Series B · The Day It Happened · Ep. 03 · 16:15 · 18 Nov 2026
Why Did Mexico City Shake So Hard in 1985? Blame the Lake
Thumbnail · AI reconstruction
Premieres WED 18 NOV · 10:00 CDMX
The video link appears here once the premiere is scheduled.
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Chapters
- 0:00 Why Mexico City shook so hard in 1985
- 0:59 Mexico City was built on a lake
- 2:35 The Michoacán gap seismologists were watching
- 4:10 How the waves reached Mexico City
- 5:27 Two seconds: the record from the lakebed
- 7:25 Why one building fell and the next one stood
- 9:25 19 September 1985, in the city
- 11:13 Why the shaking lasted three minutes
- 12:49 What changed after 1985
- 14:29 Is the lake still there?
Sources & credits
Sources
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Footage and images
USGS / M. Celebi; USGS; E.V. Leyendecker, USGS / NOAA-NCEI; U.S. National Archives / Department of Defense; NASA Johnson Space Center; ShakeMap: USGS (public domain). Museo Archivo de la Fotografía and «Panorámicas CDMX»: Gobierno de la Ciudad de México (CC0). Roberto Esquivel Sánchez, Thomas Ledl, Omar David Sandoval Sida and Parhikutin Salvador Vázquez Hernández (CC BY-SA 4.0). Maps of Tenochtitlan: Newberry Library; Uppsala University Library / World Digital Library. NISAR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/David Bekaert. Satellite image: NASA Worldview, HLS S30 (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data). Data: CESMD, USGS, NBS 1987, Natural Earth.
Some scenes are AI reconstructions and are labelled on screen. Diagrams are redrawn and simplified. Original music.
Thumbnail: AI reconstruction. Made for Tremor & Tide (Higgsfield).
AI & archive disclosure
This episode mixes real archive (always labeled) with AI reconstructions and simulations (always labeled). No AI image is presented as a photograph of a real event.
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