- 6/13/2025
From natural disasters to man-made catastrophes, the 1980s were marked by several terrifying events that shaped our world. Join us as we explore the most chilling moments that defined this decade, including devastating nuclear accidents, technological disasters, and humanitarian crises that still resonate today.
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00:00The scenes are simply hellish. So much suffering from India's invisible killer.
00:04Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at the 10 scariest events that occurred in the 1980s.
00:10Liftoff of the 25th Space Shuttle Mission and it has cleared the tower.
00:16The Mount St. Helens Eruption.
00:18Such is the force of Mount St. Helens' lateral eruption that an incredible 1,300 feet of mountain disappears almost instantly.
00:26It's not often that the United States experiences a volcanic eruption, but they experienced a huge one on May 18, 1980.
00:33This explosion was almost biblical in nature, with the entire north face of the mountain collapsing and sliding away to form the largest landslide ever recorded.
00:42I glanced over at the mountain, and the entire north face was in motion, was sliding down.
00:49And it's such an unbelievable view that I shook my head and I said, am I really seeing this?
00:55This collapsed then uncorked a massive lateral blast, flattening everything in its path.
01:01A plume of black ash towered 80,000 feet into the air, while the surrounding area, which was once a lush, green forest, was now a dead, grey, apocalyptic wasteland.
01:11When the eruption was done, ash had been deposited throughout 11 states, approximately 57 people were dead, and the mountain now had a gaping hole where its summit once stood.
01:21Mount St. Helens continues to erupt until late in the afternoon.
01:27Ashfall forced towns and cities up to 300 miles away into a state of emergency shutdown.
01:34In just over two weeks, the ash circled the entire globe.
01:39The Tylenol poisonings.
01:40We're marking the anniversary of one of the most notorious, unsolved mass killings in American history.
01:47Throughout the fall of 1982, at least seven people died in the greater Chicago area after taking Tylenol that had been laced with cyanide.
01:55Investigators quickly determined that the poisoning did not stem from the manufacturing process, meaning that someone was opening bottles on store shelves and manually inserting the poison.
02:05I watched Family End.
02:14I don't know how anybody could do anything like that.
02:17The total randomness of the act terrorized the country, many of whom feared becoming the next innocent victim.
02:22The deaths also caused a media frenzy and a mass panic, with over 30 million bottles of Tylenol being recalled throughout the country.
02:29To make matters even worse, the culprit was never caught.
02:32The lack of resolution leaving behind a haunting sense of vulnerability and mystery.
02:37Who would do this, and why?
02:38Perhaps we'll never know.
02:40Even 40 years later, the mystery is still compromising with investigators and fascinating everybody.
02:48The Mexico City earthquake.
02:49At 7.19am, Mexico City was hit with a monumental earthquake.
03:12The epicenter was about 200 miles away, off the coast of Michoacan, but the soft clay soil of the ancient lakebed amplified the seismic waves, leading to extreme shaking.
03:22Many of the city's buildings were also poorly constructed, resulting in the total collapse of over 400 structures.
03:28The earthquake caused losses that will take years of effort and millions of dollars to restore.
03:33A further 3,124 suffered extensive damage, and entire city blocks were destroyed, leaving behind an apocalyptic landscape of rubble and dust.
03:43Thousands of people were killed, and to make matters worse, the initial response from the Mexican government was slow and disorganized, leading to widespread public anger.
03:51The earthquake destroyed much of the city and revealed its vulnerability.
03:54The earthquakes of September 1985 in Mexico City attest to the vulnerability of large cities to catastrophic earthquakes, and should serve as a reminder to all Latin American countries, the U.S. and some Caribbean nations.
04:09The Ethiopian Famine.
04:10Leave the world.
04:15We're reminded of the Ethiopian famine every single year, in the form of the charity single, Do They Know It's Christmas?
04:21The song was written to raise money and awareness for the Ethiopian famine, which ravaged the country between 1983 and 1985.
04:28This was one of the most devastating humanitarian disasters of the 20th century, killing 300,000 to 1,000,000 people, and displacing millions more.
04:37It's now just after six in the morning here at Quorum, where thousands have been sleeping overnight in a bare field in the cold.
04:43I'm wearing three layers of clothing at the moment, and I'm very cold.
04:47Children, adults have been trying to get through the night wearing bare thin rags.
04:51The scale of the crisis went largely unnoticed, until journalists began smuggling out footage.
04:57It was a stark reminder of how easily suffering can occur out of sight, and in the midst of a seemingly globalized world.
05:03Said footage was also haunting, with images of skeletal children and mass graves shocking the world, and leading to an outpouring of support.
05:11Turned on the TV, and the first thing was Tigray and Wallow, and so much for the dinner.
05:21We forgot completely. My wife was crying. I was crying.
05:24Pan Am Flight 103.
05:26Five miles below, the people of Lockerbie prepare for Christmas.
05:29Michael Gordon is chatting with a friend, when a strange rumbling noise fills his house.
05:36The deadliest terror attack in the UK's history occurred on December 21st, 1988.
05:41Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 on board.
05:48The aircraft broke apart in midair, and rained flaming pieces of debris onto the small Scottish town, causing significant destruction and killing a further 11 people.
05:57And then, from my right, quite high on my right, I could see a long, thin, black object, which had a fire on the surface coming in.
06:08And it was making its way towards Lockerbie.
06:11The explosion was the result of a deliberate bombing, and while it has been officially ascribed to Libyan nationalists, much doubt and speculation has been raised regarding their involvement.
06:23The ongoing debate surrounding the true nature of the bombing has only added a further degree of agitation to an already horrifying event.
06:30In a small church, near where the Dying Plains cockpit landed, is a stark reminder of the toll of terror, and the importance of bringing the guilty to justice.
06:41The Bhopal Disaster
06:43Authorities now say the toxic gas that escaped from a Union Carbide plant on Monday has killed at least 1,600 people, and they say another 50,000 people may suffer serious after-effects such as blindness and sterility.
06:58The Indian city of Bhopal hosted a pesticide plant belonging to Union Carbide India Limited.
07:04The plant stored large quantities of methyl isocyanate, or MIC, a highly toxic chemical used in the production of pesticides.
07:12Thanks to a number of errors, water accidentally entered one of the tanks on December 2, 1984, creating a runaway exothermic reaction that caused the safety valve to rupture, releasing a dense cloud of toxic gas into the surrounding area.
07:25At one point, an official said one death was being recorded every minute from the poison gas leak in the city of Bhopal.
07:31Nearby residents were exposed to the toxic cloud, and thousands died within the first few hours of exposure.
07:37And while the overall death toll is hard to measure, an estimated 16,000 people are believed to have died in the following years due to gas-related illnesses.
07:45Union Carbide acknowledged today that two years ago, the company had major concerns about the safety conditions for methyl isocyanate at its plant in Bhopal, India.
07:54The Challenger disaster.
07:56Looks like a couple of the solid rocket boosters blew away from the side of the shuttle in an explosion.
08:05A space shuttle explosion is always a tragedy, but it was the pomp and circumstance surrounding the Challenger that made it a national disaster.
08:12The mission was part of the Teacher in Space project, an initiative meant to get kids interested in science, astronomy, and space exploration.
08:19Usually the night before, I had the same nightmare that what I saw today, and I thought it was a dream.
08:27I was speechless for a few minutes.
08:30As such, an everyday teacher named Krista McAuliffe was chosen to accompany the astronauts, and the launch was watched in countless schools across the country.
08:39Unfortunately, the shuttle suffered a catastrophic failure just over a minute into its launch, causing it to disintegrate in a gigantic plume of smoke, and killing everyone on board.
08:49Millions of children watched the disaster unfold on live TV, creating a sense of national trauma that is still being felt to this day.
08:56We have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded.
09:00The flight director confirms that.
09:02We are looking at checking with the recovery forces to see what can be done at this point.
09:07The AIDS epidemic emerges.
09:09People who, because they had been diagnosed, suddenly disappeared.
09:15And we all knew what that silence meant.
09:17The 1980s was hit by a new fear of a new disease.
09:20The CDC published its first report on what would later be known as AIDS in 1981, and HIV was officially identified a few years later.
09:29AIDS became public knowledge throughout the decade, with widespread awareness occurring in the latter half of the 80s.
09:35AIDS is now spreading in epidemic proportions to other segments of the population.
09:40Naturally, an entirely new disease caused enormous panic within the general population, especially because contracting HIV was a certified death sentence at the time.
09:49The panic was further fueled by numerous factors, including HIV's unknown cause and transmission, the lack of government response, the stigma surrounding the disease, and sensationalist media coverage, with some headlines even calling it a plague.
10:06You've tested positive for HIV, which is the virus that causes AIDS.
10:14Cold War Tensions
10:16While it started in the 40s, the Cold War was alive and well in the 1980s.
10:31In fact, some people refer to this as the Second Cold War, as the relative détente of the 1970s was destroyed by renewed hostilities.
10:38President Ronald Reagan also took a highly aggressive stance against the Soviet Union, including his famous Evil Empire speech of 1983.
10:46I pointed out that as good Marxist-Leninists, the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution.
11:00As such, the fear of a full-scale nuclear war was deeply embedded in the public consciousness, with many schools around the country participating in nuclear bombing drills.
11:09Naturally, cultural anxiety was taught.
11:12This doom and gloom was reflected in pop culture, with movies like War Games, The Day After, and Threads reflecting the paranoid atmosphere of the day.
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11:48Chernobyl
11:51The reputation of nuclear energy was permanently tarnished on April 26th, 1986, when a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded.
12:15A combination of operator error and major design flaws, the explosion sent an enormous radioactive cloud billowing into the atmosphere.
12:23The massive release of radiation was unprecedented and caused panic throughout much of Europe, as everyone feared the effects of the fallout.
12:29The wind has been blowing toward Germany, not letting children play outside, in Frankfurt.
12:39The human cost is also unavoidable.
12:42Radiation sickness painfully claimed many lives, and nearby cities were evacuated, leaving behind unsettling radioactive ghost towns that still exist to this day.
12:51Luckily, the heroic efforts of many scientists and liquidators prevented a monumental disaster from spiraling into something even worse.
12:59You'll do it because it must be done.
13:01You'll do it because nobody else can.
13:12And if you don't, millions will die.
13:17And if you tell me that's not enough, I won't believe you.
13:19Were you around to experience these events yourself?
13:22Let us know in the comments below.
13:24I was terrified of passing on HIV to someone else.
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