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10 forbidden places on Earth you're not allowed to visit — secret zones, sealed vaults and off-limits wonders. New documentary videos every day on Mythologia Geographic. 🚫
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00:00There are places on this planet where your feet are not allowed to touch the ground.
00:04Not because the journey is hard, though some of them are nearly impossible to reach.
00:10Not because the ticket is expensive, though no amount of money can buy your way in.
00:14These places are forbidden.
00:16Guarded by soldiers, by oceans, by laws, and in one case, by thousands of the deadliest snakes on Earth.
00:23From a secret base hidden in the Nevada desert, to an island in Brazil where a single misstep could be
00:31your last.
00:32These are locations governments have decided you should never see.
00:37Today we count down 10 forbidden places on Earth you are not allowed to visit.
00:43And number one is so secret most people have never even heard its name.
00:51Number 10. Snake Island, Brazil.
00:5490 miles off the coast of Sao Paulo, rises a small island covered in dense rainforest.
01:00It looks like paradise. It is a nightmare.
01:03This is Ilha da Queimada Grande, home to the golden lancehead, one of the most venomous snakes on the planet.
01:10Its venom can melt human flesh.
01:13Researchers estimate as many as one snake for every square meter of ground.
01:18The Brazilian Navy has banned all civilian landings.
01:21Only a handful of scientists are granted permission to step ashore each year.
01:26And they go wearing body armor and carrying anti-venom.
01:30The lighthouse keeper, who once lived there, did not survive.
01:34Legend says the snakes were put there by pirates to protect buried treasure.
01:39The truth is stranger.
01:40Rising seas cut the island off from the mainland thousands of years ago,
01:45trapping the snakes with no predators and thousands of seabirds to eat.
01:49Evolution did the rest.
01:51Today, the island belongs to the serpents.
01:54And humanity is not invited.
02:01Number 9. The Lascaux Caves, France.
02:04In 1940, four teenagers chasing a lost dog stumbled into a cave in southwestern France
02:11and found something that rewrote human history.
02:1417,000-year-old paintings.
02:18Bulls, horses, and deer galloping across stone ceilings in vivid reds and blacks,
02:23painted by people who lived when mammoths still walked the earth.
02:26The caves were open to the public and visitors poured in.
02:30Then the paintings began to die.
02:32The carbon dioxide from human breath,
02:35the heat from floodlights,
02:37the microbes carried in on shoes.
02:39It all fed a green mold spreading across the ancient art.
02:44In 1963, France sealed the caves forever.
02:48Today, the original Lascaux is closed to everyone,
02:51except a tiny team of scientists who enter for a few days each year in protective suits.
02:55Tourists visit perfect replicas built nearby.
03:00The real thing, humanity's Stone Age masterpiece,
03:04sits in the dark, healing, and you will never stand inside it.
03:13Number 8. Perveglia Island, Italy.
03:16In the Venetian lagoon between Venice and the open sea
03:20sits a small island you are forbidden to set foot on.
03:24During the plagues that ravaged Europe,
03:27Perveglia became a quarantine station.
03:29Ships arriving in Venice with suspected infection were held here.
03:33The sick were brought ashore, and most never left.
03:37Historians estimate that over 100,000 people died on this island across the centuries.
03:42Their bodies burned in great pyres.
03:45Later, a mental hospital was built here,
03:47and dark stories followed it,
03:50of cruel experiments and a doctor who threw himself from the bell tower.
03:54The hospital closed decades ago.
03:56The island has been left to rot ever since.
03:59Its buildings crumbling,
04:01its bell tower silent.
04:02The Italian government owns Perveglia
04:04and keeps it closed to the public.
04:07Boats are turned away.
04:08Some call it the most haunted island in the world.
04:11Whether or not you believe in ghosts,
04:14the history alone is enough to keep you away.
04:20Number 7.
04:22Surtsey, Iceland.
04:23On the morning of November 14th, 1963,
04:27the crew of a fishing boat off Iceland's south coast
04:30smelled sulfur and saw smoke rising from the sea.
04:33An undersea volcano was erupting,
04:37and over the next four years,
04:39it built an entirely new island from fire and ash.
04:45Scientists named it Surtsey,
04:47after Surt, the fire giant of Norse myth.
04:49And then they made an extraordinary decision.
04:53To protect the most pristine natural laboratory on Earth,
04:56a place where life was colonizing bare rock for the very first time,
05:00Iceland banned almost everyone from landing.
05:05Only a small number of researchers are allowed,
05:08and even they are checked to make sure
05:10they carry no seeds on their clothes or boots.
05:13Every plant, every insect,
05:16every bird that arrives on Surtsey got there on its own,
05:19and scientists are watching evolution happen in real time.
05:23It is one of the few places on Earth untouched by human hands,
05:27and Iceland intends to keep it that way.
05:35The Vatican Apostolic Archive
05:37Behind the walls of Vatican City
05:40lies one of the most secretive collections of documents on Earth.
05:4485 kilometers of shelving.
05:4712 centuries of history.
05:49Letters from Michelangelo.
05:51The trial records of the Knights Templar.
05:54A letter from Mary Queen of Scots
05:56begging the Pope to save her life.
05:57For hundreds of years,
06:00no outsider was allowed inside at all.
06:03Then, in 1881,
06:05Pope Leo XIII opened the archive to qualified scholars,
06:09and researchers have been mining it ever since.
06:12But do not imagine you can simply walk in.
06:15Access is granted only to credentialed academics,
06:18and even they may see only materials more than 75 years old.
06:23The archive's most sensitive holdings,
06:25the private papers of recent popes,
06:27diplomatic correspondence,
06:29documents the Church considers too delicate for any eyes,
06:32are sealed indefinitely.
06:34Somewhere in those 85 kilometers of shelves
06:37are answers to history's greatest mysteries.
06:44Number 5.
06:45Heard Island, Australia.
06:48In the far southern Indian Ocean,
06:50closer to Antarctica than to any city,
06:53rises one of the most remote places on the planet.
06:56Heard Island is dominated by Big Ben,
06:59an active volcano more than 2,700 meters tall.
07:03One of the only places on Earth
07:05where red-hot lava pours directly into glaciers.
07:08The island is a chaos of penguins, seals, and seabirds,
07:13a wildlife spectacle almost no human has ever witnessed,
07:16because Australia, which owns it,
07:19allows landings only by special permit,
07:21and almost no permits are granted.
07:23There are no ports, no airstrips, no rescue services.
07:27The weather is among the worst on Earth.
07:30Fewer people have set foot on Heard Island
07:33than have stood on the summit of Mount Everest.
07:36It is a world frozen in a prehistoric state,
07:40ruled by volcanoes and wildlife,
07:43and it does not want you there.
07:48Number 4.
07:49Mount Yamantel, Russia.
07:51Deep in the Ural Mountains stands a mountain
07:54the Russian government does not want you to look at too closely.
07:57At its base sits Mezgorje,
08:00a closed town that does not appear on most maps.
08:04Residents need special permission to live there,
08:07and visitors are simply not allowed.
08:09Foreign satellites have watched massive excavation projects here
08:12since the Cold War,
08:14carving what analysts believe
08:15is one of the largest underground complexes on Earth,
08:18a bunker city built to shelter Russia's leadership
08:21in a nuclear war.
08:22When asked,
08:24Moscow has given answers ranging from
08:25a mining operation to a food storage facility.
08:29Nobody believes that.
08:30The entire area is guarded by military patrols,
08:33and the airspace above it is restricted.
08:35Whatever is inside Mount Yamantel
08:38is important enough to hide a whole town for.
08:41And you will never get closer than a satellite photograph.
08:48Number 3.
08:49North Sentinel Island, India.
08:51In the Andaman Sea lies an island about the size of Manhattan,
08:55ringed by coral reefs,
08:56covered in dense jungle.
08:58It is home to the Sentinelese,
09:00one of the last uncontacted peoples on Earth,
09:03who have lived in isolation for an estimated 60,000 years.
09:06They have made their wishes clear.
09:08In 2006,
09:10two fishermen whose boat drifted too close were killed.
09:13In 2018,
09:15a visitor who paid fishermen to take him there illegally
09:18was killed on the beach.
09:19India enforces an exclusion zone around the island,
09:23and approaching it is a crime.
09:24This is not cruelty,
09:25it is protection.
09:26The Sentinelese have no immunity to common diseases,
09:30and contact could wipe them out.
09:32Scientists agree,
09:33the island is their world,
09:34not ours.
09:35Of all the forbidden places on this list,
09:38this is the one guarded not by soldiers or fences,
09:42but by the simple,
09:43absolute refusal of its people to be found.
09:50Number two.
09:51Area 51.
09:53Nevada, United States.
09:55You know the name.
09:57A remote Air Force facility in the Nevada desert,
10:00surrounded by warning signs,
10:02motion sensors,
10:03and armed guards in unmarked vehicles,
10:05locals call the camo dudes.
10:08Trespassers are arrested on site,
10:10and the restricted airspace above it
10:12is among the most tightly controlled in America.
10:15For decades,
10:16the United States government refused to even admit it existed,
10:20until documents declassified in 2013
10:22finally acknowledged it.
10:24What happens there?
10:26The official answer
10:27is testing of experimental aircraft.
10:30The U-2 spy plane,
10:33the SR-71 Blackbird,
10:35the F-117 stealth fighter,
10:37all were born in that desert.
10:39But the secrecy has bred legends.
10:42Reverse engineered alien technology.
10:44Every few years,
10:45someone tries to storm the gates,
10:46and every few years,
10:47they are stopped long before they reach them.
10:50Whatever the truth is,
10:51it sits behind fences in the desert,
10:54and you are not cleared to know it.
10:59Number one,
11:01Pine Gap, Australia.
11:02You have probably never heard of it,
11:04and that is exactly how its owners want it.
11:0718 kilometers outside Alice Springs,
11:09in the red heart of the Australian desert,
11:12sits a joint American-Australian intelligence facility
11:15that makes Area 51 look talkative.
11:19Established in 1970,
11:21Pine Gap is one of the largest signals intelligence stations on Earth.
11:26Its giant white radomes,
11:27golf ball-like domes scattered across the desert,
11:30intercept communications from satellites covering half the planet.
11:33The base operates under layers of secrecy.
11:36Its workforce is vetted beyond anything in civilian life.
11:40People who have tried to enter have been arrested and prosecuted.
11:43Even most Australian lawmakers are not told what happens inside.
11:48Area 51 hides airplanes.
11:51Pine Gap hides the conversations of nations.
11:53And of every place on this list,
11:56it may be the one you are least likely to ever see.
12:02From islands ruled by snakes and tribes who refuse the modern world,
12:07to archives holding 12 centuries of secrets and desert bases listening to the planet,
12:13these are the places humanity has decided to keep for itself.
12:20Some are protected for science,
12:22some for security,
12:23some for a sacred place,
12:25some for a processing process,
12:27some for afraid otherwise out of the people,
12:30some for respect for the people who were there first,
12:33but every one of them reminds us of the same truth.
12:36The map still has blank spaces.
12:38The world is not as explored as we pretend.
12:41Which forbidden place would you dare to visit if the gates open tomorrow?
12:46Tell us in the comments and subscribe to Mythology or Geographic,
12:50because the strangest corners of this earth are still waiting to be explored.