All language subtitles for One.Strange.Rock.S01E05.Survival.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-NTb.Eng

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NARRATOR: Every Fall there
are dead leaves to rake up.

It's inevitable, from
cells to stars, everything
dies in the end.

That's just the way things work

SMITH: But here's the thing,
our strange rock itself
can also be lethal.

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LINENGER: You know up in
space you're looking down
at earth and you go "wow,

what a beautiful spot that is
down there, that blue orb out
there in the distance."

But I'll tell you,
it's an angry planet

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HADFIELD: We tend to think
ofearth as our life support
but it's not there to support
us at all.

MELVIN: And as you look down on
it, it's a place that's violent,
that's beautiful, that's crazy,

that's intense.

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JEMISON: Mother Nature
is a serial killer.

No one is better.

SMITH: 8 astronauts with
over a thousand days
in space between them,

can tell us how being up there
helped them to truly understand
what goes on down here.

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We think we know our home
but here's the secret...

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we wouldn't be here without
mass suicide, fatal passions
and an event so devastating

it makes the extinction of the
dinosaurs look like a tea party.

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Earth might be the weirdest
place in the whole universe.

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LINENGER: You know I think every
astronaut understands that going
to space is a high risk endeavor

and that your life
is on the line.

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I came to realize this
more than most when I spent 5
months living on another world,

the Russian Space Station
Mir where survival
was a daily struggle.

Just wanna give you
a little tour of Mir.

I'm Jerry Linenger of course.

Mir Mission EO-22 would
turn out to be the longest
5 months of my life.

Back on earth sometimes
I can close my eyes and I
can be back up there again.

Go for shuttle (inaudible)
hatch opening, for
Delta P under point two.

We opened the hatch of the old
13 year old Mir Space Station
and it's kind of like going down

into grandma's cellar.

Stuffed with leftover
equipment, garbage.

I was really shocked.

It took up the majority
of our time just trying
to keep that thing going.

When you're up there
trying to use your limited
resources to stay alive,

it finally sort of hit me as
wow, the survival instinct you
know is a powerful enate force

within each of us.

RADIO: (inaudible).

LINENGER: I had about a month on
Mir and when I hear that master
alarm going off, blaring,

warning panel just lit up like
a Christmas tree, fire warning
lights, low voltage lights,

everything flashing,
smoke lights.

(alarm sound)

Looked down the length
of the module and coming out
of a solid fuel oxygen canister

is a big flame with blow
torch like intensity, 2 or
3 feet in length,

sparks flying off the end of
it, sparks flying everywhere.

I have never seen smoke spread
like it spread on that space
station so within about 30

seconds, you know, can't see the
5 fingers in front of your face,
decided better get some oxygen

while I can, getting a little
peripheral vision, blurring,
finally locate the mask.

(inhales) Breathe in
and I get nothing.

People talk about that tunnel
of death, the next 60 seconds
or so of my life, you know,

it's frame by frame.

First thought was of my family,
never seeing them again.

My baby son and
I just yelled it out,
I said "Goodbye John",

you know, "I'm really sorry
I'm letting you down."

At that point, I was kind
of OK losing my life.

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In the middle of all this flame
and smoke suddenly, you know,
something changed inside me.

I said "Jerry, you
gotta get through this.

" And then I just scream
out, I'm gonna get that fire
out, gonna see my boy again.

Jerry you have to survive.

I broke into action.

1 fire extinguisher, a
second fire extinguisher,
a third fire extinguisher.

Somehow we managed to get
the fire under control.

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You know it's instinct, survive.

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SMITH: However much we
struggle to survive,
it's not only old age,

accident or injury
that can get you.

Earth can be deadly.

It's hard to fathom but
there have been 5 mass
extinctions on the planet

and 99.9 percent of all species
that have ever lived are gone.

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PROF. SMITH: 252 million
years ago earth suddenly
turned toxic to life.

Way before the dinosaurs, nearly
96 percent of species worldwide
rapidly became extinct.

It's known as The Great Dying.

SMITH: The Great Dying is an
understatement; it all
kicked off when a whole host

of super volcanoes erupted.

The land dried out.

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And the oceans acidified.

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Nearly all plant life
perished and every forest
on the planet died.

Earth turned into the biggest
mass murder scene in history.

Everything that lives
today owes its life to the
survivors of The Great Dying.

We're all descended from the
ones that scraped through.

PROF. SMITH: Today, we're
searching an area of prehistoric
flood plain for evidence

of a creature that was an
evolutionary stepping
stone towards mammals.

PROF SMITH:

ARCHAEOLOGIST: Found something.

PROF. SMITH: All over this area
we've discovered ancient tunnels
that have been naturally

infilled and then
cast into the rock.

It wasn't long before we started
finding bits of fossil bone and
eventually we found complete

skeletons and those skeletons
all turned out to be a
mammal-like reptile called

Thrinaxodon.

A good way to picture
Thrinaxodon is to think about
the meerkat but without fur

and possibly laying eggs like
reptiles but most importantly
and similarly to the meerkat,

it lived underground digging
burrows with its large claws.

They were surviving by living
underground to withstand the
heat of the day and the cold

of the night.

One of the really very
nice specimens that we've found
here are 2 infant Thrinaxodon

curled up together head to head.

They were sharing their body
heat which they brought down
from the surface underground

which suggests that they were
beginning to regulate their
temperature on their way

to becoming warm-blooded and
of course true mammals.

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So you can see if it had
not been for creatures
like Thrinaxodon,

surviving this Great Dying, we
humans might never have evolved.

SMITH: Our ancestors weren't
the biggest or the baddest,
they just happened to sleep
in the dirt.

Luckily that was the
safest place to be.

You never know who's
gonna beat the odds.

JEMISON: Throughout the history
of life on earth, species have
risen and they've died off

over and over again.

HADFIELD: And now that the
earth is resplendent with life,
you can't get away from life

on earth, you dig a mile down
into the rock and there's
still little things living,

you go to the hottest jet in the
centre of the ocean where the
boiling stuff is pouring out

into the world and it's a
farm of life down there.

LINENGER: You know the diversity
of living things on earth
ensures that life will go on,

no matter what the earth
throws at it, no matter
which punch it takes,

no matter which species
doesn't make it, there's
another one that finds a
pathway to survival.

SMITH: So, it's a good thing
that life comes in a variety
pack but variety comes from

diversity and diversity
comes from what scientists
call "doing it."

SMITH: If you're a clone,
you don't have to date.

You want kids, just
copy yourself, easy.

But clones have a problem; if
every individual is exactly
the same, one disease,

one catastrophe could
wipe them all out, so you
gotta mix it up a little.

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COLMENERO: This is MUSA, it's
an Underwater Museum of Art.

The sculptures are becoming
home to coral species.

These animals are amazing, they
can make identical clones of
themselves to spread over a reef

but they also protect themselves
against changing conditions by
having sex, in a strange way.

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Once a year, around the
time of a full moon,

the corals release eggs and
sperm in massive numbers.

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As the eggs begin to
float, it feels like you're
floating on the Milky Way.

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The eggs join together with
sperm cells from other corals.

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By all mating like
this at the same time,

it increases the chances
of mixing up their genes

to create more diversity in
the next generation of corals.

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That's how most of these reef
building corals have survived
in the ever changing ocean

for 250 million years.

LINENGER: You take 2 individuals
and you mix all the DNA and you
create a different creature,

a different animal
than the original pair.

You know every child or
offspring is different than
the parent and this ensures

survivability of that species.

I look at my own family, I look
at my children, oh my god,
they're just totally different

human beings and
hopefully better than me.

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SMITH: Sex.

So you may have all been doing
it for fun but I'm in it for
the survival of the species.

It's crucial to mix the
gene pool and life goes to
great lengths to do that.

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WINTER: Mayfly nymphs remind me
of aliens from a sci-fi film.

They live and grow in the mud
for a year, waiting for the
right conditions to emerge.

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Once the mayfly nymphs are
mature, they have to swim
to the surface of the water.

If they don't do this
fast enough, they will
be eaten by a fish.

What happens next is one of the
strangest life cycles on earth.

(music)

It's like a fish turning
into a bird in just 1 day.

The adults can't eat, they
have no mouth parts, they
have no digestive system.

For an adult mayfly
it's all about the sex.

And they have just 24 hours to
find a mate and then they die.

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(fireworks sound)

Weirdly, their mating
often coincides with the
4th of July celebrations.

(fireworks sound)

The males in a swarm fly up and
down, then the females fly by
these males and whichever male

is fast enough to catch her
is the one who gets to mate.

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Once the mayflies have
mated, the males are done.

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The females find water
and lay their eggs and
then they too pass on.

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They only last 24 hours.

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It's amazing the lengths that
life will go to, to reproduce.

(lightning sound)

SMITH: Once sex came
along, it was no longer
enough to just survive,

you had to attract a mate and
that's when life on earth
learned to dress to impress.

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LINENGER: Sexual reproduction
has made the earth beautiful.

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It's one of the greatest
evolutionary tools for
complex life on earth.

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And without sexual reproduction,
life would not have the
diversity that it needs,

that it absolutely needs
to survive on this very
tough demanding earth.

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SMITH: We might like it, we
might need it but doing the
deed comes with a price.

SMITH: The only thing for sure
in life, you're gonna die.

Even if you don't get hit by an
asteroid or eaten by a bear,
keeping something as complicated

as a human going,
takes a lot of upkeep.

LINENGER: As a physician,
I'm fascinated with the whole
human being and how it works.

Human body's incredible,
it's like 37 trillion cells.

It's more than the
stars in the galaxy.

But sitting here today I'm
not the me that I was up in
space; my cells have cycled,

hundreds of thousands of cells
a day are dropping off of me.

And so when you look at
me, this is not the hand
I had back in space.

Right now there's hundreds
of millions of cells
dying within your body.

And your body has to replace
those and it's the way we are
able to stay alive as a
living being.

You know most of this
destruction is inside our
body but out on our skin

we actually can see it,
it's much more visible.

(music)

It's kind of a harmless
thing down here on earth
but up in space, you know,

it's a different matter.

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STOTT: In microgravity,
everything floats.

Your dry skin is
gonna float in space.

HADFIELD: Once a week
we cleaned house.

All day Saturday.

We go around with the vacuum
cleaner and clean all of our
dead skin which is collecting

on all of the surfaces of the
filters around the ship.

MASSIMINO: If you pull your
sock off, a lot of skin, dead
skin, will go flying around.

HADFIELD: It doesn't just become
something in your sock, but it
becomes a floating cloud of

unused dead skin and that's a
really good day to have taken
off your sock right next to

an air intake so that you can
just sort of turn your head and
then go get the vacuum cleaner

and vacuum up the sole
of your own foot.

LINENGER: But the clock
is always ticking.

Cells can only repair so many
times before it has a failure.

Each time a cell replicates,
small errors creep in and along
with other wear and tear,

over time, this
damage builds up.

And when you have enough of that
failure, when it accumulates,
it's the end of life.

That's why we die.

SMITH: Making a new
creature can be easier
than mending an old one.

That's the best way to keep
your genes going, knowing that,

doesn't make it any
easier when the end comes.

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LINENGER: You know, you really
need death in order to have this
complex world that we have.

It sort of is the arbitrator; by
having death you have new life
taking its place and probably

an improved form of that life.

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(radio communication sound)

SPELMAN: OK, Mission Alpha.

Make your way back, you have
a spot fire behind the line.

(radio communication sound)

Do you hear those gunshots?

There's probably
ammo in that shed.

Stay away from there.

Every firefighter has a respect
for fire, a fear for fire.

As you start fighting that fire,
you're right up close to it.

The sound, it's overwhelming.

You can't see very well,
your eyes are burning,
your lungs are burning.

It just doesn't care what
it burns; vegetation,
people's property.

It's extremely unforgiving.

Fires do kill but you have to
realise there is a sense of
health that does come from fires

after the fact.

It burns dead trees and death
away on the ground and then
it allows new things to grow.

It is a part of nature
and what it does.

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LINENGER: Death is a necessary
part of the cycle of life.

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MELVIN: Mother Nature
kills to regrow life.

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HADFIELD: It's death that
provides the window of
opportunity for new forms

of life to occur.

LINENGER: Death-life,
death-life, death-life and it
helps to perpetuate things

and improve things
on the planet.

SMITH: Nature takes
us all in the end but She
doesn't do it to be cruel,

getting rid of the old
makes way for the new.

On planet earth, death is not
the end, this is not a wasteful
world, the dead feed the living.

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SMITH: We all know it's
a one way trip when
salmon go to spawn.

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No one knows that more
than the Kamchatkans.

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Every year to mark the return of
the fish, they hold a dance to
celebrate the connection

between life, sex and death.

It's an endurance event.

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Like the salmon, they
bop till they drop.

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SMITH: The bears and the
fishermen get a bounty but
they're not the only ones

who feast on the dead.

LINENGER: You know, earth is
really just waiting for you to
drop dead so that it can recycle

you and use all your parts
in some other form of life.

Salmon are packed with an
element that is essential for
life and that's nitrogen.

(music)

Salmon die and then the
trees use the nitrogen
as a type of fertiliser,

the animal body decomposing
being used by plants.

(music)

The trees pick up the
nitrogen and they flourish.

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Those elements are now part of
the ecosystem and they help out
other parts of the ecosystem.

Without the salmon, you
don't have the forest.

Everything benefits from
this banquet of nitrogen.

Living things on earth, they
are interdependent on each
other and they are interwoven.

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I think as an astronaut
looking down at earth, you
understand that this world

is interconnected, you know,
you realise this is one heck of
a system down there

and you're just in awe of it.

SMITH: We used to think
the world was flat.

We like to think about
things in straight lines;
birth, life, death, period.

But that's not really how it
works, you need to take that
line and bend it into a circle;

birth, life, death,
birth, life, death so what
does that mean for us?

LINENGER: Dad passed away
before I was launched into
space but I'll tell you,

I was up on that Mir Space
Station and I could just sense
my dad's presence there.

(music)

And almost out of
the corner of my eye, it's
almost like I'm seeing him.

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And I was almost afraid to look
'cause I thought if I look, he
won't be there

but by not looking, just
feeling his presence, he's sort
of telling me, you know,

he's proud, he's glad I made it.

It was sort of a psychological
support for me up there and I
had his presence there probably,

you know, 4 or 5 times near my
time in space when I needed it,

it was something I
could draw upon.

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SMITH: My father's time on
this earth has come to an end
but I find comfort in knowing

that he still lives
on because on our strange rock,
nothing is ever truly gone.

He is forever a part of one
beautiful pattern of life.

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LINENGER: You're
just a speck in this long
timeline of life on earth.

We don't really think of the
string of events that had to
take place for us to exist
today.

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From the survivors of those mass
extinctions, to the cycles of
death that keep the planet so

alive today, a million
migrating salmon, a billion
mating mayflies in the sky,

mixing the genes and all those
combination and permutations.

Yet all those different things
had to weave together, all those
chance meetings had to take
place.

Grandparents coming over
from the Old Country,
that all had to happen.

In my father's life, he had to
survive World War II, you know
his best friend Jerry

did not survive, that's why
I'm Jerry, you know, named
after my dad's best friend.

If you look in a history
book, there's nothing
special about my dad,

he's not gonna be in there but
he influenced my life and he was
somebody who always told me

you can be anything you set your
mind to and "if you work hard
and you study hard, for example,

Jerry, you'll be an astronaut
someday" and when you think of
all those things that had

to happen to create the
human being called Jerry
Linenger at that moment,

who then becomes an astronaut,
floating above the planet
going 17,500 miles an hour,

a life dream.

It's incredible.

You know I had to meet my wife,
we overlapped at a job by one
day, you know, would John, Jeff,

Henry and Grace exist
without that chance meeting,
without us getting together

at the right time, at
the right place on a beautiful,
you know summer night?

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I kind of feel that I've done my
job now; my family has grown at
this point and I'm proud of them

and if I move onto, you know,
another life, I'm kind of OK
with that at this point.

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LINENGER: And I feel
I'm gonna keep going on
and on through my kids.

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So I hope down the line,
getting emotional here,
down the line, you know,

my sons and my daughter draw
upon something that their
dad did for them, you know,

how I influenced them.

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We're all against all
odds, we are all against
all odds, you know,

our very existence on earth
against all odds and so, you
know, take advantage of it.

Make the most of it.

(music)

NARRATOR: Next time, do we need
to escape this one strange rock
and what would happen if we did

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