As flash floods, tidal surges, cyclones, burst riverbanks and downpours have impacted on much of Eastern Australia, we’ve heard many references to the floods that have gone before. These floods stand as markers and reference points, in both practical and symbolic ways.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/rearvision/stories/2011/3130327.htm
On 17 June 1940, HMT Lancastria was sunk by a German bomber while evacuating troops from St Nazaire; over 9,000 troops were packed on board. The exact number of soldiers who died that day will never be known, though even the lowest estimates rank this as the worst British maritime disaster in history, with losses exceeding those of the Titanic and Lusitania combined. This talk attempts to explain why so many who were lost will never be accounted for.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/podcasts/loss-of-lancastria.htm
Tagged with history lancastria ship disaster world war two
Using documents from The National Archives, James Cronan will take you through the history of the ship, from its construction and launch to its fateful end. James Cronan is a records specialist in diplomatic and colonial records. His interest in all things Titanic stems from the fact that his great-grandfather was a crewman on board the stricken ship. He has worked at The National Archives for 17 years, at Chancery Lane, the Family Records Centre and Kew.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/podcasts/titanic-the-official-story.htm
An accomplished sailor is shipwrecked and narrowly survives five days lost at sea. Deborah Scaling Kiley is the author of The Sinking and No Victims Only Survivors: Ten Lessons of Survival and a survivor of a near-death shipwreck and shark attack.
In this week’s podcast, in honour of the chaos caused by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, we’re talking about the apocalypse in literature.
We speak to Simon Winchester, author of Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, about volcanoes past, present and – most worryingly – future, and SF blogger Damien Walter and Guardian writer Xan Brooks join Sarah Crown in the studio to discuss the genesis and status of the disaster novel.
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester Kraken by China Miéville The Stand by Stephen King The Road by Cormac McCarthy The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham "There Will Come Soft Rains" (story from the collection The Martian Chronicles) by Ray Bradbury
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2010/apr/23/apocalypse-literature-volcano-krakatoa
Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs & Steel (and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed), offers some timely thoughts on why Haiti, once a fairly prosperous country, has sunk into enduring poverty — a condition not comparatively shared by its neighbor on the same island, the Dominican Republic. According to Diamond, Haiti’s environmental conditions offer a partial explanation. But you will also find clues in the country’s language, and in the legacy of slavery that has shaped Haiti’s economic relationship with Europe and the US. This interview — quite a good one — aired this morning in San Francisco.
In the wake of the epic December 2008 ice storm, the majority of New Hampshire’s homes and businesses fell off the power grid. The best source of information about the outage, and the ongoing effort to restore service, was Martin Murray’s @psnh Twitter feed. In this conversation with host Jon Udell, Martin explains how and why Public Service of New Hampshire used social media to help manage the crisis.
Despite what you may think, the universe is not necessarily a friendly place. Sure, things here on Earth have been pretty stable over the past few millennia, allowing human civilization to gain a foothold. But that could change at any time. Disaster lurks everywhere, from the deepest reaches of space to the very bowels of our planet. We’ve recruited nine prominent Canadian scientists (and one science fiction writer) and asked them to imagine how they think the world might end.
Tagged with science disaster catastrophe
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