00:00This tourist destination has the highest entrance price of all.
00:04It could cost you your life.
00:06Those who spend over 16 hours in the Death Zone,
00:09and it is the official name of the most dangerous area on Mount Everest,
00:14risk never returning home.
00:17Those who endure 48 hours there will almost certainly never see their families again.
00:22The altitude in this region is over 26,000 feet,
00:26and winds can reach speeds of 62 miles per hour,
00:30sweeping everything, including you, off their path.
00:34Only one person has stood tall in this hostile environment for 90 hours.
00:38There was a bit of cheating involved, as it was with supplemental oxygen.
00:42Yep, the precious O2 gas is extremely scarce there.
00:46Without this vital resource, the maximum time someone can survive is about 21 hours.
00:52A record sent by this guy.
00:54Yeah, he was tough.
00:55He reached the Everest peak 10 times.
00:58His fastest ascent took slightly under 17 hours.
01:02But Pemba broke his record, ascending Everest in 8 hours and 10 minutes.
01:07However, these accomplishments are not feats for the average Joe.
01:11These record holders have, in a sense, won a genetic lottery.
01:16Both are Nepalese Sherpas, hence the names.
01:19Sherpas are native to the mountains,
01:20and have evolved a natural resistance to high-altitude living.
01:25Despite the undeniable dangers, people seem unwilling to stop visiting the death zone.
01:32Since the establishment of climbing records, over 300 people have lost their lives there.
01:37Last year alone, 18 people perished.
01:40And as of July 2024, the death zone has claimed 8 lives.
01:45Now, as creepy as it may sound, the death zone on Mount Everest resembles a graveyard.
01:51The challenge lies in that of recovering a body from this perilous location costs families a fortune.
01:58Oxygen alone, which is necessary to descend a body, can amount to as much as 20 grand.
02:04This may seem far-fetched, but the operation requires 12 people,
02:09each needing an oxygen cylinder that costs around $400.
02:14So, do the math.
02:16And it's not just the oxygen.
02:18Imagine the other expenses summed up.
02:21Still, it's not only the money.
02:23The retrieval process is fraught with danger for those tasked with it,
02:27causing many private companies to decline such requests.
02:31Recently, authorities managed to recover 4 bodies and a skeleton from the treacherous area.
02:37While not all of them have been identified,
02:40one body belonged to an individual who passed away in 2017,
02:45remaining in the death zone for 7 years.
02:48El Caminito del Rey in Spain, Maluga,
02:52may look like child's play compared to Everest's death zone,
02:55as, reportedly, it has only claimed 6 lives.
02:59But still, this is eerie.
03:02Imagine you're standing on an old piece of wood,
03:05some people dare to call a walkway,
03:07that seems to be about to fall apart.
03:10You can't really move freely on it, as it's just 3 feet wide.
03:14And if you look down, you'll see nothing but a river 330 feet below you.
03:20You may want to sarcastically call it an engineering wonder,
03:24but in reality, it really is.
03:27Look, it seems like this walkway was glued to the side of a cliff.
03:32The tools and technique used to build it were quite rudimentary and unsafe,
03:37which is not surprising.
03:38The pathway is over a century old.
03:41If you're wondering how it was built without any machinery we have today,
03:46let me explain.
03:47The poor builders just hung off the side of the mountain using ropes.
03:51It's obvious no one wanted to work on that project,
03:55so prisoners, who had received the death penalty, were invited to participate.
04:00In exchange, they could get a reduction in their sentences,
04:04if they made it out alive, of course.
04:07Now, originally, the walkway was built to connect workers
04:10at the hydroelectric power plants by some local waterfalls.
04:14You know, just a little bridge to help them cross while transporting materials
04:18and keeping things in check at the channel.
04:21The construction kicked off in 1901 and wrapped up by 1905.
04:26The walkway was famously crossed by King Alfonso XIII in 1921
04:32during the inauguration of a dam.
04:35This pathway has seen some rough times by the early 2000s
04:39and was partly closed for over a decade.
04:42Four years of renovations and 9 million euros later,
04:46it burst back onto the scene in 2015.
04:50It has gained a reputation as the world's most dangerous walkway
04:53due to a couple of tragic accidents in the late 90s.
04:57Now, you can stroll along a 1.8-mile path
05:01that hugs the edge of the gorge.
05:04Hey, remember I told you this Caminito only took 6 lives?
05:08Forget it.
05:09Nobody knows how much it really was.
05:12Alright, the next cliff destination may seem totally safe at first glance,
05:17but it's all about a very particular activity performed there.
05:22It's definitely not as high up in the sky as El Caminito del Rey,
05:27only soaring 89 feet.
05:29But this cliff is meant to jump from, and people actually do that.
05:33Now, if you were to take a watermelon
05:36and give it a dramatic drop into the water below,
05:38you'd end up with a spectacular crimson splash of watermelon juice,
05:44looking like a crime scene.
05:45It would plummet at a wild speed of 53 miles per hour,
05:49and it begs the question,
05:51can a human handle that kind of dive?
05:54Spoiler alert, absolutely.
05:56Welcome to Red Bull cliff diving,
05:59where brave athletes take the plunge from heights equivalent to an 8-story building.
06:03But before you think about trying this for kicks,
06:07let me tell you, it takes serious fitness to pull it off.
06:11The better your shape is, the better your dive.
06:13But it's also all about your peepers.
06:16Your eyes become your ultimate navigation system
06:19as you make that fearless leap.
06:21Fearless?
06:22The impact is no joke.
06:25If you dare to jump, you'll feel around 5G force on impact.
06:30For comparison, when you're on a commercial flight,
06:33even during the craziest turbulence,
06:35you rarely feel more than 1.3 G force.
06:39But when you dive from a cliff,
06:41your heart's working overtime,
06:43and that 5G force can leave you lightheaded in no time.
06:46Your brain starts to feel a bit oxygen-starved,
06:49and before you know it, you could black out in a few seconds.
06:53All that blood suddenly rushes to your head,
06:56your face puffs up,
06:57and your lower eyelids practically cover your eyes.
07:00This phenomenon is called red-out,
07:03because all you see is a bright glow
07:05through those squeezed-shut eyelids.
07:07Yeah, that sounds like fun.
07:09Now, unlike all those cliffs,
07:11this place is pretty accessible,
07:13and is popular among freedivers
07:15for having little current,
07:17which is good when you go in-depth.
07:19However, despite all those seemingly nice aspects
07:23of the Blue Hole in Egypt,
07:25this place has taken around 200 lives in recent years.
07:29Now, to be honest,
07:30technically, the Blue Hole is a complete average dive spot.
07:34There's nothing extraordinary that would make it more dangerous
07:37than any other spot in the Red Sea.
07:40However, diving through the arch at the Blue Hole is no joke.
07:45It's a tricky, submerged tunnel that has seen its fair share of accidents.
07:50While there's no official count of how many have lost their lives here,
07:54one source estimates that around 130 divers perished there between 1997 and 2012.
08:01It's more than 8 each year.
08:04Some say the number could be as high as 200,
08:07including a few snorkel-related accidents not tied to the arch dot.
08:11To help keep things safe,
08:13Egyptian authorities placed a police officer at the Blue Hole
08:17who makes sure divers are with certified guides who know the ropes.
08:23Now, the arch itself sits 170 feet down,
08:27which means you really need to know what you're doing
08:30and have the right gear,
08:32since recreational divers usually max out at around 100 feet or so.
08:36For experienced technical divers, it's mostly manageable.
08:40The real challenge is keeping track of your air in your tank,
08:44because if you mess up and take too long down there,
08:47you're going to need more than one tank of air to get through safely.
08:51If the gas isn't planed out right,
08:53you could find yourself short on air
08:55when you need to do your decompression stops.
08:58Or even worse, you can run out of it completely.
09:01And, you know, that would be bad.
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