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Speaker 1: When we think of the great unknowns, it is often

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Speaker 1: to the heavens that we have looked gazing out into

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Speaker 1: the deepness of space in wonder at what lies beyond.

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Speaker 1: But what lies below the surface of our planet's vast

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Speaker 1: oceans is perhaps almost equally mysterious, and for some it

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Speaker 1: is a world that will never be glimpsed in any

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Speaker 1: way at all. Since time immemorial, the ocean has held

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Speaker 1: a powerful grip on the imagination of all cultures that

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Speaker 1: have come into contact with it. Through the power of

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Speaker 1: myth and folklore. It is a raging manifestation of all

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Speaker 1: that is unknown. For some, it is the very embodiment

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Speaker 1: of freedom. For others, it is nothing less than the

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Speaker 1: murky fluid of their darkest nightmares. In signa Freud's interpretation

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Speaker 1: of dreams, it is to water that the psychologist turns

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Speaker 1: to elaborate his ideas. Where at the surface we find

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Speaker 1: the conscious mind. Down below, deeply submerged, lies a shadowy

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Speaker 1: world of all that is repressed. And yet for all

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Speaker 1: the myths and stories that have sprung from the sea,

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Speaker 1: fantastical tales of monsters and mermaids, there remain those that

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Speaker 1: make no allusions to metaphor whose place is not for

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Speaker 1: the pages of the poet or the psychologist's couch, but

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Speaker 1: exist merely as a matter of record stories of hidden

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Speaker 1: worlds and unknown creatures that may yet prove to be

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Speaker 1: beyond our wildest imaginations. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm

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Speaker 1: Richard McClain Smith. The sea monster has been ever present

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Speaker 1: in ocean folklore since men and women first gazed across

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Speaker 1: the surface of the mysterious deep. Many creatures of myth

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Speaker 1: and legend have since been found to be nothing but

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Speaker 1: misidentified aquatic mammals, creatures such as the beautiful and beguiling

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Speaker 1: manatee that gave rise to the sirens of Greek mythology.

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Speaker 1: But there are also stories equally abundant of strange sightings

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Speaker 1: of creatures that don't quite tally with the known biology,

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Speaker 1: sighting such as the one experienced by Lutheran missionary Hands

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Speaker 1: Ighied in July seventeen thirty four, whilst traveling on a

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Speaker 1: ship bound for the city of Nuke in Greenland. Ighied

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Speaker 1: claimed to have seen a staggering creature resembling nothing he

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Speaker 1: had seen before. With a small head, elongated neck, and

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Speaker 1: short body. It propelled itself through the water using giant fins. Later,

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Speaker 1: when the sailors also saw its tail, it was judged

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Speaker 1: to have measured longer than the whole length of the ship.

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Speaker 1: In December eighteen seventy two, the HMS Challenger, captive by

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Speaker 1: George Naires set sail on a pioneering circumnavigation of the globe.

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Speaker 1: On board were of scientists led by famed Scottish zoologists

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Speaker 1: Charles Thompson. Their mission to map the physical conditions of

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Speaker 1: the deep sea. What they discovered was nothing less than astounding.

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Speaker 1: The expedition, widely accepted to have marked the birth of oceanography,

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Speaker 1: is perhaps best known for the discovery of an area

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Speaker 1: known as Challenger Deep, located at the bottom of the

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Speaker 1: South Pacific, part way between Guam and Palau. Challenger Deep

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Speaker 1: is to be found at the southern tip of the

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Speaker 1: Mariana Trench and is thought to mark the deepest point

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Speaker 1: of the ocean floor. Although initially measured at over eight

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Speaker 1: thousand meters, it has since been calculated as being closer

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Speaker 1: to eleven thousand meters. To put it into context, if

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Speaker 1: Mount Everest were placed at the bottom, there would still

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Speaker 1: be over a mile of ocean above its peak. The

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Speaker 1: region located roughly a mile below the surface is known

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Speaker 1: as deep sea, comprising eighty percent of the entirety of

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Speaker 1: the oceans. More people have traveled into space than have

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Speaker 1: been known to travel there. Indeed, the Voyager one probe

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Speaker 1: has explored over twelve billion miles of space, and with

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Speaker 1: the incredible workings of the Hubble telescope, we have never

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Speaker 1: before been able to see so far, with present distances

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Speaker 1: estimated to be roughly thirteen point eight billion light years.

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Speaker 1: But when it comes to the area that comprises ninety

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Speaker 1: nine percent of all living space on the planet, it

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Speaker 1: is estimated that we have explored less than ten percent

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Speaker 1: of it, a fact or the more startling when you

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Speaker 1: consider the deep sea contains eighty percent of the Earth's

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Speaker 1: entire biosphere. So when you put it like that, it's

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Speaker 1: hard not to wonder just what exactly might remain undiscovered,

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Speaker 1: lurking deep in the shadows. It is a thought that

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Speaker 1: has haunted one Russian sea captain for thirty years, the

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Speaker 1: mystery of what happened to Soviet nuclear submarine K two

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Speaker 1: one nine when it ventured into the region known as

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Speaker 1: the Bermuda Triangle in the early hours of Friday, October third,

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six has never fully been accounted for. Considered

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Speaker 1: by some one of the most controversial instants of the

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Speaker 1: Cold War, it is a mystery that mains to this

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Speaker 1: day unexplained. For many, there could perhaps be no more

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Speaker 1: frightening notion than to be trapped in a glorified tin

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Speaker 1: can deep below the ocean surface for months on end.

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Speaker 1: But for Captain's second Rank Eagle Brittanov of the Soviet Navy,

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Speaker 1: it was the nearest thing to home, albeit a home

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Speaker 1: stocked with a substantial number of nuclear warheads. For this

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Speaker 1: was the Cold War, and the stakes could not have

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Speaker 1: been higher. Although believed by some to have never ended,

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Speaker 1: the war is generally regarded to have taken place between

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven and nineteen ninety one between the Western

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Speaker 1: Bloc powers of the United States and NATO and the

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Speaker 1: Eastern Block spearheaded by the Soviet Union, an intensely complicated

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Speaker 1: period of proxy wars and nuclear threat It is perhaps

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Speaker 1: best summed up by the series of catamouse games played

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Speaker 1: out by submarines of the Soviet and United States navies

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Speaker 1: in early September nineteen eighty six. The submarine K two

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Speaker 1: one nine, captained by the experienced Igor Brittanoff, set off

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Speaker 1: from the port town of Gadzievo, located in the northwest

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Speaker 1: of Russia. On board the vessel was a total of

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Speaker 1: one hundred and fifteen crew and forty two nuclear missiles

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Speaker 1: and torpedo warheads. Thirty days into the mission, on October third,

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Speaker 1: the sub was patrolling a stretch of water roughly six

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Speaker 1: hundred and eighty miles northeast of the British territory of Bermuda.

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Speaker 1: At approximately fourteen, one of the crew's engineers noticed something

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Speaker 1: alarming in missile compartment number four. Saltwater appeared to be

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Speaker 1: dripping from under the plug of one of the subs

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Speaker 1: nuclear missiles. Their alarm soon turned to panic when an

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Speaker 1: attempt at decompression turned the slowly dripping water into a

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Speaker 1: gushing stream at zero twenty five. The engineer alerted Captain Brittanoff,

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Speaker 1: who immediately ordered the sub to the safer depth of

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Speaker 1: forty six meters. Minutes later, a brown cloud of occident

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Speaker 1: issued from the missile plug. The missile casing had split.

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Speaker 1: A full scale emergency was declared and all personnel were

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Speaker 1: instantly evacuated from the area, with the exception of nine

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Speaker 1: crewmen who stayed behind to fix the problem, but it

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Speaker 1: was too late. Moments later, a huge explosion ripped through

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Speaker 1: compartment number four. Two crewmen were killed instantly by the blast,

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Speaker 1: and another died shortly after from toxic fume inhalation. Most

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Speaker 1: alarmingly for the remainder of the crew, the explosion had

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Speaker 1: torn open the hull and the submarine began rapidly taking

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Speaker 1: on water. The vessel made a sickening lurch before quickly

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Speaker 1: plummeting deeper and deeper into the darkest step of the ocean. Incredibly,

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Speaker 1: the crew managed to close off all compartments, and eventually

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Speaker 1: they were able to engage the seawater pumps. As the

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Speaker 1: submarine approached crush depth, it began to stabilize. The crew,

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Speaker 1: now wearing gas masks and safely positioned in the bow

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Speaker 1: and stern of the vessel, breathed a collective sigh of relief.

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Speaker 1: The worst appeared to be over, but something was deeply wrong.

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Speaker 1: In the event of major catastrophe, the nuclear reactors were

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Speaker 1: programmed to shut down, but as the chief engineer carried

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Speaker 1: out a check of the ship's instruments, he noticed something odd.

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Speaker 1: The temperature of the nuclear reactors was rising. In short,

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Speaker 1: the reactor was an imminent danger of a complete nuclear meltdown.

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Speaker 1: The engineer scrambled to the control station in an attempt

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Speaker 1: to initiate a remote shutdown, but the damage had been

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Speaker 1: too great. It would have to be done manually. Although

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Speaker 1: all vessels were with contamination suits, there was nothing on

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Speaker 1: board that could protect from the gamma and neutron radiation

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Speaker 1: of the reactor's cores. It was clear to all the

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Speaker 1: men that any attempt at a manual shutdown would be fatal.

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Speaker 1: At this point, a twenty year old sailor named Sergey

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Speaker 1: Preminin stepped forward. The son of an electrician and a

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Speaker 1: factory worker, it had been Sergey's dream to follow in

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Speaker 1: the footsteps of his oldest brother, Nicholas by becoming an engineer,

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Speaker 1: a dream he took a step closer to achieving after

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Speaker 1: graduating from engineering school in nineteen eighty four. Shortly after, however,

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Speaker 1: Serge was drafted into the Russian Navy. Fully aware of

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Speaker 1: the severity of the situation, Sergey volunteer to shut the

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Speaker 1: reactor down together with senior reactor officer Lieutenant Nikolai Belakov.

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Speaker 1: He donned the regulation safety suit and full faced gas mask,

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Speaker 1: and Julie entered the burning reactor chamber. After they managed

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Speaker 1: to reinsert three out of the four displaced fuel rods,

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Speaker 1: Nikolai Belakov succumbed to the seventy degree heat, just managing

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Speaker 1: to evacuate the chamber before falling unconscious. In a monumental effort.

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Speaker 1: Sergey completed the last part on his own, successfully engaging

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Speaker 1: the fourth rod. But when Sergey tried to reach his

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Speaker 1: colleagues on the other side of the compartment, the chamber

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Speaker 1: hatch would not budge. The rising temperature in the room

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Speaker 1: had increased the pressure so much that it had become

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Speaker 1: impossible to open. As his colleagues tried desperately to rescue

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Speaker 1: him from the other side, Sergey too succumbed to the

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Speaker 1: heat and soon after died. Are you always taking care

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Speaker 1: of your family? Do you often take care of others

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Speaker 1: and not yourself? Now it's time to take care of yourself,

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Speaker 1: gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you

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Speaker 1: get back to feeling your best, to feeling like yourself again.

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Speaker 1: depressed or lonely, or you might be struggling with a

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Speaker 1: personal or family issue, teledoc can help. Teledoc is committed

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Speaker 1: to facilitating great therapeutic matches, so they make it easy

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Speaker 1: available through most insurance or employers. Download the app or

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Speaker 1: visit teledoc dot com Forward slash Unexplained podcast today to

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Speaker 1: get started. That's teladoc dot com slash Unexplained Podcast. The

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Speaker 1: young sailor's actions had saved the rest of the crew

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Speaker 1: and in so doing, prevented a certain nuclear catastrophe. The

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Speaker 1: consequences of such an event would have been on a

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Speaker 1: scale comparable with the Chernobyl disaster that had occurred only

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Speaker 1: six months previously. With the reactor sufficiently secured, Submarine K

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Speaker 1: two one nine returned to the surface of the Atlantic.

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Speaker 1: But when the conning tower hatch was opened, something extraordinary

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Speaker 1: caught the attention of the crew, As senior assistant Captain

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Speaker 1: Sergey Vladimova recounts, all the way along the left side,

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Speaker 1: just above the missile silos, was what looked like two

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Speaker 1: huge scratch marks. The gouge extended from the edge of

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Speaker 1: the damaged missile section right across to the port side

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Speaker 1: of the vessel. Clearly something big had collided with the submarine.

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Speaker 1: A few days later, a Soviet freight had duly arrived

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Speaker 1: to tow the damaged vessel back to port. Despite repeated

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Speaker 1: efforts to salvage the up, a series of gas leagues

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Speaker 1: prompted Captain Brittenoff to order an immediate evacuation of the vessel.

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Speaker 1: At eleven hundred hours on October sixth Captain Igor Brittanof

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Speaker 1: became the last living man to exit Submarine K two

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Speaker 1: on nine. Three minutes later, the vessel, along with the

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Speaker 1: body of Sergey Premininent, sank to a depth of roughly

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Speaker 1: six thousand meters, where it remains to this day. The

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Speaker 1: heroic Premanin was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red

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Speaker 1: Star for his Bravery shortly after returning home, all the

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Speaker 1: surviving members of the crew were required to take part

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Speaker 1: in what became a year long investigation into the precise

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Speaker 1: cause of the explosion. However, the full results have never

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Speaker 1: come to light, and nor are they likely to, since

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Speaker 1: all the men were ordered to sign non disclosure agreements

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Speaker 1: prior to the investigation. What is known is that after

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Speaker 1: a series of simulations and careful analysis, the Soviet Navy

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Speaker 1: was satisfied that the disaster had not been the fault

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Speaker 1: of the crew, but was indeed due to the impact

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Speaker 1: of external factor, the most likely culprit being a submarine

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Speaker 1: belonging to the United States on the other side of

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Speaker 1: the world. Attention soon focused on reports of a US

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Speaker 1: vessel that had been damaged. At some point in the

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Speaker 1: early part of October. The submarine US Augusta had been

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Speaker 1: taken to the port of New London, Connecticut, to repair

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Speaker 1: damage caused by an apparent collision. It is believed the

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Speaker 1: Augusta had been patrolling the same region of ocean as

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Speaker 1: K two one nine, and yet Soviet intelligence at the

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Speaker 1: time indicated not a single NATO submarine had in fact

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Speaker 1: been repaired around the time of the incident. Perhaps unsurprisingly,

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Speaker 1: the US Navy denied all involvement. Despite the Soviet Navy's

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Speaker 1: insistence that the boat was indeed rammed. Had this in

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Speaker 1: fact been a cover up of the US Navy, It

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Speaker 1: is strange that, over thirty years later, this stance is

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Speaker 1: still strongly maintained by the American government. What is even

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Speaker 1: more surprising, however, is that Captain Brittenoff himself has also

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Speaker 1: denied the allegations, claiming unequivocally that he did not collide

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Speaker 1: with an American submarine. In twenty and ten, a Soviet

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Speaker 1: captain of the first rank called Nikolai Tushin, gave an

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Speaker 1: extraordinary interview to the Russian news website Pravda Ru. Tashin,

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Speaker 1: the former deputy commander of a brigade of nuclear submarines,

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Speaker 1: appeared convinced that although K two one nine had collided

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Speaker 1: with something, whatever it was, was not man made. Instead,

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Speaker 1: he believed the vessel had been brought down by a mysterious,

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Speaker 1: unidentified underwater object known in maritime circles as a quacker.

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Speaker 1: The oddly titled quaker gets its name from a mysterious

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Speaker 1: sound frequently picked up by submarine audio equipment, resembling something

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Speaker 1: between the quack of a duck and the croak of

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Speaker 1: a frog. It is thought by many submariner crew to

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Speaker 1: belong to an unknown creature of the deep, or perhaps

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Speaker 1: even something somewhat more alien. The phenomena is thought to

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Speaker 1: have first come to our attention due to the advances

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Speaker 1: in sonar equipment necessitated by the arms race of the

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Speaker 1: Cold War, and when you take into account the extreme

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Speaker 1: hyper vigilance of the Soviet and US navies at the time,

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Speaker 1: it is quite probable that these sounds had just not

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Speaker 1: been noticed before. In a particularly striking story, one submarine

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Speaker 1: sailor recounts picking up the fabled quacker sound while out

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Speaker 1: on a routine operation. His readings suggested something of a

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Speaker 1: significant size that appeared to be circling the vessel in

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Speaker 1: what he believed was a benign attempt to make contact. Incidentally,

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Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine, the Russian gun released a

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Speaker 1: number of previously classified documents. The reports were taken from

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Speaker 1: a Soviet Navy group specifically established to document unexplained incidents

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Speaker 1: reported by naval vessels. Former Navy officer of Vladimir Adzatza

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Speaker 1: points to one incident in particular, where a complete submarine

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Speaker 1: system malfunction occurred as an unidentified object was recorded close

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Speaker 1: by traveling at the seemingly impossible speed of two hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty miles per hour. In another report, one Navy

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Speaker 1: intelligence veteran notes the strange ufoes were most prone to

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Speaker 1: appear in the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, specifically

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Speaker 1: the Bermuda Triangle. In nineteen fifty seven, a team of

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Speaker 1: Soviet explorers led by Alexei Treshnikov set off from a

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Speaker 1: small research station on the coast of Antarctica in search

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Speaker 1: of the geomagnetic South Pole. After a hellish journey, suffering

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Speaker 1: intense storms and extreme cold, the team arrived at their

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Speaker 1: destination on the sixteenth of December. A research center was

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Speaker 1: quickly established. It has since become known as Vostok Station.

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Speaker 1: Temperature readings taken from the area have confirmed the region

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Speaker 1: as the coldest known place on Earth. However, eighty million

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Speaker 1: years ago, the frozen desert we now know as Antarctica

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Speaker 1: was in fact an equatorial region making up part of

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Speaker 1: the supercontinent known as gonduanaland home to dinosaurs and a

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Speaker 1: number of other creatures. The land was a thick mass

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Speaker 1: of ferns and other tropical vegetation. At some point, the

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Speaker 1: land began to fragment and split apart, with the bit

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Speaker 1: we now call the Antarctic, eventually settling millions of years

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Speaker 1: later over the South Pole. Over time, the vegetation changed,

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Speaker 1: being replaced by thick forests of deciduous trees. It became

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Speaker 1: home to a colorful array of birds, reptiles, and mammals.

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Speaker 1: Rivers and streams teemed with life as the ecosystem adjusted

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Speaker 1: to a post dinosaur world. But then things began to change.

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Speaker 1: A radical drop in greenhouse gas levels led to a

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Speaker 1: deep freeze that engulfed the continent. As the temperature plummeted,

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Speaker 1: the ecosystem was irreversibly altered, resulting in the extinction of

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Speaker 1: all the terrestrial animals. The lakes and rivers frosted over

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Speaker 1: until eventually they were locked under sheets of ice thousands

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Speaker 1: of meters thick. In nineteen seventy five, a team of

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Speaker 1: British scientists were conducting a seismic survey of the area

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Speaker 1: when they discovered something extraordinary. Trapped deep below the ice

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Speaker 1: was what appeared to be a huge freshwater lake, now

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Speaker 1: known as Lake Vostok. Satellite images taken in nineteen ninety

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Speaker 1: six to pick the mass as being similar in size

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Speaker 1: to Lake Ontario. Even more incredibly, despite being trapped for

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Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of years, the lake was to be

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Speaker 1: teeming with life, from single cell bacteria to molluscs and worms,

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Speaker 1: and even fairly complex arthropods. Is it completely inconceivable that

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Speaker 1: such undiscovered ecosystems may exist in other parts of the planet,

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Speaker 1: perhaps fostering the life of creatures once thought extinct or

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Speaker 1: that may not yet have even been discovered. For anyone

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Speaker 1: doubting the likelihood of such an occurrence, it is worth

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Speaker 1: bearing in mind the mythic tales of the Mighty Kraken.

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Speaker 1: The great aquatic monster of Norwegian folklore, is thought likely

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Speaker 1: to be based on sailor's reports of the giant squid,

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Speaker 1: a creature that was itself once thought to be a myth.

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Speaker 1: In fact, despite extensive efforts to capture footage of the

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Speaker 1: giant squid in its natural habitat, it wasn't until two

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Speaker 1: thousand and four that a team of Japanese scientists were

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Speaker 1: finally successful in doing so. The great aquatic monsters, such

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Speaker 1: as the kraken, may of course, prove to be nothing

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Speaker 1: but figments of our imagination, embodiments of the many subconscious

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Speaker 1: fears that we might one day defeat. But perhaps for

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Speaker 1: a moment, consider the so called monsters hidden from view,

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Speaker 1: deep below the waves. Maybe they are hiding for a reason,

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Speaker 1: for you can be certain what fate awaits them if

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Speaker 1: they were ever foolish enough to show themselves. It makes

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Speaker 1: you wonder just what would they make of us? Below

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Speaker 1: the thunders of the upper deep, far far beneath, in

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Speaker 1: the abysmal sea, his ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep, the krak

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Speaker 1: and sleepers, faintest sunlights flee about his shadowy sides. Above

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Speaker 1: him swell huge sponges of millennial growth and height, and

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Speaker 1: far away into the sickly light from many a wondrous

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Speaker 1: grot and secret cell, unnumbered, an enormous Polypi winner with

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Speaker 1: giant arms, the slumbering green. They're happy. Lane for ages

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Speaker 1: and will lie battering upon huge seaworms in his sleep

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Speaker 1: until the latter fire shall heat the deep. Then, once

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Speaker 1: by man and angels to be seen in roaring, he

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Speaker 1: shall rise, and on the surface die. All elements of

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Speaker 1: Unexplained are produced by me, Richard McClane smith. Please subscribe

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Speaker 1: and rate the show on iTunes, and feel free to

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Speaker 1: get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the

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Speaker 1: stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an

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Speaker 1: explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can

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Speaker 1: reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or on

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Speaker 1: Twitter Unexplained Pod Now. It's time to take care of yourself.

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Speaker 1: To make time for you, teledoc gives you access to

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