Original subtitles

NARRATOR: They're watching you.

More than 5,000 satellites circle the Earth.

Every day, they uncover new,

mysterious phenomena that defy explanation.

Pagans, Vikings, Nazis,

and the mystery structures that bind them all.

This could really shed some light on our earliest

human history.

NARRATOR: Stalin's Atlantis.

The scale of this is absolutely phenomenal.

And the $15 billion treasure hunt.

There was a reason why they called this

the Wild West.

NARRATOR: Baffling phenomena, mysteries

from space.

What on Earth are they?

[theme music playing]

**

July 2020 -- a NASA Earth observation satellite scans

the Orkneys on the far northernly tip

of Scotland...

...a desolate archipelago of some 70 islands

and one of the most

mysterious archaeological sites in the world.

The Orkneys have been occupied by

human beings for thousands of years.

KOUROUNIS: Even though these islands are remote,

they have a deep archaeological history,

and there's evidence in the Orkney Islands

that goes back to

the Iron Age and even Neolithic times.

NARRATOR: Throughout ancient history,

these strategic islands were fought over

and ruled by an astonishing number of warrior tribes

and civilizations.

Many of them left coded clues to their lives and battles in

the form of strange,

enigmatic structures that pepper the hills

and coastline here.

CAVELL: All over Orkney,

there are ancient sites that are quite extraordinary.

It was clearly a place of great importance.

NARRATOR: Karen Bellinger has traveled to Orkney hoping that

aerial images can help decipher this coded landscape.

BELLINGER: There aren't any written records of life in

ancient Britain,

so this could really shed some life on our earliest

human history.

NARRATOR: A satellite image taken on July 31, 2020,

is of particular interest to the archaeologist.

BELLINGER: The circular shape on this satellite image is

really exciting.

It's seven circles making a large circle in and of itself.

NARRATOR: The image appears to show a cluster of ancient ruins.

Yet how they fit into

these islands' twisting history is unclear.

Circular structures are really meaningful,

and so there's actually a lot of exciting possibilities

for what this circle in the satellite image could be.

NARRATOR: Guided by the image coordinates,

Bellinger heads south.

As she makes her way across the center of the islands,

she encounters a relic of perhaps the most extraordinary

ancient peoples of Orkney.

Wow!

This is a magnificent standing stone circle.

NARRATOR: This is the Ring of Brogdar,

built by a race of Pagan warriors

and Druids who arrived on Orkney around 6,000 years ago.

During their reign here, they established one of

the earliest civilizations in European history,

transforming a land of primitive hunter-gatherers into

one filled with giant stone monuments and temples.

Many of them predate the great pyramids of Egypt.

Yet, despite extensive study,

their exact purpose remains a mystery.

It's just really mind-boggling to imagine what was so

important to these people to invest this kind of time

and energy -- it's absolutely phenomenal.

NARRATOR: The structures in the satellite image resemble

ritualistic sites built by this pagan civilization.

But what puzzles Bellinger is its precise layout.

I don't know, it's a little bit weird.

It -- it's a little more regular.

It just doesn't look quite [indistinct].

NARRATOR: If the structures aren't ceremonial,

they could be a legacy of another momentous period in

Orkney's distant past.

One thing you can't help but think of around here,

Orkney, is Vikings.

That's an exciting possibility.

NARRATOR: The Norse sea pirates arrive in

Orkney in the late 8th century A.D.

They remain here for 500 years, using it as

a base to launch raids on England, Ireland, and beyond.

[weapons clashing, people shouting]

Even today, one in four islanders have Viking blood

in them.

KOUROUNIS: There was actually an entire set of Viking sagas

written about their time here in the Orkney Islands.

So that tells you how important

their occupation of this area was to them.

What we're looking at in this image could be

a Viking settlement of some kind, where the houses are

clustered together.

Oh, this has gotta be it.

It doesn't look quite like I expected it would

from the satellite image.

It's definitely not Neolithic.

In fact, it's not ancient at all.

NARRATOR: The mystery structures sit on

a hilltop and are heavily fortified.

But it's not apparent when they were built or why.

BELLINGER: Kind of has the feeling of World War

architecture, but it's such a weird shape.

NARRATOR: What puzzles the archaeologist

is that only some of the circles

in the image have been built on.

BELLINGER: Half of these circles actually are different.

They're the same size as the others,

but they don't have any of the concrete structures that

the others do -- it's really odd.

NARRATOR: The structures' fortified walls and hilltop

position suggests they

were put here to protect something of great value.

BELLINGER: If this is a defensive structure,

what were they defending?

This place is desolate.

NARRATOR: As Bellinger explores a nearby beach,

she discovers a possible clue to the purpose of the strange

site revealed from space.

**

Some kind of ruined ship.

Two of them, it looks like.

Weird.

**

NARRATOR: When Bellinger deploys a drone to scan the wrecks,

the story of these historic islands takes a bizarre turn.

BELLINGER: I wasn't expecting to see anything like this.

NARRATOR: Coming up, the ghost ships

and ruins reveal their strange secrets.

It's really kind of astonishing.

NARRATOR: And a mystery from the bowels of the Earth.

Wow, it looks like an intestine

or a brain-like pattern.

NARRATOR: Drawn by a cluster of mystery structures

revealed from space,

Karen Bellinger is in the historic Orkney Islands

off the northern coast of Scotland.

I'd say this is World War architecture,

you know, but it's really weird.

NARRATOR: The mystery fortifications

overlook a stretch of water.

[drone buzzing]

Bellinger discovers that it is strewn with

sections of ships and other submerged structures.

BELLINGER: There's no rocks or anything like that.

This is a number of ships that have been sunk purposefully.

NARRATOR: It appears great effort has been

made to protect this narrow waterway.

What were they defending here in the middle of nowhere?

NARRATOR: The wider image provides a clue.

BELLINGER: Zooming out, the islands themselves enclose

an enormous natural harbor

and a deep one, too, just as deep

as in the open ocean beyond.

NARRATOR: The deep harbor, protected by

the fortifications and wrecks is called Scapa Flow,

and declassified military records reveal that it has

witnessed some of the most

momentous events of 20th century military history.

Scapa Flow is one of the most strategically

important waterways

in the world and has been for a long time.

Scapa Flow has played a very important role

for the Royal Navy throughout the 20th century,

starting in World War I.

NARRATOR: What makes Scapa Flow so valuable to military leaders

is that it provides fast access to both the North Sea

and Atlantic Ocean.

In the run up to World War, the British choose it as

the base for the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet,

the largest, most powerful armada in the world.

The islands themselves protected seafarers from

all but the absolute worst weather,

so it was a perfect spot to drop anchor.

HYMEL: In that same element,

the British know that, as well as it's

defended from weather, it's not defended from the enemy.

NARRATOR: The Royal Navy realizes that Scapa Flow's

biggest vulnerability

are the seven channels that provide access to the sea.

So it barricades them to defend

the Grand Fleet from submarines or surface attack.

The British know the value of this area,

and they're gonna defend it to the teeth.

CAVELL: There was all sorts of activity taken to block

the seven main channels

that would get into Scapa Flow to protect the fleet.

NARRATOR: Scapa Flow's Grand Fleet

plays a vital role in World War I,

including the Battle of Jutland,

the biggest naval engagement of the conflict.

And just a few months after the Allies' victory,

an extraordinary incident sees more ships being claimed by its

freezing waters.

MORGAN: At the end of World War I,

the German imperial fleet is moved to Scapa Flow while

they're negotiating the final settlement of the war

that will ultimately emerge as the Versailles Treaty.

NARRATOR: During these negotiations,

the commander of the German fleet learns that he

will soon be forced to hand his ships over to the Allies.

The Germans realize what's going to happen, and they decide

that they don't want to allow

their vessels to fall into enemy hands,

and so they scuttle their ships.

NARRATOR: Following a coded message,

the Germans sink 52 of the 74 warships anchored at Scapa Flow.

Two decades later, at the dawn of World War II,

another historic event leads to the construction

of the mysterious circular structures

overlooking the harbor.

What we're actually looking at is a direct consequence of

a disaster that took place

at the very beginning of the war in 1939, and that was

the sinking of HMS Royal Oak.

NARRATOR: The Royal Oak is one of 42 warships

based at Scapa Flow

that are being used to blockade supplies from reaching Germany,

infuriating Hitler.

And when Nazi intelligence reveals the crumbling

World War I ships no longer block access to the harbor,

he senses an opportunity for revenge.

The Germans are flying reconnaissance missions over

this area, and what these show is that there

are openings to get U-boats into Scapa Flow and make

an attack on the Royal Navy.

NARRATOR: On October 14, 1939, a U-boat sneaks past

the World War I wrecks and torpedoes the Royal Oak,

sinking her and killing 835 of her crew.

[explosion blasts]

The attack is one of the most catastrophic disasters in

British naval history and a massive propaganda coup

for Hitler.

This is a huge black eye to Churchill's government.

He's going to prevent this from ever happening again.

The British have learned a lesson, and that

lesson is that you must protect Scapa Flow.

NARRATOR: The British immediately shore up

Scapa Flow's defenses by constructing

an anti-aircraft battery and other fortifications to guard

against the Nazi threat.

Over the years, they are reclaimed by nature,

joining the hundreds of other crumbling structures

built by those who have fought

for control of these islands and its harbor.

For thousands of years, people have been defending

Scapa Flow, and the ruins

really highlight the importance of this

particular stretch of water.

NARRATOR: The aerial images have revealed that what has made

this remote archipelago so pivotal

to mankind isn't just the islands themselves,

but what lies between them.

The satellite images are full of evidence for how important

this area,

with its amazing natural harbor, has been throughout

human history.

It's really kind of astonishing.

**

**

NARRATOR: Coming up,

the world's weirdest patch of ocean.

Guess who dreamt it up?

Why, none other than evil dictator, Joseph Stalin.

NARRATOR: And death and terror in paradise.

It's as if all the people have been erased from existence.

NARRATOR: August 13, 2020,

a satellite scans the 750-mile-long

Caspian Sea, the world's largest lake.

Far below, it captures something odd in the water.

It's really the strangest thing.

There's this structure with these little dots

interspersed between each of the lines.

It almost looks like a giant web.

NARRATOR: Punching in closer,

the web appears to be a network

of oil rigs, and it's bigger than Manhattan.

MORAN: You can see that there's platforms and some bridges

connecting them, but it seems a little haphazard.

The scale of this is absolutely phenomenal.

It's almost like a city at sea.

NARRATOR: Declassified Cold War images

reveal the crumbling rigs are

a bizarre legacy of Communist rule in this region.

This mega structure actually has

a name, and it's called Oil Rocks.

And guess who dreamt it up?

Why, none other than evil dictator, Joseph Stalin.

NARRATOR: Oil Rocks has its roots

in the ashes of World War II.

Russia has been reduced to a wasteland.

1,700 towns and six million buildings lie in ruins.

In 1946, dictator Joseph Stalin instigates a brutal

five-year plan to rebuild his devastated country.

The scale and scope of these plans were basically insane.

Millions of Russians were uprooted from their homes

and forced to work in these mega factories

or collectivized farms.

WALTERS: If they didn't, they were often imprisoned,

or worse still,

in that classic Stalinist way, they were executed.

NARRATOR: Over the following years,

the Russians build a vast number of factories,

steel mills, towns, and even cities,

and this explosion in industrial growth

demands vast amounts of oil.

MUNOZ: Right at the end of the 1940s,

oil was discovered in the Caspian Sea.

Now, this was a game-changing discovery,

and Stalin was determined to harness this potential

and exploit it with all its might.

NARRATOR: The problem is that the Caspian Sea's oil reserves

lie around 30 miles from land

and 3,000 feet underwater, and no one has attempted

to drill in deep water before.

This is not the ideal place, because you're right in

the middle of the -- the sea,

it's windy, it's cold, it's incredibly

hazardous to build.

NARRATOR: The Soviets' solution is to sink the Zoroaster,

the world's first oil tanker, and use it as the foundation

for the world's first offshore oil platform.

It means Stalin now has a homegrown supply

of some 50 billion barrels worth of black gold.

MORGAN: The Soviet Union is drunk with the possibilities,

because that means that they command their own

oil wealth, and they don't have to be dependent

on anyone else for it.

NARRATOR: Over the following years,

a labyrinth of interconnected rigs,

docks, and cranes rises out of the sea.

It becomes a floating city, complete with apartment

buildings and a movie theater,

vegetable gardens, and a soccer field.

MUNOZ: This was a huge undertaking.

I mean, all the construction materials needed to build these

platforms had to be basically ferried 30 miles

from the mainland.

NARRATOR: By the 1960s, Oil Rocks has 2,000

drilling platforms connected by over 186 miles of roadways.

5,000 workers extract 13 million tons of

oil from the lake bed each year.

CAVELL: This was an expression of Soviet might.

Stalin wants to show that the Soviet Union

is so powerful, it can do anything.

It can even build cities in the middle of the sea.

NARRATOR: Stalin knows that American spy planes

regularly fly over Oil Rocks -- for the dictator,

it's a triumphant symbol of Communist success,

visible from the skies.

CAVELL: There are multiple purposes

for constructing something like this.

I mean, there's the purpose of getting the oil, which is

absolutely necessary to running a modern Soviet Union,

but there's also the propaganda factor.

For a few decades,

Oil Rocks was a phenomenal success,

but nothing lasts forever.

NARRATOR: Like the rest of the Soviet Union's industries,

Oil Rocks's success is built on unsustainable state funding.

During the oil crises of the '70s and '80s,

it hemorrhages vast amounts of money.

But the Kremlin refuses to concede defeat.

WALTER: They've got to keep people in employment,

because that's the kind of Soviet command economy rule,

everyone's got to have a job, even if it makes no

economic sense.

So, you know, it kind of limps on for years.

NARRATOR: In 1991,

the Soviet Union collapses, and starved of state support,

so does much of Oil Rocks.

Huge pieces of steel rust and fall off into

the sea, and it really just starts to become decrepit.

Stalin's Atlantis is beginning to sink.

NARRATOR: Now owned by the Republic of Azerbaijan,

2/3 of the once mighty floating city is disintegrating

into the Caspian Sea,

a strange crumbling relic of Stalin's Russia revealed

from space.

Dismantling the place is going to be even more expensive

than just keeping it going at reduced capacity.

There are still 2,500 people out there working

these rigs, trying to extract whatever oil they can.

NARRATOR: Coming up -- mud, murder,

and multimillion dollar mayhem.

Add in a few bottles of whiskey,

and you're gonna end up with a lot of trouble.

NARRATOR: And Miami's secret dens of depravity.

It's the place where locals can go and have the best,

most epic, crazy time of their lives.

NARRATOR: August 29, 2020.

An orbiting eye in the sky scans

of patchwork of farmland in central California.

KOUROUNIS: I can clearly see what looks like farmers' fields,

but then there's this gray scar

across the landscape that is filled

with all of these squiggly lines.

Wow, this is crazy-looking.

It looks like an intestine or a brain-like pattern,

and look at the size of it!

NARRATOR: End to end,

the weird patterns stretch for over eight miles.

To Martin Pepper,

their twisting intestinal features are familiar.

PEPPER: Looking at the ridge lines,

I think what we're looking at is a mining operation.

This is not far from the Sierra Nevadas.

The Sierra Nevadas are home to one of

the biggest gold belts known as the Mother Lode.

NARRATOR: Historic records reveal that the pattern in

the image has been 170 years in the making.

Looking into the history of the area,

these piles are not from recent mining.

These remains are from the California Gold Rush.

NARRATOR: The Rush famously begins in 1848,

sparked when a few flakes

are discovered at Sutter's Mill,

40 miles to the southeast.

Once that happened, it went into full throttle.

NARRATOR: The following year, 100,000

so-called 49ers pour into the Golden State.

MORGAN: The city of San Francisco

has so many people that show up to begin

prospecting for gold that they have a problem with abandoned

boats clogging up the harbor.

NARRATOR: But most prospectors' road to gold

is the perilous Overland Trail,

where harsh conditions and disease

claimed 20,000 lives,

an average of 10 deaths per mile.

There are tons of stories of death and hardship on the way

towards the west,

but it doesn't stop people from heading out there to try

and make their own fortune.

Man can make a living pleasure mining and be his own boss.

NARRATOR: When the prospectors arrive,

the area around the image is a pristine wilderness.

Almost overnight, it is transformed into a lawless

tent city where miners

pan for river gold by day and fight over their share

by night.

There was a reason why they call this the Wild West.

[crowd clamoring]

You had thousands of people storming in here to try

and strike it rich with very poor living conditions,

not a lot of police activity, add in a few bottles of whiskey,

and you're gonna end up with a lot of trouble.

NARRATOR: When mining companies get wind

of California's riches,

much of the area is taken over by big business, who chased

the veins of gold upriver and deep into the rock.

Mining companies go straight to the source, up into

the foothills of the Sierras, where they bring with them

larger machinery and new technology.

NARRATOR: In 1853,

the companies introduce a new mining technology,

which dramatically accelerates the Gold Rush

and transforms the valley in the image into the snaking

shapes visible from space today.

A new technique called hydraulic mining is devised,

and it changes everything.

It's basically a giant fire hose sprayed into the sides of

hills and mountains to knock

down all the sediment and force it into sluices,

collecting all this precious gold.

NARRATOR: Using hydraulic jets eight times

more powerful than a firefighter's hose,

gold miners can reduce a rock face to rubble in minutes.

PEPPER: It's a brutal method, but definitely

a quick and efficient way of getting gold.

FANARA: After destroying those hillsides,

there is a ton of debris.

They call it slickens, and they would

dispose of it in the riverbed.

NARRATOR: The slickens contain chemicals, which quickly

turned the valley into a toxic wasteland.

The best way to get fine gold

out of sediment is you use mercury.

It actually gleans onto the gold and helps you separate it.

NARRATOR: As the noxious slickens flows

into the Yuba River,

it raises the water level up by 100 feet, contaminating

vast areas of nearby land.

All of that dirt debris, that slickens,

it ended up covering farmland 10 to 40 feet high.

MORGAN: The prospectors, they didn't care -- when they

looked at the beautiful environment around them,

they went, "That's nice, let's destroy it and get rich."

NARRATOR: In just 20 years, hydraulic mining blasts

nearly $20 million dollars worth

of gold from the Mother Lode.

But in 1884, the state of California finally brings

an end to this frenzied destruction.

PEPPER: After dumping slickens is outlawed,

the state forms a commission that dredges out the millions

of tons of these slickens,

and that's what we're seeing in this image.

NARRATOR: Over time, nature slowly reclaims

the snaking piles of debris,

yet scars visible in the image reveal

that prospectors have returned to finish the job

the 49ers started all those years ago.

Hydraulic mining isn't 100 percent efficient,

and there is gold

that gets washed away with all of the waste rock.

PEPPER: Dredges can dig up this dirt

and extract every last flake of gold in it.

NARRATOR: By dredging the slickens,

miners extract millions of dollars worth of gold discarded

in the fevered hunt for the Mother Lode more than

a century ago.

With people still mining these slickens,

it's almost as if the Gold Rush never stopped.

NARRATOR: Coming up, Florida's floating

gangster paradise.

Powerful people come to indulge themselves in pleasures

of the flesh or any other kind of vices.

NARRATOR: And unleashing hell in the South Pacific.

There's something a little post-apocalyptic

about the whole thing.

NARRATOR: March 27, 2020.

The WorldView-2 satellite passes over

Biscayne Bay on Miami's Atlantic coast.

Biscayne Bay is an extremely wealthy area

known for its big mansions and casinos.

It's kind of like a play land for the very rich.

NARRATOR: But a mile from shore,

there's a different kind of architecture,

one that doesn't fit with this millionaire's paradise.

CHAMBERLAIN: This is really kind of strange.

There are these white structures just standing in

the bay.

MORAN: You have several of these mysterious shapes.

Some of them are kind of square, some are rectangular.

NARRATOR: According to local records,

the weird structures first appeared during the 1920s,

a decade when vast numbers of criminals flocked to Miami,

looking to profit from Florida's lax

prohibition laws.

Smuggling with super big during the prohibition era,

especially off the coast of Florida.

CHAMBERLAIN: So perhaps what we're seeing here

is some kind of safe house.

NARRATOR: Prohibition is supposed to reduce

crime and corruption.

Instead, it turns bootlegging

into a multimillion dollar business

and triggers the most lawless and debauched period in

Florida's history.

It's the law of unintended consequences.

The 18th Amendment actually leads to the organization

of criminals or organized crime.

NARRATOR: To quench America's thirst,

gangsters smuggle vast amounts of booze from the Caribbean to

lines of ships known as rum rows, anchored off

Florida's coast.

Positioned out of the reach

of the law and international waters,

each can carry the equivalent of up to

a quarter of $1 million dollars worth of

illegal liquor.

Those cargo ships would dock just

short of the coastal waters of Florida.

What some smugglers decided to do was

set up sort of a distribution chain.

NARRATOR: The smugglers deploy speedboats,

many fitted with 400-horsepower World War I

aircraft engines

to evade the Coast Guard before disappearing into

Miami's waterways.

MUNOZ: It was really dangerous.

You know, you're trying to dodge federal authorities

constantly patrolling those areas,

looking for smugglers.

[airplane engine whirring]

NARRATOR: In 1928,

Al Capone moves to Miami and is rumored to

have set up an operation at the structures in the image.

But other sources suggest they were constructed some

five years later

to satisfy demand for a different kind of vice.

In Florida law at that time, if your building was a mile

off the coast, gambling laws did not apply.

So what individuals decided to do was turn these sort of

stilt homes into small casinos.

NARRATOR: Such is the success of these offshore casinos

that 27 soon dot the waters

of Biscayne Bay.

MORAN: Criminals find loopholes,

so to set up something just outside of

the bounds of legality, it's very clever, in fact.

NARRATOR: Locals call this place Stiltsville.

Hidden from prying eyes,

they become invite-only private members clubs, hosting

secret wild parties for Miami's rich and famous.

This became kind of anything goes, the kind of place where

very wealthy, powerful people

come to indulge themselves in pleasures

of the flesh or any other kind of vices.

Ted Kennedy had a bachelor party there, and it's a place

where locals could go and escape

the eye of the law, have the best,

most epic, crazy time of their lives.

NARRATOR: Over the years, hurricanes

and fires destroy much of Stiltsville.

Yet it continues to play a key role

in the evolution of Miami's criminal side.

MUNOZ: Things really took a dark turn,

and a lot of the illicit activity shifted more

towards narcotics.

[sirens wailing]

NARRATOR: During the 1970s and '80s,

Miami becomes known as the drug capital of the world.

NARRATOR: 70 percent of all cocaine

and marijuana entering the U.S.

passes through the city,

earning individual cartels up to $20 billion a year.

MUNOZ: The cartels were said to use these homes as sort of

waypoints to drop off

massive amounts of cocaine on their way into Miami for

distribution across the United States.

NARRATOR: Like their gangster forerunners of the 1920s,

the narcos turned to customized 80mph

speedboats to smuggle drugs to shore.

At one point, the authorities actually conducted

a drug bust where

they netted about $24 million dollars being brought into

the United States.

The drug running still continues to this day,

but it isn't nearly as bad as it was

at its height in the '80s.

NARRATOR: Yet while the rum runners,

gamblers, and narcos are long gone, Stiltsville remains,

evidence of Miami's long criminal history

visible from space.

Pablo Escobar, Al Capone.

The city has always had kind of

a love-hate relationship with these types of characters.

Miami and its residents will never admit it,

but a lot of their economy

is based on these types of businesses.

NARRATOR: Coming up, the volcanic tomb.

We're basically combining multiple natural disasters

into one here.

NARRATOR: High above the South Pacific,

an Earth observation satellite

scans the island of New Britain.

As it passes along its northern coast,

it spots something strange.

We're seeing a town, fairly ordinary things --

roads, buildings.

But then over on the edge of town is this area that

has roads but nothing else.

NARRATOR: The ruined town is called Rabaul and was

once known as the Jewel of the Pacific.

Parts of the road seem to have been buried,

roofs are collapsed.

It's almost as if all

the people have been erased from existence.

There's something a little post-apocalyptic

about the whole thing.

NARRATOR: A clue to the devastation

revealed from space could lie

in this island's turbulent World War II history.

During the conflict, its deep harbor

and strategic position means it

plays a key role in the battle for control of the Pacific.

KOUROUNIS: It makes sense that everybody was trying

to get a piece of this island.

It was a great staging point for

any of the navies, both Axis or Allies.

NARRATOR: In January 1942,

a month after attacking Pearl harbor,

Japan seizes control of the island and begins

transforming it into the most heavily defended in the region.

RUBEN: They built barracks and bunkers.

They very quickly and massively expanded this whole area.

This was a prime target for the American forces.

NARRATOR: A year later, they learned that

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto,

the architect of the attack on Hawaii, is on Rabaul.

RUBEN: The U.S. intercepted coded transmissions

about General Yamamoto's schedule and itinerary,

and the opportunity was too good for them to pass up.

NARRATOR: On April 18, the admiral takes off

from Rabaul to visit a neighboring island

and is taken out of the air by American fighter planes.

RUBEN: It was a huge boost to American morale to

finally get some payback for the tragedy of Pearl Harbor.

NARRATOR: However, geological records reveal

the wasteland visible in the image has a different origin.

It turns out that it wasn't

war that destroyed this area at all.

It was nature.

NARRATOR: Rabaul sits in the shadow of not one but two

stratovolcanoes,

conical peaks known for their explosive eruptions.

We know that the island was volcanic in the past,

but what unfortunately the residents of this island

discovered is, it's still volcanic today.

NARRATOR: In 1994, both volcanoes

wake from their long slumber.

DENNIE: Imagine yourself in Rabaul,

and these two volcanoes explode simultaneously.

It must have been terrifying.

The residents would have experienced something akin

to what people in Pompeii or Herculaneum experienced.

NARRATOR: Giant superheated clouds of ash fall onto

the town in layers up to six feet thick.

But for the people of Rabaul, the worst is yet to come.

Mother Nature decided to add insult to injury

by having a massive thunderstorm

take place afterwards.

That thunderstorm, of course, put an immense

amount of water down on the volcanic ash.

NARRATOR: The rain and ash combine to form a kind of muddy

volcanic tsunami,

which consumes everything in its path.

You get these volcanic mudslides called lahars,

and think of them as swift-moving

rivers of concrete and rock that can come barreling down

the side of the mountain.

We're basically combining multiple

natural disasters into one here.

NARRATOR: Meteorological records reveal

that when the ash cloud erupts,

gusts of wind force it towards Rabaul, sparing the neighboring

town and its inhabitants from volcanic annihilation.

They escaped relatively unharmed, mainly because

the prevailing winds carried all

the ash in a different direction.

NARRATOR: Today, the people of Rabaul

continue to rebuild their homes

in the shadow of the volcano that could yet destroy

their lives once again.

Tens of thousands of people continue to

live there, in the volcano danger zone.

It seems the Jewel of the Pacific

is just too tempting to abandon to nature.