A week ago, the Guadalupe River in Texas overflowed its banks and swept away dozens of campers. It turns out that this is not the first time it's done so - and not the first time some of those campers didn't survive.

Videos:

• "Rescue 911" segment on the tragedy

• Señor Onion’s Archives: Guadalupe Flood of 1987

• Sheriff recounts tragic Comfort, TX flood

• The Flood: Who Will Save Our Children?

Articles and books:

• Toll At 8 In Texas Flooding 2 Young Campers Are Still Missing

• Almost 40 years ago, 10 children died in a Comfort flood that shook Texas

(Podcaster's note: The second part of the Cutter incident episode is forthcoming; I'm just trying to get it juuuuuust right. :))

November 7th, 2018, was just supposed to be another fun night of drinking and line dancing at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, CA. But at 11:18 PM, all of that ended in an instant.

Videos:

• TikTok: shannon_mcgee visiting the site 1.5 years later

• TikTok: Official account of @borderlinebar

• RAW VIDEO: Thousand Oaks gunman seen shooting inside Borderline Bar & Grill | ABC7

• Thousand Oaks shooting survivor: "My friend killed my other friends"

• Co-Owner Of Borderline Bar And Grill Accused Of Embezzling $43K

• Ventura County DA Releases New Video Of Borderline Bar Shooting

• Columbine Survivor Survives Virginia Tech

Articles and books:

• Must Reads: Friends took this photo at their favorite bar in Thousand Oaks. Minutes later, the shooting started

• CHP officer’s bullet killed sheriff’s deputy who responded to Thousand Oaks bar shooting

• Authorities Describe 'Confusion And Chaos' At Borderline Bar Shooting In California

• What Thousand Oaks shooting suspect posted to social media during massacre

• Here Are the Victims of the Thousand Oaks Shooting

• First Responder Was Killed in Restaurant Mass Shooting at Same Place Where He Proposed to His Wife

• Borderline shooting hero Matt Wennerstrom honored at Thousand Oaks memorial after motorcycle crash

• The Americans who have lived through multiple mass shootings

It would start with a headache, a fever, maybe a funny tummy. But soon enough your knee would give out, or your arm would hang limp, or you would struggle to breathe. You'd be taken to the hospital, where you'd get your diagnosis - polio. If you survived, you ran the risk of doing so with paralyzed limbs, struggling to walk on bulky leg braces. Your parents would be terrified they might lose you, and so everybody wanted the one thing that could stop all of this - a vaccine.

Videos:

• New England Journal of Medicine: The Cutter Incident, 50 Years Later

• American Experience: The Polio Crusade

• The Iron Lung and Polio by M.Rockoff | OPENPediatrics

Articles and books:

• Polio: An American Story, by David M. Oshinsky

• The Cutter Incident, by Dr. Paul Offit

• NEJM: The Cutter Incident

In a bustling city of pirates and wickedness, one might think things couldn't get any more dangerous. But in the Jamaican city of Port Royal in 1692, that thought would be tested, and tested hard.

Videos:

• History of Port Royal (Underwater Cities)

Articles and books:

• Apocalypse 1692: Empire, Slavery, and the Great Port Royal Earthquake, by Ben Hughes

• Historic Earthquakes: Jamaica, 1692 June 07 UTC

• Jamaica Port Royal

If you'd like to donate to the GFM for my car, you can find that here:

https://gofund.me/a0585132

To raise money for car repairs, Jennifer answers the question you've all been wondering - how well can she talk about a disaster while ... let's say "not sober."

Please help Jennifer fix her car! It takes our esteemed cohost Professor on rides to go see cows and he therefore cannot live without it. Links below:

GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/59bec8ad

Paypal: [email protected]

Cashapp: $disasterareapod

Venmo: @disasterareapodcast

It was almost the end of a typical Tuesday for workers at the Sofa Super Store in Charleston, South Carolina, in June of 2007, and several of them went out to the loading dock to smoke and kill a little time. One stray cigarette butt thrown too near the trash, and within an hour and a half nine firefighters would be dead.

Videos:

• Charleston Fire Department’s recovery from deadly Sofa Super Store fire

• First hour of dispatch audio from the Sofa Super Store fire

• Charleston 9: The Ultimate Sacrifice

• Line-of-Duty Death and Injury Investigations - NIST Fire Modeling - The Charleston Investigation

Articles and books:

• Newsweek: 'It looked like Hell was burning'

• Post and Courier: Sofa store owner tells his side

• Post and Courier: Trapped: The story of nine Charleston firefighters' deaths

• NIST Study on Charleston Furniture Store Fire Calls for National Safety Improvements

• Remembering the Charleston 9: 17 years after deadly Sofa Super Store fire

• The Sofa Super Store fire: The blaze that reshaped the Charleston Fire Department

On a warm November evening in 1996, in the rural farmland not far from Delhi, the remains of two aircraft plummeted from the skies. The collision which caused them to fall is still the deadliest mid-air collision in history.

Videos:

• Mayday/Air Crash Investigation episode on Charkhi Dadri collision

• Disaster Breakdown: The Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision

• Remains of Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision

• "Head On"

Articles and books:

• Accident report

• Human error is blamed for crash

• At Least 349 Are Killed in Collision

• Indian Officials Gather Evidence on Midair Collision

• Haryana's Charkhi Dadri plans a memorial for 1996 mid-air collision victims

Let us celebrate the 250th episode of the podcast by doing literally anything else but watching "Cats." 

Videos:

• Cats: The Musical

• Cats (2019)

• The Late Late Show with James Corden: Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts with Chrissy Teigen

• "Cats" commercial for the Broadway show

Articles and books:

• Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by T.S. Eliot

• What's a Jellicle, Anyway? Everything You Need to Know About Cats Before You See the Movie

• 21 Funny Reactions From Critics Who Thought The New “Cats” Movie Was A Catastrophe

• Cats review: a sinister, all-time disaster from which no one emerges unscathed

• 'Oh God, my eyes': The reviews for 'Cats' are hilarious and traumatic

• ‘It Became This Joke. But It Was the Most Spectacular Thing of Its Time.’ An oral history of Cats on Broadway, as told by its original cats.

• Cats (2019): Performance

• Editing the Buttholes Out of ‘Cats’ Was a Total Nightmare for VFX Crew

• The ‘Cats’ trailer dropped. We have 34 questions.

• Cats mistake revealed as Judi Dench's character spotted with human hand and wedding ring

• How Do Furries Feel About the New Cats Movie?

• RAZZIE AWARDS 2020 WINNERS: CATS DOMINATES 40TH GOLDEN RASPBERRY AWARDS

• Yes, The Songs in "Cats" Are Based on These Poems by T.S. Eliot

It turns out that I have not disappeared into a magical world to be romanced by a fae prince - more's the pity. Anyway, let's talk about the Los Angeles wildfire, misinformation, and knowing when you need to give yourself space so you can give others the help they need.

It was a hot and muggy summer day as the steamboat Sea Wing carried passengers down the Mississippi River for what was to be a lovely excursion to the National Guard settlement near Lake City, MN. And it was ... until the storm hit.

Videos:

• The Sea Wing Disaster

• So Minnesota: Haunted history of the Sea Wing disaster

• Sea Wing Disaster on KSMQ's "Off 90" (Sponsored by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment)

Articles and books:

• Shipwrecked on Lake Pepin: The Sea Wing disaster

• Historic Disasters in Southeast Minnesota, by Steve Gardiner

• The Sea Wing disaster killed 98, yet the tragedy is little known beyond Red Wing