All language subtitles for The UnBelievable with Dan Aykroyd s03e05 Man vs Nature.eng

[Dan narrating]

[mysterious music]

- What if I told you a man once
found himself in a face off

with one of nature's most
unexpected opponents?

- Greig sees this
enormous kangaroo.

- [Greig] Oh God!

- [James] Holding
his dog hostage.

- This kangaroo can pretty
much eviscerate him.

- He realizes he has to
do something pretty quick

to save his dog.

- Or there's a filthy
rich cereal mogul

who declared war on the weather?

- Post makes the connection,

maybe if you agitate the
atmosphere sufficiently,

you can make it rain.

- Post hires a team of 50
men to fly dynamite kites.

[bombs exploding]

- [Hakeem] But they have
all kinds of problems.

- How about being pushed
to the brink of extinction

by a tiny bug?

- There are billions
and billions of them

and they're hungry.

- When they descend on a farm,

the scale of
destruction is biblical.

- These are the
unbelievable stories

of what happens when
humans and nature collide.

[mysterious music]

- The ocean is home to a vast
array of incredible creatures.

Many are peaceful, but
every now and then,

the deep sea reminds us
who's really in charge.

[tense music]

- In 2024, off the
coast of New Hampshire,

two fishermen have their
boat floating over schools

of small bait fish,

which attract the larger
fish they're after.

But these anglers get
a much bigger bite

than they bargained for.

[anglers yelling]

- It turns out to
be a humpback whale,

and it capsizes
this $150,000 boat.

- [Videographer 1] Oh my God.

- Sending the two fishermen
ride into the drink.

- Humpback whales are enormous.

They can grow to 60
feet and weigh 40 tons.

That's over two times
the size of the boat

and many times its mass.

- [Dan] Close calls
between humans and whales

happen more often
than you think,

but who actually has
the right of way?

- Legally, fishing
boats are required

to stay a safe distance
from humpback whales

and avoid the
schools of bait fish

where the whales are feeding.

The law is intended
to protect the whales,

but it turns out it's good
for the fishermen too.

- Not all fishermen are
following these guidelines

because they're
after their fish,

and so situations like this

may occur more and more often.

[water splashing]

- Is this boat
bashing on purpose,

a case of sea rage perhaps?

We might never know, but
for one bird scientist,

the question of
nature's vengeful intent

seems pretty clear.

- John Marzluff is
a wildlife biologist

working at the University
of Washington in 2006,

and his specialty
is studying crows.

That includes capturing
them, tagging them,

and tracking them to
observe their behaviors

and learn more about them,

and he has been
working consistently

with this one flock of
birds, a murder of crows,

and he starts to notice
something happening.

- Some of these crows

seem very wary of
specific researchers.

More than that, the crows swoop

and dive bomb the researchers

who've been directly
involved in the trapping,

and they also scold them,

[crows cawing]

cawing at them aggressively.

- What becomes really
interesting here

is that this happens even
when these researchers

are just going about
their lives around campus,

and these crows are formidable.

They have really tough
beaks and talons.

So if a crow is mad at you,
that is a serious threat.

Marzluff starts to wonder,

are these birds recognizing
these people's faces

and are they mad at them?

- Marzluff decides to try
a particular experiment.

He asks researchers who
are trapping the crows

to wear a Halloween
mask of a caveman

and other researchers

who are not involved
in trapping the crows

wear a Halloween mask of
Vice President Dick Cheney.

- [Dan] As cavemen
and Dick Cheneys

are released into
the wild on campus,

Marzluff notices
something extraordinary.

- The crows continually
accost the cavemen

who are trapping them

and ignore or leave
alone the Dick Cheneys.

- And this happens even when
they try it with a hat on

while they're wearing the mask,

or they'll put on a
different kerchief or a scarf

just to see if it is
definitely the face

that the birds are focusing on,
and it is every single time.

- [Dan] Incredibly, this
hostility runs much deeper

than anyone imagined.

- Birds that have never been
part of this research project

also start to attack, swooping
angrily at the cavemen.

These remarkable animals have
been teaching each other.

- It goes on right into 2020.

So 14 years after
the initial research

and after the paper's published,

the caveman mask is still
eliciting this response,

and that means that
there are birds in play

that are generationally
separated

from the original flock.

- In all fairness, the
biologists started this spat,

but sometimes the animal is
the one looking for a fight.

- In 2016 in the
Australian outback,

Greig Tonkins is out with his
friends hunting wild boar,

- There's one there.
[indistinct]

when one of Greig's
dogs, Max, gets a scent

and runs off ahead and
disappears into the brush.

- Greig sees something he
really wasn't expecting,

which is this enormous kangaroo.

- [Greig] Oh God!

- Holding his dog
hostage on a headlock

and Greig realizes he has
to do something pretty quick

to save his dog.

- Big male kangaroos are
actually quite terrifying.

They've got these just huge
biceps, big broad chests,

and a kangaroo can punch eight
times harder than a human

and they can bite as
hard as a grizzly.

But the biggest threat is
actually the kangaroo's kick.

- [Dan] A kangaroo's
middle toes fuse

into a single sharp talon,
a feature called syndactyly,

not unlike the kill claw
found on a velociraptor.

- He can kick his
heart as a horse

and with that sharp nail
on the end of his toe,

can pretty much open
Greig completely up

and eviscerate him.

- As it happens, Greig is
a zookeeper by profession,

so he moves in close enough
to distract the kangaroo

and it releases the dog.

You might think that the
story would end there,

but no, the kangaroo turns
its attention to Greig.

- [Jarod] Now, this kangaroo

is in full blown territory
mode and puts up his dukes.

Greig, to not show any weakness,

leans back and he socks the
kangaroo straight in the jaw.

[suspenseful music]

- Surprisingly,
the roo backs off,

and actually that probably
saves Greig's life.

[suspenseful music]

- It's unclear if this
was a triumph over nature

or mercy on the part
of the kangaroo,

but in the end, the kangaroo
learns the hard way,

don't mess with a
man and his dog.

- The pioneers of the Great
Plains fought droughts, storms

and brutal winters, but in 1874,

nature threw something at
them they never saw coming.

[suspenseful music]

- It is summer of
1874 in Nebraska.

It's a sparsely populated area
that survives on agriculture,

and the state is suffering
a really crippling drought.

The local farmers are hoping

and praying that things turn
around when all of a sudden,

there is this strange
and disturbing rumbling.

As the rumbling continues,

suddenly a haze starts
to form over the sun,

the skies start to darken.

- At first, you think it
might be an approaching storm

or a tornado, but it disperses
into billions of tiny specs.

- These specs are
not bits of dust,

they're not raindrops,
they're grasshoppers.

Rocky Mountain grasshoppers,

billions and billions of
them, and they're hungry.

- They will eat an
entire field of crops

in a matter of hours.

- It's like a blizzard
of grasshoppers.

In some areas, the insects
form a carpet a foot deep.

They invade homes, they
eat cloth and quilts,

paper, curtains,
leather, tool handles.

- They will eat the wool
right off of a live sheep.

They will start eating the
clothes off of your back.

When they descend on a farm,

the scale of
destruction is biblical.

- [Dan] Shockingly, this
isn't an isolated incident.

It's happening all
over Kansas, Iowa,

Minnesota, Missouri,
Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.

They call it the Great
Grasshopper Plague of 1874.

[suspenseful music]
[grasshoppers buzzing]

- There have been
grasshopper invasions before,

but this one in
1874 is on a scale

that the US has
never seen before.

At the peak of the invasion,

estimates run as high as
15 trillion grasshoppers.

That's 390,000 grasshoppers

for every resident of the
United States at that time.

- [Dan] Dazed citizens wonder
why this particular year

is especially brutal.

- Rocky Mountain
grasshoppers originate

in the Rocky Mountains and
under normal circumstances,

that's where they stay.

But in 1874, conditions
are not normal.

There's a very severe drought
going on, and when it's dry,

their eggs hatch
more successfully

so the population of
grasshoppers explodes.

- There are also winds
that form a jet stream

and carry the grasshoppers
throughout the Great Plains,

leading to a cycle of the
grasshoppers overpopulating,

decimating food and
seeking more food.

The grasshoppers cause about
$200 million in crop damage,

which is the equivalent
of $5.5 billion today.

Even more dangerous,

the excrement from these
billions of grasshoppers

poisons wells and
water supplies.

- [Dan] As this mass
infestation continues

throughout the summer of 1874,

desperate farmers go to
war with the grasshoppers.

- They try setting
them on fire,

they try smoking them out,

they try poisons.

- They even try a contraption
called a hopper dozer,

which is a horse drawn metal
sheet coated with coal tar

intended to get the insects
stuck to the metal sheet,

but there are just
too many of them

and it becomes another failure.

- [Dan] The swarms of
grasshoppers return

for the next four summers,

but then a strange
thing happens.

- The grasshoppers
just disappear.

They're not just
gone from the Plains,

they're gone from everywhere.

By the early 1900s,
they're extinct.

- While Nebraska farmers learned

that bugs can ruin your life,

one ancient king discovered
there's a way to use them

to your advantage.

[suspenseful music]

- It's 67 BCE in what
is modern day Turkey

along the Black Sea, and
the Persian king, Mithridates

is on the run from the Roman
general Pompey The Great.

- Mithridates is
an interesting guy.

His father was
murdered by poison,

so he spends much of his
early life out in the woods,

ingesting small amounts
of poisons like arsenic

to build up a tolerance.

At the time, he's probably one

of the world's leading
experts on human toxins.

- [Dan] Now, with the
Roman army hot on his tail,

Mithridates uses this
knowledge to his benefit.

- He instructs his soldiers
to gather large amounts

of a sticky red honey

and place it in jugs all
along his escape route.

- The Romans encounter these
jars and on closer inspection,

they find that it smells
sweet, they sample it,

and they find that it
tastes sweet as well.

- Once they taste it,
there's no stopping them.

Soldier after
soldier after soldier

is consuming handful
after handful

of life-giving
nutrient-rich honey

until the side effects kick in.

[tense music]

- What the soldiers don't
know is that in Turkey,

bees often pollinate
rhododendron fields

and these flowers contain
large amounts of grayanotoxin.

The toxin ends up in the honey,

which causes
hallucinations, diarrhea,

dizziness, and loss
of consciousness.

- After eating
tons of this honey,

the Roman soldiers are
on a pretty bad trip.

They are not what you
would call battle ready.

Imagine having to
fight for your life

while you're vomiting
and hallucinating.

This is exactly what
Mithridates had in mind.

[suspenseful music]

- Mithridates's force
then doubles back on them

and engages them in battle.

- [Dan] The result,
it's a slaughter

with over 1,000
stoned Romans killed.

- Mithridates took
all those years

studying poisons and toxins,

and he essentially
creates possibly

the first biological weapon.

- In fact, today it is one

of the oldest
hallucinogenic drugs,

though very expensive and
sometimes hard to get.

In some countries,

it sells for $80 a pound
on the black market.

- Talk about sweet revenge.

- The weather is
unpredictable, untamed,

and for one man the next
great frontier to conquer.

What happens when human
ambition takes on Mother Nature?

[suspenseful music]

- C.W. Post becomes a
breakfast cereal baron

in the late 1800s.

He makes a lot of money with
products like Grape-Nuts

and other post cereals
like Raisin Bran.

- [Announcer] Start your
day a little bit better

with Post Grape-Nuts Flakes.

- Eventually, Post starts
to have these obsessions

and because of his success,

he does not hesitate
to act upon them.

- In 1907, Post buys up
200,000 acres of land

in order to build
this self-sustaining,

idyllic little community.

- He calls it Post City.

It seems that Post has
thought of everything

in his perfect city,
except for one thing.

There's not enough water.

And soon enough, the region
is plagued by drought.

This city can't sustain itself,
no one can grow enough food.

- He remembers that
there were stories

that after big cannon battles
in the Napoleonic wars,

it would start raining.

So he makes the connection.

Maybe if you agitate the
atmosphere sufficiently,

you can make it rain.

- [Dan] His plan is as
simple as it is bizarre,

he's going to blow
up the clouds.

- Post hires a team of 50
men to fly dynamite kites.

Each one of these
kites is equipped

with two pounds of dynamite
and extremely long fuses

so that when you light
it at the bottom,

a few minutes later, the
dynamite goes off in the sky.

- So he has 50 kites, but they
have all kinds of problems.

The cords get tangled,

the dynamite explodes too
close to the ground sometimes,

almost killing his men.
[bomb exploding]

Clearly this kite approach
is too unreliable,

so Post has to come up
with yet another plan.

- He has his men haul the
explosives up the Caprock,

which is a high escarpment
running throughout West Texas.

He uses a total of 350 pounds
of explosives spread out

so that each explosive
is about 50 feet apart

and they're set off
every 10 minutes.

[bombs exploding]

- Everything goes as planned
except it does not rain.

- Post gets this idea
that you really need

to replicate battle conditions.

The explosions need to
be violent and random.

There can't be
any pattern to it.

- [Dan] Eventually his
persistence pays off

when one of these rain
battles actually works.

[tense music]
[bomb exploding]

- Post is thrilled, but
subsequent rain battles

have mixed results,

and so Post thinks they're
not using enough dynamite.

So he ups the ante from
300 pounds to 3,000 pounds.

[bombs exploding]

During one rain battle,

Post detonates over
24,000 pounds of dynamite.

That's equivalent to the most
powerful conventional weapons

used by the US military today.

- [Dan] By the end of 1913,
after middling results,

Post fires his last shot.

- Overall, Post spends about
$50,000 in his rain battles,

which is equivalent to
about $1.7 million today,

or half a million
boxes of Grape-Nuts.

- For another visionary
who dared to do battle

with the natural world,

Mother Nature's response
was much more harsh.

[suspenseful music]

- From 1949 until 1976,

Mao Zedong is the all powerful
leader of Communist China

and he holds the
opinion that humankind

was intended to dominate nature.

- [Dan] In 1958, Mao'
Great Leap Forward program

mandates a massive increase
in agricultural production.

- If you're in charge
of a massive country

with a population of
600 million people,

your first priority is
feeding those people.

Any loss in crop is an
enemy to the people.

According to Mao, the number
one culprit in grain theft

is the evil sparrow.

- In order to harness all of
the agricultural potential

of the People's Republic,

he declares war on
a two-ounce bird.

- He enlists an army of
millions of citizen soldiers

to kill as many of the
sparrows as possible.

- People use whatever weapons
they have, guns, slingshot.

They even use long poles to
poke at nests up in the trees.

But the most bizarre method

is to simply follow
the birds around,

making a loud noise
with pots and pans

and anything metal that
they can clang together.

So the sparrows, they're
too scared to land

and they end up dying
from exhaustion.

- In just a matter of weeks,

the Chinese kill over
one billion sparrows.

- [Dan] For Mao, it's proof

of his people's
revolutionary devotion.

Unfortunately for the great
leader, his contempt for nature

is only surpassed by
his ignorance of it.

- Mao is convinced that it's
the sparrows eating the grain,

but actually it's insects that
consume most of the grain,

and the sparrows are the
ones eating the insects.

So in Nanzhong, 60% of
the crops are destroyed,

in another region,
15% of the rice crop

is consumed by locusts,

and this happens again
and again and again

all over sparrowless China.

- The result of
Mao's war on sparrows

is the country is
driven to famine

and the estimates are
that 45 million people

starved to death
from 1959 to '61.

This gave rise in the United
States to this practice

of scolding children
who didn't want to eat

by telling them that there are
starving children in China,

which was set in motion

by Mao's declared
war on the sparrows.

[birds chirping]

- Chairman Mao's battle with
birds is a stark reminder

that when you mess
with nature, beware,

nature has a brutal way
of restoring balance.

- For all of
humanity's progress,

nature still holds
the upper hand.

And in 1908 in the remote
Siberian wilderness,

it delivers a blow so powerful,
it defies explanation.

[suspenseful music]

- It's June, 1908
in Eastern Siberia

near the Tunguska River.

This area is incredibly remote.

You're more likely to see
a reindeer than a person.

- A man sits on his porch

when suddenly there's
a massive explosion.

After the flash,

[low rumble]

a violent hot wind pommels him

and destroys his entire home.

- He manages to lift
his head to look around

and he sees that the
forest surrounding his home

has been flattened by some
invisible, mysterious force.

It turns out this explosion
isn't right next door.

It's over 40 miles away.

- [Dan] In fact, the
blast is so powerful,

its impact reaches
far beyond Siberia.

- Windows a hundred
miles away are shattered.

Seismic readings are taken
as far away as Washington DC.

For days after this event,

the night skies
across Europe and Asia

are glowing with
this bright light.

- [Dan] The violent
detonation becomes known

as the Tunguska Event,

and right away the world
wants to know what caused it.

- Speculation runs rampant.

Some Russian scientists
believe that it was a volcano

that went off in
eastern Siberia,

while local indigenous
peoples believed

that maybe it was a god
or a powerful shaman

that had sent a
fireball to punish them.

- [Dan] 19 years later in 1927,

scientist Leonid Kulik is
finally able to get close enough

to study the scene.

- There's an 800 square
mile circular area

where the trees have been
absolutely flattened.

80 million trees are down.

It's not hard for Kulik
to find the epicenter

because all the trees are
pointing away from it.

- He suspects that the
culprit could be something

that came from
space and collided.

He expects to find a
crater in the middle.

He doesn't, it's
even more strange.

All the trees in the
center in ground zero

are still standing.

Of course, they're
burnt to a crisp

and their bark has
been shorn off,

but they're still upright.

Every other tree is
pointing outward.

- Over the decades, a lot of
pretty wild theories crop up.

One suggests that an
alien spacecraft armed

with nuclear weapons
exploded over Siberia.

The force of the explosion
actually supports this idea.

Scientists estimate

that the blast was 185
times more powerful

than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

- [Dan] There's also another,
more natural explanation.

- There's one
speculative hypothesis,

which is that the
earth passed gas,

that there was a large pocket
or reservoir of methane

that leaked out into the surface

and then was ignited
by a lightning bolt,

and then that ignition
detonated the entire pocket

in one giant blast.

- Finally, in 2020, a Russian
research team comes up

with a very plausible idea,

which is that an asteroid
came through space,

entered our earth's atmosphere,
kind of skimmed along,

but didn't impact

and ricocheted right
off of our atmosphere.

This would've heated up the air.

It would've created
these sonic shockwaves

that caused all of
this destruction.

- It's estimated that the
meteor is about 130 feet across

and weighs 220 million pounds.

If something like that landed
on a major city like London,

millions would die.

- What's more terrifying,
whatever it was,

we know we can't prevent
it from happening again.

And due to laws of nature,

chances are it
will happen again.

- It's a stark reminder,

you never know when nor where
nature's fury will strike,

whether from above
or deep below.

- It's a quiet night
in 2013 in Seffner,

a small town outside
of Tampa, Florida.

A gentleman named Jeremy Bush

is suddenly awakened by a crash,

followed by the sound of his
37-year-old brother screaming.

Jeremy runs to his
brother's bedroom

and much to his dismay and
shock, there's no furniture.

The bed, the dresser, the
drawers, everything is gone.

- What he sees is just
completely unbelievable.

There's a hole in the
center of the room

and he does not see
his brother anywhere.

In his desperation,
Jeremy grabs a shovel,

he jumps into the hole

and he's trying to
dig his brother out,

but the walls are
still falling in,

the soil is still moving,

so the more he digs,
nothing's happening.

- [Dan] Unfortunately, Jeremy
and his brother are dealing

with one of nature's most
unpredictable phenomena,

a sinkhole.

- A sinkhole forms when
you have a layer of soil

over a layer of
limestone, a porous rock,

and a cavern underneath.

When the rain seeps
into the soil,

it can go down and erode
that limestone away,

and when it gets
sufficiently weak, it breaks,

and that's when the
system collapses.

- Because of the amount
of limestone underground

in the state of Florida,

plus all the rain they
receive on an annual basis,

it's just prime
territory for sinkhole,

and they have over
27,000 of them there.

- One of these sinkholes in
China

is known to go down
as far as 2,000 feet.

In fact, entire
prehistoric habitats

have been found well preserved
inside of these sinkholes.

- [Dan] On that
terrible night in 2013,

there's no telling how
deep this sinkhole goes.

- When first responders arrive,
they quickly tell Jeremy

that the hole is too
unstable to pull Jeff out.

The emergency workers
themselves make some attempts.

They jump in, they dig down,

but the walls of the
hole are collapsing

and they realize
it's too dangerous

and they have to
abandon the effort.

- The ground has literally
disappeared beneath him

and he has been buried alive.

- [Dan] In the aftermath,
local authorities fill the hole

and condemn the entire block.

- In 2015, two years
after Jeff's death,

a strange thing happens.

People notice their dogs
are starting to act weird,

they're a little
afraid to go outside,

and then they hear
a massive rumble.

[tense music]

- Suddenly, their
sinkhole appears

right in the same
spot as the first one,

only this time it's even bigger.

- [Cyrena] In 2023, it
opens up for a third time.

- Nobody's injured, but
it's even bigger still.

The thing is sink holes
are known to grow,

and chances are
it may come again.

- The earth, it seems, has a
way of keeping us on our toes.

Just when we think we
have it all figured out,

it throws us a curve ball,

or in this case, a sinkhole.

- When nature calls and you're
nowhere near a bathroom,

it's usually an inconvenience.

But for one man, it comes
in, well, unbelievably handy.

- A hundred years ago,
the most interesting man

in the world was probably
Danish explorer Peter Freuchen.

He stands six foot, seven,
he's covered in animal furs,

he commands dog sleds
across the tundra.

According to legend, he killed
a wolf with his bare hands.

- [Dan] For all his
experience in the wild,

nothing could fully prepare
Freuchen for what lay ahead

on the icy expanse of Greenland.

- In 1926, Peter
Freuchen and some guides

are attempting an extremely
difficult trek across Greenland.

They encounter heavy snows

and realize that their
sleds are too heavy,

so they unload a lot of the
supplies with the intention

of coming back to them
when conditions clear up.

- Next day, Peter is convinced
that he can make it back

to where they left the supplies,

load it up and
continue on his own.

- [Dan] But when he makes
it to the supply dump,

he's trapped by a
sudden blizzard.

- Peter has no other choice
than to seek shelter,

so he digs a
shallow snow trench,

puts the sled on top of it

and crawls in
through a small hole.

He's essentially
burrowing into a snow bed.

- He stays in this
shelter for 30 hours.

When the storm subsides, Peter
discovers that the exit hole

to his shelter is
now frozen shut.

He is now stuck inside
of an icy coffin

of his own making

and all of his tools
are on the sled outside.

If he doesn't get out,

he's either going to
suffocate or freeze to death.

- He notes from his experience
in polar exploration

that when his sled dogs
would go to the bathroom,

their feces would freeze
solid in the snow,

as hard as a rock.

Peter now has to
relieve himself,

so he fashions his
own fecal matter

into a chisel shaped implement,

and he waits for it to freeze.

- Miraculously, it works.

He's chipping away,
chunks of ice are flying,

and his tool is
remaining intact.

He continues fracturing
the ice till he gets a hole

that's almost big enough
for him to squeeze through.

- He gets one arm
out, one shoulder out,

but then he realizes he's stuck

and he's dropped
his poop chisel.

- In desperation, Peter takes
an extremely long exhale,

the longest of his life

and contracts his
chest just enough

to squeeze through the hole.

His left foot is
stricken with frostbite,

but he is able to crawl back
to the camp and he survives.

- A blizzard alone
is a challenge,

but in 1923, four natural
disasters strike at once,

turning a bustling
city into pure chaos.

- It's an ordinary day
on September 1st, 1923,

the city of Tokyo going
about its business,

has no idea what's coming.

A 60 by 60 mile tectonic plate
breaks loose under the ocean

and causes an earthquake
registering 8.3

on the Richter Scale.

[suspenseful music]

- [Dan] In Tokyo
and nearby Yokohama,

buildings are leveled,
crushing thousands of victims.

Moments later, a 40
foot tsunami hits,

killing thousands more,

and this is just the beginning

of nature's merciless assault.

- Not only do you have
ruptured gas lines,

this earthquake happened
at about noontime.

A lot of people were inside
making lunch and cooking,

and so now the fires begin.

It also just so happens
there's a typhoon

just off of the coast as well,

and now you have very strong
winds fueling all these fires.

- The fire rips through 45%
of the buildings in Tokyo.

- Authorities direct
about 44,000 people

to open ground near
the Sumida River

where these fleeing residents
are considered safe,

but nature's havoc is not over.

The flames themselves form
into a massive spiral.

In essence, it's a
tornado composed of fire.

- [Dan] The Japanese have a word

for this rare and
devastating phenomenon,

a dragon twist.

- The dragon twist
grows to 650 feet tall

and 1,000 feet across,

and it is heading straight
for the 44,000 survivors.

- It's an absolute massacre.

Of the 44,000, only 300 survive.

This unthinkable disaster,
earthquake, tidal wave,

fire, dragon twist
ultimately takes the life

of 140,000 people.

It is the worst natural
disaster in Japanese history.

- I can't imagine how
terrifying that twister looked.

Of course, now that everyone
has a high tech camera

in their pockets, heh,
we wouldn't have to.

- Humans don't always
feel nature's wrath

in the form of disaster,
tragedy or cranky kangaroos.

Sometimes it's
triggered by something

as simple as a wild animal

that's just sick of
having its picture taken.

- Every year, four
million visitors

descend on Yellowstone Park

to get a close look at
nature and the animals,

and what do people like to do?

Take a selfie.
[observers yelling]

Bison actually account

for most human injuries
at Yellowstone,

and they hate getting
their photograph taken.

- [Videographer 2] [yells]
Oh my God, oh my God.

- But this problem isn't
unique to Yellowstone.

I mean, this is happening
all around the world.

- A woman in a zoo in Arizona
gets mauled by a jaguar

when she attempts a photo
up against its cage.

[victim moaning]

Then this other guy climbs
right into a zoo enclosure

with a lion, which
promptly kills him.

- [Dan] But the story of one
Todd Fassler may take the cake.

- In 2015, he's at the
Barona Speedway in San Diego

and he sees a rattlesnake.
[rattlesnake hissing]

He decides, oh, this is
a perfect opportunity

for a up-close selfie
with a rattlesnake.

He doesn't get his shot,

but he does get a bite.
[rattlesnake hissing]

The rattlesnake
injects the venom,

and Todd is in a world of hurt.

- [Dan] Todd survives,

but his arm isn't the
only thing hurting.

There's also his wallet.

- Anti-venom is
incredibly expensive,

and guess what's not likely
to be covered by insurance?

Anti-venom shots.

So Todd ends up with a
bill of over $150,000,

and he didn't even
get the selfie.

- While some animals
avoid the lens,

others are more than willing

to steal the spotlight
and the bottle.

- So you're vacationing on the
lovely island of Saint Kitts.

You're lounging poolside
with a tropical cocktail

and you drift off to sleep.

You may not realize though,
that someone is watching you,

poised to strike.

- It's a vervet monkey

and he's not interested in
ejecting you from his territory

or begging for a bit of food.

He wants your booze.

For years, this island
paradise has been plagued

by a small army of sneaky,
thieving, drunken monkeys.

[tense music]
[monkey yelling]

- [Dan] The vervet
monkeys of Saint Kitts

have a long history
of excessive drinking,

going back to the 1600s

when they were brought to the
island by the British as pets.

- The monkeys start raiding
sugar cane plantations

and sometimes the sugar
cane can start to ferment.

Then the sugar eventually
turns into alcohol,

and the monkeys start
chewing on the sugar cane,

ultimately becoming
addicted to alcohol.

- [Dan] Centuries later,

sugar fields are replaced
by bars and hotels,

but the monkeys' tradition of
boozing is still going strong.

- For scientists, the
situation on Saint Kitts

actually creates a
rare opportunity.

Where else can you study
alcohol consumption

in a group of highly
social, non-human primates?

And the results of that research

are like looking in a mirror.

- So some are more social
drinkers who do it in moderation

and only when they're
with other monkeys,

and then there's a
small group, about 5%,

who are described by researchers

as seriously abusive
binge drinkers.

- They get wasted,
they get into brawls,

they basically raid
outdoor cocktail tables

and just about anywhere they
can find alcoholic beverages.

- [Dan] Research also reveals
something else surprising.

- Well, it turns out
that the most effective

and powerful leaders
among these primates

are the drunkest monkeys of all.

- Whether it's an
entire population

of plastered primates,

a sinister 600
foot wall of fire,

or the sinkhole that
just won't fill,

these are the tales of
man's battles with nature

that are so bizarre, they
are truly unbelievable.

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