A team of scientists trek deep inside a volcano, amid rockslides, seething sulfur dioxide gas, and red hot lava. Their mission: to retrieve a lava sample to help forecast the volcano’s next eruption. The fate of nearly half a million people in a nearby city could be at stake. The volcano erupted in January 2002, surprising the city 11 miles away. Enormous cracks opened in the ground nearby and spewed fountains of lava, killing 100 people and leaving 120,000 homeless. Scientists' biggest fear is that next time a fracture could open under the city itself and hundreds of thousands of people could perish.

Premiere broadcast November 1, 2005 on NOVA/PBS