All language subtitles for The.UnXplained.Special.Presentation.S02E04.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

WILLIAM SHATNER:
A fatal plague

that ravaged
the Byzantine Empire.

A bizarre affliction
of biblical proportions.

And a disturbing disorder

where people
dance themselves to death.

Plague,

smallpox,

tuberculosis and influenza.

These are only a few
of the contagious diseases

that have killed
billions of people

over the course
of human history.

Just saying their names

conjures misery and pain,

and the impact
of these deadly infections

has changed the world
more than a few times.

How do lethal maladies begin

and then start
to silently spread?

What happens
when a medical epidemic

turns into mental hysteria?

And while antibiotics
and vaccines can help

keep diseases like smallpox
and plague under control,

just how close
are we to catching

the next unstoppable outbreak?

Well, that is what
we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

News reports surface that a new,
highly contagious disease

first discovered in Wuhan, China

is spreading like wildfire.

In a matter of weeks,
the lethal virus known as

"coronavirus," or "COVID-19,"
sweeps the globe.

On March 11,

as the number
of infections and deaths

continue to climb,

the World Health
Organization declares

that the outbreak has
become a worldwide pandemic.

RAJ DASGUPTA:
What separates, clinically,

coronavirus from
other common viruses

such as influenza is that
it knows how to hide itself.

It has what we call a period
where you could be asymptomatic.

That means "without symptoms."

That's a chance to pass
that virus to other people,

keeping the disease
going on and spreading.

Most of the time, when
you wait for these symptoms,

you've already missed it.

SHATNER:
According to experts,
the origins of many viruses

remain shrouded in mystery.

DASGUPTA:
It's so difficult

to determine the origin
of viruses because

when you want
to study that virus,

you have to separate
what is the natural history

of that cell?

So, one of the important things

that epidemiologists
are looking at right now

is what did we learn
from the past?

What should we be looking at?
Where should we be looking?

GRAHAM PHILLIPS:
Some of the

earliest records
of plagues are found

in ancient India, China,
the Middle East,

and they talk
about plagues occurring

before the very first
civilization, around 3200 BC.

SHATNER:
Throughout human history,
there have been accounts

of devastating afflictions
that defied understanding

at the time they happened.

But perhaps a closer
examination of these plagues

will provide some lessons
about infectious diseases

and how they begin.

Emperor Justinian
sits atop a powerful throne,

but lurking in the shadows

is a hidden enemy
about to consume his kingdom.

A plague, started by a bacteria,

comes out of the East

and infects.

This simple bacteria
ended up killing

almost one half the population
of the entire Old Empire.

With that type of death toll,

the economic and social
ramifications were catastrophic.

Everything that Justinian
had tried was now collapsing.

His military collapsed,
his economy collapsed,

and everything that he tried
to do was of no avail.

(people coughing)

KIRSTEN FISHER:
Justinian plague is caused
by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis.

It can either
enter humans directly

through-- from saliva,
or-or coughing.

It usually manifests itself

in terms of swelling
of lymph nodes.

The skin turns black
and basically dies.

And then there's
a progression of fever

and chills and eventual death.

ARIEL BAR TZADOK:
As Justinian's Empire
was collapsing and breaking,

and his military strength
was waning,

because the science
of medicine in those days

was far more primitive
than we have today,

people cry out,
"Why... why is this happening?"

SHATNER:
The Plague of Justinian,
as it became known,

ultimately killed
an estimated 50 million people.

The vast
Byzantine Empire was crippled,

not by an invading army

but by an enemy
they could not see

and did not understand.

At the time, since the existence
of bacteria and viruses

had not yet been discovered,

many believed
that the invisible force

that caused the plague
was God himself.

It was a belief
that was widely accepted

because people
would read in the Bible

about how pestilence
from the past

had been created
by the hand of God.

Whenever humanity is infected

by something greater and
beyond human understanding,

it has always been

psychologically understood

to be an expression
of the wrath of God.

We have, in the book of Exodus,

the famous ten plagues of Egypt.

Moses had come back
after seeing God on the mountain

to free the Hebrews
from slavery.

He went before the pharaoh
and asked to let his people go.

Of course, the pharaoh said no.

Therefore,

the Hebrew God sent
a number of plagues

through Egypt.

BAR TZADOK:
The Bible stories are clear.

The order of the plagues are
well documented in the Bible.

We know, of course,
that there was the turning

of the Nile into blood.

There were the frogs,
the lice, the pestilence

and, of course,
the great plagues of

the Three Days of Darkness,

and of course,
the death of the firstborn.

JULYE BIDMEAD:
The biblical writer
who is writing what happens

and is inspired by God

does say that the plague stopped

after the Hebrews
were finally free.

So, perhaps there was some
divine intervention from God.

But we'll never know
because miracles

are very difficult to prove.

SHATNER:
Can ancient plagues
be attributed to

a higher power at work?

Well, it's a fascinating theory.

And perhaps divine intervention
could be the source

of a strange affliction

where a person
mysteriously bleeds

as if they've been crucified.

SHATNER:
Every spring,

billions of Christians
all over the world

gather to observe

a solemn day of reverence
called Good Friday.

According
to Christian tradition,

Good Friday commemorates

the crucifixion
and death of Jesus Christ.

This sacred practice
has been performed

for nearly 2,000 years,

and involves attending mass,

the veneration of the cross

and elaborate processions.

While Good Friday
is a somber occasion,

the Crucifixion
is a pivotal event

that is at the heart
of Christianity.

STEPHEN ROSSETTI:
When you look at
the spirituality

of the Christian faith,

the Crucifixion of Jesus is not

only a tragedy of death,

it's a sign
of the sufferings of Jesus.

When we think of
the Crucifixion today,

we think of Jesus' wounds
when he was crucified,

which includes
the holes in the hands,

in the feet,

in the side.

We think of the crown of thorns.

SHATNER:
The Crucifixion is clearly
a profound cornerstone

of the Christian faith.

But curiously, for centuries,

people have suffered from
a rare and disturbing condition

that is connected to
the death of Jesus Christ.

This bizarre affliction is known

as "stigmata."

McGOWAN:
Stigmata occurs

when an individual
is marked in a physical way

that represents the wounds

that Christ suffered
on the cross.

Most commonly, stigmata
happens in what is referred to

as the five wounds of Christ,

which is two in the hands,

two in the feet

and one on the side.

HOROWITZ:
Since the Middle Ages,

there have been untold
thousands of cases.

In the strictest
terms, stigmata,

although they do involve
physical suffering,

are considered

a blessing, a privilege.

It's almost as if
the stricken individual

is bearing a holy
or divine burden.

SHATNER:
How can wounds that mirror
those of Jesus Christ

inexplicably appear
on ordinary people?

It seems to defy all logic.

But perhaps clues about
this phenomenon can be found

by examining the first
documented instance of stigmata.

McGOWAN:
The first recorded
case of stigmata

occurred with St. Francis
of Assisi in 1224.

St. Francis went to
the mountains of La Verna

to meditate and to pray.

And then suddenly, Francis
had a vision of a seraphim.

A seraphim is
a particular kind of angel,

a fiery angel with six wings.

And the seraphim held
in his possession the crucifix.

His wings were wrapped around
Jesus on the cross.

And from this crucifix,
this image of Jesus,

came forth these rays,

and these rays
penetrated Francis

in the form of stigmata.

Francis' stigmata
was incredibly intense.

Nothing like this
had ever happened before.

And not only did he have wounds

that were openly
bleeding on his hands,

Francis was quite ill after

he received the stigmata,
and he died two years later.

Every day of those two years,
he did, in fact,

suffer with stigmata.

SHATNER:
Accounts of stigmata
are both fascinating

and deeply unsettling.

For many Christians,
they are proof

of divine forces
at work in our world,

but many experts are skeptical

and insist
that stigmata must have

a scientific explanation.

ROSIE FALODUN: In terms
of stigmata-like symptoms,

there are
some medical conditions

that have been attributed
to spontaneous bleeding,

but it's still
very much misunderstood.

One of them would be
hematohidrosis.

It's known as bloody sweat

because when the body is
under extreme stress,

the sweat glands tend
to become more fragile

and can bleed spontaneously.

It typically manifests
as droplets

of blood on the skin,
most commonly in the forehead,

the arms and the legs, without
any apparent physical cause.

But it can't be said
that they are

the exact cause of stigmata.

HOROWITZ:
When a proposed stigmata occurs,

the Vatican typically will do
everything possible

to account for the healing

within standard
medical protocol.

The Vatican disputes,
ignores or disproves

vastly greater numbers
of miraculous claims

than it actually validates,
and so,

if the Vatican is able
to verify stigmata,

they are considered miraculous.

SHATNER:
Is it possible
that a genuine case of stigmata

is an actual miracle,
as the Vatican claims?

Many believe that the best
evidence lies in the story

of the most famous case
in modern history--

the stigmata of Padre Pio.

LYNN PICKNETT:
Padre Pio was

a Capuchin friar
who in 1918 celebrated mass

and immediately afterwards
started bleeding

from the hands and feet,

but there were
certain peculiarities about it.

It never scabbed over.

And it gave off
a very sweet perfume,

which is known
as the odor of sanctity.

McGOWAN:
When Padre Pio was suffering
from his stigmata,

he said that the pain
was so extreme

that he thought he might die.

He was embarrassed by the blood

and embarrassed to be showing
these marks on a regular basis.

And he was always trying
to cover them

with the sleeves of his robe

so that people
wouldn't see the blood.

ROSSETTI:
The Vatican's response
to great mystics in the church

has often been to persecute
them, at least initially.

They did that with Padre Pio.

They were skeptical.

At one point they thought
they were self-inflicted

and so they, uh, silenced him.

They basically shut him away
in a monastery.

But thousands of people
would go to attend his mass

and line up
for confession for days.

ANDREW COLLINS:
It was not until long
after Padre Pio's death

in 1968
that the Vatican had relented

and saw him
as a genuine stigmatist.

He was finally canonized and
beatified by Pope John Paul II.

This was at the beginning
of the 21st century.

Now thousands of pilgrims come
from all over Italy and beyond

to venerate
at his tomb every month,

and so his memory is
something that is celebrated

by Catholics
in every part of the world.

SHATNER:
For the moment
stigmata remains a controversial

and captivating affliction
that offers no easy answers.

But in 16th-century France

another condition emerged
that was no less baffling.

It was a disturbing phenomenon
which led hundreds of people

-to dance themselves to death.
-(laughter)

(woman screams)

SHATNER:
This historic city,
built along the Rhine River,

is known for its stunning
network of canals,

remarkable
medieval architecture,

and the famous astronomical
clock of Strasbourg Cathedral.

But over 500 years ago, in July
of 1518, this town was the site

of one of the strangest maladies
in human history.

It's known
as the dancing plague,

and it started when a townswoman
named Frau Troffea

spontaneously burst into dance.

WALLER:
Frau Troffea is said

to have stepped
outside of her house

in the city of Strasbourg...

...and then began to dance,

and she danced for hours
and hours and hours,

and apparently, at first,
eyewitnesses thought

that she may have been trying
to irritate her husband

or that this was
some kind of joke,

but then the dance stretched
into the evening

and then into the night.

She collapsed.

She got up the next day
and began again.

And at that point
people realized

that a very strange phenomenon
was unfolding here.

PICKNETT:
Frau Troffea went on
hopping around and dancing

in the heat of the summer,
but she wasn't enjoying it.

She was unfocused,
glassy-eyed, dissociated,

and just jerking around
and dancing,

and she actually couldn't stop.

SHATNER:
Frau Troffea reportedly danced
for a week straight.

The constant exertion took
a toll on her health,

and she was sent to a remote
monastery to recuperate.

But strangely,
after Frau left Strasbourg,

the dancing didn't stop.

WALLER:
Within about two or three weeks,

dozens more people

had been consumed by this
same urge to dance and dance

for hours and days in an altered
state of consciousness.

By the end of August,

perhaps 400 people
were all dancing,

in some cases
on and off for weeks.

Their toenails fell off,
their feet were lacerated,

their shoes were full of blood.

And then some of them
dropped dead.

It was estimated
15 a day dropped dead,

maybe 400 in all over the course
of the two months.

It was a terrifying
and terrible thing.

What's so remarkable
about these events of 1518

is that we have copies

of the memos sent
among the members

of the governing circle
of the city.

There are intense debates
within the city

as to what is causing
this outbreak of dancing,

and they make quite clear,

these people do not want
to be dancing.

They are absolutely involuntary.

SHATNER:
What could have
possibly triggered

such a bizarre
and deadly affliction?

At the time the people
of Strasbourg began to suspect

that the dancing plague
was the work

of the devil.

COLLINS:
This was something that was seen
as a form of possession,

so they started to look

at possible
supernatural explanations,

and the first thing
that they thought of was

this possibly being instigated
by the devil himself.

And so they tried to purge
every kind of sin from the city.

It didn't work.

SHATNER:
When banning sin failed,
the townspeople wondered

if the dancing plague was
not the work of the devil

but rather a Catholic saint
by the name of Vitus.

WALLER:
St. Vitus is an important saint

in the late
medieval European Church.

There was a very strong belief

that there were
a number of saints

who could both cure you
of a particular disease

and, if you were a sinner,

then they would punish you
by inflicting that disease.

St. Vitus was believed
to cause movement disorders,

including compulsive dancing,

so it made complete sense
to people at the time

that if anybody
was dancing wildly,

it's because they'd somehow
offended St. Vitus.

So what they then do is that
they bundle people into wagons

and take them to a shrine
dedicated to St. Vitus

located about 30 miles north
of Strasbourg.

Interestingly,
they put red shoes on them.

They cover the red shoes
in holy oil and holy water

and they lead them
round the shrine in a circle,

and then we are told

most of the people recovered
their sanity,

so it seems that they cured it

by appealing
to the supernatural beliefs

of the people
who had been afflicted.

SHATNER:
Was the dancing plague
both caused and cured

by a higher power?

While it made sense to people
in medieval Europe...

...in modern times
experts have proposed

a more scientific theory.

They claim that this ghoulish
dancing frenzy was

the result
of mass psychogenic illness,

or as it's more commonly known,
mass hysteria.

FALODUN:
Mass hysteria is
when a group of people

are experiencing
the same physical symptoms

without a definitive physical
cause of those symptoms.

For example,
if you're in a social setting

whereby someone
is experiencing a symptom,

you can then believe that
that's also happening to you.

WALLER:
Today the most popular theory

for the 1518 dancing plague

is that this is an example
of mass hysteria,

but it's not always the case
that unusual behavior

is mass psychogenic illness.

We're talking about
several hundred people dancing

for days or weeks,
some of them dying.

Could mass hysteria
really be what started

the spread
of the dancing plague?

Or was it the work of the devil?

Whether it was psychological
or spiritual in nature,

the dancing plague is certainly
a lesson in human behavior.

As is the case
of a 3,000-year-old virus

that spread around the world
and became

one of the deadliest diseases
on Earth.

SHATNER:
Spanish conquistadors
led by Hernán Cortés arrive

at Tenochtitlán,
the capital of the Aztec Empire,

bearing dreams of conquest

and an insatiable desire
for gold,

but they also brought with them
a lethal, infectious disease.

TOK THOMPSON:
Smallpox is introduced into
the Americas very dramatically

at a specific point in time and
alongside the European invasion.

So this is a tremendous
sort of clash of civilizations,

the likes of which the world
had never seen before

and will never see again.

The single most deciding factor

as to why Native American
civilizations fell so rapidly

was the introduction
of smallpox.

FISHER:
So, smallpox is a virus.

It causes these sort of
irregularly spaced,

pustuly skin lesions

and had a devastating effect

on-on Native Americans,
um, in the New World.

GRONVALL:
In Europe most people
had experienced smallpox.

They had the scars
or they had it as children,

but there was no immunity
in the New World.

There was no immunity
among kids,

there was
no immunity among adults,

and so, when this new disease
came, everybody was vulnerable,

and so it spread like wildfire.

SHATNER:
Although the exact numbers
will never be known,

many experts estimate

that a staggering 95%
of the Indigenous population

would eventually die
from smallpox,

but what's even more chilling

is the fact that smallpox ran
rampant for thousands of years.

GRONVALL:
I am astounded

by how far back smallpox goes.

For most
of human recorded history,

we believe it's the same strain
that was infecting

one person after another,
this human chain of infection.

The Egyptian pharaoh Ramses V

had scarring on his face

that's consistent with smallpox.

SHATNER:
It is estimated
that smallpox has killed

between 300
and 500 million people

in its more-than-10,000-year
existence.

Which begs the question:
how did we finally beat it?

Well, it just so happens
that the cure for smallpox

was discovered in a small
English village in the 1790s.

GRONVALL:
In the late 1700s
doctors were noticing

that milkmaids did not seem
to be affected by smallpox

and their complexions
remained unscarred.

And people were starting
to make that connection

that there might be immunity
from catching

a different kind
of poxvirus-- cowpox--

so milkmaids were exposed
to the cowpox virus,

probably got infected,

and were then immune
to smallpox.

Edward Jenner was
an English physician

and decided to test
this observation

and took a piece of an ulcer

from a cow
that was infected by cowpox

and gave it
to an eight-year-old boy

and then, a little bit later,

gave this little boy
a dose of smallpox.

Fortunately, the eight-year-old
boy did not develop smallpox

and was actually protected.

Because it wasn't like a direct
viral intake, right, you would,

you would get a slightly, um,
lesser version of the disease,

but because
you had been exposed to it,

you would, of course,
then have immunity,

so it was probably
the first instance

of a crude version
of vaccination.

SHATNER:
As it turns out, Edward Jenner's
revolutionary experiment

is remembered today
for its inspiration,

its sheer audacity,

and because it provided
a new defense

against infectious disease

which we now refer to
as "the vaccine."

GRONVALL:
The word "vaccine"

comes from the virus name
vaccinia,

which was the virus that was
the cowpox-derived virus

that left people immune
to smallpox.

Vaccines prevent disease,

and some vaccines
can last for decades

and some vaccines need
to be given every year.

For smallpox, people had to get
vaccinated every ten years.

SHATNER:
Vaccines are humanity's single
greatest weapon against plagues.

Rooted in science
and not superstition,

they provide a powerful way
to fight outbreaks.

GRONVALL: The last
naturally occurring case

of smallpox
was identified in 1979,

and in 1980 the World Health
Organization declared

that smallpox was eradicated,

so no longer spreading
from person to person.

Eradicating smallpox was the
biggest public health victory

in the history
of the human race.

SHATNER:
The eradication of smallpox

is the most famous use
of a highly effective vaccine,

but there are some diseases
that are harder to cure.

MICHIO KAKU:
There are viruses

for which we have
no vaccines at all

because they mutate too rapidly.

And so, because viruses mutate,

there's a certain limitation to
what you can do with vaccines.

DASGUPTA:
The minute you get too confident

and you think
that we defeated Mother Nature,

somehow it always finds
a way to come back.

SHATNER:
It appears that
even with our technological

and medical advancements,

the ability to isolate, contain,

and even eradicate
certain diseases

will remain an ongoing endeavor.

And in some cases
discovering the source

of the affliction
can be shocking,

like in the case
of a deadly disorder

caused by a gruesome
tribal ritual.

SHATNER:
This group of tropical islands

located
in the Southwest Pacific Ocean

is one of the most remote places
on Earth.

During the 1970s
it was discovered

that a local tribe
known as the Fore

was afflicted by a strange
and deadly illness.

SCHUTT:
The Fore people lived up
in the mountains of this island.

There were probably about 36,000
of them that were spread out

across the mountain valleys
in Northern New Guinea.

They lived
in 170 different hamlets

with people who spoke
six different languages.

When the Westerners started
to interact with the Fore,

missionaries
and anthropologists found

an alarming number of them
were dying of a strange disease

that nobody
had really seen before.

One of the symptoms
of this disease

is something that is known
as pathological laughter.

(laughing)

You know, inappropriate
laughter, giggling.

Major magazines and newspapers
called it laughing death.

SHATNER:
At the time experts estimated
that the laughing death

killed 200 Fore people
every year.

The Fore called
the illness kuru,

which translates to "trembling"
in their dialect.

The disease was puzzling
to scientists,

who could not determine
its cause,

and in 1981 Dr. Robert Klitzman
traveled to Papua New Guinea

to try and solve the mystery.

When I went there
for the first time,

I wasn't sure what to expect,

but I learned many things.

Initially it was called
the laughing death,

which is sort of a misnomer.

People did engage
in what seemed like laughter,

but it really was sort of
uncontrollable expressions

and movements that they had.

Kuru causes
a number of symptoms.

It is a neurological disease

somewhat similar to Parkinson's
disease or Alzheimer's.

The symptoms are loss of
muscle control over one's body,

shaking, inability to walk,

and it has
mental symptoms as well,

so people may not be able
to control

their emotions or what they say.

The disease was terrifying
in many ways.

The symptoms usually, from start

to the person's death,
take about a year.

It's invariably fatal.

The Fore people believed
that the disease

was caused by sorcery.

So they believed
that a sorcerer would take

something that belonged to you

and wrap it around a stone and
bury it and cast a spell on it,

and that may sound ridiculous
to some of us,

but they'd say,
"That's just magic."

The world in which they lived
was this kind of a world.

SHATNER:
Was kuru the result
of supernatural forces,

as locals believed?

It's an intriguing notion,

but doctors eventually suspected
that the real culprit

was that the Fore participated
in the gruesome practice

of consuming human flesh.

HOROWITZ:
When Western anthropologists

began to study
some of the communities

of Papua New Guinea
in the 1930s,

they discovered
practice of a ritualistic,

religious-based
funerary cannibalism.

The Papua New Guineans
who engaged in cannibalism

saw the consumption of the brain

as a way of imbibing
that person's life force.

It was a devotional practice.

KLITZMAN:
When they practiced cannibalism,

at one feast, I calculated

that there were
56 people present,

53 of whom then died
of the disease.

So it was pretty devastating.

Now, every time someone died,
they would consume the brain.

I met people, for instance,
who would say,

"Well, I ate a foot,"
or "I ate a hand,"

and they were still alive.

And so,
the concentration of the kuru

was highest when
they would consume the brain.

SHATNER:
Perhaps it's not surprising

that eating human brains
is not good for your health.

But how did this practice

lead to the bizarre
laughing symptoms of kuru?

Kuru is caused
by something called a prion,

an infectious protein
that is in all of our brains.

And in roughly one out
of every million people or so,

it flips the wrong way.

And when it's flipped,

it could lead to other proteins

flipping in our brain
and forming clumps

that could kill brain cells.

Kuru probably happened
because someone

in the Fore group had such
a protein flip the wrong way,

and that person was then
consumed by other people,

and that led to proteins
in their brains flipping.

And when they died,
they were eaten,

and the rest is history,
it continued to spread.

SHATNER:
The story of kuru
is as fascinating

as it is disturbing.

But what's even more unsettling
is that this type of disease

has harmed people
not just in Papua New Guinea

but all over the world.

Except, we call it
"mad cow disease."

SCHUTT:
In the 1980s,

British cattle became stricken
with mad cow disease

because farmers
feed them supplements,

and these supplements
are made up of dead cows

infected with prion disease.

And then people
would consume that.

Eventually,
over the course of 15, 16 years,

178 people in the U.K. died

from what became known
as mad cow disease.

FALODUN:
Mad cow disease

or neurodegenerative diseases
such as kuru

can manifest upwards
of 70 years after the ingestion

of some contaminated, um,
food or livestock.

And so, it's very unclear

as to whether or not
it can happen in the future.

The study of kuru
is important for many reasons.

One is, of course,
the fact that the symptoms

in humans from eating
an infected cow

are basically the same symptoms
that we saw with kuru.

So, they provided
this unique glimpse

on what can cause
a disease that's different

than what anyone
had thought before.

SHATNER:
Could our understanding
of the laughing death disorder

help us to better identify
and avoid

stange outbreaks
in the modern world?

Perhaps, and now more than ever,

people are going
to great lengths

to dodge diseases
and even death itself.

Their secret is to remain
frozen for centuries.

SHATNER:
In a sprawling industrial park

on the north side of the city
stands the headquarters

of the Alcor Life Extension
Foundation.

Like most cutting-edge
medical facilities,

the doctors and scientists here
work day and night

to provide care
for their patients.

Except, in the case of Alcor,

the patients...

...are all deceased.

In our view, people who are
declared legally dead today

are potentially revivable.

Alcor's mission
is to take a patient

who cannot be helped by
today's medicine into the future

where, hopefully,
more advanced technology

can repair and revive them.

We're here in Alcor's
patient care bay.

In this room, we have all 184
of our human patients

in these dewars,
these cryogenic dewars,

essentially very large,
expensive vacuum flasks.

So, in each one
of these containers,

there are four
whole-body patients.

On this side, you can see

that I can put my hand on here
without any problem,

but just a few inches further in
is minus 320 Fahrenheit.

It's extremely cold.

People say that we freeze
people colloquially,

but that's not strictly accurate
if we do it right.

Our patients are essentially in
something like a long-term coma,

except there is no
metabolic activity whatsoever.

SHATNER:
To date, 184 deceased patients

lie in deep freeze
within Alcor's facility,

in the hope that, one day,
they'll be resurrected.

This bizarre form
of potential immortality

is known as cryonics.

Cryonics is the process
of freezing the human body,

perhaps just the human head,

in order to stop
the biological process of decay.

So, the hope is, if you could
freeze somebody alive,

even with an incurable disease,

perhaps you can thaw them out
at some point in the future

when science has found
the cure for that disease.

In that sense,
perhaps you can defeat cancer,

defeat all the ravages
of old age.

Perhaps even become immortal.

MORE:
Professor Robert Ettinger,
a physicist,

started the cryonics movement
in the 1960s,

where he proposed
to store people

at ultracold temperatures,

where there's the potential
that future technology

could repair and revive them.

Right now, there are
many companies that do this.

There are hundreds
of frozen individuals right now

across the United States.

SHATNER:
Worldwide, it is estimated

that at least 500 people
have been placed

in cryonic suspension,

most notably, baseball
Hall of Famer Ted Williams.

There are even those who claim
that Walt Disney's body

is preserved
in a cryonics facility.

But is there any reason
to believe

that this strange process
could actually work?

If you live in the countryside,
you know that, come wintertime,

the lakes freeze over.

But if you ever look
right on top of the lakes,

you'll see frozen organisms.

Fish and frogs.

And then, come springtime,

some of them
spring back to life again,

when you thought
they were frozen solid.

What's the trick?

The trick is that Mother Nature

has created an antifreeze

to lower the freezing point
for these animals

such that,
even though it appears

as if they're frozen solid,

the bodily fluids inside
these animals still flows,

and these animals
are still alive,

even though their metabolism
rate is very close to zero.

So, in some sense,
we're trying to copy nature.

And it turns out
that some forms of tissue can,

in fact,
be frozen almost indefinitely.

SHATNER:
If cryonics is able to deliver

on its promise of immortality
as many hope,

could it eventually mean
that death itself

will one day come to an end?

MORE:
Cryonics really is about
giving people choice

over how long they live.

We think that, in the future,

we should be able to revive
cryonics patients

and rejuvenate them and let them
go about their lives again.

What we want, really,
is indefinite lifespan.

KAKU:
If, in the future,
someone can show

that you could be revived
after being frozen solid,

then the whole question
of immortality is on the table.

We're not there yet,

but there's no law of science
that says you can't do it.

Perhaps the future
for treating a deadly virus

will be to simply
put a patient on ice

until a cure can be found.

In the meantime, it's reassuring
to know that modern medicine,

along with an understanding of
how outbreaks begin and spread,

has made great strides
in controlling the escalation

of contagious diseases.

But will killers like smallpox
still be around

for another 3,000 years?

Or can a new plague emerge

that's impervious
to antibiotics?

While we can attempt to protect
ourselves from deadly pandemics,

just when the next
unstoppable outbreak will occur

remains...

unexplained.

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