World’s biggest serial killer Earth

In recent months, we have seen earthquakes, a tsunami, flooding, forest fires, hurricane and tornadoes ripping the heart out of communities across the world.

America seems to have been hard-hit, along with Japan, but it’s a global phenomenon as many people in England will tell you, as they continue rebuilding their homes and streets.

And with global warming and all the other ecological problems we’re enduring, it seems like things will get worse before they ever get better.

A new TV series shows in all its grim horror just what happens when our planet turns against us, and it shows that mayhem on a grand scale can happen in the last places you’d expect.

In areas of California for instance, the citizens know that their homes lie on a fault line, with a history of the ground simply splitting open.

Bridges and other parts of their towns and cities are built with that in mind, and they just hope that if another earthquake comes, the infrastructure will prove solid enough to withstand it.

But it’s all in the lap of the gods, unfortunately, for millions of people.

Like the Chinese who were simply swept away, never to be seen again, by gigantic, sudden floods. Or by the Turks whose towns crumbled before their eyes during horrendous earthquakes.

From Australia’s Outback to the plains of Portugal, forest fires arrive in the sweltering heat and leave nothing but blackened stumps behind.

If the houses and trees yield within minutes, you can only imagine what it’s like for those doomed souls who can’t get in a car and get out of its path fast enough.

“Instead of being dark and gloomy, the sky was blue and clear when a tornado hit,” says seismologist David Oglesby of one “twister”, that was doing 135 mph at its root.

This is the main concern for many experts they admit that sometimes you simply cannot predict when and where the serial killer will hit.

“You had one storm after another in Nashville,” explains meteorologist Kyle Hunter.

“It just rained and rained, and when you know how heavy a cubic foot of water is, it eventually just forces its way through shopfront windows.

“It’s a tremendous force of thousands of pounds glass is not that strong.”

Talking about a massive earthquake in Van, eastern Turkey, structural engineer John Osteras says: “There were buildings around, all capable of falling down. It preyed on the weak buildings, but any could have come down.”

One man hid under a table, and filmed the earthquake, praying constantly and believing these were his last moments alive.

With the knowledge that two tectonic plates beneath him might collide, he’d always known he literally was on shaky ground. For the rest of us, the dangerous Earth we live on may threaten our lives before we know it.

l Serial Killer Earth is on Discovery’s brand-new H2 Channel, Thursdays at 9pm right through July.