Sun, Jul 5, 2020
The experts warned us, and they were right. In 2020, we've faced a once-in-a-century pandemic and seen what happens when a global health emergency plays out in real time. For our first episode, we visit the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia to learn about the last major pandemic we faced (it wasn't pretty) and speak to the leading public health experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security about how we battle a pandemic in the 21st century. But the big innovation. We speak to scientists in Tennessee who are researching human immunity to help us fight the coronavirus, and to a team of researchers finding life-saving drugs using the world's most powerful supercomputer.
Sun, Jul 5, 2020
Welcome to the Survival Condo. This former Atlas Missile silo turned luxury condominium complex offers the world's rich and powerful a chance to buy into the ultimate life insurance: an apocalypse bunker that promises the perfect combination of shelter and style. The Survival Condo has a lot of the hallmarks of your standard fallout shelter. It's underground (200 feet underground, in the middle of rural Kansas, 200 miles from Kansas City). It was built during the Cold War (as a nuclear missile launch facility). It's also been retrofitted with nine-foot-thick reinforced concrete walls designed to survive everything from tornadoes to 12-kiloton nuclear warheads dropping half a mile away.
Mon, Jul 6, 2020
Inside a nondescript warehouse, behind locked doors and accessible through a decontamination room, is the headquarters of Bowery Farming. This is 21st century farming, and it looks nothing like the wide open field your grandparents worked in. But while it might seem clinical, this facility is promising a solution to the biggest threats facing our agriculture industry. In an era of overpopulation, changing climate and ever-tightening water restrictions, this farm delivers certainty. Shelf-ready food grown year-round, regardless of weather, without pesticides, and all while using 95% less water.
Tue, Jul 7, 2020
I've foolishly volunteered to head out onto Puget Sound, to test out the Survival Capsule -- a high-tech tsunami escape pod that protects civilians in case of a catastrophic emergency. Designed to aerospace standards and built from aircraft-grade aluminum, it's made to withstand tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes. In short, it promises the ultimate in disaster insurance, starting at a cool $15,000. Being locked inside a Survival Capsule is not my ideal way to spend a Thursday morning. I'm claustrophobic and prone to motion sickness, and frankly I don't trust the ocean. But if a catastrophic earthquake hits the Pacific Northwest and I'm left with 10 minutes to escape the giant tsunami that follows, a watertight escape pod might just be my best option for staying alive.
Wed, Jul 8, 2020
Welcome to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, an organization in Scottsdale, Arizona, that offers people the chance to preserve their body after clinical death in the hopes that they can be revived in the future. Through a mixture of medicine and mortuary practice, Alcor preserves the bodies (and heads) of the dead by slowing lowering their body temperature and storing them in giant vessels of liquid nitrogen, where they will stay for decades at -196 C.
Thu, Jul 9, 2020
Though the scientists and technological innovators of the world are working on solutions to save us from the apocalypse , the only viable answer might be to ditch this planet and make our way to a new one. But regardless of whether a government space agency or a private company makes it to Mars first, what will life be like when we get there? How will we grow food, survive cosmic radiation and deal with the crippling loneliness of being so far from Earth? And most importantly, where will we actually live on our new home planet? One company has created a habitat that may well be the solution to surviving and thriving on Mars: a 3D-printed, egg-shaped home called Marsha.