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Perfect Disaster

American documentary television series

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ320772
Source-derived summary

Perfect Disaster is a one-hour American documentary television mini-series that ran from March 19 until April 9, 2006 on the Discovery Channel. The program depicted the worst-case scenario that major cities could expect in the near future if hit by extreme disaster. A large part of each episode was recounted the lives of citizens from each city, with the remainder of the program showing many real-world scientists discussing the very high probabilities of these disasters. The trademark tagline of the show was "When the conditions are right, it will all go wrong."

The series currently airs as reruns on the Science Channel.

Episodes

Dallas: Destroyed by what is declared a super-tornado, one exceeding an F5 on the Fujita scale. The presentation also describes the fact that the probability of this catastrophe is the highest of all the proposed scenarios.

New York City: Being subject to a powerful geomagnetic storm in the year 2011, causing widespread damage to electronics, and several bizarre extraterrestrial anomalies. 6 years after the mini-series premiere, a solar storm roughly half as powerful than the one depicted, erupted from the sun and misses the Earth by a margin of 9 days.

Sydney: Engulfed in the flames of a large firestorm that is brewing out of control during the dry summer weather. Similar to some phenomena seen in the Black Saturday bushfires, which occurred less than 3 years after this show's premiere.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Perfect Disaster” as american documentary television series. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Perfect, Disaster and American.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2006, 2011—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Perfect, Disaster and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Perfect Disaster”, the useful work is to connect “american documentary television series” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q320772. The first chronological checks are 2006 and 2011.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Perfect Disaster”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Perfect Disaster primary sources, Perfect Disaster archive and Perfect research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Perfect Disaster” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.