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00:09Mysteries can be buried anywhere, under the earth, beneath the sea, or even right under
00:19our own feet.
00:21And when we stumble upon them, sometimes what we find can change history.
00:31Tonight, we're diving into discoveries that are big and bad.
00:38From a remote island, crawling with lethal predators.
00:43The venom can melt flesh in seconds.
00:45Within an hour, it triggers kidney failure, brain hemorrhages, and even death.
00:53To a huge underground inferno.
00:55The fire keeps raging for hours, for days.
00:59The days become weeks.
01:01The weeks become months.
01:04The crew has unleashed something hellish.
01:08To a massive bomb.
01:11One wrong move, and the entire operation could turn into a crater.
01:17Join us now, because nothing stays in lieu forever.
01:30You know the saying, one man's trash is another man's treasure.
01:34Well, in this case, that trash is the key to a hundred million dollar mystery.
01:42It's February 17th, 2003.
01:45A retired grocer named August van Kamp is out hunting rabbits on his land in rural Belgium.
01:53It's a beautiful day.
01:54The only downside is his land is right next to a busy motorway.
01:59Drivers treat his land like a dump.
02:02All kinds of trash are tossed by motorists from their vehicles, and August is fed up.
02:09Sure enough, today he finds himself another mess.
02:12You've got an empty bottle of wine, half a sandwich, and these colorful rectangles with these crumpled up little white
02:20envelopes everywhere.
02:22And scattered around those white envelopes?
02:25Gemstones.
02:36The city of Antwerp is just 20 miles away from August's property.
02:42Around 80% of the world's diamonds pass through Antwerp at some point.
02:47And the hub of it all is the Antwerp Diamond Center.
02:51It's vault is a fortress.
02:53It's two stories underground, sealed behind a three-ton steel door.
02:58There's ten layers of security.
03:01Guards everywhere, cameras, magnetic locks, sensors for motion, heat, light.
03:06The vault's final defense is a combination lock that has up to 100 million different codes.
03:14It is nearly impossible to get into this vault without the proper permission.
03:21But in the early morning hours of February 16, someone did get into that vault.
03:26And they vanished with around $100 million of diamonds, gold, and other valuables.
03:33It's the biggest diamond heist in history.
03:36And thanks to August's discovery, investigators now have their first official lead.
03:42Among the littered around August's land, police find a business card for an Italian electronics expert.
03:48Well, they pay him a visit, and they quickly have their first suspect in handcuffs.
03:54But that's not all they find on August's land.
03:57Hidden among all the other debris is a crumpled sandwich receipt.
04:01So police trace the receipt back to where the sandwich was purchased, look at a surveillance camera from the shop,
04:08find the person in question that they're looking for.
04:09Now they have their second suspect.
04:11Now, the biggest break from the trash comes from an invoice for a video surveillance system with a name on
04:17it, Leonardo Nottomartolo.
04:20Police run his record, and they discover that he's an Italian national with a long rap sheet for robbery.
04:27His arrest marks a turning point.
04:30Authorities now see the operation for what it was, an inside job, carefully staged over months.
04:38Leonardo posed as a diamond dealer, renting space inside the Antwerp Diamond Center.
04:44There, he had a front row seat to the Diamond Center security operations.
04:49He even hid a tiny camera near the center's vault and was able to observe security guards punching in the
04:57code.
04:58The details investigators uncover reveal just how carefully the heist was planned.
05:04On the night of the heist, the crew sprayed hairspray on the heat sensors to disable them, and they covered
05:09the light and motion sensors in styrofoam.
05:12Then they drilled into 123 safe deposit boxes.
05:18And they took gold, cash, jewelry, and of course, diamonds.
05:22The job goes off without a hitch, but during the escape, things start to unravel.
05:28As they sped down the motorway, the getaway driver got spooked, and so he stopped to throw out some trash
05:34and some of the evidence.
05:36But along with those things, he also threw out some of the spoils.
05:40And the next day, August found the lost loop.
05:43So that pile of garbage led police straight to the three members of the crew, but it also exposed a
05:50fourth unknown accomplice, who's never been caught.
05:54As for the loot, so far, police have managed to recover only 17 diamonds that they can trace back to
06:00the heist.
06:00The rest, potentially millions of dollars worth of diamonds.
06:04The crew isn't talking, and so it's still out there.
06:08Somewhere.
06:10That last find brought down a big heist.
06:13This next one nearly brings down a major city.
06:19It's August of 2017, and a crew of construction workers is busy digging the foundation for a new faculty building
06:27at Goethe University, which is right in the heart of Frankfurt in Germany.
06:32Everything's going smoothly until an excavator lowers its bucket into the ground, and the bucket clangs against something, creating this
06:41very harsh metallic sound.
06:44Work stops immediately.
06:46The foreman comes over, looks down into the hole, and sees a large, curved hunk of metal.
06:54He knows what this is, doesn't hesitate, evacuates his crew, and calls the police.
07:00Soon, the police bomb squad arrive on site, and they confirm, this is a bomb.
07:07Not just any bomb, it's a British HC-4000 from World War II, packing 4,000 pounds of high explosives.
07:18During World War II, Frankfurt is pounded by Allied bombing raids.
07:2225,000 tons of ordnance is dropped on the city, killing thousands of civilians, destroying entire neighborhoods.
07:30The HC-4000 could level an entire city block in an instant.
07:35But this one, along with around 15% of the bombs dropped on Frankfurt during the war, failed to detonate.
07:42The scary thing with an unexploded bomb is it doesn't get safer over time.
07:48Decades underground make them unstable, unpredictable, and deadly.
07:54Over the years, unexploded World War II bombs have killed hundreds of people in Germany, including 11 bomb techs since
08:03the year 2000.
08:04That's why, when construction workers find this bomb, officials move quickly, ordering what becomes the largest evacuation in Germany since
08:14the war.
08:15Police go door to door, checking every home and every apartment.
08:20Meanwhile, helicopters use thermal sensors to ensure that nobody is left behind.
08:27Nearly 70,000 people are evacuated. That's 10% of Frankfurt's population.
08:32Finally, officials clear nearly a one-mile radius around the bomb site.
08:38The evacuation includes the university and Germany's central bank, which holds half of the country's gold reserves.
08:47Then comes the most dangerous part.
08:49The bomb's outer casing is rusted and corroded, and its fuse is degraded and volatile.
08:55When you get a bomb in a condition like that, it cannot be exposed to heat, pressure, or friction.
09:02With steady hands and surgical precision, technicians remove the nose cap and slowly remove the aging fuse.
09:14One wrong move, and the entire operation could turn into a crater.
09:23Finally, after hours of work, the bomb is declared safe, the bombshell itself is carried away, and the entire city
09:32breathes a sigh of relief as residents return to their homes.
09:35The crisis in Frankfurt may be over, but across Germany, the danger still lurks, buried under the surface.
09:44Experts estimate that there could be as many as a quarter of a million bombs still hidden under streets and
09:51in backyards across the country.
09:53And they get more and more dangerous the older they get.
10:01Drilling for oil is always risky.
10:04You never know what you're going to hit, which is exactly what one Soviet crew learned, the hard oil.
10:12It's 1971 in the scorching Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan, an Asian country just north of Iran.
10:20A team of Soviet geologists are surveying the land looking for oil.
10:24They find a spot that they think is good, they move their equipment in, and they start drilling.
10:31Without warning, the ground begins to shake.
10:35And then a sinkhole opens, swallowing sand as well as some of their equipment.
10:41The workers scramble, and they barely make it out alive.
10:47When the dust settles, there is a crater 230 feet wide right there in the desert.
10:55But beneath that crater is something far more dangerous.
10:59Their drill had actually pierced an underground pocket of methane gas.
11:04This is an invisible gas, a deadly one, and a highly explosive one.
11:09And now it's hissing out of the ground.
11:14There's no easy way to seal it up.
11:17So ultimately, they decide that they're going to set it on fire.
11:22And I know it sounds crazy, but that is the common practice when there is an environmental geologic gas leak.
11:31The thinking is that the fire will burn off the methane within a few days.
11:36And so, allegedly, someone throws a hand grenade into the crater to ignite it.
11:45The crater erupts into flames.
11:48But instead of burning off quickly, the crew has unleashed something hellish.
11:56The fire keeps raging for hours, for days.
12:00The days become weeks.
12:01The weeks become months.
12:04The crew has created something much larger than they ever expected.
12:10They've uncovered one of the largest reserves of methane on the planet.
12:15And now, they've started a fire they can't extinguish.
12:18The Soviets call it the shining of Karakum, but locals give it a different name, the gates of hell.
12:28Temperatures inside the pit can reach a scorching 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.
12:35The burning pit is so bright that it can be seen from space.
12:41This is one of the biggest man-made disasters of all time.
12:46And it keeps burning for decades, slowly transforming a catastrophe into a curiosity.
12:55The government builds roads, some simple infrastructure around it.
13:00And soon, they're attracting something like 10,000 visitors a year.
13:04After years of treating it as a spectacle, Turkmenistan's government commissions a fresh task force in 2022
13:12to try to extinguish the fire once and for all.
13:17They reopen old gas wells around the crater and use more recent technologies to try to divert the gas away
13:24from the site.
13:25By June 2025, they announce that the fire has been reduced by a third.
13:30So, for now, the gates of hell aren't quite shut yet, but at the very least, they're also not wide
13:36open.
13:40On the other side of the world, another accidental discovery brings a much older disaster back into focus.
13:49It's a sunny day in San Francisco in 2016, when David Silver, a vintage camera collector,
13:55is browsing a local flea market hoping to score some old gear.
13:59As he passes a stand with some 35mm cameras, he spots a guy holding up a vintage film reel to
14:06the sunlight while smoking a cigarette.
14:09David's alarm bells go off.
14:12It looks like an old nitrate film stock, which is extremely flammable.
14:16And the combination of the sun and a cigarette could send the whole thing up in flames.
14:22He rushes over and he warns the guy.
14:24And then he takes a closer look at the film.
14:28He sees tiny street scenes with pictures of horses and carriages.
14:33And he knows nitrate film is pretty rare, so he buys it.
14:39Back home, David doesn't have a projector that will play this old reel.
14:43So he unspools the film down his hallway and breaks out a magnifying loop to inspect it.
14:50What he sees stops him dead in his tracks.
14:54Destroyed buildings standing like skeletons and rubble in massive mounds in the streets.
15:02David keeps looking through the film and eventually sees some intact buildings that look familiar.
15:08Suddenly, it all clicks for him.
15:11He realizes he's looking at the aftermath of one of America's worst natural disasters.
15:18The film reel captures the devastation caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
15:26On April 18, 1906, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake rocked San Francisco.
15:33The situation went from bad to worse when ruptured gas lines sparked fires that raged across the city for days.
15:42By the time it was over, over 80% of the city was gone and over 3,000 people were
15:47dead.
15:49Back then, cameras were a rare luxury.
15:52Filmmaking was in its infancy, so hardly any footage exists showing what San Francisco looked like right after the quake,
15:59which makes David's find extraordinary.
16:02David shares the discovery in an online forum for history buffs.
16:06And almost immediately, someone's eager to get their hands on it.
16:11A film collector offers to buy the reel and restore it, and David agrees.
16:17The film's new owner spends eight grueling, excruciating months restoring the whole nine-minute film frame by frame.
16:27All 8,655 of them.
16:32Tears are repaired, scratches are cleaned up, images are brought back in focus, and then it's all digitally pieced back
16:42together.
16:43When he finally hits play, something about the footage feels strangely familiar.
16:49The footage matches a 13-minute silent film called A Trip Down Market Street, shot by the local film studio,
16:57called The Miles Brothers Studio, just four days before the earthquake.
17:02Turns out, two of the Miles Brothers had left for New York on a train the morning of the quake,
17:07carrying a fresh print of A Trip Down Market Street.
17:10When they heard about the disaster, they turned around, came back to San Francisco, and brought their cameras back into
17:17the chaos.
17:17The Miles Brothers reportedly captured nearly two hours of post-quake footage.
17:23For much of it, they followed the same route from their previous shoot, now reduced to rubble.
17:30When you watch A Trip Down Market Street, alongside this newly restored footage, it's jaw-dropping.
17:37On one side, you see a city bustling and full of life, and then rubble.
17:45A city that is a husk in itself.
17:49Sadly, almost all of that footage was lost when the Miles Brothers studio burned just a few days later, as
17:56post-quake fires continued to rage.
18:00David's Reel is the longest and best preserved piece ever discovered.
18:04The films together, they form an unparalleled before and after time capsule of a city forever changed.
18:14And if not for David, a cigarette could have sent it all up in smoke.
18:24In the quiet countryside of Denmark, a simple dig takes a very dark turn.
18:32It's 1956 in the wetlands of the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, where workers are digging out an irrigation canal.
18:39Now, this is back-breaking work.
18:42You're six feet below ground, shoveling through thick peat.
18:47One worker stabs his shovel into the earth and picks up something solid.
18:54It's a human skull staring up at him from the peat.
18:57He drops down to clear away some of the peat, and he soon discovers another skull, and then another.
19:05The authorities are called in, and soon a team of archaeologists is on site.
19:11As they begin to excavate, even more bones emerge.
19:15Ribs, femurs, spines, more skulls, all tangled together in a big chaotic mess.
19:22The experts launch an investigation to find out why these bodies are here, and why are they in this crazy,
19:30chaotic knot of death.
19:33Over the next 70 years, the site becomes one of Europe's most perplexing Iron Age discoveries,
19:40as generations of researchers attempt to figure out what happened here.
19:46Carbon dating shows that these people all died around the same time, that is, in the first century AD.
19:55But these people didn't all die of disease or old age.
19:59The bones themselves tell a story of an ugly and violent end.
20:05One femur is hacked completely in half.
20:08One skull has a deep puncture wound, which is consistent with a spear thrust.
20:16These are injuries from battle, and the participants aren't random.
20:21They're all males, mostly aged 20 to 40, but some as young as 13.
20:26Even more disturbing is that the violence didn't end with the fighting.
20:33Marks on the bones indicate that animals like wolves and foxes gnawed on the bodies,
20:39meaning that the dead lay exposed for months.
20:43As the investigation continues, researchers uncover a critical detail about the site itself.
20:512,000 years ago, this marsh wasn't a marsh.
20:54It was a lake.
20:56These people were killed somewhere else, and then they were brought here and thrown into a lake.
21:02As the evidence builds, experts think they weren't simply discarded, but placed here for a specific purpose.
21:11In northern Europe, during the first century AD, people believed that bogs and lakes were portals to the world of
21:18the gods.
21:19And very often weapons, and yes, sometimes animals or humans were sacrificed at these very sites.
21:28So these bones might have been the ultimate offering, fallen warriors given over as sacrifices to the gods, as trophies
21:39of war.
21:40So far, archaeologists have only excavated a small portion of the bog, so there are potentially hundreds of more skeletons
21:48to be found.
21:51Next up, a different kind of watery grave, where something big went down and stayed down.
22:00In the mid-1970s, British Petroleum is planning a new underwater pipeline off the coast of Scotland.
22:08To prepare, their crew surveys the seafloor using sonar.
22:13Most of the readings come back as expected.
22:16Reefs, rocks, trenches.
22:18But about 12 miles southwest of Cruden Bay, Aberdeenshire, there's a loud ping from the sonar.
22:26The sonar picks up something big and solid, and it looks man-made.
22:32Maybe a ship or a downed plane.
22:35Whatever it is, the team's curiosity is piqued.
22:39Once they're back on land, the team check logbooks for shipwrecks in the area.
22:45And finally, they find a match.
22:48A lost German U-boat from World War II.
22:52U-1206.
22:53U-1206 was a Type 7 C submarine, one of the most advanced underwater military vessels of its time.
23:03Type 7 C subs were the pride of the Nazi fleet.
23:10They had state-of-the-art torpedoes, deeper diving capabilities.
23:15They were faster, deadlier, and built to stay submerged longer than any other submarine.
23:22But this sub barely made it out to sea, sinking just eight days into its first mission.
23:30So what went wrong?
23:32On April 14th, 1945, U-1206 was nine miles off the coast of Scotland.
23:39Commander Carl Adolf Schlitt was in charge when nature called.
23:44So he headed to the submarine's bathroom.
23:47Now, the U-1206 was the first U-boat outfitted with a flush toilet.
23:53Earlier, U-boats had to surface to dispose of waste, risking detection.
23:58The U-1206 new system allowed it to be expelled underwater.
24:03But it depended on a complex series of valves.
24:07On the morning of April 14th, Captain Schlitt decided to try to flush the toilet.
24:13But he turned one of the wrong valves.
24:16And suddenly, the bathroom began filling up with seawater.
24:24Things go from bad to worse when the water floods the compartment below, where the batteries are stored.
24:30The moment that the seawater hit the battery, it creates deadly chlorine gas.
24:36The boat started to fill with toxic fumes, so Schlitt had no other choice but to surface to get fresh
24:44air.
24:46Unfortunately, the sub surfaces directly below an Allied aircraft, which immediately attacks.
24:58Faced with deadly gas and Allied bombardment, Schlitt orders the crew to abandon ship.
25:06Commander Schlitt and most of his crew made it onto life rafts, where they were eventually picked up and taken
25:12prisoner by Allied ships.
25:15Within four weeks, Hitler was dead, Germany surrendered, and the U-boat was forgotten at the bottom of the ocean.
25:23Decades later, when the BP team finds the wreck, they track down the commander himself.
25:29And he reveals the official report about the toilet mishap was actually just a cover story.
25:35Schlitt claims that he and the crew knew that the Germans were fighting a lost cause.
25:44Commander Schlitt knew that if they openly surrendered and were taken to an Allied POW camp, they would have been
25:51labeled as traitors by their fellow Germans.
25:53So, to protect himself and his crew, Schlitt faked an accidental toilet malfunction.
26:00As a pretext to surrender.
26:03So far, no one has been able to enter the wreck of U-1206 to check whether the toilet is
26:08indeed broken.
26:09But hopefully, someday, someone will get to the bottom of it all.
26:18In 2013, a discovery in New York City brings the past crashing back to one of the darkest days in
26:26American history.
26:30It's April of 2013 in Lower Manhattan.
26:33There's a team of surveyors that are inspecting a property that's scheduled to be demolished to make way for a
26:38brand new building.
26:39It's a routine job.
26:40They're mostly there to measure things.
26:43But then they peer into a gap between two old buildings.
26:48And they find that it's packed with trash.
26:52The space is only about 18 inches wide.
26:56It's the gap between two five-story tenement buildings.
26:59It's barely big enough to move around, let alone haul stuff out.
27:05As they start clearing debris, they see something that's a bit out of place.
27:11There's a large piece of metal wedged in between these two buildings.
27:16It's about three feet by five feet, silver, metallic, and with gears attached.
27:23They call 911 to report what they think is damaged machinery.
27:27And when the NYPD arrive on the scene, they recognize that this piece of metal is far too big to
27:33just pull out of the gap sideways.
27:35So they bring pulleys to the scene because they realize that the only way they're going to be able to
27:39get this piece of metal out in one piece is by pulling it straight up.
27:45Once it's clear, they inspect it closely and notice a serial number.
27:50They run it into the system and then everything stops.
28:0511 and a half years earlier, on September 11th, 2001, two Boeing 767s were hijacked and flown into the World
28:14Trade Center.
28:17Almost 3,000 people lost their lives that day in the biggest terrorist attack ever carried out on American soil.
28:27In the months after the attack, Ground Zero was meticulously combed over.
28:33Debris was sorted, cataloged, and cleared.
28:36Any human remains that were found were painstakingly identified.
28:40Ground Zero was treated with military precision.
28:44Finding something this big more than a decade later is unsettling.
28:49So investigators re-examined the site to make sure nothing else was overlooked.
28:55The NYPD locks down the site and forensic teams come in to search the area.
29:01After a thorough examination by the medical examiner, no human remains are found.
29:07Finally, the two tenement buildings were demolished and replaced with a glass high-rise.
29:14As for the piece of metal, it is now enshrined in the National September 11th Museum.
29:24While disaster often leaves devastation behind, sometimes they also reveal big secrets.
29:33In the coastal town of Mahabalipuram, India, a group of fishermen are starting their day as usual.
29:41They're fixing their nets and preparing to set out to sea.
29:45But today, they notice something alarming.
29:50The sea is beginning to pull away from the land.
29:54Water drains rapidly from the beach.
29:57Boats are left high and dry on the sand, and coral reefs emerge into the sunlight.
30:03Further out, the fishermen spot something even stranger.
30:06A perfectly straight line of massive stones rising from the exposed seafloor.
30:12Each one is the size of a refrigerator.
30:15It looks almost like the remnants of a wall.
30:17But the exposure of this eerie formation is actually the calm before a deadly storm.
30:25What they're witnessing is the ocean retreating ahead of a massive tsunami,
30:31triggered by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Indonesia.
30:40Moments after the massive stone formations appear, a 12-foot wall of water comes crashing into the coast,
30:48devastating the town of Mahabalipuram.
30:51It's actually part of what's the deadliest natural disaster of the 21st century.
30:57It kills nearly a quarter of a million people in India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia.
31:05In the aftermath, global attention turns to relief and recovery.
31:11But those fishermen by the shore can't forget what they saw before the waves crash down.
31:17They tell local authorities about the strange rock formations revealed on the seafloor.
31:22Soon, scientists from the Archaeological Survey of India arrive on the site,
31:26accompanied by a dive team from the Indian Navy.
31:32Using sonar mapping, they locate underwater features that match the fishermen's descriptions.
31:38Rows of chiseled stone blocks, a short staircase, and a 33-foot-long stretch of 6-foot-tall structures.
31:47It looks like part of a large man-made complex.
31:50As researchers continue to investigate the underwater structure,
31:55they find an intriguing connection back on land.
31:59Mahabalipuram is famous for the Shore Temple,
32:02a five-story masterpiece dedicated to the gods Shiva and Vishnu,
32:08and built around the year 700 A.D.
32:10But local legends say that the Shore Temple was once one of seven grand sanctuaries
32:17that once lined the coast of the Bay of Bengal.
32:20If those legends are true,
32:22the Shore Temple may be the last visible remnant of a much larger religious complex,
32:28one that later disappeared beneath the sea.
32:32According to the story, the seven temples were so magnificent
32:36that the Hindu god Indra, who is the god of storms,
32:40was incredibly consumed by jealousy.
32:43And he orders a great storm to come down and destroy them.
32:47The legend says that six of the temples were swallowed by the sea,
32:52leaving only one standing above the waves.
32:55Now, thanks to the tsunami,
32:58nature reveals what time has hidden.
33:01The tsunami washed away layers of sand from around the Shore Temple
33:06and exposed precious statues and carved reliefs.
33:10Archaeologists find detailed carvings of a lion, a horse, an elephant,
33:16all dated to around 950 A.D.
33:19This was roughly the time that legend has it
33:22that the temples vanished beneath the waves.
33:24The evidence may never prove the full legend,
33:27but thanks to a tragic twist of fate,
33:29one of India's oldest stories may be closer to fact than fiction.
33:41In the early 1800s, about 20 miles off Brazil's southern coast,
33:53a fisherman feels hunger gnawing at him.
33:55He spots a small island on the horizon,
33:58sees banana trees near the shore,
34:00and steers his canoe towards land.
34:03Hours pass.
34:05Then suddenly, his canoe is found drifting offshore.
34:10Inside, his lifeless body lies twisted in agony,
34:14his arms and legs covered in puncture wounds.
34:17What happened to him remains unclear until others return to the island
34:23and make a chilling discovery.
34:26Decades later, a budding entrepreneur wants to build a banana plantation on the island
34:33until he realizes this island is crawling with venomous snakes.
34:41This deadly, slithering mass makes the island impossible to inhabit.
34:46His solution?
34:48Burn them out.
34:50He sets the forest ablaze.
34:52The fire scorches the trees,
34:54but not the snakes.
34:57They survive, and they multiply.
35:00From that day forward,
35:02locals refer to the terrifying landmass as Snake Island.
35:06At just 106 acres,
35:09this little island in the Atlantic Ocean
35:12is home to the highest concentration of venomous snakes on Earth.
35:17About one per every 10 square feet.
35:20The most dominant predator is the golden lancehead viper.
35:24It is one of the 10 deadliest snakes in the world.
35:29And this is the only place on the planet where they even exist.
35:33If a person is bitten by one,
35:35the venom acts fast.
35:37It can melt flesh in seconds.
35:39Within an hour,
35:40it triggers kidney failure,
35:42brain hemorrhages,
35:43intestinal bleeding,
35:44and even death.
35:47But how did these killer snakes
35:50get to the small island in the first place?
35:53There's a legend that the snakes were placed there by pirates to guard their treasure.
35:59But scientists have a different theory.
36:02They believe the island was once connected to the mainland by a natural land bridge.
36:07When the last ice age ended 11,000 years ago,
36:10the rising seas cut it off.
36:12And with no predators and no other competition,
36:15the snakes took over.
36:17They quickly wiped out most other animals on the island.
36:21In order to survive,
36:22they turned to eating migrating birds.
36:24To catch birds before they took flight,
36:27they needed speed and stronger venom.
36:31Over time,
36:33their venom evolved to be five times more potent
36:35than that of their mainland cousins.
36:38These snakes,
36:39they don't just strike from the ground.
36:41They also hunt for the trees.
36:43They coil themselves around tree branches
36:45and dangle while they wait.
36:46So anyone setting foot on Snake Island
36:49has to watch not only the ground under their feet,
36:53but the trees over their head.
36:55It's so dangerous,
36:57the Brazilian government restricts access
36:59to just a handful of expeditions each year.
37:03Now, scientists are allowed on Snake Island to collect venom,
37:06but it's not to test its deadliness.
37:09It's to test its healing potential.
37:11Researchers hope that proteins in the venom
37:14can unlock new treatments for blood disorders and even cancer.
37:18In fact, one life-saving blood pressure drug
37:21has already come from it.
37:22It's an irony that no one misses.
37:25The world's deadliest snakes
37:28could someday save lives around the world.
37:37Fear can drive people to make strange choices.
37:41One of the oddest was found
37:42right under New York's Brooklyn Bridge.
37:47It's 2006 in New York City,
37:49and engineers are conducting a routine inspection
37:52of the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge,
37:54an iconic structure that represents the borough
37:57and that has stood for over 130 years.
38:01They're examining a row of old stone archways,
38:05long ago sealed up.
38:07And behind one boarded-up arch,
38:09they find something strange.
38:12A padlocked door beneath layers of grime.
38:16No one remembers this being there,
38:19so out of curiosity,
38:21they cut the lock
38:23and open the door.
38:25The door creaks open,
38:27revealing a dark, narrow passage
38:30and something no one expected.
38:34Stacked inside are 140 boxes of crackers.
38:38Alongside them are crates filled with paper blankets,
38:42first aid kits,
38:43and these giant water barrels
38:45that also serve as emergency toilets.
38:48You can see that all the boxes
38:50very clearly mark
38:51Civil Defense All-Purpose Survival Crackers
38:54with a date stamp of October 1962.
38:57The crew calls in historians
38:59to figure out what this is
39:01and why it's hiding
39:02under one of America's most iconic bridges.
39:06Historians focus in on the fact
39:08that on all of this,
39:10there are two dates,
39:111957 and 1962.
39:1557 is the year
39:17that the Soviets launched Sputnik.
39:19And 1962 is the year
39:21of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
39:23This government has maintained
39:24the closest surveillance
39:26of the Soviet military buildup
39:29on the island of Cuba.
39:31These were key moments in the Cold War,
39:33an era when the U.S. government
39:36and its citizens
39:36were full of fear and paranoia
39:38about the space race
39:40and about the possibility
39:41of nuclear war with the Soviets.
39:43During those years of the Cold War,
39:45the fear of nuclear warfare
39:47was everywhere.
39:51Students practiced duck-and-cover drills
39:53in their schools.
39:55Families were encouraged
39:56by the government
39:56to dig underground bunkers
39:58in their backyards,
39:59and nearly 200,000 citizens did that.
40:03But in New York,
40:04the plan was different.
40:06Residents were told to head
40:07for designated fallout shelters,
40:10like this secret space
40:11under the Brooklyn Bridge.
40:13New York City was considered
40:14a prime target
40:15in the event of a nuclear exchange
40:17with the Soviet Union.
40:18And to be prepared for this,
40:20the city built over 17,000
40:22fallout shelters,
40:23filled with items
40:25to accommodate
40:26as many as 11 million people.
40:28While the supplies were real,
40:30the sense of security
40:32was mostly an illusion.
40:36Even with concrete walls,
40:37experts say that shelters,
40:39like the one underneath
40:40the Brooklyn Bridge,
40:41wouldn't have protected people
40:43from a nuclear blast.
40:45And even if it did,
40:47it certainly wouldn't have
40:48protected them
40:48from the radioactive fallout
40:50that would have followed
40:51in the months after.
40:52Fortunately for all of humanity,
40:54the Cold War never turned hot
40:56and bombs never fell.
40:59And as for the bomb shelters,
41:01they were largely boarded up
41:03and forgotten about.
41:04For decades,
41:06hundreds of thousands of people
41:08crossed the Brooklyn Bridge,
41:09never knowing
41:10that there was a very dreary reminder
41:13just below their feet
41:14of just how close
41:16the world was
41:17to disaster.
41:22From ancient battlefields
41:24buried in bombs
41:25to bombshells
41:26beneath city streets
41:27and snakes so deadly
41:29they have their own island.
41:31These are the biggest
41:32and baddest discoveries
41:33that refuse to stay hidden.
41:35I'm Danny Trejo.
41:36Thanks for watching
41:38Mysteries on Earth.
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