Netflix’s The Twister: Caught in the Storm is one of the most visceral and eye-opening documentaries that has been released yet. It follows the events of the category EF5 tornado that hit the Missouri town of Joplin in 2011 and provides first-hand accounts from some of its survivors. The footage is extremely disturbing and of better quality than seen in many other disaster documentaries. While the best natural disaster movies tend to have uplifting endings, The Twister: Caught in the Storm depicts the damage far more realistically, focusing on the lasting effects on the people who witnessed the destruction.

Many people viewing The Twister: Caught in the Storm might be more familiar with the fictional disaster movie Twister, starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, or its well-received sequel, Twisters. Twister is sometimes considered a 10/10 disaster movie, but while the movie and its sequel both show the power of a tornado, they focus more on the spectacle rather than the effect on the lives of the survivors. The Twister: Caught in the Storm contains some extremely disturbing moments, both in the immediate aftermath of the tornado and in the later footage featuring people who were there.

158 People Were Killed By The EF5 Tornado That Hit Joplin In 2011

EF5 Is The Strongest Tornado Category Ever Recorded

A major threat in a tornado is flying or falling debris, and as many of the citizens of Joplin did not have adequate shelter, most were killed by falling buildings. One hundred and fifty-eight people died as a direct result of Joplin’s EF5 tornado, with The Joplin Globe reporting that 54% of those people died where they lived, and 32% died in nonresidential areas, like shops and churches. The remaining people died outdoors, including in vehicles. Seeing the sheer destructive power of the tornado makes The Twister: Caught in the Storm documentary scarier than a horror film, and more memorable.

Tornadoes are measured on the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale in the same way that earthquakes are measured on the Richter scale. The EF scale ranges from 0 to 5, and the calculation is based on how fast the gusts of wind are moving, with EF0 gusts measuring 65-85 miles per hour and EF5 gusts measuring over 200 miles per hour. EF5 tornadoes, like the one that hit the town of Joplin, are the strongest category ever recorded and are described as “violent.” The Joplin tornado, with its 158-person death toll, is the seventh-ᴅᴇᴀᴅliest tornado on record.

The Joplin Tornado Also Resulted In 18 Deaths By Suicide

A Rare Virus Killed More People After The Tornado Hit

Many of the tornado’s survivors still lost everything in the destruction, including businesses, families, homes, and possessions with extreme sentimental value. While The Twister: Caught in the Storm documentary showed the lasting impact and PTSD suffered by many of the survivors, it missed out on a couple of important details. The Guardian reported that eighteen people died by suicide afterward, according to Stephanie Brady, the executive director of the Community Clinic of Southwest Missouri. This was a surprising detail to omit in a documentary that had been so dedicated to showing the real non-Hollywood effects of a natural disaster.

One of the horrifying real-life plot twists in the documentary was the disease that ravaged people in the aftermath of the events of The Twister: Caught in the Storm. A rare fungal illness called mucormycosis infected some of the injured people, and while doctors tried to battle it, the disease was aggressive. Mucormycosis is often described as a “flesh-eating disease,” and the sufferers had large amounts of skin and tissue removed in an attempt to contain it. While one of the men featured in the documentary emerged scarred but alive, the disease killed five more people, increasing the tornado’s death toll even more.

Source: The Joplin Globe, The Guardian