Original subtitles

NARRATOR: They're watching you.

More than 6,000 satellites circle the Earth.

Every day, they uncover new,

mysterious phenomena that defy explanation.

From orbit,

the lost doomsday lair.

This place played a crucial role

in the fate of millions of lives.

NARRATOR: The hunt for the birthplace of humanity.

This is an astonishing discovery.

NARRATOR: And inside the New Jersey apocalypse zone.

What you've got is a scene that's beyond horrifying.

NARRATOR: Baffling phenomena, mysteries from space.

What on Earth are they?

[theme music playing]

July 2020.

A satellite flying over Southern Europe

scans the Greek island of Kefalonia

and spots strange structures on a mountain peak.

RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: We're looking at some kind of

compound in a very remote location.

And looking a bit closer,

you can see what appear to be fences all around the edges.

Clearly, whatever's there is either very valuable, or someone

wants to make sure that it doesn't have uninvited guests.

NARRATOR: What's more,

the mystery facility is not alone.

WALTERS: This site is basically weird enough,

but there are loads of nearly identical structures dotted all

over mountaintops all across Europe.

NARRATOR: More than 80 sites extend across 8,000 miles of

the continent.

MORAN: This is super perplexing.

They seem to be aligned in a kind of giant

semicircle stretching from northern Norway,

down through mainland Europe and all the way into Turkey.

It must have involved a massive amount of

international cooperation and also a vast amount of money.

But what their purpose is, is less clear.

NARRATOR: On the hunt for answers, Dutch urban explorers

are heading for the mountaintop compound

seen from space.

[high-pitched beeping noise]

Yes.

[high-pitched beeping noise]

NARRATOR: The site's owners are long gone,

but giant clues to its purpose remain.

NARRATOR: The mountaintop dishes are each

over 60 feet in diameter.

MUNOZ: What this appears to be is

some kind of communication station.

But look at the scope and scale of this.

It's unlike anything that I've ever seen.

If you look at the age of this facility,

to me, it looks decades old, and that could

put it right at the heart of the Cold War.

NARRATOR: Experts turn to declassified records

to decipher the site's purpose.

AUERBACH: Further investigation reveals that these are

all part of a very secretive communication network

known as the Allied Command

Europe Highband, or ACE High.

NARRATOR: According to the records,

the network's origins lie

at the very start of the Cold War,

when increasing Soviet aggression threatens to spark

conflict between East and West.

In 1948,

we see Stalin severely testing Western resolve by

blockading Berlin,

and the U.S. knew that she just

had to act, and NATO was the result.

NARRATOR: NATO -- short for

the North Atlantic Treaty Organization --

is a defensive alliance between the U.S., Canada,

and 12 European nations.

Its objective is to use collective military

might as a deterrent against possible conflict.

One of NATO's great strengths is the large

number of countries that are included in it.

But this is also, in some ways, a weakness, because it

makes communication amongst these different countries

a much more complex process.

What makes things worse is that some of

the countries' individual communication systems

were open to interception.

Basically, it left NATO horribly exposed.

NARRATOR: Sensing a weakness,

the Soviet Union pours tens of millions of dollars into

a campaign of electronic warfare against NATO.

[electronic noises]

200 radio-jamming stations target and cut

off communication lines between the Allied states.

Stalin threw the might of the Soviet Union

into campaigns to disrupt the Western alliance,

because he knew a united NATO

was much stronger than countries acting alone.

RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: NATO know that they need

to seriously up their game.

In times of war, cold or hot,

it is essential that military leaders are able

to communicate.

[indistinct talking]

NARRATOR: In 1956, NATO responds by commissioning

the ACE High system,

a unified network that serves as

a secure line between Allied leaders.

The whole project was conducted under the tightest

possible security to make sure that

no information about this leaked back to

the Kremlin.

There's very little information about

the nuts and bolts of the ACE High.

The details are still shrouded in mystery.

NARRATOR: To learn more,

the urban explorers hike to another site rumored

to have played a role in ACE High.

NARRATOR: But it appears the rumors were wrong.

[grunting]

NARRATOR: The mile-long tunnel guides the explorers into

a labyrinthine compound hidden deep inside the mountain.

Whenever you walk into a sealed Cold War facility,

you've really got no idea what you're going to encounter.

Who knows what's been locked away in here

for all these years.

NARRATOR: Encased in millions of tons of rock is

a network of rooms split over multiple floors.

Look at this place! It's absolutely incredible.

There are military maps, there are control desks.

It's like something out of Dr. Strangelove.

NARRATOR: The team has discovered evidence of

the ACE High network's most clandestine mission.

At one point, this place played a crucial

role in the fate of countless millions of lives.

NARRATOR: Coming up, on the front line of Armageddon.

Seconds can mean the difference between life and death.

NARRATOR: And one of the weirdest trips in history.

They came up with a very 1960s answer --

they gave the elephants LSD.

NARRATOR: Lured by mountaintop compounds captured from space,

urban explorers have discovered a hidden command

center of NATO's ACE High communications network.

NARRATOR: This facility played a vital role in some

of the darkest days of the 20th century.

This place kind of blows me away.

It's a kind of a lost command center for one

of the most secretive NATO operations of the Cold War.

NARRATOR: According to Cold War documents,

NATO begins constructing the command center,

code-named Proto, in the late 1950s.

Working in conjunction with 82 giant radar stations

built on mountaintops across Europe,

its mission is to monitor

the Iron Curtain for incoming nuclear missiles.

At the start of the Cold War,

there are no anti-ballistic missile systems.

So if the Soviets do launch,

the only thing that we can do is sound the alarm for every

NATO ally to get ready for impact.

NARRATOR: In a worst-case scenario,

military leaders predict over

2,000 Soviet nukes will launch in a colossal first strike.

Once detected and confirmed, the alarm fires through

the ACE High network at the speed of light.

The technology being used at these radar locations

is twofold.

We have a standard radio wave receiver.

They're also using a newer technology,

which was troposcatter.

NARRATOR: Troposcatter dishes bounce microwaves off layers in

the atmosphere and on to the next station in the network.

Upon receiving the signal,

that station automatically forwards on the alarm.

It basically acts like a giant trip wire

to alert of the incoming Soviet attack.

RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: This is why the ACE High system

is crucial for the Allies.

It is able to send out an alert across Europe in

a heartbeat at a time

when seconds can mean the difference

between life and death.

NARRATOR: NATO commanders hope this alert will provide enough

time to evacuate key personnel from the Soviets' targets.

WALTERS: The reality is that there's no way

you can save everybody.

Once you've taken away the time needed

to detect the missile and then confirm it,

the British government reckoned they had about enough

time it takes to make a coffee before impact.

NARRATOR: Intelligence analysts calculate the first

bombs would strike European cities

four minutes after the alarm sounds.

[explosion blasts]

ANNOUNCER: The Austin area may be hit by missiles.

There will not be time to evacuate.

NARRATOR: Minutes later, warheads descend on the U.S.,

[explosion blasts]

killing a predicted 160 million civilians.

Top-ranking NATO officials knew that the civilian

death count was going to be enormous.

Their plan was to save themselves

in order to serve their country.

NARRATOR: As hellfire rains down,

officials based in the command center would use

the ACE High network to help coordinate

an unprecedented counterstrike.

NATO forces had amassed a huge nuclear arsenal

to create a stalemate that would never be broken.

But what they knew is that if the Soviets made the first move

by firing their missiles,

they would need to retaliate in full.

NARRATOR: During such a retaliation,

NATO could unleash over 10,000 thermonuclear bombs

and missiles.

Some are over one-and-a-half-thousand times

more powerful than the nuke that destroyed Hiroshima.

The result is intended to completely annihilate

the Soviet Union, striking at every major city,

every identified military complex, in order to wipe

the Soviet Union off the face of the Earth.

[explosion blasts]

NARRATOR: The urban explorers see evidence that

the ACE High network could maintain

NATO communications for several weeks

following a nuclear onslaught,

long enough for fallout to drop to survivable levels.

NARRATOR: The ACE High network secretly maintains vital lines

of communication until 1996, 5 years after

the Soviet Union disintegrates.

Today, these structures are haunting evidence

of the reality of nuclear conflict.

MUNOZ: Even though they're not operational anymore,

these structures sort of have a new mission.

They kind of serve as a reminder for

how close we actually came to World War III.

NARRATOR: Coming up, a truly monster roadblock.

This is the kind of situation that could get ugly.

NARRATOR: And the 4,000-year-old desert treasure hunt.

This area was once the epicenter

of the ancient world.

NARRATOR: Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve, Southwest China.

This vast protected rainforest is home

to hundreds of endangered Asian elephants.

But in March 2020, eyes in the sky spot a baffling sight.

What's happening with this particular herd

is really weird.

KAYS: They left the park, they're walking into areas

where people are living,

people are farming, and they just keep going.

They just keep walking and walking and walking.

NARRATOR: Drones track the 16 elephants

as they march on for weeks,

then months.

These elephants are on an epic rampage through

the country, and they're leaving chaos in their wake.

KAYS: Nothing like this has ever happened before.

We really don't know where these elephants

are gonna go next, we don't know what they're motivated by.

NARRATOR: The pachyderms put authorities on high alert

when CCTV captures

the 11,000-pound animals barging into rural villages in

the middle of the night.

You can imagine these elephants are raising

a lot of concern in the region.

The Chinese authorities have gone as far as to leave

truckloads of pineapples and corn

in the path of these elephants in an attempt to lure them away

from populated areas.

Unfortunately, the elephants aren't really cooperating.

NARRATOR: As they continue their bizarre march,

the giants approach the heavily populated

Kunming City.

Fearing conflict between humans and the herd,

authorities evacuate 150,000 people in their path.

Large wild animals and human built infrastructure

do not mix.

This is the kind of situation that could get ugly.

NARRATOR: Some experts worry the big-eared bulldozers are

driven by a psychological condition known to spark

dangerous behavior.

There is a condition that causes

irregular behavior in elephants known as musth.

Musth is a natural phenomenon that we see in

male elephants when they're getting

into their reproductive phase.

NARRATOR: During musth,

an elephant's testosterone soars to

100 times its normal levels.

The beasts become highly aggressive, and a hormone-rich

liquid drips from glands on the side of their heads.

The young bull elephants are overloaded with hormones,

and they snap into this seemingly wild,

uncontrollable state.

[elephant trumpets]

When they go into musth, you never know what's gonna happen.

NARRATOR: In the 1960s, scientists from

the University of Oklahoma attempt

a bizarre experiment to learn more about

this hormone-fueled state.

They actually tried to induce it in a captive male elephant.

RUBEN: The problem is, they didn't know how to

induce behavior that resembled musth in an elephant.

They came up with a very

1960s answer -- they gave the elephants LSD.

KOUROUNIS: Of course, how much LSD do you give an elephant?

None of them knew what the doses should be.

NARRATOR: In the same era,

during C.I.A, mind control experiments,

soldiers feel the drug's psychedelic effect

after a 30-microgram shot.

Scaling up to monster size,

they pumped the elephant with 10,000 times

the human dose.

RUBEN: It was not a good guess.

The result was, immediately after being injected with LSD,

the elephant keeled over and started having seizures.

The researchers tried to save the elephant by injecting it

with other drugs, but to no one's surprise,

it didn't work.

The animal died.

The scientists didn't really learn anything other

than don't inject an elephant with LSD.

It was really just a tragic waste of an elephant.

NARRATOR: While musth is known

to trigger the kind of behavior seen in China,

it appears the trip these elephants

have taken has a different explanation.

When you zoom in, you see baby elephants in the photos,

which means that they are with their moms,

and female elephants don't go into musth.

So there must be something else going on.

NARRATOR: Biologists uncover another possible clue

to why the elephants have strayed

so far from the safety of their reserve.

Over the past 30 years, a crackdown on poaching

has doubled wild Asian elephant numbers

in their reserve.

The problem is, although China has more elephants now,

they had the same amount of protected forest habitat that

these elephants like to live in.

SCHUTTLER: So perhaps there's too many elephants

for the forest, and they are forced to

venture out and find another big patch of forest

that they can live in.

NARRATOR: Outside the reserve,

new habitat is hard to find.

Over the past seven decades,

a Chinese building frenzy creates an average of nearly

eight new cities a year.

As these concrete jungles rise,

more than 100,000 acres of forest

are destroyed each month.

So it's possible that this group didn't really

want to be in the towns and villages.

They were just looking for another forest to go to.

KAYS: The elephants don't know where they're going.

They don't have a map.

They're just wandering north and exploring new territory

and finding all sorts of food along the way.

NARRATOR: But another surprising twist in

the elephants' story throws this theory into doubt.

After walking over 300 miles, they make a sudden U-turn

and head for home.

There's a phrase that an elephant never forgets,

and there's actually some truth to that.

OKEREKE: They have the largest temporal lobe out of any animal,

including humans.

This is part of the brain

that deals with things like spatial memory.

NARRATOR: This spatial memory allows Asian elephants to

memorize home ranges

almost double the size of New York City.

They know their way around their territory,

and if they leave their territory,

they are most certainly gonna be able to

navigate back if they want to.

NARRATOR: Two months later, the elephants reach

the reserve they left over one-and-a-half years ago.

But the reason why these adventurous giants

undertook their epic journey remains a mystery.

KOUROUNIS: These are wild animals.

They're gonna do what they wanna do.

They might get home and then turn around,

decide that they want to go walkabout again.

It's nature.

NARRATOR: Coming up, the strange circle

that helped defeat Hitler.

Its importance cannot be overstated.

NARRATOR: And the two-million-year-old mystery.

These might unlock a previously

unknown chapter in humanity's earliest days.

NARRATOR: October 2021.

Eyes in the sky over the eastern

United States capture this image of a New Jersey suburb.

I'm looking at what looks like a pretty busy waterfront area,

but then this nearly perfect circle of forested,

undeveloped area.

It almost seems like someone took

like a cookie cutter, just stamped it,

in an area that's pretty heavily populated.

NARRATOR: Experts take a closer look.

If we zoom in, what you can see is a railway running

through the forested area,

and when you follow that railway west,

what you discover are various other structures,

which resemble military bunkers.

NARRATOR: Scale analysis shows the circular

anomaly is one mile in diameter.

To military historian Martin Morgan,

the dimensions are hauntingly familiar.

What we're seeing here is an exclusion zone that was

created to prevent

a repeat of the largest non-nuclear explosion in

the history of the North American continent.

NARRATOR: That explosion hit the port of Halifax,

Nova Scotia, more than a century ago,

while it was being used as a World War I munitions hub.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, was one of the most critical

transshipment points for material

traveling to Europe.

You had Canadian warships, American warships,

merchant vessels, all traversing these waterways.

It was a very fine balance of chaotic logistics.

[boat horn blows]

NARRATOR: On December 6, 1917,

this chaos descends into tragedy.

AUERBACH: Just before nine a.m.

in the morning, a Norwegian vessel heading

for New York strikes a French munitions ship

that was just getting ready to head out across the Atlantic.

The impact from the collision renders the French vessel

essentially rudderless -- it's just adrift.

It's also engulfed in flames.

NARRATOR: Concealed inside the flaming ship

are 2,500 tons of high explosives.

There's this blinding, blinding white flash.

[explosion blasts]

In an instant, a huge shock wave

rolls out from the source of the explosion.

When the thick, yellow smoke clears,

the true scale of the devastation becomes apparent.

What you've got is a scene that's kind of

beyond horrifying.

The town -- it's in total ruin,

and there's just fire raging everywhere.

NARRATOR: The explosion destroys a square mile of the town,

killing 2,000 people and injuring 9,000 more.

It remains one of the most

catastrophic manmade disasters in history.

A very important lesson is to be learned from this incident,

and the lesson relates to using

a seaside town as a place where munitions are being

loaded and offloaded during a time of war.

NARRATOR: In 1943, this lesson is put into practice when

the U.S. Navy creates a massive wartime munitions facility at

the site in the image.

The U.S. Navy establishes Earle Naval Weapons Station,

and it is intended to be a facility whereby explosive

munitions can be stored sufficiently far away

from civilian population so that there's not a civilian

loss of life like there was in Halifax.

NARRATOR: At this time, many U.S. factories

have retooled as munitions plants.

They will manufacture 2/3 of the entire Allied

arsenal, including

40 billion bullets and over 1.5 million tons of bombs.

WALTERS: These are staggering levels of production.

At the very peak of the Second World War,

America is manufacturing almost as many munitions

as its allies and its enemies combined.

NARRATOR: The Halifax explosion is a chilling reminder

of just how dangerous transporting munitions can be.

So engineers construct an exclusion zone at the site

that matches the blast radius of the 1917 explosion.

The live munitions are brought by rail into the circular

exclusion zone, where they are then stored,

ready for the moment when ships are ready to load.

MORGAN: If there was a large-scale explosion,

anyone outside of that one-mile radius,

they'll probably survive.

NARRATOR: As the conflict unfolds, the military funnels

increasing amounts of munitions through the site

to this 2.9-mile-long pier, where ships await.

At the height of the war,

there was just a nearly constant stream of ships laden

with munitions, weapons, coming from the port across

the Atlantic to support Allied forces.

Earle's importance to the Second World War cannot be overstated.

Almost every United States Navy warship or transport that

sailed across the Atlantic

carrying ammunition took that ammunition

on board at Earle Naval Weapons Station.

NARRATOR: During World War II, over 700,000 tons of supplies

and munitions are stored and shipped

through the exclusion zone.

And while the bombs and bullets are gone,

the mark it left on history is still evident from the sky.

Nobody has ever been allowed to

move into and live inside that circle.

And that's why it continues to show up in satellite

photography even to this day,

80 years later.

NARRATOR: Coming up, the wrath of the pharaohs.

The Egyptians strike back with vengeance.

NARRATOR: And a killer above the City of Angels.

Finding the cause of this is literally life and death.

NARRATOR: September 2019.

A satellite scanning the seemingly endless

sands of the eastern Sahara captures a mystery.

WALTERS: It's amazing.

There are all these dark holes cut into the desert.

There are dozens of them, maybe even hundreds,

in this kind of nest.

NARRATOR: Analysts punch up the magnification.

Zooming in,

I can see that the holes have regular shapes.

They're square. They're oblong.

WALTERS: It looks to me like these marks have

been made by someone cutting into the ground.

NARRATOR: The weird cluster of holes sits in the Republic

of Sudan, whose deserts have an extraordinary history

stretching back more than 6,000 years.

It was once the epicenter of the ancient world,

and it got its power from a resource found under

the desert.

That was gold.

What we're seeing here is an ancient gold mine.

NARRATOR: The first kingdom to mine gold

on a grand scale here are the Kerma,

whose capital rises on the banks of the Nile River

in 2500 B.C.E.

Over the years, it became one of

the most important, most advanced civilizations in

the ancient world.

The Kerma itself was the most extraordinary urban complex,

which has really only partly been investigated by

modern archaeologists.

WALTERS: From this great city,

the Kerma kingdom was able to spread across North Africa.

NARRATOR: In 1550 B.C.E.,

driven by a lust for riches,

the Kerma move north and invade a neighboring but even

more powerful empire.

The Kerma attacked gold mines owned by the Egyptian empire.

That was a very bad idea.

NARRATOR: The ancient Egyptians are obsessed with gold,

believing it to be a symbol of power and immortality.

The sort of heavenly value placed on gold means that

when the Kerma attack, the Egyptians strike back

with vengeance.

[distant battle sounds]

The Egyptians moved into the land controlled

by Kerma, built a series of enormous fortresses,

and exploited the gold mines themselves.

NARRATOR: These ancient mines eventually fell silent

in around 30 B.C.E.

But over the past few years, there has been

renewed activity.

A bloody civil war, which has left Sudan divided

and in ruin, has led to another gold rush

in the site seen from space.

Mining in this region increased dramatically after

Sudan was split into two nations in 2011.

The North Sudanese open new mines in this same

region once explored by the Kerma and the Egyptians.

Now, North Sudan is the second

largest producer of gold in Africa.

NARRATOR: In 2021, archaeologists find something

even more valuable than gold here --

tools made by the ancient human species

known as Homo erectus.

Homo erectus is the immediate precursor to Homo sapien,

and what was exceptional about Homo erectus is it was

the first species of Homo that closely resembled our modern

bodily appearance.

NARRATOR: Homo erectus marks a giant leap in our evolution

by becoming the first species of human to walk upright

1.8 million years ago,

they begin to migrate north from Africa into Eurasia,

a journey that eventually gives rise to

the eight billion people on Earth today.

The tools indicate they used the site in

the image as some kind of workshop during this

extraordinary exodus.

Before they became the humans of today,

our ancestors were

chopping stone tools,

refining blades, in this very place.

This is an astonishing discovery.

NARRATOR: What's more, the location of the tools could

dramatically change

our understanding of the epic journey made

by these early humans.

NARDI: We've always assumed that people came up

north through Ethiopia and out through Yemen,

but what we're finding now is -- is maybe

there is a different route out of Africa.

NARRATOR: The deserts of Sudan could hold evidence of

a new route our ancestors took

on their history-defining journey.

These mines might unlock a previously

unknown chapter in humanity's earliest days.

NARRATOR: Coming up,

something weird in the skies above L.A.

This cloud covered the entire region.

NARRATOR: October 2021.

The Sentinel-5P satellite flies

over the California coast -- as it passes above

Los Angeles, onboard instruments

scan the skies below.

The satellite is equipped with sensors that are capable of

detecting gasses in the atmosphere,

and what these satellites have picked up

is very concerning.

NARRATOR: When processed, the data reveals

high volumes of nitrogen dioxide.

This toxic pollutant gives L.A.'s infamous smog

its orange tint, but the size and intensity

of these plumes are on a lethal scale.

Huge clouds of gas are enveloping the city.

OKEREKE: This is really alarming.

Nitrogen dioxide is a nasty gas that can cause things like

severe respiratory illness,

inflamed lungs.

Finding the cause of the spike is literally life and death.

NARRATOR: A check of local weather reports suggests

a freak natural event could be to blame.

Around a month before the toxic clouds are seen over

the L.A. area,

a massive storm hits the Californian coast

in what is known as the Bay Area lightning event.

[thunder crashing]

RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: This Bay Area lightning event

was this string of incredibly dramatic thunderstorms

that covered the entire region.

It also would have produced a huge amount of

nitrogen dioxide.

NARRATOR: Lightning cooks up nitrogen dioxide

by super heating the air

to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit,

five times hotter than the surface of the sun.

This is powerful enough to break

the bonds of nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere.

Now, once these bonds are split,

they quickly bond with oxygen in the atmosphere to form

nitrogen dioxide.

NARRATOR: Each strike instantaneously

creates up to 15 pounds of the toxic gas.

During the Bay Area event, over 1,000

bolts hit the ground in one night,

along with countless cloud-to-cloud strikes.

OKEREKE: It's very much possible that a storm like the Bay Area

lightning event could be

the cause of a sudden rise in nitrogen dioxide levels

all over the Los Angeles area.

NARRATOR: But further data captured from across the country

suggests the killer clouds have a different origin.

If we look at similar analysis conducted over

New York, we see a near identical

distribution pattern of nitrogen dioxide.

Los Angeles and New York are both massive cities,

huge population centers, and they're both coastal cities.

Now we know that one of the biggest

drivers of nitrogen dioxide emissions is burning

fossil fuels.

But why is this happening now?

NARRATOR: What's more, coastal cities around the world

are experiencing the same nitrogen dioxide surge.

Investigations reveal the clouds are

an unexpected consequence of the global COVID pandemic.

This cloud of nitrogen dioxide that's hanging over L.A.,

it's just another legacy of a deadly disease

that's already taken so much and caused so much devastation.

NARRATOR: The events that spark the deadly spike

begin in early 2020,

when global lockdowns forced four billion people to stay

at home.

With shops and restaurants closed, U.S. consumers alone

save up $1.6 trillion dollars and go on a shopping spree.

A lot of people have been stuck at home, ordering things

online, and many of these goods are shipped in from overseas.

OKEREKE: Shipping companies are racing to meet that demand.

The result is a lot of ships all trying

to get into the port at the exact same time.

NARRATOR: Off the California coast,

queues of more than 100 container ships form, carrying

$25 billion dollars worth of goods.

The whole time those ships are sitting there,

they're burning fuel and pumping out nitrogen dioxide.

RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: This is like when

there's a traffic jam in a tunnel,

and the air outside of your car is filling

with nitrogen dioxide and fumes.

NARRATOR: Each day, the waiting ships pump over 100 tons

of pollution into the California air,

the same as six million cars on the road.

It's absolutely horrible for the local air quality to have

these ships idling, billowing out noxious fumes

out into the sky.

NARRATOR: Globally, nine million people a year

die from diseases resulting from pollution,

20 percent of all global deaths.

And in COVID-hit cities like L.A.,

the effect of the container ship backlog is devastating.

RUBEN: When you think of the health impacts

caused by COVID, you think of

the direct deaths from the virus.

But causing this much damage to L.A.'s air quality

is sure to have knock-on effects.

The noxious gasses mean that in some parts

of the city, COVID death rates

jump by up to 60 percent,

another terrible legacy of this disease

revealed from space.