Curiosity (2011) s01e12 Episode Script
Can You Live Forever?
Stay with me.
l've got an idea.
lt's the mother of all experiments.
Can science stop you from getting old and help you live forever? Sound impossible? [ tires screeching .]
What if you needed a replacement organ and you could just print it out? What if you could have a cybernetic arm wired directly into your brain? [ groans .]
What if we could change bodies like we change clothes? [ gasps .]
Oh! What if you could feel young forever? Sounds like science fiction? Not necessarily.
These are based on ideas being worked on by scientists in labs right now, and the implications are insane.
So could l be made to live forever, and what would it take, and what if we filmed the whole thing? l come from an age when we had just one fragile body in our lifetime.
We just accepted it.
There was a saying, ''There's nothing certain but death and taxes.
'' lt sucked.
But, of course, all that was about to change.
Savage: lt started in the year 2022.
l was 55 years old and about to have the worst day of my life.
Check out my retirement gift.
This baby looks like a three-liter motorcycle.
ln fact, it runs on genetically modified algae.
[ laughs .]
l did all the modifications myself.
Can anyone say road trip? l certainly can.
[ engine turns over .]
The future looked awesome.
l was looking forward to spending more time with my family.
[ engine sputters .]
And suddenly, just like that, the fun stopped.
[ tires screeching .]
[ siren wails .]
Television personality Adam Savage was involved in a spectacular traffic accident today.
The star was apparently test-riding a new motorcycle when he was broadsided by a pickup truck.
The unconscious Savage was airlifted to a hospital, where doctors say his condition is critical.
Doctor: Patient's obviously exhibited major head trauma.
Let's start to clean him up here and assess.
Can l have the anesthesia, please? Savage: l was in big trouble.
The truck had thrown me over 30 yards.
Ribs punctured my lungs.
l had massive internal bleeding.
Well, Adam sustained damage to his lungs to the extent that they're inoperable.
They're full of inflammatory tissue, and that's essentially irreversible.
Savage: l was so close to dying l can still remember keenly how fragile l felt, how close to death.
And l thought of my family, and l thought, ''l want to live.
'' You have to remember, this was 2022.
My only hope back then would be a lung transplant from a donor.
Finding a suitable donor might take years, and even then, chances of long-term survival were 50/50 at best.
To survive, l needed a medical miracle.
These doctors showed up from the Office of Scientific lntelligence.
Here we go, guys.
Let's get into this.
Savage: They had these unbelievable ideas Radical ideas.
Risky.
Risky as hell.
Blood pressure lf it didn't work, l was dead.
They wanted to fit me with brand-new lungs generated from my body's own cells.
lt sounded insane, but This was tissue engineering.
ln the early 2000s, scientists grew organs like bladders using a patient's own cells.
ln 2008, this guy had a new windpipe grown from scratch.
And check this out -- a fully functioning rat's lung.
The next step was to automate the engineering process.
This is a bio-printer.
lt uses stem cells as a kind of ink, layer by layer printing out organs in three dimensions.
But could this technology really be used to save my life? l'm patching the bio-ink into the printer.
lt's a mix of stem cells from Adam's body, cells from the damaged organ itself, and a protein that acts as a scaffold around which the cells can then form.
[ monitor beeping .]
Once the lungs were ready, they had to be transplanted.
Can you pass me a swab, please? Any tiny flaw in the printing process and the lungs wouldn't work.
Doctor: l'm gonna throw a couple sutures in, so let me hand you a pair of scissors.
Mm-hmm.
Hand me that.
Thank you.
-- Okay, cut these.
-- Okay.
Thanks.
Perfect.
All right.
Just gently, gently.
That's good.
Yeah.
Savage: Once the lungs were in place came the moment of truth.
l think we're ready.
We're ready.
-- Let's hook this thing up.
-- Let's do it.
[ monitor beeping .]
[ gasps .]
lt's working.
Savage: l was saved, and because the lungs were built from my own cells, my body would never reject them.
This was huge.
[ clears throat .]
Post op, they tell me that l'm doing really well.
l don't necessarily feel well.
l know l don't look that great with these scars, especially This magnificent one right here.
But that's not the coolest part.
Check this out.
They gave me a portable MRl scanner to keep tabs on my new organs.
Check out my lungs.
Aren't they gorgeous? Soon, anybody could have spare organs on ice.
My life expectancy went to 1 20 years old.
lt was nothing short of amazing.
Not only had they helped me cheat death, but l was healthier than before the accident.
lt meant that l'd live long enough to take advantage of the medical breakthroughs that kept on coming in the 21 st century.
First, it was spare organs.
Today, l have hundreds of spare bodies.
Don't believe me? Check this out.
This is my meat locker.
This is actually where l keep all of my old bodies in cold storage.
l've got bodies for every kind of occasion there is.
l think this one is my track-and-field body.
Runs really fast.
But that's not what l want to show you.
What l want to show you is the first body, the old me.
Come here.
lt's this guy right here.
This is the body that l was born in.
This is old faithful.
[ laughs .]
You might call it my model ''A.
'' Check this out.
[ laughs .]
Look at that.
That is 1 00% Earth-grown bio vessel, my original.
You know what? l'm gonna try it on.
lt's been years, but it seems like the perfect occasion.
See how this feels.
lt's been a long time.
[ breathes deeply .]
[ gasps .]
Oh! Ooh! Wow! Oh, cool.
l haven't worn this thing in hundreds of years, and l'm starting to remember why.
lt feels so [groans.]
puny and kind of weak.
l never get used to that.
lt is really hard to believe that when l was born with this, that this was all you got, for a relatively short period of time.
l would never have imagined that science was gonna keep me alive for another 950 years, but then again, it very nearly didn't.
lt was 2022 The year that l, Adam Savage, took my first steps towards living forever.
First, a terrible accident.
[ tires screech .]
Then experimental surgery, extending my life beyond normal limits.
But a few months later, one injury still hadn't healed.
The second stage of my treatment is basically a disaster.
My right arm at this point is effectively nonfunctional.
The nerve damage is too great.
We've tried injecting it with stem cells.
We've tried all sorts of other therapies.
And the fact is, at this point, l'm trying to work on this circuit, and l can l can barely lift this motor.
As advanced as medicine was back in 2022, it couldn't fix my arm.
That's when l decided to fix it myself.
[ sighs .]
All right.
So, this is the goal, is to make myself a cybernetic arm.
And l don't mean just making one that can grab and hold a cup of coffee, but hopefully, the idea is to actually make one that's better than the one that l already have, one that l'll be proud to live a long life with.
Looking back, it was super-ambitious, even for me.
But as l went to work, l had a lot to inspire me.
Super-functional prosthetic limbs had been available for decades.
ln fact, prosthetics were getting so good, some people were choosing to amputate a real limb to replace with a cybernetic one.
This guy, like me, damaged his arm beyond repair in a motorcycle accident.
We were all so used to amazing technology around us.
lt was really only a matter of time before we started to make that technology part of us.
But in order to get a cybernetic arm, l had to have my own arm removed.
[ chuckles .]
lt's never an easy choice, but l specifically remember waking up on the table after the operation and looking where my arm used to be and thinking, ''l hope this is worth it.
'' But there was no going back.
And six months later, l was back in the workshop, testing out my new arm.
This is the new hand.
[ laughs .]
lt is myoelectrically controlled, which means it's controlled by muscle actions in my forearm -- four individual fingers, plus a thumb, all controlled via motors.
lt's very, very strong.
lsn't it pretty? The arm has these sensors that picked up electrical impulses from my remaining muscle fibers to send to the hand.
lt was incredible, but it wasn't perfect.
There are a couple of problems with the arm.
One is that the fine-motor control is not really as fine as we were hoping for.
The other ls feeling.
No feeling, no feedback.
So l'd like to take this to the next level.
You see, what l was really hoping to do was to patch the cybernetic arm directly into my brain so l could control it effortlessly and experience feeling just like the real thing -- an idea that had been getting closer for decades.
ltalian Paolo Petruzziello had electrodes wired into nerves in his arm, allowing him to work a cybernetic hand using his mind.
Other researchers were developing artificial skin that could feel, thanks to tiny electrodes so sensitive, they could detect pressure from a butterfly's wing.
Complete with lifelike skin, manmade limbs could even look like the real thing, too.
l was throwing all this research into my design for a super-realistic arm, but l had no idea if it was even gonna work.
[ groans .]
[ coughs .]
That feels really funky.
All right, this is the new arm.
We are wiring in my neurons one by one to give me all the control over this arm that l ought to have over any of my other body parts.
Let's see if it works.
Finger test is good.
Let's do a touch test.
[ laughs .]
l can feel it.
This might just work.
l had a new arm, and it felt great.
What l didn't know was that by fooling around with my body's delicate wiring and placing electrodes on my brain, l had accidentally triggered a very serious side effect.
l remember this awful, awful pain in my head.
And then everything went numb.
l don't remember much after that.
lt was bad.
Something had gone wrong during the implant procedure, causing a blood clot in my brain.
lf the clot couldn't be dealt with in minutes, l was facing irreversible brain damage or worse.
The doctor's only choice was a radical technology that had never been tested.
We need to get in there right now and remove that clot.
lt's in a part of Adam's brain that's impossible hard to reach with surgery or standard interventional radiology approaches, so we're sending in these guys -- spider medics.
Savage: Spider medics were amazing.
One-micrometer-long robots designed to seek and destroy illness inside the body.
This was the next generation of medical tech.
First, there had been a remote-controlled robot called a spider pill, designed to walk through parts of the body such as the colon in search of cancers.
Next came a flea-sized drone controlled by magnets and designed to go into a human eye to cure blindness.
lt was incredible stuff.
The question was, could these bots get in and destroy that clot before it destroyed me? The spider medics go in.
They're equipped with swarm intelligence like insects, so they act as one unit, navigating my blood system.
Finally, they find the clot.
They deploy a thinning agent.
lf the clot isn't broken up quickly, my brain will be starved of o xygen.
So all the doctors can do is wait and hope.
[ monitor beeping .]
l was saved thanks to these incredible, tiny machines.
But the coolest part is they stayed inside my body on a kind of permanent patrol.
[ sighs .]
So l feel great.
lf it wasn't for these little guys, l would be dead.
And honestly, it doesn't creep me out having little robots inside me.
l actually feel safer knowing they can zap any disease or illness.
Yet again, modern science had saved and extended my life.
l'd beaten the odds.
But could l defeat the hand of time? By the year 2099, l was 1 32 years old.
l'd lived longer than anyone in history.
Yeah.
But now l face my biggest challenge yet -- old age.
Could l beat death? lt was the year 2099.
San Francisco had changed a lot in the 21 st century.
But not as much as me, Adam Savage.
l was 1 32 years old, and boy, did l look it.
Thanks to years as a scientific guinea pig, l had lived longer than any human ever, and it had been one hell of a ride.
l'm not only the only human still alive that was alive when Neil and Buzz landed on the Moon, l also had the pleasure of spending 50 years working on the space elevator.
We wouldn't have a Moon colony without it.
Controller: The liquid-hydrogen vent valve has been closed, and flight pressurization is under way.
''T'' minus 1 minute and 50 seconds and counting.
Savage: That is cool.
l'd done some cool stuff, but at that moment, l was looking forward to Thanksgiving, the busiest day of the year in the Savage household.
[ coughs, clears throat .]
Uh, this weekend should be pretty fun.
Actually, it's gonna be quite a blowout.
l have a 1 20 great, great, great grandchildren showing up.
Also, many of my grandchildren who are, if you can believe this, in their 60s and their 7 0s.
By 2099, Americans could upgrade and augment their bodies and enjoy life well past a hundred years old, but not everyone wanted that.
Some preferred to just let nature run its course.
My kids won't be there.
They My children decided, all of them, all five of them, to live normal-length lives, and none of them made it past their 90s.
As l was finding out in 2099, the longer you rolled, the more bumps in the road.
But what l didn't realize is that l, too, had reached the end of the line.
Well, the Office of Scientific lntelligence called.
l hadn't heard from them in decades, but they'd been keeping tabs.
And they said to me that the problem l was having was not with a part of my body.
lt was with the entire system.
lt seemed that all of me was dying of old age.
l wasn't gonna make it to Thanksgiving.
So, how does aging work? Well, as we get older, cells in the human body start to malfunction.
Some die or mutate.
Some replicate too much, leading to cancers.
l had accumulated so much cell damage, my bodily functions were shutting down.
News of Adam's condition spread quickly around the world.
On the lnternational Space Elevator, construction workers paid tribute to the man who served as their engineer for more than 50 years.
Hey, guys, gently.
Savage: Everybody thought l was a goner.
l didn't blame them.
l mean, l was 1 32.
But the Office of Scientific lntelligence had other ideas.
You're very fragile.
All those years in space have given him pretty bad osteoporosis, so do not drop him.
Savage: They were gonna try something unbelievable -- Strap him in.
Reverse the process of aging.
That's perfect.
lf this worked, it meant l really could live forever.
This was radical stuff.
The idea had been around since the 21 st century, scientists asking, ''What if we could stop aging? What if we could treat old age like a disease to be cured?'' The idea was to restore my body's youthful, healthy cell structure.
One problem was my body was clogged up with white blood cells that could no longer perform their job of keeping me healthy -- the classic side effect of age.
To get rid of them, the scientists planned to use this mean machine.
lt's called a cell scrubber.
Here's some footage of a prototype cell scrubber.
lt's actually pretty simple.
Scientists took an elderly mouse, removed its blood, carefully extracted only the old cells, and put the blood back in.
lt worked on a mouse.
l hoped to God it'd work on me.
First comes the scary process of pumping the blood from my body.
ls that my blood moving in and out of there? l thought l only had like 1 5 pints in me.
The blood is run through a chamber, where it's bombarded by proteins designed to attach onto the old white cells.
These proteins are laced with tiny metal particles, so when the blood is passed over a set of powerful magnets, the metal in the old cells get pulled out and dumped in the garbage.
Wait a minute.
So you're saying that vat of gunk over there is all the old detritus and ruined cells from my body that's been making me old? That's right.
Now that's removed from your body, the healthiest cells have room to replicate.
That is cool.
Savage: Thanks to the ideas of the early 21 st century, l was able to become the first person to have almost all age-related damage eradicated from my body.
And with regular treatment, l could stay that way forever.
[ groans .]
l feel fantastic.
l have the body of a 30-year-old again.
l haven't ridden this thing in l think 40 years.
As long as l have my cells replaced every few decades, l should be fine.
The only problem is, is that l still look like crap.
But l think that l have a solution.
To make myself once again young and handsome, it was time to call in the cybernetic calvary.
Meet the rejuvenators.
Savage: lt was 2099, and l was 1 32 years old.
l didn't feel it though.
ln fact, l felt awesome.
[ laughs .]
Much of my body's cells' structures had been restored to a youthful state, and this meant l could live forever.
But on the outside, l still looked 1 32.
That's because my skin had got thinner and lost its elasticity with age.
But yet again, a technology developed from early 21 st-century scientific ideas promised to change everything.
All right, everybody.
This is it.
Behind me is the rejuvenator.
lt might not look like much, but wait till l get on it.
Meet the rejuvenators, hummingbird-sized robots designed to give me the ultimate extreme makeover.
The rejuvenators spray a drug that penetrates my skin to stimulate the production of collagen, a protein that re-enforces my skin's support structure, giving it back its youthful vigor.
Whoo! Wow.
That was intense.
Really?! After all that, l get this body? [ sighs .]
l suppose it's not bad for 1 32.
[ groans .]
lt feels great! So, l had finally done it.
l could live as a young man forever.
The question now though is would l even want to? lt was the year 21 82.
The world was run by machines.
l was 21 5, and l was totally bored.
So, l have been alive for more than twice a normal human life span.
The problem is, how am l going to keep myself occupied, you know, forever? l've collected every stamp, every species of ant, and l've seen every single movie.
l've been literally everywhere and done pretty much everything.
lt's like [chuckles.]
how do you prepare yourself to live forever? What do you do when you have literally all the time in the world? But as it turned out, the world didn't actually have much time left.
When it was first discovered in 201 0, experts had warned the chance of Earth being struck by the mile-wide asteroid known as 1 999 RQ36 was 1 in 1 ,000.
Unfortunately, they were wrong.
Savage: People were running for their lives.
Luckily, l had made arrangements for my family, and l believed that they had gotten out on the last transport.
l was stranded in the chaos.
With all options exhausted, experts say there is now no stopping the one-mile-wide asteroid.
Both Mexico and Canada have closed their borders.
[ thunder crashes .]
Savage: The asteroid strike was a disaster on an epic scale, the end of human civilization.
For a 21 5-year-old man kept alive by science and cybernetic body parts, this was big trouble.
By 21 82, our entire civilization was run by machines.
They fed us and kept us alive.
And now it was all gone.
Hello? [ monitor warbling .]
Savage: l holed up in a Cold War command bunker.
Now l needed to find new ways to stay alive.
This is bad.
My arm is pretty smashed up, and though l can fix it [sighs.]
it presents a bigger problem, which is l've got a cybernetic arm and two cybernetic legs, a body packed full of 22nd-century technology, and what l've got to support it is only the crap down here l was able to salvage.
lt's not enough.
l mean, it'll keep me going for a while, but not indefinitely.
lf l don't come up with a better solution, l'm gonna die down here.
Luckily, l had this idea -- a real long shot inspired by the natural world.
l was going to grow myself a new arm, just like being back in the womb.
lt's me, Adam Savage.
Thanks to science, l am the world's first 1 ,000-year-old man.
How did l get here? Well, it wasn't easy.
lt all started with that accident.
[ tires screeching .]
And l nearly died of old age.
[ groans .]
Then the apocalypse.
lt was the year 21 82.
l was 21 5 years old, and the world l lived in had been totaled by an asteroid.
With it went the technology that kept me alive.
Not good.
My immediate challenge, to replace my cybernetic arm before it became dysfunctional.
And l had a crazy idea.
All right.
Here is the new plan.
l'm gonna try and grow a new limb from scratch.
l figure it's not out of the question.
l mean, lizards do it.
Look at this -- time-lapsed images of a salamander re-growing a leg.
The thing is, though, that we humans can grow limbs, too, at least when we're forming in the womb.
My guess is there has to be a way to trick my adult body into doing the same thing.
So, this is the bio dome.
lt's actually based on an idea from the early 21 st century, that perhaps the body can be tricked into regenerating body parts if it could be tricked into thinking that it's still in the womb.
Look at this amazing footage -- a ball of embryonic cells exchanging the bio-electrical signals that trigger where and how tissue grows.
lt's an electrical conversation that starts thanks to genes in our body that we, unlike starfish and salamanders, lose the ability to express soon after we leave the womb.
So maybe if the chemical environment of the womb could be replicated, that electrical switch could be flipped.
Now, the base unit here is gonna provide all the electricity and monitoring for this process.
The monitoring happens from all this equipment.
This is the key to the whole equation -- amniotic fluid.
This isn't real amniotic fluid.
This is my home concoction.
But if l'm right, my theory's correct, it actually ought to provide all of the same environmental stimulus required [sighs.]
hopefully to trick my body into generating a new arm.
lf l'm wrong l stay with a stump.
lt took months, but finally, the bio dome was ready.
l've removed my cybernetic arm, and l was ready for regeneration.
Not much is happening just yet.
lt's just bubbling away.
Oh! Actually, wait a minute.
l think l can see the first electrical signals passing between the cells.
This should speed up as they multiply.
l really hope they're telling each other to make an arm.
Hate to end up with a foot on the end of this thing after all this work.
lt's been six hours, and l've just started to see the limb bud forming.
lt looks totally fetal.
l was sitting there for days.
l will never forget how numb my butt went.
This is just like being in the womb.
Whoo! [ sighs .]
l will not miss this chamber.
But finally, finally, the computer told me that the regeneration process was done.
lt turns out though that there was a bizarre problem l had not anticipated.
Savage: ln my quest to live forever, l had built an artificial womb that stimulated cell growth to regenerate a whole arm.
lt worked, but there was one little problem.
[ laughs .]
Okay! Well, the good news is l have a brand-new arm.
The bad news is l have a brand-new arm that has never been used and thus can't really do anything.
l've got a lot of physical therapy ahead of me to get this thing operational.
lt wasn't perfect yet, but once again, l had a real right arm.
And as the centuries rolled by, l found other ways to stay alive and kicking.
l finally thought l could live forever.
But at 502 years old, l ran into one final problem.
l was literally losing my mind.
Here's a scan of my brain from 201 2.
Normal-sized brain.
Here's a scan of my brain right now.
lt's lost 20% of its mass.
lf it continues at this pace, this is what my brain's gonna look like in 200 years.
As we age, the brain shrinks as neurons die.
We lose functionality, often including the ability to recall memories.
lt's a process that accelerates the older we get.
Now l was in danger of losing everything that made me me.
lt's 500 years of memories -- my kids, my parents, my past.
lf l lose that, l lose everything.
l have to find a way to fix this.
First, l use stem cells to regenerate the lost neurons and restore healthy adult function.
But there was another unexpected problem.
ln the 21 st century, research into the hippocampus revealed our brains have a short-term memory limit of around seven thoughts at one time.
Some scientists theorize long-term memory might have an upper limit, as well.
l found out that they were totally right.
My hippocampus after 500 years of being alive turns out to be full.
lt's at capacity.
There was just no room for new memories in my brain.
l needed extra storage.
This right here is what l'm trying to build.
lt's effectively an electronic hippocampus.
What l'm hoping to do is to divert all my new memories from my brain onto this external storage device.
The idea came from a 21 st-century memory experiment where scientists used computers to record and then play back the brain signals of lab rats.
Now l could do the same.
lt's working.
lt's all there.
Record and store new memories and even play back my precious old ones.
With my brain, memories, and personality intact, finally l could live forever.
And centuries after the asteroid strike, a new human civilization has risen from the ashes.
Emotional scenes at the newly reopened Pacific Space Port today, as Adam Savage, the world's oldest man, was reunited with his family after nearly three centuries.
Savage: And that pretty much brings us up to date.
Here we are in the 30th century.
For he's a jolly good fellow For he's a jolly good fellow, Which nobody can deny l can't believe you guys did this! ls it really a thousand? Savage: l am the first person to reach his 1 ,000th birthday.
lncredible.
You know what? Life is sweet.
Hey, that works! [ laughs .]
Thank you so much.
This is incredible.
That was some ride.
l think it's pretty clear that being immortal ain't gonna be easy.
[ tires screeching .]
But everything you've just seen could happen and in some cases is already happening in labs all around the world, from stem-cell therapy to tissue engineering, cybernetics, and regenerative medicine -- all ideas that could one day end aging.
So whether you think it's exciting or just plain scary, the next stage of human evolution could be right around the corner.
Only this time, it'll be determined not by nature, but by us.
lt's kind of spooky to imagine that someone alive now could live forever.
l wonder who it'll be? l wonder what they'll be remembering on their thousandth birthday?
l've got an idea.
lt's the mother of all experiments.
Can science stop you from getting old and help you live forever? Sound impossible? [ tires screeching .]
What if you needed a replacement organ and you could just print it out? What if you could have a cybernetic arm wired directly into your brain? [ groans .]
What if we could change bodies like we change clothes? [ gasps .]
Oh! What if you could feel young forever? Sounds like science fiction? Not necessarily.
These are based on ideas being worked on by scientists in labs right now, and the implications are insane.
So could l be made to live forever, and what would it take, and what if we filmed the whole thing? l come from an age when we had just one fragile body in our lifetime.
We just accepted it.
There was a saying, ''There's nothing certain but death and taxes.
'' lt sucked.
But, of course, all that was about to change.
Savage: lt started in the year 2022.
l was 55 years old and about to have the worst day of my life.
Check out my retirement gift.
This baby looks like a three-liter motorcycle.
ln fact, it runs on genetically modified algae.
[ laughs .]
l did all the modifications myself.
Can anyone say road trip? l certainly can.
[ engine turns over .]
The future looked awesome.
l was looking forward to spending more time with my family.
[ engine sputters .]
And suddenly, just like that, the fun stopped.
[ tires screeching .]
[ siren wails .]
Television personality Adam Savage was involved in a spectacular traffic accident today.
The star was apparently test-riding a new motorcycle when he was broadsided by a pickup truck.
The unconscious Savage was airlifted to a hospital, where doctors say his condition is critical.
Doctor: Patient's obviously exhibited major head trauma.
Let's start to clean him up here and assess.
Can l have the anesthesia, please? Savage: l was in big trouble.
The truck had thrown me over 30 yards.
Ribs punctured my lungs.
l had massive internal bleeding.
Well, Adam sustained damage to his lungs to the extent that they're inoperable.
They're full of inflammatory tissue, and that's essentially irreversible.
Savage: l was so close to dying l can still remember keenly how fragile l felt, how close to death.
And l thought of my family, and l thought, ''l want to live.
'' You have to remember, this was 2022.
My only hope back then would be a lung transplant from a donor.
Finding a suitable donor might take years, and even then, chances of long-term survival were 50/50 at best.
To survive, l needed a medical miracle.
These doctors showed up from the Office of Scientific lntelligence.
Here we go, guys.
Let's get into this.
Savage: They had these unbelievable ideas Radical ideas.
Risky.
Risky as hell.
Blood pressure lf it didn't work, l was dead.
They wanted to fit me with brand-new lungs generated from my body's own cells.
lt sounded insane, but This was tissue engineering.
ln the early 2000s, scientists grew organs like bladders using a patient's own cells.
ln 2008, this guy had a new windpipe grown from scratch.
And check this out -- a fully functioning rat's lung.
The next step was to automate the engineering process.
This is a bio-printer.
lt uses stem cells as a kind of ink, layer by layer printing out organs in three dimensions.
But could this technology really be used to save my life? l'm patching the bio-ink into the printer.
lt's a mix of stem cells from Adam's body, cells from the damaged organ itself, and a protein that acts as a scaffold around which the cells can then form.
[ monitor beeping .]
Once the lungs were ready, they had to be transplanted.
Can you pass me a swab, please? Any tiny flaw in the printing process and the lungs wouldn't work.
Doctor: l'm gonna throw a couple sutures in, so let me hand you a pair of scissors.
Mm-hmm.
Hand me that.
Thank you.
-- Okay, cut these.
-- Okay.
Thanks.
Perfect.
All right.
Just gently, gently.
That's good.
Yeah.
Savage: Once the lungs were in place came the moment of truth.
l think we're ready.
We're ready.
-- Let's hook this thing up.
-- Let's do it.
[ monitor beeping .]
[ gasps .]
lt's working.
Savage: l was saved, and because the lungs were built from my own cells, my body would never reject them.
This was huge.
[ clears throat .]
Post op, they tell me that l'm doing really well.
l don't necessarily feel well.
l know l don't look that great with these scars, especially This magnificent one right here.
But that's not the coolest part.
Check this out.
They gave me a portable MRl scanner to keep tabs on my new organs.
Check out my lungs.
Aren't they gorgeous? Soon, anybody could have spare organs on ice.
My life expectancy went to 1 20 years old.
lt was nothing short of amazing.
Not only had they helped me cheat death, but l was healthier than before the accident.
lt meant that l'd live long enough to take advantage of the medical breakthroughs that kept on coming in the 21 st century.
First, it was spare organs.
Today, l have hundreds of spare bodies.
Don't believe me? Check this out.
This is my meat locker.
This is actually where l keep all of my old bodies in cold storage.
l've got bodies for every kind of occasion there is.
l think this one is my track-and-field body.
Runs really fast.
But that's not what l want to show you.
What l want to show you is the first body, the old me.
Come here.
lt's this guy right here.
This is the body that l was born in.
This is old faithful.
[ laughs .]
You might call it my model ''A.
'' Check this out.
[ laughs .]
Look at that.
That is 1 00% Earth-grown bio vessel, my original.
You know what? l'm gonna try it on.
lt's been years, but it seems like the perfect occasion.
See how this feels.
lt's been a long time.
[ breathes deeply .]
[ gasps .]
Oh! Ooh! Wow! Oh, cool.
l haven't worn this thing in hundreds of years, and l'm starting to remember why.
lt feels so [groans.]
puny and kind of weak.
l never get used to that.
lt is really hard to believe that when l was born with this, that this was all you got, for a relatively short period of time.
l would never have imagined that science was gonna keep me alive for another 950 years, but then again, it very nearly didn't.
lt was 2022 The year that l, Adam Savage, took my first steps towards living forever.
First, a terrible accident.
[ tires screech .]
Then experimental surgery, extending my life beyond normal limits.
But a few months later, one injury still hadn't healed.
The second stage of my treatment is basically a disaster.
My right arm at this point is effectively nonfunctional.
The nerve damage is too great.
We've tried injecting it with stem cells.
We've tried all sorts of other therapies.
And the fact is, at this point, l'm trying to work on this circuit, and l can l can barely lift this motor.
As advanced as medicine was back in 2022, it couldn't fix my arm.
That's when l decided to fix it myself.
[ sighs .]
All right.
So, this is the goal, is to make myself a cybernetic arm.
And l don't mean just making one that can grab and hold a cup of coffee, but hopefully, the idea is to actually make one that's better than the one that l already have, one that l'll be proud to live a long life with.
Looking back, it was super-ambitious, even for me.
But as l went to work, l had a lot to inspire me.
Super-functional prosthetic limbs had been available for decades.
ln fact, prosthetics were getting so good, some people were choosing to amputate a real limb to replace with a cybernetic one.
This guy, like me, damaged his arm beyond repair in a motorcycle accident.
We were all so used to amazing technology around us.
lt was really only a matter of time before we started to make that technology part of us.
But in order to get a cybernetic arm, l had to have my own arm removed.
[ chuckles .]
lt's never an easy choice, but l specifically remember waking up on the table after the operation and looking where my arm used to be and thinking, ''l hope this is worth it.
'' But there was no going back.
And six months later, l was back in the workshop, testing out my new arm.
This is the new hand.
[ laughs .]
lt is myoelectrically controlled, which means it's controlled by muscle actions in my forearm -- four individual fingers, plus a thumb, all controlled via motors.
lt's very, very strong.
lsn't it pretty? The arm has these sensors that picked up electrical impulses from my remaining muscle fibers to send to the hand.
lt was incredible, but it wasn't perfect.
There are a couple of problems with the arm.
One is that the fine-motor control is not really as fine as we were hoping for.
The other ls feeling.
No feeling, no feedback.
So l'd like to take this to the next level.
You see, what l was really hoping to do was to patch the cybernetic arm directly into my brain so l could control it effortlessly and experience feeling just like the real thing -- an idea that had been getting closer for decades.
ltalian Paolo Petruzziello had electrodes wired into nerves in his arm, allowing him to work a cybernetic hand using his mind.
Other researchers were developing artificial skin that could feel, thanks to tiny electrodes so sensitive, they could detect pressure from a butterfly's wing.
Complete with lifelike skin, manmade limbs could even look like the real thing, too.
l was throwing all this research into my design for a super-realistic arm, but l had no idea if it was even gonna work.
[ groans .]
[ coughs .]
That feels really funky.
All right, this is the new arm.
We are wiring in my neurons one by one to give me all the control over this arm that l ought to have over any of my other body parts.
Let's see if it works.
Finger test is good.
Let's do a touch test.
[ laughs .]
l can feel it.
This might just work.
l had a new arm, and it felt great.
What l didn't know was that by fooling around with my body's delicate wiring and placing electrodes on my brain, l had accidentally triggered a very serious side effect.
l remember this awful, awful pain in my head.
And then everything went numb.
l don't remember much after that.
lt was bad.
Something had gone wrong during the implant procedure, causing a blood clot in my brain.
lf the clot couldn't be dealt with in minutes, l was facing irreversible brain damage or worse.
The doctor's only choice was a radical technology that had never been tested.
We need to get in there right now and remove that clot.
lt's in a part of Adam's brain that's impossible hard to reach with surgery or standard interventional radiology approaches, so we're sending in these guys -- spider medics.
Savage: Spider medics were amazing.
One-micrometer-long robots designed to seek and destroy illness inside the body.
This was the next generation of medical tech.
First, there had been a remote-controlled robot called a spider pill, designed to walk through parts of the body such as the colon in search of cancers.
Next came a flea-sized drone controlled by magnets and designed to go into a human eye to cure blindness.
lt was incredible stuff.
The question was, could these bots get in and destroy that clot before it destroyed me? The spider medics go in.
They're equipped with swarm intelligence like insects, so they act as one unit, navigating my blood system.
Finally, they find the clot.
They deploy a thinning agent.
lf the clot isn't broken up quickly, my brain will be starved of o xygen.
So all the doctors can do is wait and hope.
[ monitor beeping .]
l was saved thanks to these incredible, tiny machines.
But the coolest part is they stayed inside my body on a kind of permanent patrol.
[ sighs .]
So l feel great.
lf it wasn't for these little guys, l would be dead.
And honestly, it doesn't creep me out having little robots inside me.
l actually feel safer knowing they can zap any disease or illness.
Yet again, modern science had saved and extended my life.
l'd beaten the odds.
But could l defeat the hand of time? By the year 2099, l was 1 32 years old.
l'd lived longer than anyone in history.
Yeah.
But now l face my biggest challenge yet -- old age.
Could l beat death? lt was the year 2099.
San Francisco had changed a lot in the 21 st century.
But not as much as me, Adam Savage.
l was 1 32 years old, and boy, did l look it.
Thanks to years as a scientific guinea pig, l had lived longer than any human ever, and it had been one hell of a ride.
l'm not only the only human still alive that was alive when Neil and Buzz landed on the Moon, l also had the pleasure of spending 50 years working on the space elevator.
We wouldn't have a Moon colony without it.
Controller: The liquid-hydrogen vent valve has been closed, and flight pressurization is under way.
''T'' minus 1 minute and 50 seconds and counting.
Savage: That is cool.
l'd done some cool stuff, but at that moment, l was looking forward to Thanksgiving, the busiest day of the year in the Savage household.
[ coughs, clears throat .]
Uh, this weekend should be pretty fun.
Actually, it's gonna be quite a blowout.
l have a 1 20 great, great, great grandchildren showing up.
Also, many of my grandchildren who are, if you can believe this, in their 60s and their 7 0s.
By 2099, Americans could upgrade and augment their bodies and enjoy life well past a hundred years old, but not everyone wanted that.
Some preferred to just let nature run its course.
My kids won't be there.
They My children decided, all of them, all five of them, to live normal-length lives, and none of them made it past their 90s.
As l was finding out in 2099, the longer you rolled, the more bumps in the road.
But what l didn't realize is that l, too, had reached the end of the line.
Well, the Office of Scientific lntelligence called.
l hadn't heard from them in decades, but they'd been keeping tabs.
And they said to me that the problem l was having was not with a part of my body.
lt was with the entire system.
lt seemed that all of me was dying of old age.
l wasn't gonna make it to Thanksgiving.
So, how does aging work? Well, as we get older, cells in the human body start to malfunction.
Some die or mutate.
Some replicate too much, leading to cancers.
l had accumulated so much cell damage, my bodily functions were shutting down.
News of Adam's condition spread quickly around the world.
On the lnternational Space Elevator, construction workers paid tribute to the man who served as their engineer for more than 50 years.
Hey, guys, gently.
Savage: Everybody thought l was a goner.
l didn't blame them.
l mean, l was 1 32.
But the Office of Scientific lntelligence had other ideas.
You're very fragile.
All those years in space have given him pretty bad osteoporosis, so do not drop him.
Savage: They were gonna try something unbelievable -- Strap him in.
Reverse the process of aging.
That's perfect.
lf this worked, it meant l really could live forever.
This was radical stuff.
The idea had been around since the 21 st century, scientists asking, ''What if we could stop aging? What if we could treat old age like a disease to be cured?'' The idea was to restore my body's youthful, healthy cell structure.
One problem was my body was clogged up with white blood cells that could no longer perform their job of keeping me healthy -- the classic side effect of age.
To get rid of them, the scientists planned to use this mean machine.
lt's called a cell scrubber.
Here's some footage of a prototype cell scrubber.
lt's actually pretty simple.
Scientists took an elderly mouse, removed its blood, carefully extracted only the old cells, and put the blood back in.
lt worked on a mouse.
l hoped to God it'd work on me.
First comes the scary process of pumping the blood from my body.
ls that my blood moving in and out of there? l thought l only had like 1 5 pints in me.
The blood is run through a chamber, where it's bombarded by proteins designed to attach onto the old white cells.
These proteins are laced with tiny metal particles, so when the blood is passed over a set of powerful magnets, the metal in the old cells get pulled out and dumped in the garbage.
Wait a minute.
So you're saying that vat of gunk over there is all the old detritus and ruined cells from my body that's been making me old? That's right.
Now that's removed from your body, the healthiest cells have room to replicate.
That is cool.
Savage: Thanks to the ideas of the early 21 st century, l was able to become the first person to have almost all age-related damage eradicated from my body.
And with regular treatment, l could stay that way forever.
[ groans .]
l feel fantastic.
l have the body of a 30-year-old again.
l haven't ridden this thing in l think 40 years.
As long as l have my cells replaced every few decades, l should be fine.
The only problem is, is that l still look like crap.
But l think that l have a solution.
To make myself once again young and handsome, it was time to call in the cybernetic calvary.
Meet the rejuvenators.
Savage: lt was 2099, and l was 1 32 years old.
l didn't feel it though.
ln fact, l felt awesome.
[ laughs .]
Much of my body's cells' structures had been restored to a youthful state, and this meant l could live forever.
But on the outside, l still looked 1 32.
That's because my skin had got thinner and lost its elasticity with age.
But yet again, a technology developed from early 21 st-century scientific ideas promised to change everything.
All right, everybody.
This is it.
Behind me is the rejuvenator.
lt might not look like much, but wait till l get on it.
Meet the rejuvenators, hummingbird-sized robots designed to give me the ultimate extreme makeover.
The rejuvenators spray a drug that penetrates my skin to stimulate the production of collagen, a protein that re-enforces my skin's support structure, giving it back its youthful vigor.
Whoo! Wow.
That was intense.
Really?! After all that, l get this body? [ sighs .]
l suppose it's not bad for 1 32.
[ groans .]
lt feels great! So, l had finally done it.
l could live as a young man forever.
The question now though is would l even want to? lt was the year 21 82.
The world was run by machines.
l was 21 5, and l was totally bored.
So, l have been alive for more than twice a normal human life span.
The problem is, how am l going to keep myself occupied, you know, forever? l've collected every stamp, every species of ant, and l've seen every single movie.
l've been literally everywhere and done pretty much everything.
lt's like [chuckles.]
how do you prepare yourself to live forever? What do you do when you have literally all the time in the world? But as it turned out, the world didn't actually have much time left.
When it was first discovered in 201 0, experts had warned the chance of Earth being struck by the mile-wide asteroid known as 1 999 RQ36 was 1 in 1 ,000.
Unfortunately, they were wrong.
Savage: People were running for their lives.
Luckily, l had made arrangements for my family, and l believed that they had gotten out on the last transport.
l was stranded in the chaos.
With all options exhausted, experts say there is now no stopping the one-mile-wide asteroid.
Both Mexico and Canada have closed their borders.
[ thunder crashes .]
Savage: The asteroid strike was a disaster on an epic scale, the end of human civilization.
For a 21 5-year-old man kept alive by science and cybernetic body parts, this was big trouble.
By 21 82, our entire civilization was run by machines.
They fed us and kept us alive.
And now it was all gone.
Hello? [ monitor warbling .]
Savage: l holed up in a Cold War command bunker.
Now l needed to find new ways to stay alive.
This is bad.
My arm is pretty smashed up, and though l can fix it [sighs.]
it presents a bigger problem, which is l've got a cybernetic arm and two cybernetic legs, a body packed full of 22nd-century technology, and what l've got to support it is only the crap down here l was able to salvage.
lt's not enough.
l mean, it'll keep me going for a while, but not indefinitely.
lf l don't come up with a better solution, l'm gonna die down here.
Luckily, l had this idea -- a real long shot inspired by the natural world.
l was going to grow myself a new arm, just like being back in the womb.
lt's me, Adam Savage.
Thanks to science, l am the world's first 1 ,000-year-old man.
How did l get here? Well, it wasn't easy.
lt all started with that accident.
[ tires screeching .]
And l nearly died of old age.
[ groans .]
Then the apocalypse.
lt was the year 21 82.
l was 21 5 years old, and the world l lived in had been totaled by an asteroid.
With it went the technology that kept me alive.
Not good.
My immediate challenge, to replace my cybernetic arm before it became dysfunctional.
And l had a crazy idea.
All right.
Here is the new plan.
l'm gonna try and grow a new limb from scratch.
l figure it's not out of the question.
l mean, lizards do it.
Look at this -- time-lapsed images of a salamander re-growing a leg.
The thing is, though, that we humans can grow limbs, too, at least when we're forming in the womb.
My guess is there has to be a way to trick my adult body into doing the same thing.
So, this is the bio dome.
lt's actually based on an idea from the early 21 st century, that perhaps the body can be tricked into regenerating body parts if it could be tricked into thinking that it's still in the womb.
Look at this amazing footage -- a ball of embryonic cells exchanging the bio-electrical signals that trigger where and how tissue grows.
lt's an electrical conversation that starts thanks to genes in our body that we, unlike starfish and salamanders, lose the ability to express soon after we leave the womb.
So maybe if the chemical environment of the womb could be replicated, that electrical switch could be flipped.
Now, the base unit here is gonna provide all the electricity and monitoring for this process.
The monitoring happens from all this equipment.
This is the key to the whole equation -- amniotic fluid.
This isn't real amniotic fluid.
This is my home concoction.
But if l'm right, my theory's correct, it actually ought to provide all of the same environmental stimulus required [sighs.]
hopefully to trick my body into generating a new arm.
lf l'm wrong l stay with a stump.
lt took months, but finally, the bio dome was ready.
l've removed my cybernetic arm, and l was ready for regeneration.
Not much is happening just yet.
lt's just bubbling away.
Oh! Actually, wait a minute.
l think l can see the first electrical signals passing between the cells.
This should speed up as they multiply.
l really hope they're telling each other to make an arm.
Hate to end up with a foot on the end of this thing after all this work.
lt's been six hours, and l've just started to see the limb bud forming.
lt looks totally fetal.
l was sitting there for days.
l will never forget how numb my butt went.
This is just like being in the womb.
Whoo! [ sighs .]
l will not miss this chamber.
But finally, finally, the computer told me that the regeneration process was done.
lt turns out though that there was a bizarre problem l had not anticipated.
Savage: ln my quest to live forever, l had built an artificial womb that stimulated cell growth to regenerate a whole arm.
lt worked, but there was one little problem.
[ laughs .]
Okay! Well, the good news is l have a brand-new arm.
The bad news is l have a brand-new arm that has never been used and thus can't really do anything.
l've got a lot of physical therapy ahead of me to get this thing operational.
lt wasn't perfect yet, but once again, l had a real right arm.
And as the centuries rolled by, l found other ways to stay alive and kicking.
l finally thought l could live forever.
But at 502 years old, l ran into one final problem.
l was literally losing my mind.
Here's a scan of my brain from 201 2.
Normal-sized brain.
Here's a scan of my brain right now.
lt's lost 20% of its mass.
lf it continues at this pace, this is what my brain's gonna look like in 200 years.
As we age, the brain shrinks as neurons die.
We lose functionality, often including the ability to recall memories.
lt's a process that accelerates the older we get.
Now l was in danger of losing everything that made me me.
lt's 500 years of memories -- my kids, my parents, my past.
lf l lose that, l lose everything.
l have to find a way to fix this.
First, l use stem cells to regenerate the lost neurons and restore healthy adult function.
But there was another unexpected problem.
ln the 21 st century, research into the hippocampus revealed our brains have a short-term memory limit of around seven thoughts at one time.
Some scientists theorize long-term memory might have an upper limit, as well.
l found out that they were totally right.
My hippocampus after 500 years of being alive turns out to be full.
lt's at capacity.
There was just no room for new memories in my brain.
l needed extra storage.
This right here is what l'm trying to build.
lt's effectively an electronic hippocampus.
What l'm hoping to do is to divert all my new memories from my brain onto this external storage device.
The idea came from a 21 st-century memory experiment where scientists used computers to record and then play back the brain signals of lab rats.
Now l could do the same.
lt's working.
lt's all there.
Record and store new memories and even play back my precious old ones.
With my brain, memories, and personality intact, finally l could live forever.
And centuries after the asteroid strike, a new human civilization has risen from the ashes.
Emotional scenes at the newly reopened Pacific Space Port today, as Adam Savage, the world's oldest man, was reunited with his family after nearly three centuries.
Savage: And that pretty much brings us up to date.
Here we are in the 30th century.
For he's a jolly good fellow For he's a jolly good fellow, Which nobody can deny l can't believe you guys did this! ls it really a thousand? Savage: l am the first person to reach his 1 ,000th birthday.
lncredible.
You know what? Life is sweet.
Hey, that works! [ laughs .]
Thank you so much.
This is incredible.
That was some ride.
l think it's pretty clear that being immortal ain't gonna be easy.
[ tires screeching .]
But everything you've just seen could happen and in some cases is already happening in labs all around the world, from stem-cell therapy to tissue engineering, cybernetics, and regenerative medicine -- all ideas that could one day end aging.
So whether you think it's exciting or just plain scary, the next stage of human evolution could be right around the corner.
Only this time, it'll be determined not by nature, but by us.
lt's kind of spooky to imagine that someone alive now could live forever.
l wonder who it'll be? l wonder what they'll be remembering on their thousandth birthday?