When we think of the great unknowns, it is often to the heavens that we have looked gazing out into the deepness of space in wonder at what lies beyond. But what lies below the surface of our planet's vast oceans is perhaps almost equally mysterious, and for some it is a world that will never be glimpsed in any way at all. Since time immemorial, the ocean has held a powerful grip on the imagination of all cultures that have come into contact with it. Through the power of
myth and folklore. It is a raging manifestation of all that is unknown. For some, it is the very embodiment of freedom. For others, it is nothing less than the murky fluid of their darkest nightmares. In signa Freud's interpretation of dreams, it is to water that the psychologist turns to elaborate his ideas. Where at the surface we find the conscious mind. Down below, deeply submerged, lies a shadowy
world of all that is repressed. And yet for all the myths and stories that have sprung from the sea, fantastical tales of monsters and mermaids, there remain those that make no allusions to metaphor whose place is not for the pages of the poet or the psychologist's couch, but exist merely as a matter of record stories of hidden worlds and unknown creatures that may yet prove to be beyond our wildest imaginations. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm
Richard McClain Smith. The sea monster has been ever present in ocean folklore since men and women first gazed across the surface of the mysterious deep. Many creatures of myth and legend have since been found to be nothing but misidentified aquatic mammals, creatures such as the beautiful and beguiling manatee that gave rise to the sirens of Greek mythology.
But there are also stories equally abundant of strange sightings of creatures that don't quite tally with the known biology, sighting such as the one experienced by Lutheran missionary Hands Ighied in July seventeen thirty four, whilst traveling on a ship bound for the city of Nuke in Greenland. Ighied claimed to have seen a staggering creature resembling nothing he had seen before. With a small head, elongated neck, and
short body. It propelled itself through the water using giant fins. Later, when the sailors also saw its tail, it was judged to have measured longer than the whole length of the ship. In December eighteen seventy two, the HMS Challenger, captive by George Naires set sail on a pioneering circumnavigation of the globe. On board were of scientists led by famed Scottish zoologists Charles Thompson. Their mission to map the physical conditions of
the deep sea. What they discovered was nothing less than astounding. The expedition, widely accepted to have marked the birth of oceanography, is perhaps best known for the discovery of an area known as Challenger Deep, located at the bottom of the South Pacific, part way between Guam and Palau. Challenger Deep is to be found at the southern tip of the Mariana Trench and is thought to mark the deepest point
of the ocean floor. Although initially measured at over eight thousand meters, it has since been calculated as being closer to eleven thousand meters. To put it into context, if Mount Everest were placed at the bottom, there would still be over a mile of ocean above its peak. The region located roughly a mile below the surface is known as deep sea, comprising eighty percent of the entirety of the oceans. More people have traveled into space than have
been known to travel there. Indeed, the Voyager one probe has explored over twelve billion miles of space, and with the incredible workings of the Hubble telescope, we have never before been able to see so far, with present distances estimated to be roughly thirteen point eight billion light years.
But when it comes to the area that comprises ninety nine percent of all living space on the planet, it is estimated that we have explored less than ten percent of it, a fact or the more startling when you consider the deep sea contains eighty percent of the Earth's entire biosphere. So when you put it like that, it's hard not to wonder just what exactly might remain undiscovered,
lurking deep in the shadows. It is a thought that has haunted one Russian sea captain for thirty years, the mystery of what happened to Soviet nuclear submarine K two one nine when it ventured into the region known as the Bermuda Triangle in the early hours of Friday, October third, nineteen eighty six has never fully been accounted for. Considered by some one of the most controversial instants of the Cold War, it is a mystery that mains to this
day unexplained. For many, there could perhaps be no more frightening notion than to be trapped in a glorified tin can deep below the ocean surface for months on end. But for Captain's second Rank Eagle Brittanov of the Soviet Navy, it was the nearest thing to home, albeit a home stocked with a substantial number of nuclear warheads. For this was the Cold War, and the stakes could not have
been higher. Although believed by some to have never ended, the war is generally regarded to have taken place between nineteen forty seven and nineteen ninety one between the Western Bloc powers of the United States and NATO and the Eastern Block spearheaded by the Soviet Union, an intensely complicated period of proxy wars and nuclear threat It is perhaps best summed up by the series of catamouse games played out by submarines of the Soviet and United States navies
in early September nineteen eighty six. The submarine K two one nine, captained by the experienced Igor Brittanoff, set off from the port town of Gadzievo, located in the northwest of Russia. On board the vessel was a total of one hundred and fifteen crew and forty two nuclear missiles and torpedo warheads. Thirty days into the mission, on October third, the sub was patrolling a stretch of water roughly six hundred and eighty miles northeast of the British territory of Bermuda.
At approximately fourteen, one of the crew's engineers noticed something alarming in missile compartment number four. Saltwater appeared to be dripping from under the plug of one of the subs nuclear missiles. Their alarm soon turned to panic when an attempt at decompression turned the slowly dripping water into a gushing stream at zero twenty five. The engineer alerted Captain Brittanoff, who immediately ordered the sub to the safer depth of
forty six meters. Minutes later, a brown cloud of occident issued from the missile plug. The missile casing had split. A full scale emergency was declared and all personnel were instantly evacuated from the area, with the exception of nine crewmen who stayed behind to fix the problem, but it was too late. Moments later, a huge explosion ripped through compartment number four. Two crewmen were killed instantly by the blast,
and another died shortly after from toxic fume inhalation. Most alarmingly for the remainder of the crew, the explosion had torn open the hull and the submarine began rapidly taking on water. The vessel made a sickening lurch before quickly plummeting deeper and deeper into the darkest step of the ocean. Incredibly, the crew managed to close off all compartments, and eventually they were able to engage the seawater pumps. As the
submarine approached crush depth, it began to stabilize. The crew, now wearing gas masks and safely positioned in the bow and stern of the vessel, breathed a collective sigh of relief. The worst appeared to be over, but something was deeply wrong. In the event of major catastrophe, the nuclear reactors were programmed to shut down, but as the chief engineer carried out a check of the ship's instruments, he noticed something odd.
The temperature of the nuclear reactors was rising. In short, the reactor was an imminent danger of a complete nuclear meltdown. The engineer scrambled to the control station in an attempt to initiate a remote shutdown, but the damage had been too great. It would have to be done manually. Although all vessels were with contamination suits, there was nothing on board that could protect from the gamma and neutron radiation
of the reactor's cores. It was clear to all the men that any attempt at a manual shutdown would be fatal. At this point, a twenty year old sailor named Sergey Preminin stepped forward. The son of an electrician and a factory worker, it had been Sergey's dream to follow in the footsteps of his oldest brother, Nicholas by becoming an engineer, a dream he took a step closer to achieving after graduating from engineering school in nineteen eighty four. Shortly after, however,
Serge was drafted into the Russian Navy. Fully aware of the severity of the situation, Sergey volunteer to shut the reactor down together with senior reactor officer Lieutenant Nikolai Belakov. He donned the regulation safety suit and full faced gas mask, and Julie entered the burning reactor chamber. After they managed to reinsert three out of the four displaced fuel rods, Nikolai Belakov succumbed to the seventy degree heat, just managing
to evacuate the chamber before falling unconscious. In a monumental effort. Sergey completed the last part on his own, successfully engaging the fourth rod. But when Sergey tried to reach his colleagues on the other side of the compartment, the chamber hatch would not budge. The rising temperature in the room had increased the pressure so much that it had become impossible to open. As his colleagues tried desperately to rescue him from the other side, Sergey too succumbed to the
heat and soon after died. Are you always taking care of your family? Do you often take care of others and not yourself? Now it's time to take care of yourself, to make time for you you deserve it. Tele Adoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best, to feeling like yourself again. With tele adoc, you can speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video. Therapy appointment are available seven days a week from seven am to nine pm local time.
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get started. That's teladoc dot com slash Unexplained Podcast. The young sailor's actions had saved the rest of the crew and in so doing, prevented a certain nuclear catastrophe. The consequences of such an event would have been on a scale comparable with the Chernobyl disaster that had occurred only six months previously. With the reactor sufficiently secured, Submarine K two one nine returned to the surface of the Atlantic.
But when the conning tower hatch was opened, something extraordinary caught the attention of the crew, As senior assistant Captain Sergey Vladimova recounts, all the way along the left side, just above the missile silos, was what looked like two huge scratch marks. The gouge extended from the edge of the damaged missile section right across to the port side of the vessel. Clearly something big had collided with the submarine. A few days later, a Soviet freight had duly arrived
to tow the damaged vessel back to port. Despite repeated efforts to salvage the up, a series of gas leagues prompted Captain Brittenoff to order an immediate evacuation of the vessel. At eleven hundred hours on October sixth Captain Igor Brittanof became the last living man to exit Submarine K two on nine. Three minutes later, the vessel, along with the body of Sergey Premininent, sank to a depth of roughly
six thousand meters, where it remains to this day. The heroic Premanin was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Star for his Bravery shortly after returning home, all the surviving members of the crew were required to take part in what became a year long investigation into the precise cause of the explosion. However, the full results have never come to light, and nor are they likely to, since all the men were ordered to sign non disclosure agreements
prior to the investigation. What is known is that after a series of simulations and careful analysis, the Soviet Navy was satisfied that the disaster had not been the fault of the crew, but was indeed due to the impact of external factor, the most likely culprit being a submarine belonging to the United States on the other side of the world. Attention soon focused on reports of a US vessel that had been damaged. At some point in the
early part of October. The submarine US Augusta had been taken to the port of New London, Connecticut, to repair damage caused by an apparent collision. It is believed the Augusta had been patrolling the same region of ocean as K two one nine, and yet Soviet intelligence at the time indicated not a single NATO submarine had in fact been repaired around the time of the incident. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the US Navy denied all involvement. Despite the Soviet Navy's
insistence that the boat was indeed rammed. Had this in fact been a cover up of the US Navy, It is strange that, over thirty years later, this stance is still strongly maintained by the American government. What is even more surprising, however, is that Captain Brittenoff himself has also denied the allegations, claiming unequivocally that he did not collide with an American submarine. In twenty and ten, a Soviet captain of the first rank called Nikolai Tushin, gave an
extraordinary interview to the Russian news website Pravda Ru. Tashin, the former deputy commander of a brigade of nuclear submarines, appeared convinced that although K two one nine had collided with something, whatever it was, was not man made. Instead, he believed the vessel had been brought down by a mysterious, unidentified underwater object known in maritime circles as a quacker.
The oddly titled quaker gets its name from a mysterious sound frequently picked up by submarine audio equipment, resembling something between the quack of a duck and the croak of a frog. It is thought by many submariner crew to belong to an unknown creature of the deep, or perhaps
even something somewhat more alien. The phenomena is thought to have first come to our attention due to the advances in sonar equipment necessitated by the arms race of the Cold War, and when you take into account the extreme hyper vigilance of the Soviet and US navies at the time, it is quite probable that these sounds had just not been noticed before. In a particularly striking story, one submarine sailor recounts picking up the fabled quacker sound while out
on a routine operation. His readings suggested something of a significant size that appeared to be circling the vessel in what he believed was a benign attempt to make contact. Incidentally, in two thousand and nine, the Russian gun released a number of previously classified documents. The reports were taken from a Soviet Navy group specifically established to document unexplained incidents
reported by naval vessels. Former Navy officer of Vladimir Adzatza points to one incident in particular, where a complete submarine system malfunction occurred as an unidentified object was recorded close by traveling at the seemingly impossible speed of two hundred and fifty miles per hour. In another report, one Navy intelligence veteran notes the strange ufoes were most prone to appear in the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, specifically
the Bermuda Triangle. In nineteen fifty seven, a team of Soviet explorers led by Alexei Treshnikov set off from a small research station on the coast of Antarctica in search of the geomagnetic South Pole. After a hellish journey, suffering intense storms and extreme cold, the team arrived at their destination on the sixteenth of December. A research center was quickly established. It has since become known as Vostok Station. Temperature readings taken from the area have confirmed the region
as the coldest known place on Earth. However, eighty million years ago, the frozen desert we now know as Antarctica was in fact an equatorial region making up part of the supercontinent known as gonduanaland home to dinosaurs and a number of other creatures. The land was a thick mass of ferns and other tropical vegetation. At some point, the land began to fragment and split apart, with the bit we now call the Antarctic, eventually settling millions of years
later over the South Pole. Over time, the vegetation changed, being replaced by thick forests of deciduous trees. It became home to a colorful array of birds, reptiles, and mammals. Rivers and streams teemed with life as the ecosystem adjusted to a post dinosaur world. But then things began to change. A radical drop in greenhouse gas levels led to a deep freeze that engulfed the continent. As the temperature plummeted, the ecosystem was irreversibly altered, resulting in the extinction of
all the terrestrial animals. The lakes and rivers frosted over until eventually they were locked under sheets of ice thousands of meters thick. In nineteen seventy five, a team of British scientists were conducting a seismic survey of the area when they discovered something extraordinary. Trapped deep below the ice was what appeared to be a huge freshwater lake, now known as Lake Vostok. Satellite images taken in nineteen ninety six to pick the mass as being similar in size
to Lake Ontario. Even more incredibly, despite being trapped for hundreds of thousands of years, the lake was to be teeming with life, from single cell bacteria to molluscs and worms, and even fairly complex arthropods. Is it completely inconceivable that such undiscovered ecosystems may exist in other parts of the planet, perhaps fostering the life of creatures once thought extinct or
that may not yet have even been discovered. For anyone doubting the likelihood of such an occurrence, it is worth bearing in mind the mythic tales of the Mighty Kraken. The great aquatic monster of Norwegian folklore, is thought likely to be based on sailor's reports of the giant squid, a creature that was itself once thought to be a myth.
In fact, despite extensive efforts to capture footage of the giant squid in its natural habitat, it wasn't until two thousand and four that a team of Japanese scientists were finally successful in doing so. The great aquatic monsters, such as the kraken, may of course, prove to be nothing but figments of our imagination, embodiments of the many subconscious fears that we might one day defeat. But perhaps for a moment, consider the so called monsters hidden from view,
deep below the waves. Maybe they are hiding for a reason, for you can be certain what fate awaits them if they were ever foolish enough to show themselves. It makes you wonder just what would they make of us? Below the thunders of the upper deep, far far beneath, in the abysmal sea, his ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep, the krak
and sleepers, faintest sunlights flee about his shadowy sides. Above him swell huge sponges of millennial growth and height, and far away into the sickly light from many a wondrous grot and secret cell, unnumbered, an enormous Polypi winner with giant arms, the slumbering green. They're happy. Lane for ages and will lie battering upon huge seaworms in his sleep until the latter fire shall heat the deep. Then, once by man and angels to be seen in roaring, he
shall rise, and on the surface die. All elements of Unexplained are produced by me, Richard McClane smith. Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or on Twitter Unexplained Pod Now. It's time to take care of yourself.
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