Original subtitles

[Dan narrating]

[upbeat music]

What if I told you a man attempted a prison break

wielding nothing but a piece of fruit?

- It's almost like a Mexican standoff of sorts.

As they're on the roof, the helicopter comes down.

Michel jumps onto the skids.

- Or there's an animal escape artist

who could give Houdini a run for his money?

- The zookeepers are getting kind of desperate.

- They go undercover, but he sees through their disguises.

Harry Houdini escapes 11 times.

[orangutan vocalizing]

- How about the acrobat who fled a brutal communist regime

using an old circus trick?

- He makes his way to the western side of Berlin

unseen by the guards.

- But as he gets closer and closer to freedom,

he stumbles and falls.

- These are the tales of escapes so astonishing

they are truly unbelievable.

[intense music]

[intense music continues]

[music crescendos and ends]

Some walls are built to keep people out,

and others are built to keep people in.

From the moment the Berlin Wall goes up in 1961,

millions of Germans on the Soviet side of the wall

plot how to bypass it.

Some take the direct approach.

[dramatic music]

- A 19-year-old man by the name of Konrad Schumann,

who is a guard at the Berlin Wall,

is tasked with placing barbed wire

down where the wall has not been built yet.

But he slowly starts to realize there's gonna be a barrier here.

[suspenseful music]

And once that barrier goes up,

I'm trapped behind the wall as well.

He decides there and then

to hop over the barbed wire and escape.

[suspenseful music]

- He's immediately ushered into a waiting automobile,

and he's now a resident of West Berlin.

- [Dan] After the wall is fully built,

complete with watchtowers and anti-vehicle trenches,

escape attempts become a bit more creative.

[tense music]

- It's December, 1962.

A trapeze artist named Horst Klein

is living in East Berlin.

He's a vocal anti-communist.

He's not happy about being forced

to live in the DDR, or East Germany.

- Because he's willing to espouse his beliefs openly,

the government decides to take away his livelihood.

They don't allow him to perform in the circus anymore.

- Horst is thinking about his escape.

He's trying to figure out how he's going to

get out of East Berlin.

And he's near the wall

when he spots a power line

traveling from East Berlin to West Berlin.

And he has a thought.

- If I can tightrope walk right over the guard's heads,

I can make it into West Berlin.

- A rational person would probably think that

this strategy is insane, for two reasons.

First, this could be a live power line,

and he could get electrocuted before his escape even begins.

Second, this power line is 30 feet off the ground.

The East German guards are authorized

to shoot people trying to flee East Germany on sight.

It would be a shot that would be hard to miss.

[gun firing]

- This plan involves extreme risk,

but the juice is worth the squeeze for Horst.

He's gonna give it a shot.

- He climbs the pole, he finds that there's

no electricity running through the cable.

And he begins to cross.

- Using all of his acrobatic skills, he makes his way

to the western side of Berlin on this wire

unseen by the guards.

- [Martin] But as he gets closer and closer to freedom,

he stumbles and falls.

[intense music]

When he crash lands, he breaks both arms.

Horst Klein paid a price to get there, but now he's free.

[tense music]

- Sure, tiptoeing your way over the wall is a risky move,

but it's nothing compared to an even bolder try

that very same year.

[ominous music]

- In 1962, 20-year-old Heinz Meixner is in love.

There's a little problem with this

because the woman that he loves, Margarete Thurau,

lives in East Germany.

- He wants to bring her to the West,

and he's not gonna let the Berlin Wall stand in his way.

- Because he's Austrian, he is able to come and go

through the border crossing without a problem,

but she can't leave East Berlin.

- So Heinz is staking out Checkpoint Charlie,

and he notices that one of the gates is kind of high.

He stealthily measures it

to be 37 1/2 inches off of the ground.

So Heinz comes up with a plan

that the East Germans will never see coming.

- He rents an Austin-Healey Sprite, which is not a big car

to begin with, but it's about 47 inches high.

That is obviously too high, unless...

you remove the windshield, which is something you

could do at this point in time.

- To ensure that he has clearance,

he loads the trunk with bricks, to weigh it down,

and partially deflates the tires.

Now there is one big catch.

Not only does he have to bring his future wife,

but she also comes with her mother.

[tense music]

On May 5th, 1963, at midnight,

Heinz approaches Checkpoint Charlie.

[suspenseful music]

He hands his passport to the border guard,

who reviews it, takes a look at him,

and then starts looking around the car.

[suspenseful music]

The border guard suspects that there's something up,

and he waves him over for inspection.

Heinz is gripping the wheel tighter and tighter

as he starts to steer over,

and then makes his move.

[engine revving]

He floors it

straight under the barrier which has come down.

He misses it by just a couple of inches.

[dramatic music]

And about 600 yards later,

he skids into freedom in West Berlin.

- Going over and under the wall both have challenges,

but what about going straight through?

[tense music]

- In East Berlin, 1963, we meet Wolfgang Engels,

a 19-year-old who's in the East German army

as a driver and as a mechanic.

He comes from a family who are staunch socialists.

In fact, his mom works for the East German secret police,

or the Stasi.

So Wolfgang's not somebody that's been

dreaming about escape his whole life.

- [Dan] That changes one night

when he and some friends try to catch a concert in a cafe

by the eastern side of the Berlin Wall.

- The East German police immediately suspect

that they're attempting to flee into the west,

and so they follow them and harass them.

And after this harassment, Wolfgang has had enough.

- [Dan] Inspiration and opportunity

both present themselves

during the 1963 May Day Military Parade.

- As a driver and mechanic, he's living on one of

the local military bases.

This is where the vast majority of the vehicles

for the May Day Parade are being marshaled.

And that's when he notices one vehicle in particular,

the BTR-152.

[suspenseful music]

- This could batter its way through almost anything,

maybe even batter its way through a wall.

- [Dan] One day, when the BTR drivers break for lunch,

Wolfgang puts his plan into motion.

- He climbs aboard the vehicle and roars off in it.

[suspenseful music]

He famously stops in front of some pedestrians and says,

"I'm going to the West. Who's with me?"

And nobody takes him up on it.

[dramatic music]

- So Wolfgang puts the pedal to the metal

and he drives this BTR right into the Berlin Wall,

and he smashes through.

[crash banging]

- Unfortunately, he comes in on an angle.

The front of the BTR actually breaks the wall,

but it doesn't get all the way through.

- So the driver's side is still in East Berlin,

but the passenger side is in West Berlin.

- So he rolls out of the driver's side.

He then gets hit by a bullet.

Because the East German guards are firing at him,

their bullets are going into West Berlin.

And now the West German border guards can fire back,

which gives Wolfgang the ability to escape.

[guns firing] [suspenseful music]

- Patrons at a nearby pub end up grabbing Wolfgang,

bringing him into the bar, laying him on top of the bar,

and start tending to his wounds.

[siren blaring]

- He realizes in the midst of all this,

he's actually reached freedom,

because when he looks up,

he can see all the bottles of booze

that just aren't available in the East.

He knows he's now in West Berlin.

[dramatic music]

[protesters cheering]

- The Berlin Wall comes down in 1989

after an estimated 5,000 people

successfully escape to the West.

- From "The Count of Monte Cristo"

to "The Shawshank Redemption,"

when it comes to fictional prison escapes, long,

arduous tunneling seems to be the preferred path to freedom.

But if we're talking about daring, real life jailbreaks,

why spend years tunneling under prison walls

when you can just go over them?

[tense music]

- It's 1986 in Sante Prison in Paris.

Michel Vaujour is serving 20 years in prison

for a botched bank robbery

in which he actually shot a police officer.

[ominous music]

- Now he's got about 20 years left on a long sentence,

and he's thinking, I gotta get outta here.

Michel has a wife back home.

Her name is Nadine, and she is looking to take up a new hobby,

so she takes up helicopter lessons.

Nothing suspicious about that.

- On May 26th, she pays for a helicopter rental in cash

and takes off with another man as her co-pilot,

with her course set for Sante prison.

- [Dan] You'd think that a helicopter

circling a maximum security prison

would raise a few red flags,

but it seems the guards at the prison are a bit preoccupied.

- While Nadine is making her way

towards the prison in the helicopter,

her husband Michel and his cellmate Pierre

are threatening prison guards

with what appears to be a hand grenade

that they somehow figured out a way

to smuggle into a prison.

Michel and Pierre are threatening to pull the pin

if the guards do not clear the way

and facilitate them getting to the roof.

- It's almost like a Mexican standoff of sorts

because if they pulled the pin,

then everybody within a 30-foot radius

is going to be eviscerated.

So the guards of course are forced to back up

and give them the room they need to make it to the roof.

That's where Nadine and the helicopter show up.

[suspenseful music] [helicopter whirring]

As they're on the roof and the helicopter comes down,

Michel jumps onto the skids.

[suspenseful music]

But Pierre, for some reason, has a change of heart,

and he turns around and gives himself up

just as the helicopter takes off.

- In a final coup de gras,

as Michel takes off into the sunset, he tosses the grenade.

[grenade clanging]

- The grenade bounces down to the roof,

but there's no boom.

[tense music]

It's not a grenade at all.

[liquid squelching]

It's a nectarine painted black.

[dramatic music]

- If the guards had actually done their homework

and read Michel's file, they would've known that he'd

done something like this before.

- He once made a gun out of a bar of soap,

painted it with shoe polish,

and forced his way out of yet another prison.

[dramatic music]

- [Dan] After a masterful escape like this,

you'd think Michel and Nadine

would head to a lush, tropical beach to lead a quiet life,

but you'd be wrong.

- He quickly gets busted in

another botched bank robbery three months later.

[tense music]

Michel gets shot in the head, but he survives.

After spending a week in a coma, he's tried and convicted

and he returns to a maximum security prison.

- And in perhaps the strangest twist of this story,

after all the effort that his wife put in

to learn how to fly a helicopter,

to facilitate his escape, when he is convicted yet again,

she divorces him a month later.

- Of course not every escapee

has a willing accomplice with a helicopter,

so one Japanese prisoner uses something much simpler.

[dramatic music]

- In the world of prison escape artists,

few can compare to Yoshie Shiratori.

He has earned the nickname 'The Man No Prison Can Hold.'

- In 1936, he is convicted

of a murder that he swears that he didn't commit,

and then he is imprisoned at the local penitentiary.

- His first escape is simple.

He uses the metal handle of a wash bucket

to pick his cell lock.

Another time, he is locked up

in a narrow cell with a skylight.

- Using shifting body weight, he's able to sort of crab-walk

his way up the walls, and he takes advantage of the

rotting wood around the skylight to push it out, open it,

and make his escape.

- [Dan] After these escapes, Yoshie is recaptured

and placed in a remote high security prison in Hokkaido.

[tense music]

- They place him in heavy iron shackles

that they claim only a blacksmith could get out of.

- There is an incredibly heavy door,

and the only way that they can access his cell

is through a very small section at the bottom

where they slide him his food.

- Each time he is delivered his meal,

all the items delivered on the food tray must be returned.

They're not leaving anything to chance.

[dreary music]

- He's being fed every day this very, very salty miso soup

that can sustain human life.

It's not very good, but he finds another use for it.

- Yoshie starts secretly putting drops

of this salty miso soup in the locks,

on his wrist, and on his ankles,

and also on the lock on the slot for his food in the door.

Yoshie is being pretty brilliant here because,

the salt water will cause iron to rust,

but it's a slow process.

- Yoshie's playing the long game.

For weeks, he is spitting droplets onto the shackles

and the lock on the food tray slot of the door.

- Finally, on August 17th, 1944,

he gets the lock on his shackles to break.

- [Dan] But the only way out

is through the tiny opening at the bottom of his cell door.

- To fit through this 20-inch by 8-inch slot,

he does the unthinkable.

- He wedges and contorts first his head

through the small opening,

and then he intentionally dislocates

both of his shoulders,

wiggles and wriggles his way through this

incredibly small opening to the other side of the door.

Laying on the floor, he resets both of his shoulders

and continues with his escape.

[tense music]

- After his third escape from prison,

Yoshie hides in a mine for two years to evade capture.

- But in his search for food, he encounters a farmer.

In the farmer's field, he stole a tomato

and he ends up stabbing this farmer, killing him,

in an act that he described as self-defense.

[suspenseful music]

- Yoshie is thrown right back in prison again

for a fourth time.

But, 'The Man Who No Cell Can Hold' again proves

his ability to escape a prison.

And again, he uses miso soup.

His prison cell has a dirt floor.

He takes the cups from the miso soup to dig a tunnel

through the floor and out of the prison.

[suspenseful music]

- Yoshie will be in and out of prison a couple more times

before eventually receiving parole in 1961

for good behavior.

Helping his cause, he used his wits,

not violence, to commit his escapes.

- An escape in the heat of battle usually means

there's no time to prepare.

That's exactly what one Soviet pilot faces

during World War II.

[dramatic music]

- 6 months into Operation Barbarossa one of the bloodiest

invasions in history,

when the Germans crossed the Soviet border,

fighting is bitter.

[explosions booming] [apprehensive music]

[gun firing] [artillery firing]

There is a pilot by the name of Lieutenant Kuznetsov.

He happens to be on reconnaissance

when he's jumped by several ME109s,

the best fighter, at the time, that the Germans possess.

[gun firing]

He takes heavy fire and damage.

[gun firing]

And he's forced down in an open field near a wooded area.

[tense music] [crash banging]

- Now on the ground in enemy territory,

Lieutenant Kuznetsov realizes that his only hope

is to abandon the aircraft and to hide in the wood line.

- [Dan] The area is crawling with

German Wehrmacht and SS troops.

Kuznetsov's chances of avoiding capture are near zero,

until fate intervenes

in a truly unbelievable way.

- As he's hiding in the woods,

he notices something absolutely bizarre.

The German pilot that shot him down

decides to land his aircraft in the field

right next to Kuznetsov's smoking plane.

[tense music]

He starts rummaging through the cockpit.

Was he interested in grabbing the intelligence

that may be on this type of aircraft

or was he just trophy-seeking?

Either way, Kuznetsov sees this as his moment.

- Lieutenant Kuznetsov recognizes

that this German pilot is extremely distracted

and also realizes that the German pilot

left his aircraft running.

And he makes the bold call to sprint from the tree line

to the German's aircraft, climbs inside of it, and takes off

in the same airplane that had just shot him down.

- The German pilot is standing there in disbelief.

His own Messerschmitt is taking off.

He's thinking, how the heck am I gonna

explain this to my bosses?

- [Dan] Kuznetsov is not out of the woods yet.

He's now flying an enemy German aircraft

back to a Russian air base.

- Sure enough, anti-aircraft fire and fighters attack him.

[tense music] [anti-aircraft firing]

Of course he can't shoot back because that's his own side.

And for the second time that day,

poor old Kuznetsov is shot down.

[suspenseful music]

- And his day's still not over.

Obviously the Russian forces

are going to come and investigate.

And to their surprise,

an individual gets out of that aircraft in a Soviet uniform.

- He has escaped from the jaws of the German war machine.

They give him the highest award possible,

the Hero of the Soviet Union.

This guy epitomizes the resistance.

[dramatic music]

- It's one thing to steal a plane from

a distracted German pilot,

but how do you smuggle 15 tons of precious art

past the whole Third Reich?

- On August 25th, 1939, there's something strange going on

after hours at the Louvre museum.

[dramatic music]

- Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa,"

Géricault's "Raft of the Medusa,"

the 11-foot tall "Winged Victory of Samothrace,"

thousands of masterworks

all being taken off their pedestals and off the walls.

[dramatic music]

- [Dan] It looks like the biggest art heist in history.

But these people aren't stealing these masterpieces.

They're saving them.

- The Nazis are about to invade Poland,

and they know that France is next.

[suspenseful music]

Failed artists Adolf Hitler and his lackey, Hermann Göring,

are art collectors, they're art hoarders.

They're art thieves.

- If Hitler comes into Paris,

the Louvre will be one of his primary targets.

- Deputy director of the Louvre Jacques Jaujard

has concocted a plan.

He has decided that he's gonna

shut the museum down for 72 hours

under the guise of performing necessary repairs.

During those three days,

a massive escape plan is executed.

[dramatic music]

Anyone who loves art and can be trusted

comes on board to very carefully pack away

the most massive and beautiful art collection in the world.

- [Dan] In August of 1939, the clock starts ticking.

- Jaujard needs to be a logistician.

They get hundreds of trucks to carry these priceless works out

to 70 different locations, mainly castles.

Castles are hard to get to.

They have thick walls and lots of hiding places.

- [Dan] When the Nazis reach Paris in June of 1940,

they immediately begin seizing assets.

- The German officer tasked with looting the Louvre

on behalf of the Nazis expects to find a full museum.

- What he's greeted by are empty hallways

filled with frames that have no paintings in them.

There's nothing there.

They have been duped.

- Jaujard is considered a hero.

His contribution to the art world is immeasurable.

- After the war is over, thousands of these pieces

are returned to the Louvre, but they have all been part of

what is really one of the greatest escapes

of the 20th century.

- [Dan] Jaujard is named the Commander of the Legion of Honor

and awarded the Medal of the Resistance.

Today at the Louvre, there's an exit named for him

to serve as a reminder

of how he got the collection out of there during the war

and back on the walls

of perhaps the world's greatest museum.

- We've seen daring escapes that require brutal physical feats,

like smashing through concrete walls and dislocating joints.

But some astonishing plots only require a costume change,

and of course, nerves of steel.

[dramatic music]

- It's 1716.

And William Maxwell, the Earl of Nithsdale,

is currently being held in the Tower of London.

He supported the Jacobite rebellion,

and he was arrested for it.

As a consequence, he has been branded a traitor

and he is scheduled for execution.

Things are not looking good for him.

- His wife the Countess of Nithsdale,

has been trying to figure out any and all ways

to get her husband out of the tower.

She has begged and pleaded for his life over and over again,

but unfortunately, no dice.

Now she knows she has one last chance

to visit her husband before his execution.

- The Countess of Nithsdale arrives at the Tower of London

accompanied by two of her lady friends,

Mrs. Morgan and Mrs. Mills.

When they arrive, the Countess and her attendants

make a big show of their grief,

crying, sobbing, gnashing of teeth, wailing.

This is not a genteel display of emotion.

- And they are so emotive about it

that it kind of makes the guards there at the prison

really uncomfortable because nobody wants to stare

at three aristocratic women who are keening and wailing.

- [Dan] And this is exactly what the Countess is counting on

as they're led to the Earl's cell for their final goodbye.

- Countess' friends are not just there for moral support.

They're here to aid in the plan that's about to take place.

- [Holly] Mrs. Morgan starts taking off her dress.

She is wearing two dresses layered on top of one another.

She gives it to him so that he can put it on,

and they give him this bonnet.

- But Lord Nithsdale has been in prison for quite some time.

He's a little disheveled.

He's also a very large man.

How are Mrs. Morgan's petty coats and bonnets

going to disguise him?

- And this is where the next phase

of the escape plan begins.

- [Dan] The women take turns leaving the cell,

hysterically begging the guards to spare the Earl's life.

- This essentially turns this plan

into sort of like a game of 3-card monte,

where you don't know who's coming in, who's coming out.

- [Dan] The hope is that amidst all this confusion,

the guards won't notice as all four exit the cell.

[suspenseful music]

- To buy them just a little more time,

the Countess hangs back and asked the guards

to give her husband a little bit of privacy,

time to say his prayers and make his peace with God,

ensuring the guards wouldn't check the cell

while they made their escape.

- Miraculously, the Nithsdales escaped to Rome

where they live with other Brits in exile until 1740.

[dramatic music]

- The Countess is clearly a mistress of deception,

but one of the greatest escape artists of all time

isn't even human.

[dramatic music]

- It's the San Diego Zoo, and it's February, 1971,

and we're meeting Ken Allen, an orangutan named

after the zookeepers, Ken Willingham and Ben Allen,

who saved the infant when his mother orangutan

was about to smother him.

We don't know how that trauma affects him,

but we do know that he doesn't wanna spend

the rest of his life in a cage.

- Even when he is still a baby orangutan,

he actually figures out how to unscrew the gate on his cage

so he can just walk out.

- That's obviously a cute trick as a baby,

but as he grows bigger and potentially more dangerous,

he's eventually moved to the orangutan exhibit

which is thought to be escape-proof.

- [Dan] The key word here being thought.

[people chattering and laughing]

- On June 13th, 1985, zookeepers are shocked

because wandering around the paths, like a tourist,

is a Bornean orangutan.

Ken Allen has escaped.

- [Zookeeper] Can everybody back up that way please?

- There had never been another orangutan

to escape from that enclosure before,

so they're not sure how he even got out.

- In 1985, camera surveillance doesn't exist

like it does today, so the zookeepers

are taking turns observing Ken.

Whenever the zookeepers are around,

he doesn't try anything funny.

- Ken Allen is extremely smart.

He's very perceptive.

He knows he's being watched.

- A month later, Ken Allen is found again

just moseying around the zoo.

And so they have to escort him back to his pen again

with no resistance.

- So at this point,

the zookeepers are getting kind of desperate.

They really have to figure out

how this orangutan is getting loose.

- They go undercover in the audience of the pen,

posing as tourists,

but Ken Allen sees through their disguises.

- The zoo was forced to spend about $45,000

to reinforce the security on his holding pen.

And they actually hire professional rock climbers

to identify any potential footholds.

And then they sandblast the whole thing

to make it perfectly smooth.

- [Dan] These new walls might be tougher to climb,

but zookeepers soon find out

Ken Allen is more than an escape artist.

He's a bad influence.

- Ken Allen stays put for a few weeks

until somebody leaves a crowbar in his enclosure.

Ken doesn't use it himself,

but he tosses it to another orangutan named Vicki.

And Vicki uses that crowbar to open a window

and let Ken Allen out.

- [Dan] Unable to prevent Ken Allen's escape attempts,

they try a different strategy.

- They move some female orangutans

into the adjacent enclosures.

He seems to like the company,

and he's less inclined to try to get out and run around.

[suspenseful music]

- Ken Allen escapes 11 times,

thus bestowed upon him

the nickname Hairy Houdini, H-A-I-R-Y.

- You can cage the orangutan, but you can't cage his spirit.

We salute you, Hairy Houdini.

- Most escapes follow one rule, get out as fast as you can.

But when freedom is a thousand miles away,

it can take both time and an incredible feat of acting.

[locomotive horn blaring] [locomotive rumbling]

- It's December, 1848 in Macon, Georgia,

and a rich, white southern plantation owner

takes his seat in the first class section of a locomotive.

He's a real Southern dandy,

but it also looks like he's had some misfortune.

His arm is in a sling.

It appears that he has a bandage on his face.

Perhaps an accident befell him.

[dramatic music]

- Another rich white gentleman sits right next to him

and looks him squarely in the eye.

And then panic washes over him.

He's not what he appears to be.

- [Dan] He's not rich, nor white, nor even male.

- Her name is Ellen Craft,

and she's a runaway slave in disguise.

And the gentleman who just sat down next to her,

she recognizes as a friend of her owner.

But she can't be sure if he recognizes her.

[dramatic music]

- [Dan] Ellen and her husband William, in the next car, have

been planning this daring and complicated escape for years,

and it may be over before they even make it out of town.

[suspenseful music]

- William and Ellen are in love.

And they know, if they have children while enslaved,

that is the property of their masters.

They could be sold at a whim.

Their only hope is to find freedom in the north.

- So the plan is this.

Ellen, who is very fair skinned,

will dress up as a white, male slave owner

and will transport William as his property

up to the northern states.

Passing for a wealthy white man

during this period of time is not easy.

Neither William or Ellen can read or write

because it's illegal at the time

to teach slaves even basic literacy.

To get around this, they add a sling to Ellen's arm

so she can say it's broken

and she's unable to sign hotel registries

or boarding passes.

- William and Ellen are trusted

by the family that owns them,

so they give William and Ellen a written note

to travel three days before Christmas.

Now that buys them some time

before they're actually reported missing.

[suspenseful music]

- [Dan] But now, boarding the first train,

they may already be in big trouble,

with a friend of Ellen's owner sitting right next to her.

- Ellen is fighting back the urge to flee.

And just as she's trying to figure out what to do,

this other gentleman leans forward and says to her,

"It's a very fine day, isn't it, sir?"

[tense music]

He has no idea who she is.

- She must be incredibly relieved,

but there's still a problem.

What if he wants to make conversation

throughout this journey?

He might recognize Ellen's voice.

This could be a total disaster.

[suspenseful music]

She decides to feign being deaf.

The gentleman stops trying to talk to her.

- [Dan] This is just the first of many close calls

the Crafts have on their 1,000 mile journey.

- The slave holders in Ellen's car

are perpetually telling her, as you get further north,

the abolitionists are gonna try to take your slave.

You shouldn't travel with your slave this far north.

Meanwhile, in the back of the car,

William is hearing from abolitionists,

"Leave that cripple, have your liberty."

Little does anyone know

that that's exactly what they're doing.

- There's one close call

in which Ellen thanks William for carrying her bags,

and is severely scolded by other slaveholders,

who advise her that she must show a constant firm hand

to her property.

[tense music]

- Imagine how difficult this is for both William and Ellen.

They're completely separated throughout this journey.

They don't know what conversations each is having.

They don't know if the other has been found out.

And there's so many things that can go wrong.

- Baltimore, Maryland is the last major stop

before free Pennsylvania, and a suspicious railway officer

demands that both Ellen and William get off the train

to show proof of ownership.

- This is documentation that Ellen does not have.

She is panicking trying to figure out

how to get out of this.

- As the railway officer is continuing to demand the papers,

they're holding up the train.

Other passengers are beginning to get upset.

Ellen summons all the indignation she can

and demands that he has no right to detain her.

[suspenseful music]

[locomotive horn blaring] [locomotive bells ringing]

- The railway agent, in order to not be further delayed,

just tells them, "Get back on the train."

[inspiring music]

- They've now passed the last major hurdle

on the road to freedom.

- The Crafts make it to freedom

in Philadelphia on Christmas Day, 1848.

They eventually end up in England

where they start a family.

But perhaps the most unbelievable part of this escape

is that after the Civil War,

they returned to the very place they fled, Macon, Georgia,

to establish a school for newly freed slaves.

- During the long years of the Cold War, America's leaders

ponder how to survive a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union.

One answer lies hidden

inside a mountain in rural Pennsylvania.

[tense music]

- When you get to the entrance at Raven Rock,

it doesn't look like much.

There's a simple guard shack and a fence.

[dramatic music]

But when you get through that,

you reach two massive blast doors

protecting an underground facility.

What's inside this facility is functionally an escape plan

for the United States government,

giving it a chance to survive

under the circumstances of a nuclear war.

[explosion booming]

- The theory is that within a few months or maybe years,

they can rebuild something

resembling the United States government.

- Inside of this mountain,

they basically built a small city.

There's electricity, there's water,

there's a fire department, a police department.

It has everything.

[tense music]

- [Dan] The extended escape plan itself

is exceedingly detailed,

albeit a tad morbid.

- For starters, the post office

would no longer necessarily be

the agency for delivering mail.

The post office has everybody's address.

They would now be the agency designed to register the dead.

- The National Archives have their own escape plan,

and they prioritize key documents.

For example, the Declaration of Independence gets

saved before the Constitution.

And you can imagine the conversation.

"Leave the George Washington Military Commission."

"We gotta go."

- While it is reassuring to know

that our government provides a plan

for the continuity of the American experience,

it's also a little bit chilling to imagine that Raven Rock

can sustain about 5,000 people.

Where does everybody else go?

- Some escapes cannot be so carefully planned.

For instance, when one is unexpectedly trapped

in a medieval bathroom.

[eerie music]

- On the campus of Cambridge University

is Queen's College, which was founded in 1448.

It's built like the castles and prisons of the era,

but it is also one of the most prestigious schools

in the world.

- [Dan] Being a top tier university, with thousands

trying to get in,

it's hard to imagine anyone would want to escape.

- Research fellow Dr. Krisztina Ilko

is a history scholar residing in one of

Queen's College's medieval era dorms.

[dramatic music]

- She gets the distinction of staying

in the building that once housed

16th century philosopher Desiderius Erasmus,

which for a history scholar is pretty darn cool.

- [Dan] What happens next, however, is decidedly not cool.

- Dr. Ilko is in the bathroom, and there's a maintenance worker

who somehow engages the outside lock on this ancient,

thick, wooden bathroom door.

[tense music]

She beats on the door.

she pushes on the door

to no avail.

[dramatic music]

- She's in the 21st century, but without her phone,

without a way to access the outside world,

she's stuck in a 15th century windowless tower,

with no route for escape.

- She starts screaming, but no one can hear her.

She starts to envision the horrible headlines

that will appear about how she died.

A scholar that starves to death in a bathroom

is not how she wants to be remembered.

[tense music]

- [Dan] As the hours pass, she reflects on the hundreds

of texts she's read during a lifetime steeped in academia.

There must be something in her countless hours of study

that can help her here.

- And then it dawns on her.

The solution to this problem

is not gonna be found in academia.

[rhythmic music]

- The thing that comes to her mind in all of this

is a TV show that she used to watch when she was a kid.

[upbeat music]

MacGyver could find his way out of seemingly any situation

just by using whatever tools were at hand.

- There it is right in front of her,

an eyeliner and a Q-tip.

[dramatic music]

Dr. Ilko is no mechanical engineer,

so she's not really sure what she's doing.

But she's got nothing if not persistence.

One hour, two hours, almost four hours later, click, pop.

[lock clicking]

She MacGyvers her way out of a 15th century bathroom

using just an eyeliner and a Q-tip.

- Astonishing escapes require

many different things, perfect disguises, weaponized fruit,

even a wife with a helicopter.

Whatever the method,

these daring escapes

are all truly unbelievable.