Spanish Flu

The government rates the global outbreak of a deadly flu virus as a major threat to the UK. It could happen at any time. To predict the impact of the next pandemic more accurately than ever before, new data is needed - and lots of it. Dr Hannah Fry is on the case. She sets out to recruit the nation to download the BBC Pandemic app in a ground-breaking experiment to help plan for when the next deadly virus comes to the UK. How quickly will it spread? How many could it kill? What can we do about it? The BBC Four Pandemic experiment will find out.

When a new influenza virus emerges that is able to be transmitted between humans, it spreads globally as a pandemic, often with high mortality. Enormous social disruption and substantial economic cost can result. The 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic was undoubtedly the most devastating influenza pandemic to date, and it has been Webster's life's work to figure out how and why. In so doing he has made a remarkable contribution to our understanding of the evolution of influenza viruses and how to control them. A century on, Flu Hunter is a gripping account of the tenacious scientific detective work involved in revealing the secrets of this killer virus. Could a global influenza pandemic occur again? Webster's warns: "… it is not only possible, it is just a matter of when."

In Corona Crisis, professor Mark Hitchcock shares how the current coronavirus outbreak is related to the vivid, end-time biblical prophecies about plagues, pestilences, and pandemics.

In the dying months of World War I, Spanish flu suddenly overwhelmed the world, killing between 50 and 100 million people.