Dark Matters: Twisted But True (2011) s02e06 Episode Script
Creative Evil, Curiosity Killed Dr. Katskee, Bat-Bomb
This is your one and only warning.
Your screen will soon be filled with dramatized stories of scientific research that some people may find controversial or disturbing.
Viewer discretion is advised.
Ask yourself, does progress always come at a price? Are some experiments too risky or just wrong? A little curiosity can't hurt anyone can it? Meet a doctor who wants to experience exactly what it feels like to die and an inventor with a top-secret wartime plan that will unleash creatures of the night on the cities of Japan.
But first, meet a psychologist who tries to discover why people sometimes abandon their sense of right and wrong and learns firsthand just how easy it is.
Stanford, California.
Nine students are arrested handcuffed and locked up in a correctional facility like no other in America.
Here, psychologist Phil Zimbardo is beginning a groundbreaking Now, these may look like ordinary faculty rooms, but they're not.
This is prison.
You're gonna be the guards.
There he is.
There he is.
Zimbardo believes his experiment can explain the causes of brutality in prisons.
Zimbardo was aware that there were serious problems in American prisons.
There'd been complaints about living conditions, there'd been riots, and he suspected it was actually in the relationship between the guards and the inmates.
are divided into the roles of guards and prisoners.
Now, I want to be absolutely clear that the roles assigned have been done so at random.
Any one of you could have been the prisoners, and any one of them could have been you.
And as for me Zimbardo himself will take on the role of prison superintendent.
Pretty mean, huh? The prisoners are processed just like real convicts.
The inmates would get picked up by the police.
They would get booked in.
They would be given new clothing.
They would be given prison numbers.
Quick as you can, please.
All participants have undergone personality tests to screen out anyone with psychological problems.
Do not laugh at the stocking on your head.
Zimbardo monitors the experiment on security cameras.
Prisoners are to wear the given number badges at all times.
They are never to be removed.
Prisoners must address each other by number.
Prisoners must address guards as Mr.
Correctional Officer.
The Zimbardo prison experiment is one of the most important psychology experiments of the 20th century.
It sought to find out how quickly people would embrace roles in a hierarchy, particularly related to prisons.
Zimbardo makes daily records of his experiment.
The plan is to strip away their individuality to allow them to behave according to the stereotypes of guard and prisoner.
Even on day one, we are seeing profound changes in behavior.
In the small hours, guards test the limits of their power over the prisoners.
Line up against the corridor! That's it! That's it! Name! Name! Uh, 043, Mr.
Correctional Officer.
You think that's funny, 043? All right.
Give us all a laugh.
Don't say it.
Sing it! Go on! 043, Mr.
Correctional Officer.
You call that singing? On the floor! Give me 20! Whoa, Frank.
We got something.
Without instruction from Zimbardo, the guards are developing their own punishments.
1, 2, 3 By inventing the singing test, the guards were using their imagination to come up with situations in which the prisoners were sure to fail, giving them an opportunity to exert and even to enjoy their power over the prisoner.
It is their first hint of creative evil.
4, 5 Just one day in, and already they are taking on the typical roles -- abusive guards, docile prisoners.
8, 9, 10.
By the second morning, students playing prisoners show signs of resentment.
043, stop sitting there doing nothing and eat.
The prisoners have rebelled.
Hunger strike.
Hey, 043, eat yourdamn meal.
Some guards respond by ripping the prisoners' bedsheets through thorn bushes outside.
The guards' dominance over the passive inmates is becoming entrenched.
You'll find out tonight what they're doing.
A situation like this can actually be exaggerated by the chemicals in your brain.
The guards would have felt like they won, because they were at the top of the hierarchy.
And when a man wins, his testosterone levels increase, making him more competitive and aggressive.
But the prisoners would have actually experienced the opposite.
In a fearful situation, the stress hormone cortisol would have led to them feeling more passive and risk-averse.
All right.
Everybody in the cell.
Within 48 hours, the mental abuse becomes physical.
It's just an experiment, man.
They have to put him in the hole.
I'm not sure No, no, no.
Listen.
From the guards' point of view, this makes perfect sense.
They have to make an example, or they lose control.
This is exactly what goes wrong in prisons.
We crack this, we end prison abuse.
Just an experiment, man.
You can't say that.
That's against the rules.
You're in big trouble, 7359.
- Come on.
- 7359.
Get your hands off me! Zimbardo and the guards devise a way to discipline defiant prisoners -- a tiny closet with no light they call "the hole.
" Solitary confinement is a common disciplinary procedure, but the hole was something different entirely, because it involved not only social isolation, but the isolation from sight, as well.
Zimbardo uses his power over the prisoners to divide them and gain control.
and wants out.
What are you gonna do? I made him an offer.
I get the guards off his case, he acts as my eyes and ears inside.
Lets me know what the others are planning.
Hey, man.
You're back! What happened?! They won't let me out, man! Like a real prison, inmates resent being told what to do.
the superintendent's offer.
This is insane! to the prison, but he started shouting that I won't let them out.
You're kidding! We really can't leave?! Zimbardo's experiment has become a real prison.
This isn't what I signed up for.
Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch Keep singing, damn it! Like me After three days, Philip Zimbardo's psychology study is taking on a life of its own.
Did I give you permission to stop?! But now I see Some students playing the role of guards aggressively dominate the students playing inmates.
And Professor Zimbardo is taking his own role as prison superintendent very personally.
Last night, when I got back to the prison, the guards had released 7924, my snitch.
He was screaming and crying.
They sent him home.
Now he's been spotted hanging around by the faculty.
Is he gonna grab a bunch of friends and trash the experiment? Is this a jail break? Frank? Yeah, tell the guards to move the prisoners.
I think What? Well, tell 'em it's for their own safety.
Zimbardo waits, practicing what he will say when people come to break up his experiment.
Look, there's nothing going on here.
The experiment's over.
The kids have gone home.
I told you, there's nothing going on here.
Listen to me, damn it! This is a pris-- this is a science department.
By evening, Zimbardo realizes no one is coming.
The prisoners are returned to their cells.
Zimbardo cast himself in a major role in the experiment.
This was a real mistake, because he embraced that role just as quickly as these kids embraced the roles of inmate and guard, and he began to act like a prison warden, instead of like a psychologist.
By day 4, the experiment is out of control.
Zimbardo doesn't see it that way.
Okay, come on.
Guys, you've got about 3 seconds to get After just four days, we have verbal abuse, physical abuse, hunger strikes, divide-and-rule tactics, sexualized bullying.
The experiment is a tremendous success.
I warned you.
I wanted to come in here and talk to you guys.
Zimbardo creates a parole board to hear the prisoners' concerns.
With the way things are going, I ju-- I'd like to leave if I can, please.
He brings in his girlfriend, psychologist Dr.
Christina Maslach, as a member of the board.
Come on out of your cell, you bunch of ladies.
Move it! 1, 2.
1, 2.
I haven't got all day.
Right.
Stop there.
Stop! Stop! Maslach tours the prison and sees the conditions firsthand.
Hey, Chris, check this out.
You know, you're not the first person to go down there.
Dr.
Zigler's been.
We've had a priest, a lawyer.
I don't care if everyone in the world thinks this is okay! What you are doing to those boys is wrong! What I'm doing?! Yes! Phil, you're in charge here.
This is your show.
Those boys, they're scared, and they're humiliated, and you just sit here like everything's okay? Those guards -- those -- those kids in uniform, they have lost their moral compass, and so have you! I'm trying to run a prison, Chris! You think that's easy?! It's not easy! You're not a prison warden.
You're a psychologist, and you're running an experiment.
So, the Stanford Prison experiment went terribly out of control, and yet there's some really important learning messages in this study.
One of the most important messages is that it wasn't just the sadism of the bad guards that's so impressive.
It was the complicity of the good guards.
And there are echoes throughout history in situations where people are incarcerated that are just like this.
For example, in Abu Ghraib, where you had guards who weren't all that well-trained, who embraced the, sort of, role almost brutally and then behaved in ways that were pretty unconscionable.
Here is it, number 43.
There's your breakfast.
Let's see you eat it.
I don't want it.
Hey, come on.
Eat the oatmeal.
What's the matter -- you don't like oatmeal? Okay, everybody.
I have an important announcement to make, so, uh, listen up.
The experiment is over.
You're free to leave.
In social psychology experiments, it's critically important that the investigator keep some distance from the experiment, and Zimbardo's big mistake was that he didn't do that.
The experiment was planned to last 14 days.
It is called off after only six.
What does it feel like to die? Easily asked, but not so easily answered.
Here's the story of one doctor who became so fascinated by the idea of death that he decided to try it for himself.
have you ever stood on a skyscraper looking down and wondered what it would be like to jump? One scientist became obsessed with an equally lethal idea until his curiosity eventually got the better of him.
He wrote down what happened every moment of his slow descent for the benefit of future researchers.
Dr.
Ed Katskee, physician.
He has just killed himself.
In the name of science, he will record every moment of his death.
Dr.
Katskee injected himself with a lethal dose of cocaine.
In Katskee's time, liquid cocaine was often used as a local anesthetic, but sometimes patients would develop a bad reaction, and no one knew why.
So to figure out what was going on, Katskee decided to find out for himself and use his own body as the test subject.
Katskee believes that as a physician, he will be able to document the side effects of cocaine in a way no layman could.
He records the drug's effect using the wall of his office as one giant notebook.
Results will be recorded in a prescription book.
Have a university or any college Any medical-college pharmacologist give you an opinion on my findings.
They'd better be good, because I am not going to repeat the experiment.
Katskee injected himself with liquid cocaine, which takes effect much, much faster than insufflation or "snorting.
" Instead of taking more than injecting cocaine only needs three, and much more gets into the bloodstream.
Katskee injected himself with probably around 1.
2 grams, I will not be able to observe the full effect of the drug on my body.
I will let someone else do that.
Dr.
K? Uh, uh, uh, uh, yes.
Um, yes.
It's -- it's, uh It's me.
You're working late again, huh? Uh, uh, yes, yes.
I'm so, so close, so close.
Actually, you -- you can help me.
Well, you want me to run those tests on you like the last time, huh? Uh, w-would you? Newspaper reports at the time indicate that he had experimented with narcotics several times previously, each time recording his bodily reactions to the drug.
There was even a report that he had his caretaker measure his reflexes early on in the experiment.
Auto-nervous reflexes enhanced.
Possible evidence of hypertension.
Yeah, feeling a bit frisky tonight, eh, Dr.
K? Uh, yes.
Uh, uh, thank you.
I'll call you when I'm done.
No problem, Dr.
K.
Now, if you need anything, you just give me a call, do you hear? Uh, yes.
Uh, uh, thank you, uh Don't let anyone clean this wall! Oh, I won't, Dr.
K.
I mean it! It's important! Sure thing, Dr.
K.
You look after yourself, hmm? Don't overdo it.
Inside Katskee's brain, cocaine is blocking the normal breakdown of two neurotransmitters -- dopamine and serotonin.
Now, dopamine is connected with the sensation of pleasure, and serotonin is connected with your mood.
And so if they can't go away, they build up inside your brain.
And under the influence of cocaine, they can increase to three times the normal level, producing a feeling of euphoria, and at extreme levels, hallucinations.
Katskee had been happily married, but his drug-taking experiments kept getting in the way.
You keep on taking bigger and bigger doses! One of these days, you're gonna take too much! Just don't overdo it, Ed.
Please, don't.
I know how much to take.
The doses are perfectly safe.
I'm not stupid! Keep your voice down.
You'll wake the children.
Honey, no one else is even close to what I'm doing.
Well, maybe there's a reason for that.
You have responsibilities, Ed.
Think of the kids! Responsibilities.
I have responsibilities.
Responsibilities.
I have responsibilities.
Responsibilities.
I have responsibilities.
Responsibilities.
This is just my way of contributing to medical and scientific archives.
As the cocaine takes hold, it begins to affect the brain's core functions.
The neurological symptoms usually start with delirium and then progress to problems with breathing.
Usually, it's an abnormal breathing pattern, which can be characterized by gasping breath, sometimes called Cheyne-Stokes respirations.
Also, we see convulsions or seizures, respiratory depression, which means you stop breathing, and subsequently death.
The experiment certainly carries lethal risks, to put it mildly.
But there is evidence that Katskee did not intend it to be fatal.
One, there was no suicide note.
Two, he'd left an antidote to the drug that was available.
He didn't take it, but he left it there.
Three, there was a caretaker on the premises.
You'd think if you wanted to commit suicide, he'd get rid of the caretaker, and he wouldn't have an antidote.
Some newspaper reports say Katskee arranged to call the caretaker.
Hello? Hello? Hello? The doctor realizes that the drug has had an unforeseen effect on his vocal cords.
Cocaine could have impacted his ability to speak by impacting his central nervous system, but it may also have affected how his brain communicated with his vocal cords themselves, paralyzing his vocal cords to some extent and making it impossible for him to actually say the words, even if he knew what he wanted to say.
Yeah, yeah.
Very funny.
Damn kids.
Dr.
Ed Katskee has taken a massive overdose of cocaine.
It has paralyzed his vocal cords, rendering him unable to call for help.
Tongue paralyzed.
Staggering gait.
Voice apparently okay.
But no sound.
Funny.
Why didn't he go get the caretaker? Why didn't he ask anyone for help? He just kept working away.
Well, then I'm sorry.
I tried, Ed.
I really did.
You take care of yourself, you hear? Katskee was depressed.
His wife had left him.
She'd taken the kids.
He really had not much of a life left in the real world.
What would have pushed him into suicide? Well, we know about suicide with criminal intent, but what about suicide with scientific intent? After an hour or so, the initial impact of the cocaine starts to fade.
Depression post-high is terrible.
Advise all inquisitive MDs to -- to lay off the stuff.
As the cocaine molecules clear, dopamine levels drop not just down to normal, but lower.
And this causes a crash, sensations of anxiety, depression, bad feelings, and craving for more.
Now able to s-stand up.
Carb-- carbohydrates m-might be useful antidote.
Cocaine can cause heart failure and stop the bits of the brain that regulate breathing from working, prolong convulsions, or increase blood pressure so much that you have a stroke.
Paralysis.
"Paralysis" -- the last legible word Katskee writes in his experiment.
Dr.
K? Thanksgiving morning Dr.
K? You done? Ed Katskee is dead.
Dr.
K, your pa's here.
We've come to get you, Dr.
K -- Suicide by experiment or experiment gone terribly wrong? We're not certain whether or not Katskee intended to kill himself.
After all, he left notes about how to be revived or that carbohydrates might be a possible antidote.
But he also left notes about which undertaker should take care of his body, so clearly, he knew that his own death was a possibility.
Oh, no.
That's what he's working on.
Said it was important.
What's it say? I've no idea.
I have responsibilities.
I have responsibilities.
I can't read any of it.
Examination by experts reveals Katskee's death diary to be, medically, at least, an indecipherable mess.
His suicidal experiment produces not a single advance in our understanding of cocaine.
When you're fighting for your life, you'll try anything to win no matter how crazy.
Like a concertina! In World War II, one man had an idea for a weapon so ludicrous, that it had them rolling in the aisles An idea so ridiculous that it might just work.
caught America unprepared.
The U.
S.
was desperate and set in motion a number of top-secret scientific research projects to strike back at Japan.
One man's plan of attack was most definitelyunusual.
Okay, call it crazy, but, remember, an idea is only crazy until it works.
Japanese buildings.
Woodbamboo.
Highly flammable.
Now, we're gonna plant incendiary bombs inside their buildings -- hundreds and thousands of them.
Uh, Doc? After Pearl Harbor, he convinces the U.
S.
Army to back his plan to retaliate against Japan.
Uh, Doc? One of Adams' first recruits.
Huh? Won't they notice us doing that? Why, thank you, Jack.
I'm glad you asked that.
No! No.
We're going to get them delivered for us by bats.
By what? Bats.
Bats? Yes, sir.
By bats.
Getting this project taken seriously will be an uphill battle.
He's kidding, right? Nope.
Von Bloeker's assistant.
Is he an engineer? Nope.
Scientist? Military man? No.
He's a dentist.
Adams actually had some pedigree as an inventor.
Before the war, he'd invented a system by which planes could pick up mail from the ground without landing.
A lot of Adams' clients were very rich and well-connected.
They introduced him to Eleanor Roosevelt.
Eleanor took his proposal to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who wrote a letter to the Colonel who'd originally rejected Adams saying, "this guy's not a nut.
Take him seriously.
" Adams was inspired by what he encountered on a visit to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico millions of bats.
What if each carried a tiny bomb? Dear Lord.
Crazy as it might sound, there's a certain logic to the plan.
If you want to maximize the destruction, a million little bombs are gonna work much better than one big bomb.
This is especially true if you want to set a city on fire.
So, gentlemen, you are millions of bats carrying tiny bombs over Japan, okay? Now, I know you're asking, "why bats?" Well, you're both bat men, hmm? When do bats fly? Uh, well, at night.
Mostly.
Of course.
At night.
It's dark.
They're hard to spot, so It's night.
You're a bat.
You've been dropped over a strange town.
Where are you gonna go? Uh, church steeple? But they don't have churches over there, do they? Oh! Rafters.
Uh-huh.
Oh, yeah.
Eaves of houses! Now you're cookin'! Rafters! Can you think of a more perfect place to plant millions of incendiary bombs? Hmm? It might seem looney, but actually bats are rather a good choice for this idea.
They're very strong mammals.
They're the only mammals capable of sustained flight.
Their wings are made of skin, unlike birds, so they tend to be very silent.
So, if I just pull his wing out very gently You can actually see the webbing between the finger digits here.
And this means that bats can fly stealthily, and they can also fly in the middle of the night, as well, in pitch blackness.
They can do this because they use sound for getting around, rather than vision.
My first question is, then, what size of bomb are we talking about? What weight can a bat carry? Uh, Jack? An adult bat? Uh, 2/10 of an ounce.
The, uh -- the smallest bomb in the U.
S.
arsenal weighs somewhere around 200 times that much, but -- but that's okay.
Uh, those carrying weights, well, they sound a little low to me.
I am, uh -- I'm sure a bat can carry a little more than that, hmm? A little more? Adams needs to know how much these bats could actually carry.
He'd enlisted the help of a Harvard bat biologist by the name of Don Griffin.
Griffin had calculated in a lab in Harvard that these bats could carry around 2/10 of an ounce.
But this didn't quite ring true to Adams' team.
They knew that some bats could actually fly carrying their own offspring and even twins whilst attached to them.
So they thought there must be something wrong with Griffin's calculations.
The enemy keeps hammering at America and its allies.
Lytle S.
Adams is eager to hit back.
All right.
All right.
Okay.
In great secrecy, Adams and his team acquire a box of bats to test how much explosive each bat could potentially carry.
Okay.
Okay.
Good man.
So, grab ahold of one, huh? Now, we're gonna start with 3/10 of an ounce, and then we're gonna work up from there, okay? Okay, I got it.
Let it go! Yes! Oh! Adams was right.
The ultimate carrying weight of the bats is four times the scientific estimate.
But the lightest U.
S.
bomb is still 60 times too heavy.
Adams suggests building tiny, lighter bombs containing a highly flammable substance -- phosphorus.
And the suggestion is returned as impractical.
Ahh, idiots.
No, they're not.
Harvard explosives expert.
You can see why Adams would have thought that phosphorus might be a good idea.
After all, it ignites spontaneously on contact with air.
We say it's a pyrophoric material.
But the problem is that with, you know, countless bats, each with free will in the back of an aircraft, this really was an accident waiting to happen.
Okay.
Phosphorus is out.
What's in? We could use Napalm.
Pretty name.
What's it do? Napalm was invented by Louis Fieser in his group at Harvard around 1942.
What they were trying to do was to take gasoline and make it more viscous, and they hit on the idea of taking metal salts, salts of naphthenic and palmitic acid -- na-palm -- and in dissolving this soap, effectively, into the gasoline, they could really end up with a gelatinous gloop.
And this stuff would just stick.
We can imagine this is the amount of Napalm that these bats would actually be carrying.
You can see that it sticks pretty nicely, the same way it would stick to the wood in the house that the bat landed one.
We take this material now and light it.
You'll also note how nicely it burns.
This Napalm stays adhered to the structure that it's on.
It's burning.
It takes an awful long time to burn.
You'll also note that it leaves in the channel -- as it slides down this channel, it leaves pieces of Napalm actually burning up above it, too.
This is one of the reasons why it's so effective.
Whatever it's touched is now going to be on fire.
Fieser creates a set of tiny pouches light enough for bats to carry, each filled with Napalm.
He inserts a tiny tube into each pouch.
This miniaturized device will ignite the Napalm at a predetermined time.
And this is a large-scale model of Fieser's device.
As you can see, it has a wire which pulls down on a piston.
This piston, when released would come up and hit a firing cap, which was placed right here, which would then light the Napalm.
A copper chloride solution is injected.
This dissolves the wire that holds the spring in place.
By making the wire thicker or thinner, fieser can control the time delay before detonation.
When the copper chloride solution eats through the wire, the spring is released.
And the Napalm is ignited.
Imagine a million of these bombs fluttering down onto Tokyo.
In other news, close to Guadalcanal, four warships have been sunk by Jap forces.
1,500 servicemen are feared lost.
Gentlemen, the bat bomb! Dr.
Lytle S.
Adams has come up with a device to drop millions of Napalm-loaded bats on Japan.
The bats will be in a state of hibernation until released.
So, after the release from the aircraft, the tray opens up like a concertina! The bats fall into the tray below and use it as a launch platform.
Ah, clever, Doc.
Very clever.
All that's needed now are the bats.
Best place to get the bats was Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.
There were more than 9 million bats living in the caverns.
The problem was that Carlsbad was a National Park.
And even during wartime, smuggling about a million bats out of the caverns probably would have been noticed by somebody.
The team travels to the less-famous Ney Cave in Texas, home to several million potential new recruits.
Should be 10 million bats in there more or less.
Uh, Doc? Jack, I am flying to D.
C.
tomorrow, and I am not going to a conference of generals with my pockets full of bat doody.
Right.
Doc! Ohh! By late 1943, the money started to dry up, and so Adams really had to battle for the funds that he was getting to support the project.
He was a bit of a con artist, and he was willing to do just about anything to keep the support going.
He would use tame bats in demonstrations.
He would invoke the names of politicians and important people that he knew.
And he would even, if absolutely necessary, bend the truth a little bit -- all to keep his work going.
After 18 months of preparation, Adam tests a working bat bomb Loaded with 1,040 unarmed bats.
This was the make-or-break test.
The project had taken so long that the army was at the end of its tether.
If it didn't succeed now, then Adams was gonna have to pack up and go home.
There were film cameras, there were people watching, and if anything went wrong, it was gonna happen very publicly.
Here it comes! Wait for it! Now! They've deployed! The bats have actually deployed! Hey! Hey.
It works, gentlemen, just as I promised.
The delivery device is a success.
All that's left is to test the Napalm pouches carried by live bats.
Six hibernating bats are brought from cold storage and armed with Napalm bombs timed to detonate in 15 minutes.
Oh, My Lord.
Oh! However, the desert heat awakes them sooner than expected.
Quick -- get a net! These bats are armed! Oh.
Well, we'd better find those bats, and fast! Doc, the only way we're gonna find 'em now is to follow the smoke.
The bats, carrying their bombs, settled in the eaves of the buildings around the base just as Lytle S.
Adams always imagined.
Six buildings are engulfed in fire.
Let's look on the bright side.
The bright side? It works.
Your screen will soon be filled with dramatized stories of scientific research that some people may find controversial or disturbing.
Viewer discretion is advised.
Ask yourself, does progress always come at a price? Are some experiments too risky or just wrong? A little curiosity can't hurt anyone can it? Meet a doctor who wants to experience exactly what it feels like to die and an inventor with a top-secret wartime plan that will unleash creatures of the night on the cities of Japan.
But first, meet a psychologist who tries to discover why people sometimes abandon their sense of right and wrong and learns firsthand just how easy it is.
Stanford, California.
Nine students are arrested handcuffed and locked up in a correctional facility like no other in America.
Here, psychologist Phil Zimbardo is beginning a groundbreaking Now, these may look like ordinary faculty rooms, but they're not.
This is prison.
You're gonna be the guards.
There he is.
There he is.
Zimbardo believes his experiment can explain the causes of brutality in prisons.
Zimbardo was aware that there were serious problems in American prisons.
There'd been complaints about living conditions, there'd been riots, and he suspected it was actually in the relationship between the guards and the inmates.
are divided into the roles of guards and prisoners.
Now, I want to be absolutely clear that the roles assigned have been done so at random.
Any one of you could have been the prisoners, and any one of them could have been you.
And as for me Zimbardo himself will take on the role of prison superintendent.
Pretty mean, huh? The prisoners are processed just like real convicts.
The inmates would get picked up by the police.
They would get booked in.
They would be given new clothing.
They would be given prison numbers.
Quick as you can, please.
All participants have undergone personality tests to screen out anyone with psychological problems.
Do not laugh at the stocking on your head.
Zimbardo monitors the experiment on security cameras.
Prisoners are to wear the given number badges at all times.
They are never to be removed.
Prisoners must address each other by number.
Prisoners must address guards as Mr.
Correctional Officer.
The Zimbardo prison experiment is one of the most important psychology experiments of the 20th century.
It sought to find out how quickly people would embrace roles in a hierarchy, particularly related to prisons.
Zimbardo makes daily records of his experiment.
The plan is to strip away their individuality to allow them to behave according to the stereotypes of guard and prisoner.
Even on day one, we are seeing profound changes in behavior.
In the small hours, guards test the limits of their power over the prisoners.
Line up against the corridor! That's it! That's it! Name! Name! Uh, 043, Mr.
Correctional Officer.
You think that's funny, 043? All right.
Give us all a laugh.
Don't say it.
Sing it! Go on! 043, Mr.
Correctional Officer.
You call that singing? On the floor! Give me 20! Whoa, Frank.
We got something.
Without instruction from Zimbardo, the guards are developing their own punishments.
1, 2, 3 By inventing the singing test, the guards were using their imagination to come up with situations in which the prisoners were sure to fail, giving them an opportunity to exert and even to enjoy their power over the prisoner.
It is their first hint of creative evil.
4, 5 Just one day in, and already they are taking on the typical roles -- abusive guards, docile prisoners.
8, 9, 10.
By the second morning, students playing prisoners show signs of resentment.
043, stop sitting there doing nothing and eat.
The prisoners have rebelled.
Hunger strike.
Hey, 043, eat yourdamn meal.
Some guards respond by ripping the prisoners' bedsheets through thorn bushes outside.
The guards' dominance over the passive inmates is becoming entrenched.
You'll find out tonight what they're doing.
A situation like this can actually be exaggerated by the chemicals in your brain.
The guards would have felt like they won, because they were at the top of the hierarchy.
And when a man wins, his testosterone levels increase, making him more competitive and aggressive.
But the prisoners would have actually experienced the opposite.
In a fearful situation, the stress hormone cortisol would have led to them feeling more passive and risk-averse.
All right.
Everybody in the cell.
Within 48 hours, the mental abuse becomes physical.
It's just an experiment, man.
They have to put him in the hole.
I'm not sure No, no, no.
Listen.
From the guards' point of view, this makes perfect sense.
They have to make an example, or they lose control.
This is exactly what goes wrong in prisons.
We crack this, we end prison abuse.
Just an experiment, man.
You can't say that.
That's against the rules.
You're in big trouble, 7359.
- Come on.
- 7359.
Get your hands off me! Zimbardo and the guards devise a way to discipline defiant prisoners -- a tiny closet with no light they call "the hole.
" Solitary confinement is a common disciplinary procedure, but the hole was something different entirely, because it involved not only social isolation, but the isolation from sight, as well.
Zimbardo uses his power over the prisoners to divide them and gain control.
and wants out.
What are you gonna do? I made him an offer.
I get the guards off his case, he acts as my eyes and ears inside.
Lets me know what the others are planning.
Hey, man.
You're back! What happened?! They won't let me out, man! Like a real prison, inmates resent being told what to do.
the superintendent's offer.
This is insane! to the prison, but he started shouting that I won't let them out.
You're kidding! We really can't leave?! Zimbardo's experiment has become a real prison.
This isn't what I signed up for.
Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch Keep singing, damn it! Like me After three days, Philip Zimbardo's psychology study is taking on a life of its own.
Did I give you permission to stop?! But now I see Some students playing the role of guards aggressively dominate the students playing inmates.
And Professor Zimbardo is taking his own role as prison superintendent very personally.
Last night, when I got back to the prison, the guards had released 7924, my snitch.
He was screaming and crying.
They sent him home.
Now he's been spotted hanging around by the faculty.
Is he gonna grab a bunch of friends and trash the experiment? Is this a jail break? Frank? Yeah, tell the guards to move the prisoners.
I think What? Well, tell 'em it's for their own safety.
Zimbardo waits, practicing what he will say when people come to break up his experiment.
Look, there's nothing going on here.
The experiment's over.
The kids have gone home.
I told you, there's nothing going on here.
Listen to me, damn it! This is a pris-- this is a science department.
By evening, Zimbardo realizes no one is coming.
The prisoners are returned to their cells.
Zimbardo cast himself in a major role in the experiment.
This was a real mistake, because he embraced that role just as quickly as these kids embraced the roles of inmate and guard, and he began to act like a prison warden, instead of like a psychologist.
By day 4, the experiment is out of control.
Zimbardo doesn't see it that way.
Okay, come on.
Guys, you've got about 3 seconds to get After just four days, we have verbal abuse, physical abuse, hunger strikes, divide-and-rule tactics, sexualized bullying.
The experiment is a tremendous success.
I warned you.
I wanted to come in here and talk to you guys.
Zimbardo creates a parole board to hear the prisoners' concerns.
With the way things are going, I ju-- I'd like to leave if I can, please.
He brings in his girlfriend, psychologist Dr.
Christina Maslach, as a member of the board.
Come on out of your cell, you bunch of ladies.
Move it! 1, 2.
1, 2.
I haven't got all day.
Right.
Stop there.
Stop! Stop! Maslach tours the prison and sees the conditions firsthand.
Hey, Chris, check this out.
You know, you're not the first person to go down there.
Dr.
Zigler's been.
We've had a priest, a lawyer.
I don't care if everyone in the world thinks this is okay! What you are doing to those boys is wrong! What I'm doing?! Yes! Phil, you're in charge here.
This is your show.
Those boys, they're scared, and they're humiliated, and you just sit here like everything's okay? Those guards -- those -- those kids in uniform, they have lost their moral compass, and so have you! I'm trying to run a prison, Chris! You think that's easy?! It's not easy! You're not a prison warden.
You're a psychologist, and you're running an experiment.
So, the Stanford Prison experiment went terribly out of control, and yet there's some really important learning messages in this study.
One of the most important messages is that it wasn't just the sadism of the bad guards that's so impressive.
It was the complicity of the good guards.
And there are echoes throughout history in situations where people are incarcerated that are just like this.
For example, in Abu Ghraib, where you had guards who weren't all that well-trained, who embraced the, sort of, role almost brutally and then behaved in ways that were pretty unconscionable.
Here is it, number 43.
There's your breakfast.
Let's see you eat it.
I don't want it.
Hey, come on.
Eat the oatmeal.
What's the matter -- you don't like oatmeal? Okay, everybody.
I have an important announcement to make, so, uh, listen up.
The experiment is over.
You're free to leave.
In social psychology experiments, it's critically important that the investigator keep some distance from the experiment, and Zimbardo's big mistake was that he didn't do that.
The experiment was planned to last 14 days.
It is called off after only six.
What does it feel like to die? Easily asked, but not so easily answered.
Here's the story of one doctor who became so fascinated by the idea of death that he decided to try it for himself.
have you ever stood on a skyscraper looking down and wondered what it would be like to jump? One scientist became obsessed with an equally lethal idea until his curiosity eventually got the better of him.
He wrote down what happened every moment of his slow descent for the benefit of future researchers.
Dr.
Ed Katskee, physician.
He has just killed himself.
In the name of science, he will record every moment of his death.
Dr.
Katskee injected himself with a lethal dose of cocaine.
In Katskee's time, liquid cocaine was often used as a local anesthetic, but sometimes patients would develop a bad reaction, and no one knew why.
So to figure out what was going on, Katskee decided to find out for himself and use his own body as the test subject.
Katskee believes that as a physician, he will be able to document the side effects of cocaine in a way no layman could.
He records the drug's effect using the wall of his office as one giant notebook.
Results will be recorded in a prescription book.
Have a university or any college Any medical-college pharmacologist give you an opinion on my findings.
They'd better be good, because I am not going to repeat the experiment.
Katskee injected himself with liquid cocaine, which takes effect much, much faster than insufflation or "snorting.
" Instead of taking more than injecting cocaine only needs three, and much more gets into the bloodstream.
Katskee injected himself with probably around 1.
2 grams, I will not be able to observe the full effect of the drug on my body.
I will let someone else do that.
Dr.
K? Uh, uh, uh, uh, yes.
Um, yes.
It's -- it's, uh It's me.
You're working late again, huh? Uh, uh, yes, yes.
I'm so, so close, so close.
Actually, you -- you can help me.
Well, you want me to run those tests on you like the last time, huh? Uh, w-would you? Newspaper reports at the time indicate that he had experimented with narcotics several times previously, each time recording his bodily reactions to the drug.
There was even a report that he had his caretaker measure his reflexes early on in the experiment.
Auto-nervous reflexes enhanced.
Possible evidence of hypertension.
Yeah, feeling a bit frisky tonight, eh, Dr.
K? Uh, yes.
Uh, uh, thank you.
I'll call you when I'm done.
No problem, Dr.
K.
Now, if you need anything, you just give me a call, do you hear? Uh, yes.
Uh, uh, thank you, uh Don't let anyone clean this wall! Oh, I won't, Dr.
K.
I mean it! It's important! Sure thing, Dr.
K.
You look after yourself, hmm? Don't overdo it.
Inside Katskee's brain, cocaine is blocking the normal breakdown of two neurotransmitters -- dopamine and serotonin.
Now, dopamine is connected with the sensation of pleasure, and serotonin is connected with your mood.
And so if they can't go away, they build up inside your brain.
And under the influence of cocaine, they can increase to three times the normal level, producing a feeling of euphoria, and at extreme levels, hallucinations.
Katskee had been happily married, but his drug-taking experiments kept getting in the way.
You keep on taking bigger and bigger doses! One of these days, you're gonna take too much! Just don't overdo it, Ed.
Please, don't.
I know how much to take.
The doses are perfectly safe.
I'm not stupid! Keep your voice down.
You'll wake the children.
Honey, no one else is even close to what I'm doing.
Well, maybe there's a reason for that.
You have responsibilities, Ed.
Think of the kids! Responsibilities.
I have responsibilities.
Responsibilities.
I have responsibilities.
Responsibilities.
I have responsibilities.
Responsibilities.
This is just my way of contributing to medical and scientific archives.
As the cocaine takes hold, it begins to affect the brain's core functions.
The neurological symptoms usually start with delirium and then progress to problems with breathing.
Usually, it's an abnormal breathing pattern, which can be characterized by gasping breath, sometimes called Cheyne-Stokes respirations.
Also, we see convulsions or seizures, respiratory depression, which means you stop breathing, and subsequently death.
The experiment certainly carries lethal risks, to put it mildly.
But there is evidence that Katskee did not intend it to be fatal.
One, there was no suicide note.
Two, he'd left an antidote to the drug that was available.
He didn't take it, but he left it there.
Three, there was a caretaker on the premises.
You'd think if you wanted to commit suicide, he'd get rid of the caretaker, and he wouldn't have an antidote.
Some newspaper reports say Katskee arranged to call the caretaker.
Hello? Hello? Hello? The doctor realizes that the drug has had an unforeseen effect on his vocal cords.
Cocaine could have impacted his ability to speak by impacting his central nervous system, but it may also have affected how his brain communicated with his vocal cords themselves, paralyzing his vocal cords to some extent and making it impossible for him to actually say the words, even if he knew what he wanted to say.
Yeah, yeah.
Very funny.
Damn kids.
Dr.
Ed Katskee has taken a massive overdose of cocaine.
It has paralyzed his vocal cords, rendering him unable to call for help.
Tongue paralyzed.
Staggering gait.
Voice apparently okay.
But no sound.
Funny.
Why didn't he go get the caretaker? Why didn't he ask anyone for help? He just kept working away.
Well, then I'm sorry.
I tried, Ed.
I really did.
You take care of yourself, you hear? Katskee was depressed.
His wife had left him.
She'd taken the kids.
He really had not much of a life left in the real world.
What would have pushed him into suicide? Well, we know about suicide with criminal intent, but what about suicide with scientific intent? After an hour or so, the initial impact of the cocaine starts to fade.
Depression post-high is terrible.
Advise all inquisitive MDs to -- to lay off the stuff.
As the cocaine molecules clear, dopamine levels drop not just down to normal, but lower.
And this causes a crash, sensations of anxiety, depression, bad feelings, and craving for more.
Now able to s-stand up.
Carb-- carbohydrates m-might be useful antidote.
Cocaine can cause heart failure and stop the bits of the brain that regulate breathing from working, prolong convulsions, or increase blood pressure so much that you have a stroke.
Paralysis.
"Paralysis" -- the last legible word Katskee writes in his experiment.
Dr.
K? Thanksgiving morning Dr.
K? You done? Ed Katskee is dead.
Dr.
K, your pa's here.
We've come to get you, Dr.
K -- Suicide by experiment or experiment gone terribly wrong? We're not certain whether or not Katskee intended to kill himself.
After all, he left notes about how to be revived or that carbohydrates might be a possible antidote.
But he also left notes about which undertaker should take care of his body, so clearly, he knew that his own death was a possibility.
Oh, no.
That's what he's working on.
Said it was important.
What's it say? I've no idea.
I have responsibilities.
I have responsibilities.
I can't read any of it.
Examination by experts reveals Katskee's death diary to be, medically, at least, an indecipherable mess.
His suicidal experiment produces not a single advance in our understanding of cocaine.
When you're fighting for your life, you'll try anything to win no matter how crazy.
Like a concertina! In World War II, one man had an idea for a weapon so ludicrous, that it had them rolling in the aisles An idea so ridiculous that it might just work.
caught America unprepared.
The U.
S.
was desperate and set in motion a number of top-secret scientific research projects to strike back at Japan.
One man's plan of attack was most definitelyunusual.
Okay, call it crazy, but, remember, an idea is only crazy until it works.
Japanese buildings.
Woodbamboo.
Highly flammable.
Now, we're gonna plant incendiary bombs inside their buildings -- hundreds and thousands of them.
Uh, Doc? After Pearl Harbor, he convinces the U.
S.
Army to back his plan to retaliate against Japan.
Uh, Doc? One of Adams' first recruits.
Huh? Won't they notice us doing that? Why, thank you, Jack.
I'm glad you asked that.
No! No.
We're going to get them delivered for us by bats.
By what? Bats.
Bats? Yes, sir.
By bats.
Getting this project taken seriously will be an uphill battle.
He's kidding, right? Nope.
Von Bloeker's assistant.
Is he an engineer? Nope.
Scientist? Military man? No.
He's a dentist.
Adams actually had some pedigree as an inventor.
Before the war, he'd invented a system by which planes could pick up mail from the ground without landing.
A lot of Adams' clients were very rich and well-connected.
They introduced him to Eleanor Roosevelt.
Eleanor took his proposal to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who wrote a letter to the Colonel who'd originally rejected Adams saying, "this guy's not a nut.
Take him seriously.
" Adams was inspired by what he encountered on a visit to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico millions of bats.
What if each carried a tiny bomb? Dear Lord.
Crazy as it might sound, there's a certain logic to the plan.
If you want to maximize the destruction, a million little bombs are gonna work much better than one big bomb.
This is especially true if you want to set a city on fire.
So, gentlemen, you are millions of bats carrying tiny bombs over Japan, okay? Now, I know you're asking, "why bats?" Well, you're both bat men, hmm? When do bats fly? Uh, well, at night.
Mostly.
Of course.
At night.
It's dark.
They're hard to spot, so It's night.
You're a bat.
You've been dropped over a strange town.
Where are you gonna go? Uh, church steeple? But they don't have churches over there, do they? Oh! Rafters.
Uh-huh.
Oh, yeah.
Eaves of houses! Now you're cookin'! Rafters! Can you think of a more perfect place to plant millions of incendiary bombs? Hmm? It might seem looney, but actually bats are rather a good choice for this idea.
They're very strong mammals.
They're the only mammals capable of sustained flight.
Their wings are made of skin, unlike birds, so they tend to be very silent.
So, if I just pull his wing out very gently You can actually see the webbing between the finger digits here.
And this means that bats can fly stealthily, and they can also fly in the middle of the night, as well, in pitch blackness.
They can do this because they use sound for getting around, rather than vision.
My first question is, then, what size of bomb are we talking about? What weight can a bat carry? Uh, Jack? An adult bat? Uh, 2/10 of an ounce.
The, uh -- the smallest bomb in the U.
S.
arsenal weighs somewhere around 200 times that much, but -- but that's okay.
Uh, those carrying weights, well, they sound a little low to me.
I am, uh -- I'm sure a bat can carry a little more than that, hmm? A little more? Adams needs to know how much these bats could actually carry.
He'd enlisted the help of a Harvard bat biologist by the name of Don Griffin.
Griffin had calculated in a lab in Harvard that these bats could carry around 2/10 of an ounce.
But this didn't quite ring true to Adams' team.
They knew that some bats could actually fly carrying their own offspring and even twins whilst attached to them.
So they thought there must be something wrong with Griffin's calculations.
The enemy keeps hammering at America and its allies.
Lytle S.
Adams is eager to hit back.
All right.
All right.
Okay.
In great secrecy, Adams and his team acquire a box of bats to test how much explosive each bat could potentially carry.
Okay.
Okay.
Good man.
So, grab ahold of one, huh? Now, we're gonna start with 3/10 of an ounce, and then we're gonna work up from there, okay? Okay, I got it.
Let it go! Yes! Oh! Adams was right.
The ultimate carrying weight of the bats is four times the scientific estimate.
But the lightest U.
S.
bomb is still 60 times too heavy.
Adams suggests building tiny, lighter bombs containing a highly flammable substance -- phosphorus.
And the suggestion is returned as impractical.
Ahh, idiots.
No, they're not.
Harvard explosives expert.
You can see why Adams would have thought that phosphorus might be a good idea.
After all, it ignites spontaneously on contact with air.
We say it's a pyrophoric material.
But the problem is that with, you know, countless bats, each with free will in the back of an aircraft, this really was an accident waiting to happen.
Okay.
Phosphorus is out.
What's in? We could use Napalm.
Pretty name.
What's it do? Napalm was invented by Louis Fieser in his group at Harvard around 1942.
What they were trying to do was to take gasoline and make it more viscous, and they hit on the idea of taking metal salts, salts of naphthenic and palmitic acid -- na-palm -- and in dissolving this soap, effectively, into the gasoline, they could really end up with a gelatinous gloop.
And this stuff would just stick.
We can imagine this is the amount of Napalm that these bats would actually be carrying.
You can see that it sticks pretty nicely, the same way it would stick to the wood in the house that the bat landed one.
We take this material now and light it.
You'll also note how nicely it burns.
This Napalm stays adhered to the structure that it's on.
It's burning.
It takes an awful long time to burn.
You'll also note that it leaves in the channel -- as it slides down this channel, it leaves pieces of Napalm actually burning up above it, too.
This is one of the reasons why it's so effective.
Whatever it's touched is now going to be on fire.
Fieser creates a set of tiny pouches light enough for bats to carry, each filled with Napalm.
He inserts a tiny tube into each pouch.
This miniaturized device will ignite the Napalm at a predetermined time.
And this is a large-scale model of Fieser's device.
As you can see, it has a wire which pulls down on a piston.
This piston, when released would come up and hit a firing cap, which was placed right here, which would then light the Napalm.
A copper chloride solution is injected.
This dissolves the wire that holds the spring in place.
By making the wire thicker or thinner, fieser can control the time delay before detonation.
When the copper chloride solution eats through the wire, the spring is released.
And the Napalm is ignited.
Imagine a million of these bombs fluttering down onto Tokyo.
In other news, close to Guadalcanal, four warships have been sunk by Jap forces.
1,500 servicemen are feared lost.
Gentlemen, the bat bomb! Dr.
Lytle S.
Adams has come up with a device to drop millions of Napalm-loaded bats on Japan.
The bats will be in a state of hibernation until released.
So, after the release from the aircraft, the tray opens up like a concertina! The bats fall into the tray below and use it as a launch platform.
Ah, clever, Doc.
Very clever.
All that's needed now are the bats.
Best place to get the bats was Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.
There were more than 9 million bats living in the caverns.
The problem was that Carlsbad was a National Park.
And even during wartime, smuggling about a million bats out of the caverns probably would have been noticed by somebody.
The team travels to the less-famous Ney Cave in Texas, home to several million potential new recruits.
Should be 10 million bats in there more or less.
Uh, Doc? Jack, I am flying to D.
C.
tomorrow, and I am not going to a conference of generals with my pockets full of bat doody.
Right.
Doc! Ohh! By late 1943, the money started to dry up, and so Adams really had to battle for the funds that he was getting to support the project.
He was a bit of a con artist, and he was willing to do just about anything to keep the support going.
He would use tame bats in demonstrations.
He would invoke the names of politicians and important people that he knew.
And he would even, if absolutely necessary, bend the truth a little bit -- all to keep his work going.
After 18 months of preparation, Adam tests a working bat bomb Loaded with 1,040 unarmed bats.
This was the make-or-break test.
The project had taken so long that the army was at the end of its tether.
If it didn't succeed now, then Adams was gonna have to pack up and go home.
There were film cameras, there were people watching, and if anything went wrong, it was gonna happen very publicly.
Here it comes! Wait for it! Now! They've deployed! The bats have actually deployed! Hey! Hey.
It works, gentlemen, just as I promised.
The delivery device is a success.
All that's left is to test the Napalm pouches carried by live bats.
Six hibernating bats are brought from cold storage and armed with Napalm bombs timed to detonate in 15 minutes.
Oh, My Lord.
Oh! However, the desert heat awakes them sooner than expected.
Quick -- get a net! These bats are armed! Oh.
Well, we'd better find those bats, and fast! Doc, the only way we're gonna find 'em now is to follow the smoke.
The bats, carrying their bombs, settled in the eaves of the buildings around the base just as Lytle S.
Adams always imagined.
Six buildings are engulfed in fire.
Let's look on the bright side.
The bright side? It works.