At the same time, we'll put the Shock and Awe campaign into the context of history's most dramatic bombardments - from the catapults and trebuchets of the Romans, to the firebombing of Dresden. We'll get an inside view of the technology that allows overwhelming firepower to be accurately targeted, and investigate how exotic missiles, like the thermobaric "bunker busters," work. Amazingly, there has been no detailed inside look at what happened during those 48 hours in March 2003. Yet the bombing was carried out with surgical precision, minimizing "collateral damage". In the most intense bombardment in history, 800 missiles were launched in two days - more than twice as many as were dropped during the six weeks of Gulf War I. Inside Shock and Awe will deconstruct the bombing campaign that launched Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Using spectacular exclusive imagery and CGI, National Geographic Television & Film investigates the planning and execution of Shock and Awe, putting it into historical perspective and looking to the future of warfare. Mission: unleash a bombardment so massive that it destroys the enemy's will, yet kills as few people as possible. Brave the worst that nature has to offer. The Arctic ice is revealed as a place of danger and drama as animals are stranded on frozen waters, trapped between moving sheets of ice, and caught in the struggle to survive. And hidden beneath the violent, shifting ice lies a secret world of strange creatures that patrol dark sea floors on the carcasses of the dead. Returning to the fridged waters come some of the world's most unusual beasts, the ghostly white Bulaga Whale, the endangered bowhead whale, the Narwal with its 23-foot tusk. And when the spring comes to the Artic, there is an extraordinary explosion of life - rarely seen anywhere else on earth. Yet many other hunters manage to survive in and around harsh Arctic waters from the savvy arctic fox to the massive, whiskered walrus. Armed with a keen sense of smell and backed up by 1,700 pounds, fur and fangs, the polar bear stands alone at the top of the food chain. Stalk the Arctic ice with the fiercest predator, the polar bear, as it prowls one of the most forbidding places on the planet: a hidden kingdom of magnificent creatures. Many are the faces, and varied are the stories, on THE GREAT INDIAN RAILWAY. From the driver in the steaming locomotive to the station master in the sleepy village, from the family traveling to a wedding to the commuters in the large cities, this great institution reflects the country itself. At the Black Beauty contest, the beloved steam engines are admired for the last time.
It's a rich history, riding the sumptuous Palace on Wheels through Rajasthan or the "toy train" to Darjiing, but sadly, the age of steam is dying. Not only did it physically link distant regions, it also connected the myriad of castes, languages, and religions that comprise India. Since 1853, India's railway has been a unifying force. A puffing steam train climbs into the Himalaya, a rolling rumble echoes over the holy waters of the Ganges, an astonishing five million commuters rush daily through the Bombay Victoria Terminus - join National Geographic as we journey on one of the world's largest railways.