupt merchant sailors to step aside and make way for the pure warriors--the Children Crusaders.
Episode 29 - The Bomb That Fizzled
August 22, 2016 02:24 - 22 minutes - 20.1 MBIn 1968, a Stanford biology professor predicted population growth would outstrip food production. Nations would disappear and 100's of millions of people would die from starvation. It didn't happen that way. Are we finally out of the woods?
Episode 28 - King Leopold II of Belgium
August 03, 2016 02:29 - 10 minutes - 10.1 MBA brief overview of Belgium's most notorious king.
Episode 27 - Queen Isabella of Castile
July 07, 2016 02:49 - 12 minutes - 11.3 MBA brief overview of the good and the bad of Spain's most famous Queen--Isabella.
Episode 26 - The Mosul Dam
May 08, 2016 23:07 - 19 minutes - 17.9 MBIraq's largest dam was built when Saddam Hussein ruled the country. But the planners did not take care to select an appropriate location and the dam ended up being built atop soft rock. If the dam breaks as many engineers feel it will soon, it could wipe out the cities of Mosul and Baghdad where millions of people live.
Episode 25 - Stalin's Great Purge
March 01, 2016 06:09 - 1 hour - 54.9 MBJoseph Stalin rose rapidly and ruthlessly through the ranks of the Soviet leadership. On his way up he took drastic measures to suppress his enemies including the forced collectivization of peasants that killed millions by famine. Other party leaders resented his tyrannical ways. Stalin countered with the Great Purges: a period when all of his enemies were accused of treason and no Russian could feel safe. The convicted were sent to prisons known as gulags or were executed. Those purged incl...
Episode 24 - The Bombing of Air India Flight 182
February 11, 2016 05:33 - 1 hour - 57.4 MBOn June 23, 1985, an Air India Boeing 747 blew up over Irish airspace killing all 329 passengers and crew onboard. On the flight were 268 Canadian citizens. It was Canada’s largest mass murder incident ever. A Sikh militant group named Babbar Khalsa was eventually determined to have planted the explosive that brought the plane down. The formal investigation took more than 20 years and was the most expensive in Canadian history, concluding that a cascading series of errors was responsible for...
Episode 23 - The Ring, Iroquois and Station Fires
January 22, 2016 05:29 - 55 minutes - 50.7 MBAt the glorious height of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a new opera house was built in the middle of its capital, Vienna. On the night of December 8, 1881, Vienna’s elite came to the theater to watch Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffman.” When lighting the gas lights, the stage hand acciddently ignited the curtains behind him. Although Vienna had established procedures for preventing fires, those procedure were not followed and the curtain burst into flames in front of hundreds of terrified theater-...
Episode 22 - The Assassins
December 18, 2015 03:46 - 53 minutes - 49 MBIn the 11th Century, a sect of Nizari Ismailis took to the mountains of Iran under the leadership of Hassan-I Sabbah (The Old Man of the Mountain). Sabbah was charismatic and drew followers from all over the Muslim Middle East. Drilling his followers on religious teachings, Sabbah carved out his own kingdom that threatened those around him. He trained his followers to carry out his orders to kill any political figure who stood in his way. These followers were called Hashshashin. It is where ...
Episode 21.5 - A Word About Paris
November 24, 2015 04:28 - 2 minutes - 2.52 MBA few words about the recent events in Paris.
Episode 21 - A Couple of Crushes
November 21, 2015 21:12 - 48 minutes - 44.1 MBOn June 16, 1883, Mr. and Mrs. Fay presented a magic and variety show at Victoria Hall in Sunderland, England. The show featured conjurers, marionettes, illusionists and talking wax figures. At the end of the show prizes would be given away. More than 2,000 children showed up and filled the hall to capacity. When the prizes were distributed to the children nearest the stage, the children in the upper gallery panicked and rushed the doors in the lower gallery, which had been bolted closed to ...
Episode 20.5 - Question and Answer Time
October 29, 2015 04:26 - 19 minutes - 17.8 MBTime to answer your questions about Episodes 1-20. Also, an announcement of the topics for episodes 21-25.
Episode 20 - The Jonestown Massacre
October 15, 2015 04:37 - 1 hour - 64.4 MBYou’re familiar with the term “Don’t Drink the Kool Aid?” It basically means don’t go along with the dominant way of thinking. It also has become an easy way for people to end an argument when they have run out of ideas. In this episode we will learn about the origin of the term “Don’t Drink the Kool Aid.” It goes back to a small town Indiana preacher named Jim Jones, who idolized charismatic leaders like Stalin, Marx, Mao, Gandhi and Hitler, and dreamed of building a communist utopia. He ga...
Episode 19 - The Irish Potato Famine
September 16, 2015 04:49 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MBPotato blight was the proximate cause of the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1849, but there were many contributing causes including the high dependency on this food staple, the harshness of British rule, the passage of laws that prohibited Irish Catholics from owning land, absentee landlords, dire poverty, and the subdivision of holdings that made the raising of any crops other than potatoes nearly impossible. As the famine took its toll, more than 1.5 million people would die of starvation in ...
Episode 18 - The Banqiao Dam Failure
August 19, 2015 14:16 - 32 minutes - 29.3 MBChina is a nation of many rivers and following mass industrialization efforts in the mid-20th century, China also became a nation of dams. One of those important dams was the Banqiao on the River Ru. The Chinese government boasted that the Banqiao Dam was built to withstand a once-in-a-thousand-year rainstorm. There was only one small problem: in August of 1975, eastern China was about to be hit by a once-in-a-two-thousand year rainstorm. The combination of a typhoon colliding with a cold fr...
Episode 17 - The Iranian Blizzard and Carolean Death March
July 29, 2015 02:51 - 29 minutes - 27.3 MBTwo giant blizzards on two different continents in two different centuries. The Iranian Blizzard of 1972 killed more than 4,000 people, many who died from exposure or suffocation beneath the snow. In one week the storm dropped as much as 26 feet of snow. In a different century on a different continent, a Swedish army prepares to invade Norway as part of a plan to retore their power and pride. But a campaign that starts in August and was only supposed to last 6 weeks ends up taking just a lit...
Episode 16 - The Bombing Of Nagasaki
July 06, 2015 04:15 - 57 minutes - 52.3 MBThree months after the surrender of Nazi Germany to Allied forces concluded World War II in Europe, fighting was still raging between the Allies and the Japanese Imperial government. Between mid-April and mid-July, 1945, Japanese forces inflicted half as many casualties as those suffered during the three previous years of fighting in the Pacific. With the capture of the Japanese Island of Okinawa, American forces were at the doorstep of the main island. With his military advisors cautioning...
Mid-Sabbatical Update
March 28, 2015 21:21 - 4 minutes - 4.14 MBI am back for a quick update on the status of the podcast. The good news is we will continue the project. The downside is you will have to wait until July. Hang in there and thanks for listening.
Episode 15 - A Tale of Two Trails: Conclusion
September 28, 2014 19:44 - 14 minutes - 13.3 MBEpisode 15 concludes with a summary of what happend after the Trail of Tears and The Death March of Bataan and what we can learn from those two forced marches.
Episode 15 - A Tale of Two Trails
September 24, 2014 03:42 - 57 minutes - 52.4 MBA comparison of two different forced marches, on two different continents and in two different centuries. In one case, Americans were the victims, in the other case, they were the perpetrators. Thousands died in the Bataan March during World War II, as the Japanese Army forced the defeated American and Filipino troops on an 80-mile march to Camp O’Donnell. The forced relocation of Native Americans out of the American South led to the deaths of thousands of people by exposure, disease and sta...