Mega-Tsunami: Wave of Destruction
Off the coast of North Africa sits a volcanic island chain that some geologists believe could trigger one of the largest waves ever recorded by human beings. This film examines the Canary Islands, particularly the Cumbre Vieja volcano, as a candidate for a landslide-generated mega-tsunami, a wave built not by an earthquake shifting the seafloor but by a chunk of collapsing island slamming into the Atlantic. Geologists and tsunami researchers walk through the mechanics: how a flank collapse could send a wall of water thousands of miles across open ocean, and what that wave might look like by the time it reaches the eastern seaboard of the United States. The film lays out the disaster case scenario for coastal cities from Florida to New England, then turns to the harder scientific argument, how likely such a collapse actually is, and how much warning coastal populations could expect. Interviews with researchers keep circling back to the same tension: rare events like this are difficult to predict, but their potential scale makes them impossible to ignore.