See the video at the bottom of the page for a behind-the-scenes look at PopSci's fiery photo shoot. For excerpts from the shoot, click here

Creating a Salt Cloud

Cost: $500
Time: 2
Hours
Safe | | | | |
Crazy

It is a prospect that terrifies bioweapons experts: Terrorists release smallpox into an American city, spreading sickness and panic. Because the disease is untreatable and vaccines no longer exist, first responders and other emergency personnel would be particularly vulnerable.

By now you know that engineers had long predicted the cataclysmic flooding that struck New Orleans. But what you might not realize is that Katrina—a category-4 cyclone when it made landfall in Louisiana on August 29—was not the worst-case scenario. That would be a direct hit from a category-5 hurricane, which would send a storm surge over the city's levees and submerge New Orleans in minutes. Anyone who had ignored evacuation orders would drown.

New Orleans needs more protection than levees alone can offer.

A reader inquires: On a flight recently, I left my cellphone on by accident,
and yet the plane did not fall out of the sky. Aren't "personal electronic
devices" supposed to be a danger to cockpit controls?

I've jumped from buses, somersaulted from airplanes, run from explosions, and been thrown through walls, but today for TBS Superstation's new reality series Worst Case Scenario, I find myself in a rather unique predicament: I'm vacuum-sealed to the 25th floor of a San Diego office building.