KEY POINTS:
It takes between five seconds and two minutes to lose everything. Possessions, money, friends, relatives, home, clothing, money, and the car are all gone.
Then it gets bad. Everyone has seen footage of shocked victims shuffling along and trying to survive. Those who have lost everything just joined them.
That was the subject of Aftershock, going out over two nights on TV3, Wednesday night's look at the aftermath of a massive earthquake hitting, and last night's Aftershock - would you survive?
The first, superbly written and with a sensible decision not to ramp up already intense drama with music and showy editing, would work as a stand-alone movie.
The second put a real family under simulated refugee conditions. Hunger and desperation arrived quickly.
A TV host pushed things along. They find water. He tells them its probably contaminated. They have to boil it. They forgot to grab matches. No matches, no fire, no warmth and no safe water. That quickly ends at being weak and sick. Bad trouble.
They had only a sketchy plan, and it collapsed, leaving them with almost nothing, quickly taking them to stealing, and openly planning looting, without realising people might be defending what they have, and possibly kill them.
If their moral code evaporated they weren't alone. Their tent disappeared. That exposed them to the elements.
This is a disaster's reality. Anything that can go wrong is guaranteed to oblige. Phones, transport and any form of energy - gas, power, etc - along with trust in other people will go.
This reviewer was in an emergency service during the Wellington storm that saw the Wahine semi-sink in the harbour, with more than 50 people dying.
All predictions were off. Most resources were in the wrong places. The roads to the right places were cut off. It took time to get things running, with significant physical harm, property damage and lasting psychological trauma. And, by world standards, this was only a blip on the disaster scale.
While TV3 and the Gibson Group did a superb job in showing what can happen, it's possible television may have been its own worst enemy.
Because last night's show put a real family through a disaster, it had unscripted lines and sharply moving camerawork, making it look like yet another reality show, a genre quickly being tapped out.
The host's enthusiasm for telling us over and over early on that he was going to make life miserable tended to blunt enthusiasm for staying put.
However, once the bad stuff started, the inherent drama was more than enough reason to stay in front of the screen.
While both shows were set in and near Wellington, famously exposed to earthquakes, being somewhere else is no salve.
The two biggest earthquakes in recent times have been on the South Island's west coast and the North Island's Bay of Plenty. Northland and the Coromandel are hit with savage storms. Canterbury gets flooded.
To adapt the old boxing cliche, people might run but they won't necessarily be hiding, and they might not be running either. The roads will be blocked.
