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; an out of control cruise liner in Venice, a military air crash in Afghanistan, and the Deepwater Horizon tragedy uncovers information about this deadly disaster.

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 to unveil the complicated relationship between humans and machines.

Italy suffers one of the worst engineering disasters when the Morandi bridge suddenly collapses; examining what failures of a Brazilian dam, a Manilla high rise, and a building in Jerusalem reveal about the collapse.

A DC-10 airplane explodes mid-flight and the quick-thinking pilot crash-lands, saving 184 passengers; the connection between the infamous Concorde crash, a fatal British skyscraper fire, and a North Dakota train derailment.

In busy downtown New Orleans a high-rise hotel under construction unexpectedly comes crashing to the ground. As the dust settles, the question on everyone's lips: why? And what connection do the answers share with an air show crash in Reno, a tower block fire in Iran, and a shopping mall collapse in Mexico City?