When Big Things Go Wrong

In the heart of Minneapolis, the busy I-35 bridge collapses at the peak of rush hour traffic. As the city reels, the question on everyone’s mind: how did an enormous steel bridge fail without warning? The mystery is unlocked through clues from other disasters–from a bridge in Florida, to a collapsing crane in Wisconsin–these moments reveal a remarkable tale of fatal miscalculations, and sheer bad luck.

A state-of-the-art high-speed train catastrophically crashes in Spain. In service less than a year, its derailment shocks the world. So what can an out of control cruise liner in Venice, a military air crash in Afghanistan, and the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, uncover about one of the deadliest rail disasters in Spain’s history?

A Boeing 777 crash lands into the San Francisco Airport with no warning, leaving everyone baffled. As engineers race to figure out what happened, they turn to other disasters, from a cruise ship out of control, a spy plane crashing in Germany, and a high-speed train derailment in Taiwan–to unveil the complicated relationship between humans and machines.

Italy suffers one of the worst engineering disasters when the Morandi bridge suddenly collapses. Built in the 60s, it was thought to be indestructible, so what went wrong? And what can failures of a Brazilian Dam, a Manilla high rise, and a building in Jerusalem reveal about its fall? The shocking answers uncover the dangerous flaws that might have doomed these structures from the start.

37,000-feet over Iowa, a DC-10 airplane explodes mid-flight. The quick-thinking pilot crash-lands, saving the lives of 184 passengers. But how could this disaster happen? And what connection do the answers share with the infamous Concorde crash, a fatal British skyscraper fire, and a North Dakota train derailment?