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CNN This Morning

More Than 750 Dead, 3,000 Missing After Floods Along Chinese- Nepali Border; Nashville's Grand Ole Opry Pays Tribute To Dolly Parton; Manhunt After Deadly Shooting At Switzerland Rave; Canada's New Great Lake Sign, "Lake Ontario, Now And Always"; Trump Plan For Yosemite Development Draws Fierce Backlash; NASA Launching "Discovery Machine" To Map The Invisible Universe; Rescuers Pull Six-Year-Old Girl From Rubble In Nepal; Rescuers Struggle To Reach Workers Trapped In Power Plant Tunnels; Legal Filings Show President Trump's Plan For Executive Privilege. Legal Filings Show Pres. Trump's Plans For Executive Privilege; Extreme Heat Persists As Meteorological Fall Rolls In; Six Flags Coaster Linked To Serious Brain Injuries, Death; Inside The Apocalypse Hideaway Of The Ultra-Wealthy. Aired 6-7a ET

Aired August 30, 2026 - 06:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[06:00:29]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to CNN THIS MORNING. Here's what's new. Rescuers are urgently searching for hundreds of workers missing from several hydropower plants in Nepal. And the number of those killed, the number of those missing, both rise this morning. We'll take you there live.

Country music performers came together last night to honor Dolly Parton. How she was remembered in tributes at the Grand Ole Opry.

Also this morning, NASA plans to launch a telescope they say could change the way we understand the universe, why it's been dubbed the Discovery Machine and what scientists hope to learn from it.

Plus, a CNN investigation visitors to Six Flags Magic Mountain rode the famous X2 roller coaster and ended up in the hospital.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You go in as yourself and then when you come back you're a medical emergency.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: What they say led to traumatic brain injuries that required emergency surgery. That's coming up on CNN THIS MORNING.

Sunday, August 30th, wrapping up the month. Thanks for joining us. I'm Victor Blackwell.

We are tracking the latest updates after that tragic, catastrophic flooding in the landslides along the Chinese-Nepali border. Overnight, the death toll rose to more than 750. More than 3,000 people are still missing, including almost 1,000 workers across a slew of hydropower projects in Nepal and one of the tunnels rescuers are pumping air in and dropping food they've not yet connected with anyone inside, though.

Also among the missing foreign nationals from across the world, families are anxiously awaiting some word on their loved ones. A woman in Virginia whose husband was there for a hiking trip says that she's begging for details.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNEHA SUDHIR, WIFE OF MAN MISSING IN NEPAL: It's been beyond 80 hours that I haven't heard -- the families have not heard anything from them. And we do not have any help where anybody else is also trying to tell us what is happening. So, I don't know. That's -- that's why we are trying to reach out to everyone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Rescue crews are running into changing landscapes. Another landslide yesterday, I should say, created a new barrier lake near the disaster zone. The rescuers themselves had to be evacuated from that area, but aid is on the way.

There's a shipment from China just arrived in Kathmandu. And the U.S. is sending more than $3.5 million of aid.

CNN's Will Ripley is in Kathmandu right now. You have some people there with you. Will, what are you seeing and hearing?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Victor. Yes. I want you and your viewers to meet Valentina and Stefano from Italy. And this is actually Valentina's first time speaking publicly about what you both experienced. They were at the border checkpoint between China and Nepal. We've all seen the video now of the giant wave that consumed that building that washed the rows of tour buses away.

Valentina and Stefano were on one of those buses and I have goosebumps just because we were talking in the lobby and I asked how you're doing and you said, I'm alive.

VALENTINA PICCININI, ITALIAN FLOOD SURVIVOR: That's the only thing that really matter right now, honestly. It was a massive -- it is -- for me it's such a chaos (ph). I followed the wrong way.

RIPLEY: You guys went in different directions, right? One turn right, one turn left.

PICCININI: Everybody turned right. Only me turned left. So, that's the point. I don't know why, but my mind -- I can -- I don't know, I cannot explain.

I cannot see anything, anybody around me. I cannot hear my name because they are only -- everybody's saying my name but I was not able to hear them. So, I just following a hand, a military hand. But now I understand his hand, who is really -- he was from -- a guy from here, from (INAUDIBLE) from here. And he showed me the only way I could follow to survive, the only way. Because if I'm going straight on for sure I would not be here.

RIPLEY: So this big -- this big -- did you know it was water that was coming when you saw the big black?

STEFANO LUTUMOLO, ITALIAN FLOOD SURVIVOR: No, we couldn't know. Like, have you seen the immigration point? It was the beginning. And we just saw something crashing into buses 30 meter in front of us.

[06:05:00]

It was very big. Like, it was crazy. The sound, it was unbelievable. And we don't know how we didn't go into. They were just 30 to 40 meters of space then let us save for a minute. A minute in that kind of situation is a very long time.

RIPLEY: So how long were you guys split up?

LUTUMOLO: Half an hour.

RIPLEY: Thirty minutes. That must have been -- it must have been the longest 30 minutes of your of your life.

PICCININI: Is that for me or for you?

RIPLEY: We'll start with you.

PICCININI: I was -- I felt that every one of them, they were alive. I don't know why, but my heart can tell me, OK, don't worry. They are all alive.

So first start -- think about you. Start to run. Think of how to survive. And then somebody somehow universe, God, Shiva, whoever will find a way to bring you back to them or bring them to you.

RIPLEY: And you said the healing power of the Nepali people has kept you here and helped you to heal from this experience.

LUTUMOLO: We were together. There were no difference between Italians, Nepali. We were just human beings, survivor. And we just try also the night time celebrating life.

And they lost everything. They lost everything, people, houses. They have nothing -- they had nothing left. But in the night time, when we were in a small house and we were like in two little rooms, 50, 60 people, we couldn't sleep. But at some point they were smiling. They had made a big noise all night, all night.

RIPLEY: It's incredible that you guys are here. They are, obviously, the lucky ones. There are still thousands of people who are missing.

We did get a piece of good news, Victor, the young girl that we saw on video who was rescued from a collapsed building, she's been airlifted by helicopter here to Kathmandu. She's being treated here. And we've also learned that her parents are also alive. So, that family also is going to be reunited.

We're holding on to these positive stories out here, Victor, because there's just so much horrible news coming out of this disaster. But you guys are a bright spot. We appreciate you being here and sharing your story. Thank you very much. Victor.

BLACKWELL: Yes. Will Ripley reporting there. There are families around the world waiting for their own bright spot after this. Will, thank you so much.

Here's how you can help. If you're watching this and you want to do something, scan the QR code. We're going to put it right there on the bottom of your screen. You can also text the word flood to 707070 to donate.

All right. Nashville's Grand Ole Opry paid tribute to one of its most beloved stars last night, the late Dolly Parton.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARLY PEARCE, SINGER: Dolly, we love you.

(singing): Those memories of you still haunt me every night when I lay down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Parton's connection to the Opry goes back more than 60 years. She was just 13 years old when she took the stage for the first time. She was invited by Johnny Cash, earned three encores that night, and launched a career that would make her a country music icon.

Parton recorded nearly 50 albums, won 11 Grammys, sold more than 100 million records and founded her own entertainment company and opened the theme park that bears her name, Dollywood. She died Tuesday after what her publicist described as a brief battle with cancer.

This morning, police in Switzerland are searching for a gunman after a deadly shooting at a rave. The shooting happened right after the event ended early this morning at a horse racing track in the city north of Zurich. One person was killed. Five others were wounded.

Officials are still trying to figure out why this happened, what exactly led up to the shooting. So, the investigation there continues.

Canada is giving President Trump another reminder. It's still Lake Ontario. Ontario Premier Doug Ford was wearing a Team Ontario jersey when he unveiled this new Lake Ontario sign yesterday. It says, Lake Ontario, now and always.

You'll remember President Trump signed an executive order Thursday for U.S. agencies to call it Lake America after trade talks with Canada fell apart. Trump's order only applies to how the U.S. refers to the lake, which is jointly controlled by the two countries.

The Trump administration is facing growing backlash over a proposal that could open parts of Yosemite National Park to private development. The National Park Service is considering a land exchange between the park and a Nevada based developer. The plan would allow the developer to build a road through the park to reach an 83-acre property where it wants to build homes and retail space.

Park employees, conservation groups and some California officials are criticizing the idea. They warn it could set a precedent for private development inside one of America's most iconic national parks.

[06:10:06]

The Interior Department says that no final decision has been made. Next on CNN THIS MORNING, countdown to liftoff. Next hour, NASA's newest telescope will launch into space. We'll learn more about that mission.

Plus, is America's most extreme ride too extreme? A CNN investigation uncovers a roller coaster linked to brain injuries and even deaths. And later, doomsday planning for the rich and famous.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:15:29]

BLACKWELL: This morning, NASA will be launching a new space telescope that they say will rewrite the atlas of our universe. The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is scheduled for liftoff in a little more than an hour from now, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, dubbed Discovery Machine.

This giant telescope will survey the cosmos 1,000 times faster than Hubble. Its mission is to chase answers into dark matter, dark energy, discover new worlds.

Joining me now is astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. Jonathan, good morning to you. I have been watching your social media where you've been giving out specifics and information, so I know you are excited. Let's just start with these remarkable capabilities. And as it compares to Hubble and the James Webb Telescope, what will Roman offer us that we don't have right now?

JONATHAN MCDOWELL, ASTROPHYSICIST, DURHAM UNIVERSITY: Right. So Hubble and Webb are fabulous machines, but they see a tiny, tiny bit of sky in exquisite detail. Roman can see a huge part of the sky at once, and so it can suck in galaxies to do mapping of the universe. And that's the thing that Hubble and Webb just can't do. It would take them decades to do what Roman can do very quickly.

And so Roman is going to map out the three dimensional structure of the galaxies in the universe and look for faint ripples in the patterns of galaxies that are going to give us clues to what happened during the big bang.

BLACKWELL: And so this doesn't make Webb and Hubble obsolete. Actually, they're going to work together to give us a better picture. MCDOWELL: That's exactly right. Astronomy really have two kinds of mission, right? We have the survey missions that look for things that might be interesting that we didn't know about before. And the follow up missions like Hubble and Webb, that tend to look at something we already know exists and want to look at it better. And so, they complement each other beautifully.

And, yes. So, Hubble and Webb, don't worry, they're going to be busy for years to come. But Roman will have a whole new view of the universe that gets at things that the other telescopes just can't.

BLACKWELL: And so, it's going to spend a month surveying the Milky Way. And so what are the questions that it's going to answer about our galaxy? Things that we've been wanting to get answers about. But because of this ability to give us like a three dimensional map of our neighborhood that we now have maybe a chance of getting an answer to.

MCDOWELL: Right. Well, so for our galaxy, what it will give us is what are called stellar streams. So, one of the huge discoveries that Europe's Gaia mission made a number of years ago is that the outskirts of our galaxy there are streams of stars that are sort of the skeletons of other galaxies that our Milky Way has eaten and torn apart. And so, we're finding the history of our galaxy and how it's interacted with other galaxies.

But the real focus of Roman is in two other directions, which are the bigger beyond our galaxy. Looking at the universe as a whole and seeing the patterns in the universe as a whole, but also its testing out a new instrument called a coronagraph, which will let us actually take pictures of planets around other stars within our galaxy. So, it's the near, the medium scale of our galaxy, and very much the really distant looking all the way out toward back toward the big bang.

BLACKWELL: What's also remarkable about this is that this information is going to be public. So, people who are enthusiasts can get access to the data, 1.4 terabytes of raw science downlinked every day, the highest data volume of any NASA astrophysicist mission so far. Talk about that. Just having the option to look over it for those who know exactly what they're looking at.

MCDOWELL: Right. Exactly. That the open science aspect of this is really great. And, you know, the thing is, right, there's going to be so much data coming in that the team working on Roman, you know, there's going to be plenty for them to do. They won't have time to look at it all. So, we actually need all hands on deck throughout the world to sort of look at this data and analyze it and make discoveries from it.

[06:20:08]

And this is a tradition that NASA pioneered all the way back in the 70s, the idea of getting community access to data. It used to be a bit limited. Now, for the first time on Roman, all the data is going to be immediately public. And that's a step forward in democratizing the investment that we've made to get us better science in the end. BLACKWELL: All right. I see you got your launch day t-shirt on. We are all ready. We're going to watch this go up in a little more than an hour from now. Jonathan McDowell, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

All right. Next, we're going to take you back to Nepal. And some of the miracles we're seeing among the devastation, rescuers pull a girl from the mud who had been trapped for days. We'll take you live to Nepal next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:25:24]

BLACKWELL: There is still hope among all the death and destruction in Nepal. The catastrophic flooding and landslides have killed at least 750 people. There are still more than 3,000 people missing.

But I want you to pay attention to this moment that a girl was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building on Saturday. Watch.

(VIDEO PLAYING)

The girl told rescuers that her name is Manisha and that she's six years old right. Right now she's getting some special medical treatment in Kathmandu. She spent three days trapped under that debris. Rescuers don't know where her parents are or whether they survived that flooding.

More than 100 workers are believed to be trapped in tunnels beneath the hydropower plant in Nepal. Rescue teams have struggled to reach them for more than a day now. They're digging through dense mud, look at this, and the debris. And then they're drilling through thick walls or blasting them open with explosives. The Nepali army was able to insert a pipeline into one tunnel to get air to possible survivors.

Hanako Montgomery is joining us now from Nepal with the latest. There's so many efforts there. This global effort to get to people and get them to support services necessary. What are you learning?

HANAKO MONTGOMERY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Victor. Earlier on Sunday, we actually spoke to over a dozen workers who were actually rescued just moments before from those hydroelectric plants. They were clearly still shell shocked, still trying to process what exactly they had witnessed and what they had experienced.

They told us that actually they had lost, I mean, everything in those floods. They lost their phones, their money, even the clothes that they had on their backs.

Now, we also spoke to the man who helped rescue them, Amar Bista. He's actually a mountaineer and he just volunteered to help find those survivors in those worst affected areas higher up in the Himalayas. Listen to this survivor, and also Amar, who detailed just how harrowing these experiences have been for him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAM CHANDRA, RESCUED FROM TUNNEL (through translator): I was hanging on a rung from the ceiling. The water was rising in the tunnel and it was difficult to move my legs. If I had let go from that rung, I would have fallen into the mix of water and concrete.

AMAR BISTA, RESCUER: Like hundreds of people are there and no food. Everybody got diarrhea (ph). You know, like nothing. So, you know I didn't have a word for that because they all are from my area, you know, like, I don't know. Nothing to tell because a lot of people here, they don't know the reality. When I entered there, like the reality is different. We cannot tell, you know, the reality is way different.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MONTGOMERY: And, Victor, Amar was really emphasizing how this disaster has affected pretty much everyone higher up in the Nepali mountains. People have lost cousins, wives, husbands, their children, even. And Amar himself has lost some family members. And again, it just goes to show the scale of this devastation, how it's affected thousands and thousands of families, Victor.

BLACKWELL: Hanako Montgomery reporting there, thank you so much for bringing us the stories of the people trying to find those workers and the families. More than 3,000 people missing. We'll check back later this morning.

Let's take a live look at the White House now this morning. President Trump already testing the boundaries of executive privileges ahead of the November midterms. New legal filings about his plans to protect himself are coming as congressional Democrats are already opening probes into his business dealings. CNN's Julia Benbrook explains what's in these filings.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIA BENBROOK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We are just weeks away from the midterms, and President Donald Trump is already laying down legal markers for how he will fight any attempt by lawmakers to investigate him.

As of right now, Republicans have control of the White House, the Senate and the House. But that could change in a matter of months. Democrats aim to take control of Congress, and with that would come subpoena power.

[06:30:00]

Now, in a Department of Justice memo and in court filings, the Trump administration has argued that the president can keep secret not only his conversations with advisers within the White House, but also with those outside of the administration. The White House has also said in court that even disclosing the identities of those involved with significant policy efforts could infringe on presidential confidentiality. In a statement, a White House spokesperson said this, quote, throughout history, Presidents have relied on advisers outside of the executive branch. Restricting executive privilege to only communications with executive branch officials would make it impossible for the President to rely on important outside sources. This comes as Trump during his second term, as he's looked to set his agenda, has notably relied on business moguls, attorneys outside of the government, and on close friends.

Now, in a recent letter to the White House, Democrats have asked for a list of those outside advisers that the White House believes this presidential privilege applies to. That letter said in part, that it is not an unlimited shield designed to insulate private citizens, informal advisers, and non-governmental actors from congressional oversight and public accountability. Congressional Democrats are already probing the administration's relationships with and ties to certain groups.

Now, those investigations would become more serious if Democrats do take some control back on Capitol Hill.

Victor.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Julia Benbrook from the White House. Thank you.

Tuesday marks the start of meteorological fall. Still really feels like summertime across much of the country, though.

CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar is with me now.

So OK, we were talking earlier. I thought it was late September, but we're talking about two different things.

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: That's astronomical fall.

BLACKWELL: OK.

CHINCHAR: That's, you know, again, like the equinoxes, the solstices --

BLACKWELL: Yes, yes.

CHINCHAR: -- you start talking about that kind of stuff. No. Meteorological fall is just the three months that we associate with autumn or fall. So September, October, November. So that would start September 1st.

BLACKWELL: OK.

CHINCHAR: Yes. But again, it doesn't matter. It's going to feel like summer. It's just going to feel hot for most of these areas.

You take a look at some of these temperatures again. Look, this looks more like July and August should look and it's not just staying there for today. A lot of these temperatures are only going to go up as we go through the rest of the week. Take Atlanta, Raleigh, D.C., all in the upper 80s. But then you fast forward into Monday and you fast forward into Tuesday and all those numbers keep ticking on up.

Even areas of the Mid-Atlantic and into the Northeast will also start to see their temperatures rise at the end of the week. Again, now you're talking well into September, the first week of September.

The concern here is what those impacts have. So the purple color is the most dangerous, but even the red, you'll start to see a lot more of that expanding eastward as we go into again Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. So again, it's really going to be a concern of this is just not what we're used to as we head into fall. People's bodies are naturally starting to cool back down.

Here's a look at Oklahoma City. Every single one of the next seven days, those temperatures expected to be 10 degrees above average. Kansas City could be looking at nearly 15 degrees above average by the time we get to the middle part of the week.

That heat is also going to fuel some showers and thunderstorms, some of which could be severe, especially Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. For today, the main focus of a lot of those storms is really going to be around the Great Lakes region, and that will spread into areas of the Northeast. So that's going to be a concern there.

But again, we talked about severe thunderstorms. This is not until Tuesday of this week, but we could see some tornadoes.

BLACKWELL: Oh, OK, Allison. Thank you.

Next, trouble for thrill seekers after stepping off a Six Flags roller coaster.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

CAMILLE MARQUEZ, DAUGHTER OF INJURED RIDER: She looked lifeless, not a thought behind her eyes, nothing. I was talking to her, Mom, Mommy, please wake up.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BLACKWELL: The CNN investigation raising concerns about one of America's famous extreme roller coasters.

And if you're heading out, remember, you can stream our show from anywhere in the U.S. right from the CNN app. You can also go to CNN.com/Watch.

Live look now of the shores of Surf City, North Carolina. Good morning.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:38:55] BLACKWELL: There's some new questions this morning about one of the most popular roller coasters in the world. A CNN investigation found a long history of serious injury claims tied to the X2 ride at California's Six Flags Magic Mountain, including reports of brain injuries, comas, deaths.

CNN's Kyung Lah reports on the riders behind those cases and the questions they're now asking.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Six Flags calls this their cutting-edge, break-all-the-rules roller coaster. But these two riders never imagined, minutes after getting off the ride this summer, they would end up in the same hospital the very same week with similar brain hemorrhages. And they're not the only riders who say they've been hurt.

A CNN investigation finds more than a dozen people who rode the X2 roller coaster at California's Six Flags Magic Mountain suffered serious injuries and hospitalizations over nearly two decades, including a 22-year-old who died. And the latest cases happened just weeks ago.

[06:40:04]

PAMELA GUILLEN, INJURED ROLLER COASTER RIDER: It was seconds. You go in as yourself, and then when you come back, you're a medical emergency.

LAH: This was from a roller coaster.

LAH (voice-over): Pam Guillen was at Magic Mountain with her daughter Camille celebrating her 16th birthday on July 5th. They boarded X2.

MARQUEZ: We got off the cart and we saw my mom. She looked lifeless. Not a thought behind her eyes. Nothing.

I was talking to her. Mom. Mommy, please wake up. Mommy. Mommy. It's OK. We're here. She had a brain bleed. Mom had really bad brain bleed.

LAH (voice-over): An ambulance rushed Pam from Six Flags to the hospital where surgeons discovered what's called an acute subdural hematoma with brain compression. Surgeons cut her skull open to relieve the pressure on her brain.

MARQUEZ: I was shocked. I was just -- this is not OK. It wasn't OK for me to see my mom like that. It's like, it's my mom.

LAH: How large is the incision?

GUILLEN: It's pretty long.

LAH (voice-over): While Pam Giullen fought in this hospital bed, X2 kept running. Twenty-five-year-old Naomi Greer-Wilkinson had no idea what had just happened. Six days after Pam's injury, Naomi got on the X2 roller coaster. She collapsed after she got off the ride.

LAH: What had happened to her brain?

JOSHUA WILKINSON, FATHER OF HOSPITALIZED RIDER: The jarring had damaged part of her brain and it had begun to bleed.

LAH (voice-over): She was rushed to the same hospital. Joshua Wilkinson and Artemis Greer are Naomi's parents.

ARTEMIS GREER, MOTHER OF HOSPITALIZED RIDER: I do remember one of the surgeons storming through the ER and yelling. How many is it this month? They've got to shut that ride down. He was furious.

LAH (voice-over): This is Naomi and just like Pam Guillen, she had emergency brain surgery.

GREER: They sat us down and said she is at the end of life and I just -- I didn't have any thoughts. I have was totally blank. We leaned over her and said Naomi and she fluttered her eyelid.

WILKINSON: We looked at each other like she's in there, like she's there.

LAH (voice-over): Naomi a healthy, vibrant young woman who loves cats and the arts remains in the hospital with an uncertain future.

GREER: Naomi should have never --

WILKINSON: No.

GREER: -- ever in a million years even had the option to get on that ride. It's absolutely insane.

LAH: Why do they leave it open?

WILKINSON: Revenue. There's no other explanation.

LAH (voice-over): Six Flags says what makes X2 different from other roller coasters is this. The seats spin 360 degrees forwards and backwards independently around the track. Riders plummet 200 feet at speeds up to 76 miles per hour with two so-called Raven Turns or half loops that turn into sheer drops.

Doctors who treated both Naomi and Pam say the severe brain injuries were the result of a traumatic rapid acceleration deceleration event experienced while on the X2 ride. Court cases alleging serious brain injuries from X2 date back years.

Christopher Hawley died after riding the X2 four years ago. A coroner's report found he died of blunt head trauma during a park ride accident. Six Flags didn't answer CNN's questions, but the company's court filings have stated the ride went through daily inspections and a normal rider using the ride as instructed would not have traumatic brain injury.

CHRISTOPHER BULONE, ATTORNEY FOR RIDERS' FAMILY: It's greed that keeps this thing going.

LAH (voice-over): Lawyer Christopher Bulone represents both Naomi and Pam's families.

BULONE: No ride should ever be dangerous enough for anyone that they're coming off of it with severe intracranial bleeding.

LAH (voice-over): More than three million people visit Magic Mountain each year, but on this day, we find X2 is temporarily closed. Six Flags tells us it hasn't run since shortly after Naomi Greer Wilkinson was hurt.

LAH: You're looking at a very long road.

GREER: It could be six months. It could be two years. It could be five years. I don't know. This is the hardest thing a human being could go through.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).

GUILLEN: I remember everyone so excited that I could walk. I have headaches every day, fatigue after doing simple things. I won't be a hundred percent because it's brain damage. Sometimes I just like feel really down like because I'm not me anymore.

[06:45:10]

LAH: Multiple lawsuits we've reviewed have settled before going to trial and that includes the wrongful death suit of 22-year-old Christopher Hawley. California's occupational safety and health division oversees amusement park ride operations but did not respond to our questions about (INAUDIBLE) history and did not say how it was allowed to reopen.

Kyung Lah, CNN Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: Here's what to watch this week.

Jury deliberations will continue tomorrow in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy. She's pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder in the killings of her children. The jury's considering first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and manslaughter charges.

[06:50:11]

Lawyers from both sides agree that she was mentally ill at the time of the killing. Jurors are weighing whether she should be held criminally responsible.

Closing arguments begin tomorrow in the murder trial of Duane Davis. He's the man accused of orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur. Prosecutors relied heavily on Davis's own words. They played recordings of interviews to law enforcement and journalists. The defense rested after they called just three witnesses. Davis did not testify in his own defense.

Doomsday prepping is on the rise. An estimated 20 million Americans now identify themselves as preppers. And that number has doubled since 2017. And that boost in popularity spans all categories, regardless of gender, race, education level, geography. But how different does doomsday prepping look for the ultra-rich?

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh visited a missile silo turned luxury doomsday bunker for millionaires and billionaires in this week's episode of "THE WHOLE STORY."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: What was the cost to buy the abandoned silo itself?

LARRY HALL, OWNER & DEVELOPER, SURVIVAL CONDO: Three hundred thousand.

WALSH: But that's a bargain, right?

HALL: Oh, yes. Certain, yes.

WALSH: There is no denying the engineering feat owner and creator Larry Hall has achieved here over years of detailed planning.

HALL: OK, this blue box you see is a volcanic ash scrubber. We have enough diesel fuel to run these for two and a half years. It just takes care of itself. The computers that control everything.

This is what we call the pet park. People get the feeling that, you know, they're outdoors.

I have a lot of people, ultra-high net worth individuals that come in here. And a lot of them, when they first contact me, want to build their own private bunker. And I say, well, that's good. But why don't you come and look at what I've built? And then we found out that they value having other adults to bounce ideas off of, as opposed to having just their family locked in a smaller facility that they were exclusive to.

So now you're in a bunker. Now you've got other adults. Say, what do you think? Like, what's going on?

WALSH: So, you and billionaires need other people?

HALL: Yes, they did. And they really appreciated that.

WALSH: So long as it's other billionaires.

HALL: No --

WALSH: (INAUDIBLE) HALL: -- we only have a couple of people I would put in the billionaire category. Other people are just successful self-made professionals. And these people are all --

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Wow. Mountain Mount escapes on the walls, the murals and dog parks. Nick Paton Walsh joins us live this morning.

So this former missile silo turned luxury doomsday bunker, a feat of engineering, obviously. How much does a residence in that type of survival bunker cost?

WALSH (on-camera): I mean, up to $5 million ultimately, then you have to add on to that the tens of thousands of annual upkeep fees to maintain that place.

Look, this itself is an extraordinary feat. Different compartments with different ventilation shafts that can be cut off and isolated. Even a small jail cell. If there's drink too much and, you know, pick a fight with each other where one of them could potentially call off an armory, a sniper tower, a shooting range of an infirmary. I mean, you name it. It's all there.

But the question you have to ask is what happens if all the power goes down and the answer is probably not good, although Larry Hall, who you saw there, vehemently suggested it's simply impossible for there to be a total power failure or something like that.

So an extraordinary insight as to what you're able to get, if indeed you're willing to spend all the way through to your own hydroponic lettuce farm, indeed. But it's a symbol of the higher end of spend. I think many hear about billionaires with their luxury bunkers. That number you mentioned of more than 20 million Americans now identify themselves as preppers.

Preparedness expert Dr. Chris Ellis kind of came up with that, suggesting the massive growth that we've seen in this mainstreamification of something, which I think it's fair to say many of us for decades felt was about lone guys, perhaps with guns in the woods. Now, this is much more of a mainstream phenomenon. And is that a political crisis, the climate crisis? Many things, I'm sure, but it's real.

Victor.

BLACKWELL: Yes, no longer fringe because we're seeing so many people who now call themselves preppers. Now, for people who don't have the $5 million to get into the door, what are their options?

WALSH (on-camera): Yes, I mean, we spend months looking at the whole gamut here. We did a urban survival course, taught how to bust out a zip ties, pick locks, get water from public facilities, all sorts of stuff for the urban end. Then you saw there the top end. You can also go to a slightly more rough around the edges ranch in Colorado. But really the key things that thing that struck me and was the toughest was the segment we spent. I think three or four nights plurred into one. I was so hungry by the end of a survival course on a Mexican beach. Now, I was only allowed to eat what I caught or found, and that just reminded you how hard basic things like making fire, fishing, making a shelter, you think, oh yes, yes, I could know how to do that. I didn't.

[06:55:22]

And it was exhausting, bitten from head to toe, and a real sign of how deeply prepared you need to be to survive in the wilderness. Such a huge swathe here of potential options and concerns, Victor.

BLACKWELL: And so, what did you catch or find?

WALSH (on-camera): What did I catch? I caught about three or four fish, but I have to tell you, I had a seriously professional survival expert, Amos Rodriguez, who's like survived on just rough caught salmon in the middle of the freezing wilderness for a reality TV show.

I mean, he's an extraordinary guy and basically kept me alive, but did warn me that after your fifth coconut, which obviously you can find a lot of, you begin to, shall we say, politely deteriorate down below. And while it may happen anyway in that kind of heat, the first time we caught a fish and we lit the fire and I ate it, I mean, that was amazing. And that was about 28 hours after I was in there.

So I felt quite pathetic, frankly, with that single metric judgment. But look, it's just a sign, I think, all this experience we had of how far away we are from those basic skills that maybe our great grandparents would have known the bat of a lid had a light of fire, a whole world of convenience away for us here. Most of the fish I've ever got has come on a polystyrene tray, and this is something I had to pull out of the ocean, gut and make a fire to cook.

Victor.

Nick Paton Walsh, we will certainly be watching. Thanks so much for joining us this morning.

For more on Nick's reporting on to Doomsday Prep, be sure to tune in to a new hour of "THE WHOLE STORY WITH ANDERSON COOPER, THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT." It airs tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific on CNN and tomorrow on the CNN app.

We'll be right back.