Original subtitles

[uneasy music]

[Dan reading on-screen text]

[mysterious music]

- Imagine a little exploratory drilling

that opens up an underwater hellhole.

- The entire rig begins leaning.

They hear this screeching, wailing sound.

- Suddenly the lake opens up in this massive vortex

and swallows a tugboat, a dock, 11 barges, another oil rig.

It even sucks up Jefferson Island.

- Or a first date that goes completely out the window.

- The toilet just won't flush.

- She panics, she looks for a plunger, no luck.

- And then she spots the bathroom window.

- How about a backyard DIY project

that backfires spectacularly?

- He doesn't bust out a can of bug spray

or call an exterminator, oh, no.

He decides he's gonna go to war.

- He's got a canister of gasoline and a box of matches.

Lights a match?

[ground explodes]

- These are the stories of complete and utter failure,

so epic, they can only be described as unbelievable.

[mysterious music]

Over the years, there have been countless health fads

that have taken America by storm,

but few have actually promised

to harness the power of atomic energy.

Turns out, there's a good reason for that.

[grandiose music]

- The height of the roaring '20s is a pretty magical time.

We're talking jazz clubs, flapper girls,

speakeasies, and insane parties.

Few people embody the era more than the rich steel baron

from Pittsburgh named Eben Byers.

- He is basically a real-life Jay Gatsby.

This is a guy who, in addition to being incredibly wealthy,

is also a golf champion.

He races horses.

He is known for throwing huge, incredibly lavish parties.

And at these parties, he has a lady on each arm.

- [Hakeem] At one point, around 1927,

he begins to notice that he's not quite himself.

He has this arm injury that won't heal.

And most importantly, he's losing his pep with the ladies.

- [Holly] He gets nervous enough about the situation

that he goes to his doctor.

And his doctor's like, there's a new product,

it's called Radithor.

- The creator of Radithor, William Bailey,

claims it can cure 150 ailments

from rheumatism to impotence.

- [Dan] The vigor he promises?

That comes from Radithor's secret ingredient, radium.

- [Jonathan] Bailey, by the way, is a college dropout

with no medical training.

But in the 1920s, the shelves are filled

with shady health tonics, and you can get real doctors

to endorse them if you're willing to pay.

- [Hakeem] Radium is incredibly radioactive.

We're talking over a million times more radioactive

than naturally occurring uranium.

But nobody at the time, including doctors,

has any understanding

of what radioactivity does to the human body.

- [Holly] So at the time, something that includes

radiation sounds like a big step forward in science.

It's modern, it's exciting.

- [Hakeem] After his doctor prescribes it,

our low-energy millionaire, Eben Byer,

starts drinking Radithor.

- [Jonathan] At first, he's convinced he's got a toned-up

feeling and that it lives up to the hype.

- [Hakeem] It seems to revive both his swing on the golf

course and his charm often.

Byers becomes the face of Radithor and sales boom.

- Byers starts buying Radithor by the case.

He starts giving it as gifts to other wealthy people,

people that he does business with.

- [Hakeem] He allegedly downs up to 1,400 bottles of the stuff

over the next couple of years.

- [Holly] Thousands of America's upper crust,

the wealthiest people in the country,

are in on the radium craze,

topping up their illegal gin with radium.

- [Dan] But even the Roaring '20s couldn't outshine

the side effects of regularly sipping radiation.

- [Hakeem] It's not very long

before Byers starts feeling under the weather again.

So in response, he starts taking more Radithor.

- [Jonathan] Then something happens he can't ignore.

His teeth start falling out.

- [Dan] That's when Byers finally realizes

this miracle tonic might not be so miraculous after all.

- [Holly] By the early 1930s, scientists are connecting the

dots, they realize high doses of radiation are incredibly lethal.

- [Dan] As the evidence mounts, pressure builds.

And in 1932, the government launches a formal investigation

into radium cures.

And their star witness is Eben Byers.

- But Byers can't make it.

He's just too sick.

So they send a lawyer to his huge estate on Long Island

to take his statement.

The lawyer gets there and is completely shocked

by what he finds.

- [Hakeem] Byers' whole body

is absolutely ravaged by cancer.

He's wrapped in bandages like a mummy.

- [Holly] His jaw has been removed

to try to stop the progression of this disease.

He also has holes forming in his skull,

and he dies a few days after he talks to this lawyer

in a death of absolute agony.

- [Jonathan] The horrific details

of Byers' case ignite national outrage.

And newspapers across the country run headlines

that Radithor is a deadly scam.

- [Holly] The market for radiation therapies crashes in

on itself, the bubble bursts.

The Food and Drug Administration finally steps in

and they force William Bailey

to shut down his entire company

and to stop selling Radithor.

- [Dan] But Radithor is far from the last time bad science leads

to big consequences.

Decades later, one infamous mistake shows us that sometimes

even the brightest minds can miss the mark.

- [Operator] Seven, six-

- It's December 1998,

and NASA scientists and engineers

are hard at work on a new mission: Exploring Mars.

They have just launched the Mars Climate Orbiter

into deep space for a nine-month journey,

where we'll monitor the weather

and climate of the Red Planet.

- [Hakeem] They're trying to figure out,

can humans really live on Mars someday?

It's a mission teeming with possibility.

The satellite itself cost about $125 million to build.

That's about $250 million in today's money.

So a lot of people got a lot riding on this hunk of metal

that's hurling through space.

- [Dan] Launching a $100 million satellite is the easy part.

The real challenge comes almost a year later,

when it has to hit a target 416 million miles away.

- [Paul] On September 23, 1999, everything is going as planned

and the team knows there is going to be a short period

of a communications blackout.

So they're sitting there waiting for the satellite

to come around the other side and come back online.

- And they're waiting and they're waiting,

and there's nothing.

- Everyone at ground control is sweating bullets.

When the news comes out about the satellite's disappearance,

the government, the media, the general public,

they all want to know,

how does a $125 million taxpayer-funded satellite

just vanish into thin air?

- [Hakeem] Talk about pressure.

The world is watching, but finding out what happened

on Mars all these millions of miles away

is nearly impossible when you can't communicate

with the satellite.

So higher-ups at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

decide to do a post-mortem and figure out what happened.

And it ain't good.

- [Paul] You have to remember that in the early 1990s,

the United States was in a recession.

So there's very little public or congressional support

for multi-billion dollar space missions.

- So NASA's administrator, Daniel Golden,

actually coins the term, faster, better, cheaper.

- [Hakeem] One big result from this ethos is that NASA

is no longer gonna do everything in-house.

They're going to contract out to private companies.

They're going to be given less money

and they're going to have less time,

but they're still planning to deliver

the same great results.

- [Paul] Lockheed Martin wins the contract to build the MCO

because they're the lowest bidder.

- [Rutledge] Now the catch, outsourcing means

that NASA and Lockheed's engineers

aren't always on the same page.

Almost the entire orbiter follows NASA's specs,

except for one important part.

- [Hakeem] NASA is using the metric system

in their calculations and measurements,

but Lockheed Martin is using the American imperial system.

- [Paul] The problem is that some of the sensors on the

orbiter are designed to receive data in metric in kilograms

and meters, but they're actually getting information

in pounds and feet.

- [Hakeem] By using the wrong units,

the satellite did not correctly calculate

its trajectory for entering into orbit.

It came in too low

and ended up burning up in the atmosphere.

- [Paul] Faster, better, cheaper sounds great on paper,

but in real life, all they ended up with

was turning an expensive orbiter into a bunch of dust

in the Martian atmosphere.

- [Dan] You don't have to be a rocket scientist

to see that turned out badly.

- Drilling for oil is tricky business.

Pick the right spot, you're a hero.

Pick the wrong one, and you're in deep trouble,

as one motley crew in Louisiana is about to find out.

[mysterious music]

- In the late 1970s, America is in an oil crisis.

The Iranian Revolution and OPEC embargoes

have caused great pain for the consumers.

So US oil giants get the green light

to tap nearly any domestic oil source

to relieve that pain at the pump.

- And Texaco believes they've found it,

800 feet beneath Louisiana's Lake Peigneur.

- [Dan] But Texaco isn't the first company

to tap into what lies beneath the lake.

- [Adam] Now for nearly 60 years,

the Diamond Salt Company has been mining

the massive salt dome

that sits right underneath Lake Peigneur.

And salt domes usually occur near massive pockets of oil,

and Texaco believes they know just how to find it.

- [Austin] There's a hive of mining operations

all beneath Lake Peigneur,

some of them up to 1,500 feet deep.

But Texaco's engineers ensure the Diamond Salt Company

that they know exactly where to drill,

not to put their miners at risk.

- [Dan] Diamond Salt signs off, and Texaco gets to work.

But almost immediately, the operation hits a snag.

[tense music]

- [Adam] It's early in the morning on November 20, 1980,

and the guys on the morning shift on the rig

have a massive problem.

The evening shift has a stuck drill bit,

and they've been dealing with it for hours.

If they can't get the drill bit unstuck, there is a risk.

They lose the well and the millions and millions of dollars

they've already invested in this project.

- [Dan] As the rig workers frantically attempt

to get the drill back into action,

things start to go sideways.

- [Martin] The entire rig suddenly begins leaning.

They hear this screeching, wailing sound,

and they watch as the whole rig turns completely sideways,

and the foreman has to give the order, "abandon the rig."

- [Dan] Incredibly, the workers reach shore unscathed.

But what happens next shocks even the veteran oilmen.

- [Adam] Suddenly, the lake opens up in this massive vortex,

swallows the whole rig.

- [Austin] People near the lake are seeing

a quarter-mile-sized whirlpool

that's sucking in everything like a black hole.

- [Adam] A tugboat, a dock, 11 barges, another oil rig.

- [Martin] In just three hours, the entire lake is gone,

and Louisiana is left with a gaping sinkhole.

- [Dan] While chaos unfolds above,

deep underground, another group of workers

has no idea what's about to hit them.

- One of the miners is out by himself in a tunnel,

and he sees a torrent of water rushing towards him.

- [Martin] Water is never what you want to see in a mining

mining operation.

That is especially the case in an operation like this one,

because all of the supporting pillars, they're made of salt,

and salt dissolves in water.

- [Adam] All 48 miners run to the elevator,

which can only take nine of them at a time,

while the rest of them are trapped.

- [Martin] These poor guys are at the bottom of this mine shaft

while water is beginning to fill the tunnels,

and they're waiting for this elevator to reach the surface,

unload, then descend back down to pick up another load.

- [Andrew] Miraculously, the last group of miners makes it

into the elevator and up to the surface

just before the torrent of water crashes in

to the mine below them.

- [Austin] The devastation is total.

An entire ecosystem has been completely destroyed,

and the only silver lining is

no human lives were lost on that day.

- [Adam] Texaco ends up shelling out over $60 million in payments

to victims and to the salt company.

And on top of that, they lose millions in equipment.

- Across the Atlantic, another man-made disaster

is about to unfold on an even larger scale.

- In the early 1960s, the Italian government

is looking to amp up electricity production

to help industrialize the country.

And one of the biggest projects they have going

is the Vajont Dam, which is being built near Mount Toc

in northern Italy.

The idea is to transform this impoverished region

into an industrial powerhouse.

- [Dan] While the Italian government promises

the dam will change lives,

those living in its shadow fear it could shorten them.

- The mountain valley where the dam is being built

is well known for landslides.

The locals even call Mount Toc the mountain that walks

because of how frequently the mountain can shift.

- [Don] Even as they build the dam,

workers notice increased fissures and rock slides

at the construction site.

So the government hires three independent experts

to examine the site.

These experts all say the same thing.

If they dam up the valley and fill it with water,

there is a huge risk of a catastrophic landslide.

- [Adam] The government responds to this report by ignoring it.

The dam is finally completed in September of 1960.

As they fill up the valley reservoir,

everything seems to be clicking along just perfectly.

- [Dan] But as the water level rises,

it soaks into the mountainsides,

and the ground begins to shift.

- [Don] In the summer of 1963,

locals report the mountains around the dam are shaking.

By the fall, it's getting worse.

Both villagers in the area

and workers at the dam report more and more landslides

in the area after heavy rainfalls.

People are starting to get anxious.

- [Dan] With each new landslide, fears grow

that the mountain may not hold.

Then, on the night of October 9th,

it reaches a breaking point.

- Instruments around the dam,

specifically around the reservoir,

are picking up what seems to be a large rock slide.

- [Don] Then the men, watching this all unfold

from the top of the dam, hear this loud roar

as the entire mountainside just crashes down

at maximum speed and with full force.

- The result is a tsunami over 800 feet high,

hundreds of feet higher than the dam itself.

And all of that excess water washes over the dam

and plummets into the valley below.

- [Dan] Over 60 people working on the dam

that night are killed, but the tragedy isn't over yet.

- Within four minutes,

the water reaches the first village in the valley.

- [Jonathan] A lot of men in the village are at the bar watching

a local football match.

[thunder thudding]

When they hear this thunder crashed.

- [Don] Suddenly a shockwave hits the whole town

with the punching power twice that of an atomic blast.

[water crashing]

- [Thor] A raging torrent of water rushes down the street

at an estimated 50 miles per hour.

The bar, the men, and practically the entire village

are all swept away in an instant.

- [Don] And several more towns follow after that.

Villages with histories

that stretch back centuries are wiped off the map.

[eerie music]

- [Dan] In a single night, more than 2,000 lives are lost.

And in a cruel twist of irony,

the dam still stands as a lasting monument

to a catastrophic failure.

- Throughout history, many influential men

have flexed their power to woo a lady.

But when one love-struck president decides to break out

the big guns to impress his crush,

things get a little out of hand.

- [Don] It's the early 1840s and John Tyler is president.

Tyler is an accidental president.

As vice president,

he takes over after William Henry Harrison dies

just weeks into office.

- Most of Harrison's cabinet resigns

rather than follow Tyler into office,

and people around town start calling him his accidency.

- [Don] Sadly, death seems to follow him into office.

His wife suffers a massive stroke very early

in his presidency, and then passes away.

This leaves Tyler without a partner.

There's seven surviving children without a mother

and the country without a first lady.

- [Dan] Forlorn and depressed,

the last thing Tyler's looking for is love,

but it finds him anyway.

- [Holly] At a social event, he spots this woman.

Her name is Julia Gardner,

and he cannot keep his presidential eyes off of her.

- [Don] Julia Gardner is an heiress to East Coast

aristocracy.

Her father, David, is also a New York state senator,

And Julia is apparently so good-looking,

she earns the moniker The Rose of Long Island.

- [Gary] Despite the fact that Tyler's in his 50s

and she's in her early 20s,

Tyler starts inviting her and her family to the White House.

And soon, Washington's high society starts gossiping

about how much time they're spending together.

- [Don] In late February 1843,

Tyler invites Julia to a masquerade ball

at the White House.

While there, he apparently steals her from dancing

with another man and proposes to her.

She turns him down flat.

- [Holly] Tyler is a 54-year-old widower.

He has seven children.

Some of his children are older than her.

She just does not see how this would ever work.

- [Don] But Tyler will not accept failure.

He keeps courting her and taking her family

on presidential trips.

He even proposes several more times.

But so far, the response is the same.

She just doesn't think of him that way.

- [Dan] At this point, most rejected suitors

would accept failure and move on.

But not Tyler, who decides to kick things up a notch.

- [Don] Tyler invites Julia and her family

to a pleasure cruise down the Potomac

to celebrate the refitting of the USS Princeton.

- Princeton has recently been refitted

to accommodate this 27,000-pound monster

of a gun called the Peacemaker.

It's a 12-inch bore diameter that's capable of accelerating

a 225-pound projectile.

Its a very, very powerful piece of modern artillery.

- [Don] There are over 400 guests on this boat.

Some of America's most powerful politicians

and wealthy elites are aboard hobnobbing and partying.

And it's time for Tyler to show off his powers

as commander in chief.

That means a demonstration

of the Peacemaker cannon in action.

- [Holly] The captain fires off this gun several times.

[cannon bangs]

And Julia's dad apparently loves it,

which Tyler perceives as great news for him.

Let's do it more.

- [Don] Then the gun itself explodes.

The barrel shatters and hot cast iron flies into the crowd.

- [Gary] Six men are killed instantly.

Tyler's secretary of state

and the head of the Navy lay in pieces on the deck.

Chief among the dead

is New York State Senator David Gardner, Julia's father.

- [Dan] The disaster is so gruesome,

it scuttles any chances Tyler has at re-election,

and you'd assume any chances he had at wooing Julia.

- [Don] Incredibly, despite basically killing her dad,

Tyler just won't give up on Julia.

In the weeks and months after the tragedy,

Tyler only doubles down in his pursuit.

He spends all that time consoling Julia in her grief.

- [Holly] Incredibly, in June 1844,

so just a few months after all of this disaster

and her father's death,

Julia becomes the youngest first lady in American history.

They have seven more children together.

So talk about pulling victory from the jaws of defeat.

- [Dan] Not every love story has such a happy ending.

Just ask one grieving husband in Australia.

- [Austin] In a suburban neighborhood

outside Melbourne, Australia,

a Congolese man, Balenga Kalala,

is mourning the loss of his wife, Noela.

She died in a car accident

while visiting family at home in Africa.

- [Rutledge] The scene is somber.

Noelle is a young mother with eight kids,

so lots of people are coming by, paying their respects,

trying to share some nice moments with Kalala,

who is devastated.

- [Dan] As the service ends,

Kalala walks the last of the mourners outside.

But when he turns back toward the house, he freezes.

Standing right in front of him is his wife, Noela.

- She says to him, surprise, I'm alive.

- [Dan] But this is no happy reunion.

To understand why, we have to go back two months earlier.

- [Kavitha] Noela's stepmother dies,

and she and Kalala travel back

to Burundi in East Africa for the funeral.

- [Rutledge] Kalala is convinced that his wife has been

unfaithful, so he plans to use Noela's stepmother's death

as a reason to get rid of her.

Not break up with her, get rid of her.

- At the hotel, Noela is distraught

over the death of her stepmother.

Kalala, at her side, pushes her to take a walk.

He's insistent.

- [Rutledge] Outside the hotel,

there's a man waiting for Noela,

who runs up and points a gun at her.

- [John] A car pulls up, and the man with the gun

and some of the guys in the car drag her inside.

They gag her and blindfold her, and then the car takes off.

- [Dan] Noela is brought to an empty building

and tied to a chair.

When the blindfold is taken off, she sees seven men,

all with a menacing gaze.

- She thinks it's all over, so she begins begging them,

asking them for mercy, asking them,

"Why are you doing this?"

- [John] The thugs explain that it's Noela's own husband

who hired them to take her out.

- [Dan] But Noela doesn't believe them,

so they decide to prove it by calling him.

- [Kavitha] His poor wife, Noela, actually hears her

husband on speakerphone saying, "Kill her, kill her."

- [Dan] Unfortunately for Kalala,

he's about to learn the hard way

that his hitmen came with something he didn't count on:

a conscience.

- [Kavitha] I guess Kalala didn't do a ton

of vetting of these guys up front

because they ultimately tell Noela that they have a rule.

No women and no children.

[tense music]

- [Dan] The hit men drive Noela out

to the countryside safe and sound,

and they make sure to leave her with a parting gift.

- [John] The guys give Noela all the evidence Kalala stupidly

left with them, giving her all that she needs

to put him away for life.

- [Austin] Once Noela returns to Australia,

she arrives at her home

and witnesses the tail end of her own funeral service.

Immediately, he folds and he admits the whole thing.

- [Dan] Noela survives.

Kalala goes to jail.

And those hit men get a terrible Yelp review.

- Everybody's had a bad first date.

Maybe you make an off-color joke

or call them by your ex's name.

But this one takes a turn no one could have seen coming.

[bright music]

- [Adam] It's 2017 in the city of Bristol, the United Kingdom,

and a young man named Liam

has met a lovely young woman online,

and they are out on a date.

They're really hitting it off,

and they decide to go back to the shared house he lives in

for a little bit of a movie and chill type situation.

- [Dan] As they settle in for a romantic evening,

the young lady feels more than a romantic spark.

She feels the distinct call of nature.

- [Adam] She tries to be discreet.

She runs the water really loud.

She flushes the toilet.

And nothing happens.

- [Hakeem] There's no delicate way to say this,

but the toilet just won't flush.

It can't handle what she was dropping.

- [Adam] She panics.

She looks for a plunger.

No luck, there's no plunger.

- At this point, you'd think she'd just admit defeat

and call out to her date for help,

but apparently she's got a great feeling about this guy.

So she searches for some other way to hide the evidence,

and then she spots the bathroom window.

- [Adam] So she grabs a plastic bag and sort of inverts it.

She reaches in, picks it up in the bag,

and throws it out the window.

- [Dan] But the dating Gods aren't granting her any mercy.

She hears this horrible thud.

And that's when she realizes

that window doesn't lead directly out to the backyard.

- [Hakeem] It turns out that there's two windows

and her poop lands on the ledge between the two of them.

At this point, it's game over.

So she opens the door and goes out

and asks the guy for help.

- [Kavitha] It takes him a minute to absorb what's going

on, but once he does,

he decides that the best solution

is to smash the window with a hammer.

But she's a former gymnast, and she thinks

that she can climb down into that window gap

to retrieve the plastic bag.

- [Hakeem] The window opens from the top that it lowers.

So she has to climb up and then invert herself

over the window and reach down to get the poop.

But that's when she realizes she is stuck.

- [Dan] Unable to remove the woman now clogging his window,

the man is forced to call in professionals.

- [Adam] He calls in the fire department,

and they have to tear apart the window to get her out.

- [Kavitha] A lot of women have fantasized about getting rescued

by firemen.

I don't think anyone's ever imagined being rescued

from a pretty much stranger's window

while you're hanging upside down,

holding a bag of your own poop.

- [Hakeem] And how do we know about this story?

Because the guy started a GoFundMe to replace his window.

- [Kavitha] In the end, they probably realized

that they would never be able to top this date,

and the two decide to go their separate ways.

[toilet flushing]

- A stubborn bathroom situation

might ruin a budding romance,

but it won't stop a hard-rocking band

from making their next gig.

[upbeat music]

- [Jenny] It's the early 2000s, and Dave Matthews Band

are at the pinnacle of fame.

They've had back-to-back hit albums.

They are touring the world.

They are pretty much the highest-grossing touring act

of that whole era,

and that's where the real money is coming in.

- [Dan] But life on the road has its challenges.

[upbeat music fading]

[mysterious music]

- [Adam] The band's getting ready for a sold-out show

at the Alpine Valley Music Theater,

a venue about an hour and a half outside of Chicago.

The band is ready to leave the city

and waiting for their massive tour bus to pick them up

and take them to the venue.

- [Dan] The tour bus driver, Stefan Wohl,

is about to pick up the band for the gig

when he realizes he's missed a crucial duty,

draining the bathroom waste tank.

- [Edward] He should have emptied out the septic

at the last pump-out site.

So now he's got a real problem on his hands.

They're miles from anywhere to pump out,

and they are filled to the brim.

- [Jenny] As Stefan crosses over the bridge,

he hears the hum of the steel grates below the bus,

and he gets an idea.

- [Adam] Stefan realizes,

I can empty the septic tank over the grate.

The liquid can go right through the grate,

fall into the river below, and make the gig, win-win.

- [Dan] But in a horrible twist of fate,

a tour boat is passing under the bridge right

at the same time Stefan is crossing it.

- [Edward] It's one of those boats on an architectural tour

with an open-air deck.

- [Jenny] They are snapping photos.

They're enjoying the skyline.

They're working on their tans.

It's a nice summer day.

And then they look up and see the bridge above them.

- [Adam] Stefan unleashes the entire contents

of the bus's septic tank right at the moment

the boat passes beneath him.

800 pounds of feces crashes down on the heads,

in the eyes, in the mouths of the 120 people below.

- [Dan] In the aftermath,

the Dave Matthews Band finds itself in deep doo-doo.

- [Adam] The press gets a hold of it

and they dub the incident "Poopgate."

- [Jenny] The band itself ends up paying over $400,000 in

damages and to river cleanup organizations.

[gavel bangs]

- [Adam] The bus driver admits guilt for illegal dumping

in court.

The band fires him, and he has to do copious amounts

of community service.

- Many of the people involved in Poopgate now laugh

about the experience.

There's even a tongue-in-cheek plaque

on the bridge commemorating the event.

And that says, no one died that day, but many wish they had.

- In warfare, underestimating your opponent can be fatal,

even if that opponent is only two feet tall

and has the brain the size of a walnut.

- [David] Summer of 1807 is a good year to be Napoleon

Bonaparte, he's the emperor of France.

He's just signed the Treaty of Tilsit after a victory

over imperial Russia.

And now he's got all of Europe cowering in his feet.

- [Gary] To celebrate the treaty,

Napoleon orders his chief of staff,

Louis-Alexandre Berthier,

to organize a huge rabbit hunt for the emperor

and his generals.

- [Holly] Napoleon allegedly loves hunting,

which is a little unfortunate

because he's not very good on a horse.

He's an even worse shot.

He literally has shot other huntsmen in the eye

and the leg while on previous excursions.

- [Gary] So Berthier feels the pressure.

He's going to make sure there are so many rabbits

that the emperor is sure to bag a few.

- [David] By the time the hunt starts,

there are as many as 3,000 rabbits caged up

at the edge of the wilderness.

Berthier probably thinks he's nailed it.

- [Dan] With everything in place,

France's military elite descend on the park.

Berthier gives the signal to release the rabbits,

but the horde of bunnies make a move

even Europe's master strategist couldn't see coming.

- [Holly] Instead of running off in all directions,

thousands of rabbits

are charging straight toward Napoleon's party.

- [Martin] The animals quickly surround and swarm them,

nipping at their feet.

Their claws are slashing away at their arms.

Men are firing muskets in a panic

because they have this swarm of rabbits

that encompasses them.

- [David] Even when they finally think

they've got the rabbits beaten, more come from behind.

- [Dan] What on earth turned a simple hunt

into a rabbit revolt of epic proportions?

- [Holly] Berthier is so hungry to secure the most rabbits

he possibly can for this hunt,

they end up securing a lot of domesticated rabbits

that are brought in by local farmers.

- [David] Nobody has bothered to feed the rabbits for a while,

so they're starving.

So when the cages are open, instead of seeing hunters

as dangerous, they think they're a food source.

- [Holly] Napoleon runs to his carriage.

He is ceding ground to the rabbits.

But these rabbits are relentless.

They are not accepting surrender.

By some accounts,

these bunnies actually chase down Napoleon's carriage

as he flees back to Paris.

- [David] This bunch of rabbits has accomplished

what all armies of Europe had failed to do so far.

Force Napoleon into full retreat.

- Napoleon didn't see his humiliation coming,

neither do the tech visionaries behind

a multi-billion dollar solar project

about to go up in smoke.

- [Hakeem] It's 2014 and the dawn of the green energy

revolution, when the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility opens

in the Mojave Desert, it's the largest,

most advanced solar farm on the planet

with a $2 billion price tag.

- [Paul] Spread out across 3,500 acres are 173,000 heliostat,

which are mirrored glass panels the size of barn doors.

These heliostats reflect sunlight

onto three 40-story-tall solar towers.

The light hitting the towers

turns liquid inside of them into steam,

which then circulates around to power turbines,

and this generates enough electricity

to power over 140,000 California homes.

- [Dan] While the facility seems to be a smashing success,

not everything is as sunny as it appears.

- Workers begin to observe a strange

and disturbing phenomenon.

Spontaneously, these little puffs of smoke,

like clouds, pop into the air.

- [Hakeem] Much to their horror, they realize that the clouds

are birds being incinerated.

It turns out that bugs are attracted to shiny objects.

And that big giant solar array of mirrors

is attracting thousands of bugs.

And guess who likes to eat bugs?

So as the birds fly in to chase those bugs,

they just burst into flames.

- [Edward] The reflected light from the heliostat mirrors

generates an enormous amount of heat.

We're talking over 900 degrees Fahrenheit.

- [Hakeem] By 2016, 6,000 birds a year are being vaporized.

- [Kavitha] The company is desperate to find a solution.

They change the positions of the mirrors

so the heat isn't concentrated

where the birds are going to go.

They blast sound and scent deterrents

to try and scare them off.

- [Hakeem] But no matter what they try, nothing works.

The birds keep coming and they keep getting zapped.

This facility is America's biggest

outdoor wild bird barbecue.

- [Dan] The facility has since announced plans

to upgrade to modern solar tech,

ones that don't come with such a high body count.

- In the grand spectrum of criminal punishments,

community service is about as light as it gets.

Yet some people will still go to extreme lengths

to avoid strapping on an orange vest

and picking up roadside trash.

[suspense music]

- [Kavitha] 24-year-old Zafer Kuzu is a grocery clerk

convicted of assault in eastern Turkey.

He's sentenced to community service for his crime,

which is definitely better than hard time,

but he's worried he might lose his job

if he has to keep ducking out

to fulfill his court-appointed service.

- [John] The guy has a young wife and really needs to keep

his job, but it's not like he could just skip out

on his community service without a really good excuse.

It has to be something really convincing.

- He realizes that he can't show up to community service

if he's hospitalized.

So if he can get injured just enough to end up

in a hospital bed, he might be able to get out of it.

- [Kavitha] There is a certain logic to it, and the trick is

coming up with a very specific debilitating,

but not crippling injury.

It's a very fine line.

- To Zafer, the only perfect alibi is a gunshot wound.

A judge isn't going to make you show up to community service

if you've been accidentally shot.

- [John] Somehow, he manages to convince two buddies

not only that this is a good idea,

but that they should be the ones to shoot him.

[eerie music]

- [Austin] They head to a relative's house,

and they go upstairs to the attic.

Zafer straps two pillows to his back,

and one of the friends brings a shotgun.

- [Kavitha] Zafer has also loaded the gun with birdshot

pellets.

The hope is that these pellets won't damage him too much,

but it'll get him just bloody enough for the right effect.

- [John] Zafer stands at one end of the room with his

back turned.

The guy with the gun aims just a little bit off to the side

so that Zafer only takes some of the birdshot.

And then he fires.

[gun bangs]

- [Dan] Unfortunately, this perfect scheme is full of holes.

- [Kavitha] Turns out two layers of pillow don't actually make

a good replacement for a Kevlar vest.

The birdshot pellets bust through

and absolutely shred poor Zafer.

- [Austin] The whole plan has gone way worse than anticipated.

They gather Zafer up and they take him to the hospital,

but to no avail.

He dies of his injuries.

- If a shotgun blast seems like overkill

for trying to skirt community service,

prepare yourself for the explosive tale

of one man's battle

against annoying household pests.

- [Rutledge] It's October 18th, 2019,

in Ines Marques in Brazil,

and Cesar Schmitz has had it

with the cockroaches invading his backyard.

- Brazil is home

to some of the largest cockroach species in the world.

We're talking 4 to 5 inches long.

We're not sure what species invaded Caesar's backyard,

but we know they're big.

We also know there's enough of them

to completely frighten his wife.

- [Dan] They say happy wife, happy life.

So Cesar brings out the big guns.

- [Rutledge] He doesn't bust out a can of bug spray

or call an exterminator, oh, no.

He decides he's gonna go to war.

- Cesar heads to the backyard and approaches the roach nest.

He's got a canister of gasoline and a box of matches.

- [Rutledge] Cesar takes his gas can

and he starts just really dumping it on there.

He really wants to make sure

this whole mound is soaked in gas.

He stands back and he lights a match

and tosses into the hole.

- [Dakotah] But nothing.

He lights a second match, throws that in the hole.

Nada.

Then he lights a third match.

[ground explodes]

- [Dan] Cesar's well-manicured back lawn is pulverized,

but he's about to get another surprise.

- [Rutledge] Lucky for him, nobody was hurt, including his

dogs, but the roaches appear unscathed.

- [Steve] So not only did Cesar just destroy

and blow up his entire backyard,

and he almost killed his dogs,

but these roaches weren't even affected.

- [Rutledge] People say that a cockroach can actually outlive

a nuclear blast, so if this is any indication,

I think those cockroaches are gonna outlive us all.

- From flame-retardant roaches to radioactive health tonics,

rabbit hunts gone awry, to poops that refuse to say goodbye,

these are the stories of fails so epic

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