Phantom Signals (2020–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - Soviet Doomsday Warning - full transcript
A Russian radio station has broadcast a signal nonstop since the Cold War.
Narrator: One phantom
signal has been broadcasting
24 hours a day,
Seven days a week for the last 40 years.
And we don't know why it exists.
Dr. Kislenko: If the
signal suddenly stops...
We will all be dead inside a few minutes.
Narrator: 2003, china sends
their first person into space.
Yang liwei is only in space for 21 hours
And is completely alone... and then...
Suddenly there's a knock.
I would have been scared out of my mind.
Narrator: Did yang liwei have a visitor?
An international team of earth scientists
Are studying ice cores taken
from antarctica and greenland.
They make a startling discovery...
A strange signal buried
deep in an ice core.
There had been a large
eruption of a volcano
That hadn't been documented.
The vast majority of people
who actually witnessed an event
Of that scale were likely killed.
Narrator: Endless streams of data,
Information bombarding
the planet from within
And from the furthest
stretches of the universe.
What messages do these
phantom signals hold?
Some signals are temporary
...quick blips on the radar,
Hums is that last minute
then fade into the ether.
But one phantom signal has been
broadcasting for 24 hours a day,
Seven days a week for the last 40 years...
But no one knows why.
Uvb 76 is affectionately
known as "the buzzer."
It is an a.M. Signal. [ radio buzzes ]
It's mostly a hum. It's
mostly a buzzing noise
That emanates, as one would expect from,
Let's say, a radio transmitter
That has emanated out of
the soviet union and russia.
And we don't know why it exists,
But we know that it came
out around the cold war.
Narrator: Russia has stayed
silent about the buzzer,
Never stating its purpose or
even admitting to its existence.
But the buzzer has a huge following
Trying to interpret its random signals
With the growth of the internet,
We have people that are actively monitoring
This thing all the time.
People have cataloged
all the little changes
That have happened
through the years on this thing.
But at its very core, it's this
buzzing noise that turns on,
Turns off...
Frequently intermixed with unusual
And frankly really creepy
commentary all in russian.
[ male voice speaking in russian ]
And human voices have been heard
In the background saying different things.
And it's that kind of
creepiness which has allowed us
To entertain all sorts of possibilities.
Narrator: Is this phantom
signal a meaningless remnant
From a cold war system,
Or does this simple tone foretell
Something far more sinister?
When it comes to the buzzer,
There are four prevailing theories.
The first one is really that
This is a ionospheric scientific test.
Not a lot of people buy it
because that's not consistent
With scientific protocols at that time,
And that doesn't seem
to be a logic behind it.
The second one is the idea
That this is what's
called a numbers station,
Which is an intelligence term to describe
How intelligence agencies
would communicate with spies.
Third possibility about the buzzer,
What's often referred to as a placeholder,
Meaning that the russian military reserves
Various radio frequencies for emergency,
Whether it's civil or military.
And then, of course,
The one that I think most
people are interested in
When it comes to the buzzer
is a possible fourth explanation,
And that's what's often referred
to as the dead hand signal.
Narrator: The dead hand was a
fabled automated destruct system.
In the case of a nuclear war,
If the dead hand did not
detect any remaining member
Of the russian military hierarchy,
It would trigger a full scale
missile launch against the west.
Nass: So if that buzzer
stops for x-plus minutes,
It would start world
war three and the soviets
Would start launching their missiles
At the united states or everywhere.
Narrator: The russians claimed
it was dismantled in the 1980s.
Is the buzzer proof that the
dead hand is still in operation?
So the question is why?
What's the purpose to keep it
Going for 40 years, to keep it powered?
We don't know.
Narrator: Uvb 76 first
came on the air waves
In the wake of the cold war in 1982.
Though it seems to be
coming from a military base,
Why does its signal intensify
after aggressions have cooled?
This is the era of ronald reagan,
Who, of course, beefs up the u.S. Military,
Invests heavily in existing systems
And then non-existent systems...
Things like the strategic
defense initiative, sdi,
Predicating anti-missile
defense is on satellites in space.
So if you frame it in that light,
The construction of a dead hand signal,
Sadly, it kind of "makes sense"
From a russian perspective.
Narrator: But what if the buzzer
has a simpler, more direct purpose?
In 2010, the fbi announced
the breakup of a secret
Russian intelligence ring
operating via shortwave radio.
The use of shortwave
for spies is really important
Because of the distances
it covers, the accuracy,
The sort of stability of the signal.
Nass: It bounces off of the atmosphere,
So we get an enhanced propagation
By using the atmosphere
in the ionization therein
To extend our signal out.
Dr. Kislenko: It is generally not
detectable, meaning that it can be operated
From outside a particular country
And broadcast inside a country.
That's imperative
So that the enemy doesn't come after you.
So it has been the medium of choice
For a lot of intelligence
networks throughout history,
Including today.
And that's important
because in today's world
Of particularly computer-based technology,
We often forget everything can be hacked.
So to some degree,
you're kind of going back
To old-school stuff, which
makes it more problematic
To intercept communications like this.
So there's an idea that
the buzzer is actually
What's often referred
to as a numbers station,
Which is an intelligence term.
The way you receive numbers stations is
You just turn your radio,
Likely just a little hand-held
shortwave receiver,
To that frequency at the right time of day,
And you will hear a human
being come over the line
And just say numbers and
those numbers can get decoded
To display a message.
Narrator: Is uvb 76 a secret
russian numbers station
Communicating sensitive intelligence
That could affect the world,
And how is it managing to
do this under everyone's nose?
Most people have this idea
when it comes to anything
Intelligence that is this world of
james bond and secret devices
And super sexy women
and guys with fancy cars.
And that's quite laughable, right?
Anybody who's worked inside
the intelligence community
Knows that's not the reality.
Intelligence sometimes
functions really simply.
It's not as high tech as you imagine.
And when it comes to
shortwave, that's particularly true.
It's the cheapest, most
efficient way to communicate.
Nass: The important thing
to remember with radio
Is as long as you're supplying
power to the transmitter
And the antenna system, it'll keep working.
What's nice about that is even
though everyone can hear it,
It's robust.
It doesn't depend on the internet.
It doesn't depend on a complicated scheme
Of being able to send data back and forth.
Narrator: The fact that radio is so
easy to receive really is the secret
To a numbers station's effectiveness
As an espionage tool.
Because they're using these one-time pads.
Dr. Kislenko: Which
are uniquely constructed
Alphanumeric sequencing
That's literally used once.
Narrator: The one-time pad is known
As the only mathematically
unbreakable system.
The letters of a message
are converted into numbers
And added to other numbers in
a process called false addition.
The recipient uses the same
page from his own one-time pad
With false subtraction
to translate the message.
There is nothing to crack.
There is no aspect of it that
we can figure out and get it
And then we will now be able
to crack all these messages.
No, they'll just make a
different one-time pad
And give that to the next person.
And then we've lost the trail.
Dr. Kislenko: So it's like you and I
speaking a new language every single day.
And that's why in the world of cryptology,
It's almost impossible to break them.
Narrator: Is the russian military
still sending out messages
Encoded using a one-time pad?
If so, what could these messages have said,
And who were they meant for?
So, I'm listening to buzzer.
Mikhail. Demetri. Zhenya. [ indistinct ]
Mikhail. Demetri. Zhenya. [ indistinct ]
Three numbers. 25.
[ man speaking in russian ]
919.
[ man speaking in russian ] zero, zero.
So he said three times [speaks in russian]
[ man speaking in russian ]
Which is "cancel, cancel, cancel."
And then he says, "over."
The tone of his voice doesn't change.
It's probably a list that he's reading off.
It does sound like it's a communication
That is destined for someone.
Narrator: Though it's possible
russia is transmitting coded messages
To russian intelligence abroad via uvb 76,
That doesn't explain the
constant buzz and the tones.
Do these noises also serve a purpose?
Some think so.
The big speculation, of course,
Is that the buzzer is a dead hand switch.
Narrator: The dead hand is a
legendary russian detonation signal
Meant to launch a full scale
nuclear attack on the west.
So if the signal suddenly stops,
There's going to be one of two reasons.
Narrator: Is the buzzer proof
that the dead hand signal is real?
Dr. Kislenko: Let's all pray
to whatever you believe in
That they've dismantled it altogether.
The other option is we will all
be dead inside a few minutes.
♪♪
Narrator: A series of buzzers
and tones has been broadcasting
At 4,625 hertz
For 24 hours a day for nearly 40 years.
Though we know the
station broadcasting the signal
Is somewhere in russia near estonia,
The content of the messages
And the significance of
the tones remains unknown.
While some speculate the
station is a relic from the cold war,
A numbers station barely in use,
Its continued activity raises questions.
This is what's fascinating
to me about the buzzer
Is it's not like a
traditional numbers station.
The buzzer doesn't seem to
be sending any information.
It's not imparting data
Because there's not a lot of
characteristic changes to it.
And it's not varied in the noise.
The noise is consistent and the same.
So the question is why? We don't know.
Narrator: Though some say
the importance of this station
Is in the numbers
broadcast on the station...
Others contend the mere
activity of the station itself
Has significance.
The big speculation, of
course, is that the buzzer
Is a dead man switch...
That if the buzzer were to stop,
it would start world war three.
Narrator: At the height of the
cold war, the russians believed
America's nuclear arsenal was so extensive
That it could wipe out russian
leadership in one fell swoop,
Cutting off any possible
retaliation from the kremlin.
To prevent this from happening,
The soviets created what
is called a dead hand signal.
Dr. Kislenko: In the 1970s, the soviet
union had spent most of the cold war
Trailing the united states, right,
Playing catch up in terms
of its nuclear capacity.
If you're russian, there is
a sort of they've got a gun
To my hand kind of, you
know, proposition constantly.
And that would in part explain their desire
To develop the system.
If the buzzer is a dead hand signal,
Then fundamentally its job
Is to keep the computer
thinking that life exists in russia,
Because the moment
that it thinks that it doesn't,
It activates and it has one mission,
Which is entirely
unstoppable once it's active,
Which is to retaliate with
a full scale nuclear attack
On presumably the united states.
Narrator: Nicknamed the doomsday
device, the dead hand signal
Would almost guarantee mutual annihilation
In the advent of a nuclear
bomb detonation in soviet russia.
Most experts suspect is
that it has been designed
To detect a mass of seismic activity,
I.E., an explosion that can't be explained,
And there has been
an inordinate light flash,
Which is consistent with a nuclear attack
And that all communications
as it knows them,
Both military and civilian, have collapsed.
Because those are the
hallmarks of a major nuclear attack.
I'm not scared by the buzzer
from a couple of reasons.
It's already stopped and then restarted.
Narrator: There have been
two instances of the buzzer
Going completely silent.
One was on June 5, 2010,
And again in August of that same year.
So is it also a psi ops campaign
That's not connected to anything?
The mere fact that it's there
is to mess with people like me
That that search about it online
and try to pick it up at home?
Narrator: If uvb 76 is not,
in fact, a dead hand signal,
Then does it serve other military purposes?
Dr. Kislenko: I think the vast
majority of intelligence scholars
Believe that this is a
military placeholder,
That basically this is the military testing
Its own capacity for
alertness, for readiness,
Narrator: Whether it's transmitting
messages to foreign spies
Or serving as a silent alarm
ahead of nuclear annihilation,
Uvb 76 is doing something.
This one is definitely going
to continue to be a mystery
Because until we are provided
some kind of new evidence,
Things can keep changing
And we're not getting a
larger picture of why it exists.
♪♪
Narrator: 2003, china sends
their first person into space,
An accomplishment
that the world is watching.
Yang liwei is only in space for 21 hours
And is completely alone in
a way that very few people
Can say they have ever been.
And then, while orbiting earth,
He hears someone knocking
on the body of the spaceship.
Dr. Proctor: Space is a vacuum
and it's not supposed to make sound.
Something knocking on
the outside of a spacecraft,
It just doesn't make sense.
Narrator: Sound travels
by vibrations of molecules
Through a medium like air.
In space, there is only one way
For yang liwei to hear the banging.
It takes physical contact
between objects in space
To transmit sound energy.
So if I'm, you know, one
inch away from the spacecraft
And I yell as loud as I can,
you won't be able to hear me.
But if I bang on the outside of it,
Then I create a resonance in the structure
Which is transmitted
Via sound through the
atmosphere in the structure.
Narrator: Could a meteorite or
other space debris be hitting the ship?
Most objects traveling in space
Are traveling at enormous speeds.
We're talking tens of
thousands of miles per hour.
Objects traveling at this speed
don't tend to bounce off objects
And make knocking sounds.
They tend to go through
the object like a bullet.
Dr. Williams: If you look at the
starboard radiator on endeavor
After we landed, it
looks more like a gunshot
Went through the thing.
And that's not surprising
Because a piece of debris in space
Is traveling in a ballistic trajectory.
Needless to say, larger debris
would just be catastrophic.
Narrator: Damage to the ship means
that yang liwei could lose atmosphere
And consciousness very quickly.
As an astronaut, if I hear a
sound I'm not familiar with,
I'm going to very quickly try
and figure out what that sound
Is because I want to be here tomorrow.
Narrator: Yang liwei didn't
admit that he heard the knocking
Until 13 years after his space flight.
The one thing that an
astronaut is not going to do
Is generally report something
weird happening in space.
You don't want people to think
you're crazy and not fit to fly.
♪♪
Narrator: China launches its
first manned spacecraft in 2003,
Making it the third nation after russia
And the usa to send a man into space.
Former fighter pilot, astronaut yang liwei,
Is manning the inaugural mission.
Everything is going like clockwork
Until he hears strange
banging against the ship.
It sounded like a wooden
mallet hitting a bucket.
[ clanging ]
Narrator: In an interview in 2016,
Yang liwei admitted that the
knocking made him nervous,
So he cautiously looked out the
porthole window and saw nothing.
No space debris.
Our job is to be able
to function flawlessly
In that environment,
Deal with those unforeseen circumstances
And document what is actually happening
So that others can learn
from the experience.
We can prepare for future missions.
Narrator: He checked everything thoroughly.
There was no damage to the cabin.
Yet the knocking continued.
[ clanging ]
The whole idea of being isolated
And just being a human being
Means that your willpower
and your ability to stay calm,
It can have ebbs and flows.
Every time we're in space,
We're learning more about
the body, about the brain
And how it interacts with space.
How does it change our perception
Of the world around us?
Narrator: It is well known that
sailors can experience hallucinations
After long periods in
the middle of the ocean
With no land in sight.
Does being in space
produce the same effect?
We live our daily lives knowing
we're attached to the earth
Because we feel gravity.
So imagine losing all
the cues that place you
And keep your upright stance or lying down
Or whatever position you
want to leave your body...
And all of that's gone both from gravity
And from vision around you.
You've got to feel a bit lost,
A bit dislocated from the world.
Arama: I'd like to think maybe
he actually heard something
That was really there.
I would say that's as plausible
as the other side of the coin,
That he was hallucinating and panicking
In a state of isolation, being alone.
Viggiani: With respect to astronauts,
They're probably the most highly
trained aviators on the planet.
There are no other better in
terms of physical endurance
And visual acuity and
just overall intelligence.
Dr. Proctor: Astronauts
are like the solid rock.
When we think of neil armstrong
and landing on the moon,
They are technically ready,
they're emotionally equipped.
And so something like this
Makes you think something
weird was going on here.
The only thing that we're left with
Is that somehow there are beings that can
Be on the outside of a craft.
Narrator: Yang liwei
isn't the only astronaut
To experience strange phenomena in space.
98% of these astronauts have expressed
That they were followed
by craft of unknown origin.
Delaney: As he flew his
capsule through orbital sunrise,
He noticed that it looked
like a whole series of fireflies
Were surrounding the capsule.
♪♪
Narrator: Astronaut yang liwei is piloting
The first manned space
mission launched by china.
While orbiting earth, he
hears a strange banging sound
Coming from outside his
shenzhou 5 spacecraft.
It makes a visual check inside and out
And can find nothing making the noise.
It is mind boggling to me that you could be
In a spacecraft orbiting our planet
And after years of training,
You know everything about the spacecraft,
And suddenly there's a knock,
A knock that appears
To be coming outside the craft.
How could you not freak out?
Narrator: Being alone in
places as vast as the ocean
Or space can exacerbate
stress and feelings of isolation,
Even cause hallucinations.
Was this what was happening to yang liwei?
These are the most expensive
machines that mankind
Has ever assembled to go into space.
If you put an astronaut in
charge of one of those craft,
You better be darn sure that
you got the right guy there.
And 98% of the situations
that involved astronauts,
They were the right people.
They had, as the vernacular
goes, they had the right stuff.
Narrator: Yang liwei
spent 21 hours in space.
After returning to earth, he spoke openly
About the noises he heard
And soon discovered that he was not alone.
A lot of the research that I've done,
98% of these astronauts have expressed
That they were followed
by craft of unknown origin.
Narrator: In 1962,
John glenn becomes the
first american to orbit the earth
And the mercury friendship 7 capsule.
While in space, he sees
mysterious lights twinkling.
As he flew his capsule
through orbital sunrise,
He noticed that it looked
like a whole series of fireflies
Were surrounding the capsule.
It was a little bit disconcerting.
Viggiani: What john glenn saw in space
Where the effluent discharge
of, I guess, liquid, urine
Or whatever it happens to be,
And in the the cold environment of space,
These things light up as crystals.
And as you move them out there,
There's no telling how these
things diffused themselves.
And it's very easy to see a conglomeration
Of these things doing strange things.
Narrator: John glenn's fireflies
had a rational explanation,
But other astronauts have
not been able to explain
Their strange encounters in space.
Viggiani: One of the astronaut
stories that we have on record
Is a shot of the earth.
And then we see a trail
of a ufo and going this way.
This particular instance has
been described by the air force
And by other pilots as
something very significant.
But as it would be told by nasa,
It was water coming off the spacecraft.
But it doesn't explain how
this ufo... what looked to be...
Just shot off into the
distance at blinding speed.
I think a lot of people at
nasa and in the general public
And in the government
completely discount this.
So as soon as you start
talking about ufos, you're nuts.
The one thing that an
astronaut is not going to do
Is generally report something
weird happening in space
Because you want to go up again.
You don't want people to think
you're crazy and not fit to fly.
Narrator: Perhaps that's why yang
himself didn't talk about the incident
Until 2016,
13 years after he heard the
strange knocking in space.
Do space agencies have a vested interest
In keeping these strange sightings quiet?
In the last 20 years,
We've really learned through
great pieces of equipment
Like the hubble space telescope
and the spitzer space telescope
That a large percentage of the star systems
In our universe have planets.
We're starting to get to the
point where now we can see
It's likely there's life in
other parts of the universe,
But the distances are so vast,
It's just really unlikely that some alien's
Going to come up and bang on our door.
Dr. Fallah: Any alien who could reach
our spaceship doesn't need to knock.
I fall on the rational.
I think that if it's not
something expanding or shifting
Due to temperatures going on in space,
Then it's going to be
something very physical.
And when you're in an
earth orbit, low earth orbit,
Every 90 minutes is one day.
That means every 45 minutes
You're going through sunrise and sunset.
The side of a spacecraft facing the sun
Can experience temperatures
of hundreds of degrees.
The side facing away from the sun will drop
To temperatures approaching
100 degrees below freezing.
There are many, many opportunities
For the spacecraft to
be creaking, shall we say.
Narrator: Thermal expansion
is a well known phenomenon.
It's hard to believe that an astronaut
Would not have known about it,
Or at least considered the possibility.
We can't prove that's happening.
But I'd be very surprised if
there was no sort of noise
At all just from the material
changes in spacecraft
As they're exposed to light and dark.
Narrator: With a lack of concrete evidence,
We may never know what
exactly knocked on the outside
Of yang liwei's ship in 2003.
You know, I think we would be very naive
To assume that we understand
All of the elements of exploring space,
Particularly as we go
farther away from the earth.
There's going to be unexplained things
That will happen to individuals
As they go back to the moon
and ultimately explore mars.
And whether it's exploring
space or exploring
The underwater world,
you still bump into the new,
The unforeseen, the inexplicable,
And that's the excitement
of doing what we do.
Narrator: In 2009, an
international team of earth scientists
Are studying ice cores taken
from antarctica and greenland.
They make a startling discovery.
A discovery was made
that basically showed us
There had been a large
eruption of a volcano
That hadn't been documented.
This deposit was substantial.
There was enough material
That had obviously been
produced by a volcano
For scientists to say, "hmm,
this probably correlates
With a pretty major eruption."
Moore: When a volcano erupts,
there's a huge amount of energy.
So you can see all these
kind of big cloud of gray ash
Kind of being ejected vertically
right into the stratosphere.
It's likely that this eruption
occurred in the early
1800s, so not a time when we had
A lot of very good monitoring
of worldwide events.
Narrator: By counting backwards
through the layers of ice in the sample,
Scientists were able to
estimate that this mega volcano
Erupted some time during 1808 and 1809
With enough massive
force that the ash it produced
Travels all the way to
greenland and antarctica.
Volcanic eruptions can put tens,
Hundreds of cubic kilometers
of material into the atmosphere.
Moore: The stratosphere,
it's about 10 or 12 miles
Up in the atmosphere.
And if you can inject
particles into the stratosphere,
They will live there for
months or even years.
Over time, that single source
of ash will be distributed
All the way around the globe.
Phoenix: A volcanic eruption
of this size could very well
Alter global effects that people
are experiencing with weather.
It could essentially blanket
the planet for a period of time
And actually help cool
The planet for a couple of years.
Narrator: A volcano that
catastrophic would be the largest
Ever seen in human history.
And up until 2009,
There was only one
volcano that held that title.
There was a volcanic eruption at tambora,
And that was a pretty large one.
It's absolutely cataclysmic.
Narrator: In 1815,
Mount tambora in indonesia
goes full mega volcano
And erupts with a force of
20,000 little boy atomic bombs.
The blast has heard all the
way in java, 1,600 miles away.
10,000 islanders are killed instantly.
When we're talking about putting
material into the atmosphere,
We're talking about fine grain material.
Heavy stuff, you know, like
if you're blasting boulders
Out of a volcano's caldera,
Then that's going to fall
to the ground pretty quickly.
But the vast majority of material
Which is being launched
at phenomenal velocities
Out of a caldera,
That material is very,
very fine-grained stuff.
And that will be carried to high altitudes
And then carried by the jet stream.
Narrator: The eruption of mount
tambora was powerful enough
To change the earth's
climate for several years.
This volcanic eruption has been linked now
To starting what we
call the little ice age.
Narrator: In 2009, an international team
Of earth scientists
Make expeditions to
antarctica and greenland
To collect ice cores.
Ice cores are a direct
archive of the earth's history
Captured in layers of glacier ice.
The long cylinders of ice
That geologists collect hold
a record of what the earth
Was like hundreds of
thousands of years ago.
The team from the
university of south dakota
Make a startling discovery
From just 200 years ago.
A discovery was made
That basically showed us
there had been a large eruption
Of a volcano that hadn't been documented.
Moore: When a volcano erupts,
there's a huge amount of gray ash
Ejected vertically right
into the stratosphere.
So over time, these
particles will then be rained out
Or snowed out onto the ice.
So what you'll find on the ice core
Is that within a year or
two of the volcanic eruption,
You will find a signature
Of that volcanic eruption in the ice core.
It's likely that this eruption
occurred in the early 1800s,
So not a time when we had
A lot of very good monitoring
of worldwide events.
That's the big problem.
So we pretty much know
All the volcanic eruptions going back
To probably about 1,000 a.D.
But there are events...
We see signals in the ice core
That have no known record to them.
And those are these
kind of mysterious events
That we don't know what actually happened.
Narrator: In 1815, mount
tambora erupts in indonesia.
At the time, it's the most massive volcano
In recorded history,
Killing 10,000 islanders instantly.
Anybody in the path of the ash that blows
Is going to be covered in
...ash is not fireplace soot.
It's not what happens when you burn wood.
Volcanic ash is made of
pulverized rock fragments,
And that pulverized
rock, if you breathe it in,
It will shred your air passageways.
Narrator: Tsunamis are
triggered in rivers of volcanic rock
And ash rains down from the
skies, burying entire villages.
Over 100 million tons
of sulfuric acid and ash
Fill the earth's stratosphere,
blocking out the sun.
Those are super volcanic eruptions,
And they drop the global temperature
For a couple of years.
You're talking about a lot of material
Being thrown into the
atmosphere to the jet streams
That is changing the atmosphere
And that changes the quality of sunlight.
There's a kind of a rapid cooling,
And that's because as soon
as you shut down the sun,
You can really cool the planet down.
And it doesn't take much to
produce crop failures because,
Again, crops are kind of tuned
to a certain temperature range.
Narrator: The year after tambora, 1816,
Was dubbed the year without a summer.
Crop failures and food shortages
Led to rioting in britain and France.
Dr. Kislenko: We talk about a dense fog.
The skies become a dark blue,
And for weeks and months afterwards,
There is fundamental
climate change in europe,
Tremendous agricultural
collapse and the freezing of waters
And things that are abnormal.
It gets woven into the
tapestry of european history.
Narrator: The effects were felt as
far away as america's eastern shore,
Where in may 1816, snow
and frost killed off crops
In massachusetts, new hampshire and vermont
And continued through the summer.
The famine was soon followed
by outbreaks of typhus and cholera
In many parts of the world.
In this instance, with
this volcanic eruption,
It is... has been linked now
To starting what we
call the little ice age.
Narrator: The little ice age was a
period of significant climate change
That happened between 1810 and 1819.
The mount tambora eruption has
long been considered the cause,
But scientists had never
understood what caused the dip
In temperatures before
tambora's eruption in 1815.
But now evidence of a
volcano potentially bigger
Than tambora cemented in an ice core.
How could it be that no one witnessed
An eruption so catastrophic?
It's even more complicated because we lack,
Especially going back far enough in time,
We lack historical documentation
for even major events,
Which, of course, in our
time and place is mystifying.
It's very possible that this volcano
Erupted very far from europe
Or where centers of the
written word where at the time.
So we need to look to what we're seeing
Preserved in the geologic record
And what people on the
ground at the time experienced.
The other option, of course,
is that it was noted and again,
Those records have been lost
Or have been sitting in some archive,
In some basement of some, you know, library
Which haven't actually been looked at yet.
Delaney: We have figured out
so much based upon the records
That go back literally 10,000 years.
Our forebears from all
around the planet figured out
When we hear stories from
all sorts of indigenous cultures,
They are talking to
us about a lot of events
That might sound almost mythical,
But they invariably have a basis in fact.
And so there is pieces of that tapestry
That are literally woven
together by people passing
That information on
down in the form of stories.
Narrator: And are there other clues
To this mysterious volcano's origins?
Phoenix: To find this eruption,
I would first look at the
coastal areas of south america
And then I would probably
look all along the ring of fire,
As the pacific region is often known
For its earthquake and volcanic activity.
So those are prime suspects in my mind.
Narrator: Could these mega
volcanoes ever come back to life?
This isn't a forest fire.
This isn't a storm on the horizon.
This is something distinctly different.
We don't like to say a
volcano is ever extinct extinct.
A lot of times we can say we believe
With all available evidence
That a volcano most
likely will not erupt again.
But you never really
want to write them off.
♪♪
Narrator: Ice core evidence
has convinced earth scientists
That a mega volcano erupted in 1809,
Plunging the world into a little ice age.
It's not hard to imagine a situation
Where you've got volcanic eruptions
Accumulating material in our atmosphere
That really does change
the balance of temperature
On our surface.
Narrator: This mysterious
mega volcano erupted six years
Before the catastrophic
mount tambora blast.
But mount tambora had witnesses
And the mystery eruption did not.
The problem is, is that
most first-hand experience
For things like volcanic eruptions,
The vast majority of people
who actually witnessed an event
Of that scale were likely killed in it
Or shortly thereafter
in a tsunami or in some,
You know, atmospheric condition.
Finding the clues that
will allow us to understand
This mystery eruption
is actually very important.
Narrator: If such a cataclysmic
eruption happened now, could it disappear
Without a trace?
A v.E.I. 8-level eruption in an area
That was densely populated
would kill millions of people.
We need to look at the
recent past for an example
Of what a very large eruption can do.
Narrator: The volcanic explosivity
index was developed in the early '80s
After the eruption of
mount st. Helens in oregon.
It measures the ejection
volume of a volcano,
With each step increasing by 10 times.
A lot of people think that a
mount st. Helens-type eruption
Is basically the biggest thing
that a volcano could produce,
And that's not the case.
To measure the volume
of volcanic eruptions,
Scientists use something
called the volcanic
Explosivity index... the v.E.I. Scale.
Mount st. Helens is a five
on the explosivity index.
Narrator: On may 18, 1980, mount st. Helens
Erupted with eight times
the force of every bomb
Dropped during world war two,
including the two atomic bombs.
A lateral blast released a
toxic spew that traveled down
The side of the volcano
at 300 miles per hour
And obliterated everything in its path.
Thousands of wildlife were decimated.
57 people were killed.
Hundreds of miles of road
and railways were destroyed.
Then, 11 years later, mount pinatubo
Erupts in the philippines.
It is v.E.I. 6...
10 times more powerful
than mount st. Helens.
722 people died and
200,000 were made homeless.
Even with such widespread devastation,
Pinatubo is 20 times
Less powerful than the estimated
size of the mystery eruption.
Could it happen again?
Vulcanology is a relatively young science.
The modern era of vulcanology only started
40 years ago this year
With the eruption of mount st. Helens.
Before then, we were monitoring
volcanoes around the world,
But it wasn't quite so systematic.
So it's super important for
geologists to add this eruption
To our catalog of
knowledge about vulcanology
Because it helps us
understand the frequency
A big eruption like this...
The frequency with which it could occur.
Oftentimes, we don't
see big eruptions like this.
Yellowstone hasn't
erupted for 640,000 years
Not in a big way.
I don't think there's
anything on the planet
With the possible exception of the seas,
That generates more
human history, mythology,
Belief systems, religion, if you like,
Than volcanoes do.
You have volcanoes shaping...
Profoundly shaping the history and cultures
Of the so-called ring
of fire, which is almost
All of the expanse of the pacific ocean.
Narrator: The ring of fire
traces the 25,000 mile outline
Around the pacific ocean
That is home to 75%
of the world's volcanoes
And 90% of the earthquakes.
It is ground zero for tectonic
shifts in the earth's crust.
This is where you have one tectonic plate
Diving under another.
As the plate that is diving gets deeper,
It gets hotter and the material melts.
So that rock, that previously
ocean floor rock, is melting,
And hot stuff rises.
That's basic physics.
So as the melting stuff
rises back to the surface,
A lot of times it forces
its way through the crust.
That's like a massive volcanic eruption.
Narrator: With no eyewitness accounts
And only ice core samples
as geological evidence,
Earth scientists can only speculate
The mystery eruption of 1809
Happened somewhere in the ring of fire.
Regardless of where this eruption occurred,
This is one of the events
that really shows us
The true nature of volcanoes.
They are forces of incredible creation
And terrible destruction.
The earth is actually creating new earth.
That's what it's doing.
It's giving birth to itself.
But in the process,
it often destroys lives.
In the 1800s,
Astronomy was beginning
to really come into its own.
We had a telescope courtesy
of galileo for about 200 years,
And by the time we got to
the turn of the 19th century,
Instrumentation,
observatories around the planet,
They were really making
some pretty neat observations.
And so there were a lot of
really good observers out there
Monitoring many aspects of the night sky.
Narrator: In 2014, over two centuries
After the devastating mystery eruption,
A team of earth
scientists unearth a journal
From a long forgotten
observatory in bogota, colombia,
Describing a strange cloud
That blocked out the sun at
the end of 1808 into early 1809.
Which is on possibly
the other side of the world
From where this volcano
may be, that described
The sun taking on a silvery
color, almost like the moon.
And of course, there was
also a description of the weather
Being colder and frost appearing
when they wouldn't expect it.
It's echoed by [indistinct],
Physician, an amateur astronomer,
And almost in the same
time frame, separate,
They are talking about, you know,
This tremendous agricultural collapse.
Narrator: Though science may
have advanced tremendously since
The 1809 eruption,
It's still difficult to predict volcanoes.
The ability to identify events
today anywhere on the planet
Is certainly much easier than
it has at any time in the past.
Not only do you have
satellite assets at all
Differing distances above
the surface of the earth,
Completely encircling the planet so that,
You know, you've got a 24/7,
365 vantage point of anything
happening on the earth
And with terrific resolution.
You would think the
volcanoes are easy to identify,
But they are not just this
v-shape that everyone thinks...
This inverted v.
A lot of times volcanoes
Take the shape of a caldera,
Which is essentially a
giant bowl-shaped area.
So the really, really biggest volcanoes,
They're the ones that
can erupt the largest.
Narrator: There are 1,500 active volcanoes
On the planet right now.
169 of them are in the u.S.
We do have potentially
active super volcanoes
And other very large
volcanoes around the world.
So it's something that
scientists need to understand.
So that's why a lot of us do what we do.
It's all about saving lives.
It's all about putting
pieces into the puzzle
That is our planet.
You know, we're humans.
We're tiny little creatures
on this great big living rock.
And we're trying to understand
why it ticks, what makes it...
What makes it change
and evolve the way it does,
And how can we learn to
live alongside gigantic hazards
Like a massive volcanic eruption?
♪♪
signal has been broadcasting
24 hours a day,
Seven days a week for the last 40 years.
And we don't know why it exists.
Dr. Kislenko: If the
signal suddenly stops...
We will all be dead inside a few minutes.
Narrator: 2003, china sends
their first person into space.
Yang liwei is only in space for 21 hours
And is completely alone... and then...
Suddenly there's a knock.
I would have been scared out of my mind.
Narrator: Did yang liwei have a visitor?
An international team of earth scientists
Are studying ice cores taken
from antarctica and greenland.
They make a startling discovery...
A strange signal buried
deep in an ice core.
There had been a large
eruption of a volcano
That hadn't been documented.
The vast majority of people
who actually witnessed an event
Of that scale were likely killed.
Narrator: Endless streams of data,
Information bombarding
the planet from within
And from the furthest
stretches of the universe.
What messages do these
phantom signals hold?
Some signals are temporary
...quick blips on the radar,
Hums is that last minute
then fade into the ether.
But one phantom signal has been
broadcasting for 24 hours a day,
Seven days a week for the last 40 years...
But no one knows why.
Uvb 76 is affectionately
known as "the buzzer."
It is an a.M. Signal. [ radio buzzes ]
It's mostly a hum. It's
mostly a buzzing noise
That emanates, as one would expect from,
Let's say, a radio transmitter
That has emanated out of
the soviet union and russia.
And we don't know why it exists,
But we know that it came
out around the cold war.
Narrator: Russia has stayed
silent about the buzzer,
Never stating its purpose or
even admitting to its existence.
But the buzzer has a huge following
Trying to interpret its random signals
With the growth of the internet,
We have people that are actively monitoring
This thing all the time.
People have cataloged
all the little changes
That have happened
through the years on this thing.
But at its very core, it's this
buzzing noise that turns on,
Turns off...
Frequently intermixed with unusual
And frankly really creepy
commentary all in russian.
[ male voice speaking in russian ]
And human voices have been heard
In the background saying different things.
And it's that kind of
creepiness which has allowed us
To entertain all sorts of possibilities.
Narrator: Is this phantom
signal a meaningless remnant
From a cold war system,
Or does this simple tone foretell
Something far more sinister?
When it comes to the buzzer,
There are four prevailing theories.
The first one is really that
This is a ionospheric scientific test.
Not a lot of people buy it
because that's not consistent
With scientific protocols at that time,
And that doesn't seem
to be a logic behind it.
The second one is the idea
That this is what's
called a numbers station,
Which is an intelligence term to describe
How intelligence agencies
would communicate with spies.
Third possibility about the buzzer,
What's often referred to as a placeholder,
Meaning that the russian military reserves
Various radio frequencies for emergency,
Whether it's civil or military.
And then, of course,
The one that I think most
people are interested in
When it comes to the buzzer
is a possible fourth explanation,
And that's what's often referred
to as the dead hand signal.
Narrator: The dead hand was a
fabled automated destruct system.
In the case of a nuclear war,
If the dead hand did not
detect any remaining member
Of the russian military hierarchy,
It would trigger a full scale
missile launch against the west.
Nass: So if that buzzer
stops for x-plus minutes,
It would start world
war three and the soviets
Would start launching their missiles
At the united states or everywhere.
Narrator: The russians claimed
it was dismantled in the 1980s.
Is the buzzer proof that the
dead hand is still in operation?
So the question is why?
What's the purpose to keep it
Going for 40 years, to keep it powered?
We don't know.
Narrator: Uvb 76 first
came on the air waves
In the wake of the cold war in 1982.
Though it seems to be
coming from a military base,
Why does its signal intensify
after aggressions have cooled?
This is the era of ronald reagan,
Who, of course, beefs up the u.S. Military,
Invests heavily in existing systems
And then non-existent systems...
Things like the strategic
defense initiative, sdi,
Predicating anti-missile
defense is on satellites in space.
So if you frame it in that light,
The construction of a dead hand signal,
Sadly, it kind of "makes sense"
From a russian perspective.
Narrator: But what if the buzzer
has a simpler, more direct purpose?
In 2010, the fbi announced
the breakup of a secret
Russian intelligence ring
operating via shortwave radio.
The use of shortwave
for spies is really important
Because of the distances
it covers, the accuracy,
The sort of stability of the signal.
Nass: It bounces off of the atmosphere,
So we get an enhanced propagation
By using the atmosphere
in the ionization therein
To extend our signal out.
Dr. Kislenko: It is generally not
detectable, meaning that it can be operated
From outside a particular country
And broadcast inside a country.
That's imperative
So that the enemy doesn't come after you.
So it has been the medium of choice
For a lot of intelligence
networks throughout history,
Including today.
And that's important
because in today's world
Of particularly computer-based technology,
We often forget everything can be hacked.
So to some degree,
you're kind of going back
To old-school stuff, which
makes it more problematic
To intercept communications like this.
So there's an idea that
the buzzer is actually
What's often referred
to as a numbers station,
Which is an intelligence term.
The way you receive numbers stations is
You just turn your radio,
Likely just a little hand-held
shortwave receiver,
To that frequency at the right time of day,
And you will hear a human
being come over the line
And just say numbers and
those numbers can get decoded
To display a message.
Narrator: Is uvb 76 a secret
russian numbers station
Communicating sensitive intelligence
That could affect the world,
And how is it managing to
do this under everyone's nose?
Most people have this idea
when it comes to anything
Intelligence that is this world of
james bond and secret devices
And super sexy women
and guys with fancy cars.
And that's quite laughable, right?
Anybody who's worked inside
the intelligence community
Knows that's not the reality.
Intelligence sometimes
functions really simply.
It's not as high tech as you imagine.
And when it comes to
shortwave, that's particularly true.
It's the cheapest, most
efficient way to communicate.
Nass: The important thing
to remember with radio
Is as long as you're supplying
power to the transmitter
And the antenna system, it'll keep working.
What's nice about that is even
though everyone can hear it,
It's robust.
It doesn't depend on the internet.
It doesn't depend on a complicated scheme
Of being able to send data back and forth.
Narrator: The fact that radio is so
easy to receive really is the secret
To a numbers station's effectiveness
As an espionage tool.
Because they're using these one-time pads.
Dr. Kislenko: Which
are uniquely constructed
Alphanumeric sequencing
That's literally used once.
Narrator: The one-time pad is known
As the only mathematically
unbreakable system.
The letters of a message
are converted into numbers
And added to other numbers in
a process called false addition.
The recipient uses the same
page from his own one-time pad
With false subtraction
to translate the message.
There is nothing to crack.
There is no aspect of it that
we can figure out and get it
And then we will now be able
to crack all these messages.
No, they'll just make a
different one-time pad
And give that to the next person.
And then we've lost the trail.
Dr. Kislenko: So it's like you and I
speaking a new language every single day.
And that's why in the world of cryptology,
It's almost impossible to break them.
Narrator: Is the russian military
still sending out messages
Encoded using a one-time pad?
If so, what could these messages have said,
And who were they meant for?
So, I'm listening to buzzer.
Mikhail. Demetri. Zhenya. [ indistinct ]
Mikhail. Demetri. Zhenya. [ indistinct ]
Three numbers. 25.
[ man speaking in russian ]
919.
[ man speaking in russian ] zero, zero.
So he said three times [speaks in russian]
[ man speaking in russian ]
Which is "cancel, cancel, cancel."
And then he says, "over."
The tone of his voice doesn't change.
It's probably a list that he's reading off.
It does sound like it's a communication
That is destined for someone.
Narrator: Though it's possible
russia is transmitting coded messages
To russian intelligence abroad via uvb 76,
That doesn't explain the
constant buzz and the tones.
Do these noises also serve a purpose?
Some think so.
The big speculation, of course,
Is that the buzzer is a dead hand switch.
Narrator: The dead hand is a
legendary russian detonation signal
Meant to launch a full scale
nuclear attack on the west.
So if the signal suddenly stops,
There's going to be one of two reasons.
Narrator: Is the buzzer proof
that the dead hand signal is real?
Dr. Kislenko: Let's all pray
to whatever you believe in
That they've dismantled it altogether.
The other option is we will all
be dead inside a few minutes.
♪♪
Narrator: A series of buzzers
and tones has been broadcasting
At 4,625 hertz
For 24 hours a day for nearly 40 years.
Though we know the
station broadcasting the signal
Is somewhere in russia near estonia,
The content of the messages
And the significance of
the tones remains unknown.
While some speculate the
station is a relic from the cold war,
A numbers station barely in use,
Its continued activity raises questions.
This is what's fascinating
to me about the buzzer
Is it's not like a
traditional numbers station.
The buzzer doesn't seem to
be sending any information.
It's not imparting data
Because there's not a lot of
characteristic changes to it.
And it's not varied in the noise.
The noise is consistent and the same.
So the question is why? We don't know.
Narrator: Though some say
the importance of this station
Is in the numbers
broadcast on the station...
Others contend the mere
activity of the station itself
Has significance.
The big speculation, of
course, is that the buzzer
Is a dead man switch...
That if the buzzer were to stop,
it would start world war three.
Narrator: At the height of the
cold war, the russians believed
America's nuclear arsenal was so extensive
That it could wipe out russian
leadership in one fell swoop,
Cutting off any possible
retaliation from the kremlin.
To prevent this from happening,
The soviets created what
is called a dead hand signal.
Dr. Kislenko: In the 1970s, the soviet
union had spent most of the cold war
Trailing the united states, right,
Playing catch up in terms
of its nuclear capacity.
If you're russian, there is
a sort of they've got a gun
To my hand kind of, you
know, proposition constantly.
And that would in part explain their desire
To develop the system.
If the buzzer is a dead hand signal,
Then fundamentally its job
Is to keep the computer
thinking that life exists in russia,
Because the moment
that it thinks that it doesn't,
It activates and it has one mission,
Which is entirely
unstoppable once it's active,
Which is to retaliate with
a full scale nuclear attack
On presumably the united states.
Narrator: Nicknamed the doomsday
device, the dead hand signal
Would almost guarantee mutual annihilation
In the advent of a nuclear
bomb detonation in soviet russia.
Most experts suspect is
that it has been designed
To detect a mass of seismic activity,
I.E., an explosion that can't be explained,
And there has been
an inordinate light flash,
Which is consistent with a nuclear attack
And that all communications
as it knows them,
Both military and civilian, have collapsed.
Because those are the
hallmarks of a major nuclear attack.
I'm not scared by the buzzer
from a couple of reasons.
It's already stopped and then restarted.
Narrator: There have been
two instances of the buzzer
Going completely silent.
One was on June 5, 2010,
And again in August of that same year.
So is it also a psi ops campaign
That's not connected to anything?
The mere fact that it's there
is to mess with people like me
That that search about it online
and try to pick it up at home?
Narrator: If uvb 76 is not,
in fact, a dead hand signal,
Then does it serve other military purposes?
Dr. Kislenko: I think the vast
majority of intelligence scholars
Believe that this is a
military placeholder,
That basically this is the military testing
Its own capacity for
alertness, for readiness,
Narrator: Whether it's transmitting
messages to foreign spies
Or serving as a silent alarm
ahead of nuclear annihilation,
Uvb 76 is doing something.
This one is definitely going
to continue to be a mystery
Because until we are provided
some kind of new evidence,
Things can keep changing
And we're not getting a
larger picture of why it exists.
♪♪
Narrator: 2003, china sends
their first person into space,
An accomplishment
that the world is watching.
Yang liwei is only in space for 21 hours
And is completely alone in
a way that very few people
Can say they have ever been.
And then, while orbiting earth,
He hears someone knocking
on the body of the spaceship.
Dr. Proctor: Space is a vacuum
and it's not supposed to make sound.
Something knocking on
the outside of a spacecraft,
It just doesn't make sense.
Narrator: Sound travels
by vibrations of molecules
Through a medium like air.
In space, there is only one way
For yang liwei to hear the banging.
It takes physical contact
between objects in space
To transmit sound energy.
So if I'm, you know, one
inch away from the spacecraft
And I yell as loud as I can,
you won't be able to hear me.
But if I bang on the outside of it,
Then I create a resonance in the structure
Which is transmitted
Via sound through the
atmosphere in the structure.
Narrator: Could a meteorite or
other space debris be hitting the ship?
Most objects traveling in space
Are traveling at enormous speeds.
We're talking tens of
thousands of miles per hour.
Objects traveling at this speed
don't tend to bounce off objects
And make knocking sounds.
They tend to go through
the object like a bullet.
Dr. Williams: If you look at the
starboard radiator on endeavor
After we landed, it
looks more like a gunshot
Went through the thing.
And that's not surprising
Because a piece of debris in space
Is traveling in a ballistic trajectory.
Needless to say, larger debris
would just be catastrophic.
Narrator: Damage to the ship means
that yang liwei could lose atmosphere
And consciousness very quickly.
As an astronaut, if I hear a
sound I'm not familiar with,
I'm going to very quickly try
and figure out what that sound
Is because I want to be here tomorrow.
Narrator: Yang liwei didn't
admit that he heard the knocking
Until 13 years after his space flight.
The one thing that an
astronaut is not going to do
Is generally report something
weird happening in space.
You don't want people to think
you're crazy and not fit to fly.
♪♪
Narrator: China launches its
first manned spacecraft in 2003,
Making it the third nation after russia
And the usa to send a man into space.
Former fighter pilot, astronaut yang liwei,
Is manning the inaugural mission.
Everything is going like clockwork
Until he hears strange
banging against the ship.
It sounded like a wooden
mallet hitting a bucket.
[ clanging ]
Narrator: In an interview in 2016,
Yang liwei admitted that the
knocking made him nervous,
So he cautiously looked out the
porthole window and saw nothing.
No space debris.
Our job is to be able
to function flawlessly
In that environment,
Deal with those unforeseen circumstances
And document what is actually happening
So that others can learn
from the experience.
We can prepare for future missions.
Narrator: He checked everything thoroughly.
There was no damage to the cabin.
Yet the knocking continued.
[ clanging ]
The whole idea of being isolated
And just being a human being
Means that your willpower
and your ability to stay calm,
It can have ebbs and flows.
Every time we're in space,
We're learning more about
the body, about the brain
And how it interacts with space.
How does it change our perception
Of the world around us?
Narrator: It is well known that
sailors can experience hallucinations
After long periods in
the middle of the ocean
With no land in sight.
Does being in space
produce the same effect?
We live our daily lives knowing
we're attached to the earth
Because we feel gravity.
So imagine losing all
the cues that place you
And keep your upright stance or lying down
Or whatever position you
want to leave your body...
And all of that's gone both from gravity
And from vision around you.
You've got to feel a bit lost,
A bit dislocated from the world.
Arama: I'd like to think maybe
he actually heard something
That was really there.
I would say that's as plausible
as the other side of the coin,
That he was hallucinating and panicking
In a state of isolation, being alone.
Viggiani: With respect to astronauts,
They're probably the most highly
trained aviators on the planet.
There are no other better in
terms of physical endurance
And visual acuity and
just overall intelligence.
Dr. Proctor: Astronauts
are like the solid rock.
When we think of neil armstrong
and landing on the moon,
They are technically ready,
they're emotionally equipped.
And so something like this
Makes you think something
weird was going on here.
The only thing that we're left with
Is that somehow there are beings that can
Be on the outside of a craft.
Narrator: Yang liwei
isn't the only astronaut
To experience strange phenomena in space.
98% of these astronauts have expressed
That they were followed
by craft of unknown origin.
Delaney: As he flew his
capsule through orbital sunrise,
He noticed that it looked
like a whole series of fireflies
Were surrounding the capsule.
♪♪
Narrator: Astronaut yang liwei is piloting
The first manned space
mission launched by china.
While orbiting earth, he
hears a strange banging sound
Coming from outside his
shenzhou 5 spacecraft.
It makes a visual check inside and out
And can find nothing making the noise.
It is mind boggling to me that you could be
In a spacecraft orbiting our planet
And after years of training,
You know everything about the spacecraft,
And suddenly there's a knock,
A knock that appears
To be coming outside the craft.
How could you not freak out?
Narrator: Being alone in
places as vast as the ocean
Or space can exacerbate
stress and feelings of isolation,
Even cause hallucinations.
Was this what was happening to yang liwei?
These are the most expensive
machines that mankind
Has ever assembled to go into space.
If you put an astronaut in
charge of one of those craft,
You better be darn sure that
you got the right guy there.
And 98% of the situations
that involved astronauts,
They were the right people.
They had, as the vernacular
goes, they had the right stuff.
Narrator: Yang liwei
spent 21 hours in space.
After returning to earth, he spoke openly
About the noises he heard
And soon discovered that he was not alone.
A lot of the research that I've done,
98% of these astronauts have expressed
That they were followed
by craft of unknown origin.
Narrator: In 1962,
John glenn becomes the
first american to orbit the earth
And the mercury friendship 7 capsule.
While in space, he sees
mysterious lights twinkling.
As he flew his capsule
through orbital sunrise,
He noticed that it looked
like a whole series of fireflies
Were surrounding the capsule.
It was a little bit disconcerting.
Viggiani: What john glenn saw in space
Where the effluent discharge
of, I guess, liquid, urine
Or whatever it happens to be,
And in the the cold environment of space,
These things light up as crystals.
And as you move them out there,
There's no telling how these
things diffused themselves.
And it's very easy to see a conglomeration
Of these things doing strange things.
Narrator: John glenn's fireflies
had a rational explanation,
But other astronauts have
not been able to explain
Their strange encounters in space.
Viggiani: One of the astronaut
stories that we have on record
Is a shot of the earth.
And then we see a trail
of a ufo and going this way.
This particular instance has
been described by the air force
And by other pilots as
something very significant.
But as it would be told by nasa,
It was water coming off the spacecraft.
But it doesn't explain how
this ufo... what looked to be...
Just shot off into the
distance at blinding speed.
I think a lot of people at
nasa and in the general public
And in the government
completely discount this.
So as soon as you start
talking about ufos, you're nuts.
The one thing that an
astronaut is not going to do
Is generally report something
weird happening in space
Because you want to go up again.
You don't want people to think
you're crazy and not fit to fly.
Narrator: Perhaps that's why yang
himself didn't talk about the incident
Until 2016,
13 years after he heard the
strange knocking in space.
Do space agencies have a vested interest
In keeping these strange sightings quiet?
In the last 20 years,
We've really learned through
great pieces of equipment
Like the hubble space telescope
and the spitzer space telescope
That a large percentage of the star systems
In our universe have planets.
We're starting to get to the
point where now we can see
It's likely there's life in
other parts of the universe,
But the distances are so vast,
It's just really unlikely that some alien's
Going to come up and bang on our door.
Dr. Fallah: Any alien who could reach
our spaceship doesn't need to knock.
I fall on the rational.
I think that if it's not
something expanding or shifting
Due to temperatures going on in space,
Then it's going to be
something very physical.
And when you're in an
earth orbit, low earth orbit,
Every 90 minutes is one day.
That means every 45 minutes
You're going through sunrise and sunset.
The side of a spacecraft facing the sun
Can experience temperatures
of hundreds of degrees.
The side facing away from the sun will drop
To temperatures approaching
100 degrees below freezing.
There are many, many opportunities
For the spacecraft to
be creaking, shall we say.
Narrator: Thermal expansion
is a well known phenomenon.
It's hard to believe that an astronaut
Would not have known about it,
Or at least considered the possibility.
We can't prove that's happening.
But I'd be very surprised if
there was no sort of noise
At all just from the material
changes in spacecraft
As they're exposed to light and dark.
Narrator: With a lack of concrete evidence,
We may never know what
exactly knocked on the outside
Of yang liwei's ship in 2003.
You know, I think we would be very naive
To assume that we understand
All of the elements of exploring space,
Particularly as we go
farther away from the earth.
There's going to be unexplained things
That will happen to individuals
As they go back to the moon
and ultimately explore mars.
And whether it's exploring
space or exploring
The underwater world,
you still bump into the new,
The unforeseen, the inexplicable,
And that's the excitement
of doing what we do.
Narrator: In 2009, an
international team of earth scientists
Are studying ice cores taken
from antarctica and greenland.
They make a startling discovery.
A discovery was made
that basically showed us
There had been a large
eruption of a volcano
That hadn't been documented.
This deposit was substantial.
There was enough material
That had obviously been
produced by a volcano
For scientists to say, "hmm,
this probably correlates
With a pretty major eruption."
Moore: When a volcano erupts,
there's a huge amount of energy.
So you can see all these
kind of big cloud of gray ash
Kind of being ejected vertically
right into the stratosphere.
It's likely that this eruption
occurred in the early
1800s, so not a time when we had
A lot of very good monitoring
of worldwide events.
Narrator: By counting backwards
through the layers of ice in the sample,
Scientists were able to
estimate that this mega volcano
Erupted some time during 1808 and 1809
With enough massive
force that the ash it produced
Travels all the way to
greenland and antarctica.
Volcanic eruptions can put tens,
Hundreds of cubic kilometers
of material into the atmosphere.
Moore: The stratosphere,
it's about 10 or 12 miles
Up in the atmosphere.
And if you can inject
particles into the stratosphere,
They will live there for
months or even years.
Over time, that single source
of ash will be distributed
All the way around the globe.
Phoenix: A volcanic eruption
of this size could very well
Alter global effects that people
are experiencing with weather.
It could essentially blanket
the planet for a period of time
And actually help cool
The planet for a couple of years.
Narrator: A volcano that
catastrophic would be the largest
Ever seen in human history.
And up until 2009,
There was only one
volcano that held that title.
There was a volcanic eruption at tambora,
And that was a pretty large one.
It's absolutely cataclysmic.
Narrator: In 1815,
Mount tambora in indonesia
goes full mega volcano
And erupts with a force of
20,000 little boy atomic bombs.
The blast has heard all the
way in java, 1,600 miles away.
10,000 islanders are killed instantly.
When we're talking about putting
material into the atmosphere,
We're talking about fine grain material.
Heavy stuff, you know, like
if you're blasting boulders
Out of a volcano's caldera,
Then that's going to fall
to the ground pretty quickly.
But the vast majority of material
Which is being launched
at phenomenal velocities
Out of a caldera,
That material is very,
very fine-grained stuff.
And that will be carried to high altitudes
And then carried by the jet stream.
Narrator: The eruption of mount
tambora was powerful enough
To change the earth's
climate for several years.
This volcanic eruption has been linked now
To starting what we
call the little ice age.
Narrator: In 2009, an international team
Of earth scientists
Make expeditions to
antarctica and greenland
To collect ice cores.
Ice cores are a direct
archive of the earth's history
Captured in layers of glacier ice.
The long cylinders of ice
That geologists collect hold
a record of what the earth
Was like hundreds of
thousands of years ago.
The team from the
university of south dakota
Make a startling discovery
From just 200 years ago.
A discovery was made
That basically showed us
there had been a large eruption
Of a volcano that hadn't been documented.
Moore: When a volcano erupts,
there's a huge amount of gray ash
Ejected vertically right
into the stratosphere.
So over time, these
particles will then be rained out
Or snowed out onto the ice.
So what you'll find on the ice core
Is that within a year or
two of the volcanic eruption,
You will find a signature
Of that volcanic eruption in the ice core.
It's likely that this eruption
occurred in the early 1800s,
So not a time when we had
A lot of very good monitoring
of worldwide events.
That's the big problem.
So we pretty much know
All the volcanic eruptions going back
To probably about 1,000 a.D.
But there are events...
We see signals in the ice core
That have no known record to them.
And those are these
kind of mysterious events
That we don't know what actually happened.
Narrator: In 1815, mount
tambora erupts in indonesia.
At the time, it's the most massive volcano
In recorded history,
Killing 10,000 islanders instantly.
Anybody in the path of the ash that blows
Is going to be covered in
...ash is not fireplace soot.
It's not what happens when you burn wood.
Volcanic ash is made of
pulverized rock fragments,
And that pulverized
rock, if you breathe it in,
It will shred your air passageways.
Narrator: Tsunamis are
triggered in rivers of volcanic rock
And ash rains down from the
skies, burying entire villages.
Over 100 million tons
of sulfuric acid and ash
Fill the earth's stratosphere,
blocking out the sun.
Those are super volcanic eruptions,
And they drop the global temperature
For a couple of years.
You're talking about a lot of material
Being thrown into the
atmosphere to the jet streams
That is changing the atmosphere
And that changes the quality of sunlight.
There's a kind of a rapid cooling,
And that's because as soon
as you shut down the sun,
You can really cool the planet down.
And it doesn't take much to
produce crop failures because,
Again, crops are kind of tuned
to a certain temperature range.
Narrator: The year after tambora, 1816,
Was dubbed the year without a summer.
Crop failures and food shortages
Led to rioting in britain and France.
Dr. Kislenko: We talk about a dense fog.
The skies become a dark blue,
And for weeks and months afterwards,
There is fundamental
climate change in europe,
Tremendous agricultural
collapse and the freezing of waters
And things that are abnormal.
It gets woven into the
tapestry of european history.
Narrator: The effects were felt as
far away as america's eastern shore,
Where in may 1816, snow
and frost killed off crops
In massachusetts, new hampshire and vermont
And continued through the summer.
The famine was soon followed
by outbreaks of typhus and cholera
In many parts of the world.
In this instance, with
this volcanic eruption,
It is... has been linked now
To starting what we
call the little ice age.
Narrator: The little ice age was a
period of significant climate change
That happened between 1810 and 1819.
The mount tambora eruption has
long been considered the cause,
But scientists had never
understood what caused the dip
In temperatures before
tambora's eruption in 1815.
But now evidence of a
volcano potentially bigger
Than tambora cemented in an ice core.
How could it be that no one witnessed
An eruption so catastrophic?
It's even more complicated because we lack,
Especially going back far enough in time,
We lack historical documentation
for even major events,
Which, of course, in our
time and place is mystifying.
It's very possible that this volcano
Erupted very far from europe
Or where centers of the
written word where at the time.
So we need to look to what we're seeing
Preserved in the geologic record
And what people on the
ground at the time experienced.
The other option, of course,
is that it was noted and again,
Those records have been lost
Or have been sitting in some archive,
In some basement of some, you know, library
Which haven't actually been looked at yet.
Delaney: We have figured out
so much based upon the records
That go back literally 10,000 years.
Our forebears from all
around the planet figured out
When we hear stories from
all sorts of indigenous cultures,
They are talking to
us about a lot of events
That might sound almost mythical,
But they invariably have a basis in fact.
And so there is pieces of that tapestry
That are literally woven
together by people passing
That information on
down in the form of stories.
Narrator: And are there other clues
To this mysterious volcano's origins?
Phoenix: To find this eruption,
I would first look at the
coastal areas of south america
And then I would probably
look all along the ring of fire,
As the pacific region is often known
For its earthquake and volcanic activity.
So those are prime suspects in my mind.
Narrator: Could these mega
volcanoes ever come back to life?
This isn't a forest fire.
This isn't a storm on the horizon.
This is something distinctly different.
We don't like to say a
volcano is ever extinct extinct.
A lot of times we can say we believe
With all available evidence
That a volcano most
likely will not erupt again.
But you never really
want to write them off.
♪♪
Narrator: Ice core evidence
has convinced earth scientists
That a mega volcano erupted in 1809,
Plunging the world into a little ice age.
It's not hard to imagine a situation
Where you've got volcanic eruptions
Accumulating material in our atmosphere
That really does change
the balance of temperature
On our surface.
Narrator: This mysterious
mega volcano erupted six years
Before the catastrophic
mount tambora blast.
But mount tambora had witnesses
And the mystery eruption did not.
The problem is, is that
most first-hand experience
For things like volcanic eruptions,
The vast majority of people
who actually witnessed an event
Of that scale were likely killed in it
Or shortly thereafter
in a tsunami or in some,
You know, atmospheric condition.
Finding the clues that
will allow us to understand
This mystery eruption
is actually very important.
Narrator: If such a cataclysmic
eruption happened now, could it disappear
Without a trace?
A v.E.I. 8-level eruption in an area
That was densely populated
would kill millions of people.
We need to look at the
recent past for an example
Of what a very large eruption can do.
Narrator: The volcanic explosivity
index was developed in the early '80s
After the eruption of
mount st. Helens in oregon.
It measures the ejection
volume of a volcano,
With each step increasing by 10 times.
A lot of people think that a
mount st. Helens-type eruption
Is basically the biggest thing
that a volcano could produce,
And that's not the case.
To measure the volume
of volcanic eruptions,
Scientists use something
called the volcanic
Explosivity index... the v.E.I. Scale.
Mount st. Helens is a five
on the explosivity index.
Narrator: On may 18, 1980, mount st. Helens
Erupted with eight times
the force of every bomb
Dropped during world war two,
including the two atomic bombs.
A lateral blast released a
toxic spew that traveled down
The side of the volcano
at 300 miles per hour
And obliterated everything in its path.
Thousands of wildlife were decimated.
57 people were killed.
Hundreds of miles of road
and railways were destroyed.
Then, 11 years later, mount pinatubo
Erupts in the philippines.
It is v.E.I. 6...
10 times more powerful
than mount st. Helens.
722 people died and
200,000 were made homeless.
Even with such widespread devastation,
Pinatubo is 20 times
Less powerful than the estimated
size of the mystery eruption.
Could it happen again?
Vulcanology is a relatively young science.
The modern era of vulcanology only started
40 years ago this year
With the eruption of mount st. Helens.
Before then, we were monitoring
volcanoes around the world,
But it wasn't quite so systematic.
So it's super important for
geologists to add this eruption
To our catalog of
knowledge about vulcanology
Because it helps us
understand the frequency
A big eruption like this...
The frequency with which it could occur.
Oftentimes, we don't
see big eruptions like this.
Yellowstone hasn't
erupted for 640,000 years
Not in a big way.
I don't think there's
anything on the planet
With the possible exception of the seas,
That generates more
human history, mythology,
Belief systems, religion, if you like,
Than volcanoes do.
You have volcanoes shaping...
Profoundly shaping the history and cultures
Of the so-called ring
of fire, which is almost
All of the expanse of the pacific ocean.
Narrator: The ring of fire
traces the 25,000 mile outline
Around the pacific ocean
That is home to 75%
of the world's volcanoes
And 90% of the earthquakes.
It is ground zero for tectonic
shifts in the earth's crust.
This is where you have one tectonic plate
Diving under another.
As the plate that is diving gets deeper,
It gets hotter and the material melts.
So that rock, that previously
ocean floor rock, is melting,
And hot stuff rises.
That's basic physics.
So as the melting stuff
rises back to the surface,
A lot of times it forces
its way through the crust.
That's like a massive volcanic eruption.
Narrator: With no eyewitness accounts
And only ice core samples
as geological evidence,
Earth scientists can only speculate
The mystery eruption of 1809
Happened somewhere in the ring of fire.
Regardless of where this eruption occurred,
This is one of the events
that really shows us
The true nature of volcanoes.
They are forces of incredible creation
And terrible destruction.
The earth is actually creating new earth.
That's what it's doing.
It's giving birth to itself.
But in the process,
it often destroys lives.
In the 1800s,
Astronomy was beginning
to really come into its own.
We had a telescope courtesy
of galileo for about 200 years,
And by the time we got to
the turn of the 19th century,
Instrumentation,
observatories around the planet,
They were really making
some pretty neat observations.
And so there were a lot of
really good observers out there
Monitoring many aspects of the night sky.
Narrator: In 2014, over two centuries
After the devastating mystery eruption,
A team of earth
scientists unearth a journal
From a long forgotten
observatory in bogota, colombia,
Describing a strange cloud
That blocked out the sun at
the end of 1808 into early 1809.
Which is on possibly
the other side of the world
From where this volcano
may be, that described
The sun taking on a silvery
color, almost like the moon.
And of course, there was
also a description of the weather
Being colder and frost appearing
when they wouldn't expect it.
It's echoed by [indistinct],
Physician, an amateur astronomer,
And almost in the same
time frame, separate,
They are talking about, you know,
This tremendous agricultural collapse.
Narrator: Though science may
have advanced tremendously since
The 1809 eruption,
It's still difficult to predict volcanoes.
The ability to identify events
today anywhere on the planet
Is certainly much easier than
it has at any time in the past.
Not only do you have
satellite assets at all
Differing distances above
the surface of the earth,
Completely encircling the planet so that,
You know, you've got a 24/7,
365 vantage point of anything
happening on the earth
And with terrific resolution.
You would think the
volcanoes are easy to identify,
But they are not just this
v-shape that everyone thinks...
This inverted v.
A lot of times volcanoes
Take the shape of a caldera,
Which is essentially a
giant bowl-shaped area.
So the really, really biggest volcanoes,
They're the ones that
can erupt the largest.
Narrator: There are 1,500 active volcanoes
On the planet right now.
169 of them are in the u.S.
We do have potentially
active super volcanoes
And other very large
volcanoes around the world.
So it's something that
scientists need to understand.
So that's why a lot of us do what we do.
It's all about saving lives.
It's all about putting
pieces into the puzzle
That is our planet.
You know, we're humans.
We're tiny little creatures
on this great big living rock.
And we're trying to understand
why it ticks, what makes it...
What makes it change
and evolve the way it does,
And how can we learn to
live alongside gigantic hazards
Like a massive volcanic eruption?
♪♪