Hora cero

At precisely 01:23:48 on a spring morning of April 26th 1986, the world changed forever. In Pripyat, Ukraine in the Soviet Union the largest nuclear reactor of its kind exploded at the Chernobyl Power Station. Disaster at Chernobyl uses previously undisclosed facts and eyewitness reports to reconstruct the events of the last fateful hour.

The Last Hours of Flight 11 dramatically recounts the final sixty minutes of American Airlines Flight 11 - an hour, and a flight, that changes the world forever. At 08:46 on the morning of September 11, 2001, Flight 11, a fully fueled Boeing 767, explodes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. It is the first terrorist strike on that day of infamy.

Massacre At Columbine High chronicles the final hour that saw the worst high school massacre in American history. On the morning of April 20, 1999, in the affluent suburban town of Littleton, Colorado, Columbine High students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed 12 students and one teacher, injured 23 others and then turned the guns on themselves.

During a busy rush-hour morning, Tokyo’s elaborate underground Metro system is packed with commuters. All are unaware that it is about to become ground zero for an attempted mass murder. The attackers, members of a Japanese religious cult, Aum Shinrykio – or Aum the Supreme Truth - release the nerve agent Sarin in five separate train cars. Sarin is a chemical that, in its purest form, is 26 times more lethal than cyanide. This event marks the first time a weapon of mass destruction is deployed in an act of terror. For the group behind it, the potential murder of thousands is no mere attempt to gain notice – it is a religious vendetta…a spiritual act. ZERO HOUR: TERROR IN TOKYO reconstructs minute by minute the events from 07:46 to 08:46 as five men set out to poison the Tokyo Metro system. In doing so it reveals the bizarre motivations that led to the murder and permanent injury of so many innocent people. It uncovers a carefully coordinated plan of mass, indiscriminate killing. The episode analyzes both the structure and psychology of Aum as a movement. It offers personal testimonies of individuals caught up in events beyond their control – victims whose lives were irrevocably changed by the terrible effects of the Sarin as well as cult members who, until the attacks, were devout followers of Aum’s guru, Asahara.

On a balmy evening in October 2002, young Western tourists and Balinese revelers pack the bars and nightclubs that line the main strip of Kuta, on the resort island of Bali. The night seems full of promise; of sizzling romance and unfettered fun. However, for hundreds of these partygoers this night will be their last. Just after 11 pm, Islamic militant suicide bombers detonate their deadly payloads inside two of the area’s most popular nightclubs - Paddy’s Bar and the Sari Club. Barely a year after the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington, Bali adds fuel to the fear that terrorism is now a highly organized, global conspiracy. Zero Hour 2 – The Bali Bombing recreates the final hour leading up to the most devastating terrorist attack in Asian history. Using dramatic reconstruction, as well as interviews with survivors and experts, the episode unravels the truth about the so-called global conspiracy and reveals the inner-workings of a terrorist cell on the verge of a strike.

He seemed the quintessential, hometown American, with a childhood of little league baseball, Santa Claus, and cowboys. But on a bright spring morning in April 1995, Timothy James McVeigh shattered the image and took his place among the pantheon of mass murderers. His homemade bomb blew the face off the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 of his fellow citizens – 19 of them children. When it went off the bomb became the worst peacetime atrocity on United States soil. The event shocked America – and the rest of the world – because the perpetrator was not, as was first assumed, an Islamic terrorist, but a self-styled American patriot and Gulf-war hero. One of America’s own.Using court records and other published sources, including interviews with the killer himself, Zero Hour 2 – One of America’s Own tells the story of the minute-by-minute build up to this terrible tragedy. It seeks not only to understand the mind and motives of Timothy McVeigh, but also the unseemly and dangerous subculture of guns, racism, and perverted patriotism that turned the American dream into a nightmare at 9:02 a.m. on April 19th 1995.