All language subtitles for What.on.Earth.S11E02.1080p.DSCP.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-BTN_track3_[eng]

NARRATOR:
They're watching you.

More than 6,000 satellites
circle the Earth.

Every day, they uncover new,
mysterious phenomena

that defy explanation.

Revealed from the skies,

the ghosts of war.

What an amazing structure to
find in the middle of nowhere.

NARRATOR: Attack of
the million-ton goop monster.

It almost physically
shouldn't be possible.

NARRATOR: And the weirdest
war in history.

There were stabbings
and shootings

between rival gangs
of egg collectors.

NARRATOR: Baffling phenomena,
mysteries from space.

What on Earth are they?

[theme music playing]

December 2021.

Alex Richie is traveling
through Poland, drawn

by a mystery hidden
from human eyes.

RICHIE:
I'm deep in the Polish forest

to try and figure out what

on Earth these mysterious
things could be.

NARRATOR: A laser scan of
a dense patch of woodland

has revealed a series of
structures swallowed by time.

The Lidar scan reveals
something

absolutely extraordinary.

The forest is hiding
dozens of perfectly

straight parallel lines
and mounds of earth.

So something quite unusual
is going on here.

NARRATOR: Richie's journey
takes her deep

into the region of Silesia,

a place with a long,
twisting human history

stretching back more than
100,000 years.

What's really strange
is the locals

I've spoken to
don't seem to know

anything about
these structures in the woods.

They've just been
forgotten about.

NARRATOR:
Richie heads north.

As she approaches
the coordinates in the image,

the landscape begins to change.

Now most of this forest
is pretty flat.

But this...

is quite astounding,

because there are
three huge mounds.

NARRATOR:
Richie believes this is one of

the giant lines
visible in the image.

Its purpose, however,
remains unclear.

Far in the distance,
I can see some sort of building.

Oh, my goodness!

What is this?

NARRATOR: An arched edifice
rises some 30 feet

from the end of the mounds.

RICHIE:
It's huge.

What an amazing structure
to find

in the middle of the forest.

In the middle of nowhere.

NARRATOR: One of the structure's
walls yields a clue.

Oh, no -- look.

This is amazing.

This says Opitz,

which is a German name,
16-9-1942.

That's incredible.

NARRATOR: Richie has uncovered
a Nazi mega structure,

and it was a place of
extreme violence.

There's these massive walls
riddled with bullet holes,

and you can see
the pieces of metal

that are just lying around.

Now it really all makes sense.

This discovery of all
of these...

bullets in
this huge structure,

faced by
these massive trenches.

This was a Nazi
firing range.

It's quite
an extraordinary place.

NARRATOR:
Declassified files reveal that

Hitler takes control of
this massive facility

in the early 1930s,
when this region of Poland

was German territory.

It will play a key role
in his plans to

secretly rearm his country
in violation

of international peace treaties.

MORGAN: In the aftermath
of World War I,

the Versailles treaty limited
what Germany could make for

its military.

It limited combat aircraft,
it limited German

naval strength, it limited
the rearmament program.

NARRATOR: The treaty restricts
the strength of

the German Army to
100,000 troops.

Hitler increases this
to four million.

He uses this range
to prepare his new troops

and weapons for the fury he
will soon unleash on the world.

It's obvious that the Nazis
invested a huge amount of money

into this vast facility,

but there was a reason for it,
because small arms were

tremendously important in
the Second World War.

NARRATOR:
When Hitler rises to power,

the Nazis' primary infantry
weapon is the 98k rifle,

but it soon becomes clear
that it is not

suitable for the demands of
World War II battlefields.

The German troops were armed
primarily with weapons that had

proven very effective during
the First World War,

you know, trench warfare.

MUNOZ: The nature of warfare
had changed dramatically.

They did not have
the rate of fire required

to conduct modern,
urban warfare operations.

NARRATOR: In response,
Nazi engineers designed

the first assault rifle
in history,

the Sturmgewehr, or MP 44.

The Sturmgewehr,
or Storm Gun,

was the name given by Hitler
himself to the weapon,

and it was truly a breakthrough
in infantry warfare.

It was a revolutionary weapon,
because it was the first

small arms weapon

that combined a fully
automatic rate of fire with

a detachable magazine.

NARRATOR: The MP 44 provides
range and accuracy but also

offers the intense firepower
needed for close urban combat.

The MP 44 ended up being sort
of the best of both worlds.

CAVELL:
It really is a revelation.

It changes all sorts of ideas
about how

we're going to equip
our soldiers in the field.

NARRATOR:
During the war,

the Nazis used the site
in the image as

a proving ground for
their new weapons of war.

But in the end,
victory becomes a numbers game.

While German factories produce
around 13 million guns,

the U.S. and Britain churn out
almost two times that number.

It's not really armies
that win wars,

it's the ability of the nation
behind that army to produce

the tools to keep it in
the fight.

NARRATOR: Yet, as Richie
explores a local archive

to learn more,

she discovers the story of

the giant Nazi range
doesn't end there.

This is really like

an Aladdin's cave
of old maps and documents.

NARRATOR: Wartime maps
show that the range once

formed part of a much larger
Nazi facility,

one that played a role in some
of the vilest events

of the war.

RICHIE:
This was an installation of

enormous importance
to the Third Reich.

If these walls could talk,

they would tell a truly
sinister history.

NARRATOR: Coming up, death
stalks the Polish forests.

These were highly trained,
highly murderous,

highly fearsome individuals.

NARRATOR: And the mystery
mucus invasion.

This grayish, greenish slime,
it's sticking to everything.

NARRATOR: A strange pattern in
a Lidar image has led

historian Alex Richie to
discover a Nazi shooting range.

Wartime documents reveal
its connection to some of

the most controversial
chapters of World War II.

The shooting range was part of
a huge military complex,

and this complex was
used by the SS.

NARRATOR: The SS, or
Schutzstaffel, begins life in

1925 as a small personal
bodyguard to Hitler.

In the run-up to war, under
the command of Heinrich Himmler,

their number grows to 50,000.

The SS were
the most ideologically

fanatical of
all the German forces.

They literally took a personal
oath to Adolf Hitler

and they would fight
more fiercely

and with more conviction
than any other unit.

NARRATOR: Himmler installs
thousands of SS recruits

in Polish forests,
like the site in the image.

Those who display the greatest
lust for violence are later

involved in some of the most
despicable acts of the war.

Locals have talked
about Nazi death squads

that stalked these forests
during the war.

WALTERS: These Nazi
death squads were known as

the Einsatzgruppen,
special groups,

and these were
highly trained,

highly murderous,
highly fearsome individuals.

NARRATOR: During the first
three months of World War II,

the Einsatzgruppen murders
some 50,000 Poles.

They will go on to commit many
more heinous war crimes,

killing around 1.5 million
people on

the eastern front
and during the Holocaust.

As the conflict unfolds,
the story of

the site in the image takes
another disturbing turn.

Sadly for the people
of Poland,

the 13th Waffen-SS
Mountain Division

also visited
and trained here.

We tend to think of Waffen-SS
divisions as being

these six-foot, blue-eyed,
blond-haired Aryans,

but the 13th Waffen
Mountain Division

was not Germanic at all.

They are actually made up
mostly of Muslims.

NARRATOR: The 13th Division
has its origins

in the Balkans campaign
of World War II,

which sees Albania, Greece,
and Yugoslavia

fall under German control.

When partisan rebellions
threaten stability in

the region,
Himmler decides to use

local ethnic divisions
to his advantage.

Germany had to do something
about partisans in Yugoslavia.

They just couldn't bring
the uprising under control,

and that then opened the door
for them going,

who can we get to help us?

NARRATOR:
At the time,

30 percent of Yugoslavians
are Muslim.

Himmler, who has long been
fascinated by Islam,

devises a plan to mobilize
them against

their fellow countrymen.

For him, Islamic fighters,
historically, were some of

the greatest fighters
in history,

and he wanted to be able to
tap into that source of power

if at all possible.

And that is such a rich irony
when you consider that,

central to, at the core of
German ideology,

was this idea of not just
white supremacy,

but the supremacy
also of what

white people
believe spiritually.

NARRATOR: Himmler tries to
navigate this hypocrisy

by claiming
that Balkan Muslims

are descended
from an ancient Aryan race.

But when enlistment
begins in 1943,

few buy into his propaganda.

There were problems
with recruitment.

There weren't too many from
the Muslim population who were

ready to take up arms
and fight for Germany.

NARRATOR: The Nazis turned
to the controversial

Muslim leader
Amin al-Husseini for help.

By playing on the clerics'
hatred of the Allied nations

and anti-Semitic views,

Hitler persuades him
to rally more recruits.

Al-Husseini declared that Arabs
and Germany were

natural friends, because they
shared the same enemies.

WALTERS: Al-Husseini put out an
appeal for volunteers to fight,

and the end result was
the formation of

the 13th Waffen-SS Division.

NARRATOR: Following
Al-Husseini's call to arms,

some 20,000 Balkan Muslims

join the 13th
Waffen-SS Division.

The 13th SS had a fez,
and right at

the center of the fez
was the totenkopf,

the death's head,
the skull with the crossbones.

NARRATOR:
In September 1943,

the 13th Division begins
training in France,

but a group of them
soon stages a mutiny,

killing several of
their commanding officers.

It's a pretty
catastrophic mutiny.

Many of them actually escaped
into the French countryside

and Himmler's like, "Oh, God,
did we make a mistake here?"

NARRATOR: In the fall of 1943,
Himmler moves

thousands of the 13th Division
to the site in the image.

After five months
in the Polish woods,

they embark on a series of
brutal campaigns

in the Balkan states.

Unfortunately,
their aggressions are directed

against ethnic cleansing
in the region,

which is exactly what
the Nazis had hoped for.

NARRATOR: When the war
draws to a close,

the division surrenders to
advancing Allied forces,

who executes several officers
for war crimes.

Over the following decades,

the site that helped give rise
to their atrocities is

abandoned and slowly reclaimed
by the forest.

The division was notorious in
its cruelty and its brutality,

which taints it with some

of the worst crimes that were
committed by the Germans in

the Second World War.

Today, the story of the 13th
Waffen Mountain Division

is mired in controversy,

for while their atrocities
cannot be denied,

for some, they, too,
were victims of Hitler's

exploitation of anyone
who stood in his way.

It was a direct
manipulation of

the religious diversity of
the Balkans.

It was Germany going,
we know just

how to turn these people
against each other.

RICHIE: This shooting range
is part of a vast system

of terror that was unleashed
on the 1st September 1939.

NARRATOR: Coming up,
swamp things.

It's completely brutal,
and only the very toughest

get through.

NARRATOR:
And 400,000 tons of terror.

It could pose a threat
to the entire region.

NARRATOR: July 2020.

Flying over the wild expanse
of northern California,

an aerial survey
captures something

in the landscape below.

KOUROUNIS: I'm seeing
a strange pattern

of geometric shapes here.

It looks like lines
of circles or spheres.

These circles are regularly
occurring in a pattern,

but some of them
look more like rings.

Some of them have, like,
a solid core.

I honestly cannot imagine
what this could be.

NARRATOR: Over 150 of
the bizarre structures

stretch across
a swampy body of water.

KOUROUNIS: It seems very much to
be out in the wilderness.

Who would build something
so geometrically perfect

out in the middle of nowhere?

NARRATOR: Guy Walters thinks
the structure's location

and its precise layout

could mean it serves
a military purpose.

There's this particular
section of the American army

that has this really
long and secretive

history of using swamps
for its really

grueling training regime.

They're known as the Rangers.

The Rangers are
the U.S. Army's

premier light infantry unit
and trace

their roots back to before
the Revolutionary War.

Today,
they play a clandestine role

in conflicts
around the world.

What the Rangers do is
to specialize in going

behind enemy territory to
carry out really daring raids.

So these are the most elite
soldiers in the world.

NARRATOR: Before being deployed,
recruits must complete

Ranger school,

a brutal 61-day
training program.

Each phase of that training
is designed to

challenge and exhaust
candidates in very

specific ways.

So what the first phase does
is to

center on kind of military
skills and endurance.

And then the second phase
examines survival techniques.

NARRATOR: Up to half of
all recruits drop out

of ranger school, many during
the feared swamp phase.

The swamp phase is all about
waterborne operations,

simulating intense
battle environments.

WALTERS:
It's completely brutal.

It's completely relentless,
and only

the very toughest get through.

You have to know
how to push through

even when every fiber
of you is screaming stop.

NARRATOR: The structures in
this Californian swamp would

be the perfect training ground
for Rangers,

but biologists believe
this site

serves a more
peaceful purpose.

KAYS: What we're looking at
in this image is artificial

nest islands set up to provide
sanctuary for migratory birds.

These are part of
a statewide effort

to address the problems caused

by a series of
catastrophic events

that stretch back
over a century.

NARRATOR:
Those events begin in 1848,

at the dawn of the Gold Rush.

The Gold Rush brought
an endless surge of

ambitious gold seekers to
San Francisco, in particular.

And at one point,
it was the fastest growing city

in the world.

NARRATOR: 300,000 people
travel to California

during the Gold Rush,

the largest mass migration
in U.S. history.

The city was utterly flooded
with workers, who were

spending their days doing
backbreaking labor,

hunting for gold.

In the evenings, these guys
were ravenously hungry.

At the time, this area had
fairly limited agriculture.

So when all these gold
prospectors arrived,

the area had a hard time
providing enough food

for all the people.

NARRATOR:
The lack of available food

causes prices to soar.

Stores charge the equivalent
of $56 for a slice

of buttered bread
and $30 for a single egg.

Looking to cash in
on the protein shortage,

entrepreneurs turn
their attention

to the Farallon Islands,

A desolate set of rocks some
30 miles off the coast.

Every spring, a colossal
number of sea birds would

arrive and basically cover
the island with their nests.

KOUROUNIS: If what
you wanted was eggs,

this place was an open treasure
chest filled with them.

NARRATOR: Migratory birds,
similar to those now found

at the nesting grounds
seen from space

blanket the Farallon Islands
in eggs.

This means there are
riches to be made

for anyone who dares
venture there.

Every trip out to the islands
was a dangerous journey.

There was the rough crossing
through treacherous waters,

slippery rocks where many men
fell to their deaths.

And, of course,
there was the competition.

KAYS: Each year, more and more
people would arrive at

the Farallons to try to harvest
the eggs in the spring,

which led to more
and more competition.

Eventually, tensions even
escalated to the point

where there were stabbings

and shootings between rival
gangs of egg collectors.

NARRATOR: Between 1849
and 1896, gangs steal

millions of eggs
from the islands.

The bird population
plummets by 85 percent.

The speed at which
we managed to kill these birds

off that were once so
plentiful is astonishing.

But the birds in the Farallons
weren't the only ones

to face this kind
of devastation

in the 19th century.

NARRATOR: One such bird is
the passenger pigeon.

A. MORGAN: The passenger pigeon
used to be

the most common bird in
North America.

You would regularly see
billions flying overhead.

WALTERS:
There were so many of them,

they would literally kind of
blacken the skies

for hours at a time.

The problem was, these gigantic
congregations, if you like,

also made them very,
very easy to hunt.

NARRATOR: Over a period
of just 50 years,

hunters erased the passenger
pigeon from existence.

During the 20th century,

the slaughter of other species
continues, with

three billion birds lost
since 1970 alone.

But thanks to artificial
nesting sites,

like those captured
from the sky,

the decimation may finally be
coming to an end.

These artificial islands in
this image

are one small example of

our attempt
to right our wrongs

against wildlife
in the past.

NARRATOR: Coming up,
100 square miles of nasty.

What we're looking at here
is one

of the most disgusting things
on Earth.

NARRATOR: And the wrath
of the Golden Horde.

Take no prisoner
was their rule.

April 30th, 2021.

Satellites scan
the coast of Northwest Turkey,

along the Sea of Marmara.

KOUROUNIS: There are boats
along the coast,

but all the water around them
is just a smear of goo.

It looks disgusting.

It's like someone emptied
a load of cream or paint

into the water and started
mixing it all around.

Whatever this white stuff is,
it's definitely not something

that's supposed to be
in the water.

NARRATOR: Analysts examine
the creamy concoction for clues.

It's this grayish-greenish
slime or sludge

that looks like it's sticking
to everything.

One possible explanation is
a fish called the hagfish

that exudes a enormous

amount of slime that looks
very similar to what we're

seeing in this image.

NARRATOR: Hagfish are
primitive creatures,

which,
when threatened, release

vast amounts of slime that
clogs predators' gills.

Up to 400 times the volume of

a hagfish's body can be
converted into slime.

It almost physically
shouldn't be possible.

NARRATOR: But when scientists
sample the waters in the image,

they discover that it
contains something

even more nauseating
than hagfish slime.

In fact, what we're looking at
here is a substance called

sea snot,
which must be

one of the most
disgusting things on Earth.

NARRATOR:
See snot is a foul-smelling,

thick, mucus-like substance.

It's a weird byproduct of
several microorganisms,

including phytoplankton.

Phytoplankton actually create
tiny little drops of

mucus naturally that float
down into the ocean.

But for it to accumulate at

this level,
something must be wrong.

NARRATOR: Phytoplankton are
crucial to life on Earth,

generating half our
planet's oxygen

as a byproduct of
their growth.

But human interference has
triggered a catastrophic

sequence of events
in the Sea of Marmara.

KAYS: The problem occurs
when pollution,

in the form of runoff
fertilizers from agriculture

or from a sewage that runs into
the ocean basically fertilizes

the ocean, and the phytoplankton
populations go nuts.

NARRATOR: When
the microorganisms multiply,

so does the amount of mucus
they produce.

Stagnant water
turbocharges the process,

creating vast mats of sea snot
that cover 100 square miles.

As it starts to accumulate,
it traps all sorts of other

things in there, some debris,

and other rotting material,
which produces a really good

environment for other types of
bacteria to grow.

The problem isn't limited
to one harbor or one cove.

This stuff is everywhere,
all throughout the Sea

of Marmara and other coastal
areas as well.

The situation is completely
out of control.

NARRATOR: As the sea snot
overwhelms the coast,

it cripples
Turkey's multibillion-dollar

tourism
and fishing industries.

This amount of sea snot
can really

cause all kinds of problems
for local communities.

No one wants to go sit next to
a stinky, slimy beach,

not to mention the damage that
this is causing for the natural

marine life that lives there

and now finds themselves
covered in sea snot.

NARRATOR: The gruesome mats
of slime don't

just affect the surface of
the sea.

As they grow,

they can become
100 feet thick,

sucking oxygen out of the water
column and choking sea life.

Organisms like corals,
sponges, mollusks,

they're all being smothered to
death in enormous numbers.

It's terrifying to think of
the mass

die off that's happening
beneath the waves.

The situation has gotten so
bad that workers are being sent

to literally vacuum up

the sea snot,
load it into trucks,

and truck it away
to a landfill.

NARRATOR: As the problem
intensifies, 40 ships

and 1,000 workers
join the cleanup,

collecting 100,000 cubic feet
of sea snot in just one week.

It's a tremendous effort,
but it might prove futile.

I mean, what is
the point of vacuuming up

just the snot at the surface

when the conditions are still
right for

the phytoplankton to keep
making more and more of it?

NARRATOR: Scientists fear
that this is just

the first stage of a global
sea snot invasion.

Increases in global water
temperatures and pollutants

mean we're likely to see

many more attacks from
this aquatic booger monster.

If we don't find a way to
limit the amount of pollution

that runs into the oceans,

we're gonna see this kind
of sea snot show up

more and more frequently
and in more and more places.

NARRATOR: Coming up,
the desert time capsules.

Some claim that these balls

are created by
underground lightning.

NARRATOR: And...
red death.

The disaster could
have global consequences.

NARRATOR: March 2022 --
in Western Kazakhstan,

a drone scans the barren
80,000-square-mile

Ustyurt Plateau

and captures
an unexpected sight.

All around, there's this kind
of featureless landscape,

and then you've got this big,

big cluster of all these kind
of giant balls.

It's completely bewildering.

NARRATOR: Thousands of
the rocky orbs

litter the rugged landscape.

Looking closer at some of
these balls,

they are amazingly round.

It's fairly common to see
rocks worn smooth

by rivers or the sea,

but we almost never
see them like this.

It seems unnatural.

NARRATOR: The Ustyurt Plateau
has a long and bloody history,

one which could offer
a clue to

the strange spherical boulders
revealed from the skies.

It's not entirely far-fetched
to imagine that these boulders

polka-dotting the landscape
were the result

of a military assault.

HORTON: One possibility is that
these could have been flung

from catapults,
from trebuchets,

which was a very favored method
in medieval warfare for

besieging cities
and attacking armies.

NARRATOR: One army known
to have used trebuchets

in Kazakhstan are the Mongol
Hordes of Genghis Khan.

In 1219 CE, his army of
200,000 horsemen

sweeps through the region

on its way to creating
the largest unified land empire

in history.

The way the Mongols,
on the move, completely

devastated cultures,

the speed and murderous rate
at which they expanded,

struck terror into the hearts
of everyone in the way.

NARRATOR: At the time,
much of Central Asia is

ruled by the wealthy
Khwarazmian Empire.

The ferocity of
the Mongol assault is unlike

anything they have experienced
in their long history.

[shouting]

The Mongols besieged
the richest cities in

the empire, and they murdered
their citizens.

HUNT: The brutality
of the Mongols is

well attested --
when they took a territory,

that literal phrase, "Take no
prisoner," was their rule.

NARRATOR: Perhaps the most
fearsome Mongol siege

weapon is
the boulder-launching trebuchet.

The principle
behind a trebuchet

is actually
deceptively simple.

It's just really basic physics
around torque,

but scaled up,
it can become devastating.

The great thing about
a trebuchet

is their long distance.

You can shoot a boulder with
a trebuchet hundreds of feet,

so long before your army

has to break through
a defensive wall, the trebuchet

can do the most
effective damage.

NARRATOR: Yet while Mongols
are known to have

waged war in the region,

some analysts doubt
the giant balls

are relics of
their conquests.

It's tempting to look at this
image and think, oh well,

maybe these could be abandoned
projectiles left by the Mongols

in pursuit of some citadel.

But, you know, even the Mongols
wouldn't have hurled

quite so many.

Geologists believe
the spheres are bizarre

natural formations,

but their origin
divides opinion.

Some in Kazakhstan have claimed
that these balls are created by

a kind of form of
underground lightning

linked to volcanic activity

that fuses
this material together.

Some of the locals
even believe

that these spheres are
fossilized dinosaur eggs.

NARRATOR: Analysis confirms
the mystery spheres do date

from a time when dinosaurs
walked these lands.

They're called concretions,
and they're time capsules

from the Earth's
distant past.

So even though they're not
giant dinosaur eggs,

there's actually a grain of
truth to the fact that there

are evidence of ancient life
captured within the rock.

NARRATOR:
150 million years ago,

Western Kazakhstan
is covered in ocean,

a primeval abyss filled with
hunters and the hunted.

And beneath the seabed,
A process is beginning

that will eventually create
the strange spheres

in the image.

A. MORGAN: Although
it's not entirely clear

how these things form,
our best guesses at the moment

suggest that it's layers and
layers of mineral deposited on

a solid core, like a fossil,
over time.

NARRATOR: Most geologists
believe the process begins

when minerals dissolved in
water percolate through

the seabed.

The solution slowly cements
around objects such as teeth

or fossils, and over millennia,
forms into giant spheres.

This process is very similar
to how an oyster

creates a pearl.

It would be absolutely
fascinating to actually

crack them open

and find out what might be
in the middle

of these stone balls.

NARRATOR: Today,
the ocean is long gone.

And as the soft sedimentary
rock from its seabed

wears away, the long-buried
spheres emerge.

That's why we see them laying
out on the surface, half buried

or completely exposed,
because over millions of years,

erosion has removed
the softer rock

away from these
hard concretions.

The landscape is just littered
with them,

hundreds upon hundreds of them,
strewn across the landscape,

like some giant marble game.

NARRATOR: Coming up,
the multimillion-dollar hijack.

Maybe this is a ghost ship

that's been plundered
and left for dead.

NARRATOR: June 17th, 2020.

A satellite
flying over the Red Sea

captures an image of
a suspicious craft

in the water below.

This vessel is huge, and it
looks like an oil tanker,

but it also
looks abandoned.

NARRATOR:
The 1,100-foot-long vessel

languishes away from
established shipping lanes.

The paint is deteriorating,
seems to be falling apart,

so there's probably not
been any activity

on this ship for quite
some time.

AUERBACH: Why would you leave
this multimillion-dollar vessel

just floating derelict in
the middle of nowhere?

It makes no sense.

NARRATOR: The tanker's location
off the coast of Yemen

could offer a clue.

NARRATOR: This tanker
is floating in a part

of the world that has
a fearsome reputation,

pretty ruthless pirates
swarming

onto commercial vessels.

So maybe this is a ghost ship,

a ship that's been plundered
and left for dead.

NARRATOR:
Over the past two decades,

pirates here have attacked
vast numbers of ships heading

to the Suez Canal
and the Saudi oil fields.

Somali piracy
has posed the biggest threat

to commercial shipping
in recent history.

[shots firing]

Between 2010 and 2014,
there were more than

350 successful or attempted
attacks on commercial

shipping vessels.

NARRATOR: Local reports offer
a surprising clue

to the origin of
these hijackings.

Part of what may be driving
the rise in piracy is

the arrival of international
fishing vessels

in these local waters.

And that, of course,
depletes the stocks

are available
to the local fishermen.

NARRATOR: As a result,
many Somali fishermen

turn to hijacking ships.

Today, oil tankers are
the pirates' main target,

helping net them $120 million
a year in ransom.

Pirates hijacked a vessel very
similar to this one in 2008,

one called the Sirius Star,

which had around two million
barrels of oil on board,

worth about $100 million.

NARRATOR: Maritime records
reveal the ship

in the image is called
the FSO Safer,

and she's at risk of something

much more dangerous than
a pirate attack.

It turns out that this tanker
is at the center of

a massive international crisis,

and it could even pose
a threat to the safety

of the entire region.

NARRATOR: Documents show
that, since 1986,

the giant tanker has been used
as a storage facility for

Yemen's oil fields.

But in 2014, a brutal civil
war breaks out in the country.

Since then, engineers
have been unable to

conduct vital safety checks
on the vessel.

It has the capacity to store
three million barrels of oil,

and it's reported
that there's

just over a million barrels of
crude oil on board right now.

That's an awful lot of oil to
be just sitting there in

a rusting, dead tanker.

Reportedly, the vessel is
an absolute mess, with cracked

pipes that are leaking seawater
into the main engine room.

NARRATOR: The problem with
the ship's engine room

threatens to trigger
a catastrophic chain reaction.

To keep crucial systems
running, steam boilers need to

run around the clock,

but those steam boilers have
run out of fuel back in 2017.

NARRATOR: Crews on ships like
this need to pump inert gas

into their oil tanks
to prevent vapor from

spontaneously igniting.

No engine fuel
means no pumps,

making the FSO Safer
a 400,000-ton time bomb.

This thing is like
a tinderbox.

Even the smallest spark

could lead to
an absolute catastrophe.

NARRATOR: An explosion
could kill the crew

and breach the hull.

And the FSO Safer contains four
times more oil

than the Exxon Valdez tanker,

which in 1989 decimated 1,300
miles of Alaskan coastline.

The Exxon Valdez disaster
killed hundreds of thousands of

marine animals and cost
billions of dollars in

economic loss.

This possible disaster in
the Red Sea

threatens to be many orders of
magnitudes worse.

NARRATOR: The ship in the image
could soon devastate

untold amounts of wildlife
and local fish stocks,

creating
a humanitarian disaster.

The aftereffects could rumble
around the world.

Ten percent of
global shipping trade

passes through the Red Sea,

so any cleanup operation is
going to severely disrupt

the supply chain.

AUERBACH: A disaster
involving the Safer

could have global
economic consequences.

Let's just hope that there's

the political will to avert
this crisis.