All language subtitles for 22536d9bd36041149d24a66b2f9c183d_track3_eng

Narrator: Dead or alive,

did Adolf Hitler escape Berlin?

Hard evidence
is seemingly missing.

Diehard fascists are saying,

"he's still alive.
He's escaped."

Narrator: Gangster cover-up.

Did the FBI kill
an innocent man?

Gough: Dillinger had blue eyes.

The body in the morgue
had brown.

They're trying
to keep this under wraps.

Narrator:
Extraterrestrial origins.

Is Tutankhamun's dagger
out of this world?

The iron age
begins 200 to 300 years

after the burial of Tutankhamun.

Gough: The Egyptian culture
was a bronze age civilization.

So how does it possibly exist?

♪♪

Narrator: Expert analysis

combined with 21st century
forensic science

uncovers groundbreaking
new evidence

to reveal the truth

behind the world's
darkest conspiracies.

[ Speaking German ]

Adolf Hitler...
Evil personified.

I don't know that there is

a more hated man
in human history.

Narrator: Hitler disappears from
the eyes of the world in April 1945.

There are reports that he died

in his underground command post,
the fuhrerbunker,

in the last days
of world war ii.

But there are other theories.

There's huge numbers of stories
that he actually escaped

after world war ii.

Narrator: Now new evidence
may reveal the truth behind his fate.

Can a jawbone said to be
the remains of the fuhrer

prove that he died in 1945?

Having actual
hard, physical evidence

is what we need
if we want to have proof

that Hitler did, in fact,
die in the bunker

in the way
that history tells us.

♪♪

Narrator:
The last days of April 1945...

♪♪

...as the battle
for the city rages overhead,

Hitler issues orders
from his bunker

beneath the Reich chancellery.

Everyone is wondering
what Hitler's last moves

are going to be.

Narrator: But German state radio
suddenly announces his death,

has fallen in battle
at the head of his troops.

Many are not convinced.

Where's the evidence?
Where's the body?

So, there's a big question Mark.

[ Gunfire ]

Narrator: Soviet forces
are determined to find him,

dead or alive.

They are literally
turning over bodies,

trying to determine if
that's the body of Adolf Hitler.

Narrator: They take over
Hitler's headquarters,

the Reich chancellery,

and comb every inch
for evidence.

The Russians capture
Hitler's staff in the bunker,

and all of them tell
pretty much the same story.

Hitler's committed suicide
about a week ago

along with Eva Braun,

and that they have
cremated his body.

Narrator: Russian troops find
two burned corpses

in the bombed-out garden
behind the Reich chancellery.

The Russians tell the Americans

that they have disinterred
a couple of bodies.

They've done an autopsy,
and they have Hitler's remains.

Narrator: But within weeks,

the Russians
changed their story.

What Stalin's media machine
starts to do is say,

"where's Hitler?
We don't have him.

We don't know."

Which just fuels the mystery

about where Hitler is
at the end of the war.

The hard evidence
is seemingly missing.

Narrator:
Rumors begin to circulate.

The diehard fascists are saying,

"he's still alive. He's escaped.

He's going to lead us on
to final victory."

Narrator: After the war,
there are even claims

Hitler is spotted
in South America.

So, did he survive
the war or not?

♪♪

In 1968,
new evidence comes to light.

The Soviet union releases
an autopsy report from 1945.

They claim it's Hitler's.

It contains an official account
of his death.

Pavelec: The bunker staff
at the end of the war

insist that Hitler and Eva Braun
both took cyanide,

and then, while
the cyanide was working,

Hitler also does the double duty
of shooting himself in the head.

[ Gunshot ]

At that point, his staff take
his body up to ground level,

put him in a small, shallow pit,

pour gasoline on him,
and cremate the body.

♪♪

Narrator: The autopsy report
partially confirms

the original account
of Hitler's death.

It reports that the body
purportedly of Hitler

is burned beyond recognition.

Narrator:
But there are discrepancies.

There are no indications
of a lethal wound,

which is odd, given that
the official account

is he shot himself.

Are the Soviets lying again

or do they have
incomplete evidence?

It's unclear what
they're trying to argue.

♪♪

Narrator: The autopsy report
causes confusion.

The only way to confirm

the body found by the Russians
is Hitler's

is to examine the remains.

This seems a possibility in 2000

when a special exhibition

celebrating the end
of world war ii

is held in Moscow.

Historians across the world

hope it will clarify
Hitler's fate once and for all.

The Russians, again,
dangle a carrot,

opening up the mystery.

They say that here's a picture
of Hitler's jawbone

and that skull fragment

showing what they purport
is a bullet wound.

Narrator: The Russians reveal
hard evidence for the first time,

but they refuse to allow
the bones to be examined.

They say they are
to delicate to handle.

♪♪

17 years after the exhibition,
the Russians reconsider.

They give French scientists
from the Université Paris-Saclay

access to the skull
and jaw bone fragments,

skulls are
a very, very useful tool.

Not only can we find out about,
you know, the sex,

we can also look at whether
someone was an adult or a child.

Narrator: But the French team
don't have a full skull,

only a three by four inch
piece of cranium.

What we'd want to see
would be the forehead,

the neck, down by the ears,

because those are the features
that we'd look at

that would be really male
or really female.

It's actually quite difficult
to make a call

on just an isolated part
of the cranial vault.

Narrator: It's not enough to
determine even the sex of the body,

but the fragment does hold
one vital clue.

The most noticeable thing
about this skull

is that there is
a bullet hole in it,

more specifically,
there is an exit wound.

King: Hitler apparently shot
himself, and there is a bullet hole

on the skull
on the left parietal bone.

But it's in a bit
of an unusual place.

So, there's a bit
of a question there.

Narrator:
The accounts from Hitler's staff

say he shot himself
through the temple.

The fragment of bone
suggests something else.

One of the ways
that you're going to get

an exit wound
in your left parietal

would be
if someone had shot themselves

through the roof of their mouth.

[ Gunshot ]

Narrator:
Did Hitler's staff get it wrong?

Are these the fuhrer's remains?

The skull alone is not enough

to make a positive
identification.

♪♪

The French team use
a scanning electron microscope

to examine
the jaw bone fragment.

They spot something
that could be significant.

Teeth are incredibly useful
in a forensic context.

Everything you've done
with them...

Lose bits of them,

knock some of them sideways,
chip them,

all leads
to a very identifiable,

individual sort of bite print.

Narrator: Incredibly, a record
of Hitler's teeth survives.

His dentist, Dr. Hugo Blaschke,
was interrogated after the war

and gave a full description
of Hitler's dental health.

Could this record confirm
once and for all

whether Hitler survived the war?

♪♪

Narrator: The Russians claim
to have the bones of Adolf Hitler.

A French forensic team

compares the jaw bone
to Hitler's dental records

to see if
the Russians are right.

We know that Hitler is supposed
to have had bad teeth,

and what we see
in this particular jaw fragment

is evidence of
a really bad oral health.

Parts of the jaw bone have
actually started rotting away

from the front teeth.

These are bad, bad teeth.

Narrator: The dental remains
include false teeth

and complicated bridgework.

The scientists attempt to match
these remains

to an X-ray
of Hitler's skull and teeth

dating from 1944.

We can see that various parts
of the X-ray

are basically all white

because they're reflecting
something really, really heavy,

which is metal,
and that metal looks a lot like

the metal we're finding
on the jaw fragment.

This is the identifying clue
that you need.

♪♪

Narrator: Finally, the mystery
regarding Hitler's fate is solved.

Thanks to forensic archeology,

the remains found
in the Reich chancellery

have been identified.

Beyond the shadow of a doubt,

those teeth are the teeth
of Adolf Hitler.

And from that, we draw
the incontrovertible conclusion

that he died in 1945.

He never emigrated to Argentina.

He didn't escape
to any other place,

and there's no dodging
that conclusion.

♪♪

Narrator: John Dillinger, a
notorious gangster in 1930s America.

Gunned down by the FBI,

but rumors persist that the body
in the morgue is not his

and that he escaped.

Narrator: Using new technology
to reexamine the evidence

could solve
an alleged conspiracy

that reaches to the heart
of the establishment.

The big question is,
did we get the right guy?

♪♪

Narrator: Chicago, 1934...

Gangster John Dillinger
is making a name for himself.

Davis-Hayes:
John Dillinger is a celebrity.

He's depression era America’s
favorite bank robber.

But to the FBI,
he's public enemy number-one.

♪♪

Narrator:
After a year long manhunt,

the FBI finally
corners Dillinger.

Gough: He's watching a film
in the Chicago biograph theater

when they raid the theater,
and there's a massive shootout.

Narrator:
Bullets ring into the night,

and the infamous gangster
lies dead in an alleyway.

He's lying in a pool of blood.

There's chaos. There's disorder.

And do they have the right man?
Is that John Dillinger?

Well, when they roll him over
and look at him,

some people said,
"yes, it is him,"

and others said no.

Narrator: The FBI brings in
Dillinger's family to identify the body.

The family looks at the body,

and they feel
something ain't right.

He doesn't look the way
that they know him to look.

Narrator:
His face appears different.

Something about him has changed.

Gough: Dillinger had blue eyes.

The body in the morgue
had brown,

and thus, the conspiracy

of whether or not
that was Dillinger

and if he actually escaped

is spawned.

The papers are printing

that the FBI got the wrong guy,

that Dillinger has escaped,
and all of it is a cover-up.

So, you have to ask yourself,
"did the FBI fake his death,

and if so, why?"

♪♪

Narrator: If the FBI
did shoot the wrong man,

why wouldn't they admit it?

By the summer of 1934,

John Dillinger was
the most wanted man in America.

It makes the white house
sit up and take notice.

President Roosevelt has directed

the head of the FBI,
j. Edgar hoover,

to get Dillinger.

Narrator:
Hoover is hired to turn the FBI

into a professional
organization,

but in 1934, Dillinger makes
the bureau look like amateurs.

While the FBI has been trying
to track Dillinger down,

there have been mistakes.

Bystanders have been shot
and killed,

and F.D.R. Told J. Edgar Hoover

that if they didn't
catch Dillinger,

they would be shut down.

Baker: And hoover, nothing
if not a egomaniac,

completely focused
on his own reputation.

So he's smart enough
to understand

we've got some problems
here with the bureau.

We've got to do something
to improve the image.

Narrator: Hoover's orders
to his agents are simple.

The goal is shoot him.

The FBI is going to get its man.

♪♪

Narrator:
But did the FBI get their man?

Or were they forced to cover up
another mistake

to help hoover keep his job?

The problem we have is that this
all happened about 80 years ago.

We don't have a body.

How can we possibly solve
this crime without it?

♪♪

Narrator: In 2016, new evidence
emerges that may reveal

whether the FBI shot
John Dillinger dead.

♪♪

A plaster cast of the face

of the man the FBI claim
is Dillinger

made as his body
was on the morgue table,

♪♪

Death masks are very common
in the 1930s.

They made the death mask
for forensic evidence

and to prove
the death of criminals.

Narrator:
Can modern forensic science

prove this mask really
is the face of Dillinger?

This could be the final
missing piece of the puzzle

that we've been looking for.

We need to take this mask
and ask the question,

does it fit?
Is this John Dillinger?

♪♪

Narrator: When Dillinger's
family see the body in the morgue,

they can't confirm
it's their son.

Can the death mask explain why?

When I study the mask

and compare it to photos
taken by the FBI,

there's some pretty
impressive similarities.

Narrator:
The chin dimple, the eyebrows,

and the nose all match,

but the death mask
reveals some key differences.

A mole between his eyes
is missing,

another mole near
his left eye has vanished,

and a scar
on his upper lip is gone.

♪♪

Not only that,

a series of photographs
taken by the FBI

when Dillinger was alive

reveals his face
changes considerably

over a relatively short
period of time.

How is this possible?

This man is public enemy
number-one.

Everyone knows
what he looks like.

His face has been splashed

on the front page
of every newspaper.

What is the best way
to disappear?

When you have that notoriety,

you don't want to go live
in the mountains.

You still want to be
in the towns, the Chicagos,

the new Yorks, the big areas.

But you don't want
to be recognized.

And one way to solve
that dilemma

is through plastic surgery.

♪♪

Narrator: Modern
plastic surgery techniques

could explain Dillinger's
change in appearance,

but was the plastic surgery
of the 1930s

capable of such
a transformation?

Plastic surgery goes back
to world war one

by the end of the war,

numbers of soldiers
were coming back,

and they needed
reconstructive surgery.

Narrator:
Although still in its infancy,

the plastic surgery techniques
of the 1930s

could alter
Dillinger's features,

perhaps enough
to fool his own family.

♪♪

But there is
another inconsistency

in the FBI's account.

Hamilton:
It is a matter of record

that John Dillinger
had blue eyes.

It is a fact.

Where we come into
some difficulty

is that when we read
the autopsy report,

the eyes are clearly described
as brown.

It obviously raises questions.

Could it have been
because he had contact lenses?

Narrator: Colored contact lenses
did exist in the 1930s,

but they would have been spotted
during the autopsy.

They can't be the reason,

but there is
another possibility.

♪♪

Hamilton:
Decomposition is a process

that happens to every body
after someone dies.

♪♪

The bacteria
that live inside you

that help you
with your daily life

will turn on you,

and it affects
all the parts of the body.

One of those is
the Iris of the eyes.

Could decomposition
have an impact

on the color of somebody's eyes?

Narrator: In 2008, new research
on pigs by scientists in Canada

reveals decomposition
breaks down the eye

within 48 hours of death
with surprising results.

Decomposition will affect
all sorts of things

that you can see on a body.

So, even a blue eye, as it
breaks down, may change color.

It may become brown.

♪♪

Narrator: The death mask
can also help reveal

the state of decomposition
of the body.

As the body begins to rot,

bacteria create gases,
causing tissues to swell.

Dillinger's mask appears
rounder than his face in life.

We are potentially at the point

where decomposition is starting
to set in and altering his face.

♪♪

Narrator: If the FBI recorded
details about the body

at the same time
the mask was made,

decomposition could explain
the brown eyes,

but the autopsy report
seems to contradict this.

It was performed on July 23rd,

within 24 hours
of Dillinger's death.

Had the body decomposed enough
by then to change eye color?

It is a mystery
that may never be solved,

but perhaps there is
a simpler way to I.D. a body.

If you truly want to identify
someone, you don't use the face.

You use something
much more exact...

Fingerprints.

♪♪

Hamilton: Everyone has them.
They are unique,

and that means
that even identical twins

will have different
fingerprints.

Narrator: In the FBI database

is a set of
Dillinger's fingerprints

made when he was still alive.

Do they match those of the body
on the slab?

♪♪

We look at his fingerprints.

There's something not right.

There's whole spots
that are missing.

Narrator: If the real John Dillinger
was trying to hide his identity.

There could be an explanation.

You have to imagine
John Dillinger

sitting around in a hotel room,

talking to a cohort of his,

brainstorming
about possibilities

of how they can change
their identity.

And the first thing
that they come up with,

I am sure,
is to get rid of fingerprints.

Narrator: And it looks like
that's just what has happened.

Gough:
It would appear that he's taken

the top layer of the skin,
the epidermis, off

and had his fingerprints
coated with acid.

Could you imagine how painful
that must have been?

Narrator: But Dillinger was
only partially successful.

There are gaps,

but enough of the prints remain
to get a positive match

between Dillinger
and the body in the morgue.

♪♪

The evidence suggesting
an FBI cover-up

is starting to look thin.

But there's one test
that can close the case.

♪♪

The only way to finally
answer the question

is to have a DNA sample
from the body.

♪♪

Narrator: In 2019,
relatives of the gangster

secure permission
to exhume Dillinger's body

from crown hill cemetery

in Marion county, Indianapolis.

In 2019, John Dillinger's body
was set to be exhumed,

however, it was canceled.

That leads to more questions.

Narrator: The cemetery refuses
to allow an exhumation,

they say to protect the site
from disturbance.

Many suspect a cover-up.

It is another twist
and the Dillinger tale.

I mean, if I'm believing
the conspiracy

that the bureau faked his death,
got the wrong man,

then this is just another piece
of evidence that proves,

yes, they're trying
to keep this under wraps.

♪♪

Narrator:
So, did the FBI get its man?

The weight of evidence
suggests it did.

While the change in eye color
remains a mystery,

the altered features
and the strange fingerprints

can be explained.

But until DNA testing
is allowed,

certainty will remain elusive.

♪♪

In the midst of an ancient
Egyptian kings tomb

lies a simple artifact
that baffles scientists.

There's one object,

and that's his dagger.

This iron blade
is thousands of years old

but hasn't even rusted,

it's in perfect,
pristine condition.

♪♪

Narrator: A dagger that
defies explanation.

Can cutting-edge technology
help explain this artifact?

♪♪

♪♪

Narrator: In the valley
of the kings, Egypt,

British archeologist
Howard Carter

discovers the entrance
to the tomb of king Tutankhamun.

The artifacts discovered in
Tutankhamun's tomb are amongst

the greatest archeological
discovery of all time.

There's more gold
coming out of that tomb

than archeologists would
expect to see in a lifetime.

Narrator: King Tutankhamun is
a pharaoh of the 18th dynasty

in the 14th century
B.C.E. Egypt.

The boy king reigns for 10 years
before dying at the age of 18.

It was the first time
that a royal, pharaonic tomb

had been discovered,

largely unrobbed
with all its material

and literally thousands
of preserved objects.

Narrator: King Tutankhamun takes
valuable objects with him

into the afterlife...

A solid gold coffin,

an exquisite funerary mask,

precious jewels,

but there's something else.

♪♪

This very simple-looking object,
a very plain iron dagger,

is, perhaps,
the greatest treasure of all.

♪♪

Narrator: Archeologists can't
explain why a simple iron dagger

would be buried with king tut
amid all the gold and jewels.

♪♪

Until they realize it was
a piece of the future,

the Egyptian culture was
a bronze age civilization.

They didn't have iron.

Horton: They were making their
artifacts their tools out of stone

and out of bronze and copper.

These were soft-metal artifacts.

The iron age begins maybe
200 to 300 years

after the burial of Tutankhamun.

So, how does it possibly exist?

Narrator: And why hasn't the
dagger aged and over 3000 years?

Unlike gold,
iron should corrode over time.

Think of it this way...

An iron nail,

if it's left outside
rusts and breaks.

So, something 3,000 years old

to be in pristine,
perfect condition

is mind-boggling.

♪♪

Narrator: When iron is
mixed with other elements,

it forms alloys.

Alloys behave differently
to pure iron.

In 2015,
Italian and Egyptian scientists

test the dagger's composition
to find out

if the blade contains anything
that stops it from rusting.

We have a technology
known as X-ray fluorescence

that can measure
not just the iron content,

but also the other elements
contained within it,

and that gives us a fingerprint

to reconstruct
the origin of the iron

from which the dagger
has been made.

Narrator: The results
are out of this world.

Gough: It looks like iron.
It feels like iron,

but chemical analysis suggests
that there's another explanation

for why it just looks
so pristine after 3,000 years.

What's interesting
about this dagger

is the amount of nickel in it.

Regular iron ore has about 3%,

the dagger has 11% nickel in it.

That high of a nickel content

actually reduces
rust dramatically

and explains the absolute

pristine condition
of this dagger.

Narrator: There are no sources
of iron on our planet

with such a high nickel content.

The discovery forces scientist

to consider
an incredible possibility.

Could the dagger be alien?

Conspiracy theories
claim extraterrestrials

helped build the pyramids.

But there might be
a simpler explanation

for the kings king's dagger.

♪♪

Narrator:
King Tutankhamun's dagger

contains an alloy
not found on earth.

The extra terrestrial iron alloy
must have come from space.

Horton: It might have come
from a meteorite.

Meteorites often
have very heavy concentrations

of iron contained within them.

Narrator: Hieroglyphs found on
tomb walls and in ancient texts

provide some clues.

The ancient Egyptian texts
talk about "iron from the sky."

And while that sounds poetic,

what if it was
absolutely literal?

I.e...
A meteorite from the sky?

It makes perfect sense.

In fact, Egyptian inscriptions
support this interpretation,

the Egyptian word that
can be translated literally,

"iron coming from the sky."

Narrator: Investigators are
convinced the metal in the dagger

is from a meteorite.

Now they want
to identify which one.

This is a huge task.

Egypt is a giant kingdom,

and now you're looking
for the meteorite.

That's more than just looking
for a needle in a haystack.

That's near impossible.

Narrator: Evidence of ancient
meteorites can still be found

on earth today.

Egyptian and Italian scientists
analyze craters

and fragments of space debris
around Egypt

and find a likely candidate.

♪♪

We have a meteorite that landed
160 miles from Alexandria.

The khargo meteorite crashed
to earth thousands of years ago.

Saini: The Egyptian and Italian
teams analyze the nickel content.

The percentage of nickel,

which is around 11%
in this meteorite,

almost exactly matches
the percentage found

in the dagger
that belonged to Tutankhamun.

♪♪

Narrator: It's a match.

The iron in the kharga meteorite

appears to be the source of
the iron in king tut's dagger.

It's hard to be certain
when it comes to something

that's 3,000 years old,

but the kharga meteorite
and the dagger

have the same amount of nickel,
so that's pretty convincing.

♪♪

Narrator: But that's not the
only thing from the impact site

that ended up
in the boy king's tomb.

What's exciting about
this meteorite site

is it contains fragments
of yellow glass

that form with the meteor
hit the ground.

♪♪

What happens is
in the heat of the impact

as the meteorite hits the earth,

the sand fuses and forms
this beautiful yellow glass.

And lo and behold,
what did we find

in king Tutankhamun's tomb?

Saini: This little glass yellow
scarab beetle.

So it's possible that glass

was used to make
that very beautiful scarab.

Narrator: Glass formed in
the heat of a meteorite impact

and a dagger made from iron
from outer space.

In the hands of earthly
king Tutankhamun,

hidden from the world
for over 3,000 years.

Not every king gets to have

an extraterrestrial dagger
in the afterlife.

♪♪

Narrator: When radioactivity
monitoring stations across Europe

sound the alarm
in the fall of 2017,

experts fear the worst.

All of a sudden,
we have a radioactive cloud.

What the heck's going on here?

Narrator: The last time
this happened was in 1986,

when Chernobyl spread a deadly
radioactive cloud across Europe.

You can't see it.
You can't taste it.

You can't smell it.
You can't stop it.

Narrator: Yet again, the
Russians deny responsibility,

but new scientific evidence
suggests another cover-up.

Have we got
another Chernobyl on our hands?

♪♪

♪♪

Narrator: Scientists from an
Italian laboratory issue an alert.

Their instruments are showing
bursts of radioactive isotopes

in the air over Milan,
there are so many possibilities.

It could be
some kind of incident

at a nuclear power plant

or a nuclear waste facility,
even a nuclear weapon.

Narrator: Data pours in from
monitoring stations across Europe.

It's in the eastern part
of Europe,

but it's spreading,

it's showing up in Austria
and Sweden and Norway.

Narrator: Experts worry
lives could be in danger.

They need to identify the source
of the radioactive cloud

and where it's heading.

It's one thing to have this
invisible cloud of radioactivity

spreading across an area,

but if the weather gets bad
and it starts to rain or snow,

that can actually pull
the radiation

from high up in the sky
right down to earth.

♪♪

Narrator:
The situation becomes clearer

when scientists identify

a particular isotope
in the cloud.

Ruthenium-106

is a very specific
radioactive nucleotide

because it doesn't
occur naturally.

It's really rare,

and the fact that it's so
prevalent in this... in the air,

means that has to be
a nuclear incident.

Narrator: Ruthenium-106 forms
by the splitting of uranium-235.

This process, nuclear fission,

is used to generate
nuclear power.

So ruthenium-106 is often found
in spent nuclear fuel.

Ruthenium-106 can be
enormously damaging,

but in this case, the levels
appear just low enough

that they're not
going to be dangerous yet.

It depends
on how long it lingers

and if more of it appears.

Narrator: The last time scientists
saw spikes of ruthenium-106

was in 1986 when Chernobyl blew.

If you're looking at a cloud
drifting over the European Union

on the heels
of an incident as serious

and devastating as Chernobyl,

that's exactly what you have
to think about.

♪♪

Narrator:
Scientists race to find out

where this radioactive cloud
originated.

We have sophisticated
computer models,

we have weather radar,

and we even have
orbiting satellites

that can track the passage
of clouds over time.

Baker: They pinpoint
the cloud very quickly

as an origin somewhere south,

the Ural mountains,
likely Russia.

♪♪

Narrator: The world turns to
the Kremlin for an explanation

and gets a denial.

This, of course, brings to mind

the longstanding Russian
tradition of maskirovka,

which means deception
or concealment.

When you're blamed
for something,

you instantly deny it.

♪♪

Narrator: Western authorities
ignore the denial.

In 1985, Russia denied there was
a problem at Chernobyl, too.

The Chernobyl incident released
50 million curie's of radiation

into the atmosphere.

That is 100 times Hiroshima.

Caddick-Adams:
Their first reaction was to deny

that anything
had happened at all,

despite radiation monitors

right across Europe
going absolutely crazy.

♪♪

Narrator: But the sheer scale
of the Chernobyl incident

means it soon
becomes undeniable.

Over 100,000 people
are evacuated

from an 18-mile exclusion zone.

♪♪

Kourounis: It is an eerie, scary
place, like something post-apocalyptic.

Everything is radioactive,

and you don't want
to touch a thing.

♪♪

Narrator: In 2017, as reports
of the suspected leak persist,

Russian authorities are forced
to issue an official statement.

They start
to release information,

which is actually
disinformation.

First of all,
they blame the Romanians.

Well, that makes no sense

because censors all over Romania

track this cloud
of radioactivity

all at the same time.

So it's got to have originated
outside Romania.

And then the Russians say,
"well, actually,

this is a satellite
that's come out of orbit

and has crashed and released
radioactivity at the same time."

Narrator: Satellites do
contain ruthenium-106,

but is this the cause
of the cloud?

It's highly unlikely that
one satellite is going to cause

the levels of ruthenium-106
that we're picking up.

They only carry a trace amount
of ruthenium in the batteries.

So, the Russian excuses
fall down in every single case.

What are they hiding?
What are they covering up?

♪♪

Narrator:
Advance meteorological modeling

pinpoints the origin
of the toxic cloud.

All the arrows are
pointing straight towards

the Mayak nuclear
processing facility

in the southern Ural mountains.

♪♪

Narrator: The Mayak nuclear facility
is over 800 miles east of Moscow

in a remote region
of the country

Kourounis: Built shortly
after world war ii,

this place wasn't even
on the map for years,

it was that top secret.

Narrator:
The location is a concern,

declassified documents
from Russian

and U.S. intelligence archives

reveal that the Mayak facility

has a disturbing history
of nuclear leaks.

In 1957, it suffered what is now

the third largest
nuclear incident of its kind

anywhere in the world.

Caddick-Adams: It contaminated
the entire terrain

for hundreds
of square miles around,

and it affected, perhaps,

a quarter of a million
Russian civilians

living in the neighborhood.

Kourounis: There are high rates
of birth defects and cancer rates

10 times higher
than the national average,

but even after years
of industrial accidents,

this facility
is still operational today.

Narrator: The Mayak facility
is a reprocessing plant.

Reprocessing involves
treating spent nuclear fuel

to recover some of
the radioactive material.

It's a dangerous process
that generates

specific radioactive by-products

like highly-toxic ruthenium-106.

Saini: One of the issues that
could have happened here

is in the process to filter out

different kind of
radioactive isotopes

from spent nuclear fuel,
something went wrong,

and that's what allowed the
ruthenium-106 to escape.

Narrator: But there's not
enough evidence to clarify

what went wrong at Mayak...

♪♪

...until a Russian activist
exposes issues at the plant

relating to the newly-installed
electric furnace,

part of the vitrification,

or glass-making section
of the facility.

They find a host
of different problems here,

in terms
of construction and safety.

The electric furnace
vitrification system

can't handle the amount of work
it's receiving.

Narrator: Russia has been using
vitrification technology

on nuclear waste since 1987.

It turns liquid nuclear waste
into solid glass,

which can be stored more safely.

It may sound simple to turn
waste material into glass.

Actually, this is an incredibly
complex thing to do.

If there's any issues with
the vitrification process there,

that can have
serious repercussions.

♪♪

Narrator: Poor quality equipment
or mistakes made

during the reprocessing
of spent nuclear fuel

could lead to some kind
of explosion or leak,

releasing a cloud
of radioactive material.

Western nuclear experts
believe this is what has caused

the ruthenium spike
in the atmosphere,

but the discovery raises
a more serious question...

What would happen if a much
deadlier amount of ruthenium-106

were to be released?

If we're looking ahead
to the future

based on the past record,

there are probably
more incidents to come.

Baker: The Russian leadership
is paranoid.

Their authoritarian.

They are singularly focused
on maintaining power.

So, the idea that somehow
they're going to come out,

reach out to
the world community,

and say, "we need your help,"

we know they're not
going to do that.

They haven't done it
in the past.

They're not going to do it now.

♪♪