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This spectacular five-part documentary series, presented by Tony Robinson, investigates the history of natural disasters, from the planet's beginnings to the present, putting a new perspective on our existence and suggesting that we are the product of catastrophe.

99% of all the creatures that have ever lived, no longer exist. They were wiped-out in a series of global catastrophes. Each disaster changed the course of evolution on earth. Without them mankind, nor any of the life we see around us, would be here today. For out of catastrophe comes rebirth. Evolution is a savage, imperfect and violent process. It's survive or perish. The earth's history of catastrophes has both moulded the planet and determined evolution. For each disaster led to another leap forward on the evolutionary trail form single celled bacteria to humankind itself.

Episode 5 - Survival Earth

So far, humans have been lucky not to have experienced catastrophes on a global scale, like those that have extinguished 99% of all other species. Humans have come to reside as the most powerful species on this planet, but it is easy to forget that the forces that wiped out many of our ancestors are still at work. In this final programme, Catastrophe maps out key events over the last 75,000 years. During that time humans were subjected to a super-volcano that nearly devastated whole regions of Earth. The ensuing ice age that covered Europe with ice sheets many kilometres thick is said to have thwarted the development of complex civilisation, and the cosmic catastrophe that followed is believed to have changed life forever for the early inhabitants of North America.