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These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:03,080 --> 00:00:07,720 A toxic facility in the British countryside off the beaten track. 2 00:00:09,280 --> 00:00:12,760 They're far from any urban centre workforce. 3 00:00:12,800 --> 00:00:14,920 They're making something so dangerous, 4 00:00:14,960 --> 00:00:16,680 they want it far away from other people. 5 00:00:19,880 --> 00:00:23,000 A deceptively alluring ruin in Malta. 6 00:00:23,040 --> 00:00:25,120 Nobody wanted to be here, 7 00:00:25,160 --> 00:00:29,160 and there was always the risk that you'd never make it out alive. 8 00:00:30,920 --> 00:00:35,440 A Ukrainian city littered with strange concrete remains. 9 00:00:35,480 --> 00:00:37,080 It was top-secret. 10 00:00:37,120 --> 00:00:39,600 Even saying the word 'tunnel' 11 00:00:39,640 --> 00:00:41,880 would be enough to get you sent to the gulag. 12 00:00:43,680 --> 00:00:48,080 And the site of a biblical disaster in the valleys of Pennsylvania. 13 00:00:49,640 --> 00:00:53,600 The local mill owner started to say that this was never going to fail, 14 00:00:53,640 --> 00:00:55,760 and he was lying through his teeth. 15 00:01:00,440 --> 00:01:06,960 Decaying relics, ruins of lost worlds... 16 00:01:10,160 --> 00:01:12,280 ..Sites haunted by the past... 17 00:01:15,880 --> 00:01:19,080 ..Their secrets waiting to be revealed. 18 00:01:32,840 --> 00:01:38,960 In north wales are the remains of a secret facility now a wasteland. 19 00:01:43,120 --> 00:01:45,360 This is a wild place, 20 00:01:47,080 --> 00:01:50,960 and it is far from civilisation. 21 00:01:53,080 --> 00:01:56,920 The surviving signage suggests a dirty history. 22 00:01:57,960 --> 00:02:04,160 North wales is a mining area of Great Britain, but there's 23 00:02:04,200 --> 00:02:07,840 nothing of the infrastructure of mining about this place. 24 00:02:09,240 --> 00:02:12,440 Would make no sense to put a factory here without workers nearby, 25 00:02:12,480 --> 00:02:17,160 so this seems to have some classified, official purpose. 26 00:02:21,400 --> 00:02:24,120 Hollowed-out buildings in a remote location 27 00:02:24,160 --> 00:02:26,640 point to a history that's been erased. 28 00:02:30,520 --> 00:02:32,376 So, you look inside these buildings and it's very, you know, 29 00:02:32,400 --> 00:02:35,080 sort of bare, austere. 30 00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:37,760 Concrete walls clearly intended to store something 31 00:02:37,800 --> 00:02:42,520 or make something that was combustible, sensitive, fragile. 32 00:02:46,240 --> 00:02:50,040 You don't see remnants of wallpaper. 33 00:02:52,520 --> 00:02:55,360 This place has been emptied systematically 34 00:02:55,400 --> 00:02:57,920 and scrubbed from top to bottom. 35 00:02:59,320 --> 00:03:02,720 And there's this kind of lunatic graffiti all over 36 00:03:02,760 --> 00:03:04,960 the walls of one of the structures. 37 00:03:07,920 --> 00:03:09,760 Messages from the long-departed 38 00:03:09,800 --> 00:03:13,320 tease a deeper history hidden beneath the surface. 39 00:03:16,440 --> 00:03:20,800 If I know anything about the archaeology of the abandoned, 40 00:03:20,840 --> 00:03:25,560 I know that what's important here is not these buildings. 41 00:03:25,600 --> 00:03:28,960 What's important here is what lies beneath. 42 00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:40,360 Colin barber first came here ten years ago. 43 00:03:42,280 --> 00:03:43,800 'Tis a beautiful place. 44 00:03:43,840 --> 00:03:47,760 I think it reminds us of how bad things could be, 45 00:03:47,800 --> 00:03:51,160 and thank goodness we never used what was produced here. 46 00:03:53,600 --> 00:03:57,280 In one building he found strange writing on the walls. 47 00:03:59,080 --> 00:04:01,320 Well, I thought it was a graffiti, 48 00:04:01,360 --> 00:04:05,160 but it's mixed up with personal comments 49 00:04:05,200 --> 00:04:09,120 and comments upon the general state of the world at that time. 50 00:04:09,160 --> 00:04:12,200 And as we look at it more carefully, 51 00:04:12,240 --> 00:04:13,736 I mean, i'm not great at math but these 52 00:04:13,760 --> 00:04:19,160 are clearly mathematical equations, formula of a very advanced nature. 53 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:24,320 Well, this here is magnesium carbonate. 54 00:04:24,360 --> 00:04:28,800 The one below that is sodium chromate. 55 00:04:30,360 --> 00:04:33,920 This might have had some military lineage because, 56 00:04:33,960 --> 00:04:36,480 you know, classification was so strict. 57 00:04:36,520 --> 00:04:38,600 They would tell scientists often, 58 00:04:38,640 --> 00:04:40,640 "you can't write these things down on paper 59 00:04:40,680 --> 00:04:42,200 'cause the paper could go astray. 60 00:04:42,240 --> 00:04:44,680 We'll write it on the wall. We can police up the walls. 61 00:04:44,720 --> 00:04:48,400 We can't police up every scrap of paper and wastebasket." 62 00:04:50,480 --> 00:04:52,400 Secrecy was Paramount, 63 00:04:52,440 --> 00:04:57,600 because here they were working on a deadly chemical - mustard gas. 64 00:05:01,640 --> 00:05:05,600 Used in the first world war to clear out enemy trenches, 65 00:05:05,640 --> 00:05:09,000 this weapon was a toxic sulphur compound. 66 00:05:12,280 --> 00:05:17,280 Mustard gas has nothing to do with mustard and it's not a gas. 67 00:05:17,320 --> 00:05:22,240 It is sprayed into the air as a mist. 68 00:05:23,480 --> 00:05:25,800 And if you get it on your skin, 69 00:05:25,840 --> 00:05:28,600 or god forbid you get it in your lungs, 70 00:05:28,640 --> 00:05:31,560 it causes blisters wherever it goes - 71 00:05:31,600 --> 00:05:35,040 blisters, burning and pain. 72 00:05:39,120 --> 00:05:43,400 Mustard gas killed 90,000 soldiers in the first world war. 73 00:05:45,680 --> 00:05:49,520 This was the beginning of large-scale chemical warfare. 74 00:05:51,840 --> 00:05:56,040 Mustard gas was definitely one of the most horrific weapons 75 00:05:56,080 --> 00:05:58,920 of the first world war - so horrific that people talked about 76 00:05:58,960 --> 00:06:00,680 banning its use after the war. 77 00:06:00,720 --> 00:06:04,480 But they were also viewed by the government in the 1930s 78 00:06:04,520 --> 00:06:07,440 as an essential part of British deterrence, so they manufactured 79 00:06:07,480 --> 00:06:11,320 a lot of mustard gas in the interwar period to be prepared 80 00:06:11,360 --> 00:06:13,160 in case they needed it in world war ii. 81 00:06:14,720 --> 00:06:18,080 Well, they built these tunnels because in 1939, 82 00:06:18,120 --> 00:06:21,400 when the first factory came online, they were producing 83 00:06:21,440 --> 00:06:25,840 216 tonnes a week and they only had storage for 100 tonnes. 84 00:06:28,600 --> 00:06:31,040 At the onset of world war ii, 85 00:06:31,080 --> 00:06:33,960 the government dug new depots underground, 86 00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:36,760 safe from German bombing. 87 00:06:40,040 --> 00:06:43,760 The largest was here at the ms factory. 88 00:06:48,480 --> 00:06:51,800 In these tunnels, mainly it was storage. 89 00:06:51,840 --> 00:06:55,640 65-tonne tanks were bought in and eventually you could store 90 00:06:55,680 --> 00:06:57,920 4,000 tonnes in here. 91 00:07:00,680 --> 00:07:05,960 This facility was so well hidden and so secret 92 00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:11,520 that throughout the whole war the Nazis never knew it was here. 93 00:07:13,080 --> 00:07:16,320 Facilities like the ms factory 94 00:07:16,360 --> 00:07:21,840 made enough mustard gas to be used in another chemical war, 95 00:07:21,880 --> 00:07:26,920 but one building on the site had an even deadlier purpose. 96 00:07:30,200 --> 00:07:33,000 This is building p6. 97 00:07:33,040 --> 00:07:37,800 This place was built to manufacture pyro mustard gas. 98 00:07:37,840 --> 00:07:41,320 It transpired that, with improvements in technique, 99 00:07:41,360 --> 00:07:44,680 they didn't need this particular building to do that. 100 00:07:46,240 --> 00:07:51,960 Bred down here both sides were the offices of all of 101 00:07:52,000 --> 00:07:55,160 the scientists, the chemists. 102 00:07:55,200 --> 00:07:59,080 Nobody could come into here unless they passed the guard. 103 00:08:04,200 --> 00:08:09,160 Here they began work on a new weapon that would be infinitely more lethal. 104 00:08:11,520 --> 00:08:14,000 You think mustard gas is dangerous. 105 00:08:14,040 --> 00:08:19,600 Building p6 is a facility for making u-235, 106 00:08:19,640 --> 00:08:21,360 enriched uranium - 107 00:08:21,400 --> 00:08:26,200 the stuff you use to build atom bombs. 108 00:08:28,680 --> 00:08:31,400 Behind the scenes during the second world war, 109 00:08:31,440 --> 00:08:34,080 scientists on both sides were in a race 110 00:08:34,120 --> 00:08:36,320 to build a thermonuclear warhead. 111 00:08:36,360 --> 00:08:41,960 Whoever could build the atom bomb first would likely win the war. 112 00:08:42,000 --> 00:08:45,280 But both sides were missing a key ingredient. 113 00:08:47,040 --> 00:08:50,160 At the beginning of the second world war 114 00:08:50,200 --> 00:08:53,680 we were looking at a way to remove 115 00:08:53,720 --> 00:08:59,600 the isotope uranium-235 from uranium-238, 116 00:08:59,640 --> 00:09:03,600 because this substance was essential in the manufacture 117 00:09:03,640 --> 00:09:05,520 of any atomic bombs. 118 00:09:05,560 --> 00:09:08,520 That was the bit that made you go 'bang'. 119 00:09:11,400 --> 00:09:17,360 To make that bang they needed nearly 15kg of radioactive material, 120 00:09:17,400 --> 00:09:20,520 an impossible-sounding task. 121 00:09:20,560 --> 00:09:25,880 But here in building p6 they tested a new process. 122 00:09:27,440 --> 00:09:30,760 By heating uranium and putting it through a filter, 123 00:09:30,800 --> 00:09:32,520 it would become enriched. 124 00:09:34,440 --> 00:09:38,200 It was a discovery that transformed nuclear science. 125 00:09:39,760 --> 00:09:41,880 Here in north wales 126 00:09:41,920 --> 00:09:46,200 the allies achieve something that no-one had ever achieved before. 127 00:09:46,240 --> 00:09:51,720 They're able to produce enriched uranium with u-235 128 00:09:51,760 --> 00:09:54,120 on an industrial scale. 129 00:09:56,000 --> 00:09:59,840 In less than four years the Manhattan project tested 130 00:09:59,880 --> 00:10:04,920 its first nuclear bomb, and a month later two were dropped on Japan. 131 00:10:06,480 --> 00:10:10,920 The second world war ended with a chilling glimpse of the future. 132 00:10:13,560 --> 00:10:18,320 Nuclear weapons ended the second world war quickly, and if 133 00:10:18,360 --> 00:10:22,360 it'd been necessary they'd have been used to end the war in Europe too. 134 00:10:27,960 --> 00:10:30,440 At the close of the second world war, 135 00:10:30,480 --> 00:10:35,400 the ms factory was decommissioned and its materials were disposed of. 136 00:10:36,960 --> 00:10:40,480 Everybody now appreciates the importance 137 00:10:40,520 --> 00:10:42,600 of the use of the atomic bombs. 138 00:10:42,640 --> 00:10:45,640 It is the thing which has defined our lives, 139 00:10:45,680 --> 00:10:50,880 and to think that it's happened here in a little Welsh village, 140 00:10:50,920 --> 00:10:54,240 I think most of 'em were very impressed with that. 141 00:11:01,120 --> 00:11:04,160 On the island of Malta, 142 00:11:04,200 --> 00:11:07,360 in the calm waters surrounding the capital valetta, 143 00:11:07,400 --> 00:11:10,680 lies a marooned site with hidden depths. 144 00:11:16,440 --> 00:11:19,880 This building sits right on the waterfront, 145 00:11:19,920 --> 00:11:21,640 catching the sunshine. 146 00:11:21,680 --> 00:11:27,440 And in many ways it looks like an idyllic place to be. 147 00:11:27,480 --> 00:11:30,840 But parts of it are in real disrepair. 148 00:11:32,400 --> 00:11:34,680 It's overgrown in places, 149 00:11:34,720 --> 00:11:38,440 and on the stairs this creeping plant has taken over. 150 00:11:40,040 --> 00:11:44,480 The balconies look like they could collapse at any minute. 151 00:11:45,360 --> 00:11:48,320 The walls here are covered in 152 00:11:48,360 --> 00:11:52,760 carvings, names, dates, pictures. 153 00:11:52,800 --> 00:11:56,960 There's hundreds of years of history etched into the stone. 154 00:11:59,320 --> 00:12:01,240 As inviting as it may have first appeared, 155 00:12:01,280 --> 00:12:04,520 the true nature of the site is obscured. 156 00:12:04,560 --> 00:12:08,160 Those rooms upstairs are light and breezy. 157 00:12:08,200 --> 00:12:12,120 It feels like it had an air of luxury about it back in the day. 158 00:12:12,160 --> 00:12:17,680 It looks like it could be a palace or a rich person's home, 159 00:12:17,720 --> 00:12:20,400 but it's something far, far different. 160 00:12:22,080 --> 00:12:26,320 On the surface, this place seems to have been one thing for most of 161 00:12:26,360 --> 00:12:31,320 its life, but if you then take a walk behind the staircase, 162 00:12:31,360 --> 00:12:34,960 something surprising creeps up on you. 163 00:12:36,320 --> 00:12:40,720 Carved from the rock behind is an entrance to an underworld. 164 00:12:42,680 --> 00:12:49,280 Some of these tunnels are very small, very claustrophobic, 165 00:12:49,320 --> 00:12:53,160 and the further you go in, you get to these dungeon-like spaces 166 00:12:53,200 --> 00:12:57,480 and these rooms full of rusting equipment. 167 00:12:57,520 --> 00:13:01,480 You start to wonder what was really going on here. 168 00:13:08,080 --> 00:13:12,840 Travelling from afar, the first arrivals to this mediterranean site 169 00:13:12,880 --> 00:13:15,360 landed here in 1643. 170 00:13:18,280 --> 00:13:21,640 They found themselves lined up outside the doors 171 00:13:21,680 --> 00:13:25,600 of the main building, later referred to as the old palace. 172 00:13:28,680 --> 00:13:34,960 Alex torpiano is an architect who worked for the firm that manages it. 173 00:13:35,000 --> 00:13:40,360 This is the courtyard of the oldest palace of the complex. 174 00:13:40,400 --> 00:13:45,560 People would arrive from the ships through this entrance. 175 00:13:45,600 --> 00:13:49,560 Their goods would be taken to the two warehouses 176 00:13:49,600 --> 00:13:51,120 on either side or at the back, 177 00:13:51,160 --> 00:13:55,680 and they would go up this grand staircase to their living quarters. 178 00:13:57,240 --> 00:14:00,360 Once you're bought into here, there's no way you can get out of 179 00:14:00,400 --> 00:14:03,720 this place before a set period of time is over. 180 00:14:05,280 --> 00:14:09,000 The elaborate design with its grand courtyards, 181 00:14:09,040 --> 00:14:12,040 large rooms and breathtaking views 182 00:14:12,080 --> 00:14:15,520 immediately makes clear this was no ordinary prison. 183 00:14:18,520 --> 00:14:21,880 The people staying here weren't necessarily the kind 184 00:14:21,920 --> 00:14:23,800 that you would normally lock up. 185 00:14:23,840 --> 00:14:27,360 There had to be a reason why they were being isolated, 186 00:14:27,400 --> 00:14:30,240 even in these relatively nice conditions. 187 00:14:32,800 --> 00:14:36,720 This is the first floor of the 17th century building. 188 00:14:36,760 --> 00:14:38,800 These are the accommodation, 189 00:14:38,840 --> 00:14:42,320 the living quarters of the people confined in this building. 190 00:14:43,440 --> 00:14:46,400 Nice, airy, high ceilings, 191 00:14:46,440 --> 00:14:49,480 well ventilated, well lit. 192 00:14:49,520 --> 00:14:52,600 Not a poor place to be confined. 193 00:14:52,640 --> 00:14:57,840 But despite the visitors' wealth and status, the locals still had 194 00:14:57,880 --> 00:15:02,080 reason to fear them and locked them inside under armed guard. 195 00:15:03,480 --> 00:15:05,856 The people who were confined here were not confined because they were 196 00:15:05,880 --> 00:15:09,320 criminals but because they were travelling to Malta from other 197 00:15:09,360 --> 00:15:12,200 countries in the mediterranean, and they needed to be isolated 198 00:15:12,240 --> 00:15:16,040 from the population just to make sure that they didn't 199 00:15:16,080 --> 00:15:20,880 carry diseases and wouldn't spread and affect the population. 200 00:15:23,040 --> 00:15:24,920 This is the lazzaretto, 201 00:15:24,960 --> 00:15:29,360 Malta's first line of defence against plague and pestilence. 202 00:15:31,280 --> 00:15:36,360 We've seen recently just how quickly infection can spread. 203 00:15:36,400 --> 00:15:39,640 Even in the modern world it's extremely difficult, 204 00:15:39,680 --> 00:15:43,200 if not impossible, to control an outbreak. 205 00:15:43,240 --> 00:15:47,000 Back then people didn't even know that cleanliness 206 00:15:47,040 --> 00:15:49,240 helped keep you safe. 207 00:15:49,280 --> 00:15:53,920 The only measure they knew about was to quarantine people, 208 00:15:53,960 --> 00:15:55,776 to isolate them from the rest of the population. 209 00:15:55,800 --> 00:15:58,320 You quarantine the people upstairs 210 00:15:58,360 --> 00:16:01,040 and you quarantine the goods downstairs. 211 00:16:02,600 --> 00:16:07,280 Throughout the middle ages, a number of outbreaks of disease at ports 212 00:16:07,320 --> 00:16:11,360 led to deadly pandemics sweeping across Europe and beyond. 213 00:16:13,040 --> 00:16:16,000 The worst of these, the black death, 214 00:16:16,040 --> 00:16:19,920 had struck three centuries before this place was built. 215 00:16:19,960 --> 00:16:24,040 It killed as many as 75 million people across the world. 216 00:16:25,640 --> 00:16:30,560 The island itself had been used as a quarantine site 217 00:16:30,600 --> 00:16:34,640 for more than 100 years before they built this structure. 218 00:16:34,680 --> 00:16:38,880 But they needed something a bit more secure as time went on, 219 00:16:38,920 --> 00:16:40,376 and that's why they started to build this facility. 220 00:16:40,400 --> 00:16:45,400 One of the reasons this place is so large is, once you were there, 221 00:16:45,440 --> 00:16:49,640 the quarantine, the isolation was absolutely unbreakable. 222 00:16:51,840 --> 00:16:55,760 Derived from the Italian word for the number 40, 223 00:16:55,800 --> 00:16:59,880 a quarantine typically lasted 40 days - 224 00:16:59,920 --> 00:17:03,120 enough time to see if any symptoms appeared. 225 00:17:04,680 --> 00:17:08,600 People didn't really understand what caused infections and how 226 00:17:08,640 --> 00:17:11,760 it spread, but I think fairly early on they decided 227 00:17:11,800 --> 00:17:15,200 that perhaps the best thing to do is to isolate whoever was sick. 228 00:17:15,240 --> 00:17:19,480 Quarantine was slightly different in the sense that people who are not - 229 00:17:19,520 --> 00:17:22,040 or you didn't know that they were sick, they could be sick, 230 00:17:22,080 --> 00:17:25,440 so they were kept in a period to see whether the signs 231 00:17:25,480 --> 00:17:29,520 of the plague would come out within that 40-day period. 232 00:17:29,560 --> 00:17:34,360 There were guards that making sure that people did not go in or out. 233 00:17:34,400 --> 00:17:39,640 Effectively death penalty if you broke that rule. 234 00:17:39,680 --> 00:17:43,240 No matter your status or level of wealth, 235 00:17:43,280 --> 00:17:46,520 enduring the isolation period was par for the course 236 00:17:46,560 --> 00:17:50,000 for all those wishing to set foot in Malta. 237 00:17:50,040 --> 00:17:54,600 If you had 40 days to kill, this wasn't the worst place to be. 238 00:17:54,640 --> 00:17:56,056 I mean, you had the views and the sunshine, 239 00:17:56,080 --> 00:17:57,840 you had plenty of company. 240 00:17:57,880 --> 00:17:59,960 It's almost like a holiday retreat 241 00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:03,800 but with the hazard of a potentially deadly disease. 242 00:18:05,400 --> 00:18:09,560 Many centuries worth of visitors were locked inside here, 243 00:18:09,600 --> 00:18:11,960 and their presence is still evident. 244 00:18:15,240 --> 00:18:18,000 What's amazing about this place, though, is that its history is 245 00:18:18,040 --> 00:18:21,720 carved into the walls of the building, literally. 246 00:18:25,960 --> 00:18:29,080 On either side of the living areas there were these terraces, 247 00:18:29,120 --> 00:18:33,600 which the people could use to while away the time 248 00:18:33,640 --> 00:18:37,280 with the view of the sea and of valetta and the sun, 249 00:18:37,320 --> 00:18:42,280 and many of them left a Mark on the walls. 250 00:18:42,320 --> 00:18:46,160 Among the countless numbers quarantined here 251 00:18:46,200 --> 00:18:50,880 was a famous novelist, a future prime minister of the United Kingdom 252 00:18:50,920 --> 00:18:55,120 and the scandalous romantic poet lord Byron. 253 00:18:57,200 --> 00:19:01,880 Here we have what is attributed to be lord Byron's graffiti 254 00:19:01,920 --> 00:19:03,120 when he was here. 255 00:19:03,160 --> 00:19:08,080 Difficult to read but experts tell us that that is what it is. 256 00:19:08,120 --> 00:19:12,840 The graffiti Mark the history of the people who came here, 257 00:19:12,880 --> 00:19:15,280 and some of them wrote their story. 258 00:19:15,320 --> 00:19:18,440 There's one who talks about coming from constantinople, 259 00:19:18,480 --> 00:19:24,160 the other one etched the ship that he was on. 260 00:19:24,200 --> 00:19:28,040 Me, it's four beautiful walls which contain all these stories 261 00:19:28,080 --> 00:19:30,400 which need to be deciphered. 262 00:19:33,960 --> 00:19:36,400 But away from the sunshine and sea views 263 00:19:36,440 --> 00:19:39,360 lurks a far darker secret. 264 00:19:41,000 --> 00:19:44,960 What about these other areas - not the nice areas 265 00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:49,120 for holding wealthy travellers but these darker areas, 266 00:19:49,160 --> 00:19:52,200 the more claustrophobic ones, the hidden spaces? 267 00:19:54,840 --> 00:19:57,680 If the people were being locked up in the nice part of this site, 268 00:19:57,720 --> 00:20:00,640 then what exactly was going on back there? 269 00:20:00,680 --> 00:20:03,560 The lazzaretto was repurposed 270 00:20:03,600 --> 00:20:07,080 to guard Malta against a very different threat. 271 00:20:07,120 --> 00:20:09,800 Now, the island had been important for centuries 272 00:20:09,840 --> 00:20:12,560 'cause it's at a strategic position in the mediterranean, 273 00:20:12,600 --> 00:20:16,800 but in world war ii it became even more important. 274 00:20:16,840 --> 00:20:21,240 So this was a nerve centre of operations of submarines 275 00:20:21,280 --> 00:20:25,200 in the mediterranean with the royal Navy for the allies, 276 00:20:25,240 --> 00:20:27,040 so this was a very important place. 277 00:20:28,880 --> 00:20:35,000 In 1940 Italy joined forces with Nazi Germany, and soon 278 00:20:35,040 --> 00:20:40,200 the axis powers will dominate more than just the mediterranean waters. 279 00:20:40,240 --> 00:20:45,400 Malta under British rule was to become a Thorn in the enemy's side, 280 00:20:46,960 --> 00:20:50,760 and the lazzaretto itself was drawn into battle. 281 00:20:52,000 --> 00:20:55,320 So this is the heart of the submarine depot. 282 00:20:55,360 --> 00:20:57,920 A submarine depot means basically two things - 283 00:20:57,960 --> 00:21:00,160 one is the control of operations, 284 00:21:00,200 --> 00:21:04,000 so it's a communications centre for submarines, and the second, 285 00:21:04,040 --> 00:21:07,360 you were supposed to have somewhere where submarines could refuel 286 00:21:07,400 --> 00:21:10,920 from the oil tanks that were stored underground as well. 287 00:21:12,480 --> 00:21:17,040 This place was all about repairing and refuelling the submarines, 288 00:21:17,080 --> 00:21:21,800 getting them ready to be sent back out on patrol in the mediterranean. 289 00:21:23,360 --> 00:21:28,480 The two sides used submarines very extensively to attack 290 00:21:28,520 --> 00:21:32,840 especially supply ships and also, of course, the battleships. 291 00:21:34,960 --> 00:21:36,856 The battle of the submarines in the mediterranean, I think, 292 00:21:36,880 --> 00:21:40,320 was crucial in the way the war developed. 293 00:21:41,760 --> 00:21:46,040 The above-ground buildings were requisitioned for operations, 294 00:21:46,080 --> 00:21:49,240 but on their own they weren't enough. 295 00:21:50,720 --> 00:21:52,936 If the allies are gonna use this as a staging point, that's also going 296 00:21:52,960 --> 00:21:56,560 to make Malta one big target. 297 00:21:56,600 --> 00:21:58,920 If you're gonna put facilities here, 298 00:21:58,960 --> 00:22:02,680 they have to be facilities that can withstand a heavy bombardment. 299 00:22:04,280 --> 00:22:10,760 During the war, Malta suffered 3,343 air raids. 300 00:22:15,120 --> 00:22:18,600 Use of this underground complex allowed work to continue here 301 00:22:18,640 --> 00:22:19,920 despite the bombs, 302 00:22:19,960 --> 00:22:25,040 but the full picture of how it all ran is still hard to piece together. 303 00:22:26,880 --> 00:22:30,520 The whole system of these rooms, 304 00:22:30,560 --> 00:22:34,600 these chambers, partly to contain equipment and power supply 305 00:22:34,640 --> 00:22:39,520 and also to have habitation for the soldiers, for the Garrison. 306 00:22:39,560 --> 00:22:44,120 Difficult to understand exactly what the purpose each room was, 307 00:22:44,160 --> 00:22:47,160 because first of all we don't find that much documentation. 308 00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:49,320 Presumably all of this was secret. 309 00:22:49,360 --> 00:22:52,560 Suppose somewhere there is an explanation. 310 00:22:53,560 --> 00:22:57,320 From here allied submarines went out in to the sea 311 00:22:57,360 --> 00:23:02,280 and caused untold amount of damage to the German and Italian navies 312 00:23:02,320 --> 00:23:04,360 and their supplies. 313 00:23:05,920 --> 00:23:09,200 This island was absolutely crucial 314 00:23:09,240 --> 00:23:11,000 in winning the war in the mediterranean, 315 00:23:11,040 --> 00:23:14,120 and this place played a key role in it. 316 00:23:16,120 --> 00:23:19,400 Despite the war damage, the site was 317 00:23:19,440 --> 00:23:23,360 used as an infectious diseases hospital for the next 30 years. 318 00:23:26,040 --> 00:23:32,720 But once vacated, neglect, vandalism and time each had their way with it. 319 00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:42,200 Today the stunning architecture on display here is now the focus of a 320 00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:45,000 major restoration project 321 00:23:45,040 --> 00:23:50,120 hoping to return the buildings to their former glory. 322 00:23:50,160 --> 00:23:54,000 It's a unique building, and it should find its place again 323 00:23:54,040 --> 00:23:55,960 in the glory in the middle of this harbour. 324 00:23:56,000 --> 00:24:01,080 I think it's a place where we could learn the very complicated history 325 00:24:01,120 --> 00:24:03,401 of this place, which reflects the history of the island. 326 00:24:11,720 --> 00:24:17,360 In rural Pennsylvania lies a forest valley and a trail of destruction. 327 00:24:25,360 --> 00:24:30,120 Across the valley you can see these jagged structures - 328 00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:33,160 very well weathered, torn apart. 329 00:24:35,360 --> 00:24:39,960 Whatever somebody did here was some mass industrial process, 330 00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:45,440 somewhere in the back woods of the allegheny mountains of Pennsylvania. 331 00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:50,080 They're almost completely subsumed by mother nature. 332 00:24:50,120 --> 00:24:51,440 They're overgrown. 333 00:24:51,480 --> 00:24:54,480 They've been clearly there for some time 334 00:24:54,520 --> 00:24:56,320 and not been used for a long while. 335 00:24:57,880 --> 00:25:02,080 Following the trail north is another piece of the puzzle - 336 00:25:02,120 --> 00:25:04,480 the remains of a wall. 337 00:25:08,800 --> 00:25:11,520 They were once in some sort of line, 338 00:25:11,560 --> 00:25:15,480 but they're misaligned and almost like a sort of dominos in - 339 00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:17,360 that have fallen in funny shapes. 340 00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:25,040 It could be one of the hundreds of dams that we see in the runs 341 00:25:25,080 --> 00:25:27,640 and streams of Pennsylvania. 342 00:25:27,680 --> 00:25:30,240 But if this was a dam, 343 00:25:30,280 --> 00:25:32,680 what smashed it to pieces? 344 00:25:40,760 --> 00:25:44,840 At the bottom of the valley is the quiet town of Austin, 345 00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:48,080 but it wasn't always this way. 346 00:25:48,120 --> 00:25:52,600 Alvie fourness grew up a few miles from here. 347 00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:59,560 110 years ago this town had a population of about 3,000 people. 348 00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:04,760 This would have been a very busy town, all types of businesses here. 349 00:26:04,800 --> 00:26:07,760 There would be schools and hospitals, 350 00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:10,800 a movie theatres, restaurants. 351 00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:16,960 Back in the early 1900s, Austin was a boom town. 352 00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:19,920 Like many prosperous settlements, 353 00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:24,480 there were opportunities here for a few less respectable enterprises. 354 00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:31,760 One of our most famous citizens at the time was Cora Brooks, 355 00:26:31,800 --> 00:26:38,120 who had a boarding house located about 2 miles north of here - 356 00:26:38,160 --> 00:26:43,760 a brothel sort of environment probably, although those type 357 00:26:43,800 --> 00:26:45,920 of things were very illegal. 358 00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:50,280 Cora was somewhat an outcast in the community. 359 00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:55,520 But while Cora Brooks' establishment was frowned upon by many, 360 00:26:55,560 --> 00:26:59,360 in time she would become a sort of saviour of the town. 361 00:27:00,360 --> 00:27:04,280 First, though, Austin had to weather another storm 362 00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:07,360 that threatened to make this boom town go bust. 363 00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:11,320 I mean, this region was famous for its trees, 364 00:27:11,360 --> 00:27:13,120 and so the lumber market was a big thing. 365 00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:16,400 But soon enough, too many people working, 366 00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:18,400 the place was effectively deforested, 367 00:27:18,440 --> 00:27:21,200 and the bottom had fallen out of the lumber market. 368 00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:26,520 But one entrepreneur found a way to make money. 369 00:27:26,560 --> 00:27:29,360 His name was George bayless, 370 00:27:29,400 --> 00:27:32,920 and here he built the bayless paper mill. 371 00:27:34,680 --> 00:27:38,320 Bayless's paper mill was a huge, huge complex. 372 00:27:38,360 --> 00:27:42,560 It took the raw material, all the wood, turned it into pulp, 373 00:27:42,600 --> 00:27:46,560 cleaned it, dried it and then made it into paper. 374 00:27:46,600 --> 00:27:49,640 A massive operation 375 00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:52,320 with specialised buildings spreading out across the valley. 376 00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:57,920 The pulp product would come into this area, 377 00:27:57,960 --> 00:28:01,920 be placed in these digestors or vats. 378 00:28:01,960 --> 00:28:05,920 Certain chemical processes were occurring, 379 00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:07,960 give the final pulp product. 380 00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:13,920 The mill produced almost 500 tonnes of paper a week. 381 00:28:15,480 --> 00:28:20,320 But something on this scale needs reliable, cheap power source. 382 00:28:20,360 --> 00:28:24,120 1900, water is the key to that. 383 00:28:25,600 --> 00:28:30,440 To power the mill, bayless commissioned this - the Austin dam. 384 00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:33,960 The first dam was just an earth-built one, 385 00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:38,360 and that absolutely worked, and it showed what could be achieved. 386 00:28:38,400 --> 00:28:40,960 And then of course the factory got bigger, 387 00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:42,600 the demand for power got bigger, 388 00:28:42,640 --> 00:28:44,880 and you're gonna need a bigger reservoir, 389 00:28:44,920 --> 00:28:48,280 and a bigger dam to hold it back. 390 00:28:48,320 --> 00:28:51,000 To upscale the enterprise, 391 00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:56,240 the factory owner hired an engineer to draw up a design. 392 00:28:56,280 --> 00:29:00,120 It was gonna take 43,000 cubic feet of concrete 393 00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:02,120 and a dam that was 50 feet high. 394 00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:05,640 This was gonna be an epic engineering feat, 395 00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:08,840 but it was also gonna be expensive. 396 00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:12,920 Bayless commissioned the biggest gravity dam in Pennsylvania. 397 00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:18,400 A clear problem building a dam in any valley, and particularly 398 00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:22,560 in these types of valleys, where you've got vegetation and a soil, 399 00:29:22,600 --> 00:29:27,160 is the problem of the soil being eroded in and around the valley. 400 00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:30,360 The gravity dam relies on weight. 401 00:29:30,400 --> 00:29:35,120 32,000 tonnes of concrete resisted the push of the water, 402 00:29:35,160 --> 00:29:37,800 but underneath was ordinary soil, 403 00:29:37,840 --> 00:29:40,280 which water could pass right through. 404 00:29:44,240 --> 00:29:46,896 I mean, if you think about it, if you build a swimming pool at home, 405 00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:49,400 you don't just dig a hole in the ground and pour water in, 406 00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:51,160 because it'll seep through. 407 00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:53,256 And that's kinda like the problem they've got here, 408 00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:54,720 but it's on a much bigger scale. 409 00:29:56,600 --> 00:30:00,600 If water can get underneath, gravity wouldn't be enough to 410 00:30:00,640 --> 00:30:03,960 hold back the reservoir and the dam would fail. 411 00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:10,360 So the engineer designed a safety mechanism - 412 00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:13,720 an underground wall to prevent water getting under the dam. 413 00:30:17,480 --> 00:30:19,920 In December 1909, 414 00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:24,000 the Austin dam was completed but something wasn't right. 415 00:30:26,040 --> 00:30:31,880 It became obvious early on that the dam would be troublesome. 416 00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:35,800 Water was seeping up out of the ground, 417 00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:41,320 and also there was cracks developing in the structure itself. 418 00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:47,160 The townsfolk had called it the dam that could not break, 419 00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:51,920 but fate would prove them wrong on the worst possible day. 420 00:30:54,120 --> 00:30:57,120 September 30, 1911, is the key date. 421 00:30:57,160 --> 00:30:59,336 The town was celebrating polling day. Everybody was out. 422 00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:01,640 It was very, very busy. 423 00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:05,920 A week of rainstorms bought unprecedented amounts of water 424 00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:07,440 into the valley. 425 00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:13,040 The reservoir at that point was really high as well, 426 00:31:13,080 --> 00:31:14,840 just 2 foot below the overspill level. 427 00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:16,880 That's incredibly full. 428 00:31:16,920 --> 00:31:19,880 And at that point catastrophe happened. 429 00:31:21,760 --> 00:31:26,320 The structure over here moved more or less like a door. 430 00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:31,560 It swung open and allowed the water to start gushing out. 431 00:31:31,600 --> 00:31:38,480 The wall behind me also slid about 50 feet. 432 00:31:39,240 --> 00:31:43,080 A torrent of water came crashing down the valley, 433 00:31:43,120 --> 00:31:47,120 destroying everything in its path. 434 00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:50,600 When the water came gushing down the valley, 435 00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:52,560 the first thing it hit was the paper mill. 436 00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:54,360 It came crashing through, destroying, 437 00:31:54,400 --> 00:31:56,640 entering almost every room. 438 00:31:56,680 --> 00:32:00,760 And it gathered up everything in its path, 439 00:32:00,800 --> 00:32:04,080 including all the raw material, all the tree trunks, 440 00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:07,960 and then it headed downstream towards the town of Austin. 441 00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:17,280 The east side of the town got hit worst due to the slope 442 00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:21,280 of the valley, pushed the wave more in that direction. 443 00:32:21,320 --> 00:32:24,880 And the scene was of almost sheer devastation. 444 00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:26,680 Almost every building was submerged. 445 00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:28,136 You could just see the steeple of the church. 446 00:32:28,160 --> 00:32:29,160 That was the only thing 447 00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:31,600 that you would have recognised that there was a town there. 448 00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:38,000 In 15 minutes the town turned from celebration to disaster area. 449 00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:42,600 Almost no-one saw it coming. 450 00:32:44,160 --> 00:32:48,360 Bayless was determined to get his new, expanded paper mill 451 00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:51,720 up and working, and if that meant he had to cut a corner, 452 00:32:51,760 --> 00:32:53,280 that's what he did. 453 00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:58,640 The underground wall designed to protect the dam 454 00:32:58,680 --> 00:33:00,600 was deemed too expensive. 455 00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:03,440 Bayless ordered the engineer to scrap it, 456 00:33:03,480 --> 00:33:06,280 turning it in to a ticking time bomb. 457 00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:11,520 The dam is built on the cheap. 458 00:33:12,360 --> 00:33:15,400 It's built to take the minimum amount of money 459 00:33:15,440 --> 00:33:19,200 to hold back the maximum amount of water. 460 00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:23,360 The local mill owner started to say that this is a dam 461 00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:27,120 that was never going to fail, and he was lying through his teeth. 462 00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:32,680 3,000 residents were in the town when the water hit, 463 00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:36,640 but the people of Austin had an unlikely guardian angel. 464 00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:44,200 Luckily the alarm had been raised by, of all people, Cara Brooks. 465 00:33:46,480 --> 00:33:50,040 The outcast brothel owner saw the flood coming 466 00:33:50,080 --> 00:33:54,320 and she warned the town, saving thousands of lives. 467 00:33:55,320 --> 00:34:01,520 The phone call allowed the people of Austin 15 minutes' warning. 468 00:34:01,560 --> 00:34:03,320 And the town below, 469 00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:10,320 out of that town of 3,000 only 78 die in the disaster. 470 00:34:18,200 --> 00:34:21,800 The history of that flood is preserved in the Austin 471 00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:24,520 dam memorial park. 472 00:34:24,560 --> 00:34:30,680 In the early 20th century, anybody could build a dam in Pennsylvania. 473 00:34:30,720 --> 00:34:35,920 There was no regulation, there was no inspection, and that was 474 00:34:35,960 --> 00:34:42,840 what led to a poorly designed dam smashing the very people, 475 00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:46,800 the very town it had been designed to power. 476 00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:50,720 A tragedy like the Austin dam, 477 00:34:50,760 --> 00:34:54,000 like many sort of tragedies that involve humans, 478 00:34:54,040 --> 00:34:57,040 is there's often a mistake that's made or a decision that's made 479 00:34:57,080 --> 00:34:59,400 that ends up leading to something 480 00:34:59,440 --> 00:35:01,496 that you didn't necessarily predict was going to happen. 481 00:35:01,520 --> 00:35:03,240 And that's exactly the case in Austin. 482 00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:04,640 Just cutting a few corners, 483 00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:08,280 or not doing the right engineering mitigation 484 00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:10,000 to stop something like this happening, 485 00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:11,576 ultimately led to the destruction of the dam 486 00:35:11,600 --> 00:35:13,520 and to the loss of life. 487 00:35:15,080 --> 00:35:20,040 Today construction is held to a strict engineering code, 488 00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:24,160 perhaps the greatest legacy of the Austin dam disaster. 489 00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:35,640 In Ukraine's capital city, Kiev, 490 00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:39,360 a concrete monolith stands at odds with its surroundings. 491 00:35:44,240 --> 00:35:48,680 As you wander around Kiev, you can start to see some strange things. 492 00:35:48,720 --> 00:35:51,480 I mean, there's this one example - can only be described 493 00:35:51,520 --> 00:35:54,240 as like a submarine in a park. 494 00:35:55,600 --> 00:35:58,480 You can actually walk inside of it 495 00:35:58,520 --> 00:36:01,800 and then you can see how truly enormous it is. 496 00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:04,400 It's 50m long, 15m across. 497 00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:06,840 The walls are incredibly thick. 498 00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:12,240 My first thought is it's gotta be a typical example of, 499 00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:17,640 you know, eastern European Soviet-era kitsch, 500 00:36:17,680 --> 00:36:19,440 but then on the other hand, 501 00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:22,760 if it was kitsch, it would prettier, you know, it would be painted up, 502 00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:25,040 it would look more like a submarine. 503 00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:27,840 It must have been built where it is. 504 00:36:27,880 --> 00:36:30,920 It must have been built for a purpose, but what could that be? 505 00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:36,000 This object sits on the bank of the dnieper, 506 00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:38,520 the largest river in Ukraine. 507 00:36:38,560 --> 00:36:44,960 The dnieper is a big, slow-moving, shallow river, swampy in spots, 508 00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:49,560 and divides the city of Kiev almost right down the middle. 509 00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:55,920 A larger piece of the puzzle sits on those swamps. 510 00:36:55,960 --> 00:37:00,280 You can see this weird, kind of snake-like concrete construction, 511 00:37:00,320 --> 00:37:04,720 which seems to be sinking down into a swamp. What's that for? 512 00:37:08,720 --> 00:37:12,640 Two sites 11 miles apart are both clues to one of 513 00:37:12,680 --> 00:37:15,480 the greatest engineering secrets behind the iron curtain. 514 00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:23,080 Local historian valery lysenko 515 00:37:23,120 --> 00:37:26,040 has been coming to Kiev's natalka park since he was a child. 516 00:37:29,480 --> 00:37:31,616 Translation: Back then you couldn't even ask about it. 517 00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:36,240 What was a state secret half a century ago is now being uncovered. 518 00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:41,560 The locals gave it many names. Some call it a train. 519 00:37:41,600 --> 00:37:46,040 Some call it a submarine. The most accurate name would be a caisson. 520 00:37:46,080 --> 00:37:50,640 But not many people understand what the word means. 521 00:37:50,680 --> 00:37:54,200 The story here begins 80 years ago 522 00:37:54,240 --> 00:37:57,680 with the river that runs through the city. 523 00:37:57,720 --> 00:38:01,480 Across this river you have eight Bridges, and as you can imagine, 524 00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:04,640 these are essential for keeping goods and people 525 00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:07,000 moving back and forth across the river. 526 00:38:07,040 --> 00:38:12,600 But 80 years ago they were recognised as a huge problem. 527 00:38:14,640 --> 00:38:17,120 In 1920, Kiev faced an invasion. 528 00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:25,360 The Poles attacked and took over Ukraine and captured Kiev. 529 00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:29,000 The red army drove them out after just a few weeks, 530 00:38:29,040 --> 00:38:32,880 but it made Lenin and the other Soviet leaders 531 00:38:32,920 --> 00:38:35,520 realise how vulnerable this area was. 532 00:38:39,720 --> 00:38:42,720 Translation: What did the Polish army do before the retreat? 533 00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:46,000 The obvious thing - they destroyed all the Bridges, 534 00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:48,280 the large ones across the dnieper. 535 00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:54,320 Kiev's Bridges were rebuilt, 536 00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:57,800 but the battle taught them a valuable lesson for the future. 537 00:38:58,960 --> 00:39:03,600 One thing they'd learned is that Bridges were very vulnerable. 538 00:39:03,640 --> 00:39:07,920 What if an enemy air force came in and knocked out these eight Bridges? 539 00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:09,280 They would be helpless. 540 00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:11,400 There'd be no way to get supplies or troops 541 00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:12,960 back and forth across the river. 542 00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:14,920 They needed a better system. 543 00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:20,680 To protect the city, the Soviets began work on a secret weapon. 544 00:39:25,160 --> 00:39:28,760 Translation: There are many local legends that surround this place. 545 00:39:28,800 --> 00:39:32,280 Some say that there's a train hidden inside the tunnel. 546 00:39:35,240 --> 00:39:38,720 Others claim that the water doesn't freeze inside the tunnel 547 00:39:38,760 --> 00:39:40,480 because of the radioactivity. 548 00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:46,480 The official name of this structure was object 1, 549 00:39:46,520 --> 00:39:51,080 but to the people of Kiev it goes by a different name. 550 00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:56,640 Translation: People call this place Stalin's subway. 551 00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:02,040 Kiev had learned the hard way 552 00:40:02,080 --> 00:40:04,880 that if an enemy destroyed its Bridges there was no way to get 553 00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:07,000 supplies across the dnieper. 554 00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:12,040 So here in the swamp they began digging a tunnel 555 00:40:12,080 --> 00:40:14,000 that would run underneath the river. 556 00:40:19,920 --> 00:40:22,016 They're gonna be railway tunnels, but they're gonna have steel plates 557 00:40:22,040 --> 00:40:25,480 that can be lowered into place over the railway tracks to accommodate 558 00:40:25,520 --> 00:40:27,000 vehicle traffic as well. 559 00:40:29,720 --> 00:40:35,320 Around 1938, construction started in secret. 560 00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:40,160 Translation: The Soviet union was obsessed with secrecy. 561 00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:42,040 They liked to hide everything. 562 00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:48,240 Stalin decrees that if any of these 2,000, 5,000, 563 00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:52,960 10,000, eventually 12,000 workers enlisted in these sites 564 00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:57,320 ever even breath the word 'tunnel' they'll get ten years in the gulag. 565 00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:03,800 But digging from one side of the river to the other was too slow. 566 00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:08,320 In the 1930s, Europe was on the brink of another world war. 567 00:41:08,360 --> 00:41:11,960 Kiev faced invasion again. 568 00:41:12,000 --> 00:41:15,360 To speed up the dig they used caissons. 569 00:41:18,600 --> 00:41:21,720 80 years ago this park was a wetland. 570 00:41:21,760 --> 00:41:24,880 The caisson was constructed on the surface. 571 00:41:26,440 --> 00:41:30,120 And then they would use high-pressure hoses 572 00:41:30,160 --> 00:41:32,120 to remove the soft sediment beneath, 573 00:41:32,160 --> 00:41:35,520 thus sinking that tunnel into the ground beneath the river. 574 00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:41,240 A column of concrete rings would be built, 575 00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:43,560 creating a pressurised chamber 576 00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:46,880 in which the engineers could beginning digging in both directions. 577 00:41:50,720 --> 00:41:51,960 Translation: And so this tube, 578 00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:53,536 when it was lowered to the relevant depth, 579 00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:57,680 they constructed the so-called manual tunnel-boring machine. 580 00:41:57,720 --> 00:42:02,520 Now it's done mechanically, but back then it was done manually. 581 00:42:02,560 --> 00:42:06,960 It was a metallic construction which allowed them to move forwards. 582 00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:11,920 The Soviets hoped this would turbocharge the dig, 583 00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:15,480 but by August 1941 they had run out of time. 584 00:42:15,520 --> 00:42:18,760 The enemy was at the gates. 585 00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:26,240 Believing they could hold off the German army, 586 00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:29,960 Soviet top brass ordered the workers to keep digging, 587 00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:33,320 but the Nazi force was overwhelming 588 00:42:35,360 --> 00:42:37,920 and Kiev's Bridges were destroyed again. 589 00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:42,600 They branched south to try to take Kiev, 590 00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:45,720 'cause it's such a big prize and it's such a big population. 591 00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:49,960 And they bagged 650,000 red army troops - 592 00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:52,240 one of the greatest military victories of all time. 593 00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:58,680 When Kiev fell, work on the tunnels finally stopped. 594 00:43:01,600 --> 00:43:04,560 It's believed that maybe they got 10% of it done 595 00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:07,920 before the war intervened and they had to stop. 596 00:43:10,000 --> 00:43:14,000 Translation: They were afraid to talk about it even years after. 597 00:43:15,680 --> 00:43:18,720 There is a high possibility that all the prisoners who worked here 598 00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:20,560 were later exterminated. 599 00:43:26,720 --> 00:43:30,520 Attempts were made to restart the construction, but in 1949 600 00:43:30,560 --> 00:43:35,160 the tunnels were abandoned and the project covered up. 601 00:43:37,240 --> 00:43:40,400 Translation: Many years after the war, the subway was built in Kiev. 602 00:43:42,080 --> 00:43:45,000 When this area was no longer restricted for the people and 603 00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:47,360 they were curious as to what it was, 604 00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:51,680 only then the newspapers started writing about it openly. 605 00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:02,040 Captioned by ai-media ai-media. TV 53237

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