All language subtitles for Secrets.Declassified.with.David.Duchovny.S02E08.720p.HDTV.x264-NGP-CEsubs

Tonight on Secrets Declassified.

Experiments considered so wild,
dangerous, or deadly, they have to be

from the public.

From building an aircraft carrier made
of ice to defeat Nazi U -boats.

This thing will be the largest naval
vessel ever constructed.

To a manned mission to Mars that never
leaves Earth.

These men are subjected to every form of
stress that their Soviet overlords can

think of. Or even to Stalin's obsession
with understanding his rivals.

They want to profile Mao by analyzing
his poo.

These are the astonishing and sometimes
terrible things done by governments and

the people who work for them.

It's time to bring them to light.

It's World War II.

In the Atlantic, Hitler's U -boats are
hunting British ships relentlessly.

So Britain gambles on a daring
experiment.

Build an unthinkable ship, not from
steel, but from ice.

By 1942, Britain feels like it's against
the ropes.

U -boats hunting in the mid -Atlantic
are sinking 650 ,000 tons of shipping

every month.

The killing zone is called U -Boat
Alley. It's a stretch of the Mid

where Allied ships are unprotected.

Air Force planes can't reach that far
from land bases, and the British can't

send aircraft carriers to help because
they would be sunk by the U -Boats, too.

What they need is an aircraft carrier
that can't be sunk.

Enter Jeffrey Pike, an eccentric
adventurer and inventor now working for

HQ.

Jeffrey Pike comes up with the
realization that nature already produces

unthinkable platforms in the ocean.
They're called icebergs.

So he comes up with the idea that you
could flatten one and tow it wherever

wanted it to be. You can use it as an
unthinkable aircraft carrier, and it can

close the mid -Atlantic gap.

But Pike soon realizes icebergs won't
work.

nasty tendency to flip, which would put
your aircraft and your crew in the cold

Atlantic water. So, no, not a good
solution.

Pike won't be stopped so easily.

He begins to design an artificial
iceberg.

Pike's idea is to create a giant
aircraft carrier, not from steel, but

blocks of carved ice.

He can have a system of cooling pipes
throughout the ice to keep it frozen.

and also use diesel engines to propel it
forward.

At a secret lab, hidden in a
refrigerated storage unit at London's

Meat Market, Pike's team starts
experimenting.

There's one big shortcoming with ice. It
is extremely brittle.

If it came under enemy attack, it will
fracture.

So as Pike considers this problem, he
takes some inspiration from reinforced

concrete, and the idea that... Perhaps
combining water with another element

would produce a harder ice product.

Pike's team begins to experiment with
additives to increase the durability of

ice. They find a research paper from
scientists in Brooklyn, New York,

cotton as a reinforcer. But this makes a
slushy, uneven ice block.

Finally, after lots of experimentation,
they come up with just the right recipe.

and that is 4 % wood pulp and 96 %
water. This combination creates an

durable block of ice.

Pike's new ice behaves like nothing else
on Earth.

It's strong as concrete and almost
bulletproof, but can be cast like metal

cut like wood.

They named this new miracle material
Pikerete after its inventor.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
is the kind of guy who likes unusual,

bold, daring ideas. So he says, yeah,
let's do this.

Pike's project is given the code name
Habakkuk.

Habakkuk is an Old Testament prophet who
records God's promise to the doubtful.

I'm going to do something in your days
that you would not believe, even if you

were told.

Pike chooses the name to fit his
impossibly ambitious ice ship.

Now he needs to construct a prototype.

But Britain is too warm to build it.

So the entire project moves to Canada.

They turn the frozen surface of Patricia
Lake into a giant laboratory and build

a 1 ,000 -ton, 60 -foot -long scale
model.

The Habakkuk team starts experimenting.

And they find that in order to keep the
ice stable, the ship's refrigerators

need to keep it at a frosty 5 degrees.

They also discover that to stop a
torpedo, the hull has to be at least 30

thick.

When they complete their design, it is
an absolute behemoth.

Pike wanted an ice ship with a runway 2
,000 feet long and 300 feet wide.

It has 40 -foot thick walls, and it can
carry over 150 bombers at one time.

This will be the largest naval vessel
ever built.

Project Habakkuk is now becoming hugely
expensive, so it needs American backing.

In August 1943, at the Allied Conference
in Quebec, the Brits make their pitch.

To prove the properties of Picrete to
the Americans, one of the U .K.'s top

commanders, Lord Mountbatten, stages a
demo.

Mountbatten gives U .S. General Hap
Arnold an axe and asks him to smash a

of Picrete. Arnold swings at the Picrete
with all his might. The axe bounces

off. Then Mountbatten draws his pistol
and fires it at the Picrete.

The bullet ricochets off, sending the
generals diving for cover. The room

erupts. But the point is made. The
Americans are on board for Habakkuk.

Before production can begin, the tides
turn in the Atlantic.

Long -range aircraft and new anti
-submarine tactics blunt the U -boat

With the crisis over, the ice ship is no
longer needed.

In January 1944, Project Habakkuk is
canceled.

The prototype ship they'd built on
Patricia Lake is allowed to melt away.

Soon, the war comes to an end.

But the British military keeps details
of Pike Creek on ice for the next 30

years. We only learn the full details
through declassified documents that were

discovered in 1973.

They speak to an hour of desperation.

when England faced an existential threat
as a result of the U -boat.

Winston Churchill isn't the only leader
to greenlight an audacious experiment.

When the Soviets decide to beat the U
.S. to Mars, three cosmonauts are locked

in a test chamber for a year -long
study.

They learn that it's not the equipment
that fails, it's the crew.

In Moscow, leaders are convinced that
getting to Mars will definitively win

space race. For the Soviets, putting a
man on Mars would be a massive prestige

win.

But a round trip to Mars would take a
full year.

At the time, no one knows whether humans
can survive that long in space.

Moscow's Institute of Biomedical
Problems hatches a bold experiment.

They call it a year in a spaceship, but
they run it at their labs in Moscow.

The plan is to lock up a cosmonaut test
crew for 365 days inside a cramped metal

box. They want to find out if the team
can endure such a long space flight and

what the scientists need to do to make
it work.

Soviet leadership signs off on the Space
Chamber plan.

On November 5, 1967, the top secret
experiment begins.

In order for this experiment to provide
any meaningful results, the three

cosmonauts are going to have to be
actually isolated. The only contact that

will have with the outside world will be
through a radio channel, and everything

will be documented on film.

So the men locked inside, the chamber
feels more like a prison cell than a

starship. There is no privacy. The
living quarters are just 10 by 13 feet

not built for comfort.

The crew has a table, a stove, some
medical gear, and three flimsy fold -out

bunks.

Soon, the conditions begin to take a
toll on the cosmonauts, and the space

chamber becomes a psychological pressure
cooker.

Within a few weeks, all of them are
showing signs of psychological stress.

They're no longer enjoying any
collective activities together. They

almost at each other's throats all the
time.

Within two months, The crewmen are not
speaking to one another. If they're

holding these churlish grudges against
one another, they're not a cohesive

They're not an effective team.

With the experiment at risk, the
scientists take action.

They build a 200 -square -foot
greenhouse and dock it with a simulated

The greenhouse gives them a little bit
of dignity to get away from one another.

It gives them something positive and
constructive to do with their time. And

suddenly, rather than being at each
other's throats constantly, they're back

being a cohesive team again.

With the experiment back on track, the
scientists decide to stress test the

crew. They simulate a failure of the
chamber's life support systems.

The Soviet lab administrators massively
raised the concentration of carbon

dioxide in the capsule.

They crank the temperature up to 86
degrees. They push the humidity to a

tropical 90%. All of the subjects are
suffering from headaches and exhaustion.

It feels like hell in space.

The extreme conditions force the crew to
cooperate.

On November 5, 1968, after a full year
inside the space chamber, the experiment

comes to an end.

The most important lesson learned is
that claustrophobia and monotony are two

the biggest challenges a cosmonaut crew
will face on the way to Mars.

For years, the full details of the
secret space chamber experiment remain

deep in Kremlin files.

It's not until 1975 that they're finally
revealed to the world, when cosmonaut

Andrei Bozhko publishes his memoir.

He actually described the feelings that
he and his fellow participants had

living inside this tiny capsule for a
year.

Although the cosmonauts never actually
leave Moscow, the lessons learned from

the experiment prove useful for planning
future space missions.

If we're going to send somebody to Mars,
you can't just simply put them in a

capsule and expect them to endure a 34
million mile voyage.

You have to provide more space for them.
Otherwise, the mission is going to fail

because the individuals are going to
fail.

At the start of the Cold War, the U .S.
wants to know more about biological

weapons, how to protect against them, or
how to use them.

To learn more, the Pentagon comes up
with a top -secret experiment.

The target?

Unsuspecting American cities.

At the beginning of the 1950s, the
Pentagon is terrified that the Soviets

launch a biological attack against the
United States.

In the event that such an attack was
released on the U .S., what would

Everything is, at this point, an unknown
quantity.

The Army Chemical Corps is tasked to
investigate.

The Chemical Corps consider several
options.

The first one they come up with is using
a wind tunnel to see how it disperses,

but that's nothing like real -world
conditions.

The second option they consider is
building a city in the desert. However,

turns out to be too expensive.

And the third option is to do live
testing in real U .S. cities, but

using a real biological agent, use a
stand -in.

They start by looking for a safe
substitute for deadly germ weapons.

Chemical core scientists find this
apparently ideal candidate. It's a

fluorescent powder used in TV screens
called zinc cadmium sulfide.

What makes this powder so ideal is that
the individual grain sizes are very

similar to the sizes of the known
biological agents that an adversarial

may use.

The other thing about them is that they
fluoresce under ultraviolet light.

So it's easy to track them wherever they
go.

Initially, at least, the Army thinks
that the substance is harmless.

What they didn't know then, but we do
know now, is that cadmium is a top -tier

carcinogen. It causes lung cancer and
kidney cancer.

In January 1953, the experiment is ready
to begin.

The Army wants to study how a biological
agent would spread to an entire city.

The question is, what city?

The Army needs cities in the United
States to be an approximate match for

corresponding Soviet cities.

In the event that one day the U .S.
wants to carry out some sort of chemical

biological attack against a Soviet city.

First up is a viable proxy for brutally
cold Leningrad.

Minneapolis in Minnesota.

Here, they want to find out how a
biological weapon might get inside

types of buildings. To cover up what
they're doing and reassure the public,

come up with the story that they're
testing a smoke screen to protect the

from Soviet missiles.

Local authorities are eager to help, so
they sign on.

The Army selects a range of testing
locations, factories, office buildings,

one site stands out.

Clinton Elementary School.

They mount sprayers on the roof and
release clouds of zinc cadmium sulfide

the surrounding building and the
playground.

Inside the school, they put detectors to
measure how much zinc cadmium sulfide

is seeping in.

What the Army learns from all of this is
that even during the winter, when

everyone's largely sealed up in interior
spaces,

The pathogen is still going to find its
way into those spaces.

That means there is nowhere to hide from
a biological attack of this sort.

By February 1953, the Army decides to
scale up the experiment.

How would a bioweapon spread across a
bigger city, like Moscow?

They set their sights on St. Louis,
Missouri.

The Chemical Corps focuses their
experiments on the Pruitt -Igoe housing

project. They put sprayers on the
rooftops of all 33 towers to start

zinc cadmium sulfide. Other sprayers are
mounted inside vehicles, and those

squirt out toxic powder while they drive
around.

Over two years, the chemical core sprays
more than 2 ,000 pounds of zinc cadmium

sulfide over just 10 square miles of St.
Louis.

The results are disturbing.

In urban canyons between tall buildings,
wind turbulence disperses the particles

vertically.

But in open spaces like parks, they
linger at ground level.

In an attack, some places are going to
be largely spared, while others are

to be devastated.

Next, the Army wants to understand the
spread over multiple states.

So it launches its biggest experiment
yet, called Operation LAC, Large

Area Coverage.

An aircraft is loaded with zinc cadmium
sulfide.

and it sprays it during a flight from
South Dakota to Minneapolis.

The results are alarming.

That's because they detect particles
from that flight 1 ,200 miles away.

It proves that even with a small
quantity of a pathogen distributed in

it can reach a much broader geographical
area.

Over the next 10 years, the U .S. Army
Chemical Corps conducts 200 experiments

with zinc -cadmium sulfide in a
geographical region stretching from the

Mountains to the Atlantic coast,
affecting 40 different states.

The Chemical Corps learns that a single
tank of weaponized biological agents can

spread disease to an area three times
the size of New York City.

By the end of the 1960s, The Army has
the information it needs. The

are wrapped up and the details are
buried under top -secret classification.

The Army keeps the experiments hidden
for decades.

Then, in 1994, the truth is revealed.

When journalists publish their findings,
the public is...

Outraged, and rightly so. These were
experiments done on unwitting Americans,

and the experiments could potentially
have been deadly.

The Army maintains that, yeah, cadmium
may be a dangerous chemical, but the

amounts of exposure were so low, they
were non -toxic.

This entire operation suggests the
mindset during that era of the Cold War.

you're talking about the survivability
of the country in a biological,

or nuclear attack, There's very little
that the U .S. government was unwilling

to do.

At the end of the 1940s, the Soviet
Union and China begin talks over

alliance. Stalin wants a deeper
understanding of Chairman Mao, so he

scientist into Mao's bathroom.

Communist China's leader, Chairman Mao
Zedong, rolls into Moscow aiming to

an alliance with Soviet Premier Joseph
Stalin.

Stalin sees Mao as something less than
him, and he has no problem keeping him

waiting. In fact, he keeps him waiting
for days.

This insult is a deliberate ploy. The
issue is that Stalin, as is often the

with Stalin, doesn't trust Mao.

And he's letting him wait for days on
end because he wants to get into Mao's

head. He wants to figure out what makes
the man tick.

While Mao waits in Moscow, Stalin turns
to his secret police.

He orders the NKVD to conduct a bizarre
experiment, which will remain secret for

over six decades.

He wants them to build a complete
psychological profile of the Chinese

starting in a very unusual place.

It sounds insane, but one of the ways
that they plan to do this is by

who he is, getting a piece of him, if
you will.

They're going to analyze his poo.

For years, the NKVD labs have been
running a bizarre and top -secret

experimental program in scatological
research.

That's the study of excrement to gain
intelligence.

The theory is simple.

Soviet scientists believe a person's
waist can provide insights into their

psyche.

Stalin's team is under the impression
that high levels of the amino acid

tryptophan in the poo indicate a calm
and approachable personality.

The deficiency in potassium could be an
indication of a nervous and

unpredictable person.

To run their tests, the NKVD needs one
key thing, a sample from the chairman

himself.

Mao gets invited to the Kremlin to have
talks with Stalin, but the NKVD makes

sure that those talks get delayed day
after day after day.

While Mao is waiting...

The Kremlin staff serve up a series of
elaborate banquets for him and his team.

Huge feasts piled high with delicacies.

But this lavish hospitality is a trap.

Really, they're just looking to ensure
that the man has to have a bowel

there in the Kremlin. And they have a
specially rigged toilet that they want

to use.

NKVD agents install special collection
toilets.

These don't connect to the sewers.

Instead, they funnel the waste into
special containers.

It's a dirty trick.

Eventually, the NKVD succeeds in
collecting some of Mao's products.

Once collected, the samples are rushed
to a classified lab where a team of

dedicated scientists meticulously
analyze them.

They test for tryptophan, potassium, and
other chemicals.

things that they ultimately think are
going to be indicative of Mao's mood.

The excrement experiment is reportedly a
success. The NKVD team sends a detailed

scatological, psychological portrait of
Mao directly to Stalin.

The report about Mao sent to Stalin has
never been found, so the details inside

it are lost to history.

What we do know is that after reviewing
the scatological profile, Stalin is said

to be scathing about Mao's communist
credentials.

This man is a radish, he declares.

He's only red on the outside, but his
insides are white.

This makes Stalin very wary of engaging
in any significant partnerships.

The Chinese leader leaves Moscow with a
watered -down treaty and none of the

financial support he's been hoping for.

Stalin's scatological lab doesn't last
much longer. After he died in 1953, his

successors didn't have the same
predilection about analyzing the

humans.

The experiment remains classified for
the next six decades.

Then in 2016, former Russian agent Igor
Adamanenko reveals Stalin's

obsessions.

He reports that he's found the details
of this poop research in a declassified

file within Soviet archives.

Revelation makes headlines worldwide.

As one of the Cold War's most bizarre
experiments is finally brought to light.

As World War II comes to an end,
millions across Europe are on the brink

famine.

To maintain order, the U .S. must figure
out how to help them.

So, far from the front lines, the War
Department begins an extraordinary

experiment, intentionally starving
healthy American volunteers.

By 1944, Allied forces are ashore in
Normandy. They're driving the enemy, and

they will soon be in Germany itself.

Allied leaders are about to face a new
challenge.

Millions of civilians across the war
zone are on the edge of starvation, and

it's going to be the job of the victors
to feed them back to health.

To be prepared, they need to understand
how people's metabolism changes as they

experience malnutrition, and that has
never been studied properly.

Enter Dr.

Ansel Keys, a physiologist at the
University of Minnesota and special

assistant to the U .S. Secretary of War.

To solve the famine problem, Keyes
proposes a dangerous and controversial

experiment. He wants to do a controlled
study under lab conditions of human

starvation and recovery from starvation.

The War Department likes the plan and
gives Keyes its backing.

Now he needs volunteers who are willing
to starve for their country.

To get useful results, Keyes wants to
use healthy young men for the

but... Most of those are off fighting in
the war, but not all of them.

Keys identifies an untapped pool of
healthy young men who are still in the U

.S., conscientious objectors.

Keys recruits using a brochure signed
off on by the War Department.

On the cover is a picture of starving
children, with the text reading, Will

starve that they be better fed? It's an
emotional appeal, but it works.

More than 200 men volunteer.

Keys picks... 36th of the healthiest and
most psychologically stable candidates

to be his guinea pigs.

He sets up a facility literally
underneath the bleachers at the

Minnesota so that the men are away from
prying eyes.

In February 1945, the starvation phase
of the experiment begins.

To start, he splashes the men's daily
calorie intake in half.

Keys wants to impose a reduced calorie
intake, but also make the subjects burn

more energy by exercising.

So he puts them through the Harvard
Fitness Test, which is a series of

that are designed to push people to the
limits of their endurance.

The effects of starvation are swift and
shocking.

The subjects drop around 20 % of their
body weight in the first 12 weeks.

Their ribs are sticking out. They've got
no energy. They're just...

Wilting. One subject gets himself
trapped in the department store's

door. He's just too weak to push himself
through.

And it's not just physical. As the weeks
go by, the starving subjects are

getting irritable, they're getting
depressed, and not surprisingly, they

totally obsessed with food.

Two men get into a physical brawl in a
canteen line over a scrap of pasta.

That's how complete this...

Session with food becomes for them.
They're fighting even over a couple of

scraps.

One individual starts having visions of
cannibalism. He's fantasizing about

food, and he reaches the limits of his
mental endurance.

Look at that generous helping of rich,
juicy barbecue.

He actually sneaks out of the study,
goes into town, and engages in a massive

caloric binge in the form of milkshakes
and ice cream sundaes.

After six months, the starvation phase
finally ends.

Next comes the refeeding.

He's believed that by gradually
increasing the subject's calorie intake,

safely feed them back to health without
triggering any negative reaction.

He splits the subjects into four groups,
and the different groups get different

amounts of extra food.

Some groups are also given extra protein
and vitamins, while others just get the

base amount of carbohydrates.

Now a new and dangerous problem arises.

Their body weight continues to plummet,
even though they're re -nourishing these

test subjects.

Keyes discovers that the men are
shedding retained edema fluid that's

masking just how much weight they've
lost. This is a potential disaster for

study. To get the experiment back on
track, Keyes decides to supersize his

portions.

Doubles the calories for the group. And
to the relief of the scientific team, it

worked. The men finally began to
recover.

Keyes realized that in refeeding a
starving population, vitamins and

were really a luxury. It was the
calories that mattered. They needed at

,000 calories a day.

Keyes passes that information on to the
War Department, who immediately put it

to practical use in post -World War II
Europe.

Keyes wraps up the experiment in October
1945.

But his complete findings remain hidden.

It's not until five years later that he
finally reveals the data in his

masterwork, The Biology of Human
Starvation.

The results of the starvation experiment
are used worldwide in famine relief.

In 1979, Soviet scientists are secretly
experimenting with deadly bacteria.

And when a lab technician makes a simple
mistake,

An entire city will pay the price.

The U .S. and the Soviets have signed a
treaty banning biological weapons

research. The Soviets are looking to get
an edge and have no problem cheating.

They're continuing research to create
even more dangerous weaponized diseases.

In the city of Sverdlovsk, laboratories
at Compound 19 are running three shifts

a day, working to develop a killer
weapon using anthrax.

Anthrax is a deadly disease caused by
the bacteria Bacillus anthracis.

If inhaled, its fatality rate is up to
90%. Even a fraction of a milligram

can kill.

It's perfect for a weapon because the
spores are tough enough to be delivered

a bomb and small enough to disperse
after the explosion as an invisible

mist.

Compound 19's goals are absolutely
terrifying.

Inside airtight chambers, scientists are
testing new anthrax strains in aerosol

form on monkeys hoping to create a
deadly super weapon.

They're attempting to create a new
strain that does not respond to

This work is incredibly dangerous, not
just for the workers, but also for the

citizens in the surrounding city.

Compound 19 uses a complex system of
filters to purify the contaminated air

before it gets vented into the
atmosphere outside.

The lab's safety system seems foolproof,
but its chain of protection is only as

strong as the weakest link.

On Friday, March 30th, that link
snapped.

A technician is finishing up the
afternoon shift on an anthrax production

and he shuts down as normal before the
next shift comes on duty.

He notices that there's a filter that's
clogged. He takes it out, and he leaves

a note letting the next shift know that,
hey, I've taken it out. This needs

attention.

Now, this is where the safety protocols
break down.

The officer in charge fails to make a
note in his logbook, and the

note gets lost.

The next shift comes on, and the anthrax
production line gets going again.

The machinery is switched back on.

What the scientists don't realize is
that the critical filter is still

When the plant is restarted without the
filter in place, it begins to pump out

anthrax aerosol into the cold night air.

A steady wind carries this invisible
cloud of deadly spores right over the

sleeping city of Sverdlov.

It seeps into buildings, getting inhaled
by unknowing citizens.

No one realizes for hours that this has
happened.

When a technician at Compound 19 finally
fought the error, they shut down the

line and replaced the filter. But it's
too late.

It doesn't take long for the anthrax to
take effect.

The first victims have no idea what's
hit them.

32 -year -old Riza Shmirnova is working
at a nearby ceramics factory when a co

-worker notices her hands are turning
blue.

She's rushed to the hospital.

She's feverish, struggling to breathe,
and slips into a coma.

Over the next few days, more people fall
sick with mysterious flu -like symptoms

that progress to respiratory failure and
then to a horrible, choking death.

Soon, the hospitals of spread love...

are overwhelmed with victim at least 64
people die local doctors

are baffled the symptoms are indicative
of inhalation anthrax but that almost

never happens in nature when that starts
to really sink in terror seizes

the city kremlin officials realize that
compound 19 secrets are about to be

exposed

So they dispatch agents to contain the
fallout.

The KGB comes in and enforces a citywide
cover -up.

They confiscate patient files.

They take autopsy reports. They even
bring in trucks that spray down the town

with chlorine bleach that turns the
trees yellow.

News of that many deaths is bound to
leak out within the Soviet Union and to

West. So the Soviet authorities create a
cover story.

They say the deaths are caused by
gastrointestinal anthrax, which is

explainable by citizens eating
contaminated meat that they bought on

market.

Moscow keeps the deadly lab leak hidden
for more than a decade.

Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union
collapses.

A new Russian president, Boris Yeltsin,
comes to power and soon reveals the

truth about the Sverdlovsk incident.

Yeltsin spills the beans. He's trying to
be a good partner and demonstrate to

the West that he's trustworthy, and he
lets it be known that, no, it had

to do with black market meat.

Harvard bioweapons expert Matthew
Meselson gets permission to investigate

further. He travels to Sverdlovsk, he
tracks down survivors, and he talks to

families of the dead.

He confirms exactly what Yeltsin's
admitted to. This was caused by military

development.

In 1994, Meselson finally publishes his
research paper, and it conclusively

reveals that the Sverdlovsk incident was
caused by weapons research at Compound

19.

That accident caused the deadliest
recorded anthrax outbreak in human

After the U .S. dropped two nuclear
bombs on Japan, World War II is over.

But the plutonium core of a third bomb
is ready and waiting at the Los Alamos

National Laboratory.

Scientists put it to use there in
experiments that are so dangerous, they

it the Demon Core.

The war is won, and America's atomic
whiz kids are now working to master the

apocalyptic power they've unleashed.

Louis Floten is a 35 -year -old physics
prodigy working at Los Alamos Lab.

He has a pretty impressive resume. He's
a veteran of the Manhattan Project, and

he's also known as a bit of a cowboy,
both in his style of dress as well as

fearless approach to science.

He's doing experiments to understand how
to make the plutonium bomb more

efficient. He is a physicist who is
absolutely brilliant.

But he certainly is someone who's
willing to bend the rules if it helps to

enhance his persona as a risk taker.

In May 1946, just weeks before he's set
to leave Los Alamos for a teaching job,

Slotin heads into the lab to show his
replacement how to do his signature

experiment, working directly on the
leftover plutonium bomb core.

The core is a softball -sized sphere of
weaponized plutonium alloy.

It's so radioactive that it's warm to
the touch. It's so dangerous that it's

given the nickname the Demon Core.

The Demon Core is constantly emitting
subatomic particles called neutrons. If

those neutrons can escape freely, the
core remains stable.

But if those neutrons are somehow
trapped in the core and build up, it'll

unstable and effectively become a bomb.

His mentor, the nuclear pioneer Enrico
Fermi, warns him about the experiment.

If you keep doing it, you'll be dead
within the year. But he keeps on doing

The audience is transfixed as Slotin
gets to work on the demon core.

To get his data, Slotin must
intentionally edge the demon core toward

explosion while trying to stop just
short of triggering one.

He lowers a neutron -reflecting
beryllium shell over the demon core and

how many neutrons start building up
inside it.

This is incredibly useful.

for the scientists, but also incredibly
dangerous.

The closer the shell gets to the core,
the closer the core comes to a

supercritical state.

If the beryllium shell closes completely
over the demon core, the energy inside

will build up to supercriticality in a
catastrophic instant. And that means

either a burst of radiation or an all
-out explosion.

Los Alamos has rules for everything.

You need to, right? You're dealing with
some of the most dangerous substances on

Earth. And the regulations Los Alamos
puts in place is to use wooden spacers

keep the two hemispheres of these shells
apart.

Slotin, however, as the cowboy, decides
to do it his own way. Instead of wooden

spacers, he uses a flathead screwdriver
to wedge open these two shells just

enough to keep it from going critical.

It's a reckless method, but it works.

In his left hand, he holds the shell of
the core. In the right hand, a

screwdriver with a flat tip just between
the two halves of the hemisphere.

After tempting fate, Slotin's luck
finally runs out.

The screwdriver slips, and the gap snaps
shut.

There's a silent, blinding flash of blue
light.

And then a wave of heat sweeps across
the room.

Radiation is expanded in every
direction.

Slotin knows it's too late for him to
run. He immediately lunges forward and

rips the beryllium shell off with his
bare hands.

This quick decision breaks the chain
reaction and puts the demon core back to

sleep. He saves the lives of the other
men in the room, but it's too late for

him. Being so close to the demon core,
Slotin's absorbed a massive dose of

radiation.

Slotin's left hand feels like it's on
fire.

A sour metallic taste fills his mouth.

As he leaves the room, he begins to
vomit uncontrollably.

On the way to the hospital, Slotin turns
to one of the observers and he

apologizes. I'm sorry I got you into
this, but I have less than a 50 % chance

living. And even that was optimistic.

Over the next nine days.

Slotin's body slowly disintegrates. He
has what's known as three -dimensional

burns, which is essentially a sunburn
inside of his body. He also has gangrene

and massive organ failure.

On May 30th, he dies in agony, a victim
of the Demon Corps.

Although Slotin's death makes the
papers, for decades the full details of

fatal Demon Corps experiment are buried
under top -secret classification, hidden

for over a quarter of a century.

Finally, in 1989, the New York Times
publishes the full story and reveal

the true horror of the Demon Core
experiments to an unsuspecting public.

From toxic tests in black -site labs to
bold ideas that push back the boundaries

of human knowledge, Governments have
long conducted extraordinary experiments

secret. Though it may take years, the
covert science eventually finds its way

into the light.