“Learn about the disasters caused by the unstoppable shifting of the earth’s huge tectonic plates”

National Geographic cameras travel to Iceland, Africa, Japan, California, and Greece to record how the huge plates of the earth’s crust crash together and spread apart causing ground-shattering earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Follow scientists around the world as they search for clues to the causes of these powerful geologic events. Born of Fire demonstrates that while man is capable of harnessing this tremendous power for his benefit, he must also prepare for the possibility of cataclysmic disaster.

Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are the subject of Born of Fire, the main thesis of which is that our world is constantly changing. Our earth was once a single continent, yet today the separated continents seem stationary; they are, however, moving an inch or so each year.
By studying our earth’s history, scientists predict that Africa will collide with southern Europe, Eastern Africa will be isolated, Los Angeles will move toward Alaska, and New York will become part of a volcanic range.

Narrator Robert Ballard takes viewers to:

• Iceland: in 1963 an island emerged off Iceland’s coast
• the United States: to the site of San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake, the Mojave Desert, the San Andreas Fault and the sites of the 1857 and 1971 earthquakes that hit Los Angeles
• Greece: to the Aegean island of Santorini’s misfortune during the Bronze Age
• East Africa: the Rift Valley is sinking and the sea advancing inland
• Japan: children in Tokyo are schooled in reading, writing, and catastrophe (their earthquake in 1923 killed 140,000 people).

The irony is that though scientists can make increasingly more accurate geological predictions, we cannot know whether we will survive the disasters caused by the unstoppable shifting of the earth’s huge plates.
Born of Fire is a fascinating and cohesive look at these phenomenal geological occurrences. 

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