Alcatraz
the rock the most infamous prison on
Earth
well I think Alcatraz was the perfect
present for the time it was the big
stick against Crime America's worst Al
Capone Machine Gun Kelly and Whitey
Bulger all called The Rock home the
Island lies just over a mile offshore
but Escape was almost impossible
prisoners who tried faced icy waters
deadly currents disorienting fog and
fearsome predators
to understand these dangerous forces a
new investigation pulls a plug on the
sea floor and drains the Waters of San
Francisco Bay
it will reveal the secrets of the seabed
with stunning computer graphics
can the underwater landscape explain the
Rock's reputation as an inescapable
prison
in 1962 three men did break out from
Alcatraz
will draining the bay throw new light on
what happened to them they entered the
water at the North End and took off in a
raft never to be seen again did they
reach the mainland and freedom or did
the Ferocious currents shaped by the
seabed seal their fate and can this
underwater landscape show why Alcatraz
might be the safest place when the next
earthquake hits California
secrets are revealed as we drain
Alcatraz
the island of Alcatraz sits alone in the
middle of San Francisco Bay
within this dramatic landscape Alcatraz
and the remnants of the renowned U.S
federal prison are just a mile from the
Heart of the City
for 29 years it held some of the most
dangerous and notorious criminals in
history Alcatraz was the end of the line
and that's what it was designed for it
was the place where they could take and
isolate the troublemakers the gang
leaders the most problematic
the most Troublesome prisoners they send
them to Alcatraz
officially no one successfully escaped
The Rock
but why exactly was no inmate able to
break out of Alcatraz
to answer this
high resolution sonar scans plot the
hidden depths of San Francisco Bay
for the first time Cutting Edge computer
Graphics transformed the scans into
remarkable images of the seabed
this is Alcatraz as never seen
today the island is a museum run by the
National Park Service over a million
people visit every year
one man has watched it rise to become
one of America's most visited
attractions
Ranger John Cantwell
he's worked on the island for over 25
years
he knows its history
there's a term that we use on Alcatraz
layers of history and the first layer of
History would be the Army's time on
Alcatraz they arrive in 1853 and built a
fortress to protect the harbor
the Federal Bureau of Prisons take over
in 1934 and they ran the island for 29
years as a super max penitentiary
American Justice reserved Alcatraz for
the worst of the worst the prison was
fortified to make sure they would stay
put where I'm standing is on Broadway
this is the main Corridor in the cell
house Alcatraz being a supermax
Penitentiary meant that you had high
security one officer for every three
convicts they were constantly being
watched 12 times a day they would have
counted every convict in this
Penitentiary building
Prison Breaks were suppressed with
extreme force
but Escape was a constant temptation
Freedom was just a short swim away
the punishment of Alcatraz was this the
view of what was going on across the bay
everything's in plain view and these men
that were incarcerated on Alcatraz could
see it
I think it's fair to say every guy that
ever did time here considered how are
you going to escape
Liberty seemed so close that for some it
was irresistible the official count is a
14 different Escape attempts of that
number five men are still unaccounter
for
to make it off the island the convicts
first had to escape from the prison
itself
probably one of the most famous Escape
attempts from the building is the 1937
Rowan coal escape attempt they cut
through the windows and pop out into the
San Francisco Bay and they said boats
out looking for those uh two guys and
never found them
the official on this is is that they
were swept out to sea
powerful currents weren't the only
dangers facing escapees
Alcatraz folklore claimed that predatory
sharks swam in the Bay Area
in 1959 a college student had been
killed by a great white in these Waters
and in 2015 the Alcatraz shark Legend
was confirmed on camera when tourists
witnessed a great white attacking a seal
on the Island's dock but fear of shark
attacks didn't stop the Escape attempts
and these were becoming easier as the
fabric of Alcatraz began to crumble the
complex was aging concrete starts to
crack and spall steel rusts barbed wire
rusts it's almost impossible to make an
escape-proof prison
in the last year before the prison
closed there were two remarkable Escape
attempts
in December 1962 two men made it to the
water John Paul Scott and Daryl Parker
escaped from the basement of the
penitentiary building and they cut
through two bars the basement window pop
out the window shimmy up a set of pipes
scramble across the rooftop of the cell
house and basically came down off the
West Wall of Alcatraz Island scrambled
down this road and hit the water
they found Daryl Parker standing on that
rock a little Alcatraz Island about 50
yards off the North End waving to the
officer in the guard Tower yelling come
get me
but they found John Paul Scott at the
base of the Golden Gate Bridge
John Paul Scott was officially the only
prisoner to successfully swim across the
bay but he was so exhausted when they
found him that he was quickly returned
to Alcatraz
there was one other escape attempt in
1962. the most famous in the prison's
history three convicts Frank Morris and
brothers Clarence and John Anglin
planned for months to escape
and eventually got off the island on a
homemade raft
but they were never seen again
case is still alive the official record
is their presumed drowned
it's one of the great Alcatraz Mysteries
could Morris and the Anglin Brothers
have been the only ones to make it to
Freedom
Alcatraz closed in the spring of 1963.
officially no one escaped successfully
but its true strength as a prison can't
be explained just by the thickness of
its walls
or the vigilance of its guards
the waters around the rock were also a
deadly barrier to escape now science can
explain just how and why the bay was so
dangerous
imagine you could pull the plug on the
bottom of the bay and drain the water
from around Alcatraz
for the first time we combine high
definition sonar scans and cutting-edge
computer images to uncover the Hidden
World of the seabed and this remarkable
landscape
finally an unobstructed view of Alcatraz
it's a rock that rises from San
Francisco Bay it's isolated but it's
highly visible from the shore also you
can reach out and touch it but it's a
mile and a half away
draining the bay reveals Alcatraz as a
pinnacle of Bedrock emerging from the
sea floor it's surrounded by mountain
peaks
all of them are ancient survivors from
an age of earthquakes
Tom Parsons is a geophysicist with the
United States geographical survey he has
studied this area for decades
so we're standing at the Golden Gate and
we're standing on mountains that were
formed 100 million years ago
we're sandwiched right between the San
Andreas and the parallel Hayward fault
both of which are helping to accommodate
plate motion here between the Pacific
and North American plates
San Francisco sits right on the edge of
the North American Plate as the Pacific
Plate grinds North past it stress builds
up along the major fault lines in the
area the Hayward fault and most notably
the San Andreas this region is very
volatile it produces large earthquakes
we've seen them in 1906 1868 both were
devastating earthquakes in San Francisco
the nightmarish effects of the 1906
earthquake 7.9 on the Richter Scale are
a reminder of how the area's violent
geology threatens the existence of a
great City
over a hundred million years ago the
landscape is entirely different
there was a third plate between the two
larger ones called the Farallon
the Fairlawn play used to sit between
the Pacific and North American Plate it
was shoved underneath the North American
Plate over all that time
the movement of the Farallon plate was
the Catalyst that created San Francisco
Bay and Alcatraz as it ground under the
North American Plate
this process is called subduction
as the Farallon plate disappeared
fragments of the Earth's crust were
forced upwards creating a valley and
mountains the Alcatraz was part of the
Coast Range belt that was uplifted by
the subduction of the Fairlawn plate
the Bay Area was then a Long forested
Valley with a number of Rocky Mountains
one of these mountains was Alcatraz
ten thousand years ago has the last ice
age came to an end
the area was deluged by billions of
gallons of melt water
this created what we call San Francisco
Bay
[Music]
tras Island forms
this 1853 photograph shows the tip of
the drowned Mountain as a featureless
rock in the middle of the Bay
Alcatraz may look tranquil and isolated
but it's surrounded by powerful Natural
Forces
by draining the bay we can explain why
the island earned its deadly reputation
and what may have happened during the
1962 Escape from Alcatraz
[Music]
we're pulling the plug on San Francisco
Bay and draining the waters to discover
why escaping from Alcatraz was so
dangerous
foreign
over three decades there were 14 daring
Escape attempts the story of one of
these is legendary
probably the most famous escape attempt
would be the 1962 Breakout
Frank Lee Morris and brothers Charles
and John Anglin devised an audacious bid
for freedom
the escape attempt was incredibly
ingenious and it involves stealing an
immense amount of material
dozens of rubber raincoats glue electric
motors to turn into drills
the guys even made a periscope they made
a flashlight
and used homemade tools to breach the
Prison Walls
[Music]
we're in one of the Anglin Brothers
cells and they were ingenious to
actually create a portal at the back of
their cell and they fashioned a drill
made out of a vacuum cleaner engine put
a diamond bit on the end of this thing
and then poked holes through the
concrete to loosen up the concrete
around the air vent
dummy heads were made out of concrete
material human hair glued onto the heads
and the face is painted on these heads
and at night with the lights down it
looked like they were sleeping in their
cells
so in the cell house the lights go out
at 9 30.
that's basically when they make their
break
once the lights are out the heads are in
place they go up to the rooftop and
they've got from 9 30 to 6 30 the next
morning to make it to the mainland
[Music]
rubber raincoats glued together the
escapees construct a makeshift raft and
life vests this is their Lifeline to
Freedom
they carry everything to the roof and
drag it down to the water's edge
so this is the actual spot where they
enter the water frankly Morris and the
Anglin Brothers came down this Hillside
they dragged their wrap inflated it at
the sea wall here jumped in and took off
into the night
they searched the waters looking for
these three men and the raft or the men
were never found
the official FBI documents State the
three men and their raft were most
likely swept out to sea
their bodies were never recovered
but is this what really happened
were they lost at sea or could they have
made it to the mainland
to understand the fate of the three
escapees on their raft scientists are
studying the geology of the bay itself
can the seabed offer an answer
first Patrick Barnard from the United
States Geological Survey explores the
underwater landscape at the mouth of San
Francisco Bay
he hopes analysis of the seabed will
explain the powerful currents that surge
around Alcatraz making Escape attempts
so dangerous
today we're going to be mapping from the
Golden Gate Bridge West toward the outer
Coast so it'll be very interesting to
see what's on the seafloor in that area
the first time that high-tech multi-beam
scanners have been used to explore how
the seabed itself may have shaped the
prisoners Faith the incredible thing
about multi-beam is it captures the
seafloor and high resolution so we get a
sounding at least every one meter along
the sea floor so we can see incredible
detail what the seafloor looks like
this remarkable technology projects
thousands of sound waves towards the
seat the waves reflect off the Contours
giving the team an unprecedented view of
the bottom
the investigation begins under the most
iconic location in San Francisco
we're right underneath the Golden Gate
Bridge at the narrowest part of the
Golden Gate Strait The Purple represents
the deeper parts of the channel which
are about 92 meters deep in this
location
after several passes over the Deep
channel the monitor shows a strange
landscape below we're seeing a largely
featureless bottom in this whole Center
portion of the swath that's scoured
clean to bedrock
draining the water from under the Golden
Gate Bridge reveals a huge Gorge
it's far deeper than the rest of the Bay
large enough to hide a 30-story building
but what happens to the seabed when the
multi-beam vessel heads West into the
open ocean
we're located a little over a kilometer
from the Golden Gate Bridge now to the
West
but the bottom is still clean it's still
Bedrock lined
as the boat moves farther from the
bridge
the water grows much shallower
the sonar readings suggest a dramatic
transformation in the Seascape below
the bottom is changing we're seeing a
lot more sediment on the sea floor now
draining the water reveals an incredible
sight
we're starting to see some very large
sand waves here that are emerging from
the depths of the Golden Gate Strait
these formations on the seabed are huge
so the largest sand waves are about 200
meters long six meters high the biggest
one's 10 meters high or about three
stories
and they're sitting just yards away from
the harbor entrance
they look like probably what the Sahara
would look like if you were walking
through it
giant sand waves are caused by the huge
tidal rush through the Golden Gate
Strait the fast-moving water picks up
sand and dumps it as it slows down
the sand waves of the mouth of San
Francisco Bay are there because you have
this very large Estuary and all the
tidal flow associated with it roughly 2
trillion liters of water being forced
through in every tide
huge title forces push water through the
narrow channel
the solid Bedrock of the gorge does not
erode so the straight acts like a fire
hose as the water rushes through it
and the flow is 160 times greater than
the volume of water cascading over
Niagara Falls
you have all the sand and gravel be
carried along and forced for this narrow
opening and then as the opening widens
further and further all this material
gets deposited in these bed forms
the drained landscape shows how the
geology of the seabed shapes the
powerful tidal currents in San Francisco
Bay
first there's the deep gorge that
funnels the water into a jet stream
moving West beyond the bridge
the seabed rises from over 300 feet deep
to just 130 feet
the drain shows how the racing current
dumps thousands of tons of sand
creating these giant sand waves up to 30
feet high
but what does this underwater landscape
of the Golden Gate have to do with
escaping from Alcatraz
these racing tides are what the inmates
had to contend with when fleeing The
Rock
possible that Frank Morris and the
Anglin Brothers got caught in these
Wicked currents
the records from the 1962 FBI
investigation show the tide charts on
June 11th from 9 pm to 3 A.M there was a
strong outgoing tide
which peaked at exactly 11 46 pm
so when did the three escapees hit the
water in their homemade raft
from the moment lights out happened
which I think was 9 30 as soon as they
could have they would have gotten out of
theirselves give it an hour hour and a
half to have gotten everything that they
needed to
through that vent on the roof
crossed the cell house down the other
side hit the water
I think that they started paddling as
soon as they got to the water
let's say 11 o'clock
the three convicts would have been in
the water at Peak title flow during an
ebbing outgoing tide
what were their chances if their flimsy
raft made of raincoats broke up leaving
them to swim in the powerful currents
if you try to escape off the North End
of the island especially during ebbing
tide like they did in 1962 where the
currents are extremely strong and moving
straight out to sea it was very
difficult to swim out of that current
within an hour and a half you could have
been on the open Coast
so Morris and the Anglin Brothers had to
struggle with the fastest and deadliest
current flow in the bay
and these currents show no mercy
known to destroy vessels far larger than
a raft
San Francisco Bay is a ship's graveyard
draining the San Francisco Bay reveals a
deep ominous Gorge under the Golden Gate
Bridge
and giant sand waves rising from the
seabed
evidence of massive water flow through
the mouth of the Bay
two and a half miles to the east of the
Golden Gate lies Alcatraz this is a
great example of the tidal movement
around Alcatraz Island I'd gauge this at
about a five knot tide
it is possible to swim from Alcatraz to
the mainland but only during the brief
period when the tides are turning and
the currents slow down
and I've done the swim on a slack tide
and there's no way that you'd catch me
in this water trying to make it to San
Francisco
Fierce currents were just one of the
challenges inmates faced when they tried
to escape
there were other deadly hazards
Bill Baker is one of the few surviving
inmates from Alcatraz a convict
sent to the rock for three years in
1957. after attempting to break out from
other prisons
but escaping Alcatraz was another matter
I thought about it a lot but I couldn't
figure out how to beat the water because
the water kills you because it's cold
that water is the wall that kept us here
and it killed a lot of people
trying to escape
and so that was
becomes very ugly
you know after you look at a wall
water that frightened Bill Baker is
caused by the upwelling of cold currents
from the deep ocean
these replace the warmer surface waters
relentlessly churned up by the Strong
Winds of San Francisco Bay
average temperatures range from a bone
chilling 51 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit
in these conditions hypothermia will
quickly overwhelm any swimmer
but when this cold water mixes with warm
air it creates another killer that
silently invades the bay
fog
thick fog could be a prisoner's friend
concealing a breakout from Alcatraz
in 1937 two men escaped from the
industries building into the fog they
basically timed it between the head
counts they had about a 45 minute jump
on the officers before they realized
that they were missing
for Ralph Rowe and Ted Cole the fog
offered cover once they were off the
island but the white out also posed a
threat
if some were to escape into the foggy
Bay it would be you know
almost an impossible type of situation
be very dangerous be disorienting so you
know that would be almost a worst case
type of scenario for someone to try and
Escape in
Jan null knows all about fog he's been a
local San Francisco meteorologist for
years
but why is fog so prevalent in this part
of the world
the mechanism that creates the classic
fog for San Francisco is you know a a
Sea Breeze circulation as that air flows
over the very cold water along the
California coast it condenses out forms
the Marine layer
fog and then that spreads inland there
is only one place for fog to reach San
Francisco the only sea level gap for
that fog to get through is the Golden
Gate so that's the area that's going to
get the most fog it's focused you know
from the gate right toward Alcatraz and
then on toward Berkeley
when Roe and Cole escaped they quickly
vanished into the white out
it was December it was cold
one eyewitness he saw them he claims
have seen him in the water being swept
out 99.9 sure they didn't make it
the thick fog made rescue impossible
row and coal were never seen again
the FBI speculated they had died in the
icy water
the San Francisco Bay fog mixed with the
wicked fast-moving currents
is a recipe for disaster
by draining the water we can see the
results of this deadly combination
there are ghostly large artifacts
scattered on the seabed
dozens of shipwrecks
San Francisco Bay is a graveyard of lost
ships
and there is one just east of the Golden
Gate Bridge
deep down on the side of the gorge it
has a tragic tale to tell
the Shipwreck is the city of Chester
but how did it get here
August 1888 the city of Chester moves
towards the Golden Gate Strait
August is a time when you get heavy fogs
around here and it was foggy she's
heading out to Golden Gate
at the time when a great ocean liner is
heading in
far larger far faster
now 130 years later
National Park historian Steve Haller and
archaeologist Peter gavette are
searching for the Lost vessel city of
Chester went down rapidly and she sang
in 200 or so feet of water we're over
the spot where She lays
multi-beam sonar gives a tantalizing
glimpse of the sunken ship
see the superstructure
in there
the fact that the city of Chester is is
hasn't been covered with sediment is is
great with the multi-beam data we can
look at the city of Chester wreck as it
happened
using the data from the scan we can Now
drain the wreck of the city of Chester
does it offer any evidence of how the
disaster unfolded
you can see exactly where the Fatal
damage to the ship occurred
and you could see how that bow sections
off kilter with the rest of the ship so
it broke her keel
the drained ship is the crime scene
giving clear evidence of its fate
we can actually see where it was struck
aft of the the port side just after the
bow and very almost split it in two
in the thick fog the city of Chester and
the white star liner Oceanic are on a
collision course
they don't see each other until it's too
late
powerful currents drive them together
city of Chester Hills off to Port the
oceanic
hits her in the side far heavier vessel
splitzer Hall
the smaller ship is fatally wounded
the city of Chester sinks in only six
minutes
killing 16 people on board
she is just one of many shipwrecks that
lie on the bottom of San Francisco Bay
the deadly result of extreme natural
forces that make this Bay so dangerous
these are the same forces that escape
ease from Alcatraz had to contend with
most notably Frank Morris and the Anglin
brothers who escaped the Island prison
on June 11 1962.
what would their chances have been in
these conditions
if you consider the two ocean-going
steamers
can get tossed around to the point where
one cuts the other one in half what are
the odds of three guys in a rapidly
deflating homemade rubber raft gonna
have
but could the powerful currents in the
bay have instead helped the escapees
could they have been pushed to shore and
to Freedom
in 1962 three prisoners launched a
legendary Escape from Alcatraz in a
homemade raft
ever since there have been wildly
different rumors about their fate some
claim to have seen them on the mainland
but that conflicts with the official FBI
report
which states that their objective was
Angel Island
a two-mile paddle north of Alcatraz
they did what nobody else ever did they
got off the island
with a head start and and were never
seen again
the official Bureau prisons report on
these three men in the raft is that they
raft took on water the men were in the
San Francisco Bay they became
hypothermic and the currents took them
out to the Pacific
never proved and when the story broke
around the world there was excitement
and intrigue
it appears to be the first successful
Escape in the history of the Maximum
Security Prison
for weeks the FBI searched the bay their
goal was to find them dead or alive
the Escape triggered the greatest
Manhunt in San Francisco's history
[Music]
though they never discovered any trace
of the bodies the FBI did find evidence
of the Escape
they recovered two of the inflatable
life vests they recovered a two of the
plywood paddles found floating in
different places in the bay another one
of the life vests was recovered outside
the Golden Gate at a beach north of the
Golden Gate there was no lack of
evidence that they escaped
this evidence was scattered all over the
Bay Area with no signs of the men
how did this happen
could the Three Fugitives have made it
is there a possibility that the strong
currents worked in the escapees favor by
pushing them to the shore
Patrick Barner and his USGS colleague
Josh Logan explore this intriguing
Theory they use high-tech buoys with GPS
sensors to track the currents the
conditions are very similar to what they
would have been during the escape in
1962 where a Peak at flow the water is
moving about a meter and a half a second
or about five and a half kilometers per
hour
the GPS will be recording its position
every five seconds we'll be able to pick
that up on our laptop and be able to
track it in real time and that'll let us
know that the direction and the speed
that the water is moving
okay so we are tracking now I'm going to
deploy The Drifter
the buoy is dropped at the North End of
Alcatraz on the escapees route to Angel
Island
at first the buoys path seems to confirm
the theory that the men were swept out
to sea it's drifting about averaging
about six kilometers an hour right now
in 15 minutes we've drifted uh about
half the distance between Alcatraz and
the Golden Gate it looks like it's going
right down the middle of the Golden Gate
Strait
been in a strong headwind
fast moving current pushes the buoy
further out
but then
the unexpected happens it's going about
six kilometers an hour until it hit that
that seam and then it slowed down to uh
one kilometer an hour the buoy stops
just before the Golden Gate Bridge it's
not what the team had predicted all
right looks like it just sort of slowed
down because it got into an Eddy
that's pretty interesting
so you can see it was traveling
Southwest in a straight line until I hit
that Eddy and then it slowed down and
changed directions
and Eddie is created by water moving in
a circular motion almost like a
slow-moving whirlpool
can draining the water from San
Francisco Bay reveal anything that would
cause such a giant Eddy just east of the
bridge there is a strange feature on the
seabed
right toward the Golden Gate there's
some very shallow depths from a large
Bedrock outcrop known as a sill in this
location and so this causes an uprush of
a lot of water and eventually some flow
separation causing this Eddy
the deep water currents run directly
into the Bedrock Zoo forcing the fast
flowing water to the surface
this creates the giant Eddy which stops
the buoy dead in its track
draining San Francisco Bay is revealing
how powerful currents on the surface
that swept men to their deaths are
shaped by The Contours below
other strange features on the seabed
help to explain the deadly outcome of an
earlier escape attempt
[Music]
burglar Aaron Bergen made a break for
freedom in September 1958.
his friend Bill Baker was an inmate at
the time
well he was a young man he was like I
say he was strong he was
strong was abused
while on garbage detail Burgett overcame
a guard and then jumped into the waters
off the west side of Alcatraz
they didn't know what happened to forget
and they locked the soil Down The Boat
Circle in the island all day and night
you know search lights and everything
and
every day that passed we were more
optimistic that he was gone
though the prisoners hoped he made it
two weeks later the authorities found
Bergen
but then one day his body washed up and
then that was the end of that
I was very sad about that because I hope
that like heck that he made it
strangely burgett's body was found just
yards off the shores of Alcatraz
so why wasn't he washed out to sea by
the powerful currents in the bay the
clues May lie in the shallow Waters
around Alcatraz they've never been
accurately mapped before
now Professor Rick vitek from California
State University Monterey uses a
one-of-a-kind surveying vessel to
explore the terrain is it designed to
work in all the places a conventional
vessel can't go to work in shallow water
around rocks and it's outfitted with all
the sonar systems found on a normal
hydrographic vessel except it's all
operated by one
after a day of scanning the shallows
back and forth along the western Cliffs
Professor kvitec's survey helps explain
what happened to Aaron burget's body
the drained seabed around Alcatraz shows
dozens of large rocks and crevices
when burgit drowned his body probably
sank to the bottom and became trapped in
these rocks
later as it decomposed gases forming in
the corpse would have lifted it to the
surface
the 1962 escapees didn't try to swim to
Freedom they used a homemade raft but
where they ended up lost out at sea or
safe on the mainland is the real mystery
Patrick Barnard and Josh Logan hope to
confirm how the seabed in San Francisco
Bay influences the water currents above
they want to determine the course the
escaping prisoners took in 1962.
the first test buoy stopped dead in a
giant Eddy
now they deploy two other buoys in
different locations along the route to
Angel Island
we're going to release it a little bit
further north from where we released the
last Drifter the two buoys begin their
Journey towards the Golden Gate the
second moves down into the same Eddy as
the first but the third buoy heads
directly towards the bridge this one
seems to be heading out the gate instead
of getting caught in that Eddy that we
saw further to the South
moments later it's past the bridge so
that third buoy is uh basically gone
straight out the main Channel and uh has
sped up
the drained seabed shows exactly why
this buoy is moving Southwest
as it floats slightly further north it
moves past the Bedrock sill and misses
the Eddy then powerful currents sweep it
through the gorge and under the Golden
Gate Bridge soon the buoy is in the open
ocean we deployed it for about about an
hour and it went 6.8 kilometers it had a
maximum speed of 10 kilometers an hour
it's about in line with the predictions
of the model I was surprised the first
two didn't make it out but they got
caught in these Eddies and this one was
going pretty much right as a model
predicted it peaking at about 10
kilometers per hour which is uh far
faster than anybody can swim
getting caught in the Eddies may not
have saved the escapees they had to
fight against powerful currents to get
to the mainland
anybody who's trying to paddle to shore
they'd be heading Southwest and they'd
probably Bloom sideways the buoy test
sheds fascinating new light on the 1962
FBI report
the two buoys caught in the Eddy moved
in different directions including one
that amazingly floated back towards
Alcatraz
this could explain why debris from the
prisoner's raft was found near the
island after the Escape
the path of the third buoy shows that if
the prisoners drowned as the FBI
believed their heavy bodies could have
been swept out to sea by the Ferocious
currents
but the test truly shows one thing San
Francisco Bay is unpredictable
the current field is so complex that you
could have literally just been a few
meters on either side of the main part
of the channel it could end up in
completely different places you could
have ended up 10 kilometers out to sea
you're almost right back at Alcatraz but
for the three inmates if they did reach
the open ocean there was one more deadly
challenge because of its high population
of great white sharks this area is known
as the red triangle in June of 62 it
would have also been during upwelling
season like it is now so you have lots
of nutrients in the water column lots of
fish and lots of bigger Predators so
it's likely there could have been more
great whites in the area than there are
during the rest of the year so if they
made it this far out Dead or Alive
they may have become prey for the great
whites
[Music]
the bodies of the three inmates were
never found but now science shows that
it is unlikely that they could have
survived
the infamous prison closed its doors in
1963 with a perfect record
there were no successful escapes from
Alcatraz though many tried the
conditions surrounding this island is
what really made an escape-proof prison
the bay was the most formidable of the
prison's walls you could say that the
Bay has really created alcatraz's
reputation
the perfect prison was the result of
extraordinary geology deep Gorges giant
underwater sand dunes hard Bedrock
pillars at the Golden Gate Strait
powerful currents and even great
predators that roam the waters outside
the bay all natural phenomena that made
the rock inescapable
but there is another Mighty natural
force at work in San Francisco Bay that
dwarfs even the power of the ocean
currents a drained Pacific Ocean reveals
the first clip deep under the waters off
the coast of San Francisco lies the
infamous San Andreas fault the shifting
tectonic plates are the trigger of major
earthquakes in the past the most deadly
in 1906.
over 3 000 people lost their lives
but could an even deadlier earthquake
hit the area the so-called big one
so in our forecast we actually consider
an earthquake that could start at the
southernmost part of the San Andreas
fault run all the way along through the
bay area up North involves the entire
San Andreas fault Zone that earthquake
would be on the scale of 8.2 to 8.4 in
magnitude
the devastation would be far greater
than the destruction caused by the 1989
quake
if we were to see an earthquake of that
scale in San Francisco because
unfortunately a lot of casualties any
buildings would collapse freeways and
infrastructure type things would be in
danger you know if it did happen I think
we would see significant destruction in
the city and throughout the Bay Area
throughout California
the massive earthquake could cause parts
of the city to topple into the sea
much of the downtown core destroyed
the Golden Gate Bridge pushed to its
engineering limits
but when the fire and Smoke Clears one
place will still be standing
during a big earthquake alcatas would be
a safe haven because it is built out of
very strong Rock it's not going to
collapse under strong shaking like soft
soil would it's been there for 100
million years it's hung in there and so
it's going to do well under an
earthquake
if the geologists are correct and when
the San Andreas lets go Alcatraz is the
safest place to be and that is the
ultimate irony the the island that so
many men wanted to get away from is the
place it's going to offer The Refuge
by draining Alcatraz and exposing the
secrets hidden on the seabed a different
picture of the island emerges the
explanations behind its most legendary
Mysteries involve more than just the
prison itself the geography of San
Francisco Bay the waters the Rocks the
wind and the fog a tightly woven net
making Alcatraz an inescapable place
unless the big one hits
by draining the waters around Alcatraz
the secrets of the rock are revealed
[Music]
thank you