Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Worldwide,

36 billion cameras are watching us --

on our streets, at work,

and in our homes, they capture things that seem impossible.

Science says this shouldn't happen.

MAN: Do you see that?

NARRATOR: Experts carry out forensic analysis

of these unusual events.

Wow, what a blast!

[screaming]

This doesn't make sense.

There has to be some sort of explanation.

What else is going on here?

NARRATOR: Coming up, in a subway said to be haunted,

a stroller is pushed across

a platform and thrown onto the tracks.

[gasps]

We're watching a nightmare happening in real time.

We need to get that baby off the tracks, now.

NARRATOR: In British Columbia, an inhuman hiker

strides down a treacherous glacier.

If this is a man, what the heck is he doing down there?

NARRATOR: And a Thai takeout that's too hot to handle.

Boom! Whoa!

What the heck just happened?

NARRATOR: Bizarre phenomena.

Oh, my God. [gasps]

NARRATOR: Mysteries caught on camera.

[woman screams]

NARRATOR: What's the truth behind this strange evidence?

Goodge Street Underground Station, Central London.

July 23rd, 2014.

CCTV footage shows a man carrying

a child in a stroller down the stairs.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

It looks like they're going up, getting some more stuff.

NARRATOR: The man returns to the top

of the stairs to collect another child.

Then, the unthinkable happens.

Wait a minute.

This -- this --

Whoa! The buggy is -- it's mov --

It's like somebody's pushing the buggy. There's nothing...

NARRATOR: A mysterious force

propels the child towards the rails.

No -- no, no, no!

[gasps]

NARRATOR: There are over 250 miles of electric line on

the London underground, and the middle rail of the tracks

is live.

The track is pumped with over 3,000 amps,

and if you touch it, you are toast.

You can see the handles of the stroller hooked up,

saving the baby from coming into contact

with the live rails.

We're watching a nightmare happening in real time.

We need to get that baby off the tracks, now.

NARRATOR: Even if the baby avoids a deadly electric shock,

subway trains traveling at an average of 20 miles an hour

arrive at this platform every three minutes.

WALLACE: Here comes the mother.

Okay, she's -- she's got the baby out

and got it back up, but Great Scott!

NARRATOR: The mother's instinct to protect

her child overrides self-preservation.

She has no idea how lucky she was,

because she was inches from death.

This footage just takes your breath away.

NARRATOR: The cause of this near fatal event

remains unexplained.

The platform appears perfectly flat.

There's no slope, no incline for the stroller to roll down.

The stroller looks like it was pushed,

but there isn't anyone around.

It's so unnerving, because it's almost like

there's an unnatural force acting on that stroller.

NARRATOR: Author Jeff Belanger uncovers a history

of disturbing incidents on London's subway system.

The London underground is over 100 years old.

It's the oldest underground system in the world, and over

the decades, this place has just

amassed many strange tales of the unexplained.

NARRATOR: At Bethnal Green Underground Station,

right next to the hunting grounds of Jack the Ripper,

passengers and staff report the wailing

and screaming of adults and children.

King's Cross Station, scene of a terrible fire in 1987,

is said to be haunted by a desperate woman.

BELANGER: A man heard screaming and saw

a woman rushing toward him with outstretched arms.

He ran to help, and she ran right through him.

Others report seeing an apparition

and smelling smoke at the same station.

I can't even imagine that, how scary that is.

[woman screaming]

NARRATOR: Physicist Athena Brensenberger

believes the stroller's uncanny movement could be a result

of a unique and dangerous atmospheric effect

that can occur in tunnel systems.

These tunnels haven't been updated ever since

they were first built over 100 years ago.

But the trains have been updated -- they're bigger,

more powerful.

It's like taking a V8 supercharged car and putting

it on a system that's designed for a horse-drawn carriage.

It's causing larger gusts of wind to get pushed

through these tunnels at higher speeds and creating

pressure differentials.

A wind gust could be what set the stroller running.

NARRATOR: At the exact time of the incident,

any train leaving or arriving through the station's

tunnels should not have been going fast enough to produce

a large wind gust,

but in the depths of the London subway network,

there are many other tunnels hidden from sight.

BELANGER: While the London underground has been expanded,

certain sections have been closed off,

while others have been secretly extended.

NARRATOR: One rumor based on secret accounting figures

suggests government offices in Whitehall are connected to

the British Secret Services MI6 headquarters via

a top-secret tunnel beneath the River Thames.

A classified spy subway could be in operation.

Goodge Street Station is close

to several key government offices.

Maybe movement

in one of these secret tunnels caused some sort

of vacuum that moved the stroller onto the track.

[beeping noises]

[saw buzzing]

NARRATOR: Engineer Nick Householder builds an experiment.

He wants to test the theory

the incident was caused by a secret spy train

passing through unseen passages.

Let's construct this tunnel.

NARRATOR: He uses plastic piping to replicate

the station's layout at Goodge Street underground.

This represents the rest of the tube line

that comes up to the station entrance.

This little T piece is effectively the station, with

a piece connecting to it where the stroller was sitting.

Off of this is the rest of the tunnel.

Now, this section represents what I think

is happening in the tunnel.

There's a second line connected somewhere further

on in the stream, and there's a train

traveling through it.

NARRATOR: A secret spy train passing through a tube tunnel

pushes air ahead of it

and creates a partial vacuum in its wake.

Air rushes in from elsewhere in

the tunnel system to fill the vacuum.

This piston effect could create a powerful

suction force, which pulls the stroller towards the tracks.

This rag moving inside of

the tube effectively works like a train.

It's creating a seal and can

slide back and forth inside the tube.

I'm using this ping pong ball

to represent the baby in the stroller.

Now, I'm putting it here just at the entrance of the station.

You'll notice this is actually pretty far away from

the tracks.

I'm curious to see if a train moving through a tube is

actually enough suction force

to pull a baby all the way away from the station

onto the tracks.

NARRATOR: Coming up...

did a secret spy train suck up the stroller?

Baby on tracks in three, two, one.

NARRATOR: And in British Columbia, hikers take

the vacation video of a lifetime.

Holy cow.

NARRATOR: On a London subway platform,

a mysterious force pushes a baby in a stroller

onto the tracks.

Engineer Nick Householder believes it could have been

caused by a blast of wind

from a secret MI6 spy train passing close to

the station.

He has created an experiment to test his theory.

HOUSEHOLDER: This is the platform and the tracks

that we see in the video.

Here's the little hallway where the stroller is sitting.

Further along up the track is a split into a second tube.

I'm gonna see if I can generate

an effect like what we saw in the film.

This piston is gonna move through

and potentially create a vacuum behind it,

and I want to see if those forces are strong enough to

pull the baby from where it's sitting

at the foot of the stairs and pull it on the tracks.

All right, here we go.

Baby on tracks in three, two, one.

NARRATOR: The simulated baby meets a gruesome fate.

It worked! Just the train moving through this tunnel

produced enough of a suction force

to pull the baby onto the tracks.

This experiment proves that a secret tunnel creates

enough of an airflow

to disturb the other parts of the track.

With this many secret tunnels and hidden trains,

you just have to watch out.

NARRATOR: The British government remains tight-lipped about

its secret network of tunnels under London,

despite a journalist claiming he accessed them

through a hidden entrance in 1980.

But this experiment demonstrates -One...

that unseen forces can create strange effects

captured on camera in London's subway system.

These people really don't know how lucky they are.

This is every parent's worst nightmare,

your child spirited away into the most gravest of dangers,

totally out of your control.

NARRATOR: Now, Panorama Ridge near Black Tusk mountain

in remote British Columbia.

August 16th, 2014.

Photographer Shayd Johnson is out hiking with friends

7,000 feet above sea level when they spot

something moving on the glacier across the valley.

Holy cow!

NARRATOR: His phone camera zooms in as far as it can to focus on

the dark figure.

MAN: Such a big thing for such a, like...

MAN #2: He's hauling it down that mountain.

-For sure! -MAN: He's, like, just going...

He's not on the trail, guys.

This is -- this is not...

-Wh -- why is he so far away? -What are we looking at?

NARRATOR: What is immediately clear from the footage

is that this is no ordinary hiker.

Are we all seeing the same thing, right?

Yeah.

NARRATOR: There is no hiking trail on the glacier's

slippery slope, and the striding figure is surrounded

by deep ravines and dangerous gullies.

MONTANARI: If this is a man, what the heck is he doing

down there? He's all alone --

no backpack or hiking poles.

It doesn't make any sense.

NARRATOR: The fast-moving figure appears to move down

the treacherous slope with astonishing speed

and wide gait.

How is it moving so quickly?

NARRATOR: Until...

MAN: Yo! [echoing]

It stopped.

NARRATOR: The mysterious mountain man is nearly

a mile away but seems to hear them

and stops to stare.

But no human signal like a hand wave

or shout is returned.

MAN: I don't think that's a person, guys.

MAN #2: I'm [bleep] zoomed in as much as I can

on this thing. -What the [bleep]?

NARRATOR: This figure is performing

an incredible feat of power and athleticism.

The unedited video clip lasts just over 60 seconds.

During that time,

the figure scrambles approximately 300 feet

down a slippery glacial slope.

MAN: No way you can cover that ground

if you were just a person. -Yeah, you're just

going down the side of a glacier? No way, man.

NARRATOR: By combining the distance and time taken,

it's traveling at nearly double the speed of

an average human hiker in this kind of terrain.

Biologist Jayde Lovell attempts to identify what could

be moving at this speed across the mountainside.

LOVELL: In this type of wilderness,

it wouldn't be surprising to see a lone wolf

or a grizzly bear, but when you look closer

at the footage, you can see it's not a creature on four legs.

It's definitely walking upright, like a human, like a man.

-Coming up... -MAN: Yo!

...was calling out to the creature a bad idea?

This sighting occurred right on the edge of an area of

Canadian wilderness

home to a spate of mysterious disappearances

and brutal killings.

NARRATOR: And in Thailand, a mysterious motorcycle blast

gives a new meaning to burning some rubber.

Boom! Whoa!

Whoa, what is happening?

NARRATOR: In British Columbia, photographer Shayd Johnson

and three friends film a mysterious two-legged

creature traveling down a steep glacier at what seems to

be a tremendous speed.

MAN: No way you could cover that ground

if you were just a person. -Yeah, you're just going down

the side of a glacier. No way, man.

NARRATOR: British Columbia is twice the size of California,

and over 60 percent of it is covered in deep,

impenetrable forest.

British Columbia -- Bigfoot ground zero.

This is Sasquatch country.

NARRATOR: Today, the Kitasoo tribe who live in the region accept

the creatures as being as real as the bears,

whales, and wolves that make up the megafauna of the area.

Indigenous tribes believe it is a hybrid creation

of ancient woodland creatures that once roamed the region --

a small, well built, dark ape and a tall, thin gray one.

The Kitasoo call them ba'gwi,

and elders forbid humans from going into

parts of the forest that are reserved as wilu'bu'kwis,

which means the places where there are Sasquatch.

They tell people not to enter for their own safety.

Many people speculate that in 1924, a woodsman,

Albert Ostman, was dragged into a Sasquatch lair, where he was

held captive until he escaped.

NARRATOR: And science journalist Shaena Montanari

discovers this area of British Columbia has gained

a reputation for people going missing in the wilderness.

This sighting occurred right on the edge

of what locals call the Kamloops Triangle,

an area of Canadian wilderness home to a spate of

mysterious disappearances and brutal killings.

NARRATOR: Six men have gone missing between 2017 and 2020,

and despite a massive search,

Royal Canadian mounted police say only two bodies have

been recovered.

Some people blame Sasquatch for these killings,

but the authorities thinks it's more likely these deaths

are due to this area being

a magnet for criminals with high-end survival skills.

LOVELL: B.C. has the dubious honor of being known for being

a haven for people who are running from the law.

NARRATOR: The small community of Kitimat, just 400 miles north

of where the footage was shot,

was the site of a savage mass murder.

Kevin Vermette shot four campers at a campsite in 1997

before fleeing into the forest,

and he was never seen again.

NARRATOR: Despite a $20,000 reward,

Vermette, an experienced outdoorsman, simply vanishes.

He has evaded capture ever since.

GLOVER: Could a desperate or dangerous criminal

have made this mountain peak his home?

NARRATOR: But biologist Jayde Lovell speculates

this may instead be a person who has just

suffered a terrible trauma.

They don't seem to have any survival gear,

any backpack, or any kit with them.

Are they someone in distress?

Over one weekend in September 2020, one hiker was

killed and two were critically injured in accidents.

They all fell from mountainside roots above

Squamish Valley.

[man shouting]

LOVELL: This is very dangerous terrain.

23 people die every year in B.C.

from all sorts of things, climbing accidents

and injuries, but also just simply getting

lost and dying from exposure.

Perhaps this man just emerged traumatized

after being buried by an avalanche.

NARRATOR: The mountains of British Columbia produce over

2,000 avalanches every year.

A big one can release 300,000 cubic yards of snow.

If you get buried for more than an hour,

you have only a one-in-three chance of survival.

Perhaps he was in a group, and maybe he's searching

frantically for his friends --

it might explain the lack of hiking gear.

NARRATOR: But if it was a desperate person,

why don't they respond when Shayd's hiking party

call out a greeting?

[echoing] Yo!

NARRATOR: No one was recorded missing that day.

And the person, if it was a person, isn't reported to have

arrived at any nearby village or town.

We don't know what that creature is.

Is it a person? We don't know.

LOVELL: One thing we do know for sure is that

there's something massive living out there

in those B.C. mountains.

NARRATOR: Now, Pathum Thani,

in the Bangkok metropolitan area of Thailand.

September 21, 2020.

A man's dash cam films as his car

approaches what looks like an improvised roadblock.

People running across the road, it looks like.

Two guys on a motorcycle go by on the left-hand side,

and they're cruising along -- there are two chairs

in the middle of the road for some rea -- Boom! Whoa!

[indistinct shouting]

What the heck just happened?

NARRATOR: In the blink of an eye,

the motorbike and its two riders are

engulfed in a searing white fireball.

Whoa! What is happening?

Where did that even come from?

[sobbing]

NARRATOR: Eyewitnesses are terrified.

The motorbike's passenger slowly sits up.

The driver is yet to move.

-Then suddenly... -[explosion blasts]

the victims are caught in another blistering blaze.

So the fire stops, and then it restarts.

It's like something's going horribly wrong with this bike.

It was like a tiny miniature bomb

just went off underneath them.

Motorcycle accidents are always dangerous because of how

exposed you are, but this is something else.

[explosion blasts]

What could have sparked that fire?

I don't see anything.

Engineer David Wallace is particularly interested

in this case, being a lifelong motorcyclist.

When you ride a bike, you're always inspecting

the area around you, looking for outside dangers

that could possibly get you.

You never expect it to be your own bike.

NARRATOR: In the U.S., motorcyclists are

28 times more likely to be killed

on the road than car drivers -- in Thailand,

it's even worse -- every day,

39 people die on motorbikes here,

making it the world's deadliest country to ride in.

70 percent of all Thai traffic deaths are motorbike related.

It looks like my mom is right -- motorcycles are a death trap.

NARRATOR: Martin Morgan spots

a detail that suggests this fireball could be

the latest escalation of a lethal turf war.

The fact that we have two people on this motorcycle is

a clue, and that's because in Thailand,

motorcycle taxis are enormously popular.

All of the taxi drivers on these motorcycles,

they kind of carve out a turf where they operate, and they

don't want other people muscling in on their turf.

They're constantly at odds with one another about where

the boundaries of their turf starts

and ends, and it's almost like it's created

a motorcycle mafia.

NARRATOR: Bangkok has over 100,000 licensed motorbike

taxis, all vying for business

from just 6,000 official pickup spots.

But then in October 2017, a new unregulated ride hailing

app is launched,

undercutting the city's already angry

territorial drivers.

The bloody battles start to escalate.

These turf wars are for real.

NARRATOR: In March 2019, a driver registered with

the rideshare app is brutally stabbed by a rival.

VITTERT: Later that year, two men were shot

and killed in a battle between two groups of drivers.

These fights happen all the time,

and people get bludgeoned and beaten.

NARRATOR: This hair-raising footage could represent

the latest atrocity in this bitter turf war.

A rival group could be responsible

for sabotaging this rider's fuel tank.

So if the driver of this bike has crossed into some

rival's territory,

this explosion could be intentional.

It would explain why the driver's legs

caught on fire first.

ORZEL: Burning gasoline reaches a temperature of over

1,700 degrees, and once it's on you,

it's hard to get off.

It tends to stay where it comes in contact with

human skin, which is one of the reasons

why napalm is such a brutally effective weapon.

You get burned by gasoline, they're gonna have to cut away

the burned skin to expose new

skin cells, and then, to cover up the scarring,

they're gonna have to use skin grafting.

NARRATOR: Electrical engineer David Wallace

doesn't think this is a fuel explosion.

WALLACE: As we look closely to this, we notice that this fire

starts rather suddenly -- goes bright, dims down, gets bright.

Now, this is looking more like an electrical-type fire.

So is it feasible that this may be

possibly an electric motorbike that has malfunctioned?

NARRATOR: Wallace could be onto something.

Thailand has imposed severe import duties on foreign goods.

At the time of the blast,

electric cars are subject to 80 percent import

taxes and e-bikes up to 60.

This means no one can afford them,

and locals are improvising.

Engineer and mechanic specialist Rachel de Barros

investigates why two chairs

were sitting in the middle of the road.

I see something smoldering on the ground, and then just

above that, a black line.

I think it's a power cable that's just hanging there.

NARRATOR: David Wallace wants to find out

if the violent explosions seen in the footage

come from a fallen overhead power line.

WALLACE: So here we have our one million vote generator that's

gonna be feeding power down through the ring into the line

to my right here.

Now for this experiment, we're only gonna be using about

34,000 volts,

which would simulate a distribution line running

along a highway like you see in the video.

NARRATOR: For safety, Wallace is bringing the power cable to

the bike -- this experiment

should never be attempted at home.

What we have here is our current sensor,

which will be used to detect the current flowing through

the motorbike's frame whenever the electricity hits it.

So there's only one way to find out what's gonna happen.

Let's give it a shot.

NARRATOR: Coming up, Wallace finds out if

these guys were fried on their ride.

Look at this. We've got a good arc going.

NARRATOR: And bizarre bird behavior in Texas

as a camera seems to capture a feathered funeral.

More and more you watch,

the more and more you get creeped out.

NARRATOR: Near Bangkok, Thailand, a motorbike is

suddenly engulfed in a searing white-hot fireball.

Electrical engineer David Wallace is

conducting a highly dangerous experiment.

So in a moment, we're gonna use my one million volt

generator in order to produce the power to my line.

NARRATOR: He wants to find out if the violent explosion

that consumes the rider

and his passenger is triggered by a fallen power line.

Just in case something happens and the bike ignites,

we want to be protected.

NARRATOR: The motorbike is emptied of all gasoline

and oil for safety and to prove, if there is an explosion,

it's not caused by fuel in the vehicle.

Okay, so let's get ready to light this bike up.

Let's run the voltage up.

NARRATOR: Switches are thrown, and instantly, 35,000 volts,

approximate to the power running through the roadside

cables, are coursing through the conductor rod.

A little more.

NARRATOR: The deadly current shoots down through the bike,

but we're not seeing the searing white hot flames

from the footage.

-Then... -[explosion blasts]

Look at this. We got a good arc going.

This is what we see in the video.

You get the flashes.

NARRATOR: These white hot arc flashes are

just like the footage from Thailand.

As the powerful electrical current breaks its circuit

and jumps from the conductor rod to the bike,

dust and gas in the atmosphere violently ignite.

This deadly expulsion of energy

generates heat up to 35,000 degrees Fahrenheit,

hotter than the surface of the sun.

All right. Kill the power.

This bike took quite a lick here -- we had over 160 amps

flowing through this bike.

This is more than enough current to kill you very,

very quickly.

So it definitely appears to me that this is a broken

power line that these guys ran over that created the blast.

NARRATOR: Power lines run alongside roads

for ease of access.

But in a country like Thailand, with frequent storms and poorly

maintained infrastructure,

low-hanging cables and highways

can be a lethal combination.

Both of these guys on the bike recovered,

and they were lucky to get out of that alive.

So if you ever come across a power line laying on

the ground, no matter what,

assume this thing is live -- never go

anywhere near it. Death awaits you.

Now, Austin, Texas.

September 15th, 2016.

A man films a mysterious gathering in a parking lot.

MAN: There are more coming.

They're not afraid of me, and I'm right next to them.

They're all hovering around!

NARRATOR: The birds seem to be focused on one of their dead.

There are dozens of them, and more

just keep coming.

MAN: There's more all around.

NARRATOR: The eerie congregation ignores everything around them.

MAN: Here's a big one that just walked up.

Oh, my goodness. I wonder if that was planned.

This looks like highly organized behavior,

like a kind of group intelligence.

NARRATOR: Their avian attention focuses

on their fallen flock member.

But is it grief or a grudge?

More and more you watch, the more and more you get

creeped out.

[whistling]

It's so sinister.

It's like they're planning something.

NARRATOR: Coming up, are these birds arranging

a funeral or plotting revenge? -When they're being aggressive,

they'll peck and claw at a person's head.

It's almost impossible for the person to fight back.

NARRATOR: And in China, an unidentified falling

object brings fear to a village. -[indistinct shouting]

The terror that you can hear cannot be understated.

They are afraid.

NARRATOR: A man films a bizarre and threatening congregation

of birds in the middle of a parking lot in Austin, Texas.

MAN: There's more all around it.

You can see the reason for the gathering --

right in the middle of the circle is a dead bird.

MAN: It's like they want to move it.

Are they investigating the cause of its murder?

Avian murder investigation

sounds like something out of a cartoon.

The bird detective is a wacky idea, but the more we find out

about birds, the closer to reality

this idea becomes.

NARRATOR: Recent research suggests that some species

of bird can remember faces,

learn about threats, and even hold grudges.

[cawing]

Crows have been found to share this information

with each other at a funeral-like events,

where they gather around corpses of

their dead comrades.

If we have bird funerals, and that may be what we're seeing on

camera here,

then why not bird murder investigations?

NARRATOR: Crows' brains contain 1.5 billion neurons,

as many as a monkey,

but because crows' neurons are packed tighter together,

they are more intelligent,

[engines revving]

some think as much as a gorilla or a chimpanzee.

Analysis of the footage shows the jet black species holding

this avian CSI

are actually a type of bird that's just as brainy

and belligerent as crows, the grackle.

SZULGIT: A recent study shows that grackles

actually rank very high in intelligence close to crows.

We know that crows engage in this kind of behavior.

I don't think it's a push to suggest that

grackles maybe are doing the same kind of thing.

NARRATOR: If a grackle investigation concludes

that a human is a threat,

that person could be in trouble -- when threatened,

these mass gatherings can erupt into

a violent defensive behavior called mobbing.

Grackles have a bad reputation

in Texas for their aggressive behavior.

They'll steal your food and do

all kinds of nasty things -- in Austin.

they've learned to identify fast food areas

and trucks, and the locals call them taco raptors.

NARRATOR: Just a couple of hours away

from where the footage was shot, nearby Houston

was the site of a major grackle incident.

In January 2020, thousands of grackles take

over the parking lot of a grocery store.

Eyewitnesses say the birds act aggressively

and displayed no fear of humans.

The size of these grackle flocks can be huge.

Eyewitnesses report rivers of birds in the sky.

In fact, bird attacks have been on the rise everywhere.

When they're being aggressive,

they can fly at somebody and vomit and defecate

on them with amazing accuracy.

They'll peck and claw at a person's head

and then come back in huge numbers.

It's almost impossible for the person to fight back.

NARRATOR: This grackle funeral could indeed be

the start of a feather-brained hit squad

hell-bent on revenge.

And as birds seem to be losing their fear of humans,

perhaps humans should start to

develop a healthier fear of birds.

SANFORD: It's easy for us humans to get

complacent about our place in the environment.

We've got weapons, we've got shelter.

However, some animals have discovered

that humans are easy pickings.

I would not want to be the person who killed that bird.

There could be a feathery rain of pain coming their way.

NARRATOR: Now, Gaoyao in Shaanxi province, northern China.

September 7th, 2020.

A normal day, until...

[speaking indistinctly]

Whoa, whoa.

[shouting indistinctly]

I mean, this is crazy -- something falls from the sky.

So you can see the villagers in the footage.

They can view this cylindrical object dropping out of the sky

towards them. -[shouts indistinctly]

Petrifying for them.

NARRATOR: The huge object continues its rapid descent.

The villagers can be heard screaming a warning to

those below.

You can see that the people are terrified.

This is not something that you would see every day.

They're yelling. The camera's shaking.

There is panic going on here.

NARRATOR: The man suddenly stops filming.

Oh, no!

-Still nothing. -NARRATOR: Then....

Oh! Okay. There it is. Wow. That's big.

That is a big explosion.

This is not your normal gas.

This looks sort of deadly.

This is nuts.

A giant object falls from the sky,

and then orange smoke starts pouring into the air.

This little village looks like it's suddenly

become a war zone.

NARRATOR: The unidentified object lands close to a school,

villagers fear for their children's lives.

[indistinct shouting and commotion]

The terror that you can hear in

the voices of the people in this video cannot be understated.

-They are afraid. -NARRATOR: Shocked locals rush

to where the object has made ground fall.

The blast crater looks like something

from the Predator movies.

What has landed on this village,

and just how deadly is it?

NARRATOR: Coming up, is the Chinese government

playing war games above its own people?

Is it conceivable that they're even allowing

the North Koreans to test missiles over

Chinese territory?

NARRATOR: In northern China, terrified eyewitnesses film

an unidentified object

crash landing right next to the village's school.

I think it's a pretty good rule of

thumb that if you see an orange cloud,

it's probably not going to be good for you.

NARRATOR: Antonio Paris looks for answers

about this mysterious object.

One of China's closest allies is

the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

He suspects Kim Jong-un could be involved.

Geographically, China is very close to North Korea,

and in the last 10 years,

North Korea has been testing a whole assortment of rockets

and missiles -- is this what we're seeing here,

is something that malfunctioned over

China that came from North Korea?

McMAHON: The impact site definitely says missile.

It's a large hole in the ground.

It's what every missile does.

NARRATOR: North Korea is an impoverished country,

but it still has one of the largest militaries in

the world.

It's estimated 20 percent of its entire GDP

is spent on defense.

America spends just 3.4 percent.

The North Koreans are nuclear capable, and they have

an intermediate range strike capability now, as well,

in the form of ballistic missiles that can be equipped

with a nuclear payload, and the delivery system

that they have can stretch to about 8,000 miles.

NARRATOR: Mainland USA may be out of reach,

but the Pacific island of Guam is a sitting duck.

And that is something that should alarm Americans,

first and foremost, because Guam has been a part of

the greater United States of America since 1898.

It's the site of a major United States Navy base.

NARRATOR: But Guam lies pretty much in the opposite direction

from where the object in the footage falls in

northern China.

China could be helping the North Koreans

to develop their missile system.

Is it conceivable that they're even allowing

the North Koreans to test those missiles over

Chinese territory?

NARRATOR: Space journalist Amy Shira Teitel

reexamines the footage.

Is this a spent rocket booster stage

crashing in the middle of a residential area?

The thing is, spent rocket stages are usually jettisoned

over water, not populated areas.

NARRATOR: The Chinese government space program uses former

top-secret military missile launchpads to blast off

their spacecraft.

These were all built in the Cold War, far inland,

away from the eyes of spies

and the possibility of attack by a foreign navy.

PARIS: So that's an issue.

If you have a spaceport that's inland,

and the rocket takes off,

and then there's some type of malfunction, that rocket's

not gonna fall into the ocean,

it's gonna fall on land and potentially a city.

NARRATOR: Falling space debris is now such a common problem

that locals are given a warning prior to any launch.

The Chinese government puts out these notices saying that

if you see something falling from

the sky near these launch sites, you need to get out

the way, you need to run.

It struck me as completely insane.

Can you imagine if NASA gave people warning of a launch

to just run if they found something falling over

their homes?

NARRATOR: Further clues from the footage

now confirmed conclusively --

this is a booster stage from a rocket.

This gigantic orange cloud that you see

in the video is actually rocket fuel exploding.

It's a mix of hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide.

These two things are hyperbolic propellants,

which ignite on contact with each other.

Hydrazine is an incredibly powerful genotoxic carcinogen,

So even if you survive the impact in a village,

you will have health effects that could be deadly

almost immediately.

NARRATOR: And it isn't just a problem

for the people in China.

The Asian superpower is now starting to

launch rockets that travel all over the world.

MORGAN: Recently, in the Ivory Coast,

a 40-foot-long section of a Chinese rocket came down

and crashed through this cheese maker's warehouse.

NARRATOR: And in May 2021, the Chinese lose control of

a 21-ton rocket during re-entry to Earth's atmosphere.

Traveling at more than four miles per second,

experts predict the Long March 5B's

debris could land anywhere from New York to New Zealand.

So here's the biggest problem -- China is trying to beat us to

space, and they're trying to

fast track this, and when you fast track something,

especially a space program,

there's a chance that this can be done unsafely.

TEITEL: China is on a mission to establish itself

as a major player in space.

So we're going to be seeing more

of these rockets launching in the future.

If problems with launches and re-entry persist, it could be

a matter of time before one of

these Chinese missions ends with an international incident.