All language subtitles for Abandoned.Engineering.S07E02.Stalins.Subway.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

A toxic facility in the British
countryside off the beaten track.

They're far from any
urban centre workforce.

They're making
something so dangerous,

they want it far away
from other people.

A deceptively
alluring ruin in Malta.

Nobody wanted to be here,

and there was always the risk
that you'd never make it out alive.

A Ukrainian city littered with
strange concrete remains.

It was top-secret.

Even saying the word 'tunnel'

would be enough to
get you sent to the gulag.

And the site of a biblical disaster
in the valleys of Pennsylvania.

The local mill owner started to
say that this was never going to fail,

and he was lying
through his teeth.

Decaying relics,
ruins of lost worlds...

..Sites haunted by the past...

..Their secrets
waiting to be revealed.

In north wales are the remains of
a secret facility now a wasteland.

This is a wild place,

and it is far from civilisation.

The surviving signage
suggests a dirty history.

North wales is a mining area
of Great Britain, but there's

nothing of the infrastructure
of mining about this place.

Would make no sense to put a
factory here without workers nearby,

so this seems to have some
classified, official purpose.

Hollowed-out buildings
in a remote location

point to a history
that's been erased.

So, you look inside these
buildings and it's very, you know,

sort of bare, austere.

Concrete walls clearly
intended to store something

or make something that was
combustible, sensitive, fragile.

You don't see
remnants of wallpaper.

This place has been
emptied systematically

and scrubbed from top to bottom.

And there's this kind
of lunatic graffiti all over

the walls of one
of the structures.

Messages from the long-departed

tease a deeper history
hidden beneath the surface.

If I know anything about the
archaeology of the abandoned,

I know that what's important
here is not these buildings.

What's important here
is what lies beneath.

Colin barber first came
here ten years ago.

'Tis a beautiful place.

I think it reminds us of
how bad things could be,

and thank goodness we never
used what was produced here.

In one building he found
strange writing on the walls.

Well, I thought
it was a graffiti,

but it's mixed up with
personal comments

and comments upon the general
state of the world at that time.

And as we look
at it more carefully,

I mean, i'm not great
at math but these

are clearly mathematical equations,
formula of a very advanced nature.

Well, this here is
magnesium carbonate.

The one below that
is sodium chromate.

This might have had some
military lineage because,

you know, classification
was so strict.

They would tell
scientists often,

"you can't write these
things down on paper

'cause the paper
could go astray.

We'll write it on the wall.
We can police up the walls.

We can't police up every
scrap of paper and wastebasket."

Secrecy was Paramount,

because here they were working
on a deadly chemical - mustard gas.

Used in the first world war
to clear out enemy trenches,

this weapon was a
toxic sulphur compound.

Mustard gas has nothing to do
with mustard and it's not a gas.

It is sprayed into
the air as a mist.

And if you get it on your skin,

or god forbid you
get it in your lungs,

it causes blisters
wherever it goes -

blisters, burning and pain.

Mustard gas killed 90,000
soldiers in the first world war.

This was the beginning of
large-scale chemical warfare.

Mustard gas was definitely
one of the most horrific weapons

of the first world war - so
horrific that people talked about

banning its use after the war.

But they were also viewed
by the government in the 1930s

as an essential part of British
deterrence, so they manufactured

a lot of mustard gas in the
interwar period to be prepared

in case they needed
it in world war ii.

Well, they built these
tunnels because in 1939,

when the first factory came
online, they were producing

216 tonnes a week and they
only had storage for 100 tonnes.

At the onset of world war ii,

the government dug
new depots underground,

safe from German bombing.

The largest was
here at the ms factory.

In these tunnels,
mainly it was storage.

65-tonne tanks were bought in
and eventually you could store

4,000 tonnes in here.

This facility was so
well hidden and so secret

that throughout the whole war
the Nazis never knew it was here.

Facilities like the ms factory

made enough mustard gas to
be used in another chemical war,

but one building on the site
had an even deadlier purpose.

This is building p6.

This place was built to
manufacture pyro mustard gas.

It transpired that, with
improvements in technique,

they didn't need this
particular building to do that.

Bred down here both sides
were the offices of all of

the scientists, the chemists.

Nobody could come into here
unless they passed the guard.

Here they began work on a new weapon
that would be infinitely more lethal.

You think mustard
gas is dangerous.

Building p6 is a facility
for making u-235,

enriched uranium -

the stuff you use to
build atom bombs.

Behind the scenes during
the second world war,

scientists on both
sides were in a race

to build a
thermonuclear warhead.

Whoever could build the atom
bomb first would likely win the war.

But both sides were
missing a key ingredient.

At the beginning of
the second world war

we were looking
at a way to remove

the isotope uranium-235
from uranium-238,

because this substance was
essential in the manufacture

of any atomic bombs.

That was the bit that
made you go 'bang'.

To make that bang they needed
nearly 15kg of radioactive material,

an impossible-sounding task.

But here in building p6
they tested a new process.

By heating uranium and
putting it through a filter,

it would become enriched.

It was a discovery that
transformed nuclear science.

Here in north wales

the allies achieve something that
no-one had ever achieved before.

They're able to produce
enriched uranium with u-235

on an industrial scale.

In less than four years the
Manhattan project tested

its first nuclear bomb, and a month
later two were dropped on Japan.

The second world war ended
with a chilling glimpse of the future.

Nuclear weapons ended the
second world war quickly, and if

it'd been necessary they'd have
been used to end the war in Europe too.

At the close of the
second world war,

the ms factory was decommissioned
and its materials were disposed of.

Everybody now
appreciates the importance

of the use of the atomic bombs.

It is the thing which
has defined our lives,

and to think that it's happened
here in a little Welsh village,

I think most of 'em were
very impressed with that.

On the island of Malta,

in the calm waters
surrounding the capital valetta,

lies a marooned site
with hidden depths.

This building sits
right on the waterfront,

catching the sunshine.

And in many ways it looks
like an idyllic place to be.

But parts of it are
in real disrepair.

It's overgrown in places,

and on the stairs this
creeping plant has taken over.

The balconies look like they
could collapse at any minute.

The walls here are covered in

carvings, names,
dates, pictures.

There's hundreds of years of
history etched into the stone.

As inviting as it may
have first appeared,

the true nature of
the site is obscured.

Those rooms upstairs
are light and breezy.

It feels like it had an air of
luxury about it back in the day.

It looks like it could be a
palace or a rich person's home,

but it's something
far, far different.

On the surface, this place seems
to have been one thing for most of

its life, but if you then take
a walk behind the staircase,

something surprising
creeps up on you.

Carved from the rock behind
is an entrance to an underworld.

Some of these tunnels are
very small, very claustrophobic,

and the further you go in, you
get to these dungeon-like spaces

and these rooms full
of rusting equipment.

You start to wonder what
was really going on here.

Travelling from afar, the first
arrivals to this mediterranean site

landed here in 1643.

They found themselves
lined up outside the doors

of the main building, later
referred to as the old palace.

Alex torpiano is an architect who
worked for the firm that manages it.

This is the courtyard of the
oldest palace of the complex.

People would arrive from
the ships through this entrance.

Their goods would be
taken to the two warehouses

on either side or at the back,

and they would go up this grand
staircase to their living quarters.

Once you're bought into here,
there's no way you can get out of

this place before a set
period of time is over.

The elaborate design
with its grand courtyards,

large rooms and
breathtaking views

immediately makes clear
this was no ordinary prison.

The people staying here
weren't necessarily the kind

that you would normally lock up.

There had to be a reason
why they were being isolated,

even in these relatively
nice conditions.

This is the first floor of
the 17th century building.

These are the accommodation,

the living quarters of the
people confined in this building.

Nice, airy, high ceilings,

well ventilated, well lit.

Not a poor place to be confined.

But despite the visitors' wealth
and status, the locals still had

reason to fear them and locked
them inside under armed guard.

The people who were confined here
were not confined because they were

criminals but because they
were travelling to Malta from other

countries in the mediterranean,
and they needed to be isolated

from the population just to
make sure that they didn't

carry diseases and wouldn't
spread and affect the population.

This is the lazzaretto,

Malta's first line of defence
against plague and pestilence.

We've seen recently just how
quickly infection can spread.

Even in the modern
world it's extremely difficult,

if not impossible, to
control an outbreak.

Back then people didn't
even know that cleanliness

helped keep you safe.

The only measure they knew
about was to quarantine people,

to isolate them from
the rest of the population.

You quarantine
the people upstairs

and you quarantine
the goods downstairs.

Throughout the middle ages, a
number of outbreaks of disease at ports

led to deadly pandemics sweeping
across Europe and beyond.

The worst of these,
the black death,

had struck three centuries
before this place was built.

It killed as many as 75
million people across the world.

The island itself had been
used as a quarantine site

for more than 100 years
before they built this structure.

But they needed something a
bit more secure as time went on,

and that's why they
started to build this facility.

One of the reasons this place is
so large is, once you were there,

the quarantine, the isolation
was absolutely unbreakable.

Derived from the Italian
word for the number 40,

a quarantine typically
lasted 40 days -

enough time to see if
any symptoms appeared.

People didn't really understand
what caused infections and how

it spread, but I think
fairly early on they decided

that perhaps the best thing to
do is to isolate whoever was sick.

Quarantine was slightly different in
the sense that people who are not -

or you didn't know that they
were sick, they could be sick,

so they were kept in a
period to see whether the signs

of the plague would come
out within that 40-day period.

There were guards that making
sure that people did not go in or out.

Effectively death penalty
if you broke that rule.

No matter your status
or level of wealth,

enduring the isolation
period was par for the course

for all those wishing
to set foot in Malta.

If you had 40 days to kill, this
wasn't the worst place to be.

I mean, you had the
views and the sunshine,

you had plenty of company.

It's almost like
a holiday retreat

but with the hazard of a
potentially deadly disease.

Many centuries worth of
visitors were locked inside here,

and their presence
is still evident.

What's amazing about this
place, though, is that its history is

carved into the walls
of the building, literally.

On either side of the living
areas there were these terraces,

which the people could
use to while away the time

with the view of the sea
and of valetta and the sun,

and many of them
left a Mark on the walls.

Among the countless
numbers quarantined here

was a famous novelist, a future
prime minister of the United Kingdom

and the scandalous
romantic poet lord Byron.

Here we have what is
attributed to be lord Byron's graffiti

when he was here.

Difficult to read but experts
tell us that that is what it is.

The graffiti Mark the history
of the people who came here,

and some of them
wrote their story.

There's one who talks about
coming from constantinople,

the other one etched
the ship that he was on.

Me, it's four beautiful walls
which contain all these stories

which need to be deciphered.

But away from the
sunshine and sea views

lurks a far darker secret.

What about these other
areas - not the nice areas

for holding wealthy travellers
but these darker areas,

the more claustrophobic
ones, the hidden spaces?

If the people were being locked
up in the nice part of this site,

then what exactly was
going on back there?

The lazzaretto was repurposed

to guard Malta against
a very different threat.

Now, the island had been
important for centuries

'cause it's at a strategic
position in the mediterranean,

but in world war ii it
became even more important.

So this was a nerve centre
of operations of submarines

in the mediterranean with
the royal Navy for the allies,

so this was a very
important place.

In 1940 Italy joined forces
with Nazi Germany, and soon

the axis powers will dominate more
than just the mediterranean waters.

Malta under British rule was to
become a Thorn in the enemy's side,

and the lazzaretto itself
was drawn into battle.

So this is the heart of
the submarine depot.

A submarine depot
means basically two things -

one is the control
of operations,

so it's a communications centre
for submarines, and the second,

you were supposed to have
somewhere where submarines could refuel

from the oil tanks that were
stored underground as well.

This place was all about repairing
and refuelling the submarines,

getting them ready to be sent back
out on patrol in the mediterranean.

The two sides used submarines
very extensively to attack

especially supply ships and
also, of course, the battleships.

The battle of the submarines
in the mediterranean, I think,

was crucial in the
way the war developed.

The above-ground buildings
were requisitioned for operations,

but on their own
they weren't enough.

If the allies are gonna use this
as a staging point, that's also going

to make Malta one big target.

If you're gonna
put facilities here,

they have to be facilities that can
withstand a heavy bombardment.

During the war, Malta
suffered 3,343 air raids.

Use of this underground complex
allowed work to continue here

despite the bombs,

but the full picture of how it all
ran is still hard to piece together.

The whole system of these rooms,

these chambers, partly to contain
equipment and power supply

and also to have habitation
for the soldiers, for the Garrison.

Difficult to understand exactly
what the purpose each room was,

because first of all we don't
find that much documentation.

Presumably all
of this was secret.

Suppose somewhere
there is an explanation.

From here allied submarines
went out in to the sea

and caused untold amount of
damage to the German and Italian navies

and their supplies.

This island was
absolutely crucial

in winning the war
in the mediterranean,

and this place
played a key role in it.

Despite the war
damage, the site was

used as an infectious diseases
hospital for the next 30 years.

But once vacated, neglect, vandalism
and time each had their way with it.

Today the stunning architecture
on display here is now the focus of a

major restoration project

hoping to return the
buildings to their former glory.

It's a unique building, and
it should find its place again

in the glory in the
middle of this harbour.

I think it's a place where we could
learn the very complicated history

of this place, which reflects
the history of the island.

In rural Pennsylvania lies a forest
valley and a trail of destruction.

Across the valley you can
see these jagged structures -

very well weathered, torn apart.

Whatever somebody did here
was some mass industrial process,

somewhere in the back woods of the
allegheny mountains of Pennsylvania.

They're almost completely
subsumed by mother nature.

They're overgrown.

They've been clearly
there for some time

and not been used
for a long while.

Following the trail north is
another piece of the puzzle -

the remains of a wall.

They were once
in some sort of line,

but they're misaligned and
almost like a sort of dominos in -

that have fallen
in funny shapes.

It could be one of the hundreds
of dams that we see in the runs

and streams of Pennsylvania.

But if this was a dam,

what smashed it to pieces?

At the bottom of the valley
is the quiet town of Austin,

but it wasn't always this way.

Alvie fourness grew up
a few miles from here.

110 years ago this town had a
population of about 3,000 people.

This would have been a very busy
town, all types of businesses here.

There would be
schools and hospitals,

a movie theatres, restaurants.

Back in the early 1900s,
Austin was a boom town.

Like many prosperous
settlements,

there were opportunities here for
a few less respectable enterprises.

One of our most famous citizens
at the time was Cora Brooks,

who had a boarding house
located about 2 miles north of here -

a brothel sort of environment
probably, although those type

of things were very illegal.

Cora was somewhat an
outcast in the community.

But while Cora Brooks' establishment
was frowned upon by many,

in time she would become
a sort of saviour of the town.

First, though, Austin had
to weather another storm

that threatened to make
this boom town go bust.

I mean, this region
was famous for its trees,

and so the lumber
market was a big thing.

But soon enough, too
many people working,

the place was
effectively deforested,

and the bottom had fallen
out of the lumber market.

But one entrepreneur
found a way to make money.

His name was George bayless,

and here he built
the bayless paper mill.

Bayless's paper mill was
a huge, huge complex.

It took the raw material, all
the wood, turned it into pulp,

cleaned it, dried it and
then made it into paper.

A massive operation

with specialised buildings
spreading out across the valley.

The pulp product would
come into this area,

be placed in these
digestors or vats.

Certain chemical
processes were occurring,

give the final pulp product.

The mill produced almost
500 tonnes of paper a week.

But something on this scale
needs reliable, cheap power source.

1900, water is the key to that.

To power the mill, bayless
commissioned this - the Austin dam.

The first dam was
just an earth-built one,

and that absolutely worked, and
it showed what could be achieved.

And then of course
the factory got bigger,

the demand for power got bigger,

and you're gonna
need a bigger reservoir,

and a bigger dam
to hold it back.

To upscale the enterprise,

the factory owner hired an
engineer to draw up a design.

It was gonna take 43,000
cubic feet of concrete

and a dam that was 50 feet high.

This was gonna be an
epic engineering feat,

but it was also
gonna be expensive.

Bayless commissioned the
biggest gravity dam in Pennsylvania.

A clear problem building a
dam in any valley, and particularly

in these types of valleys, where
you've got vegetation and a soil,

is the problem of the soil being
eroded in and around the valley.

The gravity dam
relies on weight.

32,000 tonnes of concrete
resisted the push of the water,

but underneath
was ordinary soil,

which water could
pass right through.

I mean, if you think about it, if
you build a swimming pool at home,

you don't just dig a hole in
the ground and pour water in,

because it'll seep through.

And that's kinda like the
problem they've got here,

but it's on a much bigger scale.

If water can get underneath,
gravity wouldn't be enough to

hold back the reservoir
and the dam would fail.

So the engineer designed
a safety mechanism -

an underground wall to prevent
water getting under the dam.

In December 1909,

the Austin dam was completed
but something wasn't right.

It became obvious early on that
the dam would be troublesome.

Water was seeping
up out of the ground,

and also there was cracks
developing in the structure itself.

The townsfolk had called it
the dam that could not break,

but fate would prove them
wrong on the worst possible day.

September 30,
1911, is the key date.

The town was celebrating
polling day. Everybody was out.

It was very, very busy.

A week of rainstorms bought
unprecedented amounts of water

into the valley.

The reservoir at that point
was really high as well,

just 2 foot below
the overspill level.

That's incredibly full.

And at that point
catastrophe happened.

The structure over here
moved more or less like a door.

It swung open and allowed
the water to start gushing out.

The wall behind me
also slid about 50 feet.

A torrent of water came
crashing down the valley,

destroying
everything in its path.

When the water came
gushing down the valley,

the first thing it hit
was the paper mill.

It came crashing
through, destroying,

entering almost every room.

And it gathered up
everything in its path,

including all the raw
material, all the tree trunks,

and then it headed downstream
towards the town of Austin.

The east side of the town
got hit worst due to the slope

of the valley, pushed the
wave more in that direction.

And the scene was of
almost sheer devastation.

Almost every building
was submerged.

You could just see the
steeple of the church.

That was the only thing

that you would have recognised
that there was a town there.

In 15 minutes the town turned
from celebration to disaster area.

Almost no-one saw it coming.

Bayless was determined to
get his new, expanded paper mill

up and working, and if that
meant he had to cut a corner,

that's what he did.

The underground wall
designed to protect the dam

was deemed too expensive.

Bayless ordered the
engineer to scrap it,

turning it in to a
ticking time bomb.

The dam is built on the cheap.

It's built to take the
minimum amount of money

to hold back the
maximum amount of water.

The local mill owner started
to say that this is a dam

that was never going to fail,
and he was lying through his teeth.

3,000 residents were in
the town when the water hit,

but the people of Austin had
an unlikely guardian angel.

Luckily the alarm had been raised
by, of all people, Cara Brooks.

The outcast brothel
owner saw the flood coming

and she warned the town,
saving thousands of lives.

The phone call allowed the
people of Austin 15 minutes' warning.

And the town below,

out of that town of 3,000
only 78 die in the disaster.

The history of that flood
is preserved in the Austin

dam memorial park.

In the early 20th century, anybody
could build a dam in Pennsylvania.

There was no regulation, there
was no inspection, and that was

what led to a poorly designed
dam smashing the very people,

the very town it had
been designed to power.

A tragedy like the Austin dam,

like many sort of tragedies
that involve humans,

is there's often a mistake that's
made or a decision that's made

that ends up
leading to something

that you didn't necessarily
predict was going to happen.

And that's exactly
the case in Austin.

Just cutting a few corners,

or not doing the right
engineering mitigation

to stop something
like this happening,

ultimately led to the
destruction of the dam

and to the loss of life.

Today construction is held
to a strict engineering code,

perhaps the greatest legacy
of the Austin dam disaster.

In Ukraine's capital city, Kiev,

a concrete monolith stands
at odds with its surroundings.

As you wander around Kiev, you
can start to see some strange things.

I mean, there's this one
example - can only be described

as like a submarine in a park.

You can actually
walk inside of it

and then you can see
how truly enormous it is.

It's 50m long, 15m across.

The walls are incredibly thick.

My first thought is it's gotta
be a typical example of,

you know, eastern
European Soviet-era kitsch,

but then on the other hand,

if it was kitsch, it would prettier,
you know, it would be painted up,

it would look more
like a submarine.

It must have been
built where it is.

It must have been built for a
purpose, but what could that be?

This object sits on
the bank of the dnieper,

the largest river in Ukraine.

The dnieper is a big, slow-moving,
shallow river, swampy in spots,

and divides the city of Kiev
almost right down the middle.

A larger piece of the
puzzle sits on those swamps.

You can see this weird, kind of
snake-like concrete construction,

which seems to be sinking down
into a swamp. What's that for?

Two sites 11 miles apart
are both clues to one of

the greatest engineering
secrets behind the iron curtain.

Local historian valery lysenko

has been coming to Kiev's
natalka park since he was a child.

Translation: Back then you
couldn't even ask about it.

What was a state secret half a
century ago is now being uncovered.

The locals gave it many
names. Some call it a train.

Some call it a submarine. The most
accurate name would be a caisson.

But not many people
understand what the word means.

The story here
begins 80 years ago

with the river that
runs through the city.

Across this river you have eight
Bridges, and as you can imagine,

these are essential for
keeping goods and people

moving back and
forth across the river.

But 80 years ago they were
recognised as a huge problem.

In 1920, Kiev faced an invasion.

The Poles attacked and took
over Ukraine and captured Kiev.

The red army drove them
out after just a few weeks,

but it made Lenin and
the other Soviet leaders

realise how vulnerable
this area was.

Translation: What did the
Polish army do before the retreat?

The obvious thing - they
destroyed all the Bridges,

the large ones
across the dnieper.

Kiev's Bridges were rebuilt,

but the battle taught them a
valuable lesson for the future.

One thing they'd learned is
that Bridges were very vulnerable.

What if an enemy air force came in
and knocked out these eight Bridges?

They would be helpless.

There'd be no way to
get supplies or troops

back and forth across the river.

They needed a better system.

To protect the city, the Soviets
began work on a secret weapon.

Translation: There are many local
legends that surround this place.

Some say that there's a
train hidden inside the tunnel.

Others claim that the water
doesn't freeze inside the tunnel

because of the radioactivity.

The official name of this
structure was object 1,

but to the people of Kiev
it goes by a different name.

Translation: People call
this place Stalin's subway.

Kiev had learned the hard way

that if an enemy destroyed its
Bridges there was no way to get

supplies across the dnieper.

So here in the swamp
they began digging a tunnel

that would run
underneath the river.

They're gonna be railway tunnels,
but they're gonna have steel plates

that can be lowered into place over
the railway tracks to accommodate

vehicle traffic as well.

Around 1938, construction
started in secret.

Translation: The Soviet union
was obsessed with secrecy.

They liked to hide everything.

Stalin decrees that if
any of these 2,000, 5,000,

10,000, eventually 12,000
workers enlisted in these sites

ever even breath the word 'tunnel'
they'll get ten years in the gulag.

But digging from one side of
the river to the other was too slow.

In the 1930s, Europe was on
the brink of another world war.

Kiev faced invasion again.

To speed up the dig
they used caissons.

80 years ago this
park was a wetland.

The caisson was
constructed on the surface.

And then they would
use high-pressure hoses

to remove the soft
sediment beneath,

thus sinking that tunnel into
the ground beneath the river.

A column of concrete
rings would be built,

creating a pressurised chamber

in which the engineers could
beginning digging in both directions.

Translation: And so this tube,

when it was lowered
to the relevant depth,

they constructed the so-called
manual tunnel-boring machine.

Now it's done mechanically, but
back then it was done manually.

It was a metallic construction
which allowed them to move forwards.

The Soviets hoped this
would turbocharge the dig,

but by August 1941
they had run out of time.

The enemy was at the gates.

Believing they could
hold off the German army,

Soviet top brass ordered
the workers to keep digging,

but the Nazi force
was overwhelming

and Kiev's Bridges
were destroyed again.

They branched south
to try to take Kiev,

'cause it's such a big prize
and it's such a big population.

And they bagged
650,000 red army troops -

one of the greatest
military victories of all time.

When Kiev fell, work on
the tunnels finally stopped.

It's believed that maybe
they got 10% of it done

before the war intervened
and they had to stop.

Translation: They were afraid
to talk about it even years after.

There is a high possibility that
all the prisoners who worked here

were later exterminated.

Attempts were made to restart
the construction, but in 1949

the tunnels were abandoned
and the project covered up.

Translation: Many years after the
war, the subway was built in Kiev.

When this area was no longer
restricted for the people and

they were curious
as to what it was,

only then the newspapers
started writing about it openly.

Captioned by
ai-media ai-media. TV