Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Drone footage uncovers unexpected creatures

in turbid waters.

- What are these animals, and what are they doing here?

NARRATOR: Desert sands hide eerie ruins.

- This isn't part of the landscape.

This is something that shouldn't be there.

NARRATOR: An unnerving image emerges from a quiet forest.

- It certainly makes sense to be suspicious of something so unusual.

NARRATOR: Satellites detect a mysterious pattern

in a seemingly empty plain.

- It looks like a kind of weird cipher or code.

NARRATOR: Everywhere we look on our planet,

there's evidence of the past.

In nature... in buildings... in relics.

Each holds a mystery that technology now allows us

to see from above.

What new secrets are revealed?

- (monitor bleeps)

NARRATOR: For thousands of years, humanity has explored and mapped

the farthest reaches of our planet.

From remote mountain peaks to the deepest jungles,

discovering where everything belongs.

But the world still hides shocking secrets,

and the view from above can reveal things

that seem completely out of place.

Deep in the heart of Colombia, through miles of remote wilderness,

a winding river rises from the jungle.

An oasis for hundreds of different aquatic species.

- Rivers are the lifeblood of these tropical environments.

And these rivers shape the landscape.

They even create thousands of lakes, a lot of which are formed

when the paths of the rivers change.

- These tropical rivers and lakes are home not just to fish,

but also birds, snakes, reptiles, amphibians, even mammals.

NARRATOR: In these waters, you can expect to see pink river dolphins,

black caimans, and capybaras.

But in one lake, the view from above reveals a baffling mystery.

Strange shapes emerge from the water's surface.

DAN: You can see these rounded, grey shapes

bobbing up and down in the water.

CYLITA: The way they move, you can tell right away

that this is some type of animal.

What are these animals swimming around in the river? Do they belong?

GEORGE: You can see what look like bubbles rising to the surface.

To me, they look like manatees.

NARRATOR: But are there manatees in this part of the world?

CYLITA: Colombia is home to the Amazonian manatee,

also known as the South American manatee,

and they live in freshwater just like this lake.

So, it makes sense that that could be what we're seeing here.

DAN: But there's a problem.

Amazonian manatees are the smallest kind of manatee.

They're like two metres long. They weigh maybe 300kg.

That's way smaller than what we're seeing here.

- And these creatures are really big.

GEORGE: These animals look to be ten times heavier

than your average manatee and easily two metres longer.

NARRATOR: So, what are these enormous creatures?

- They could be, maybe, hippos?

DAN: Everybody knows what a hippo is.

I mean, they're these big, semi-aquatic creatures.

But what a lot of people don't know is that the word "hippo"

actually means "horse". "Potamy" is Greek for "river".

"Hippopotamus" is ancient Greek for "river horse".

GEORGE: Aside from elephants and rhinos,

the hippopotamus is the largest land mammal.

CYLITA: They're massive herbivores that can consume

more than 36 kilos of grass a day.

- But hippos are native to Sub-Saharan Africa.

NARRATOR: They certainly don't belong over 9,000km away

in the jungles of Colombia.

GEORGE: This doesn't make any sense at all.

It would be like running into a giraffe or an elephant

in Yellowstone National Park.

- What are these hippos doing so far from their natural habitat?

- Could they maybe have escaped from a local zoo?

NARRATOR: There may be a clue over 11,000km away,

in Georgia's capital Tbilisi,

where a disaster prompts a major escape.

GEORGE: In 2015, hours of heavy rainfall

is raising water levels to dangerous heights.

- And 20km outside the city, a massive landslide

turns it into a disaster when a million cubic metres of land,

mud and trees clog up the Vere River.

CYLITA: All that water has to go somewhere,

and the flash flood heads right through the Tbilisi Zoo,

drowning enclosures and damaging cages.

- Animals are fleeing for their lives.

Their hippo, named Beggi, was soon seen wandering the streets.

- The whole city was in chaos, but a group of citizens worked

to safely recapture Beggi, herding him to an area

where he could be safely hit with a tranquiliser dart.

GEORGE: Is that what happened here in Colombia?

Did a bunch of hippos actually pull off The Great Escape?

NARRATOR: But there are two glaring problems with that theory.

DAN: For one thing, the nearest public zoo is in Medellin.

That's over 100km away.

I mean, even for good swimmers that's a ridiculously long distance.

- Another tell-tale sign that these animals didn't escape from a zoo

is just how many there are.

NARRATOR: In all, over 100 hippos have been spotted in this area,

and far into the lush and marshy Magdalena River basin,

ranging over 150km.

GEORGE: That's way too many of them to have escaped from a zoo.

Unless, they've been here for a long time.

- So, how did they get here?

NARRATOR: On the edge of the lake with the out-of-place hippos

is a significant clue.

CYLITA: When you zoom out, you can see that there are these signs

of human activity nearby.

You've got a pool and buildings.

GEORGE: This looks like some kind of abandoned compound,

like a ranch or estate. Who lived here?

And what does that have to do with these rogue hippos?

TORRI: Who, in Colombia,

would have the money to build something like this?

There's one person who comes immediately to mind.

NARRATOR: This was once the lavish mansion

of one of the most notorious gangsters in the world.

Colombia's cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar.

- Colombia is the world's largest cocaine producer.

Three-quarters of the world's annual yield of cocaine is produced there.

TORRI: Throughout the 1970s, Pablo Escobar made a fortune

by manufacturing and distributing that drug around the world.

And, according to some, he was worth around $25 billion.

- He was so rich and powerful that he bought this massive ranch,

which he called Hacienda Nápoles.

NARRATOR: Hacienda Nápoles spanned around 3,000 hectares of jungle,

roughly nine times the size of New York's Central Park.

- The drug lord spared no expense when it came to constructing

his private paradise, which included an air strip, a soccer field,

a bullfighting ring, and his very own private zoo

stocked with wild creatures that he illegally imported

from around the world.

NARRATOR: Including four hippos, three females and one male.

But why are so many more roaming through

the Magdalena River basin now?

GEORGE: Some have been seen upriver,

over 150km away from Pablo Escobar's mansion.

How did they get here?

NARRATOR: By the early 1990s,

Escobar was on the Colombian and US governments' most wanted list.

- So, you've got this violent drug lord that's on the run,

but on December 2 1993,

the Colombian Police finally catch up to him.

They find him holed up in a house

in Colombia's second-largest city, Medellin.

- They tried to arrest him, but when he refused,

Escobar was shot and killed in a fiery showdown.

- (Gunshot)

NARRATOR: Leaving behind a menagerie of animals

back at his jungle estate.

DAN: When the authorities went through Hacienda Nápoles,

they were faced with this huge problem of,

'What do we do with all these exotic animals?'

As much as possible, they shipped them to various Colombian zoos.

NARRATOR: But why are the hippos left behind?

- Because they were so large and so difficult to move,

it was decided that they should just be left in the pond,

where they'd already been living for a dozen or so years.

GEORGE: The authorities figured that without anyone to look after them,

the hippos would soon die off and that would be that.

After all, that's what usually happens when an animal is forced

to live on their own, far from their natural habitat.

NARRATOR: So, if the Colombia hippos are not where they should be,

why and how have they survived?

- How did they escape from Pablo Escobar's compound?

NARRATOR: And what are they doing to Colombia now?

- What the hell happened here?

DAN: How did they go from being part of drug lord Pablo Escobar's

private zoo on his Hacienda Nápoles estate,

to being spread all through the Magdalena River basin?

NARRATOR: How did these hippos defeat the odds

and thrive in the wilds of Colombia?

- They were released in 1993. That's like three decades ago.

NARRATOR: And, from the original four,

there's now around 100 hippos in the Magdalena River basin.

TORRI: But these guys didn't just survive,

they've thrived here, in a place they never should have been.

NARRATOR: The question is, how?

- Well, for one thing, the environmental conditions

are perfect for hippos.

The temperatures are basically the same here

as they are in their native habitats back in Africa.

And the swamps of Colombia

are a perfect habitat for food and shelter.

NARRATOR: But it's mostly about what isn't here.

- In Africa, crocodiles, hyenas,

and lions have been known to eat hippo calves.

That's what keeps their populations in check.

But, in Colombia, hippos have no known natural predators.

Crocodile sightings are very rare, and there are no lions or hyenas.

NARRATOR: As a result, the rare opportunity to see

these exotic hippos up close has helped boost the local economy.

GEORGE: Every year, 50,000 tourists come

to la Hacienda Nápoles to see the hippos.

It's become big business.

NARRATOR: But it's not all smooth sailing.

Now, instead of a cocaine drug lord,

it's the hippos who are being hunted.

- (camera shutter clicks) - But why?

- While they bring in much-needed tourist dollars,

they're also an ecological nightmare.

CYLITA: Through their movements and feeding patterns,

these hippos are reshaping the landscape around them,

and this could cause the extinction of hundreds of local species.

NARRATOR: Not to mention their danger to humans.

- Hippos are among the most dangerous creatures on the planet.

Their powerful jaws can snap a canoe in half.

GEORGE: I've travelled extensively throughout Africa

and any time I'm near a river,

I'm more worried about the hippos than I am about crocodiles.

Each year, hippos kill about 500 people in Africa.

NARRATOR: Yet, these hippos aren't being hunted down.

CYLITA: They're actually being sedated and sterilised

to stop them from reproducing.

NARRATOR: A plan that isn't exactly running like clockwork.

Like my grandmother always used to say to me,

"It's very hard to castrate a hippo."

The testes are hidden inside the body,

and it's also extremely variable in terms of where they are in the body.

So, you need to do surgery to remove them.

NARRATOR: If scientists don't find a solution soon,

the area faces an environmental disaster.

Current predictions suggest that the hippo population

in the Magdalena River basin could swell

from a hundred individuals to more than 5,000 by the year 2050.

- Every time the idea of culling these creatures comes up,

there's such a massive public outcry

that some people think it's unlikely that

that's ever going to be allowed to happen.

It's an invasive, dangerous animal.

A cull makes sense from a biological perspective,

especially from a conservation perspective.

But public opinion just sometimes doesn't match scientific reality.

- This is a very complicated problem with no solution, so far.

NARRATOR: From above, the discovery of creatures completely out of place

becomes a grim reminder of the strict laws of nature.

- This is a great example of how moving an animal

from one habitat to another can have disastrous consequences.

- These hippos show us how much of an impact

a species out of place can really have.

- I think it reminds us

that every little step we make can change the world.

NARRATOR: From lush rainforests to ancient arid sands...

..the view from above uncovers

another puzzling misplaced phenomenon.

On the other side of the world, on the northern coastline

of the African nation of Namibia,

an eerie shape rises from the majestic sand dunes

of the ancient Namib desert.

GEORGE: You've got what looks like this huge crack

in the middle of this sea of sand.

- It's incredibly shocking to look down at this ghostly image.

CYLITA: There's nothing around and then you've got this...

thing staring back at you.

It's almost a little unnerving.

NARRATOR: Whatever it is, it's big.

At nearly 95 metres, it's longer than the statue of liberty.

- You can sort of make out three-dimensional details,

but this isn't part of the landscape.

It's something that shouldn't be there.

- I'm definitely seeing something partially buried here.

KAREN: It's either in the process of being revealed,

perhaps by desert winds,

or swallowed up by the sand dunes surrounding it

for what appears to be miles in all directions.

- What is it? And who or what put it there?

NARRATOR: There shouldn't be anything here except endless dunes.

So, what is this massive object doing here?

Can the desert itself offer a clue?

CYLITA: The Namib gets less than 10mm of rain annually,

making it one of the driest places on Earth,

and one of the most inhospitable.

- Because it's such a harsh place, hardly any humans live here.

GEORGE: At first glance,

it almost looks like the surface of some alien world.

NARRATOR: Scientists estimate that the Namib dates back

as far as 80 million years,

making it the oldest desert on the planet.

The desert has a notoriously deadly stretch of shoreline

known as the Skeleton Coast...

..named for the whalebones that litter its beaches.

SHEILA: Can these bones tell us anything about how

and why this strange object got here?

TORRI: Whales often beach themselves when they swim into shallow water,

and when the tide goes back out, they get stuck.

- Could this mysterious object have suffered the same tragic fate

as the Skeleton Coast whales?

NARRATOR: But this is clearly no whale.

GEORGE: When you move in closer, you see that this is the skeletal

remains of a very large ship.

But what's a ship this big doing this far inland?

- If this is a shipwreck, I mean, why isn't it on the beach?

- It's hundreds of metres from the water.

- Clearly this is something that shouldn't be here.

- Where did this ship come from, and how did it wind up here?

DAN: Maybe knowing more about it

can help us make sense of what we're seeing here.

NARRATOR: Records reveal the ship is the Eduard Bohlen,

an enormous 2,300-tonne cargo ship that ran aground here

on September 5 1909.

But what was it doing along this deadly coastline?

- Was there something special that happened here back

in the early 20th century that not only caused it to crash,

but also to wind up so far inland?

TORRI: Waves will only push a ship so far.

So, what really happened here?

NARRATOR: A wider look from above reveals that the Eduard Bohlen...

..is not alone.

- The Skeleton Coast is littered with more than

just the bones of whales.

- How many other ships are scattered on the Skeleton Coast?

- Records suggest there are actually hundreds.

DAN: Some of these are hundreds of metres inland.

How did they get there?

CYLITA: That's a lot of raw tonnage to move that far inland.

Clearly, the average ocean waves couldn't have pushed them there.

NARRATOR: But what about a super-powered ocean wave?

Perhaps there's a clue in the pacific ocean...

off the coast of Japan.

DAN: In 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake

set off these enormous tsunami waves...

..that absolutely demolished some of Japan's coastline,

bulldozing virtually everything in their path,

including large ships like the ones on the Skeleton Coast.

CYLITA: After the floodwaters retreated,

many of these ships were left stranded

hundreds of metres from the sea.

TORRI: Is that what happened to the Eduard Bohlen?

Was it pushed into the Namib Desert

by the force of a devastating earthquake and a massive tsunami?

NARRATOR: But there are no records of a major earthquake in Namibia

around the time of the wreck...

..nor were there any reported floods or tsunamis.

- It wasn't an earthquake or tsunami, so what was it?

What could have possibly moved these mega ships so far into the desert?

NARRATOR: What unseen power could be behind

the largest ship graveyard in the world?

- Whatever's behind this must be incredibly powerful.

It's no wonder that this place is legendary.

NARRATOR: The waters of the Skeleton Coast are considered

some of the most dangerous in the world.

Powerful desert winds cause sandstorms that hide the coastline,

while strong ocean currents create dense fog

and huge storms that make sailing here a life-or-death risk.

- Portuguese sailors called this place the "Gates of Hell."

GEORGE: Many a sailor lost his life here after being swallowed up

by the thick ocean fog

and then battered to pieces by the constant, heavy surf.

- But how could these shipwrecks move from the coast?

NARRATOR: Perhaps a clue can be found about 300km south

of the Eduard Bohlen, across the unforgiving desert sands,

where a view from above reveals another type of graveyard.

- What are these houses doing in the middle of the desert?

- What is this place? And where is everybody?

CYLITA: There's something haunting about this place.

From above, you start to see half-buried evidence

that this was more than just a few buildings strung together.

- You can see what looks like a power station.

Incredibly, these guys were on the grid.

DAN: It also had a railway line.

Now, was that just to transport people,

or where they transporting something else?

NARRATOR: The answer is rooted in a dark colonial history

and the search for African diamonds.

And the abandoned houses themselves reveal a clue.

- These were built just like old German houses.

NARRATOR: But what are German houses doing here in the African desert?

KAREN: In the 1880s, Germany began to claim

parts of what is now Namibia

in the hopes of controlling its valuable mineral deposits.

TORRI: It was a gruesome time in history,

with Germany enacting the first genocide of the 20th century

against the Herero and Nama peoples.

- By the early 20th century, this whole area was under German rule.

NARRATOR: And soon a major discovery uncovers the wealth

the Germans were hoping for.

TORRI: When Namibian worker Zacharias Lewala discovered

the first diamonds in these desert sands on April 14 1908,

he reported this to his German boss, and the diamond rush began.

NARRATOR: And this small village, Kolmanskop,

was built around the new diamond mine.

KAREN: Soon, Germany controlled around 30%

of the world's diamond supply, which helped feed the growing market

for diamond engagement rings in the US.

TORRI: With the violence and abuse of the Indigenous workers

they brought in to mine the gems, combined with the genocide,

they really were all blood diamonds.

KAREN: It's a sobering bit of history to correct the so-called

"long tradition" of a diamond representing love and care.

NARRATOR: But how is the Eduard Bohlen connected

to this deadly mining boom?

- According to shipping records, it was a German ship that

wrecked here en route to deliver supplies to the diamond miners.

- But that still doesn't explain how the ship and others like it

end up so far inland away from the open water.

- Is there anything about Kolmanskop turning into a ghost town

that can help us understand what happened to these marooned ships?

- What made everybody leave this once thriving mining town?

GEORGE: Was it because the diamonds dried up,

or was it something else?

NARRATOR: Could the answer lie hidden

inside these abandoned houses?

- This is eerie. It's an entire house totally filled with sand.

- The sand has taken over everything.

- House after house has been reclaimed by the desert.

- It's like this entire town was just swallowed up by the dunes.

KAREN: When the diamonds disappeared,

the people soon followed, and then the town itself began to fade

because of the geological forces of the desert

that dominate the Skeleton Coast.

NARRATOR: But how do those forces create

the world's largest ship graveyard in an ancient desert?

- There's a reason the Bushmen of the Namibian interior

called this place the Land That God Made In Anger.

NARRATOR: And it all starts some 600km south

at Namibia's border with the longest river

in South Africa, the Orange River.

DAN: For millions of years, sediment from the Orange River

has been flushed out into the Atlantic Ocean

and then taken northward up the Skeleton Coast

by one of the strongest currents in the world, the Benguela.

CYLITA: There, the sediments accumulate along the shore

and the constant force of the wind pushes the sand out into the ocean,

forever expanding the Namib Desert westward.

NARRATOR: As seen from above, using satellite imaging,

the shipwrecks that were once along the shore have,

over time, become part of the desert as it creeps ever westward.

TORRI: These waves of sand have replaced the ocean water

that once lapped at the Eduard Bohlen's rusting remains.

CYLITA: This is the same process that turned the mining village

of Kolmanskop into a ghost town.

GEORGE: This is the complete opposite of what you would expect,

which is that the shoreline erodes

and the ocean moves incrementally inland each year.

CYLITA: Instead, it's the land itself,

the desert sands that are overtaking the shoreline

and moving into the ocean.

DAN: The Eduard Bohlen and the other ships

crashed on the shoreline and never moved.

It's the shoreline that moved.

GEORGE: In a hundred years,

who knows how far inland these ships will be.

Maybe a couple of kilometres? Maybe more?

TORRI: It's incredible to me that, from the shoreline,

you might assume that there's nothing out there except sand.

- But when you get up in the air, you uncover this amazing piece of

natural history, a real testament to the incredible powers of nature.

NARRATOR: From a desolate coastal desert

to the edges of a bustling American city,

a view from above uncovers yet another baffling misplaced enigma.

Across the South Atlantic to the North Pacific,

just 30 km west of Portland, Oregon,

past the busy streets of Downtown Hillsboro

and the patchwork of farm fields and vineyards,

something extraordinary is revealed from the air.

TORRI: You can immediately see a familiar white shape

that stands out against the green trees.

ROMA: This is such a strange image.

I've got so many questions when I look at this.

NARRATOR: This is forest and farmland,

there shouldn't be anything here except mature fir trees

and orderly lines of crops.

GUY: What we're looking at here is clearly an aeroplane,

but you've gotta ask, why is there this massive aeroplane

in this kind of thick clump of forest?

GEORGE: This is the last place you'd expect to find an aircraft.

How did this plane get here? Did it crash?

Did someone put it here? Where did this plane come from?

- Does anyone even know that it's here?

NARRATOR: What if the answer is that it isn't there at all?

- Are we looking at some kind of trick of light

or an optical illusion?

NARRATOR: Is it possible we're being fooled by our trusted technology?

What will the view from above reveal?

GEORGE: It definitely doesn't belong,

and it certainly makes sense to be suspicious of something so unusual.

NARRATOR: But it's not the only mystery plane seen on satellite.

A shocking discovery is made 7,400km away,

off the rugged coast of Scotland.

- While browsing Google Earth, a man in the UK spotted

what looked like a submerged plane, just off the coast of Edinburgh.

- Like our plane in Oregon, there was no evidence

or report of a plane crash.

GUY: Edinburgh is a large metropolitan city.

It's got over half a million people living there

and millions of people visiting every year.

So, it seems completely inconceivable that all those people

would've missed this large commercial airliner

falling right there into the sea.

NARRATOR: That's because it never did.

But how did the satellite produce such a shocking image?

ROMA: To create the hyper-real images of our planet,

Google Earth combines millions of overlapping satellite

and aerial photos to create one continuous image.

- It's a process called compositing and mosaicking.

- But sometimes there's a glitch in the way these photos

get stitched together, and that creates these phantom images

of things that aren't really there.

TORRI: And that's the case here in Scotland.

The satellite image of that plane flying somewhere

in some nearby airspace was mistakenly overlapped

with those of this Scottish coastline.

NARRATOR: Could the plane in Oregon also be the result

of a glitch in Google Earth technology?

GUY: The problem with this theory is that, unlike the plane in Scotland,

this one in Oregon has also been captured

by dozens of different drones.

So, you can't just say, "Ah, it's a glitch in satellite transmission."

That doesn't make sense at all.

- So, how did this end up here?

GUY: There could be some kind of somewhat sinister story behind it.

NARRATOR: One clue might lie with other abandoned planes,

left behind in a race from the law.

TORRI: Obviously, planes are used all the time to smuggle drugs

back and forth into the US.

But was this plane on a narcotics run gone wrong?

NARRATOR: Another mystery emerges in the jungles of Guatemala,

close to the Mexican border, that may offer a hint.

TORRI: Hidden in this lush nature reserve,

are signs of a dangerous business.

GEORGE: Over the course of 2019, security forces found not one,

but a whopping 50 aircraft abandoned throughout the country.

DAN: But what are all these aircraft doing here?

I mean, these planes can cost thousands, even millions of dollars.

Why would they just be left behind in the middle of nowhere?

NARRATOR: The view from above reveals clandestine runways

and mysterious planes sprinkled throughout the forest,

but what are they hiding from?

TORRI: This region is a major thoroughfare for the cocaine trade,

and these abandoned aircraft are part of the illicit narcotics trade.

- These planes are left behind if the military

or a rival drug gang is closing in.

- Is it possible that this mysterious plane in Oregon

is part of the same criminal industry?

NARRATOR: Could this aircraft be part of a similar operation?

- When we look down from above, we can't see any sign

of an airstrip like the one in Guatemala.

ROMA: Plus, where this plane is sitting is much too crowded by trees

to be part of a planned landing site.

NARRATOR: A closer look at the aircraft reveals it's nothing like

the ones used in Guatemala.

DAN: This isn't some private aircraft like a Cessna.

This looks like a full-on commercial aeroplane.

GUY: When you get a closer look, you can actually see the lettering.

This is a Boeing 727.

It's without doubt one of the most successful

commercial aircraft ever made.

- The first Boeing 727 was produced in 1962

and soon became the gold standard

for mass passenger transportation.

NARRATOR: But what is this aviation legend doing

in the forests of rural Oregon?

GUY: Clearly, this huge commercial aircraft

isn't supposed to be here, not in the middle of a wood.

So, it makes you wonder, was it forced

to make some kind of emergency landing?

GEORGE: Unfortunately, these things do happen.

In the last decade, it's been reported that,

in North America alone, as many as 2,000 commercial flights

were forced to make sudden unplanned landings.

NARRATOR: One of the most famous and dramatic of these

took place on the other side of the country,

in New York on January 15 2009.

- After taking off from LaGuardia Airport,

US Airways flight 1549 flew into a large flock of Canadian geese

and lost all engine power.

DAN: With 155 people on board including crew,

Captain Chesley Sullenberger made

an incredibly brave and daring decision.

- He decided to land in the Hudson River,

right off midtown Manhattan.

- The water was six-degrees Celsius,

and the Coast Guard rescuers immediately lept into action

to get everyone out of the water.

- The move worked beautifully, and 155 lives were saved.

- I think it was a miracle, and I'm very blessed to walk away from it.

- It makes sense to wonder if this plane in Oregon

is the result of another air incident.

NARRATOR: But a view from above is missing the tell-tale signs

of an emergency landing.

ROMA: This is a massive aircraft.

The sheer force of an emergency landing

would've simply torn up the landscape.

GUY: And yet, we can see that these trees

have been completely untouched.

It would be like driving your car at full speed

into a China shop and yet not breaking a single plate.

It would be a miracle.

TORRI: Plus, there's no report or eyewitness account

of a plane crash in this area, ever.

- The bottom line is, we know it's there, we just don't know why.

GEORGE: How does a Boeing 727 end up in the middle of the woods?

Someone must have put it there, but for what reason?

TORRI: The model of the plane gives us a clue,

because the last commercial flight for the Boeing 727 was in 2019.

So, this plane must be in private hands.

So, is it possible that it's just being stored here?

DAN: When airplanes get removed from service permanently,

you can't just park them at a gate at the airport,

and you can't just throw them in a local dump.

They need a special place.

NARRATOR: Once decommissioned, most commercial airliners

are stored in safe, secluded areas known as boneyards.

- The largest boneyard in the world

is at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona.

And it's basically this enormous graveyard

for the world's biggest collection of military aircraft.

NARRATOR: Which raises a crucial question

when it comes to the plane in Oregon.

- If this is a boneyard, why is there only one plane in it?

Why would anyone go to the trouble of storing an out-of-service plane

somewhere that's so inaccessible?

NARRATOR: Why was it placed here?

- You have to ask yourself: could it serve a purpose being here?

- And, if so, for whom? Who put it there?

NARRATOR: A peek inside reveals the truth.

- It looks like someone actually lives here.

NARRATOR: It's the home of retired electrical engineer Bruce Campbell.

- I'm really jealous of the guy who owns this.

I want a Boeing jetliner on my lawn at home to live in.

- But how in the world did he ever get this giant plane here

in the first place?

Roma: You can't exactly drive a Boeing through a forest.

With a project like this, when you just can't fly the plane

to its destination, there is only one thing you can do.

You have to take it in pieces.

NARRATOR: Before being transported,

the wings of the Boeing needed to be detached.

Once in the woods, it was then carefully reconstructed

and steadied on top of support beams.

But can this recycled airliner offer ecological solutions for the future?

- Commercial aircraft are being decommissioned

and reduced to scrap at a rate of three a day.

Dan: That's a lot of waste, and a good proportion of it

can't be recycled, so maybe this should be more of a thing.

Why not turn more decommissioned airplanes into homes?

ROMA: These amazing pieces of engineering

can have a life way beyond their original design.

- I mean, I'd like to live there. I think that's pretty cool.

NARRATOR: What was once a mystery from the air

is now revealed as a possible ecological solution

for future housing.

NARRATOR: From pine forests to arid deserts,

the view from above reveals strange objects

that look completely out of place.

Gen Z web sleuths examining Google Earth

discover something incredible in the deserts of Nevada...

..and the shocking video goes viral.

Guy: What we're looking at here is a truly bizarre pattern

of all these kind of rectangular shapes.

TORRI: It definitely doesn't look like it's supposed to be there.

It just looks too symmetrical and organised

to be something formed by nature.

GEORGE: So, someone must have built it,

but who, and why?

NARRATOR: This is sitting in the middle of a dry lake bed.

It's the type of place where nothing even grows.

There simply shouldn't be anything here.

The bizarre symbol is clearly out of place, but what is it?

Some online commenters immediately notice familiar shapes

in the strange figure.

But one stands out.

Could this be a massive machine-readable image

known as a QR code?

GUY: These codes are used to translate information

to digital devices such as mobile phones.

So, if this is one of these QR codes, what message is it sending?

And actually, who is the intended receiver?

- You'd have to be thousands of feet up in the air to even see it.

NARRATOR: But what if we get closer?

- It's clear that someone has created

this really strange arrangement

of what looks like shipping containers.

SHEILA: When you see shipping containers, you immediately think,

of course, shipping.

And these things are everywhere.

There are literally millions of them all around the world.

- But when we look around this site from above,

something crucial is missing.

Ships.

NARRATOR: The nearest rail line is over 20km away,

and there's a mountain in between.

And the closest port is even further,

more than 400km away.

GEORGE: Without a port or a rail line for transportation,

these containers aren't going anywhere.

So, how did they get here in the first place, and why?

NARRATOR: Other strangely organised shipping containers

over 8,000km away in Copenhagen, Denmark, may be a clue.

TORRI: From above, you can see that

these are definitely shipping containers,

but they're not being used for cargo.

SHEILA: Humans are great at coming up with new uses

for things to meet a pressing need,

and one unconventional use of containers like these is housing.

GEORGE: It's kind of a genius idea.

These things are made of weather-resistant steel,

so they're pretty tough.

TORRI: And they can be far more cost-effective

than building from traditional materials.

I mean, it's no surprise that there are so many of these homes

popping up around the world.

NARRATOR: So, could this be the explanation

for the containers in the Nevada desert?

SHEILA: I know that more and more people are building homes

out of shipping containers, but not in the way that these are arranged.

It's such a strange pattern.

GEORGE: And there's nothing else around.

And I don't see any cars or paved roads around here.

If this is some kind of a housing complex,

it's in a really inconvenient place.

GUY: There's no sign of life at all.

There are no people, there are no animals.

And you've gotta ask, who would wanna live in a place like this?

NARRATOR: But only 34km away from the code...

..another pattern on the desert floor

hints at a hidden past that may be connected.

GUY: This kind of looks like a grid

of a town that's in the middle of being built.

NARRATOR: This is Dixie Valley.

Records suggest it was once the location of a small,

thriving ranching town founded in the 1800s.

GEORGE: Looking around today, it's in ruins.

Some of these buildings look like they've been flattened.

- Where did everybody go? What the hell happened here?

NARRATOR: Perhaps a clue is hiding under the ground.

GUY: Nevada is the third most seismically active state

in the United States, so it makes sense to wonder if some kind of

natural disaster took this town out.

GEORGE: State documents indicate that back in 1954,

this whole area was rocked by a series of earthquakes

measuring between 6.6 and 7.1 on the Richter scale.

Was that the reason these people fled?

NARRATOR: But records show, ranches in the Dixie Valley were active

as late as the mid-1990s.

SHEILA: So, what drove these people away?

Was it a lack of water? A massive drought?

- Maybe the environment was just too harsh and the people just left.

GUY: But when you scan south, you can see

there's actually plenty of water in this area.

In fact, this is an endorheic basin.

That means it has plentiful groundwater.

NARRATOR: So, why would the ranchers of Dixie Valley abandon their homes?

- What happened to Dixie Valley?

And what does it have to do with the strange shape in the nearby desert?

NARRATOR: From above, a wider search of the surroundings

reveals a crucial clue: an area covered in massive holes.

- About four kilometres to the east, we see an area of ground

riddled with what looks like blast marks and scorched earth.

- Was this place blasted from the air?

GUY: There are hundreds of craters here.

So, what we're looking at is a lot of firepower,

but what on Earth has actually unleashed all this destruction?

If we look closely, there are clues nearby.

NARRATOR: Zooming out further afield reveals more objects

completely out of place.

- There's a tank and what look like air control towers.

- What is this place?

GUY: It strikes me that whenever you see weird structures

or buildings in strange places, the culprit is often the military.

NARRATOR: This is the Fallon Range Training Complex,

a US Military facility spanning over 12,000 square nautical miles

of airspace and 200,000 acres of navy-controlled land.

- That's an enormous area. Even bigger than New York City.

- But how does this strange pattern of metal containers fit in?

Are they for storing ammunition or other supplies?

- It looks more like they've placed them here for training purposes.

The arrangement of these could be used to mimic real life urban

or industrial environments.

GUY: Military sites like these are used to train

for something called MOUTs,

military operations on urbanised terrain.

Now it's in a MOUT that a soldier can prepare

for an on-ground situation where he's facing down enemies

in a civilian environment, like a city or a small town.

- But that doesn't explain the blast marks on the ground nearby.

NARRATOR: The mysterious pattern is part of a much bigger story.

This isn't any old military compound.

The Fallon Range Training Complex is designed to train

the very best jet pilots in the country.

This is the home of Top Gun.

- Millions of people around the world saw

those two Top Gun movies with Tom Cruise in them.

But very few know that those movies were actually based on a real place.

This place here, the Naval Air Station Fallon.

NARRATOR: Originally located in California,

the Top Gun training complex was moved to Nevada

back in the mid '90s...

..exactly when Dixie Valley became a ghost town.

SHEILA: That explains the disappearance

of all the Dixie Valley ranches.

The town and area was bought in the mid '90s

by the US government to build this training complex.

GEORGE: Nowadays, the valley doesn't only have ruined old ranch homes,

but old military equipment, like tanks for on the ground training,

just like the shipping container site.

NARRATOR: And the most advanced military aircraft in the world fly

in the airspace above.

GUY: I find it incredible, actually, that when you look at this

from high up, you might think that it's just...

just some bizarre pattern, but actually, it's very deliberate.

NARRATOR: So, how does the so-called Nevada QR code

fit into the Top Gun training programme?

- These world-class pilots practise with live ammunition

over the bomb targets nearby.

- But ground operations are important, too,

even for fighter pilots. Here, they can practise crucial air support

for ground missions, acting as a friendly lookout,

and hitting targets with safer 'dud' ammo.

TORRI: You can imagine a team on the ground with the best fighter pilots

in the world flying overhead taking out nearby targets with precision.

It would give you a lot of confidence

having them watching over you.

GUY: These metal containers are also used as calibration targets

for things like spy planes and satellites.

GEORGE: The irregular and random shapes of the fake buildings

allow pilots to focus their aircraft-mounted cameras

on a specific target to test their resolutions

and allow them to take clearer pictures at high speeds.

GUY: The technology, it's changed over the years,

but the goal has always been the same:

produce the best pilots in the world.

NARRATOR: And it leaves us to discover unexpected sights

only truly visible from above.

GEORGE: There are so many strange objects

strewn across our planet that can be quite baffling

because they just don't belong in that environment.

DAN: And, sometimes, the only way to solve those mysteries

is to see them from a fresh perspective...

from above.

Subtitles by Sky Access Services