Original subtitles

Narrator: They're watching you.

More than 4,000 satellites Circle the earth.

Every day, they uncover new, Mysterious phenomena

That defy explanation.

[ beeping, distorted music ]

A shipwreck that appears In the middle of the desert...

It's like a giant monster.

This is the very definition Of weird.

Narrator: ...A ghost town of death still Stalked by a silent killer...

Faylor: there's buildings. There's roads.

Everything seems to be in order, But there are no people.

Narrator: ...And a thing That came from space.

We have absolutely no idea Where this came from,

And we have no clue What it could've been carrying.

**

Narrator: Baffling phenomena.

Mysteries from space.

What on earth are they?

-- captions by vitac -- Www.Vitac.Com

[ beeping ] [ camera shutter clicking ]

[ whirring ]

Captions paid for by Discovery communications

**

[ frequency warbles ] [ whirring ]

**

February 23rd, 2013.

400 miles above namibia, South west africa,

The geoeye-1 satellite finds a Strange pattern in the sands.

Nelson: This is a truly bizarre image.

You have this structure In the middle

And these rays that shoot out From it in all directions.

Narrator: ...60 lines, Like ray from the sun,

Emanating from a central object.

Walters: a mathematician Has laid this out.

They've got to have Some purpose,

But I'm really can't, For the life of me,

Work out what that could be.

Narrator: hooked by the weird Desert pattern,

Military historian martin morgan

Is crossing namibia To investigate.

It has this evocative Appearance like nazca lines.

Why would you go to effort And expense

To place something out here Where there is nothing?

Narrator: This is one of the world's most Sparsely populated countries.

For morgan, the structure's Isolated location suggests

It has a clandestine purpose.

You've got two million people Living in a country

That's three times the size Of the state of arizona,

So if you wanted to create A secret facility

Far from prying eyes,

This would be A good place to start.

Narrator: Namibia's desert holds

Some of the world's Largest reserves of uranium.

Military superpowers, Including china,

Are vying for control of it.

**

This is it.

I have arrived.

**

Narrator: Yet as morgan approaches

The perimeter of the complex, It becomes clear

That this is No high-security installation.

Why is there no security here?

'cause this fence, It's not electric.

It's just a wire fence.

Up close, the weird radial lines Are even more striking.

Morgan looks for clues To their purpose.

So, these track lines That we can see

In the satellite image -- Pushed up dirt and rocks,

But something's Clearly been removed.

Narrator: the lines of rubble Are very precisely arranged.

All of these lines are Exactly 6 degrees apart,

And they are all converging back To that central point.

**

This was some sort Of precision instrument.

Narrator: morgan wants to know If the central structure

Will shed light On the mystery.

**

But he finds it to be empty.

The place has been gutted, So whatever it was

That was in here that was So important is now gone.

Narrator: whoever cleared This place went to great lengths

To leave no trace behind.

**

Maybe there's something outside.

**

Narrator: outside, morgan Notices a wall with holes

Set slightly away From the building.

As a military analyst, He's seen this before.

The only time I've seen A separate wall like this

Is that it functions As a blast wall

That could potentially absorb The fragmentation

From exploding bombs Or a rocket launcher.

**

Narrator: morgan Returns to the satellite image

And sees something That makes no sense --

Numerous shipwrecks Litter the nearby coast.

This is incredible.

Looking at the satellite Image of wrecks

All along the coastline, And our mystery facility

Is located right in The middle of all of it.

This facility is smack in the Middle of shipwreck central.

**

Narrator: closer analysis Of the satellite images reveals

Hundreds of these wrecks.

This region is literally A graveyard for ships.

There are over 1,000 shipwrecks

That dot the coasts All around this region.

Ships met their fate Along this coastline

Often in the most horrible And savage fashion.

Morgan considers if The perplexing star pattern

Played a role In their destruction.

Morgan: during the cold war, Radio jamming

And hacking systems Were used by both sides

In an attempt to gain An upper hand.

So, could this be Some sort of a ship killer?

Narrator: the bizarre shipwrecks Are spread across

Hundreds of miles Of desert coastline too risky

To travel to by car...

So morgan takes to the skies.

**

Local tribesmen gave a name To these desolate sands.

They called it "The land god made in anger."

Morgan: in one direction, It's endless sand dunes,

And some of these sand dunes Appear to be 300 feet tall.

The namib's vast, barren sands

Spill straight Into the atlantic ocean.

This coastline gets its name From dead whales

Whose remains are weirdly Preserved in the sand.

The name that has Struck fear into sailors

For hundreds of years -- The skeleton coast.

Incredible. It's totally incredible.

We are not in kansas anymore.

An hour into his flight, Morgan catches sight

Of something Truly extraordinary below.

Oh, my god. Look at that.

**

Narrator: a huge ship, Hundreds of feet long,

Sunk in the desert as if it has Been magically carried here.

**

Wow.

Look at this thing.

**

It's like a giant monster...

Left to decompose in the desert.

This is the very definition Of weird.

**

Narrator: Coming up, seen from space, The town that doesn't exist...

Nelson: clearly, Something happened here,

And it must have been very bad.

Narrator: ...And the reason Sailors fear the skeleton coast.

It was the most terrifying fate Befalling anyone

Sailing along That piece of coast.

**

Narrator: Martin morgan's investigation

Into this image has led him To venture along

Namibia's legendary Skeleton coast.

**

And there, to his amazement, Surrounded by desert,

He sees this.

This has got to be one of the Most surreal things I have seen.

**

This ship is big.

It's got to be 400 feet long.

Narrator: There seems to be no explanation

To what happened to this ship

To leave it sitting So far from the sea.

**

Morgan: Its source of locomotion

Is obviously some Sort of boiler-driven shaft.

This is a 20th-century Cargo ship.

For some reason, It is in the namib desert.

Narrator: morgan wants to know How this ship

And the many others Met their doom

And whether their fate Is connected

To the mystery star pattern That sits in their midst.

The question remains what Brought this ship to grief here?

**

Narrator: morgan flies Further up the coast

Till he reaches The port of swakopmund.

**

He speaks to two local men, Dreis and simon.

Are you guys Fisherman?

-yes. -yeah, we are.

Why are there so many Shipwrecks here?

Is it treacherous?

-yeah. -it's very, very treacherous.

Narrator: dreis reveals Why skeleton coast has

For so long been a place Of terror for sailors,

Where many ships enter Never to return.

The fog is very dangerous In that area.

It's a very Terrifying experience.

Narrator: naval archives confirm That the hellish fog

Has been appearing On this coastline for centuries.

Hundreds upon hundreds of ships And sailors

Have disappeared here.

Horton: if your navigations Were defective,

And you hit The namibian coast,

You are trapped, And you can't escape.

It was the most terrifying fate

Befalling anyone sailing Along that piece of coast.

Cerveny: they actually nicknamed This the gates of hell

Because it was so dangerous For ships

To actually go Through this area.

Wind and fog is coming in. Anything can happen.

Anything can happen.

Narrator: archaeologist mark Horton confirms that over time,

Many of the beached wrecks Are being slowly swallowed

By the shifting sand Of the namib deserts,

And there are treasures In these wrecks.

In recent times, a miner found The wreck of a ship laden

With $13 million worth of gold.

The desert is moving Westwards into the sea,

And so shipwrecks Of only maybe 100 years ago

Are now some distance inland as The desert has surrounded them,

Not in a sea of water But a sea of sand.

Narrator: yet for morgan, any Connection between the wrecks

And the weird shape In the image remains elusive.

**

Returning to the image, he sees Structures to the southeast

Which have a very similar layout To those next to the star.

**

He heads there next.

Morgan: there's a real skill To driving in sand,

And I'm getting a crash Course in it.

That must be it.

There is nothing else around.

**

Narrator: Exploring the site,

Morgan notices One building is occupied.

He introduces himself To joachim cranz,

Who says he owns the building

And that its origins go back To world war 2.

It's a navigation station Called decca.

It was a british company That established,

As far as I know, Five sites in namibia.

The liberation Of nazi-occupied europe

Posed a series Of huge challenges,

And one of them was primitive Navigation technology.

Walters: trying to get Your planes to bomb a city,

Trying to land your men On a specific piece of coastline

Was very, very difficult Before the war.

Narrator: the allies receive Help from a record company,

Decca, the label That will later sign artists

Like the rolling stones.

**

The decca navigational system Uses a chain of transmitters

To send out Low-frequency radio waves.

There was a huge mast As I recall as a kid,

And that was Emitting a signal.

Decca towers emit pulses Of radio energy.

By measuring the difference In time it takes

These pulses to reach a ship,

Decca operators plot lines Of position on nautical charts.

Sailors use these charts And time readings

From two pairs of stations To fix their position.

The british military introduced The system the day before d-day,

Allowing the allies To catch the nazis off guard

And helping to turn The tide of war.

It's a really, really important Piece of technology

Because you're going to be Avoiding all sorts of hazards

Such as shoals, submerged rocks, Treacherous currents.

Narrator: during the 1970s, The namibian government wonders

If the system can save ships From their doom

On the treacherous Skeleton coast.

A transmission station Is constructed in the desert.

Surrounding it is a buried web Of copper.

In the 1990s, the invention of Gps makes the system redundant.

Cranz rips the valuable Copper from the ground,

Leaving behind lines of rubble Visible in the image.

We were asked to remove them, So we dug them all out,

And you still see The remains of the trenches.

It's a strange story

And a strange image That only adds to the mystique

Of this legendary Desert coastline.

Morgan: I can't help but think Of all of the times

That mariners were lost at sea

For want of A navigational system

As sophisticated And effective as decca was.

**

Narrator: coming up, When nerve gas attacks...

Nelson: Someone down the way

Starts bleeding From the nose and mouth.

It's sheer panic. You don't know what's happening.

Narrator: ...And why are the British listening to the sky?

Bellinger: they're like people Wearing elephant ears

Or mickey mouse caps with tubas Mounted on bicycle wheels.

**

June 24th, 2015.

An earth observation satellite Flies over the county of kent

On the south coast of england.

It captures images of a curved Structure facing out to sea.

This is really weird.

It looks as if a sickle blade

Has just been dropped on Its side like a cookie cutter.

Narrator: scale analysis reveals The object is 200 feet long.

It's like the wingspan of a 747, And for such a big structure

To be randomly tossed out in The kent countryside like this,

It really begs the question What is it.

**

Narrator: investigators consider If the structure's

Strategic position Offers a clue.

From the location Close to the coast,

It would make sense if these Were some sort of military

Or defensive fortifications

To protect england From everybody on the continent.

**

Narrator: For military historians,

The symmetrical, curved shape Could be significant.

The smooth lines And semicircular shape

Of this object make it look like It might be somehow a receiver

Or a transmitter of some kind.

Narrator: guy walters believes The size of the structure

Means it is likely made From concrete,

And signs of erosion suggest It is several decades old.

[ men shouting ]

He wonders if it has its origins In world war 1.

What's the image We have in our minds

When we think Of the first world war?

We think of mud. We think of trenches.

But, of course, It's also an arena

In which a new type of warfare Is gestating,

And this, of course, Is aerial warfare.

Narrator: During the great war,

A lethal new threat appears In the skies --

German gotha bombers And zeppelin airships

Raining death Upon the people of britain.

For the people living In these cities,

It was a terrifying experience.

You never knew If your home would be attacked,

And most importantly, You didn't know

If you were going to live.

Narrator: in a devastating wave Of attacks,

German aircraft dropped 300 tons of bombs,

Killing nearly 1,500 people.

There's literally no way To predict an attack

Until it is Essentially upon you.

Morgan: the aircraft that were Being used in world war 1,

They moved slowly, But not slow enough.

By the time you heard them, It was basically too late.

Narrator: military chiefs Need to find a way

To give their artillery time

To arm their defenses Against an aerial attack.

Walters: if you can't use optics Or your eyes to spot airplanes,

Then what's the next best thing You can do?

You could actually use sound.

So, is there some way To actually magnify the sound

Of an incoming aircraft

And focus it onto a very Specific point and use that?

Narrator: According to wartime records,

Inspiration comes From an unlikely source.

Now, we all know those old types Of hearing aids,

Those kind of ear trumpets.

All the sound collects At the big end,

And it gets channeled down To the little end

To the receiver, your ear.

What if you built a machine On a much larger scale

And then use it to detect The sound of distant aircraft?

Narrator: in 1915, Engineers test prototype

Sound detectors in the town Of farnborough.

The pictures are quite funny.

They're like people Wearing elephant ears

Or mickey mouse caps,

Like giant trombones or tubas Mounted on bicycle wheels.

Narrator: The bizarre contraptions

Prove effective in detecting Incoming planes

During the latter stages Of world war 1.

Bellinger: I mean, It's incredibly ingenious

What they created with these Advanced listening devices.

Narrator: The device's success

Pushes british military Engineers to develop

A more practical Acoustic defense system.

The so-called "Sound mirror" Uses a large curved

Concrete surface And a microphone.

The sound wave would bounce off The curved wall.

It would be focused In a single point,

Which then would amplify The sound to an operator

Who was stationed nearby.

Morgan: And with that information,

They could simply pick up A telephone and warn london.

Narrator: in 1930, Construction begins

On the massive 200-foot Concrete sound mirror

Visible from space today.

Sitting next to Smaller versions,

The system enables the british To detect an incoming aircraft

Up to 15 minutes Before it arrives.

Morgan: you have a very basic Concrete structure,

And yet it's capable Of saving hundreds of lives.

Over the following years, Military engineers construct

More of these structures Along the english coast.

Walters: I would say there was A lot of optimism

About these sound mirrors When they were first developed.

It was felt that they were Going to give the british

The edge Over any incoming invasion.

Narrator: yet these ingenious Devices are never used.

By the dawn of world war 2, The invention of radar

Makes the weird structures Obsolete.

Radar gives you A more accurate picture

Of where the enemy aircraft are, How high they're flying,

And, ultimately, Where they're likely to go.

Narrator: the sound mirrors Project is abandoned,

But the structures, Live on as monuments

To old-school ingenuity.

Sound mirrors represent The the craziness,

But also they're innovatory.

Whoever would've thought That building a concrete lump

On a beach was a vital way To defend the nation?

But they worked.

**

Narrator: coming up, It came from outer space...

Major: it's possible that they Landed on our planet, evolved,

And maybe we're the end result Of alien life.

Narrator: ...And mass death In a desert ghost town.

Faylor: the cult is testing Their chemical agents.

They want to know how much Devastation it can cause

And how quickly.

**

Narrator: January 19th, 2015.

As the worldview-2 Satellite passes

Over the western Australian outback,

It photographs A deserted settlement.

Faylor: there's buildings. There's roads.

Everything seems to be in order, But there are no people.

Narrator: nothing unusual About an abandoned town

In the outback, But government records reveal

Something strange About this one.

What's really weird here Is the australian government

Does not allow anyone To go here.

This town wasn't just abandoned.

It was literally removed From the maps.

Nelson: clearly, Something happened here,

And it must have been very bad.

Narrator: Analysts search historic Local newspaper records.

They reveal that in the 1990s, This region is linked

To one of the most disturbing Terror attacks ever committed.

Nelson: if a terrorist group Was acting here,

It would make sense as to why The town was abandoned

And why the government Has wiped it off the map.

Narrator: the story begins On march 20th, 1995

In tokyo, Morning rush hour.

10 terrorists board the subway In groups of two.

Each team leaves a bag On the train

And gets off At the next station.

What nobody knows at the time Is that these bags

Are full of A deadly nerve agent,

And they've poked holes In them with umbrellas.

Narrator: unnoticed, The odorless nerve agent

Seeps into the air, Spreading through the cars.

Nelson: you're on Your normal commute to work,

And then all of a sudden,

Someone down The way starts coughing,

Then bleeding From the nose and mouth.

[ siren wails ]

Narrator: The nerve gas, sarin, kills 13 people and injures 6,000.

Chamberlain: to give you an idea Of the potency,

They had a bag of sarin,

And one drop of sarin Can kill an adult.

[ people shouting ]

Narrator: The atrocity is carried out

By a japanese doomsday cult Led by shoko asahara.

Police discover That two years earlier,

The cult buys a cattle station

In sparsely populated Western australia.

When they head to the location,

The police find rotting sheep Carcasses infected with sarin.

Faylor: the death cult is Testing their chemical agents

On animals to see How effective they are.

They want to know how much Devastation it can cause

And how quickly.

The cult's training camp Is in the same state

As the ghost town In the satellite image.

It makes you wonder.

Did this cult have another base In this town?

We know this terrorist group Was using sarin,

And potentially Some of it escaped.

Could that be the reason This town is abandoned?

Narrator: yet when analysts Check the case files,

There's no record the cult Had a second camp in the region.

**

Geologist martin pepper goes Back to the satellite image.

To the south of the ghost town,

He observes a blue-gray scar On the landscape.

Pepper: you see that this blue All comes from a certain source.

I'm starting to think That this is mining slag.

Narrator: Chemical scientist reid faylor

Believes the blue streak Could be a vital clue.

Once you identify The mining slag,

The blue material You see starts to make sense

Because there's one Blue material

That would absolutely make A town have to leave,

And that's asbestos.

Narrator: the mineral asbestos Occurs naturally

And is usually Colored white, brown, or blue.

Fire- and heat-resistant, it is Touted as a wonder material

In the late 19th And early 20th centuries.

Asbestos was used everywhere.

It was in construction.

It was in your homes, in your Factories, in your offices.

Narrator: asbestos becomes An ingredient in goods

As varied as toothpaste, Bowling balls,

And fake snow In hollywood movies.

**

Little do people know They're inviting a killer

Into their lives.

**

People started Getting sick from it...

And people who mined it Started to get sick,

So it didn't take long Before we realized

That it was probably The asbestos itself

That was making people ill.

Narrator: asbestos is made up Of tiny fibers

Formed of microscopic crystals.

Odell: if these small fibers Become airborne,

They can get trapped In your airways,

Killing the cells and causing A variety of different cancers.

Narrator: Chemists rate blue asbestos

500 times more lethal Than white asbestos

Because it sheds smaller And harder needle-like fibers.

Blue asbestos is so fine That it embeds in your lungs,

And your body, To react to it,

Basically grows cells Around it, causing cancer.

Narrator: geological And mining records yield a clue

To the identity Of the mystery ghost town.

Pepper: there's only One supplier of blue asbestos

In the records Of western australia,

And it was a small town Called wittenoom.

Man: in 1948, in the shadow of the hamersley range,

a town was born -- wittenoom.

Narrator: wittenoom, almost 700 miles northeast of perth,

Is a tiny backwater town,

But when asbestos mining Starts there in the 1930s,

Wittenoom becomes a boom town Of 20,000 people.

the comfortable homes of this remote, tropical town

have amenities which usually come to mining towns

only after years of struggle.

Blue-asbestos dust Becomes part of daily life.

They would have Shoveling competitions

Trying to see who could dig up The most asbestos fastest.

Narrator: miners unearth 150,000 tons of asbestos.

That's almost half the weight Of the empire state building.

Nelson: here you have a whole Community of people

Who were mining asbestos.

Their livelihood was made Up of the thing

That eventually Would be killing them.

Narrator: 7,000 people work at the mine,

But soon workers and town Residents start to fall ill.

A disease spreads -- Mesothelioma --

A cancer of the chest walls And lungs,

And they die, at first in their Tens and then their hundreds.

What I find so horrifying About all of this

Is we now know How dangerous asbestos is,

But they didn't, So they were playing

With this dangerous compound As if it was harmless.

**

Narrator: in 1966, The killer mine is closed down.

Cleanup proves impossible.

The deadly dust saturates The land, buildings, everything.

Eventually, the government Shuts down the town

And wipes it from the maps.

Pepper: It all makes perfect sense.

They figure out what They're digging up is toxic,

They all get the heck Out of dodge,

And another wittenoom Is a ghost town.

**

Narrator: coming up, The visitor from outer space...

Who's to say it couldn't Survive the impact

And then breed from there?

Narrator: ...And corrupt communist North korea goes crazy.

This one is one that I would Never have guessed.

**

Narrator: September 15th, 2007.

Strange stories emerge

From the andean settlement Of carancas.

Villagers in a remote part Of peru

Reported this screaming sound From the sky.

A massive explosion was heard,

Windows shattered, And the ground shook.

On arriving, The locals found a hole

That was basically full Of boiling mud and steam.

Narrator: satellite images Confirm a large hole

Has appeared In the landscape.

The sheer force of the event

Makes some locals fear A divine reckoning.

After this, the local community Becomes quite disturbed.

Some people believe That possibly the crater

Is somehow Some sort of retribution.

Narrator: yet roland kays Believes the crater

Has another celestial origin.

Kays: From the shape of this hole,

My guess is that this must be A new meteorite crash site.

**

Narrator: analysis of The 46-foot-wide crater

Suggests that whatever caused it Was no ordinary meteorite.

**

Janulis: it's a fairly unusual Impact crater.

This one looks like it came In completely perpendicular

To the ground, which would Explain why it's so deep.

And at this point, The story takes

A bit of a turn for the weird.

Everyone who's around the crater Suddenly becomes ill,

Falling sick Almost immediately.

Narrator: locals flood medical Centers, suffering from vomiting

And a mysterious Skin condition.

**

The government dispatches Police officers

To the site Of the satellite image.

They find a landscape Littered with bleeding animals.

Livestock near the crater, Healthy one day, just drop dead.

**

Police officers who were Sent in to investigate

Also became ill After leaving that crater.

This is just getting Stranger and stranger.

It's like an episode Of "Doctor who."

Narrator: the nightmare scenario Is that the source

Of the mystery illness In the meteorite itself.

We have absolutely no idea Where this meteorite came from.

It could've come From another planet.

It could've come From the asteroid belt,

And we have no clue What it could've been carrying.

Narrator: Biologists have discovered

That there are some organisms Capable of surviving in space.

There's things That we've observed

Like the tardigrade That can literally exist

In the vacuum of space Without dying.

Narrator: tardigrades are Water-based microanimals.

Some scientists believe They are proof of panspermia,

The theory that life on earth

Was seeded by organic material From outer space.

It's possible that The building blocks of life

Hitched a ride on meteorites,

And when they landed On our planet

During our planet's formation, Brought life with it.

Here they evolved, They found a new home,

And maybe we're the end Result of alien life.

Dotson: If it's theoretically possible

For organisms to come here And create life,

It's possible For them to come here

And exterminate it.

Narrator: 1918 -- spanish flu Sweeps across the world,

Infecting one-third Of the global population,

Killing 50 million.

Some astronomers theorize This deadly plague

Is the result Of space debris

Depositing frozen alien viruses Into the atmosphere.

Analysts consider whether The meteorite in peru

Is hosting a similarly Lethal substance.

If you have some type of durable Organism that can exist on,

Say, the surface of a meteor And make it to earth,

Who's to say it couldn't Survive the impact

And then breed from there.

[ sizzling ]

Narrator: investigators analyze Soil samples

From the crater site And discover it does,

Indeed, contain some lethal.

It's not the meteorite That brought the sickness,

But it's what the meteorite Hit on the ground,

Which turned out to be Groundwaters full of arsenic.

**

Narrator: arsenic is a Metalloid, a natural element

Which has some Metallic properties.

Found in trace amounts in soil, Water, and even food,

Just an ounce Can kill 3,000 people.

**

Lester: something hit the earth Really hard and really fast.

What does that do? Anything on the surface

Is going to get thrown up Into the air.

In this case, The meteorite hit material

That was rich in arsenic.

All of a sudden, That's in the air,

People are breathing it, And that's why they got sick.

If you're infected by arsenic,

There's no shortage of bad Things that can happen to you.

You can organ failure. You can die.

You can get cancer.

Narrator: arsenic is found Throughout the earth's crust,

And well over 100 meteorites Fall to earth every year.

This event could happen again.

It could happen anywhere.

We have to live with the reality That a meteor strike

Could happen anytime, Anyplace, and hit anything.

**

Narrator: coming up, Kim jong-un's terror camps.

Mosher: once you go in, It's a very good chance

That you're never Going to come out.

**

Narrator: high-resolution Earth-imaging satellites

Regularly map every square mile Of north korea,

Searching for suspicious New structures or activity.

This area is a place that We really know nothing about.

We're unable to get sources On the ground,

And so we rely On satellite technology

And images to find out What little we can.

On may 4th, 2018, The quickbird 2 satellite spots

Something unusual just north Of the capital, pyongyang.

This image is really weird.

We have a long a succession Of structures

All arranged In a very orderly manner.

Mosher: it looks like A giant radio antenna

That was just sort of laid On the ground

With this central pole

And all of these little bars Crossing it.

Munoz: the way things are Set up, it's very regimented.

It's very military.

**

Narrator: when investigators Closely analyze the image,

They identify what appear To be fenced-off sections

Within the facility.

Looking again at the image, You can see

This main access road And these series of buildings

With areas to pen people in.

Maybe this is a prison camp.

Narrator: intelligence sources Estimate north korea has

As many as 25 prison camps Holding up to 120,000 inmates.

Ordinary people Frequently go missing,

Never to be heard from again.

You never know if saying The wrong thing

Could cause your neighbor To denounce you,

And you might end up In a prison camp

For the rest Of your very short life.

Narrator: some international Observers liken the prisons

To the nazi concentration camps Of world war 2.

Munoz: There's overcrowding,

Prisoners are routinely beaten, Interrogated.

We're talking deprivation To the point of starvation,

Rape, torture, and Essentially worked to death.

Once you go in, It's a very good chance

That you're never Going to come out.

**

Narrator: yet when Image analyst marc d'antonio

Studies the perimeter Of the mystery structure,

He casts doubt On the prison-camp theory.

D'antonio: Where are the high fences

That would stop prisoners From leaving?

There don't seem to be Guard towers here,

So we're missing A lot of stuff.

Narrator: D'antonio's analysis

Yields another possible clue To the mystery.

You can see down the center, Between the whole rows,

There's a water canal.

What's in the building Requires water,

So in my view, we're looking At some type of farm here.

**

Narrator: Historic images of the region

Reveal the facility Appears in 1997.

Ex-c.I.A. Operative lindsay Moran discovers this time period

Corresponds to a devastating Famine that hit the country.

This was one of the greatest Famines of our time,

And although the north Korean government will maintain

That only a few hundreds Of thousands of citizens died,

The more accurate estimates Are more likely in the millions.

Narrator: In 1995 and 1996,

Floods overwhelm north korea's Farms and grain reserves.

As people starve, The despotic leaders

Allocate the remaining supplies Based on the degree of loyalty

People display To the communist state.

Mosher: north korean farmers Have to give away

Most of their crop To the government.

During this time, They start hiding it

So that their families Can survive and they don't die.

Narrator: reports emerge That markets begin selling meat

Labeled, "Special," Which investigators believe

Are human remains.

This strikes fear within The hearts of the people.

They're not only starving,

But they're worried about Their kids being stolen

And possibly being converted Into food for humans.

Narrator: According to dissidents,

The facility in the image Is evidence

Of one of kim jong-il's Insane plans

To feed his starving people.

It turns out, it is a farm,

But with a completely unexpected Animal for north korea.

**

It's actually an ostrich farm.

**

Ostriches. Go figure

I'm happy to say That this is one

That I would never have guessed.

Narrator: coverage 16 feet In a single stride,

The ostrich is The ultimate fast food,

But it also carries a kick.

Their 4-inch-long claws can Disembowel with a single strike.

And the ostrich farmers Soon discover another problem

With kim jong-il's Birdbrained scheme.

It doesn't take a genius To figure out

That ostriches might not survive Well in north korea.

North korea has Really severe, cold winters,

And ostriches are known For thriving in arid,

Savanna habitats Of africa.

Narrator: The cold north korean winters

Drive the ostrich farmers To desperate lengths.

Moran: they end up Having to make special vests

For the birds to keep them Warm in the winter.

Can you just imagine These ostriches,

Which are already A really large, awkward bird,

Wearing these little jackets Around them.

Narrator: The ostrich farm does nothing To help the starving population.

The ostriches produce too little Meat at too high a cost.

Moran: there's distinctly The possibility

That this could be A breeding ground

Just for a delicacy That's enjoyed

Only by the uber elite, Kim jong-un and his cronies.

Schuttler: it's probably The most ridiculous attempt

In history To try to battle a famine

With a bird that's not Even native to the area.