“The Aral Sea must die, just as a soldier in battle!” So said a Soviet official during the 1930s when rivers feeding that immense inland sea were diverted to cultivate the surrounding desert. But in trading fisheries for fields of cotton and rice, the government doomed the region to ruin. In this program, Mukhtar Tairov and Boris Chaikin, former members of the Ministry of Fishery, and others assess the irrigation plan, its catastrophic effects on the area and those who live within it, the failed follow-up plan to refill the sea with water diverted from Siberia, and belated efforts to stabilize the northern of the two lakes—all that remain of a once-thriving body of water. (30 minutes)