HeyJaredWreckage & Ruins
Welcome to Wreckage & Ruins!Each week we investigate disasters: man-made and natural, legendary last stands, medical mishaps, and everything in between.Each of the ruins unfold into a story, and we're here to understand why it happened and what came after.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 11
- Latest publication
- Sep 16, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 8, 2026
Latest episodes
Episode 38: Galveston Hurricane (opens the original)
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On September 8, 1900, the Great Galveston Hurricane struck the Texas coast and became the deadliest hurricane in U.S. history. Galveston was a prosperous port city built on a low barrier island. Hurricane forecasting was still in its infancy, communications were limited, and few residents understood the scale of the storm approaching them. When the Category 4 hurricane arrived, its powerful winds and roughly 15-foot storm surge devastated the island. About 8,000 people are commonly estimated to
Episode 37: Silver Bridge Collapse (opens the original)
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On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed over the Ohio River between Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Ohio, killing 46 people. Investigators would eventually trace the disaster to a hidden fracture in eyebar 330, a critical flaw ordinary visual inspection couldn't reach. CC & Kitty follow the Silver Bridge from its unusual 1928 eyebar design through the rush-hour collapse, the dangerous rescue and recovery operation, and the investigation that identified stress corrosion and corrosion
Episode 36: Endurance Expedition (opens the original)
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Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition was supposed to make the first crossing of Antarctica. The expedition never reached its starting point. After Endurance became trapped in Weddell Sea pack ice, Shackleton and 27 other men spent months drifting with the ship before the ice finally crushed it. Losing Endurance was only the beginning. They camped on moving ice, escaped in lifeboats to uninhabited Elephant Island, and then watched Shackleton and five companions attempt an extraordinary open-b
Episode 35: The Conqueror (opens the original)
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John Wayne as Genghis Khan was only the beginning. The Conqueror filmed in southern Utah after the region had received fallout from Nevada nuclear tests. Years later, dozens of cast and crew cancer diagnoses fueled a controversy that still surrounds the movie—while Downwinder communities lived with the consequences far beyond Hollywood.Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conqueror_%281956_film%29 https://www.britannica.com/place/the-Steppe https://www.intermountainhistories.org/items/show
Episode 34: Byford Dolphin Incident (opens the original)
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The Byford Dolphin incident was a catastrophic 1983 saturation-diving accident caused by a sudden loss of pressure during a diving-bell transfer. On November 5, 1983, four divers were inside a pressurized chamber system aboard the Byford Dolphin in the North Sea. During the process of separating a diving bell from the chamber, the system suddenly decompressed from nine atmospheres to one. CC and Kitty explain how saturation diving works, reconstruct the required transfer sequence, and examine th
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