All language subtitles for Ripleys Believe It Or Not s01e02_English

I'm taking extreme risks.

I do put my life on the line.

Some can squirt.
Some can exude.

Toxic, acidic...

I shape energy, turning
impossible into possible.

His madness is beauty.

This vehicle is hot.
It's ready to explode and flip.

♪♪

ZACH: Who's got
to clean that up?

CAMPBELL: 100 years ago,
Robert Ripley went on a quest

to the farthest reaches
of the globe

in search of the extraordinary
and unusual.

Today, the adventure continues,

searching for the world's
most bizarre,

astonishing secrets...

♪♪

...on
"Ripley's Believe It or Not!"

♪♪

We rely on our vision
for up to 80%

of the information we take in,

and yet, there are whole worlds
around us hidden in plain sight.

I'm Bruce Campbell.

Time to take a trip
into the unseen.

♪♪

Millions of people walk the
New York City streets every day,

so many familiar sights

and yet...so much
uncharted territory.

♪♪

INVADES:
My name is Vic Invades,

and I'm a Brooklyn, NYC,
photographer.

♪♪

CAMPBELL: You never know where
in New York's five boroughs

Vic will turn up next,

but you can be sure it will
be hazardous to his health.

INVADES: Oh, my God.

♪♪

CAMPBELL:
Today, Vic is taking on

one of his steepest
challenges yet,

confronting extreme heights
and extreme weather

to catch one moment in time,
his next unbelievable photo.

INVADES: Look at that fog.

You can't see [bleep]

♪♪

♪♪

I developed a passion.

♪♪

When I'm hanging above the city,

I get a feeling
of being one with the city.

[ Camera shutter clicking ]

I have a unique way of looking
at the city,

and I wanted to share it with
the people around the world.

When shooting from above, I love
the way the buildings converge,

and I love
the bird's-eye view.

♪♪

I just love the way I see
the people move below,

and I see how the city is
just moving right below me,

and I see how life
is just so continuous.

♪♪

I've always been
a born adventurer.

The only training I had
was life training,

climbing on jungle gyms,
you know, just being a kid.

My friends and I,
sometime we would go

into abandoned buildings.

We were doing this
at, like, 14, 16.

CAMPBELL: Born Victor Thomas

in Brooklyn's
Clinton Hill neighborhood,

Vic is an urban explorer,
a breed of radical adventurers

who probe the city's
secret spaces.

♪♪

These days,
Vic is elevating his game.

♪♪

INVADES: I figured out that
people are so into shock value,

sometimes people
want to see you take risks,

so I took the risk first,
and I used the risk

as a opportunity
to get my talent out there.

CAMPBELL:
The higher Vic climbed,

the more his social-media
following grew

and so did his need
to up the ante.

INVADES:
We on the bridge for real.

Alright?
Want to come back in?

Hey, guys, go back in.

Sometimes I feel more scared
than excited

because I know what can happen.

♪♪

CAMPBELL:
Vic takes no precautions,

no harness, no tether, no net.

He chances death with each
and every photograph.

INVADES:
I'm taking extreme risks.

A majority of the time,
I do put my life on the line

when I do put my foot
over a ledge

or, like, even if I hold
my camera over a ledge,

it's, like, I'm still
putting someone in danger.

If I don't make sure I'm safe,
I can kill myself,

or I can kill someone else.

♪♪

CAMPBELL: Today, Vic
and a photographer friend

are on a mission
to capture a view of New York

no one has ever seen.

♪♪

INVADES:
I'm climbing 60 flights up.

You know,
I feel the burn in my knees.

I feel fatigued.

Sometimes I say to myself,
"Damn, what am I doing here?"

But it's like, "Nah, man.

Sometimes the passion
is in the work."

Getting to that final entrance
of the roof

is a feeling
you can't necessarily describe.

I feel like I just
won the lottery.

♪♪

Like, that's just the orgasm
right there.

Take a picture of me
if you see me up here.

[ Speaks indistinctly ]

Good, you?

It's adrenaline,
but the adrenaline

comes from the image
that I produce.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

CAMPBELL: But this climb

is about to test Vic
like never before.

Out of nowhere,
a blanket of fog rolls in.

INVADES: Bro, look.
Oh, my God.

♪♪

Can't see [bleep]

Ooh.

CAMPBELL: Vic is trapped up
on the ladder 60 stories up,

blinded by fog.

♪♪

But against the odds,
he gets what he came for.

♪♪

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

♪♪

INVADES:
I'm about to come down.

♪♪

I feel like the city is, like,
in the palm of my hand.

♪♪

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

[ Horns honking ]

Far from the skyscrapers
of New York,

there's abandoned musicians
that slow down time itself.

♪♪

KULASH:
When you see an OK Go video,

I don't want you to say,

"It's a cool idea,
but I don't believe it."

I want you to see it and go,
"Humans can do that?"

Or "We live in a world
where that's possible?"

♪♪

Spray paint rig is
the same scene as this ideally.

CAMPBELL: Fans around the world
love OK Go's tunes.

Now they're working on a project
that aims to expand time itself,

stretching 4.2 seconds
of stunts

into an action-packed
3 1/2-minute music video.

Believe it...

MAN: Action.

♪♪

...or not.

♪♪

We've loved OK Go
for, like, 15 years-ish.

When we were
in middle school, yeah.

When they came out,
yeah, is sort of

when we started
getting into them.

ETHAN: This band has done
a really great job

pushing the limits of what it
means to make a music video...

...in a insane, creative way.

I constantly have to tell
my friends

that those videos are not fake.

[ Cheers and applause ]

♪♪

♪ You're right ♪

♪ There's nothing
more lovely ♪

CAMPBELL:
It all started decades ago

on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

♪♪

My name is Timothy Nordwind,

and I'm the bass player
in OK Go.

KULASH: Tim and I have known
each other

since we were 11 years old.

When we first met
at summer camp in the late '80s,

we had an art teacher who would
give really insane instructions,

like touch the paper
with your mind,

and touch the still life
with your hand,

and then draw
the difference, man,

and then he would wait
over your shoulder

for sometimes 5 or 6 minutes
just going,

"Okay, okay, okay, go."

It was an inside joke
for a long time,

and when we started the band
I guess about 10 years later,

it was the first choice
for a name.

NORDWIND: OK Go's music,
there's definitely

an experimental aspect
of what we do,

exploring the gray areas
of everything,

going to the places that no
one thinks to go to creatively.

That's where we like to exist.

CAMPBELL: In 2016, lead singer
Damian Kulash had a vision

for the band's
upcoming music video.

♪ So open your arms to me ♪

♪ Open your arms to me ♪

The song was sort of about
how you can go through years

and not all that
much will happen,

and then in an instant...

[snaps fingers]
...boom.

Love happens or death happens
or birth happens.

In the moment of a car accident,

suddenly time slows down
for you dramatically,

and, of course,
it's not slowing down,

but you are packing
in a million more memories,

and, of course,
you're experiencing it

much more differently, and your
brain is flooded with chemicals

that make you experience
it much more differently.

CAMPBELL:
When a person is scared,

a region of the brain
called the amygdala

becomes more active, laying down
an extra set of memories,

and the more memories we store
of a frightening event,

the longer and bigger
the event grows in our minds.

That's why one terrifying moment
can feel like an eternity.

In this moment, a million
tiny things are happening.

If you could get down into that
level and choreograph that,

look what would happen.

We realized pretty quickly that
slow motion isn't one thing.

Slow motion is everything that's
too slow for us to normally see.

But some things
are 10 times too slow.

Some things are a thousand
times too slow.

Some things are several hundred
thousand times too slow.

You've got this camera
that's shooting 8,000 frames

a second, which is many,

many hundreds of times
faster than normal cameras,

meaning many hundreds of times
slower than real life.

CAMPBELL: Damian's concept
requires the band

to film 325 distinct
background stunts

using a range of props
like watermelons

filled with colored liquid.

Each of these millisecond-long
stunts will then be slowed down

20,000% to match
the beat of the song.

KULASH: When we are firing
the projectiles

through the watermelons,

that entire shot is 1/10
of a second long.

The camera is going so fast.

CAMPBELL: Finally, it's time
to record the band.

Hey!

KULASH: To keep things in time
with the song,

we need to be
millisecond accurate.

We have to be that specific.

We thought we had been
in the planning.

But if the air pressure
behind it is in decrease,

it's just the differential
between this and that.

The last round of tests
right before we shoot,

we got there,
and we were not...

We weren't even close.

And now they fall
on me.

[ Loud thud ]

CAMPBELL:
Will the pieces fall into place,

or is OK Go finally out of time?

♪♪

They'll exude so much slime
that you can't hold onto them.

♪♪

You see a boat
smack into another boat,

and they both explode...

When you're engulfed in that
fireball, that's horrific.

♪♪

The band OK Go wants to show
that every moment,

every second is packed
with thousands of micro moments.

And now
they fall on me.

[ Loud thud ]

I would like to have
this camera there.

It was so complex,
we needed a scientist.

CAMPBELL:
To reveal this hidden world,

they're using high-tech cameras

to make 4.2 seconds last
for 3 1/2 minutes.

The first one is going
to very little.

His name was Fluffy,

which is
obviously very exciting.

I have a platform
that I developed

that allows me that flexibility.

It has, you know,
analog to digital input.

KULASH: He also was like,
"You know, last time

I had to do something
this accurate,

I was working on nuclear bombs."

NORDWIND:
The level and depth we go in

to show these micro moments
that the human eye can't see,

I think, is really beautiful
and feels profound.

325 micro moments
rolled into 4.2 seconds,

that's what the boys in OK
Go are determined to do.

Okay, go.

MAN: And action.

[ Explosions ]

[ Cheers and applause ]

Now it's time to unpack those
seconds into the one moment.

♪ There's nothing
more profound ♪

♪ Than the certainty ♪

♪ Than the certainty ♪

♪ That all of this will end ♪

NORDWIND: You can't go back in
the past or at least not yet,

and you can't travel into
the future or at least not yet,

but what you do have
is right now,

and the best thing
until we figure out time travel

is to make sure that the moments
you're living in count.

♪ The one thing we remember ♪

♪ And this will be ♪

KULASH: In a lot of OK Go
videos, the invisible world

we're looking for
is bigger than humanity,

bigger than our normal
experience of humanity is.

Like, this is what
everyday life is like,

but in this video,
what's nice is that,

is the invisible world

is the one
that's smaller than we are.

♪♪

If you're as mesmerized as I am

by the slow-motion
obliteration of fruit,

just wait until you see
what comes up next --

a world of warfare few people
ever lay eyes on

or would ever want to.

Stand by for World War Spew.

♪♪

Believe it or not,
sharp teeth and claws

aren't the only way animals
defend themselves.

♪♪

Some can squirt.
Some can exude.

CAMPBELL: An arsenal
of weaponized body fluids...

They can also shoot fragments
of their intestine.

♪♪

CAMPBELL:
One scientist has seen it all,

and now he's ranking the top
animal defense mechanisms.

♪♪

How gross can it get?

What are the contents
of each projectile fluid?

Today, I've got a doctor with me

who knows all about creatures
who spill their guts.

♪♪

I really love looking at
bizarre, interesting behaviors.

CAMPBELL:
This guy has spent his career

slogging through the muck,

searching out the hidden world
of animal secretions.

Consider the challenge of simply
surviving and reproducing.

You need defenses.

One way to do that --

bleed noxious chemicals,

shoot out projectile vomit.

Another way -- to spew
from specialized glands,

toxic, acidic, gooey chemicals.

CAMPBELL: How does Dr. Klein
rank this animal weaponry,

a potent formula of factors
that include the surprising,

the disgusting and the toxic?

Time to battle.

Coming in last on our list
at number 7,

a body-melting saliva.

Giant water bugs have this beak,
this proboscis,

this piercing,
injecting mouth part,

and what they do is,
they can inject a saliva,

and it can extract liquid-form
food from its prey,

and they're a delicacy
in some parts of the world,

so rich in proteins
and a culinary delight to some.

♪♪

CAMPBELL: The stench coming up
at number 6 lasts for weeks

unless you chemically
neutralize the sulfur.

Number 6 on our list,
a terrible odor.

Skunks, classic examples,
that black and white

is a high-contrast warning
because shabango,

can eject this
putrid-smelling defense

from its anal glands,

those unforgettable
anal scent glands.

[ Laughs ]

♪♪

CAMPBELL: Synchronized spewing
is part of what earns

these ants a number-5 ranking.

Spew type number 5,
acid spray.

Ants.

These are Formica ants.

They make these massive nests.

They don't have stingers.

Instead, they spew this formic
acid at great distances.

Oh, that's marvelous, beautiful.

♪♪

CAMPBELL:
In a potentially deadly

but respectable
fourth-place finish,

voluminous body slime.

The hagfish.

Hagfish are bottom dwellers,

and they're fish that can exude
through their pores

this ooze that,

when it makes contact
with water,

forms this frothy,
quickly expanding goo

that can suffocate or entrap
a potential predator.

They'll exude so much slime
that you can't hold onto them,

so much slime
that volumetrically,

it's far more than
its own body volume.

♪♪

Seems impossible.

♪♪

CAMPBELL: Checking in at
number 3, puking up your guts.

Ribbon worms.

There are many species

that can avert the front part
of their digesta system.

Let's see what we have here.

Whoa, there we go.

This gooey, sticky,
sometimes toxic branching,

and in some species,
poison can be injected.

Bung!

Aah!

♪♪

CAMPBELL: And the runner-up
on our list of horrors,

boiling-hot toxins.

DR. KLEIN: Bombardier beetles
have this remarkable defense

where they can swivel
the tip of their abdomen

in the direction
of a potential predator

and pa-pow...

an explosion,

a micro explosion.

You can see this little cloud,
this little puff.

The chemical that can be,
upon pulsing from their bodies,

nearly boiling, so this is,
in Fahrenheit, 212 degrees,

so when they direct it
to an ant and pop, pop, pop,

can potentially kill
those predators.

♪♪

CAMPBELL: Barrett's journey
has led him

through smelly anal glands

and boiling-hot
toxic butt spray,

but one contender remains,
and you'll never believe

what this lone-star badass
does to defend itself.

♪♪

The first time you press
a button, you're shaky.

You're nervous.

A lot could go wrong.

♪♪

We've followed
Dr. Barrett Klein's journey

into the invisible world
of animals that spew,

spray, ooze and exude,

but one little-known
phenomenon tops them all.

♪♪

This lizard stands out
among spewers

for its stunning precision
and surprising execution.

Phrynosoma --
Texas horned lizard, spiky,

has really tough scales
to protect itself,

but Texas horned lizards
have another remarkable defense.

CAMPBELL: They spew a fluid
we might be familiar with

but in a totally
new and toxic form.

That's because these lizards
eat venomous ants.

Incredibly, the venom
doesn't affect them at all.

It's just stored in their blood
like a gun in a holster,

and when it's time
for a quick draw,

you can't believe
what you're seeing...

♪♪

...projectile toxic blood
shot from the eyes.

Man, during "Evil Dead,"
why didn't we think of that?

DR. KLEIN: They can produce
blood from the eye socket.

They can shoot blood
a fair distance

that can also be
somewhat acidic or toxic.

♪♪

A spewing defense
should inspire respect,

fear, repulsion, admiration,
an actual celebration.

The diversity of life
on planet Earth is marvelous.

♪♪

Oh! Ew! Oh!

The natural world has
some disturbing weapons.

We're about to meet a family
of effects masters

with a few weapons
of their own,

but if they do their job right,
you'll never see them.

The Kutcher boys have worked
on some of Hollywood's

biggest projects,
from "San Andreas"

to "Tombstone,"
from "NCIS" to "Jackass."

MAN #2: Whoo!

Now as they prepare
for their next big film...

♪♪

...they're testing out
something bigger,

better and more hard-core
than anything before,

an explosion so dangerous,

it could trim the Kutcher family
from a trio to a solo act.

Can they pull it off?

This vehicle is hot.
It's ready to explode and flip.

Or will a single miscalculation
end in disaster?

♪♪

For this family, it's just
another day at the office.

Here we come.

Believe it...

or not.

♪♪

Under the tutelage
of their father,

veteran effects guru
Matt Kutcher,

Zach and Matt Jr.
have driven nose-first

into the hotbed of Hollywood's
stunts and special effects.

ZACH: If I had to describe
my father to somebody

who had never met him --
determined, driven and crazy

in a way
that just builds success.

His madness is beauty
in everything he does.

♪♪

CAMPBELL:
The boys should know.

They've had a front-row seat
for their dad's work

since they were young.

They lived in that environment
with me,

and they traveled
to all the places

I've been to for the most part
with me on movie sets.

I didn't really go to normal
public-school system.

I woke up every day and went
to work with my dad,

and he had tutors that would
come out and educate us on set.

MATT JR.: I think we've grown
a lot as a family,

and I think at the point
in our careers,

we're beginning to work
with each other

rather than
for each other, right?

MAN #3:
And three, two, one, go.

♪♪

So if you see somebody go
through the broken window,

you see a car flip over
and explode,

you see a boat,
you know, driving along

and smacking into another boat,
and they both explode...

...that's us.

Full-time badass.

[ Laughs ]

CAMPBELL:
Movie stunts got their start

at the beginning
of the 20th century

with comedians
like Buster Keaton

and Charlie Chaplin.

♪♪

But it wasn't until the 1960s
and '70s

that the implementation
of air-compression technology,

explosions and bullet squibs
that modern-day stunts

began to take shape.

By the 1980s,
everything was bigger,

faster and even more dangerous

with 21 stunt men
dying on the job.

Now in the 21st century,

it's a whole new frontier
thanks to CGI.

Lots of planning goes in,
but in the end,

the hand of
the stunt coordinator

should be totally invisible.

♪♪

Today, Matt and his boys
are allowing us under the hood

as they test out
their latest stunt.

MATT: The gag is in the script
is that the car comes sliding

in at high speed,
and a hand grenade gets thrown,

and the car gets blown up and
blows over in a spectacular way.

CAMPBELL: But can they pull off
this killer trick

without exploding themselves
in the process?

MATT: I think the worst thing
in this stunt

could be complete
catastrophic failure,

and it would prematurely
detonate for some reason.

When you're engulfed in that
fireball, that's horrific.

Alright.
Effect is hot.

[ Explosion ]

♪♪

Wild car stunts are the holy
grail of action films,

and they have to look real.

That's why there's an effects
crew like the Kutcher boys

pulling all the strings
and pushing all the buttons.

[ Explosion ]

This is the first time they've
ever attempted this stunt.

Everyone here knows the risks.

At any one given time on these
sets, a lot could go wrong.

What we're about to do
is dangerous.

We're going to be smart
about it,

and then we're going to make
sure we don't screw it up.

♪♪

CAMPBELL: Matt Sr. is driving,

and Zach
is in the passenger seat,

but Matt Jr.
has the most vital role,

pushing the button
on the flipper,

a machine packed
with highly compressed air

that can launch a car
20 feet into the sky

at the push of a button.

The timing is critical.

A few seconds off,

and the flipper could launch
the car on top of his father

and brother,
killing them instantly.

The first time you press
a button, you're shaky.

You're nervous.

If it wasn't my brother,
I wouldn't trust it.

You just don't want
to mess it up.

CAMPBELL:
The entire team is in place,

but it will take pinpoint
precision to get it right.

Alright.
Effects is hot.

♪♪

Here we come.

♪♪

♪♪

♪

MATT: The car is going
a tremendous distance,

nice big fireball,
but the flipper,

it's off the ground
4 or 5 feet,

but the computer
is gonna go back

and remove that flipper,
so you don't see it.

Unless you saw it
in the slow motion,

you wouldn't have known
that happens.

Your naked eye
would never pick that up.

♪♪

I don't know that I wanted
to get my children

involved in this business,
but since they are now,

and they're excelling at it
at such a high rate of speed

and at such a high level for
their age, it's extraordinary.

I love watching it every day.

♪♪

ZACH: Who's got
to clean that up?

[ Laughter ]

♪♪

The Kutcher boys have a knack
for tearing things apart.

This next groovy guy uses
good vibrations

to put things together.

♪♪

Gravity glue is the glue
that holds the cosmos together.

It's also the glue
that holds this together.

♪♪

Marker.

My name is Michael Grab.

Um...

I balance rocks.

[ Laughs ]

♪♪

Well, I balance rocks
on the surface.

I would say a better answer is,
I shape energy.

I transform energy.

♪♪

CAMPBELL: The first question
people always ask --

Is it glued?

GRAB: My whole aesthetic
with gravity glue is, like,

it has to look like
an alien did it...

...something not of this world.

CAMPBELL:
The next question is,

how in the world did he do it?

Believe it or not,
Michael creates these structures

with nothing more than
a collection of rocks,

his two hands
and an uncanny connection

to the invisible
forces around us.

GRAB: I don't really have time
or space in my brain

to think about
all these different aspects.

It's more like this almost
universal process

is acting through me.

CAMPBELL: Now Michael is raising
the stakes again,

pushing those invisible forces
to a whole new place.

GRAB: I'm trying to achieve
something that I don't know

if it's gonna work or not,

turning impossible
into possible.

♪♪

I moved to Boulder in 2002
to start going to college at CU.

I went through kind of
a psychedelic phase in my life,

where I was experimenting with
that realm of experience a lot.

♪♪

I was hanging with a friend
at the creek,

and we're both just kind of
losing our minds

a little bit

and kind of naturally
fell into this activity

of stacking rocks.

LOVE: When I first saw
Michael's work,

it kind of felt unreal to me.

I just couldn't quite wrap
my head around

how that was happening.

GRAB:
It was just the first moment

I realized,
"Hey, this is really cool.

It's a great way
to empty the mind."

♪♪

CAMPBELL:
Every rock is unique,

sculpted by time
and the elements,

and without flat,
consistent surfaces,

balancing them
is incredibly tricky...

♪♪

...but Michael sees and feels
what most of us can't.

GRAB: My fingers kind of become
like antennae,

and I'm feeling
literal vibrations

that are coming
through the rocks.

It's basically like seismic
waves but on a miniature scale.

CAMPBELL: When two continental
plates slam into each other,

massive vibrations
ricochet around the globe.

Scientists measure these seismic
waves on the Richter scale,

assigning them a number
based on their intensity.

Michael's superhuman senses
allow him to feel vibrations

too small to register
on any scale.

He uses these minute
seismic waves

to find the center
of gravity for each stone.

GRAB: So every time a rock
contacts another rock,

you can feel the vibration
travel through the rock,

so I kind of triangulate
the balance that way

just by feeling
these subtle vibrations.

♪♪

CAMPBELL: Michael started
posting his work online,

and within months,
an audience started to grow.

GRAB: The Internet caught wind
of what I was doing,

and it just spread
all around the world.

CAMPBELL: Michael is
commissioned to create

sculptures around the globe.

♪♪

Today, Michael will construct
another tower of impossibility.

Will gravity hold his
work together,

or will it drag him down?

HAMMERMEISTER:
We do live in a cave,

but we're not necessarily
Neanderthals.

♪♪

34-year-old Michael Grab

has made a career
out of balancing rocks

by using the forces
of gravity.

Now Michael has a new challenge.

Let's see if he
can keep it together.

♪♪

GRAB:
I have to lift this huge weight

that's basically maxing out
one of my arms

and at the same time

keep this precarious structure
stable with my other arm.

And if I fail, then I have
to start all over again.

♪♪

LOVE: That's when it becomes
really magical,

to see that silhouette
with that little, tiny point.

Michael has turned
playing with rocks

into a very successful career
and art form

and inspirational medium.

♪♪

Michael's trip has taken him
all around the world and beyond,

but what better setting
for a trip beyond belief

than the Land of Oz?

♪♪

The Australian Outback.

Summer temperatures here
can reach 118 degrees.

In that kind of heat,
the average person can sweat

more than 2 quarts
of liquid per hour,

and once you're out of fluid,
your organs start shutting down.

If you're standing on the roof,
you can definitely fry an egg.

CAMPBELL:
How can people thrive

in one of the most inhospitable
places on the planet?

The answer lies
hidden underground,

believe it or not.

♪♪

The name Coober Pedy
is aboriginal

for "white man in a hole."

Indeed, the landscape
is riddled with pockmarks

from over 100 years
of mining.

If you're not wary, you can
fall down 60 feet straight down.

There has been quite
a few people

who have sort of fallen
down shafts.

CAMPBELL:
It's what you're not seeing

that tells the real story
of this place.

JOHNSON: Opal.

CAMPBELL: 70% of the world's
supply comes from right here.

But that's not the only thing
luring people

to this dusty town.

It's the subterranean life.

HAMMERMEISTER:
We do live in a cave,

but we're not necessarily
Neanderthals.

We don't roll the rock
shut at night anymore.

We do have doors.

CAMPBELL: Thomas Hammermeister
is one of 1,700 Coober Pedians

living under the desert
and inside the ground.

♪♪

With all the amenities
of a suburban neighborhood,

the town today is a far cry
from its hellish beginnings

over a century ago.

In 1915, 14-year-old
Willy Hutchison

was prospecting for gold

with his family
near Coober Pedy.

Dehydrated by the scorching
temperatures

and running out of water,

Willy's dad sent him
to find a well.

Willy not only came back
with a full canteen

but with a bag of gemstones.

Coober Pedy quickly became
an important mining town,

and for the next century,

fortune seekers from around
the globe

set up camp
in hopes of scoring big.

♪♪

HAMMERMEISTER: In our family,
Dad was an opal miner.

When I was about 6 years old,
he said,

"Boy, this is
the Garden of Eden,"

and we looked outside, and there
was a dust storm blowing,

and I'm thinking,
"Yeah, I'm not getting it."

♪♪

Underneath the searing
Outback of Australia,

the inhabitants of Coober Pedy

have forged a mining community
with a twist.

♪♪

HAMMERMEISTER: I know why my mum
nearly died of fright

when she saw the place
because it was desperate.

There was no trees,
and nothing grows.

There was no running water.

You had a 44-gallon drum
per family per week,

which was not a lot of water,

so you got as much rainwater
as you could when it rained,

and sometimes it didn't rain
for quite a few years.

CAMPBELL: Water shortage
is no longer an issue,

and these days,
it's not just the homes

that reside
under the Earth's crust.

The crown jewel of Coober Pedy

is the Serbian Orthodox
Church...

♪ Hallelujah ♪

CAMPBELL: ...measuring almost
100 feet long,

17 feet wide with
23-foot-tall ceilings.

♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah ♪

♪ Hallelujah ♪

CAMPBELL: Living underground may
seem like a hardship to some,

but the residents of Coober Pedy
wouldn't trade it for anything.

HAMMERMEISTER: We get people
that come through on a holiday,

and 30 years later, they're
still here because they love it.

♪♪

The unseen world
is still a mystery,

sometimes scary,
sometimes surprising,

but like the miners
from Coober Pedy,

dig deep enough, and you're sure
to find treasure.

♪♪