All language subtitles for Abandoned.Engineering.S09E10.Alien.Contact.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

Tom ward (narrates): A
cosmic wreck in america

that almost made an
earth shattering discovery.

It really looked like the signal
was coming from a faraway planet.

Secret ruins that
decided britain's fate.

A lot of what went on here
was top secret for good reason.

In rajasthan, India, a fort
of colossal proportions.

It's really just staggering
the scale of this place,

you know we're talking walls
22 miles in circumference.

Seven massive gates,
seven massive bastions.

And an extraordinary
French castle

hiding a great deception.

I see a lot of story book,

but there's a lot more to
this place than meets the eye.

Decaying relics.

Shadows of lost worlds.

Ruins haunted by the past,

their secrets waiting...

To be revealed.

In the piedmont region of
the American state of Georgia,

two lonely structures
gaze at the heavens.

You've got all these trees
and then all of a sudden,

it breaks through...

And you see something
that you completely

don't expect to see here.

There's no mystery
as to what these are,

they're two great,
big satellite dishes.

They have clearly
been sitting there

in the weather and not
being used for some time.

They were built at great expense,
but what exactly were they for?

Cold white walls, no
windows, air vents,

these two great big dishes
on top surrounded by fencing,

it's like some
sort of villain's lair.

When you get inside you can see
they've been stripped pretty bare,

any valuable equipment
was taken away long ago.

Now it's just kind of
a hodgepodge of junk.

There's stacks of wooden chairs,

there's even an
old refrigerator.

This was a place
for brilliant scientists

who were searching for
life beyond planet earth.

There was a moment
when we thought

we had proof that
something was out there

and this complex was
at the centre of this story.

When these structures
were built in 1976

it was called the
woodbury earth station.

It was built by at&t the
giant telecoms company.

In the 1970s,

the telephone industry was
going through a revolution.

It was becoming feasible
to send all kinds of data

including telephone calls
up to satellites in orbit,

so, at&t built these two dishes to
serve as an uplink and downlink

for this satellite phone
transmission system.

The unique landscape
here made it a perfect place

for an earth station.

Scott Harris is a
planetary geologist

who has investigated the
area's ancient beginnings.

Well, we're in this
unique depression

called the cove,

my colleagues and I have
been researching the site

for about 20 years,

looking at the possibility
that these radio telescopes

actually sit in the middle of
an ancient impact structure.

This cove dome crater
appears to be the remnants

of a large meteor strike,

whatever hit this hit it hard
enough to pulverise rock,

even melt the rock and then leave
that crater ring around the side.

There's no coincidence
that these dishes

are in the middle of that crater

because the deep depression
about 300ft deep provides

a radio and microwave-free zone.

You can build
your big dishes here

and they'd have
very little interference

from surrounding
electromagnetic sources.

But woodbury earth station's
time in service was short.

The thing about
satellite technology

is it changes so rapidly.

Paul steffes is a professor

at the school of electrical
and computer engineering

at Georgia tech

and still recognises
old machinery here

from the at&t days.

All of these pieces

are from the original
southern antenna installation,

there are motors, there
are wave guide components

that were used in the
microwave communications

with the satellites.

There are power supplies
and regulators that control

the very special amplifiers

that were used in
the original facility.

This tank of helium
actually represents a coolant

when the at&t facility was built

in order to keep the
satellite signal strong,

the amplifiers had to be
cooled with liquid helium.

By the late 1970s,

it was possible to provide
the same level of service

with a dish that was only
15ft wide rather than 100.

So, by 1980, just a few
years after they'd built it,

at&t retired this facility
and abandoned it.

But that was not the
end of the story here,

far from it.

Soon these giant dishes
would be involved in a close call

with something
truly out of this world.

Paul was on the ground
when the woodbury site

was at the centre
of this close call.

Our team leader, Jill tarter,

was one of the earliest folks
involved with the searches.

And because she
and her husband Jack,

who was also a radio astronomer,

always felt that they should be
ready in case good news comes.

They kept a bottle of champagne

in their fridge and
Jill mentioned to me

that after this
detection was made,

they made sure the bottle
was still there and full.

In 1996, Paul wasn't
working for NASA,

but an independent
organisation known as SETI,

which stands for search for
extra terrestrial intelligence.

This was an organisation
that originally had been funded

by the American federal
government, their funding gets cut

and they become a non-profit.

Their mission is to find evidence
of extra-terrestrial intelligence

by searching space for signs
that something is out there.

And woodbury played
a key role in this hunt.

We operated as part
of the project Phoenix

at the SETI institute

from 1996 all the way
through to the year 2000.

Project Phoenix was a
successor to a NASA programme

of searching the skies for
artificial signals emanated

by foreign or rather
distant civilisations.

The theory is that if
some intelligent civilisation

developed anything like
humans did, at some stage,

they might invent
something like radio.

A signal from a radio station

whether it be music or talking

would not look anything
like a signal from a star,

you know, you might
see the beat of the music

or other very particular
patterns that had to be made

by something intelligent,

so, that's what they
started looking for.

But when SETI took charge
of the woodbury earth station,

it wasn't fit for the task.

The requirement for
the SETI programme

to be able to point
precisely at given targets

was far in excess of the
previous pointing capability

of this facility.

In 1996 SETI,
provided a million dollars

to upgrade one of the dishes

so, it could become
part of project Phoenix.

They put in a new motor,
they took out an old stairway,

and they put in a new
flexible cable carrier

called the twister.

The one that we installed on
the centre of the southern dish

on this facility
was built so that

we could monitor signals over
a wide range of frequencies.

When at&t used the facility
for microwave communication,

there were very
specific narrow bands

that they used.

We need to be able to receive
over a wide range of frequencies

since we have no
knowledge of what frequency

an external
civilisation might use.

When the upgrades were complete,

it was renamed the
woodbury research facility.

It would provide
follow-up detection

for another SETI station in
greenbank, West Virginia.

So, having this device,
which we called a fudd,

follow up detection device,

was the key for being able
to quickly scan the skies

and excise any radio
frequency and interference.

If you watch the movie 'contact',
after their detection of a signal,

Jodie foster kisses the screen
and says, "thank you, elma"

and of course the software that
ran the fudd was named elma.

Woodbury was
essential to making sure

that any signals
from one facility

could be immediately
verified by the other.

They were there to double check.

To confirm signals
identified as alien.

Less than a year later,
at 6am on 23 June, 1997,

SETI made contact.

Woodbury's sister
facility got a signal

that looked really distinct.

This might be the greatest
scientific breakthrough

in human history.

They were scanning
a star named yz SETI

about 12 light years
away from our sun

when they started
to hear something

that they thought
might be promising.

So, this really looked
like it might be the big one.

Being in that room,
in that moment,

you'd go crazy with excitement.

They needed to use woodbury

to check that the
signal was genuine.

But disaster had
struck, it was off-line.

About 1.5 weeks

before the close call a
lightning storm struck the dish

and caused damage
to one of the receivers

that was used to monitor
for project Phoenix,

so as a result, we
were unable to run

the follow up detection
device those days.

So, the dish was
down, it wasn't available

to confirm this possible
sighting of an alien intelligence.

The researchers
were biting their nails.

They were trying to figure
out how they could confirm it.

While Paul's colleagues were
putting the champagne on ice,

he had to catch a flight to
SETI headquarters in California.

But this gave him
some time to think.

As I was flying on the plane,

I had with me a paper
copy of all of the spacecraft

that we had in our database.

And the more I looked,

the more I realised that this
specific frequency corresponded

to one that had been assigned
to a satellite called soho.

Soho was a deep space explorer
designed to monitor the sun.

And that's when I
realised as I was flying west

that this was likely a signal
from the soho space craft.

The SETI telescopes were
pointed into deep space,

and on its orbit around the sun,

the soho satellite
had crossed their path.

The signal was being
made by intelligent life.

Unfortunately, it was us.

Of course if woodbury
had been online

at that moment in time,

this would all very quickly
have been squashed,

but they weren't there at the
moment that they were needed.

SETI continued to operate
the woodbury research facility

until the year 2000

when technological innovations
made it redundant once more.

It has remained dormant ever
since, silently watching the skies.

Although SETI has now
left woodbury behind,

it remains committed
to the search

for intelligent life
in the universe.

After all these years,
SETI is still at it,

they have a new project
called breakthrough listen

where they are looking
at a million nearby stars

and 100 different galaxies,
continuing to search

for any kind of sign
that we're not alone,

that there's someone
else out there.

A legacy of woodbury
is that it shows

if we don't look for this
extra terrestrial intelligence,

we'll never find it.

I think we should cast
our eyes to the heavens

and keep on searching.

You know what, I do
think the truth is out there.

In the Indian state of rajasthan
is an engineering marvel

that once protected an empire.

There are mountains all around
and then dominating this landscape

is this huge majestic structure.

Looks almost like
the great wall of China,

but we're definitely
not looking at that

'cause we're not in China.

And as we get closer,

we get a feeling not only for
how massive these walls are

but we get a feeling
for what a huge amount

of ground they cover.

Commanding gates
guard the treasures inside.

There are buildings full of
beautifully carved statues

and tall pillars
supporting vaulted roofs.

And there's really a
distinctly religious feel

to the place

because many of
these interior structures

look like temples.

All of this massive imposition

of human will on the wilderness
is part of the vision of one man.

And its history
tells a story of faith,

conquest, and betrayal.

Sandeep Sharma
is a local historian

who is fascinated
by this site's past.

Today there are no signs of life,
but it was once a hive of activity.

500 years back, it
would be as lively,

as crowded as it can get

because people would come
here, gather around here,

to seek permissions from the king
and from the security personnel.

This is the
kumbhalgarh hill fort.

This place was
built by rana kumbha,

who was the ruler of mewar

one of the great kingdoms
in rajasthan, in India.

Mewar was part of a far
more fragmented India

than we know today.

This was a time of
conquest and conflict.

All of the ruling families were
constantly fighting over land.

The threats of an invading
army was very real.

With the kingdoms capital
over 50 miles east in chittorgarh,

this fortress was a
second line of defence.

If mewar is attacked,

rana kumbha wants
to take the capital,

the administration,
the civil service,

everything required
to run his kingdom

and tuck it safely behind
walls in the mountains.

Kumbhalgarh was the crown Jewel
in the mewar kingdom's defences,

but blood spilled here was
before construction even began.

Historically, this place
was very important

because it is dedicated
to the martyr meru,

because he sacrificed
his own life as a volunteer

for the luck and the prosperity

of the people of the
fort kumbhalgarh.

Locals still to this day say that
when they started building it,

each time they placed a
stone or built part of a wall

that evening the whole thing
would crumble back down

to the ground again.

King consulted one
of his spiritual advisors

who said that the
fort couldn't be built

until somebody voluntarily
gave their life as a sacrifice.

So, they say that
a wandering pilgrim

or perhaps one of the
king's troops came forward,

volunteered to be the
sacrificial lamb, so to speak.

As the story goes, he
began walking up a hill.

And as he climbed,
he was beheaded.

His head struck off by a sword

rolled to a stop where
one temple was built

in his memory.

With the so called curse lifted,
in 1433, construction began.

It lasted 15 years.

After the great wall of China,

it is the longest wall
in the entire world.

It is 15ft wide, it is having
the interlocking engineering

which for that
particular point of time

was an engineering marvel.

And it's really just staggering
the scale of this place,

we're talking seven massive
gates, seven massive bastions.

When finished, it proved to be

one of the most
impenetrable fortresses

known to man.

The heavily fortified
battlement stretched

for 22 miles completely
surrounding the fort

and the settlement within.

But even this great bastion
could not protect the king

from an enemy within.

This is the Shiva temple,

which is inside the
kumbhalgarh complex

where kumbha used to pray.

And he was not armed at that
point in time when he was praying

to lord Shiva,

so, his son murdered
him in the same temple.

The murderous heir udai Singh
was driven by ruthless ambition,

but he didn't get
to rule for long.

Udai Singh wanted the
power, wanted the prestige,

he then set out on the road
and was struck by lightning.

Many believe that
his untimely death

was a divine punishment
for his betrayal.

After his father's murder
and udai's dramatic end,

the fort lost its importance
to the rulers of mewar.

Until in the 1500s,

a great new ruler
decided to resurrect it.

Early in the days,
maharana pratap was said

to be the best warrior
in the whole warrior clan.

The new king's arch
enemy was akbar the great,

the leader of the mogul empire.

Pratap spent his
entire life fighting

the mogul empire

and it's armies tried
on many occasions

to capture the fortress,

but every time they
were unsuccessful.

Kumbhalgarh was still
impregnable by direct assault.

It took yet another act of
treachery to finally breach its walls.

Some say a traitor inside the
fort poisoned the water supply.

And that meant that
with the walls abandoned

and the gates abandoned,

akbar and his mogul
army were able to come in

and take over the city.

According to legend,
pratap eventually managed

to take back what
was rightfully his.

But after his death in 1597,

kumbhalgarh went
into a long decline.

Following India's
independence from the British,

the fort stopped being used

as a residence by
rulers in the region,

and it's been empty ever since.

In 1951, kumbhalgarh
became a protected monument.

Today, its gates
are open to all.

This is really one of the
more spectacular sites

in the world and it gives
us a really fascinating insight

into the glories of
Indian civilisation

and into the ferocity
of competition

between these warring
Indian city states.

In the quiet countryside to
the north of London lie remnants

of britain's incendiary past.

The urban sprawl
ends and suddenly

there's this vast
expanse of countryside.

It looks like most of this
area is surrounded by fences

with barbed wire on the top.

It was patrolled 24 hours
a day, 7 days a week

by armed security guards

because of the materials
they were dealing with

and some of the secret
work that went on to this site.

Scattered across a vast area
are traces of an explosive industry.

Some look like they could
be hundreds of years old.

Others look like they're from
a more recent industrial era.

Smashed windows, peeling
paint, cracked concrete,

birds nesting in the rafters,

it's quite an eerie place to be.

You can't help but be drawn
by this unusual curved tunnel

which leads into a
circular room inside the hill.

Born of incredible
scientific advances,

this place played a key
role in unleashing violence

on a scale never seen before

and it has been shrouded
in secrecy to this day.

As you go past the no entry
sign into this dark tunnel,

you find yourself
in a concrete bunker

with a strange fortified
room at its centre.

You can tell it's
relatively modern,

but that really
is all you can tell.

Very little is known,
probably all still covered

by the official secrets act,

which may never be released

depending on what sort of
work they was carrying out.

Laurence Burnett
is a local expert

who has spent 20 years
uncovering the history of this place.

They provide a
very strong chamber

that can withstand
enormous pressures,

enormous stresses and
that's really the only evidence

we've got of what was
going on in this part of the site.

It's possible we'll never
know all the details,

a lot of what went on here
was top secret for good reason.

But a ruined building nearby

suggests that it's all part
of a much longer story.

This collection of
buildings and structures

is known as press
house number two.

On the left hand side, we've
got the press metal structure,

directly behind me,
you've got the big blast wall,

and on the right hand side,
you've got the hydraulic house,

which generated hydraulic power

to actually work the
base of the press.

This place was definitely
producing something dangerous,

why else would they
put a big thick wall

between the water wheel
and the metal machine?

This whole thing was
set up as a process,

one of 17 steps to
make gunpowder.

Spread over an
area of 170 acres,

this is the royal gunpowder
mill's waltham Abbey.

Originally a private enterprise

it is rumoured to have
supplied gunpowder

to some rather infamous clients.

It's even possible
that the gunpowder

that guy Fawkes famously
tried to use to blow up parliament

might have been
manufactured here.

But its biggest client by far
was the British government,

so much so that in
1787 they bought it.

They took it over and
said this is too important

to be left to some
private owner.

We need to run this as a
national defence priority.

It developed over centuries

to become one of the
most important centres

of gunpowder
production in britain.

Trafalgar, Waterloo,
the crimea, the burr war,

the American war
of independence,

the first Indian war
of independence,

and countless other battles,

the gunpowder
made here helped fuel

the unstoppable
British military machine.

But as scientists
at sites like this

were making explosive
new breakthroughs

in the mid 1800s,

Europe was teetering on
the edge of armageddon.

The discovery of new
chemical compounds

and new processes
to manufacture them

resulted in an arms
race that was to lead

to industrialised
chemical warfare.

Dubbed the chemist's war,
it saw the deployment of new

and ever more deadly weapons.

A ruin hidden in the undergrowth
shows how hard britain was working

to stay ahead of
the competition.

The material that was
produced on this site was a liquid

and it was so sensitive,

so volatile that the only
way you could produce it

was at the top of
a man-made hill

and this is what
this structure is here.

This was a new type of explosive
that was far more powerful

and made a faster moving
explosion than gunpowder.

This building is the nitrator

and this was solely built
to produce nitro glycerine.

You can still see the marks
in the walls where the top floor

was situated,

all the way round and
the stairs coming down

'cause it would have
been a wooden building

to reduce the risk of sparks,

you can still see
the lead flashing,

there was an entrance way here,
possibly stairs going up around

from that to the charge
house at the very top.

The inner structure,
which is rotted away,

was where the nitro
glycerine was produced,

the remains today prove

just how volatile this
new chemical was.

Nitro glycerine is made by
the combining of two acids,

nitric acid and sulphuric
acid with glycerine.

It's very dangerous
work and is only stable

between 60 and 70
degrees fahrenheit.

It's actually a big blast wall,

so, if anything does go wrong,

the energy from the
blast would go out

through the curved exit way

and straight up in the
air and it wouldn't damage

any of the other
production buildings

around this area.

Fortunately, it never
happened here,

otherwise this building
probably wouldn't still be here.

The highly explosive
qualities of nitro glycerine

made it absolutely
ideal for the purpose,

but the problem was
its extreme volatility,

and it couldn't be transported
in its pure form to the front-lines.

The raw nitro glycerine
needed to be combined

with other compounds
to stabilise it,

which in 1889 led
to the development

of a revolutionary
new product, cordite.

Cordite as a propellant
was absolutely fantastic

compared with the
previous propellants

that we used it's smokeless,

there was more
energy per given mass,

and it was used from
anything from pistols,

rifles, large
cannons, naval guns,

it was just the
propellant to use,

it was easy to use and it
powered every gun available

to all the forces,

so, it was a revolutionary
product really.

When the first
world war broke out

in 1914 demand for
cordite greatly increased.

But the royal gunpowder
mills were equal to the task,

providing British troops
with what they needed.

The British expeditionary
force in 1914

was modern agile and mobile,

but when it arrived
on the continent,

they were expecting
one kind of warfare

and it soon turned in to
something very different.

People can be Manning
artillery guns miles from the front,

raining death down on an
enemy they had never seen

out of the sky, both
sides did this relentlessly,

month after month,
year after year.

If waltham Abbey
wasn't producing cordite,

then we would have
been in serious trouble,

at the time there
was no other factory

that could produce that
amount of high quality propellant.

But as the scale of
the war increased,

cordite production
had to be ramped up

even further if britain
was to stay in the fight.

You had belt-driven equipment,

belt-driven presses, which
made a hell of a noise.

You had the clattering of
the machinery, the pumps,

the belts slapping about,

and it would have
been a, a very noisy

and quite an
unpleasant place to work.

At the height of production,

the factory was producing

100 tonnes of liquid
nitro glycerine a week

and the rest of the
factory was producing

75 tonnes of cordite every week.

But it soon became clear
that there was a problem.

They were chronically
short of labour.

With all the men
away fighting in the war

and the demand for cordite,

like never before, they hired
over 3,000 new employees

to help produce it and
most of them were women.

They kept the
place going really,

bit of initial training
and they got on with it,

it was maintenance,
production, transport,

absolutely everything on
site to keep the site going,

so, it was absolutely
amazing really.

As the war progressed,

soon even the scaled
up facilities here

couldn't keep up.

The government built
new larger factories

around the country
to meet demand,

but it was the royal
gunpowder mills that pioneered

the production of
cordite at a moment

when all might have been lost.

The legacy to the country is
that it saved our bacon really.

It was vital, absolutely
vital to the success of,

you know, our forces.

Incredible.

The royal gunpowder mills
were eventually closed in 1945,

but as the mysterious bunker

at the heart of the
complex suggests,

it still played a vital
role in protecting britain

for years to come.

Just three days after
the mills were shut down,

it was reopened again.

It was turned in to a
place for weapons research

and for experimentation.

The facility was finally
decommissioned in 1991

ending over 300 years
of cutting-edge research

at waltham Abbey.

But lots of what went
on here is still classified,

still to this day we
don't really know

to the true extent
what happened here.

I mean, maybe we'll never know.

In France's loir valley,

a fairy-tale castle
dominates the landscape.

When I look at this
place I see a lot of Disney.

It's sophisticated,
symmetrical, just gorgeous.

You've got these
beautiful porticos,

balustrades, terraces, all
done in the renaissance style.

Surrounded by a deep moat,

this place clearly
had strong defences

and some fascinating
excavations have taken place here.

And if you move further in,

that's when it starts
to get interesting.

There is an entrance down there

that shows that there

is a great deal going
on beneath the surface.

(Speaks French)

It's cool, it's
damp and it's dark.

There are places
where as you walk,

you realise you're
walking down a ramp

and that you are no
longer walking on a corridor,

you're not walking
on a steady floor,

the floor is dropping
away beneath you.

We're talking hundreds and
hundreds of metres of corridors

and little alleyways

and all sorts of
different little tiny rooms

and caverns and spaces.

This is a place that was
dug out with hand tools,

we can almost, when
we look at these marks,

imagine the sweat of
good French stone cutters

digging their way
into this hilltop.

Herve chaudron
has spent ten years

uncovering this hidden
world below chateau de breze.

(Speaks French)

This was a place of last resort,

built out of the fear of a
rampaging band of warriors

advancing up the
nearby river loir.

This is a river that leads
right into the Atlantic ocean.

It was a highway for peaceful
trade and it was a highway

for moving goods to
market and it was a highway

for the vikings.

In the 9th century,
viking raids across France

grew in their
frequency and ferocity.

But one event in 885 ad
shocked the entire country.

The siege of Paris.

That siege went
on for nearly a year,

it was absolutely
brutal and vicious,

the vikings took no order,
they slaughtered people,

they enslaved people,

they took whatever
wasn't nailed down.

There was real danger
that these cut throat warriors

might turn their attention
to chateau de breze.

The lords here were
acutely aware of the threat

and turned to the ground
beneath their feet for protection.

If you were a big land
owner in France at the time,

you had to take
counter measures,

you had to prepare
to defend yourself

against the vikings
or hide from them.

Survival depended
on a deception.

They had to convince the vikings

that there was not
one castle but two.

So, secrecy was
its first defence.

And the chateau de breze
is unique in that they decided,

"ok, we're going to have
a relatively modest palace

"above ground."

You would abandon
the structure above.

You would let the vikings take
it, loot it, have their way with it

and you would vanish

into this secret
underground labyrinth.

It wasn't only people's
lives that were at risk

but also their livelihoods,

this was an ancient
survivalist bunker.

People didn't keep money in
banks, wealth wasn't in something,

you know, that was hidden
away, it was literally within the food

and the chattels that
you had in your location,

that's all you had, that's
all the wealth you had,

and that had to be
protected at any cost.

(Speaks French)

With these extensive
preparations,

inhabitants were able
to survive down here

for a very long time.

(Speaks French)

If the raiders above
somehow discovered

the hidden entrances,

there was still a very
effective last line of defence.

The only access is through a
narrow ramp or a narrow stairs

so, people could come
down and at most two abreast,

so, troops at the bottom
could hack them up

as they tried to come down
a relatively small numbers.

(Speaks French)

A single Archer, a
determined fighter

could defend the entire
underground system.

It's not known
whether these defences

were ever discovered
or put to use,

and eventually the threat
of viking raids passed.

But they were just the
beginning of the story

for the fortifications here.

There was still the threat
of civil war in France

between candidates
for the French throne

in which this family
might become involved,

it might need a defensive
position, but also imagine

there were all sorts
of pandemic diseases

circulating around France,
Europe, and the world at the time.

Work began in the 15th century

and lasted for more
than 200 years.

The deep moat was dug
and the new owners used

the excavated stone to build
a more imposing castle above.

They really fixed it up.

They expanded.

They build it out in
classic renaissance style.

Faced with the prospect
of deadly diseases

and the development of new
more destructive weaponry,

the lords of breze once more
turned to the subterranean defences.

The main threat
to a castle is canon.

Great big gunpowder canon
smashing the walls to pieces,

and if all of the working
parts of your castle

are below ground level,
where the canon can't get them,

then it doesn't matter
what the enemy does

to the top half to the
part above ground.

To match the opulence
of the new castle,

the stronghold below
was also overhauled.

You had a relatively
crude refuge

created in the medieval period

against the vikings
that was now expanded

in to a much more
expansive tunnel network.

But these new tunnels came with

a few important upgrades to deal
with the latest military technology.

(Speaks French)

Using the same principles
as the earliest tunnels,

the new construction
meant that defenders

were able to hold out

against even the most
determined attackers.

People are going to be blazing
away at you with muskets

and handguns and
arrows and boiling oil,

and all of this
place is going to be

a death trap for anybody
who tries to get in.

You had sort of
fake tunnels installed

to deceive invaders
who would go down

the wrong tunnel and
become trapped in a dead end

and be overwhelmed.

Despite its formidable defences,

chateau de breze was
never put to the test.

If your fortress is good enough,

if everybody knows

that even if they
destroy the towers,

the fortress will keep
on fighting from below,

nobody's going to attack,
and you know what?

It worked, this fortress
was well enough built

that nobody ever
even tried to get in.

But had anybody ever tested it,

they would have had
a very bad bloody nose.

Kept as a close secret
over the centuries,

the underground strong
hold faded into obscurity.

(Speaks French)

Today chateau de breze's
dank tunnels have found

a very fitting new purpose.

These cool, dark caverns
are perfect for storing wine

that's still made here
on the estate today.

(Dramatic music)

Captioned by
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