2+ Hours Of The World's Greatest Super Structures

off the coast of Japan there is a super structure so immense it can be seen from [Music] space the world's first airport in the midst of the sea the largest man-made island of its day the longest bridge of its kind and one of the world's architectural masterpieces but it's brilliant design could not conquer a hostile [Music] Earth today low Tech Ingenuity saves its high-tech engineering is Kai the airport of the future or is it doomed to sink beneath the [Music] waves Japan where Modern Skyscrapers dwarf The Monuments of Ages past where Timeless Serenity mingles with industrial might and one of the world's engineering Marvels rises from the [Music] sea a super structure for the 21st century the mile long terminal at Kanai International Airport hovers like a giant Silver Bird at top of man-made Island in Osaka [Music] Bay graceful in design Japan's aerodynamic airport is a Triumph of construction and a technological wonder it was quite extraordinary to me that when the building first opened it was getting 10,000 visitors a day who were not there to fly they were there to look at the building and that says something to build the world's first ocean airport Architects and Engineers probe deep into the laws of nature searching for answers to the awesome challenges before [Music] them thousands of workers labored 7 years building the biggest man-made island of its Day More Than 3 mi from Shore in water 60 ft deep then croning it with the world's longest building the biggest Public Works project of the 20th century the airport is the first place and last place people normally see at your city so you wanted to represent something about your city you want it to look good you want them to have a favorable impression when they arrive and when they leave we don't build big Cathedrals anymore uh but we big build big airports today Kai International is a glittering Masterpiece widely regarded as one of the world's most beautiful airports and one of modern history's most daring engineering [Music] projects before kai no one had ever built an island in water so deep or so far from land from steel girs to workers lunches everything had to be transported to the construction site by boat to create the island work Crews had to move 750 million cubic feet of Earth pound a million steel columns into the ocean floor and labor over 10 million man hours I scouted the location by a helicopter and I thought oh my God this might be a big challenge why did Japan take on the challenge of building an airport on the sea because daunting as that challenge was building Kai International Airport on land would have been next to Impossible Kai is a 10,000 square mile region in central Japan straddling the anid of honu some 300 Mi Southwest of Tokyo within its boundaries lie two of Japan's most important cities the sprawling industrial centers of Osaka and KOB in the 1960s Kai cities were losing ground Japan's imports and exports flowed through Tokyo to compete with Tokyo Kai needed a new international airport this Airport was not only very important for Kanai but also for the whole Japanese economy before Kanai airport manufacturing companies based in Kanai had to send their carco all the way to Tokyo to ship it out of the country that was very inconvenient Osaka's airport Itami sat in the middle of a residential neighborhood dangerously hemmed in by buildings the constant Roar of jet engines Disturbed its neighbors there's no way that you can get around it the airplanes fly over they make noise they have particles of emission from the jet engines and those end up in people's yards on people's roofs and in people's ears when they're trying to watch television or have a barbecue too many families lived in that area so the potential there for was a dangerous one if something ever went wrong thank goodness it didn't at the far end of the runway just on the approach there was a school she were always cognizant of the uh the school being there and which is not the greatest thing expanding Itami was out of the question but so was Finding land for a new airport in heavily populated Japan there was little empty land and few people willing to give up land they owned in 1969 Tokyo began construction of an international airport at Narita a distant subb largely populated by Farmers when the government confiscated Farmland to build the airport protests exploded outraged Farmers besieged the Narita construction site leftist radicals fired Rockets across the runway police arrested more than 3,000 activists seven people died protests delayed construction of Nara airport for nearly a decade in the Nara case the government carried the plan forward without giving much information to the people you might say the government forced its plan on the people and that caused a strong movement against the construction the best way to deal with noise pollution and angry neighbors was to avoid them all together conai decided to build its new airport on the Waters of Osaka Bay there's nobody out there to sue them in the middle of Osaka Bay maybe maybe a Marlin here or there or something like that with no neighbors to disturb a water airp Port could stay open 24 hours a day making it even more competitive with Tokyo but the plan had other perils Osaka's fisherman might oppose a water airport as bitterly as narita's Farmers had battled an airport on land fish travel their own Roots which the fishermen know if there's any change in those routs it's very difficult for the fisherman to catch fish it's not like the fish travel along marked highways to find them again is very difficult to avoid another Narita authorities offered the fisherman a huge fee as compensation for disturbing their fishing grounds the fishermen accepted politically the path was now clear but the project troubles were only Beginning by locating their airport on water Kai's planners had avoided battles with outraged citizens over land yet they would soon find themselves battling a far more powerful force the force of nature itself Japan's four main islands have been called the most geologically treacherous real estate on Earth nine major earthquakes greater than magnitude 7 struck in the 20th century alone killing over 150,000 people thousands of smaller Timor Shake Japan every month an earthquake's worst damage is often to structures built on landfill which liquefies when shaking when it isn't shaking Japan is really from some of the deadliest storms on the planet since World War II hundreds of typhoons have ravaged the Japanese Coastline killing nearly 7,000 people a typhoon cyclonic winds can whip up what meteorologists call a storm surge a dangerous rise in sea level on September 21st 1934 a storm surge raised the level of Osaka Bay 10 ft for several hours that typhoon killed 3,000 people 3 m from Shore the new Kai airport would be fully exposed to a typhoon's fury would a typhoon someday tear the new multi-billion dollar airport apart would its foundations dissolve in an earthquake would storms or earthquakes sever its lengths to land the new new Kanai airport had to survive some of Nature's Most Powerful onslaughts discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and AdFree podcasts presented by world-renowned historians all from history hit watch them on your smart TV or on the- go with your mobile device download the app now to explore everything from the wonders of ancient Pompei and the Mystery of the princes in the tower to the life of Anne Belin and D-Day sign up via the link in the description Engineers designed an Island 2 and a half miles long and nearly 4,000 ft wide framed by a huge rectangular seaw wall whose perimeter would be 7 m long into this massive frame they would pour 750 million cubic feet of [Music] Earth it seemed like a simple plan a larger version of other projects Japanese Engineers had successfully completed many times before in Landstar Kai the shore is lined with Industries built on man-made land but 3 mil from Shore conditions were very different the seabed is something like 100 m or so depth of soft clay So Soft in fact that if you could drain the sea away you wouldn't be able to work on it as Marsh tests showed that the airport Island would rest on two levels of ocean bottom clay the upper layer called aluvial clay didn't worry Engineers they had built on it many times [Music] before but 3 mi from Shore there was a deeper older stratum called diluvial clay extending 1,000 ft below the aluvial layer Engineers had never built buil anything on this diluvial clay no one was sure how it would react when the world's largest man-made Island began pressing down on it so the new problem is how to predict the completion of deep seated old stiff clay that's I think the first case in the human engineering history in order to know the condition of the foundation ground we developed a method of sampling the clay itself we calculated things like strength and pressure density correlation to learn the characteristics of the ground scientists analyzed core samples from the ocean floor and gave differing predictions of how far the airport might sink into the clay some believed it would sink only 19 ft others in insisted it could sink as deep as 25 ft officials made a faithful decision to save money they rejected the predictions of deeper sinking and planned an airport that would sink only 19 ft January 1987 with prayers for the safety of the workers construction of Kai International Airport Begins the first task is to strengthen the soft ocean floor clay so it can support the airport's immense weight to strengthen the seabed engineers use a well- tested method known as sand draining specially designed ships float over the construction site first spreading a 5ot layer of sand over the ocean floor then hammering 1 million pipes deep into the clay it's a fully automated process controlled by shipboard computers next enormous barges equipped with pile drivers Force sand into each pipe finally the computer controlled ships pull out each pipe leaving a million Columns of sand when the finished airport presses down on the water logged clay its weight will squeeze the water from the clay into the sand piles draining the clay to make it harder but the sand drains cannot reach the deeper diluvial clay nothing can be done to stabilize [Music] it with sand drains in place work on the seaw wall begins to keep waves from washing away its Rubble slope seaw wall workers must armor its surface with massive stones 60 ft below the surface divers guide these armor stones into position the divers are veterans of many underwater construction projects but none as deep and as far from Shore as Kana airport they face deadly hazards in the turbulent ocean depths at this place we set stones that are about 1 to 2 tons each in the water it was far from the shore so so there were bigger waves was a challenge for us we did it even in tough situations like in bad weather one guy had his leg amputated at the thigh because the waves moved a stone and it smashed into his leg we were always close to death in a way despite the dangers work on the seaw wall continued as workers maneuvered 69 gigantic steel Chambers into place each of these Mammoth casings was 75 ft High 75 ft in diameter and weighed over 200 tons pile drivers pounded them into the ocean floor to form the corners of the seaw wall workers placed 48,000 four pointed concrete blocks along the seaw walls South and Western edges where the sea was strongest these Strang looking blocks are designed to to dissipate the force of breaking [Music] waves by June 1989 2 and 1/2 years after work began the seaw wall was finished now the airport Builders had to find enough soil to fill it on the mainland Crews work Round the Clock Excavating three entire mountains huge barges transported the excavated so oil to the airport site for 3 years a fleet of 80 ships dumped Earth inside the seaw wall until it Rose over 100 ft above the ocean [Music] floor Global Positioning Systems directed each barge through its onboard computers telling it exactly where to dump each load the island Phil combin three different sizes of coarse rock and gravel Engineers hoped this mixture would resist liquefaction in an earthquake slowly the airport Island emerged from the sea despite violent protests the same leftist radicals who assaulted Narita Airport launch a mortar attack on one of the quaries supplying the islands Phil no one is hurt but the exploding mortar rounds ignite a forest fire which rages for hours it is only one of more than two dozen attacks on the airport project during construction planting bombs firing rockets and setting fires the radicals destroyed equipment and injured four people but work never faltered while some workers built the island other Crews were busy linking it to land in the fall of 1987 Giant floating cranes brought the first pre-assembled Bridge Pier to Osaka Bay anchoring it on pilings driven into the seabed by the spring of 1989 29 of these peers stood in line between the airport Island and the mainland the gigantic cranes were turned with enormous steel modules each over 500 ft long and weighing over 4,000 000 tons bolted together they formed a double decked truss bridge over 2 m long 13d longer than the Golden Gate Bridge with a price tag of over a billion dollar its upper deck was a highway its lower deck a railroad track flexible joints connected its fans so the giant Bridge would bend not break in a typhoon's deadly winds by March 1990 the bridge was built and the airport Island was nearly complete this man-made Island was created by the effort sweat Blood and Tears of over 10,000 people who worked very hard but the island Builder celebration was a muted one by then they had discovered a new and Relentless threat an enemy so powerful it could defeat them spring 1990 Kai Airport's man-made island is nearly finished construction firms prepare for the Monumental task of building the Passenger Terminal but in March engineers make an alarming discovery which threat threatens to destroy the project conai airport is sinking into the sea airport officials had expected the island to settle some 19 ft into the soft seabed but by March 1990 it had sunk 27 ft and was still sinking over 2 in every month no one knew when or if the sinking would stop no one knows exactly what to do because it's quite a far different from a past experience it's big size and a very heavy load these two factors combined give rise the effect of waking up the sleeping lion the Revelation stunned Osaka and the nation the international press dubbed Kanai Japan's sinking airport some compared it to history's most notorious engineering blunder the Leaning Tower of Pisa after 20 years of planning 3 years of construction and billions of dollars it appeared that Kanai airport might never be built what had seemed genius now a appeared to be merely hubris as public outrage grew the president of Kai airport resigned Engineers scrambled to find a solution if there was one we cannot stop the compression of this type of soil because we can cope with the soil with various new technique down to 50 or 60 M depth but now the soil question is 200 M deep so we canot apply any sort of artificial technique to them to keep the airport above sea level workers piled an extra 11 and 1/2 ft of soil at top the island at a cost of $150 million they dropped a 20ton weight 100 ft onto the runway to compact its soil they decided to pay the Runway with asphalt because asphalt would absorb Earth movements better than concrete yet their greatest problem remained unsolved it was time to construct Kanai International's Passenger Terminal but how could they build it on a sinking Island while Engineers debated The terminal's Architects perfected its design noriaki okab had spent 25 years in Europe working with World Ren Italian architect Renzo Piano together they had created some of the world's most remarkable buildings including the famed pompo Center in [Music] Paris but at Kai they fa the challenge of their [Music] careers the conai terminal had to be small enough to fit on a man-made Island yet big enough to house all the complex functions of a modern International Airport high enough to inspire passengers with its beauty yet low enough to allow air traffic controllers an unrestricted view of every airplane on the tarmac it seemed an architectural Paradox Architects usually get stimulated by looking at the site before the work starts this project was unique because there was no sight yet there was no ground seeking new sources of inspiration The Architects turned to the structures of nature Nature's geometries solve their most difficult problem how to make the terminal both high and low answer the toroid the remarkably versatile shape of magnetic fields convection currents bicycle tires donuts and fruits in its architect's eyes the enormous conai terminal is only the small visible portion of an immense too over 20 m in diameter circling through the Earth the toroid shape allows the building center to soar 85 ft High while its wings taper to 20 ft inspiring visitors giving the control tower a clear view of aircraft and making architectural history it is the most pive form in the natural world the toroid and so far as I know this was the first time it had been used certainly the first time been used a big structure since canai was designed the toroid has become a very fashionable form particularly Architects working with British Engineers who have mastered how to use this form but uh it was innovatory at its time the toroid solved the problem of Designing The Passenger Terminal but still unsolved was the biggest problem of all how to construct one of the world's biggest buildings on an island sinking into the sea by the spring of 1990 an international team of Architects and Engineers had created a cuttingedge design for Kai Airport's Passenger Terminal the blueprints were ready but the terminal could not be built until the Builder solved a puzzling problem the completed terminal would weigh only half as much as the vast amount of Earth excavated for its foundation from an island that was sinking into the sea the lighter terminal would not sink as fast as the heavier Island as Island and terminal pulled apart the massive structure was certain to crack the problem is not that the building is sinking into the ground but that the ground is sinking faster than the building people don't realize but the building actually floats in the earth that's one of the reasons they have to have basements they're like ship um and that's particularly true of new Earth so caner airport has a ballast of a quar of a million tons of very dense iron ore in it as they prepared to build the terminal Engineers lined its foundation with an 8T thick layer of crushed iron ore hoping the extra weight would help the terminal sink as fast as the [Music] island on April 24th 1991 terminal construction began it would take nearly 3 years to complete following the architect's blueprints workers erect some 30 steel trusses to support the roof each of these massive trusses weighs over 200 tons then workers assemble the terminal skeleton of 250 ribs each forged in England and carried by ship to Japan they install nearly 5,000 panels of Glass on its sweeping front carefully encasing each panel in a rubber frame so it will move not break if an earthquake or a typhoon sways the building they cover the roof with 9,000 stainless steel tiles tested to withstand Fierce typhoon winds and violent seismic shaking with painstaking effort workers lay each of these tiles individually by hand High ocean winds make their task even more difficult and sometimes Impossible by 1993 the terminal's enormous shape Rose above the airport is over a million Architects engineers and workers around the world had contributed to its construction today nyaki okab wanders with pride through a super structure widely proclaimed as one of the most brilliantly designed airport terminals in the world it's a very big building canai it's possibly the longest building in history that is not a factory but one huge room occupied by people but what's very striking is the very intimate relationship it sets up between you the person moving through and the building that is making way for you leading you through guiding you through this is a very extraordinary sense to get in what's a highly technological enormous building I think that's one of its most extraordinary achievements arriving by car rail or hydrofoil passengers enter what the Architects call the canyon a vast open space 100 ft high and nearly 1,000 ft long four cavernous stories linked by humming escalators and wearing elevators designed to impress but also to inform once it home the reason why this space is so huge is so that people can see where they are going any spaces in this structure can be seen from wherever you are as they move beyond the canyon passengers don't have to navigate a sprawling multi-terminal complex as in many other airports domestic and international arrivals and departures are vertically stacked on the four floors of the terminal building passengers travel up and down a central set of escalators which carries them to arriving and departing domestic and international flights finally they emerge into the terminal spectacular Departures area a kind of Aviation Cathedral stretching over a mile long making conai terminal the longest building in the world automated trains whisk passengers to its 41 aircraft Gates travel time from the Central Terminal to the end of each Wing is only 90 seconds please keep clear of the [Music] door an ingenious system solves a baffling problem how do you air condition the world's longest building if if you blow a big air jet into a very large space uh it travels so far now what we did on canai which I think is quite Innovative was to create a shape of ceiling which was similar to an air jet shape and to stick the jet to the ceiling if you make a jet of air stick to the ceiling then it travels up to twice as far as it would if it was in free space and and it will cause a much bigger circulation current gigantic yet graceful 18 nozzles send air flowing along the ceiling into sheets of smooth fabric which keep it circulating colorful mobiles reveal the moving air it's the first time it had been done at such a big scale and it's the first time in which the shape of the roof and structure was exactly shaped to the decelerating air yet it's building that is most in step with what is happening in the sciences and must Herald the future but when it was finished Kanai terminal's future remained in doubt as the island beneath it continued to sink even with its iron ore ballast the terminal would almost certainly crack as the heavier Island beneath it sank Engineers devised a surprisingly simple solution in the basement 9900 concrete columns support the building's massive weight but that's not all they do as the terminal sinks sensors on the columns alert computers in the central control room technicians scan the computer screens looking for trouble spots this screen shows the current subsidence of the terminal building the area in red have less subsidence and those in blue have more when the computer is worn that the sinking Island threatens to crack the terminal workers raise or lower the columns in the endangered area to keep it level with the ground they use powerful hydraulic jacks which can move columns up to 15 in if necessary [Music] workers slide iron plates under the jacked up pillars to hold them up after the Jacks have been removed it's no different than sliding a matchbook under the leg of a wobbly coffee table but Kai terminal has 900 legs and weighs nearly 3 million tons it's a solution which as I understand it has been used before in Japan and it might seem a bit primitive but I have no reason to suspect that it's anything but perfect for the problem in fact everything in the conai terminals basement is designed to move up and down air conditioning and other systems are bolted to the ceiling instead of the floor doorways feature several inches of extra extra room overhead in their Zeal to save the conai terminal Engineers tried to think of everything this terminal building is being adjusted at all times I'm on the stairs which connect the first floor and the basement the step where I'm standing right now was the height of the floor when the airport opened in the last four years we jacked it up three times and as a result we added two more steps here measures like these helped the airport cope with its sinking Island but they also delayed its completion by over a year on September 4th 1994 Kai International Airport finally opened for business the emperor's son Crown Prince Narito and his wife princess masako attended the opening cere ceremonies 11,000 police stood guard in case radicals [Music] attacked as they celebrated the airport's proud Builders could not know that Nature's Fury would soon assault their [Music] Masterpiece Dawn January 17th 19 1995 Kai International Airport has been opened 15 months as this day begins it will be severely tested at 5:46 a.m. on January 17th a devastating 7.2 earthquake rocks the Kanai region the massive Timor is the deadliest Quake to strike Japan since the great Tokyo earthquake of 1923 mother I was still in bed because it was quite early in the morning it was a very huge up thrusting movement dishes jumped out of the cupboard in my house I had never experienced an earthquake that big before hardest hit is the city of cobay the city's Warf Rises 10 ft cranes topple and a harbor Breakwater sinks Rail lines and major highways Buckle the Quake kills more than 5,000 people and injures over 25,000 more than 300,000 people lose their homes Kai International Airport is only 18 mil from the epicenter when the earthquake hit the first thing I thought about was my family then I thought about the Kanai airport maybe the glass has fearing the worst official rush to the airport outside the terminal they find a cracked sidewalk and few other signs of damage I raced to the airport in my car and arrived before 7:00 when I rushed into this control room all the machines were operating properly the airport had survived one of nature's deadliest assaults or had it with so much Devastation nearby it seemed too good to be true when I came to Kanai airport we could see coob was burning although you couldn't see anything wrong I had great anxiety about the airport's invisible Parts the inspections confirmed that the Airport's anti-earthquake measures had worked Engineers had used a mixture of large rocks to build the airport Island when the earthquake hit this coarser landfill absorbed the shaking had the fill rocks been smaller the island soil might have liquefied airport buildings would have collapsed as so many other structures [Music] did instead the delicate looking Passenger Terminal proved as tough as its Architects had hoped thanks to its ingenious design for example at this bridge that side of the building is fixed and this side has a sliding system to absorb the shock at the time of the coob earthquake this point moved almost 4 in even the terminals massive glass walls were intact it was important not to transmit the movement of the roof in an earthquake to the glass wall below we designed a system which absorbed all movements between the two structures by using sliding or rotating joints during the coob earthquake this system worked so well that not a single pane of glass was broken Kai International remained open throughout the crisis serving as a staging area for arriving rescue teams and supplies the building was in fact the building closest to the epicenter of the earthquake that destroyed Kobe that doesn't mean to say it was hardest hit because the buildings in Kobe were equally hard hit hard but because it been designed to cope with all these things it rode it out with any without any damage at all surviving the Kobe Quake was a Triumph for conai beleaguered Engineers the airport had passed a significant test of its engineering and design 3 years later it would face another as nature struck again September 22nd 1998 a powerful typhoon slams into the Japanese Coast killing 10 people and injuring more than 200 winds clocked at 100 30 mph Roar across Osaka Bay whipping up dangerous waves and slashing Rains by noon the storm's full Fury reaches Kai airport the typhoon had increased speed to the point of where we were arriving at the same time and we did have quite strong winds but uh the difficult part was the people who Tred to park us on the ground to keep them from getting blown away literally uh right after we landed in fact the airport Authority closed the airport because of the the difficulty on the causeway between the mainland and the island uh it became unusable for vehicular traffic when we were crossing the causeway going to the mainland uh there was a motorcycle who went down and I there was a couple of accidents that we had seen so it was smart of them to discontinue by evening the typhoon had passed and Kai airport resumed normal operations the terminals roof had suffered minor damage but airport officials felt lucky the typhoon might have threatened the sinking Island now standing only 17 ft above sea [Music] level Kai's ingenious jacking system keeps the terminal building level but it cannot stop the island from sinking every year the airport sinks a foot deeper into the sea scientists debate how much farther the island will sink but some believe that if it keeps sinking a typhoon's waves will someday swamp the airport next counter measure is how to prevent the invasion of water we are going to start with this sort of counter measure maybe 5 or 10 years time from now if the top el ation of the mmed island go going down Beyond some special value in high tide time or typhoon time it's quite easy to sea water to flush inside Island that's our greatest concern at the moment airplane cannot land in the pond lway must be dry all the time to keep out storms Engineers must build build a higher seaw wall around the airport but this is not the only challenge they must meet if Kanai airport is to survive economically it must expand since it opened in 1994 its volume of international flights has nearly doubled its single Runway can handle 160,000 takeoffs and landings a year by the Year 2007 it will reach that number without a second Runway Kanai will choke on its own traffic the airport plans to build a second Runway and terminal on a parallel Island connected to the original airport but this island must be built in water even deeper than the first the seabed is even softer scientists believe the second island could sink even farther than the first at the new site we have to construct the island on a bad soft Foundation since it is impossible to do away with subsidence we are thinking of constructing a second terminal building between the old and the new islands which will float on the sea like a ship then we won't have to worry about it settling at all but sinking isn't the only obstacle to expanding Kanai International battling the sinking problem drove the airport's price tag to $15 billion 40% over budget interest alone on the airport's debt is $560 million a year building a second Runway will cost an estimated $14 billion more even if it never slides beneath the waves Kanai International May sink beneath the crushing burden of its debt and yet the second Runway must be built the airport's future and perhaps the lives of its passengers depend on it if you're going to be a major hub airport you're going to really have to have two runways because what happens when something goes wrong what happens if you have an airplane that blows a tire and you're really a hub a hub brings in a lot of lot of airplanes at one time when you're considering the number of tires on each 747 you blow one tire as far as the airplane is concerned you'd never even know it until you cleared the runway however the carcass is on the runway and you certainly wouldn't want an aircraft following you to encounter that it could be a major disaster both uh landing gear Andor engine wise so they have to sweep the runway and uh that takes time and when you have you know 10 airplanes or 12 airplanes waiting for arrival it gets to be a very ticklish Affair so a second Runway is very very important though surrounded by water Kanai International Airport finds itself between a rock and a hard place Hong Kong and Singapore now have new state-of-the-art airports Tokyo's Narita is building a second Runway to hold its own in the highly competitive world of Asian Aviation Kai must expand Engineers need the second island as much as airport officials do they want to build higher seaw walls to keep typhoons from someday swamping the first island to build those walls they must temporarily close the original runway yet the immense cost of saving the airport added to its already huge debt burden May its future Kai International Airport may never fulfill its Builder dream of becoming one of Asia's leading Aviation hubs but somehow it's not conai trouble as most people remember it's conai achievement its Landmark design has won the praise of critics the world over and earned the approval of the thousands of a struck Travelers who pass through it each year I think it'll be some time before what has been achieved there be fully understood the lessons will be learned probably in the 21st century more than in the next few years from canai people will understand more deeply what's been achieved there I believe that the the Legacy that people are going to remember about the airport is that they built something that was never heard of before for an airport and that even though they had problems they found very good solutions to make it work and in fact became an engineering Marvel in several aspects number one that they were able to fill it and then when it didn't settle at the rate that somebody had calculated they were able to solve that problem and continue to operate whatever its future holds Kai International Airport will always be a monument to a bold Vision a vision that dared to accomplish something no one had ever tried before a vision that literally moved mountains created land in the midst of the sea and graced Japan with one of the world's most beautiful airports [Music] [Music] above ground it seems just another day in London about 60 ft down beneath the historic streets an army of 20,000 people are laboring on Europe's most massive engineering project since the channel [Music] tunnel as they Burrow under the ancient buildings there must be no mistakes this is the Jubilee line extension to the London Tube for 6 years now the engineers have been digging tunnels laying track building stations bringing the world's first subway system into the 21st century this $4.5 billion project has encountered more than its share of technical difficulties but overcoming obstacles is the m Mo for the world's oldest and greatest Subway London's underground affectionately known as the train in the [Music] drain London is an ancient city when the Romans first arrived more than 2,000 years ago there was already a settlement here over the centuries it's been ruled by countless kings and queens it is here that Shakespeare wrote his plays and modern democracy was born but London today works thanks to something invented 150 years ago and improved constantly since the tube yeah we you can appreciate the importance of the tube to London when you think of one of our little tube lines is the equivalent of seven Lanes of Highway each way if you did it by car put that on a map of London put the car parks in there is no London left and I think if you think of London and London Underground you're thinking of the arteries of a body you're thinking about the thing that runs deep through its heart and keeps it alive if the tube has a heart it's Oxford Circus one of the world's busiest subway stations some 87 million people pass through it each year the London subway has a simple Mission move a great number of people efficiently quickly and hopefully safely 800 million Travelers actually use the system every year but the risks are enormous when you transport millions of people at high speed through 106 mil of narrow tunnels the tube has seen its share of accidents bombings and fires and it's been more than just a transport system above ground the streets grow more and more congested to remain true to its Mission the London subway is now undertaking the Jubilee line extension the new line will relieve the desperate pressure on the busy streets as well as reducing the crowding on the Subways themselves it will also provide londoners with a safer more efficient way of traveling the line is the First new subway project in London for 20 years it will add 10 miles of new tunnels and give Travelers access to areas of London never served by the tube [Music] before it will link to the new business complex at Canary Warf and when it's finished we'll be able to carry 50,000 passengers an hour to the Millennium [Music] Dome [Music] many of the engineers for this project are seasoned Veterans of the channel tunnel the 31m undersea link between England and France but the Jubilee line presented these veteran Engineers with a greater technical challenge than the Chunnel the Jubilee line tunnels have to be carefully threaded through an already overcrowded Subterranean City packed with older tube lines and a spaghetti of underground service line and cables and there was another challenge the water logged soils near the temps River can cause collapses or subsidence fortunately the engineers have at their disposal the latest tunneling Technologies but they are on a tight timetable and there is no margin for error no mistakes if we had had a problem in Westminster it would have been an international catastrophe it's as bad as that so we had to get it right one of the Prime concerns for the extension was tunneling beneath the British Houses of Parliament and big Ben Big Ben may be an international Landmark but the Victorian Builders gave it poor supports unfortunately two new Jubilee line tunnels pass a mere 20 M from the buildings frail foundations if you can imagine Westminster itself um to one side you've got the Big Ben structure um and all the Westminster um structures tied in with that building uh you've got the district and circle line you've got a major sew running longitudinally with us uh 8 ft in diameter taking half of London's sewage through it uh we've got water mains um gas Mains and uh really it's amazing that we managed to hold everything up the bane of all tunnelers is subsidence when tunnels are dug especially through water-filled soil there is a natural tendency for the ground above to sink to check the subsidence the engineers came up with an ingenious solution some 7,000 electronic monitoring points were clamped to the historic and the Not So historic buildings surrounding the Westminster area any movement would instantly be detected by the sensitive monitors detecting subsidence is one thing preventing it is another so Engineers came up with a sophisticated technical fix permeation grouting this process calls for injecting concrete into the ground above the dig [Music] sites [Music] first large main shafts were dug from these shafts smaller injection tubes marked in red spread out under the buildings most at risk into these shafts and tributaries the cement was carefully injected stabilizing the [Music] soil we're still boring holes in the ground under some of the most expensive real estate in the world uh a lot of which was actually constructed in the 1880s without proper foundations uh and is on the verge of tumbling down without assistance from us boring underneath one of these shafts was right outside the houses of Parliament to keep traffic disruption to a minimum the work was done at night in fact few commuters ever suspected that they were driving over a 100t deep hole on their way to work each morning the Jubilee line has been an enormous achievement it's surpassed anything in the tunneling terms that has ever been done in this country [Applause] [Music] before the engineers Precision achieved the necessary stability and big Ben stands as straight and Tall today as it has for 150 years the difficulties faced by the Jubilee line engineers and their ability to devise imaginative Solutions are an integral part of London's Subway's proud engineering tradition a tradition stretching back to its very beginning in 1850 London was the world's largest city and the most congested 2 and A2 million people were crammed into 60 miles the city was crowded filthy filled with horses and carts it was choking itself to death the only roads were a network of narrow streets designed centuries earlier something had to be done a more efficient means for moving people from point A to point B needed to be found outside London there was an impressive system of railroads but trains were not allowed into the town itself it took the vision and Innovative thinking of Charles Pearson solicitor to the city of London to devise the perfect solution put the railroads underground it was a bold idea there was only one problem it had never been tried before and it might not [Music] work the Metropolitan chose to dig its route by cutand cover largely which of course he's basically digging a trench and then covering it over and the easiest place to dig a trench then was in the middle of the road so it became natural in effect to to construct an artificial cutting and go down below it was a relatively simple method in terms of Technology uh it is just a trench and then roofed over one final challenge confronted the engineers of the Metropolitan line the engines were steam powered in the confined tunnels passengers would be poisoned by the engine's toxic fumes the solution was a steam engine that piped its exhaust into two huge holding tanks on its side called condensing engines these engines made possible the world's first underground Railway unfortunately the solution wasn't perfect the holding tanks quickly filled up with fumes and needed to be emptied so how could the tanks be vented in an enclosed underground environment [Applause] this is number 23 and 24 leaner Gardens in London's Paddington District to the Casual Observer these houses are like any other on the street but on closer observation it becomes apparent that the windows are false and there are no mailboxes it is only from above that one can see the real purpose of the these fake houses they cleverly hide the Subway's vent holes where the engines holding tanks could be cleared safely when the Metropolitan opened it was successful immediately uh large numbers used it right from the beginning and it was successful commercially it was paying a dividend within one or two years which was considered very good four or 5% the first London subway called The Metropolitan ran for 3 and 1/2 miles between Paddington and farington in the city but the cut and cover method turned out to be enormously disruptive it required digging up main streets to build the tunnels in the end this approach only added to the congestion of London streets rather than relieving them if the subway was going to expand a new method of construction one less disruptive needed to be found clearly there was only one option dig [Music] deeper today for the engineers handling the Jubilee line project digging deep underground is a well-mastered science what continues to be a challenge however is digging through the water logged soil under London's River 10s watery soil is much heavier and more likely to collapse than normal soil in all the Jubilee line will tunnel back and forth beneath the temps four times the man who first devised the technique was a British engineer Mark isembard Brunell was a celebrated engineer he built the first major canal in America the Lake Champlain Hudson waterway in 1825 he started work on a tunnel for pedestrians under the TS in undertaking this project brenell had to solve difficulties that had no easy answers Brunell was very worried that uh he was going through soft mud at the bottom of the temps uh and there was a distinct possibility that the whole thing would fall through on him so he devised this huge Shield uh whereas nowadays they're usually circular in section this one was rectangular because it was easy to build but a vast cast iron structure uh with screw Jacks to hold Timber boards at the front in in order that the men could Advance at a very small amount at a time and feel fairly safe the machine that Brunell devised is the forefather of all modern tunneling machines his Innovation was to design a solid roof or shelf over the heads of workers to protect them as they clawed their way through the Earth but his design was not without faults during the construction of of his pedestrian tunnels there were two collapses and 10 people drowned but after 15 years the 500 yard long tunnel was completed in 1880 plans were made for a new pedestrian tunnel beneath the temps the engineer James Henry greathead decided to improve on brell's design his tunneling machine was smaller and lighter than brunell's and most importantly it was circular in shape giving it optim imum strength for tunnels grad also designed the machine so that as the Earth was removed hydraulic Rams pushed it Forward workers behind the machine would then bolt cast iron lining sections into place securing the tunnel finally cement would be pumped into into the area between the iron lining and the surrounding Earth ensuring a tight and waterproof fit it was a painstaking process resulting in only 5 ft of tunnel every 12 hours 10 ft a day grad's new tunneling machine presented the Metropolitan with a technology that would allow the subway for the first time to be dug deep beneath the City Construction could go on without disrupting traffic above in 1886 gread with his new digging machines set to work constructing an additional four miles of tunnels linking King William Street with Stockwell um it's important to remember that the vast bulk of London's tube network was actually built by hand it was tunneled by hand and dug by hand it's a remarkable Enterprise in many respects and we owe it largely to those people who beavered away underground at the turn of the century but now with deeper tunnels London subway had a major new problem to overcome steam engines were useless in tunnels 60 ft underground there was nowhere to vent their deadly toxic fumes but the Germans had been experimenting with a revolutionary means of locomotion electricity Electric engines proved to be the answer to this day London's tube trains are powered by electricity with a design changing little over 100 years each line has four rails two for wheels and two live rails that carry 630 volts of electricity the current is picked up from the live rails by shoes on the train powering the electric motors the first electric engines were used in the subway in 1890 they were British built and pulled three cars for the early passengers who considered gas lights in the street exotic the subway was a Fantastical Voyage into the future to the victorians and edwardians it must have been truly astonishing you step out into this white tiled tunnel and this train appears as if by Magic there's no steam there's no smoke and it must have been just overwhelming for those early Travelers in many respects it's it's almost akin to doing the shopping by space shuttle for us but the engineers made one bad judgment it was felt that because you were in a tunnel the entire time there was actually no need to see out of the train so they were built with no real windows with very very high back seats and they very quickly gained the nickname of padded cells the Victorian Engineers had solved the major early problems plaguing the Subway by developing deep tunneling techniques and electric Locomotion the stage was set for the subway to expand but there was still a problem where was all the money going to come from to Electrify the lines and dig the new tunnels the money to modernize and expand the London subway would come from this man Charles Tyson yeres a finer from Chicago who had made his fortune on tram cars he was to become the driving force behind the great expansion of London subways at the turn of the century here was this go- getting thrusting American setting sort of Edwardian England on its heels to be quite honest you know this was the man who was going to build the under ground and build it he did yuris bought up the various competing lines and then set about electrifying them now all he needed was a large source of electrical power his solution was big bold and expensive build the world's largest Power Station locals called it the Chelsea monster the size of lot Road was a major increase on anything which had been done before that when it opened in 195 it was described as the largest power station in the world and was at least twice as large as that at Niagara which of course is a hydroelectric station to increase the plant efficiency yur's Engineers turned to a new technology for generating electricity Steam turbines this was another example of being farsighted in that of course he was foreseeing the construction of further two Railways which would add load to the system his engineer from America Chapman designed and built the the whole Affair this new technology has stood the test of time the Chelsea monster powered the London subways for almost a century at peak times It produced a over 180 megaw of electricity enough to light a small City by the Millennium this historic building will close and the national electricity network will power the tube with the subway tunnels now up to 100 ft below street level it became inconvenient to move large numbers of passengers up and down from the street by endless flights of stairs yur's first solution was to use elevators but they were soon overwhelmed another approach was needed that solution proved to be an American invention the escalator today there are more than 300 escalators in the London subways and another 118 are being installed for the Jubilee line extension the Subways escalators have their work cut out covering in their lifetime the equivalent of 52,000 M and running 20 hours a day 364 days of the [Music] year the first escalator was installed in 1911 these so-called moving stairs were not immediately popular so the company went out and hired a man with a wooden leg his job was to ride up and down the escalator all day to reassure the passengers of its safety the American influence on London's underground went further than financing and Technical Solutions yeres and his company left many legacies move right down inside the cars phrases like move down inside the car only in the London Underground is a train Carriage called a car other americanisms seeped in too Northbound and southbound instead of the traditional up and down and even okay I think we've got a lot to thank yys for it's interesting to note that um after the yys group of companies you know stopped digging um there wasn't another tube line in central London for for the best part of 50 nearly 60 [Music] years the cost of building and powering deep level Subways was enormous $28 million a mile in today's money to justify such an investment the London subway needed more Revenue the solution was to expand the network out from Central London into the suburbs and once the trains were in place the New Riders built their houses near the stations at the same time the subway tried to entice travelers to come back into the City Posters tempted people out of the suburbs to venture into London's West End at night without television of course people tended to go out to entertain themselves so the underground really pushed the idea of traveling into exciting electrically lit Central London to go and see the latest film um and our publicity was very much geared towards that and I mean certainly given the fact that there were very few private cars at the time the vast bulk of people who came into Central London for an evening's entertainment normally travel by tube was an enormously important Market to us traveling by tube then was as much part of the evening out as seeing the film or seeing the play but soon enough londoners were to get a very different nightlife the Second World War hit London hard and the subway would play a major and new role between August 1940 and July 1941 German planes dropped over 40,000 High explosives and millions of incendiary devices on London it was known as The Blitz by the end 32,000 men women and children lay dead and 30% of the city was in Ruins there were few bomb shelters in the early days of World War II so in desperation londoners turned to the tubes because of their 100t depth they offered Shelter From The Inferno above ironically at the beginning of the blitz British authorities tried to keep the people out maintaining it prevented the system from running efficiently londoners simply ignored the ban and just bought tickets camping out on Platforms in passageways and even on the escalators [Music] for 78-year-old Joyce Morel time has not faded her memories of those long nights in the tunnels mothers and children used to Wai in a queue to be let down at 4:00 they wouldn't let you go down before and they would stop there all night um people were just sitting on the concrete platforms which was very uncomfortable the thing I can remember most is babies screaming all night long parents going to sleep and leaving the babies screaming accepting reality the subway authorities came up with ways to serve its new overnight visitors better some trains were converted to tube refreshment specials providing hot chocolate and buns for everyone London had gone Underground I think that was the one thing we did feel safe well we all tried to help one another perhaps looking after the children or trying to soothe them down trying to help the people who were feeling very Panic stricken one didn't really have time to think of oneself but of course the following morning we didn't know know whether we were going to find our houses Still Standing or not the tube took another wartime role some of the tunnels were converted into factories one housed 2,000 workers who built aircraft parts for the Royal Air Force's Spitfires hurricanes and bombers another became an improvised Art Gallery protecting the precious Treasures of the British Museum from the Nazi bombs unfortunately the underground was never meant to be a bomb shelter in fact it had two strategic weak points the river and the station entrances a bomb exploding in the river temps could rupture a tunnel going under the temps and flood the entire system to prevent this Engineers installed huge floodgates on either end of tunnels running under the river if ruptured the gates would close automatically but little could be done to protect the many vulnerable station entrances in 1941 a bomb bounced down into bank station exploding on the escalator tragically 56 londoners lost their lives in the ensuing explosion when the blitz ended londoners joyously returned to the open air but worse was to follow in 1944 Hitler began a new Campaign Of Terror launching his V1 and V2 rockets on the city forcing londoners back underground this time they had more choices Winston Churchill the Prime Minister had additional deep level tunnels built with the idea that after the war they would be used as [Music] subways in all eight tunnels were built and many survived to this day although they were never integrated into the system one tunnel is still used for government document storage and some of the original bunk beds are still there the graffiti on the ceiling revealed the tunnel's former military purpose another became the headquarters for General Eisenhower in this tunnel Ike and the Allied command devised the plans for Operation Overlord otherwise known as D-Day with the day in 1945 the London subway could return to its former civilian purpose during the six years of war this Victorian superstructure had played an unlikely but crucial role saving thousands of lives from Nazi bombs but the Future Would present the London subway with new and even deadlier types of threats in 1995 a terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway brought home how vulnerable Subways are Japanese extremist released a poisonous gas that killed 12 and injured 5,000 [Music] Riders the since 1990 the London Subway has received over 10,000 terrorist alerts an average of three a day the confined crowded stations are a perfect Target in the closed space of a Subway there is no escape from the blast and destructive power of a well-placed bomb for those responsible for the tube security that threat demands constant vigilance we have to deal with people who are determined in their goals to achieve um major disruption and sometimes loss of life in in the United Kingdom but particularly in London and the underground as a as a Target is one which they have favored in the past until recently the prime terrorist concern was the IRA the Irish Republican Army since 1972 the IRA has waged a sustained War Of Terror on Britain in its struggle to win a United Ireland some 600 bomb attacks on the mainland have killed more than 60 people to fight the terrorists London's Subway police force has gone Hightech since 1987 millions of dollars have been spent on video surveillance equipment the Subways Communications and surveillance Center is a state-of-the-art facility it provides authorities with instant access to nearly 1,500 video cameras the cameras closely monitor all the comings and goings of the subway stations if you entered the system anywhere on the Underground um we would be able to collect you on the on the network system um pick it up in here watch it on the television camera and follow you through on the trains so if you boarded a train going eastbound you'd have to get off the train going eastbound at the next station we can pick you up and follow you across the whole system it's probably the the prime tool that keeps the police policing cost at a at a sensible level if we didn't have the cameras we'd have to replace them with people and people are a very expensive resource an added benefit of the cameras is a reduction in Subway crime by providing police with 24-hour monitoring the London subways are now an unfriendly place for criminals in fact crime has fallen by 40% since the cameras went up as a result London is one of the safest Metro systems in the world but things can still go wrong and when they do London's Elite underground Emergency Response Unit is trained to respond quickly the unit can deal with any kind of catastrophe from derailments to fires to bombings today they are conducting a training exercise for writing a derailed train right 2 in in and a half inside outside inside inside smaller no we're all right we're all right if we take this we take this on this piece yeah the unit is well aware that their services have been needed in the past in February 1975 a runaway train careened into the buffers at morgate station the cars were sandwiched into a tiny space one literally on top of the other in all 42 people lost their lives and another 150 were seriously injured the cause was never determined it's thought the driver might have had a heart attack but it took The Rescuers a week to reach his mangled body and no one could ever be sure 12 years later tragedy struck yet again at 7:30 p.m. on a Brisk November evening a terrible allc consuming fire broke out at King's cross station one of the systems busiest the underground Emergency Response Unit was called into action this was no training exercise before it was over and The Inferno brought under control 31 people would be dead all the result of a cigarette that had been innocently dropped on the station's old wooden escalator as the fire spread passengers crowded onto the narrow platforms blinded by dense smoke and overcome by the intense heat chaos it seemed as we pulled up you would have believed that you was looking at a film shoot there was cars there was trucks there was blue lights just seemed like this is a film set so you was waiting for the word cut and it just never came I was totally shocked when I went downstairs it was very dark and there was nothing left it was just I recall this very you know as if it was just yesterday there was just strips of metal of the ticket hole which you know in the heart and bustle of commuters you'd have to sort of Dodge to one side to get [Applause] through incredibly the tube itself contributed to the intensity of the blaze trains which continued to run pushed oxygen into the station fueling The Inferno the aftermath was shocking it was like I was standing in a field there was just nothing left the fire was out but it was just very hot there was the the smell of burning in there and it wasn't just of the wooden particles and um materials in the place it was of um human [Music] beings the king's cross fire resulted in massive safety changes to the London subway the wooden escalators were replaced fire retardant materials were used in New Station construction and training and evacuation procedures greatly improved for maintenance workers the fire brought home the sad fact that the main enemy of the underground is its age much of the London subway is over a 100 years old as a result the system is increasingly dilapidated and and in dire need of a massive overhaul yet there is little time for upkeep because the system runs 20 hours a day 7 days a week repairs can only be carried out during the 4 hours after the Subway shuts down at 1:00 a.m. by 5:00 a.m. all the work must be completed so the subway is ready for the next day's service the loneliest overnight maintenance job is track walking every single inch of the underground network is carefully inspected on a regular basis for Charlie deia that means a 5 m constitutional through the tunnels each and every night to check the [Music] track this one is a maintenance Army of 1500 men and women work against the clock to keep the London Underground running but as the system gets older the repairs get more difficult London underground's problems today come from its age it was built in late Victorian uh Edwardian period it used old materials it was not built to a very high standard today we spend most of our time rebuilding it with modern materials to Modern standards where about halfway through that challenge it's estimated that $16 billion is needed to bring the underground up to date it costs $400 million a year merely to repair and renew the current system the only technology that is stood stood the test of time are the iron tunnel Linings so when the engineers got a chance to build a new line for the subway they were determined to get it right the design of the Jubilee line extension is aimed at ensuring that tragedies like the fire at King's Cross or the accident at morgate never happen again Engineers are using the latest and most sophisticated technology to build the jubilees tunnels trains and stations [Music] the thing that bevils the underground is that it may have been built with vision it wasn't built with foresight all the holes are too small when you get to the Jubilee line extension all the holes are the right size it's also having to tackle one problem that until now Subway Engineers have mostly managed to avoid the complex and challenging geology of London itself London is Split in Two By The River temps the bulk of the tube system was dug north of the river for one simple reason the thick layer of Clay on that side of the temps is ideal to Tunnel through south of the temps the clay is much thinner just beneath the fine clay strata is a porridge of water bearing so soils and gravels Engineers say that tunneling through these soils is like digging through a waterlogged Beach the biggest Hazard I suppose for life and limb in constructing tunnels is water we're always very anxious to keep away from water it's why we didn't build tunnels in the gravel south of the temps uh there are ways of course of building tunnels in water bearing ground and uh traditionally uh the principal Aid was compressed air this technique for working in water logged soil was first pioneered by James Henry grad when he built the subway tunnels in the late 19th century high-press air is pumped into a sealed chamber at the tunnel's face the air pressure keeps water away from the digging surface allowing Engineers to Tunnel more safely but working in this pressurized environment can be risky the high pressure necessary to hold water back is equivalent to being 40 ft below sea level if workers emerge from the airlock without going into a decompression chamber they face the bends and possible death but the Jubilee line is using a new kind of tunneling machine that pressurizes only the very front of the machine where the cutting blades are leaving the actual workers to do their job in a normal pressurized environment by carefully regulating the rate at which the Earth is removed during the drilling process Engineers can maintain the proper air pressure at the front of the tunneling machine keeping the water at Bay the Jubilee tunneling machines and all modern tunneling moles are direct descendants of the early British tunneling Machines of the 19th century but these new machines operate on a much more massive scale in the past it would have taken dozens of men to do the work of these mechanical moles with their enormous cutting [Music] [Music] blades the monsters Advance slowly but relentlessly through the London clay for each meter of tunnel duck 40 tons of Earth is carried away on conveyors as the machine moves forward Engineers put in Place pre-formed concrete tunnel sections cement has replaced iron because it's cheaper from time to time these monsters bump up against London's past at London Bridge tlers found the debris from a Roman house smothered by the unforgiving [Music] mud [Music] at the new train depot at Stratford a burial ground for cerian monks was discovered this was the site of a monastery built in 1134 and destroyed by Henry VII in 1538 all told archaeologists removed 678 skeletons for a respectful reburial before work started up again the most radical and Innovative aspect of the new Jubilee extension are its stations for years London subway platforms have been cramped dirty overcrowded and vulnerable to accidents or terrorist attack remembering the fire disaster at King's cross the Jubilee Line's new stations are designed to serve passengers safely for the next Century we wanted to make stations that were convenient and that also lifted the spirit that they were practical common sense and optimistic that made people feel better concept of the jubly L convenience ease ease of use and a bit as an extra a bit of delight the new stations are enormous the Canary Warf station for instance is larger than the massive skyscraper which overshadows it they're designed with safety in mind platform Edge doors line each platform greatly reducing the wind effect that fed the Flames at King's cross and the doors also reduce access to the tracks this will cut down on suicide attempts twice a week someone Falls or throws thems onto the underground's tracks the Jubilee line will also have state-of-the-art trains and cars 59 automatic trains of six cars each they will run every 2 and a half minutes moving 50,000 passengers an hour the trains are designed with crumple zones to absorb impact addressing the problem that killed so many people in the morgate crash each train will also have blackbox incident recorders similar to those on airplanes the escalators go through their final testing and work on the various jub stations is nearing completion but success has come at a price both in terms of time and budget the Jubilee line is substantially over budget and way over schedule yet technically the engineers have achieved their objectives building the most advanced subway system in the world the men and women who built this massive superstructure look back on their accomplishments with great pride oh I think we're absolutely on on the Leading Edge when it comes to tunneling I think other cities would have accepted the Earth moving more would have accepted the surface damage and would have simply Shrugged it off and gone back and repair the damage in such an intensely crowded city as we have in London that took the very best quality civil engineering to [Music] achieve the demand for technically Advanced Subways like the Jubilee line grows in direct proportion to the increasing conest gestion in urban areas all around the globe cities are developing new mass transit Technologies to move people in Paris the French have recently built their new meteor subway line with fully automatic trains in Asia mass transit is making great strid forward Hong Kong opened its own subway system just 20 years ago but already it carries 850 million passengers a [Music] year now Britain's Engineers too are trying to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors they will need all their Ingenuity and skill to turn the legacies of the past into the Subways of the future on the drawing board is a new type of subway train for London the space train it will increase passenger capacity by over 40% without changing the size of London's narrow tunnels the space train is pioneering the concept of micro Wheels which allows for a much larger cabin for the passengers the space train also has no split cars it's all one long [Music] tube the London Underground has served its City well providing efficient safe transport in times of peace and protection in times of War over the last 150 years 100 miles of tunnels have been hacked through hostile soils while carefully preserving the ancient and historic City [Music] above today thanks to the technologically advanced Jubilee line the train in the drain continues to be the world's leader in mass transportation keeping its proud place as a super structure like no [Applause] other it was a time of Terror an invincible force thundered on the face of the earth a super structure was the only defense so strong it could survive a nuclear blast so powerful its electronic eyes reach 23,000 miles into space a million a 12 lb of dynamite ripped 23,000 truckloads of solid Granite from the heart of a Rocky Mountain to create an underground Fortress of unprecedented size come inside this Citadel hidden deep within the Earth where high-tech Sentinels guard America against Annihilation this is the secret world of [Music] [Music] noran [Music] Cheyenne Mountain a rugged Rocky Mountain Peak Rising boldly from America's vast Central Plains just a few miles from the town of Colorado Springs deep within its 100 milliony old Granite heart lies one of Mankind's most remarkable super structures a citadel of stone steel and microchips where it is always Twilight light and no one ever sleeps instead dozens of eyes maintain a second byc vigil over the skies around the world looking for anything that could be the beginning of an attack on North America quick alert open up checklist 101112 sir we got an unknown in the system radar picks up an unidentified object in the Skies over Central Russia DST is reporting an Eastern quick alert from placet Russia it traveling fast and heading toward the Pacific Ocean standby for possible mental event CD copies Intel what is your analysis prompt response is vital to the defense of the nation highly trained teams scan intelligence reports to determine the correct action sir Intel assesses this to be the scheduled launch of an ICBM from faes with impact expected at the Kamchatka Peninsula and Intel assess this as troop training though it's a scenario that has played out hundreds of times the men and women on duty here know that A Moment Like This Could Be the one that puts them to the ultimate test training nored us space complete recommend we terminate this conference this is the headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defense command NORAD members of the United States Army Navy Air Force Marine Corps and the Canadian Armed Forces the nored operation centers they work under the cover of a super structure whose design and construction are as incredible as its high-tech capabilities in a virtual world of computers remote sensors and speedof light telecommunications they stand watch over the North American continent perpetually devouring instantaneous data Transmissions from a vast network of sensors on land at Sea and in space norad's eyes can not only see the entire surface of the Earth they also gaze 22 1 12,000 mil up into the heavens where they intently probe 27 trillion cubic miles of Aerospace from the smallest civilian airplane to the most sophisticated military satellite nothing escapes them NORAD Personnel consider all airspace for 120 Mi around the outer border of the United States and Canada critical to National Security it's called the outer identification Zone NORAD must know the purpose of every aircraft there as soon as an aircraft crosses the outer identification Zone we we start a 2minute clicker uh so we got to figure out who that track is within 2 minutes and if we can't figure out who it is or there's no way to correlate that with an FAA flight plan we uh declare the track unknown and that's when we scramble interceptors and go out and figure out who that is by putting eyes on the target yes sir I just want to let you know that uh we have an unknown over Canada right now on a given day we have anywhere from 6,500 to 7200 tracks and we provide identification of every aircraft coming into North America and that is a pretty sizable task given the fact that about 2.5 million tracks come into North America every year we are very rarely ever surprised in cheyen Mountain we can't allow ourselves to be surprised red us space has East DSP indication Cheyenne mountains Labyrinth conceals norad's military wonders its existence has always been well known its tracking prowess is a matter of national pride its methods are top secret how this super structure came to be carved out of the inside of a mountain is one of the great feats of our Century 15 ingeniously constructed steel plate buildings house the command centers and the infrastructure that supports them through the endless hours of norad's vigilance stores of water food Fuel and a sophisticated air cleaning system provide life support for the complex it can completely seal itself off from the outside world for more than 30 days well the first time I got here I was lost I really didn't know where I was going when you wander around because it's a pretty complicated complex inside it's hard for people to imagine all the different levels of you know different floors and different buildings that are here and it's it's pretty overwhelming at first but there just a real sense of awe because the design is incredible you know that when when you come into the the large tunnel and into the through the blast doors and just realize what this was meant to survive you know any kind of attack during the Cold War and and the engineering behind it is just amazing to me still I guess my first impression when I walked into cheyen Mountain was just to say wow what an engineering Marvel uh even though it was U constructed over 30 years ago I continue to be amazed at the technology resident within the mountain getting all this technology inside a mountain was one of the 20th Century's toughest engineering challenges the builders wrenched 460,000 cubic yards of hard rock from the core of the mountain and replaced it with 7,000 tons of steel yards of concrete and miles of wiring what drove men to hollow out a mountain and build this amazing superstructure It Was Fear in the 1940s and 50s mankind unleashed the power of the stars on the face of the planet nuclear weapons darkened America's post-war optimism with fears of Armageddon could anything survive this unparalleled destructive force to have any chance of winning the unthinkable War America had to build something that could no one was sure it was possible at the the beginning of the nuclear age the technology to build a working City deep within a mountain strong enough to endure a nuclear blast did not exist no one knew how many problems Engineers would face once a project of this magnitude was started or how Innovative and creative they would have to be to solve those problems the call went out to America's most talented Engineers challenging them to create something totally new to defend against phenomena whose effects were mostly unknown in uh fall of 1958 I received a call to go to Omaha to meet with a core of engineers to discuss a project and that's how it all began for me I didn't know anything about Colorado Springs didn't know anything about NORAD at that time remember about nor in the late 1950s Tom Keel and Steve Greenfield were young Engineers with a New York firm of part Brinkerhoff more or L Greenfield had proven skills on some of his company's toughest projects He specialized in hardened underground defense facilities his work was often highly classified Kel was more of a specialist in tunnel design and bridges he brought innovative solutions to engineering problems but nothing they had done prepared them for the mysterious top secret atmosphere of engineering North America's survival the young engineers and their colleagues were given an unprecedented task to design and build quickly and economically a fortress that could survive the unsurvivable the power of a new weapon that for the first time in history could destroy the entire human race a weapon that was now in the hands of America's enemy in 1949 the Soviet Union detonated a nuclear device Soviet bombers are armed with nuclear weapons could strike North American [Applause] cities the nuclear superpowers settled into what they called Cold War a permanent confrontation that could instantly turn hot when I was in regular military uh we had very regular military training for the future war against Americans Colonel stanislav lunev is the highest ranking Russian military intelligence officer ever to defect proved for my country he is currently in the federal witness protection program and I didn't know any other life than to live inside Cold War we consider all this peace time as some kind of break which we have to train ourself for the future War only break peace break that's all Andover in America the Soviet threat gave birth to a massive campaign called civil defense you know how bad sunburn can feel the atomic bomb flash could burn you worse than a terrible [Music] sunburn while the public watched upbeat training films Federal and local authorities built shelters and tried to prepare for the worst where we would hire architect engineering firms to go out and identify existing shelters and existing buildings hallways and then put up signs say this is a fallout shelter and then eventually put in Provisions food and water so that you could spend some time there till the Fallout decayed enough to where it was safet to go outside this shelter is a real good idea if we should ever have a nuclear war we could get a heavy Fallout even though we were not anywhere near the target area hey isn't this nice but thoughtful Americans wondered how much protection civil defense could offer against a nuclear Onslaught the key to survival was to stop an attack before it came in 1957 Canada and the United States formed the North American Air Defense command or NORAD to operate the continent's early warning front line against attack by the Soviet Union to detect incoming bombers Canada and the US cooperated to build a series of radar outposts across the far north the D mid Canada and pine tree lines provided early warning of enemy attack over the North Pole but the new defense system suffered from a fatal flaw NORAD headquarters was an old Hospital building a masonry structure built in the 1920s a direct hit from an old-fashioned conventional bomb could have knocked it flat a nuclear attack would have turned it to dust in 1956 the Continental Air Defense Commander reported that a man with a bazooka passing in a car could put the establishment out of commission to fight its cold war with Russia America had to build something previously unimagined a hardened Command Center that could survive the devastating power of an atomic bomb the daunting challenge for military engineers was how and where such a building could be constructed or even if it could with America in Daily danger they had to succeed the first design followed the plan of the Strategic Air Command headquarters at Omaha Nebraska this plan combined an aboveground headquarters with an underground combat Operation Center but defense planners protested that this design was too vulnerable for a facility as important as NORAD headquarters the Rand Corporation a defense Think Tank recommended locating the base underground if possible within a Granite Mountain military engineers combed the Front Range of Colorado's Rocky Mountains in search of a suitable site the site was eventually chosen as Cheyenne Mountain South the Colorado Springs which is a Great Big Blob of granite and it was chosen because it was the hardest and strongest rock around besides its Granite core several factors attracted NORAD designers to Cheyenne Mountain it was near the geographic center of North America far from Soviet strategic bombers in a relatively inactive geological region and near an existing military base at Fort Carson Colorado the Engineers had their sight now how could they carve such a massive structure out of solid Granite Hard Rock miners had the technology but no one had ever tried a project of this scale before the whole concept of this structure was to create a series of caverns 1500 ft on the surface of the mountain and they were kind of like an egg crate there were three galleries that went in One Direction and three that crossed them so there were intersections where the two galleries came together work on the massive Caverns began in June of 1961 the miners made quick progress in only one year they blasted loose and hauled away over a billion pounds of granite but suddenly their work took on a desperate urgency in the fall of 196 2 the Soviets suddenly brought the nuclear threat to America's front porch aerial photographs revealed that the Russians had placed missiles capable of carrying powerful nuclear warheads on the island of Cuba a scant 90 mi from our nearest shore both sides went nose to nose and prepared for the worst fortunately most of the American public wasn't aware it was that close till afterwards we were redeployed to the reserve position very deep in the mountains from our permanent location and uh received weapons ammunition uh gas mask uh special closes uh for the protection against radiation and all other stuff it was good luck of our mankind that we had a chance to avoid this War I knew that a Fallout shter wouldn't help you and factly I took the attitude if a war happened a nuclear missile attack I'd be dead I wouldn't have to worry about it after 13 days of tense negotiations the Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba tempers cooled but the arms race continued to escalate the near Apocalypse of the Cuban Missile Crisis made the successful completion of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex even more important in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis work proceeded on Norad with an even greater sense of purpose the project was put on what is called a wartime construction schedule it was to be completed as soon as possible everyone involved with the project knew what was at stake nothing less than the continued existence of the Free World hey good morning Carl fine today you might never guess that the Free World survival once depended on these old friends who still play golf together in Omaha in the 1960s they were the rising stars of the Army Corps of Engineers charged with the seemingly impossible task of building a nuclear bomb proof NORAD it was an elite group of what we considered ourselves Elite at least group of people that were a good structural electrical mechanical engineers that were giving super challenging problems as far as I know there were no projects designed to withstand uh uh the effects of nuclear explosion the most important requirement of the underground facility was its ability to survive a nuclear blast before work began geologists and soils Engineers drilled test holes to discover if the rock would support the enormous Cavern that needed to be hollowed out of the belly of the mountain the military engineers had plenty of experience in underground tunnels and mines but blasting a whole inside Cheyenne Mountain would be like no mining project ever conceived NORAD headquarters required far more space than a mining tunnel at first this seemed to be no problem the miners were very good good at blasting and removing massive amounts of rock but this project required more finesse The Rock Chambers had to be excavated to a very specific size the remaining Rock had to be structurally solid normal blasting very effectively removes the maximum amount of rock in the shortest possible time but it's very destructive blasting inside Cheyenne Mountain threatened its overall stability now before the uh excavation is made of course the joints are tight because you have the massive Rock above which is keeping everything real tight but once you start blasting then uh once you've created an opening you have uh loosening of of the of the joints the massive blasting that not only weakened Cheyenne Mountain it left its brittle Granite with sharp Jagged edges that could break off and fall if a nuclear impact shook them in desperate need of a solution the engineers called in Dr Clifton W Livingston a blasting expert from the Colorado School of Mines the rock of Cheyenne Mountain was very brittle granite and as such in the blasting it broke very Jagged corners doc Livingston was a a rock dentist he came in and trimmed it up he was say halfway between a quarry Blaster and a sculptor of Mount Rushmore he was much more precise and careful and more expensive and he used very small charges and very precise drilled holes Dr Livingston's technique of smooth blasting significantly reduced fracturing and weakening of the rock Livingston precisely calculated the dynamite charges so that the rock fractured only to the desired depth when he was brought in I guess was sometime 1961 or two there was considerable concern about the security of this Cavern and Doc Livingston took the contractor in hand and directed Where to drill the holes and how deep and how much power to put in them and what sequence to set them off and he worked on it for 6 months and he had the price looking pretty good and the Air Force came through to look at this they'd heard there was all this trouble up here and they came in and saw the chambers were all nice and smooth what's all the fuss about what do we need this guy for they fired him but he did his job and he made a major contribution to this project but it was not enough just to smooth the cracks in the C the engineers also needed to strengthen the hollowed out sections of the mountain so that it could withstand the power of a nuclear blast to do this would require taking a mining technology to a level where it had never been before and the result was one of the greatest Innovations of Cheyenne Mountain Rock bolting I think it's kind of interesting not just how they removed the rock but how they left the remaining Rock in place with rock bolts there aren't too many people people that are familiar with rock bolts The Rock bolts used in Cheyenne Mountain were metal rods 6 to 30 ft in length that were similar to but much larger than the expansion bolts used by the Home do yourselfer to Anchor objects to a concrete or brick wall but these bolts an unprecedented 115,000 of them kept a half mile thickness of granite from falling in on itself since this facility was designed for dynamic loads that would uh could be induced by a possible nuclear detonation it was very important that you have a a really good rock reinforcement System Shock waves move very quickly we're talking milliseconds you know this is not a an earthquake type of long frequency this is a Zippo a shock wave propagates Through The Rock and hits the interface with a rock and the Chamber the wave creates some tension and tends to take the Rock and spall it and the bolts and the mesh kept it all together and mobilized a massive amount of rock by tying it all together each bolt was torqued to 275lb a 1-in diameter 6t long bolt created a tension of 10,000 PB on the exposed rock face this tension fooled the mountain into thinking it still had a center just as the engineers began to believe that they had conquered the interior challenges of Cheyenne Mountain a shocking Discovery threatened to derail the entire project for good they found that the mountain had a fatal weakness when they picked the mountain they thought was going to be the best mountain in the world but when they got inside of it they found it was rotten in the core to make matters worse this fractured Rock Zone was precisely over the tunnel intersection where norad's Operation Center was to be placed the collection of joints was known as a a Shear Zone it was an area where the rock had been sheared apart in ancient geology if the shock wave had come across the unreinforced chambers with the weak Rock the weak Rock would have been squeezed out into the chambers like toothpaste out of a tube and would have crushed the buildings and filled the chamber the nearly completed project was in serious Jeopardy unless this massive natural Shear Zone could be reinforced Cheyenne Mountain would be abandoned Kel went back to the drawing board to figure out a way to overcome Mother Nature's capriciousness I went back to New York and devised a concrete sphere that would be constructed inside the mountain at the intersection of these two Chambers and the sphere could withstand the squeezing pressure of the weak Rock being tended to be squeezed out and hold it in place this Dome although unplanned is one of the greatest engineering marvels of Cheyenne Mountain it took nearly 2 years to complete the form for the Dome was constructed outside Cheyenne Mountain once complete it was then disassembled for the move underground at 100 ft in diameter the form was a mammoth jigsaw puzzle putting the pieces back together inside the mountain presented Kel and his team with another challenge the construction of this was more of a problem than the design the chamber had to be enlarged in order to make room to put this Con spear in place expanding the excavation only added to the instability inside Cheyenne Mountain the engineers would need another Innovation to keep the project alive Kel came up with the answer over lunch while visiting the Army Corps of Engineers headquarters I remember sketching this idea out on a napkin in a cafeteria in Omaha so we came up with a very strong steel Tower composed of of heavy steel columns laced together which was jacked up against the roof workers poured thousands of yards of concrete to create the structure that would transmit the weight of the mountain around the fractured area to the solid Bedrock below while work on the steel Tower and concrete Dome added months to the project the urgency of completing norad's Command Center never left lessoned the miners and excavators gave way to the welders and Steel Fabricators construction never stopped on the steel buildings in the completed underground Chambers you had to bring a 40ft building to a 15t diameter tunnel so all came in pieces and all had to be welded together underground in the middle of the cavern people work night and day on this despite the added work over the command center norad's interior protect Ive shell was finally completed in May of 1965 the steel buildings that would eventually provide 208,000 s ft of working space took their place within the 2 and 1/2 miles of tunnels in the cavern now it would take 8 months just to install the complex electrical and surveillance equipment inside the mountain the centerpiece of the new Command Center was an $800,000 combin camera processor projector that could display a 12x 16 ft image of the planet in seven colors on that screen commanders got a sophisticated Global picture of objects they were tracking observation posts even satellites in orbit the screen was fed by radar and satellite information from an array of computers around the world by today's standards norad's initial computer technology was primitive but at the time the massive Mainframe computers were state-of-the-art throughout the Cold War the computer technology race was as Fierce as the nuclear arms race today norad's Granite Sentry system remains state-of-the-art all the computers we use are off-the-shelf items it's just a software that is specially designed and created to perform the missions that we require of them basically we have our fingers on the pulse of cheyen mountain we can tell at a glance if there's a problem with our missile Warning Systems our space defense systems or our air defense systems throughout the mountain by early 1966 the power was on at Cheyenne Mountain the Sentinels at their stations everything waited in Readiness for an event everyone hoped would never happen after nearly 5 years of work at a present-day replacement cost of $18 billion the Cheyenne Mountain Complex became fully operational on April 20th 1966 the men who designed engineered and built the massive underground Center were proud of their work they were also quite aware of its limitations everyone hoped that this superstructure would never be put to the test even more they prayed that it would survive that test the design was based on that premise so the odds were rather high that you would not have a direct hit on the complex if you had a direct hit then the dynamic loads would be so great that the openings would collapse there's just no way to offset the terrible stresses that would be developed in the Rock in the end NORAD survival rested on a principle called circular error [Music] probability C was simply the probability that a nuclear weapon fired from halfway around the world would fail to score a direct hit on Cheyenne Mountain as far as a vulnerability of NORAD that was really mostly a function of the accuracy of the device because you know it was it was a forone conclusion that a direct hit would destroy it to Kam even though it cannot survive a direct hit the command center is designed and built to resist the effects of a nuclear weapon blast heat seismic shock electromagnetic pulse and radiation the access tunnels weaken the effects of blast and heat simply by letting the blast wave pass through the tunnel unimpeded to avoid a direct strike by the blast wave the designers located the blast Valves and blast doors at right angles to the tunnels at the first sign of a credible nuclear threat the blast doors are closed and Cheyenne Mountain is sealed off from the outside world Tech Sergeant Marvin hirers and his team of Specialists maintain these doors here in nor we have three blast doors the blast doors are designed to protect the mountain from an over pressure implo in from the inside each door's hydraulic system is self-contained and the speed of the door is anywhere from 40 seconds to 15 seconds if we had to they're perfectly balanced 50,000 lb doors you can actually move them with your hand when the doors are closed technicians reconfigure the ventilating fans to run backwards the Reversed air flow keeps radioactive contaminants or chemical warfare Agents from entering the mountain another engineering Innovation at Cheyenne Mountain is designed to protect NORAD from the seismic shock of a nuclear blast massive steel Springs more than 1300 of them support each of the 15 buildings in the complex each spring is about this big round and and the wire that that that makes the spring is 3 in diameter of high strength steel the Springs about 1,000 lb a piece in weight and they stand 48 Ines tall unsprung the weight of the buildings compress those Springs to approximately 36 in and the purpose of the springs for all these facilities is to prevent a shock that might come through the rock resulting from either a man-made or a natural shock these Springs will attenuate that shock just as they would car springs on your vehicle my recollection is that we were just barely able to make one spring out of one Ingot of Steel couldn't have made it much bigger than this in the manufacturing facilities that were available norad's gigantic Springs work so well that the concept of seismic shock isolation has been incorporated into many modern buildings and earthquake zones flexible passageways and couplings allow the buildings to sway independently without breaking vital connections but the designers needed even more reinforcement to meet the challenge of a nuclear bomb's electromagnetic pulse or EMP this tremendous burst of energy similar to but far more powerful than a lightning strike can destroy sensitive electronic equipment and damage even sturdy electrical circuits to combat its effects the engineers constructed the buildings like the hull of a ship or fuselage of an airplane the continuous welded 3/8 in thick steel skin gave structural strength as well as electromagnetic pulse protection it was found that the pulse could be deflected if the entire building inside was surrounded with a steel shell just like a ship so the basic description of this facility was a fleet of upside down ships constructed in a cave floating on a sea of spring the day-to-day operation of this complex facility must seamlessly support the primary defense mission of Cheyenne Mountain Ben bour is the Deputy based civil engineer for the Cheyenne Mountain Complex there aren't too many situations that our utility system cannot accommodate today uh fortunately the people that designed and built this place had in mind all of the Redundant equipment necessary to operate in the event that a primary uh water system Electric System or HVAC heating ventilating air conditioning system would fail it's the redundancy and the unique design of those types of systems that make this a very interesting place to work a reliable source of power is absolutely necessary for the complex network of critical electronic equipment right now we are in the bowels of Cheyenne Mountain in fact we're at the lowest excavated point within the complex behind me is a 500,000 gon diesel storage Reservoir that we use to power our generators in the event that we need to go to generator power and this Reservoir will permit us to run for an extensive period of time if we should lose commercial power even the backup power has a backup 3400 powerful battery cells maintain what is called uninterruptible power supply or UPS for the operation of NORAD it is one of the largest backup Power Systems ever built perhaps the most important supply for the operation of NORAD is water more than a million and A2 gallons of drinking and 42 million gallons of industrial water are stored here Chen Mountain must also regulate its Air Supply Air enters through two sources the North and South portals and then is directed through a so-called air delay path this construction is crucial to prevent damage from the force of a nuclear blast and the pressure pulse it would create a destructive blast of air traveling at the speed of sound the air delay tunnels are equipped with blast valves one of the ingenious design elements of Cheyenne Mountain's respiratory system if a blast occurs and that pressure pulse drives up the tunnel that pulse will hit a disc located on the back side of this valve and drop dve that disc across these slots preventing any air from entering the complex the mountain must also be able to repel chemical biological or radiological contaminants to combat that threat the engineers can force outside air through sophisticated CBR filters in the cooling towers Cheyenne Mountain is more than just a panoply of technological wonders it's a place where people live their lives and do their jobs more than 12200 people keep the complex functioning on a 24-hour a day yearound basis at any given moment there are as many as 800 highly trained people working inside from a collection of 12 government and civilian agencies and from the combined branches of both the US and Canadian Armed Forces each of those individuals is very carefully screened and they represent the very best that their services and their country have to offer it's incumbent upon me to make sure that those people who work shifts do not uh develop a false sense of security of sitting in a command center staring at a blank screen for eight hours a day and then going home security is tight not only getting into Cheyenne Mountain but also in getting from area to area within the complex although always on guard the complex does have its amenities not surprisingly its engineering makes it a unique and a inspiring place for the people who work here when I first got to shine Mountain to nored I was astonished uh the size of it I had no idea that we had this much room inside the mountain our work environment is not unlike um any other large off office building or headquarters building that our people would routinely work in being inside the mountain you really don't get a feeling of claustrophobia stand by because of the space inside the buildings you really if you were in the same building downtown you really wouldn't notice the difference other than not having a window to look out of it's just like being in an office without a window for more than 30 years the nored Operation Center in Cheyenne Mountain has Faithfully fulf filled its Mission but was that mission necessary or was it cold war paranoia now that the cold war is over we know that the Soviet threat to North America was real the Soviet plan for global thermonuclear war was revealed in a 1985 report it consisted of a surprise attack that would be launched on several fronts land sea and air-based elements of the Soviet military forces would simultaneously attack Targets in Western Europe and in North America the first barrage would destroy us coastal cities and create an electromagnetic pulse that would disrupt satellite and ground Communications the Soviets estimated that in the first 20 minutes of this massive Nuclear Assault 75 to 25 million Americans would be killed Cheyenne Mountain was high in the list of primary [Music] targets they knew a lot about nor and locations uh of weapon system include Fighters interceptors missile interceptors uh numbers and location of American space satellites not for something uh abstract tactical but for very real reason how to destroy this system in time of possible War the Soviet attack never came the Cold War is Over some say NORAD has outlived its usefulness others say a threat is still present it has only changed [Applause] [Music] hands Cheyenne Mountain was inspired by a time when the Cold War through threatened North America originally designed to combat the threat of Soviet bombers its priority shifted to monitoring Soviet missiles even as it was being constructed during the 60s and' 7s the United States and the Soviet Union played out a DA macabra of nuclear missile superiority to the inexorable beat of mutually assured destruction the Soviets never achieved numerical superiority but they built bigger missiles with more powerful Warheads both Nations relentlessly added to their stockpiles of destructive power their combined Arsenal held enough Firepower to destroy the world more than a dozen times over and challenged by Cheyenne Mountain the Soviets built elaborate Subterranean military command posts connected by secret Subways it was located uh not very far from Moscow in highly protected Bonkers very highly protected Bonkers not so uh not so strong ground as norat is located but in Granite we never consider this facility like maybe you uh consider norat headquarter as a 100% uh secured and protected no because uh after first sign of possible attack uh this headquarter will be evacuated immediately to another Center which located in much more secrecy and much more protected Western intelligence estimates indicate that the Soviets were prepared to shelter as many as 175,000 key officials and support workers who would rebuild their country after a prolonged nuclear engagement for nearly 40 years the world trembled Under The Cloud of imminent nuclear Annihilation for all this military buildup chenne Mountain has entered an advanced state of alert only once in its history it was in October 1973 during the yam kapor War as the Arab allies Advanced on Israel America ordered B-52s armed with nuclear bombs into the air American missile launchers went into a pre-launched check as NORAD monitored the war the American Military was placed on defense condition or Defcon 3 an advanced state of alert halfway between peace and thermonuclear Warfare the alert warned the Soviet Union's Arab allies that an invasion of Israel would not be tolerated the advance was halted and the alert relaxed then in the late 1980s the Soviet Empire collapsed and with it so did much of its nuclear threat today the Cold War is Over over NORAD has been forced to redefine its role yet its Mission Remains the Same make certain that nothing enters us airspace that we don't know about and today there are many more potential threats some of them are external from new nuclear States like India Pakistan North Korea or from former Soviet republics Iran and Iraq could soon join the nuclear club and China already has nuclear capable ballistic missiles Conventional Weapons remain a threat during the Gulf War NORAD closely monitored Iraqi missile strikes coordinating with Allied theater commanders in Saudi Arabia and Israel it was able to issue warnings of scud missile launches that were relayed to troops on the ground the same technology is also being used to stand watch over possible Airborne attacks from terrorist teams looking for an American Target you know that International terrorist groups just now are growing like mushrooms after rain so I think that danger to norat is not only still existing but challenges to Nora just now much more than it was before or in time of Cold War nored also protects against enemies from within by tracking all aircraft movements in and out of North America it's a powerful resource in the war against drugs thanks to the ever watchful eyes of NORAD there have been a number of dramatic interceptions of drug traffickers in North America NORAD even monitors threats from outer space International treaties ban the deployment of weapons in Space the space control center tracks every object that orbits the earth from an altitude of 200 Mi all the way out to 22,500 Mi nothing goes up into space or falls out of it without the center knowing about it we've been doing this ever since Sputnik launched in October of 1957 object number one is the rocket body from that launch Sputnik is object number two we're currently up to 2,484 over the years NORAD has become a kind of nears Space Traffic cop we'll use the shuttle as an example while it's on orbit we will build a 10 km by 50 km long theoretical box inside of our computer we'll compare that to the 88,200 object that we're tracking for 36 hours if any of those objects penetrate that box we have a hotline to the flight Dynamics officer at Nasa and NASA is the one that makes the decision to maneuver the shuttle in the 91 missions they've maneuvered seven times to avoid an object the support from the International Space Station will be quite similar to what we currently provide for the shuttle and the mirror space station the only difference will be we will have a dedicated person to support that mission and it will compare all the objects that we're tracking for 72 hours Vice 36 hours that we do with a shuttle they will also use the same hotline to the flight Dynamics officer at Nasa and NASA will make the decision whether to maneuver it to avoid an object since its cold war Origins this engineering Marvel has matured to fulfill several important roles in the technologically complex world of computers space Weaponry satellite Communications and even the colonization of near Space by the International Space Station yet those who built the Cheyenne Mountain Complex have never forgotten the terrifying times that gave it birth children were being raised with this nuclear threat over their head he needed to do something about it first you duck and then you cover when the Wall came down and essentially the US won the Cold War looking back I feel well maybe I had a small contribution to that total impact and although it was expensive it was a lot cheaper in both money and people to go that route than to have a nuclear Holocaust today the risk of global thermonuclear war Warfare seems like a nearly Forgotten Nightmare but other bad dreams have sprung up to take its place in the postc Cold War World a threat to peace can come from any direction at any time many believe there is no foreseeable end to norad's Mission the engineers and Builders who met the challenge of constructing this superstructure did much more than confront the cold War's nuclear threat this Monument to their Ingenuity will continue to serve the security and sovereignty of North America well into the coming millennium

Channel: Progress - Tech Science Documentaries

Views: 1,864,716

Keywords: Air Travel History, Architectural Achievements, Earthquake Resistant Design, Educational Videos, Innovations in Technology, Japan's Engineering Feats, Massive Structures, Oldest Subway System, Secret Military Facilities, World's Busiest Airports, World-Class Documentaries, earthquake resistant design, informative videos, innovative technologies, military defense technology, technological breakthroughs, transportation systems, underground bunkers, world-class documentaries

Id: 3iIOmzplckU

Length: 153min 44sec (9224 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 15 2023