All language subtitles for Abandoned.Engineering.S09E01.Megalomaniacs.Palace.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

Voiceover: A Bangkok skyscraper
embroiled in a murder mystery.

This place got all
the fame and attention

that its owner wanted, but
for all the wrong reasons.

A grand Iraqi palace where
a dictator hoarded his wealth.

It was built to impress
and to intimidate.

And a site in america where
legends took centre stage.

It's this space that was
once filled with glory.

Decaying relics,
shadows of lost worlds.

Ruins haunted by the past,

their secrets waiting
to be revealed.

In Iraq, between the
tigris and euphrates rivers,

history weighs
heavy on the land.

It is where nebuchadnezzar
ruled, where Abraham came from,

this place is the
cradle of civilisation.

Yet rising above a
scattering of ancient ruins,

perched on a hill is
something else entirely.

Looking at the
scale of this place,

you can tell that
whoever built this

had a stupidly high
opinion of himself.

The man who built this

became the face of lavish
despotism the world over.

He decided to build himself a
luxury palace, fit for an emperor.

The throne room is designed
to emphasise the rulers dominion

over little old you.

The marks left by an infamous
tyrant can be found everywhere.

But as Saddam Hussein
amassed his vast fortune,

world leaders were
preparing to bring him down.

His boastful project found
itself right in the firing line.

It's been thoroughly looted,
thoroughly vandalised,

and so you see graffiti
everywhere, Iraqi graffiti,

but also American graffiti.

What was this building's purpose

and how did American troops
come to occupy this palatial ruin?

Archaeologist Hussein falih,
now knows this palace well,

but he can remember when
access was highly restricted.

This level of secrecy
and security reflected

the Iraqi leader
it was built for.

In 1979, a new man
comes to power in Iraq,

it's Saddam Hussein who comes
from an impoverished background.

But he really made his Mark as
an absolutely ruthless politician.

And when he seizes power,

he's intent on instantly removing
any opposition whatsoever.

He soon becomes one of
the worlds most feared leaders.

He, you know, kills
off and overthrows

all of his opponents and thereafter
he embarks on a cult of personality

to make him the essential glue
holding Iraqi society together.

The dictator immediately
looked to expand his territories,

fixing his attention on the oil-rich
lands on the border with Iran.

He thinks, "hey, I'm gonna
just lurch across the border,

take those oil receipts
to kind of supercharge

my new Iraqi state and
there'll be no consequences."

There's this chunk of Iran that
has a lot of arabs in the population

and Saddam Hussein thinks
that because they're arabs

and he's an arab, he can
take over that chunk of Iran

and all of its oil and
make it his own, so he tries.

But Saddam's land grab
quickly turned into a nightmare.

There's trench warfare,
fighting back and forth across

this disputed area, the Iranians
using their much bigger population

to launch human wave attacks.

Despite us support and the
ruthless use of chemical weapons,

Saddam Hussein's
campaign was a disaster.

And he fails for years

a bloody murderous war
between Iraq and Iran.

To mask the catastrophic failure

and to make the most
of Iraqi nationalism,

Saddam ordered
great building projects.

This one was called
the summer palace.

While his country was in
a grinding war of attrition

with hundreds of
thousands of casualties,

he decided to build himself a
luxury palace, fit for an emperor.

For a megalomaniac like Saddam,
the location was highly symbolic.

Saddam Hussein
sought to connect himself

with the babylonian
rulers of old.

And the babylonian
emperor nebuchadnezzar,

had a palace on this spot
and so Saddam Hussein says,

"I too will have a
palace on this spot."

The summer place was carefully
positioned within the outer walls

of the ancient city, which Saddam
wanted restored to its former glory -

last seen during the reign of the
great warrior king nebuchadnezzar ii.

Saddam's grand plan was not
only to restore the ancient city,

but also to overlook it, the ultimate
display of strength and power.

Nothing would be
allowed to stand in his way.

In 1986, Saddam orders the
complete destruction of this village

and he has it blown up
and in the place of the village

he builds an artificial
hill and it's on this hill,

which would become
known as Saddam hill,

that the palace would be built.

Construction began with
workers bought in from north Africa

who were supposedly blindfolded

to avoid a security risk
during the ongoing war.

The project remained top secret,

part of a wider scheme to
build up the family fortune.

This is only one of over 100
such palaces scattered around Iraq

and that in this
particular palace

he has all kinds of
tributes to himself.

Archaeologists told Saddam that
nebuchadnezzar had these bricks

with his name stamped in them.

Saddam decided that he
wanted to do the same thing.

Saddam Hussein fills this palace

with paintings and murals

in which he is ruling
the ancient world

in his chariot being
pulled by horses

as though he, Saddam Hussein,

is the reincarnation of
these great rulers of old.

Every brick used in the
restoration of Babylon,

the construction of his palace,

he has uppercase s, lower case d
uppercase h, inscribed in the brick,

Saddam Hussein.

While Saddam tried to
evoke great glories of the past,

construction dragged on into the
mid-1990s and was only completed

after both the Iran-Iraq
war and first Gulf war,

which had cost the
country dearly, were ended.

Yet little of this
fantasy world remains.

The inside of the palace
has been stripped bare,

the walls covered in graffiti.

It speaks to the arrival
of an outside force.

Well, Saddam was a real Houdini.

He escaped being deposed
by the Americans, er,

after the persian Gulf
war in 1990, 1991,

goes on through the 1990s

pretending that he more or
less won the, the war in 1991.

But then after 9/11 refuses to
confirm or deny his nuclear program

and assured the United States
that he won't sponsor terrorism.

Time was up for Iraq's Houdini.

Barely had the dust settled after
the shocking attack on the twin towers

before George w bush
began plotting to succeed

where his father had
failed a decade earlier.

Saddam Hussein and his sons
must leave Iraq within 48 hours.

Their refusal to do so
will result in military conflict

commenced at a
time of our choosing.

In 2003, we invaded Iraq,

specifically in order to depose
Saddam Hussein from power.

When the Americans attacked
Iraq they moved very quickly,

the so-called 'thunder
run' toward the capital.

First they take out all the air
defences and all the aircraft

and they completely blind
and disarm Saddam's military.

They chase Saddam out
of the capital into hiding and

then they fan out across the country
occupying key points like Babylon.

On April the 8th 2003, units
from the 101st airborne division

stormed across the euphrates
and launched an attack.

As they approached
they encountered gun fire.

Members of Saddam's elite republican
guard were entrenched in the palace

and put up fierce resistance.

After a few days of intense
close-quarter fighting,

Saddam's great monument
to his new Iraqi empire

fell into American hands.

And us troops who went in to
this palace and the 100 others

that us forces liberated in
the course of the Iraq war,

were just stunned by
the decadence, the luxury,

the magnificence of the furnishings,
the chandeliers, the furniture.

In the chaos that
followed the initial invasion,

the palace was looted and vandalised
until it was made a us military base.

2,000 troops moved
in to camp Babylon.

The coalition forces
do not always treat

Saddam Hussein's
palaces with respect.

There is a bit of graffiti,

there are some fittings that
might have been detached

and are now trophies
on somebody's desk.

But Saddam was still on the run

and he had just withdrawn a
fortune from the central Iraqi bank.

A billion dollars to fund his escape
and the planned Iraqi fight back.

But he was fighting a losing
battle and soon the game was up.

They find Saddam in December of
2003 hiding in a hole in the ground

and they turn him over to the
Iraqis who then execute him.

It was a brief, but
unpleasant operation

to topple Saddam
Hussein from power.

The Iraq war started sharp and
then ran on for a very long time

even after Saddam
Hussein was dead.

The palace was formally handed
over to the Iraqi ministry of culture

in 2005 and it looks
set for a brighter future.

The Iraqi government made a
big Grant to the local community to

fix up the palace and
use it as a cultural centre,

but the money was
misspent or purloined and it,

the work was never done
so it remains as essentially,

a neglected ruin.

Hussein falih still has hope that
rather than being associated with

a ruthless despot, it can complement
the world heritage site at its feet.

Treasury and homeland security
agents continue to chase down

Saddam's family fortune and freeze
his assets. But the hunt goes on.

In Byron, Georgia, are the remains
of a once iconic sporting arena.

Some places are good at
concealing what they are,

this is not one of those places,
this is obviously a race track.

And it's not just a simple horse
track or a simple local track.

This is big, this is
a half-mile circuit

that has these concrete stands
that is something permanent.

This place looks like it belongs
in a post-apocalyptic movie,

this is a monument to americana,
but now it is completely overgrown.

Graffiti-littered terraces
and smashed floodlights

overlook a track that's clearly
a far cry from its glory days.

You can see faded the name of
the race track there on the side

and you know that this
has been something special.

There's at least a dozen
hall of famers that raced here.

It's at this raceway that
Richard petty is going to

break the speed record.

But while famous
racers blessed this track,

others were chasing
their fortunes underground.

Just outside the track
there are thick woodland,

it's the perfect place
to hide something.

People are still talking about it to
this day, 50 something years later.

This is going to be a huge bust.

It's still known as 'the
mystery beneath turn three'.

For Tim Thornton, owner of
the middle Georgia raceway,

what is more vivid
in the memory,

is the Saturday night
races held here in the 1960s.

As a high school kid, it was
very special to come down here

and have what I call the big boys
of Nascar race on a Saturday night.

It was the golden age of Nascar

and this was a regular
venue on the circuit.

Some of the biggest names
in stock car racing came here,

Richard petty, the king, the
Alison brothers, David Pearson,

I could go on and on, that
was really special for us.

Nascar you know, started
in this part of the country.

The atmosphere on
race night was electric.

These stands would
be packed, at that time

there was also grandstands
across on the other side of the track.

I believe these stands held about
6,800 people and probably 2,000

or 3,000 in the infield, so there
might be 10,000 people out here.

So the population of
Byron was less than 1,000,

so that was huge and of course
a lot of cheering, a lot of noise.

There's the smell of gasoline,

the roar of the crowd, the
screaming of the engines.

It is excitement piled on
excitement, turbo-charged

with even more excitement.

You can smell the
rubber and the gasoline

and the cotton candy
and the hotdogs.

And they dropped the green flag.

And then your hair blows
with the wind as they go past,

it's just an incredible feeling.

Based on a simple formula,
Nascar is all about maximising speed.

But it is also a contact sport.

This is your original
American motorsport,

40 cars duelling it out on
a half mile or mile track.

Bumping other cars
is part of the game.

It's called 'trading paint'.

But it's a more complex sport
than it's often given credit for.

It's a lot of science and
a lot of technology, er,

that goes into that
race, really sophisticated.

It has an incredible
amount of skill,

dexterity and the margin
of error is really small.

You lose focus for
just a split second

and you can hit the wall
at over 200 miles per hour.

To ensure drivers could
maintain such high speeds,

Nascar developed its distinctive
feature: The raised banks.

The land around
here is very flat

so they excavated the
Georgia red Clay that we have

and built these turns
and compacted the dirt.

This is about an 18-degree bank.

For this size half-mile
track that's very steep.

This is the original asphalt

and even though there's
a few cracks in it and, well,

grass growing up, it's
still very much intact.

The only way to keep these
cars from literally going airborne

is to angle the turns
so these cars aren't just

driving around curves - they are
just halfway flying around them.

These steep banks saw
Richard petty known as the king,

make racing history.

So one of my most vivid memories
about being here seeing the king,

Richard petty, race on a
number of occasions and he,

he won more races than
anybody else out here.

He won an even 200 races
and he holds several records

including the
Daytona 500 record.

He is a god among Nascar fans.

It was here at middle Georgia
that Richard petty sets the record

for the average speed
on the half-mile track.

Over 82 miles per hour and this is
going to put the track on the map.

But this wasn't the only thing that
would bring fame to Byron, Georgia.

National headlines would soon
feature the name of this track,

but for a very different reason.

So the police learned that,

that there's something
afoot at the racetrack.

On September 23rd 1967,

race night, the FBI
arrived to investigate.

And it was no accident that
they decided to raid the track

in the middle of a race
when the stands were packed.

The police were there
for maximum publicity.

They were there to make a scene.

So there's something really
amazing that happened back here

on the back side of the track.

People were still talking
about it to this day,

50-something years later.

With engines roaring trackside,

federal agents begin
searching the nearby woods.

The only remaining clue to
the mystery beneath turn 3

is a strange crater.

Behind me here is
the drivers' entrance,

kind of back
entrance if you will.

The cars and the trailers
would come in and out here.

The builders, when
they designed the track,

were very forward-thinking
in a naughty way.

They had a ticket booth right
back in here, it had a false floor in it.

The police get there and they
find a trap door, they open it

and realise they've just
stumbled upon the largest

illegal distillery of moonshine
in the whole state of Georgia.

Descending down a 35-foot
shaft, they entered a tunnel system

that a federal
agent described as

one of the most cleverly run
moonshine operations he'd ever seen.

A long tunnel contained a cooker
tank, gas and fermenting tanks

with electric lighting and
electric exhaust system.

An estimated 80 gallons of moonshine
whiskey was produced here every day.

When the race ended
and the crowds had left,

jugs of the whiskey were
loaded into the race car haulers

and smuggled away
in the dead of night.

Making moonshine
is a risky business.

It is very flammable

and you could potentially
make dangerous by-products.

It can be done wrong
and kill you or blind you, er,

but there's all
different varieties of it.

Discovering a moonshine
distillery under a Nascar track

is not as strange
as it may seem.

You know, Nascar and a
moonshine operation are

not such an odd combination
when you think about it.

During the era of prohibition,

a thriving smuggling
business sprang up.

The police of course, are going
to try to crack down on this, er,

so what happened is the smugglers,
or bootleggers as they were known,

would take ordinary looking
cars and they would modify them.

And so you have this idea of you
know, the old thunder road, right,

where they take their stock cars,
their everyday cars, they soup up

the motors, er, they build
spaces in them to carry as much

of this highly flammable alcohol
as they can, so that they can

outrace the sheriffs, outrace
the police, the FBI whoever.

They even developed special
moves that they would use

to try to escape the police.

If you've ever seen a car going down
a straightaway and then someone, er,

pulls the emergency brake to
make the car spin around on its axis

180 degrees so they can
immediately start going

in the opposite direction, that's
called a 'bootlegger reverse'.

Well, one day two of these
bootleggers put their modified cars

down side-by-side to see which
one was the fastest and bam!

A new form of racing was born.

The early days of racing was
these bootleggers getting together,

bootlegger's the guy
that hauls the moonshine,

they would get together
and race out in the field,

and race on the mountain
roads, that kind of thing,

and that was kind of the, the
beginning of stock car racing.

So this idea of the
moonshine distillery

being found under
a Nascar track,

really ties the past to the present
and the future of the motorsport.

Yet evidence of the moonshine
operation is all but gone.

Traditionally, when
the feds would raid a still

they would use
dynamite, blow up the still.

They didn't want to blow it up,

'cause they would have damaged
or destroyed the racetrack,

so they took heavy equipment

and just totally crushed
it and, and buried it.

The sheriffs did a real
thorough job of destroying this.

They just decimated it
completely to the point that today,

all that you can find
is a hole in the ground

and the only thing we really
know about it is old photographs.

The track owner was charged

with running the illegal
moonshine operation,

but small town, small county
- he was actually acquitted.

That was pretty controversial.

Despite the scandal,

the following season kicked off
as planned at middle, Georgia.

But with Nascar moving
to bigger stadiums,

the owners went looking
for new forms of revenue.

One of these drew crowds

the size of which Byron,
Georgia had never seen before.

The owners of the track
decided to do something big, er,

to try to attract
attention to, to the area.

On July 4th 1970, the
racetrack was taken over

by the Atlanta
international pop festival.

I worked at the pop festival.

I was still a high school kid
and they put me er, probably

300 feet from the stage. I finally
laid down and went to sleep beside

my popsicle truck and woke
up and there's Jimi Hendrix

playing, erm, star
spangled banner

with fireworks going off and here
I am, just looking straight up at it.

When Jimi Hendrix played here,
he drew a crowd of over 300,000,

which is probably the
largest audience in america

that Jimi Hendrix
ever played to.

It became known as the
Woodstock of the south,

but Hendrix sadly died of a suspected
drug overdose just 10 weeks later.

America is a place that is in
love with the idea of, of cars, er,

and it's also in love
with the idea of rebellion,

so I don't think we should
be surprised at all that,

you know, racing
came out of bootlegging

and then Jimi Hendrix
played on a Nascar racetrack.

In a funny way they all
fit together really well.

Amateur races continued
alongside music events

until a 1984 concert
sealed its fate.

Very big brawl and fight
broke out, a lot of arrest.

At that point the county said,
"no more" and shut it down.

With no clear future,

this abandoned piece of americana
is cherished for its unique past.

It means an awful lot to
people in the area and race fans,

I suppose worldwide,
really a special place.

In the centre of Thailand's
capital city of Bangkok,

an infamous ghost
tower reaches into the sky.

This is a sight
that you can't miss.

A huge derelict skyscraper leaning
out over a buzzing Metropolis.

Even in its state of disrepair,

you can see that this was a
pretty wild piece of architecture.

It looks grand, but as
you get closer you see that

it's just a skeleton and there's
this eerie haunted feeling about it.

Inside the building is a
minefield of, of hazards.

You have gaping
holes in some sections,

you've got windows with no
glass in them, open stairwells.

It's right in the heart of
this buzzing Metropolis,

but when you're inside,
you feel incredibly alone.

This is one of the
tallest buildings in the city

and the view from the top
where the balconies extend,

is absolutely spectacular,
but without any railings,

venturing out there
would be foolhardy.

Its continued abandonment
with nothing but vines and trees

occupying the vast
shell, is baffling.

Here you have a luxury tower in
the middle of a thriving booming city.

The real estate it sits on
must be incredibly valuable,

why in the world
has no-one stepped in

to either tear it
down, or complete it?

Many of the local
Thais think it's cursed.

Now superstition and folklore
is very popular in Thai culture,

but not every story
about the ghost tower

is just myth and superstition.

This place got all the fame and
attention that its owner wanted,

but for all the wrong reasons.

In the 1990s, Thailand was
undergoing economic growth on an

unprecedented scale. Nowhere
more so than in its capital, Bangkok.

Its skyline was studded
with construction cranes

and its buildings
were surging skywards.

And this building was going
to be at the gleaming centre

of this incredible
economic surge.

This project was the brainchild
of an architect and developer

named rangsan torsuwan, who
was this extravagant famous designer.

His buildings were designed to
appeal to Asia's richest people,

who would want a luxury
apartment at a prestige address.

For rangsan torsuwan, this was
more than just a design though,

he owned the company
that was building it.

And the costs were staggering,

with multiple big investors
putting up the money.

He named the building
the sathorn unique tower.

And what he had planned
was hugely ambitious.

When constructed started in 1990,
sathorn unique was earmarked to be

one of the most luxurious
tower buildings in all of Bangkok

and you were going to
have some 659 luxury flats

and dozens of retail spaces.

There was going to be a
ballroom and a jewellers.

Pansit torsuwan
is rangsan's son.

He was just a teenager when
the work on the tower began.

To make it a success,

he had a very specific
architectural design in mind.

Hundreds of families and
investors bought into this dream.

The stone balconies
jut out, it looks grand.

I mean you can
imagine, you know,

spending an opulent
holiday in there,

or holding a
high-powered meeting.

The shell went up quickly and
this building was clearly going to be

everything it had promised.

But there was a twist on the
horizon that was so far-fetched

you could barely write it,

and at the heart of it all was
the founder mr rangsan torsuwan.

The sathorn unique
tower's progress

to becoming the most
luxurious high-rise in Thailand

was bought to a sudden
and spectacular halt.

It was a dramatic moment

that sent shockwaves
rippling through the country.

With his father in prison,
pansit made it his mission

to discover the truth, but
time wasn't on his side.

Nor were those in power.

Thailand politics at the
time were really byzantine,

with all kinds of rivalries
and plots and accusations,

so this was a case where a
prominent figure was caught up,

whether truthfully or not,
in a giant political scandal.

The longer pansit's
father was locked up,

the worse the consequences were
for the family and their business.

Some investors started pulling
out, banks stopped lending.

Who wants to risk
their money on a project

whose leader and
designer is in jail?

The whole success of this project
depended on what happened

to mr rangsan and for months
the building stood semi complete,

its future rested on
the fate of one man.

Even though rangsan
had been released,

the investigations
against him were ongoing.

This was a real rocky time for
the funding of sathorn unique,

but it didn't necessarily
kill the project.

He managed to scrape
together just enough funds

to keep it going and they
might have weathered this crisis,

but there was another
disaster looming on the horizon.

This disaster was about to
engulf the whole of Thailand.

In 1997, the economies
of south east Asia

went in to a terrible
economic collapse.

Banks didn't have money to
lend, stock markets collapsed,

unemployment shot up, this
was an enormous crisis for,

for the countries as a whole,
but especially for developers

who were over-extended.

Many of the building projects
came to a crashing halt,

including this 49-storey tower.

Rangsan desperately
searched for new investors.

But before long his past
came back to haunt him.

In 2008, he was
once again charged

and this time convicted
of attempted murder.

That conviction was
actually overturned,

er, by an appeals court
two years later in 2010,

but with rangsan's
complicated personal history,

investors were really
reluctant to sink their money into

one of his projects and
this really spelled the end

for any hopes of completion
of the sathorn unique tower.

This, er, wonderful
dream was going to die.

Today the responsibility
for the tower lies with his son.

But it seems the challenges
of completing it are just too big.

It took a fortune to build and
it will take a fortune to finish it.

There's another reason this site
is unlikely to ever get developed.

Many of the local
Thais think it's cursed.

There's even a
rumour going around

that the tower is built
on a former burial site.

Today the tower
stands as a dark shadow

on the increasingly
glittering skyline,

but it isn't as quiet here
as its owners would like.

It's now become somewhat
of a YouTube sensation,

attracting daredevil urban
explorers from around the world.

The family tries to keep people out,
but somehow people keep managing

to break into this tower
and shoot their videos

for that moment of fame, taking
enormous risks in the process.

And with neither development
nor demolition any closer,

the sathorn unique
tower seems set to remain

as one of the world's most
prominent temples to urban decay.

Captioned by
ai-media ai-media. TV