Nature is scary. Help scare me more!
July 23, 2015 10:12 AM
I am obsessed with extreme nature - tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, harsh environments (think Mt. Everest or deep oceans), extreme weather - basically anything about how big and scary and unpredictable the earth is. I want to get my hands on more articles, books, and documentaries (preferably available online) to quench my appetite for more.
Some good examples of what I'm looking for are:
-Into Thin Air
-Outside's article about deep cave diving
- the article from the post about the Cascadia Subduction Zone
- this article about free diving
- this article about tornado chasing
Stuff that explains the science for a general audience is also good. Last night I watched a bunch of videos from the US Geological Survey that were really cool.
I basically can't get enough of reading about the intense extremes of the planet from the comfort of civilization and would love more suggestions on how to scratch that itch!
Some good examples of what I'm looking for are:
-Into Thin Air
-Outside's article about deep cave diving
- the article from the post about the Cascadia Subduction Zone
- this article about free diving
- this article about tornado chasing
Stuff that explains the science for a general audience is also good. Last night I watched a bunch of videos from the US Geological Survey that were really cool.
I basically can't get enough of reading about the intense extremes of the planet from the comfort of civilization and would love more suggestions on how to scratch that itch!
The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean
posted by anderjen at 10:29 AM on July 23, 2015
posted by anderjen at 10:29 AM on July 23, 2015
Documentary Tsunami: Caught on Camera. The Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. 8 parts on youtube, link to part 1.
posted by gudrun at 11:06 AM on July 23, 2015
posted by gudrun at 11:06 AM on July 23, 2015
...anything about how big and scary and unpredictable the earth is...
for some values of 'earth'...
Spillover (we catch scary diseases from animals)
China Syndrome (we can't do much about scary diseases)
Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC(there are lots of scary diseases, we can do *some* things)
The Great Influenza (sometimes we're just fucked)
Surviving The Extremes (people like to go to scary places. often they get hosed)
In The Heart of The Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (sea travel is hard, dangerous, and sometimes horrifying)
Touching The Void (sometimes after getting hosed, people are extroadinary)
Observer. Orient. Decide. Act (gravity, speed, and oxygen affect health)
Green Ant Tea, Anyone?(go places, come back)
The Hunt For The Death Valley Germans( go places, don't come back)
excerpt (pdf), The Man Who Rode The Thunder (gravity+air+speed+oxygen+weather)
Isaac's Storm(wind & water)
The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina ('earth' plus criminally shitty engineering)
The Big Uneasy (filmaker harry shearer's take)
posted by j_curiouser at 11:13 AM on July 23, 2015
for some values of 'earth'...
Spillover (we catch scary diseases from animals)
China Syndrome (we can't do much about scary diseases)
Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC(there are lots of scary diseases, we can do *some* things)
The Great Influenza (sometimes we're just fucked)
Surviving The Extremes (people like to go to scary places. often they get hosed)
In The Heart of The Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (sea travel is hard, dangerous, and sometimes horrifying)
Touching The Void (sometimes after getting hosed, people are extroadinary)
Observer. Orient. Decide. Act (gravity, speed, and oxygen affect health)
Green Ant Tea, Anyone?(go places, come back)
The Hunt For The Death Valley Germans( go places, don't come back)
excerpt (pdf), The Man Who Rode The Thunder (gravity+air+speed+oxygen+weather)
Isaac's Storm(wind & water)
The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina ('earth' plus criminally shitty engineering)
The Big Uneasy (filmaker harry shearer's take)
posted by j_curiouser at 11:13 AM on July 23, 2015
--Issac's Storm about the hurricane that hit Galveston in 1900, killing over 6000.
--Climbing books, like Pole expedition books mentioned above, contain multitudes. Touching the Void and Annapurna are classic climbing books you might like if you enjoyed Into Thin Air; the recent spat of books about the 2008 K2 disaster are also good. Denali's Howl might also be up your alley. Those are just the tip of the spear.
--Rising Tide about the Mississippi flooding in 1927
--The Control of Nature by John McPhee - another classic.
--And of course, Alive.
--In the Heart of the Sea about a whaleship tragedy
--River of Doubt about Theodore Roosevelt and going up an uncharted tributary of the Amazon
--If you haven't read A Perfect Storm yet, it's also a great example of the genre.
Books about wildfire are a great way to scratch your itch, and is another great rabbit hole with plenty of material. The classic to start with is Young Men and Fire - from there I'd suggest Fire on the Mountain and then the recent book about the Yarnell fire. The Big Burn, about the wildfire season and one fire in particular in 1910, is also an amazing book. There's also a few books about the wildfire in Peshtigo that are good.
The quartet of books about death in US National Parks is also good - Yosemite, Yellowstone (the classic one), Grand Canyon, and Rocky Mountain, and a more general one about SAR.
posted by barchan at 11:15 AM on July 23, 2015
--Climbing books, like Pole expedition books mentioned above, contain multitudes. Touching the Void and Annapurna are classic climbing books you might like if you enjoyed Into Thin Air; the recent spat of books about the 2008 K2 disaster are also good. Denali's Howl might also be up your alley. Those are just the tip of the spear.
--Rising Tide about the Mississippi flooding in 1927
--The Control of Nature by John McPhee - another classic.
--And of course, Alive.
--In the Heart of the Sea about a whaleship tragedy
--River of Doubt about Theodore Roosevelt and going up an uncharted tributary of the Amazon
--If you haven't read A Perfect Storm yet, it's also a great example of the genre.
Books about wildfire are a great way to scratch your itch, and is another great rabbit hole with plenty of material. The classic to start with is Young Men and Fire - from there I'd suggest Fire on the Mountain and then the recent book about the Yarnell fire. The Big Burn, about the wildfire season and one fire in particular in 1910, is also an amazing book. There's also a few books about the wildfire in Peshtigo that are good.
The quartet of books about death in US National Parks is also good - Yosemite, Yellowstone (the classic one), Grand Canyon, and Rocky Mountain, and a more general one about SAR.
posted by barchan at 11:15 AM on July 23, 2015
Here are some choice excerpts from Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite, and here is a guy who climbed there without ropes.
posted by earth by april at 11:15 AM on July 23, 2015
posted by earth by april at 11:15 AM on July 23, 2015
One thing that really scratched this itch for me was The World Without Us.
There's a TV series, too. It demonstrates just how quickly our entire built environment (cities, houses, subways, dams, cars, everything) would dissolve if humans just disappeared from the planet, and how incredibly powerful even everyday natural forces can be over time. Humbling. Presents the science of it in a very approachable way.
posted by mochapickle at 11:26 AM on July 23, 2015
There's a TV series, too. It demonstrates just how quickly our entire built environment (cities, houses, subways, dams, cars, everything) would dissolve if humans just disappeared from the planet, and how incredibly powerful even everyday natural forces can be over time. Humbling. Presents the science of it in a very approachable way.
posted by mochapickle at 11:26 AM on July 23, 2015
Minus 148 Degrees was a total page-turner of "what-the-mother-fuck-were-these-guys-thinking"ness.
posted by latkes at 11:54 AM on July 23, 2015
posted by latkes at 11:54 AM on July 23, 2015
Bot flies.
Bot fly removal (warning: graphic).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:55 AM on July 23, 2015
Bot fly removal (warning: graphic).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:55 AM on July 23, 2015
I haven't watched any of these, but they showed up on my Netflix recommended list. And here they are on YouTube: Nature's Weirdest Events.
posted by The Deej at 12:03 PM on July 23, 2015
posted by The Deej at 12:03 PM on July 23, 2015
On Netflix there's Siren of the Himalayas, Desert Runners, Encounters at the End of the World, Grizzly Man, all featuring dangerous nature and the weirdos who go there.
posted by feste at 3:56 PM on July 23, 2015
posted by feste at 3:56 PM on July 23, 2015
Death from the Skies! by "Bad Astronomer" Dr. Phil Plait is all about astronomical world-enders, like asteroid or comet collisions, supernovas, black holes, solar flares, threats that range from the end of civilization, the death of humanity, and, at worse, a complete sterilization or obliteration of the planet and/or solar system.
The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of Our World by Brownlee and Ward is about the eventual extinction of humanity, forecast using the speculative science of Astrobiology, the study of life in the universe in general, and particularly the study of habitable environments, such as the one that surrounds the Earth's crust. It's not scary stuff exactly, but it does lay out the case that humanity is just another animal race that'll have its sunset sometime in the future, whether we fix the biosphere here or not.
posted by Sunburnt at 4:37 PM on July 23, 2015
The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of Our World by Brownlee and Ward is about the eventual extinction of humanity, forecast using the speculative science of Astrobiology, the study of life in the universe in general, and particularly the study of habitable environments, such as the one that surrounds the Earth's crust. It's not scary stuff exactly, but it does lay out the case that humanity is just another animal race that'll have its sunset sometime in the future, whether we fix the biosphere here or not.
posted by Sunburnt at 4:37 PM on July 23, 2015
Nobody mentioned Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything yet? In the early part of the book, it seems to be about the history of science. Somehow it devolves into talking about all the ways that the world could end.
posted by polecat at 5:12 PM on July 23, 2015
posted by polecat at 5:12 PM on July 23, 2015
A book I enjoyed way too much on my last trip to Yellowstone: Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park.
Spoiler -- Lots of being boiled by hot springs, getting trampled by bison, etc.
posted by BusyBusyBusy at 8:59 PM on July 23, 2015
Spoiler -- Lots of being boiled by hot springs, getting trampled by bison, etc.
posted by BusyBusyBusy at 8:59 PM on July 23, 2015
I love this stuff so much. I'm reading Deep Survival - Who Lives, Who Dies and Why right now - it's about climbers and fishermen and adventurers who get in REALLY bad situations deep in the wild. Holy shit it reads like a thriller/horror movie.
This one is similar - it's about the deep terribleness of the Amazon forest.
posted by Sijeka at 12:43 AM on July 24, 2015
This one is similar - it's about the deep terribleness of the Amazon forest.
posted by Sijeka at 12:43 AM on July 24, 2015
Oh and a classic and absolutely AMAZINGLY written Alaska book is The Blue Bear by Lynne Schooler. Lots of wild, nature, scary things because of the immensity of the landscape. Schooler is the best. Also by the same author which has a long scene in that's probably the scariest animal encounter I've ever read.
posted by Sijeka at 12:49 AM on July 24, 2015
posted by Sijeka at 12:49 AM on July 24, 2015
Some more books in the vein of Into Thin Air:
* Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains (also by Jon Krakauer)
* High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed
* K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain
* No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks
posted by neushoorn at 12:51 AM on July 24, 2015
* Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains (also by Jon Krakauer)
* High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed
* K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain
* No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks
posted by neushoorn at 12:51 AM on July 24, 2015
Thanks, everyone, these are fantastic suggestions and will keep me occupied for quite some time.
I would mark everyone as best answer since each single answer has good recommendations, but j_curiouser's "people like to go to scary places. often they get hosed" particularly made my day.
I can't wait to get reading!
posted by Neely O'Hara at 6:03 AM on July 24, 2015
I would mark everyone as best answer since each single answer has good recommendations, but j_curiouser's "people like to go to scary places. often they get hosed" particularly made my day.
I can't wait to get reading!
posted by Neely O'Hara at 6:03 AM on July 24, 2015
The Picador Nature Reader.
From the blurb:
This delightful anthology features pieces by some of the best authors of the 20th century, such as Italo Calvino. John Fowles, Bruce Chatwin, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Richard Ford, Cormac McCarthy, and many more.
For instance, there is a short story by Annie Dillard about a total eclipse that is amazing.
posted by brappi at 11:17 PM on July 27, 2015
From the blurb:
This delightful anthology features pieces by some of the best authors of the 20th century, such as Italo Calvino. John Fowles, Bruce Chatwin, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Richard Ford, Cormac McCarthy, and many more.
For instance, there is a short story by Annie Dillard about a total eclipse that is amazing.
posted by brappi at 11:17 PM on July 27, 2015
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Race to the Pole
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
Alone on the Ice
The Worst Journey in the World (This one is written by someone who was there on Scott's expedition and is slow in the beginning but absolutely worth pushing through.)
Other non-Antarctica things:
The Children's Blizzard
The Worst Hard Time
posted by something something at 10:27 AM on July 23, 2015