World War Weird: Nazi Anti-Gravity Device | Free Documentary History
Transcript
a Nazi super weapon straight out of the comic book Multiverse the ancient Mongol curse that almost destroyed the Soviets the big bang that diverted the Blitz and a bird brain scheme to Stave off nuclear winter a new kind of War conflict on a scale never seen before or since this is war at its weirdest incredible experiments this has got to be one of the most bizarre weapons ever moted in the history of warfare what is even crazier is that it seems to work mysterious events this is pretty you couldn't make this up unexplained phenomena this is all crazy and I kind of don't even know where to begin with this when a world goes to war with itself things get really weird December 1952 SS over group and furer ycob sparenberg is about to be hung for war crimes sparenberg worked at this really Sinister Nazi secret facility called derza and he was in charge of 60 crack Nazi scientists he was responsible for a top secret project called The [Music] Bell what we've got here is like something out of a Marvel comic or a kind of Pulp Fiction novel from the 70s it's really lurid but it's true you can almost picture him sitting on a big leather chair as he gives the command with a cat on his lap he pulls no punches and has everybody who works that are murdered some think it was a super weapon some think it was a UFO and some have even linked it to Roswell what is so important that all who touch it will die to keep it secret 1945 Allied intelligence hears rumors of a top secret Nazi base near the Czech border with Silesia it is called der Dera is not a very imaginative name it means the Giant and this was uh basically a research facility that was involved in creating Hitler's next generation of vaaa the the Wonder Weapons conventional Weaponry had failed him and what he needed was a weapon that would help him win the war Nazi scientists at derza are said to have worked on the V rocket program the world's first longrange ballistic missile used to terrorize London but that's the least of its Secrets one of the most mysterious things about derza is its enormous electricity Supply it's much more than you would expect for a Conventional Weapons program a mysterious fuel is also spotted at the site workers on this site had apparently seen a red liquid which was supposedly known as serum 525 which had a kind of gooey uh viscous quality to it now it's said that this strange substance is poured into this big cylinder with these counter rotating Chambers and this is supposedly the Bell no one knows what the Bell is but death swirls all around it the thing about the Bell is that anyone who got within 600 ft of it got really really sick it's said that animals who are within this Zone develop these strange crystals within their bodies plants apparently would just start to degenerate would turn into a sort of greasy gloop five scientists actually died in proximity to the Bell because uh if they got too close to it their skin and tissue would literally liquefy and fall off of their bodies so what on Earth was it what is the power that can simply melt people's flesh away from their bones a clue might lie in a mysterious structure found less than 2 miles Southeast of derza another site linked to derza is this very enigmatic concrete framework which is known as the henge it's all these concrete pillars sticking out the ground arranged in a kind of concentric shape if you just imagine a NASA Launchpad what it is is concrete pillars arranged in a circular fashion that is somehow connected to what they were doing a launch site near a top secret facility it would appear that the Nazis are reaching for the skies what we do know is that by 1945 the Nazis has successfully developed to the me262 now this was a fighter built by mesmi that could nearly reach supersonic speeds the Germans were very very Advanced the V1 Rockets were jets they they they came over Britain and they caused a great deal of damage to towns and cities the suggestion is that the Bell might have been uh connected with a more impressive type of propulsion so possibly early types of stealth aircraft or even it could literally lift something up into space face as the Red Army draws ever closer the bell's Handler OB group and fury yob sporrenberg takes drastic action to keep its Secrets out of Soviet hands sparenberg acts like an arch supervillain from a be movie when he figures out that the secrets of Teresa and what the Bell is might fall into Soviet hands he rounds up all 60 of the scientists working on this project and has them all shot sporrenberg categorically refused ever to tell anyone what the Bell was for or to reveal any details about what went on um till the day he died they hung him for war crimes in 1952 and whatever he knew he took it to the Grave with him or did he in July 1947 a strange craft crash landed near the US Air Force Base in Roswell New Mexico the military's press release stated that a flying disc had been discovered in the area then changed a few days later to claim it was a weather balloon most of us know about the Roswell incident in which it's widely supposed that an alien spacecraft crashed near Roswell in New Mexico but there's a chance that actually what crashed at Roswell was not a UFO at all the suggestion is that whatever the Bell was and whatever was there was packed up by the Americans and taken to area 51 and that they later reverse engineered this craft that the Germans have been working on and there are some who even maintain that actually the Bell was the foundation of the US stealth aircraft program sounds plausible but it has problems perhaps the biggest problem with it is that it wasn't actually the Americans who liberated Dera it was the Russians who liberated derza any information that was gleaned from this place wouldn't have gone to the Americans it would have gone to the Soviets frankly for me it's very far-fetched but of course it's less far-fetched than an alien landing but there is another equally compelling explanation that neatly fits all the known facts surrounding the Bell a practical explanation for the death zone surrounding the Bell when you think about it is really simple all these stories of uh people's flesh falling off them develop being hideous s of mutations and illnesses now to me and I'm sure to a lot of other people that sounds like one thing radiation some witnesses from Dera claimed that an isotope called thorium was present at the site if the radioactive isotope thorium 232 was found at the testing site this starts to make sense of what was going on what seems more likely is that if it did exist then the Bell was a Nazi attempt at a heavy particle accelerator the process is fairly straightforward you take thorium 232 you bombard it with neutrons and that becomes thorium 233 that then eventually becomes weapons grade uranium 233 A variation of this process using uranium 238 could also create plutonium for Atomic weapons without the need for a nuclear reactor throw this into the mix and the pillars of the henge near derza make a different kind of sense it makes more and more sense when you take into account the henge because when you look at the construction of the concrete pillars it could feasibly be the ruins of a cooling tower um which would suggest that in a very plausible place a a Nazi super weapons Factory they were actually developing nuclear fuel they weren't necessarily successful but what seems to me is that this was an attempt at producing some form of nuclear weapon just a few months after Dura fell to the Soviets Stalin established the artas 16 research facility in the closed city of sarov its job was to build an answer to America's atomic bomb we're never going to know the exact story about this site it will always remain very very weird but what we do know is that the Russians very soon after capturing it start to develop their own nuclear weapons program their official explanation is that they find 100 tons of uranium oxide in Berlin it could be more likely that they found both the expertise and the type of structures and indeed the uranium at derza and not in Berlin so when you add to this the clear secrecy that was surrounding the development of something here it becomes plausible that what you're actually dealing with is the development of nuclear weapons however this theory is just too convenient for some some even say that it was part of a top secret Nazi space program that was going to send Hitler and his acolytes out to the Alder Baron space constellation quite a long way away I've not been there myself but that is where Hitler is now resigning Ing and I guess they would live happily ever after and have their Third Reich there coming up a British engineer realizes German bombers use burning buildings to Target their bombs brilliantly his plan is low stuff up the decoys he creates are a pyromaniac dream it's sort of a liveaction theater put on to deceive the Germans could these Phantom cities save Britain from from the blitz it could save hundreds perhaps thousands of [Music] [Applause] lives September 1940 Britain is under siege this is the Blitz the Nazi Terror bombing of Britain it's horrific it's night after night German Airmen taking to the Skies over Britain and riging down death from above to protect their homes the citizens of Britain take Extraordinary Measures households are ordered to black out their windows so no light can get out it's taken incredibly seriously not only are there wardens on the ground enforcing the blackout but there are spotter planes doing reies at night looking for lights showing but there's also another reason for the blackout and it involves blowing stuff up 1940 the British government are using all kinds of tricks to make it more difficult for Luft Fafa Pilots to navigate that way blackouts aren't the only method used to confuse the German bombers during the blitz you have smoke screens on the ground that they would set fire to Tar to try and obstruct the German Pilot's View and barrage balloons full of hydrogen hoisted in the air to actually present a physical barrier um against the luffer you've got other things like search lights who can blind them or for anti-aircraft [Music] guns sadly that's still not enough to stop the LT faer there is only so much you can do to obscure German targets to Black them out the reality is that the Germans will employ other methods to find their targets and and one example is Coventry and nearly 600 people die and 40,000 buildings destroyed the government is desperate to find a way to divert German bombers a potential solution comes from a retired Air Ministry Officer Colonel JF Turner he notices that the German bombers attack in waves now the first wave is entirely reliant on using maps and location points in order to identify their targets in the second wave the pilots don't use maps they just use the smoke and Flames coming up from the ground so what if the smoke and Flames could be used as a decoy so brilliantly his plan is to go somewhere completely isolated and blow stuff up because then the Germans will see flames and smoke and then they will follow the flames and the smoke and bomb nothing it's genius it's simple but it's [Music] genius for his idea to work Turner will have to create massive sets lit up with giant pyrotechnic displays obviously this isn't going to work if there's half a dozen Boy Scouts sitting around a campfire somewhere in hartfordshire you're going to have to be convincing you're going to have to make it look like there's a city on fire on the ground so basically he's got to go large otherwise he might as well go home he decides to seek help from a very unusual Source because the British weather is so notoriously evil the British film industry typically has to make entire sets for towns undercover so you've got a very skilled and capable Workforce of producing dummy buildings very very quickly so what Turner and the production industry do is create fake buildings fake fires in a way that presents the illusion that the Germans have hit their target and destroyed a town it's theater with a purpose Beyond entertainment theater for defense it could save hundreds perhaps thousands of lives the urban decoys are nicknamed starfish after the fluorescent sea creatures that illuminate the dark seabed they employ every means of flammable substance and what they do is build huge Towers 20t High um to try and mimic uh buildings and Industrial sites you've got row upon row of diesel and paraffin tanks mounted on 20ft uh structures that when set Al light will mimic a whole row of building wi being on fire it's actually got a valve like a sink what they do is they turn open the valve and the paraffin or the diesel flows onto hot coals creating flame and smoke and this creates a massive orange ball whoosh of explosion that looks just like a bomb as the German bombing raids become more frequent the decoy program Rises to new levels so what they do is it it's chemistry they take multiple um flammable substances and they cover them with paraffin or oil or craso to create different types of fires and and different um views from the air to make it look more convincing to add layers to the Spectra from above you've got the boiler fire which releases oil from a storage tank onto a hot steel tray they then turn on another valve that's connected to a water tank and that water pours on to the Flames you've then got white hot flashes of fire leaping 40t right into the air they have nearly 500 gallons of oil going into this and they could make this burn for up to 4 hours and a typical starfish site can contain up to 12 or 14 of these massive boilers the grid fire is a metal grid um and it's sprinkled with paraffin it produces a steady yellow smaller flame which you would expect to see if if there were multiple small fires in a locality the amount of fuel a starfish site could get through is absolutely staggering some can use up 25 tons of fuel in Just 4 hours others can use double that the people creating these sites Place themselves right in the firing line there's no way that these sites were completely safe though cuz not only are you literally playing with fire on a massive scale but don't forget the object of these sites is to make the Germans come and bomb you so yes you might be 600 yards away pushing a button to get this stuff rolling but that's nothing to say that some member of the luer isn't going to bomb you as well the British are constantly improving the designs to make the starish sites as convincing as possible to play this game correctly these sites have to be set up somewhere just close enough to the targets that the Germans want to bomb to create the illusion that they actually hit their target they have to be plausibly close to what they're trying to imitate they're set up in places near enough enough to existing factories and dwellings but in Open Spaces where it's hoped that the bombs will fall harmlessly but it's not just the Allies who are at it the Germans were not above employing deception on their own and a good example of a one-off case is the town of constance that was right on the Swiss border the Swiss were neutral so the Americans and the English did not want to accidentally bomb them and so what the town did was they decided to leave their lights on all throughout the we all know that Switzerland are neutral and that um if you then went and and bomb The Living Daylights out of one of its towns you'd be in trouble consequently the town of constance never got bombed throughout the entire War the Nazis also make their own decoy sites as well in Holland they make an entire Airfield out of wood they use wooden hangers they use wooden aircraft you know you name it they make a wooden replica unfortunately for the Germans they've taken so long to build the thing that the RAF um has have watched them construct it and know it's all wood and know there are no genuine airplanes there so in true RAF fashion what they do is they send up one lone airplane and he trundles over to the wooden Airfield and drops a bomb on it um but the bomb is made of wood just to take the [Music] Mickey it's one of those ideas that this sounds good but actually in practice it never really works by the end of the war 237 starfish sites protect 81 on locations one estimate suggests that about 968 tons of ordinance is dropped on the decoys during the blitz that's almost 1,000 tons of bombs that could have otherwise devastated British cities I can only imagine how awesome it must have been for some military guy to turn up at your job and say uh I'm going to give you Limitless resources to blow things up and make stuff burn and you're going to get paid for it blowing stuff up and getting paid for it yeah that's the job i' one coming up a medieval warlord's curse threatens Russia with horrific retribution whoever uncovers this tomb shall unleash an Invader even more terrible than I but Joseph Stalin wants the body dug up it's quite creepy actually I think safe to say that if you weigh up whether you're more terrified of Stalin or a dead warlord then you're going to dig up the body no matter what the mummy rises from the tomb and its curse is Unleashed upon the world just as the elders predicted a terrible Invader does sweep across the country in the form of Adolf hit ad4 5 the Mongol Emperor Taman the great embarks on the most ambitious conquest of his blood soaked Reign Taman was one of the greatest Warlords in Mongol history he is a prenal brutal medieval Mongol warlord he invaded turkey and Iran and Syria and Iraq Russia parts of Eastern Europe he managed to acquire this vast Empire at the expense of 17 Million Lives but Taman does not conquer China China conquers him it's a lot bigger than he anticipated and the natives are a lot better at defending it the terrain favors them as well and obviously they know it better than he does in the harsh conditions of the Chinese winter he grows sick and he dies his body was taken back to samand in what's now usbekistan and there it's inomed in this giant morum called G Amir a warning is engraved on the front of his tomb when I rise from the dead the world shall tremble this of course is the classic kind of curse from the mummy's tomb if you like and no one really expects it to come true after all the spirit of Taman is dead and gone or is [Music] it 1941 and asistan is dominated by a ruler even more ruthless than the infamous tamine Joseph Stalin is in control of the USSR and that includes usbekistan now Stalin sees in Taman a kindred spirit he's not wrong there were similarities and I think he's probably thinking along the lines of a glorious successful warlord whereas anybody else might be thinking thinking in terms of a complete sociopathic lunatic so he's determined to find taman's tomb Stalin sends eminent Soviet Anthropologist mik M gasimov to gur Amir on the hunt for tamim's Tomb gasimov is a Pioneer in the field of forensic sculpture his big speciality is reconstructing historical figures so what Stalin decides to do is dig up Taman and have what is essentially a life-size doll made it's quite creepy actually Stalin wants taman's body and he wants it because he wants to recreate him I suppose so he could look into the eyes of this kindred spirit why a life-sized doll surely if you're going to go all to that trouble maybe you would move like Lenin you would move his IM remains to Moscow and have people visit it and say this was essentially like one of our forbearers and stuff I want to so I know what he looked like you just think when you've got too much money and too much power you end up doing silly things gasimov arrives in G arir and begins work on Excavating the morel as tomb after tomb is ransacked the Soviets become more and more confident that they are on the verge of discovering taman's final resting place local Islamic leaders in usbekistan are absolutely horrified by this idea they claim that if the tomb is is opened it will unleash taman's curse interestingly Stalin is a very superstitious man as Russians are want to be um and he but he takes absolutely no notice of the fact that digging up Taman to make his doll is horrific it was far more important to Stalin to be able to to dig up this man to look at this 14th century counterpart this equally bloodthirsty individual to travel through time and look in a mirror the excavation team finds the tombs of taman's sons and grandsons then on the 19th of June 1941 they locate a giant sarcophagus topped by a massive [Music] slab they have discovered taman's tomb as if the original inscription um about a trembling World um isn't enough and all of the local leaders running around screaming with their hands in the air it gets worse as gas mov and his team remove this Jade covering they reveal an even more terrifying inscription whoever uncovers this tomb shall unleash an Invader even more terrible than I this is the Russians last chance to stop but they don't take it in the face of the Wailing cries of the fearful Muslims gathered nearby gasimov orders his men to break the seal on taman's resting place at the moment they open the tomb everybody smells this strange sweet smell the local workers recoil in horror they absolutely believe that taman's ghost is on the move gasimov is not so superstitious what it was was the eming fluid which has been kept under wraps for centuries and centuries suddenly being exposed to the air so you've got a mixture of what of rows of camper of Frankincense of different oils and exactly the same thing was noted when tombs in Egypt were opened up even so members of the local Islamic clergy plead with the Russians telling them not to do anymore because something bad is going to happen they claim that 3 days after taman's body is removed the curse will come upon them and a mighty Invader and Slayer of men will come to them and kill them all gasimov continues regardless I think it's safe to say that if you weigh up whether you're more terrified of Stalin or more terrified of a dead warlord who's been gone since the 14th century then you're going to dig up the body no matter what the curse of Stalin is going to be far greater than the curse of Taman gasimov takes the body straight back to Leningrad in The Institute of material culture he begins to prepare taman's skeleton for reconstruction then the unthinkable happens on the 22nd of June 1941 exactly 3 days after tamilan is removed from his tomb Germany invades the Soviet Union just as the elders predicted a terrible Invader does sweep across the country the form of Adolf Hitler if you think Taman was bad and you think Stalin was a lunatic Adolf Hitler and his forces have invaded after the said 3 days which you would have to assume means that somewhere Taman was shaking his fist and saying I Told You So operation Barbarosa is the code name for the Nazi invasion of Russia and it's much more terrible than anything Taman ever envisaged Hitler's invasion was intended to be and was truly devastating to put it really brutally the aim of the Nazis is simply to invade and colonize the western part of the Soviet Union to give the Germans what he called laan's realm living room to be able to exploit the people to be able to exploit minerals oil materials Farmland everything that Germany needed was to be taken from the Soviet Union the Nazis wanted to enslave slave them starve them Massacre them by the end of World War II something like 27 million Russians have died at the hands of the German invasion this is a war to the death the USSR soon becomes mired in a desperate struggle for survival in the first month alone Starin loses more than 600,000 troops as this long devastating war of attrition which Millions dieded was taking place gasimov actually started to doubt himself he started to wonder whether actually the curse might be coming true and so he actually writes to Stalin and outlines his fears what he essentially says to Stalin um in his letter is do you think maybe we really did unleash a massive terrifying curse and if so should we come put him back where we got him from it would appear that Stalin is convinced because he actually now all orders taman's remains to be sent back to sakad and to be reinterred in the morum the final and most bizarre Twist of this tale occurs as the warlord is returned as taman's remains have flown over Stalingrad it's that point when the Russians launch operation Uranus which is their attempt to beat back the Germans from that City Taman has given an amazing burial with four Muslim honors and he's put in a wonderful morum and suddenly the entire Soviet war effort takes a huge turn for the better so believe what you want was it a coincidence um or was it because they put him back where he belonged I mean presumably that's just a coincidence I mean what real effect could the return of a long dead Leader's body to his tomb have on this terrible vicious War that's actually being fought in the moment couldn't have any effect on it at all could it could it coming up a Birdbrain scheme to thow bombs during the Cold War so imagine you're outside in the bitter cold uh of central European winter and you put on a blanket but that not keeping you warm what do you do next you hug a chicken you heard me right chickens yes chickens you know poultry that flaps and flies actual chickens when the war goes cold things get even weirder 1954 the cold war is Raging and the British army is on high alert for a Soviet invasion of West Germany the ministry of Defense is seriously worried that NATO won't be able to stop a massed Soviet armor attack if that happens and the Russians are got a foot hold in Western Europe and from there they can launch their nuclear missiles against the British Isles now bear in mind that in 1954 the majority of people can absolutely remember the blitz German bombs raining down on British cities and the British still remember what the Nazis did launching v1s from France and V2s from the Netherlands but of course nuclear technology has given Weaponry with much greater Firepower huge Devastation the destruction would be total the Soviets must be stopped so how do you defend against this the answer is chickens that's right you heard me chickens yes chickens you know poultry that flaps and flies actual chickens this is the story of one of the most bird-brained ideas in the entirety of the Cold War in July 1957 the British army Council orders the construction of 10 nuclear landmines code name blue peock these will be buried in strategic locations close to the West German border the story behind blue peacock at first sounds like a completely sensible normal idea that's gone a little bit off the rails that is so long as you think the idea of planting nuclear landmines is rational and logical the boffins thought that if they buried a series of nuclear weapons along the west German border they could trigger them with an electronic timer when massed waves of Soviet tanks overran them this would have had two devastating effects first these landmines would have vaporized huge tracks of land wiping out Soviet tanks and also denying access to this contaminated land to the Russians and of course the second effect is that this radioactive contamination would have infected the area for years and years and denied the Russians any access for almost decades nor for that matter would any body the blue peacock device consists of a plutonium core surrounded by a sphere of high explosives all encased in steel this landmine is actually based on an existing nuclear weapon called the Blue danu which is already in service with the RAF but the blue peacock is a lot bigger and it's going to weigh 7 tons each bomb is expected to produce a nuclear yield of 10 kilotons which which is about half the yield of the plutonium device that was dropped over Nagasaki in 1945 the device complete with anti-tamper mechanisms is tested in a flooded Gravel Pit near 7 Oaks in Kent this should create a crater 375 ft across and 640 ft deep if the blast takes Place 35 ft below ground blue peacock on the surface seems pretty powerful and pretty versatile it can be set to be triggered automatically by a timer set as far as 8 days in advance by a wire from several miles away it's also got some pretty highly sophisticated anti-tampering devices that will cause it to go off if you try to fiddle with it if it's pierced by gunfire if someone attempts to move it so there's not a lot the Russian can do if they stumble across it so clearly the scientists of buffins they've thought of everything haven't they well almost everything there's a bit of a flaw with the bombs components they are very sensitive to very cold temperatures below -20° C the bomb's components become brittle and unreliable now bear in mind we're talking about Central Europe we're talking about a bomb that may well have to be used in winter and bear in mind we're talking about the invading Force being the Soviets and I don't think anyone is in any doubt that the Soviets were very good at fighting in Winter the Siberian winds over Germany's eastern border can cause the air temperature to plummet as low as -20° Centigrade even lower underground for the blue peacock mines to work they must be kept above minus 20 until detonated Engineers building blue peacock have to come up with a way of warming the device the first thing they thought of was put a blanket over them that's what you do if you were cold this will insulate them and keep them warm but these blankets just don't work in freezing German weather the problem with the blankets is that they too become very brittle and cumbersome in the cold weather so plan one didn't work so a new idea is proposed and it's one of the most extraordinary ideas in the entire cold War so imagine you're outside in the bitter cold of central European winter and you put on a blanket but that not keeping you warm what do you do next you hug a chicken you heard me right chickens chickens are pretty warm the average body heat is about 107° F so these are cozy chicks if you put 40 chickens in a box it will raise the ambient temperature so the chickens themselves can insulate the mines the idea is that within the sort of structure of the bomb and its in placement you place this big Coupe of chickens that are going to keep the bomb metal from not going brittle and keep the wiring functioning they were actually creating an Avary inside a nuclear bomb now if the Soviets come across it and hear this weird Subterranean clucking sound and they dig down to investigate the whole thing is going to go boom and that's a lot of Russians killed and a lot of dead chickens this is all crazy and I kind of don't even know where to begin with this uh first of all how do you keep the chickens alive rubber tubes allow air to enter the delivery device to feed the avens there are seed dispensers which they can Peck at to access sustenance how do you keep the chickens from pecking at the nuclear bomb that they're keeping warm the Aven containment module will constrain the birds and prevent them from pecking at the delicate wiring inside the delivery device and you've got another problem with all these chickens in their nuclear Coupe they're going to poo everywhere 40 chickens that's a lot of poop you're going to have this nuclear bomb which is going to have chicken poo all over it I certainly don't want the effect of chicken feces would be on the very very uh precise workings of a nuclear bomb waste will be disposed of in the appropriate manner estimates suggest that the avens can survive in optimal conditions for at least a week after which they will be overrun by the enemy and the delivery device will be triggered this is absolutely insane no one designs nuclear weaponry to feature ptan come on buffins you really haven't thought this one through chickens you're kidding two prototypes of the nuclear landmine are built but in February 1958 operation blue peacock is abandoned in the end blue peacock is not dropped out of a humanitarian concern for the chickens that concern is quite low on the pecking order problem is actually political because if you are setting off these nuclear landmines in Germany which of course you know is a friendly country in the ' 50s and if if you have these plans to do so in the event of an invasion the headlines are going to look pretty bad British planning to Nuke German soil in event of Soviet invasion just think you would be putting a whole area out of use for very many years you're also risking nuclear fallout onf friendly territory it's not going to play well with our new Ally and our recent former enemy it's going to look bad because it looks like we're going to contaminate Germany rather than let it fall into the hands of the Russians so what would start with the death of a few dozen chickens would end potentially with the entire Globe incinerated you know that's politics and it's got nothing to do with chickens the chicken nukes program remains a secret until 2004 when operation blue peacock is Declassified information about blue peacock was first first revealed when the British national archives announced a plan for an exhibit that would open on April 1st everybody thought it was an April Fool's joke but it really wasn't people really were planning to bury chickens with nuclear landmines as the Civil Service made very clear this is not an April Fool story they said the civil service does not do jokes exactly [Music] [Applause] f