Discovery Channel Magazine India - September 2014

EDITOR'S LETTER

C H A N N E L M AG A Z I N E I N D I A Editor-in-Chief$URRQ3XULH Group Chief Executive Ofﬁcer Ashish Bagga Group Synergy and Creative Ofﬁcer .DOOL3XULH

FOOD FOR THOUGHT, BODY AND SOUL

Editorial Director-DPDO6KDLNK Art Director 3L\XVK*DUJ Asst Art Director Rahul Sharma Designer Kishore Rawat

Impact (Advertising) Group Business Head 0DQRM6KDUPD Associate Publisher (Impact) Anil Fernandes Senior General Managers .DXVWDY&KDWWHUMHH (DVW -LWHQGUD/DG:HVW +HDG1RUWK Subhashis Roy General Manager Shailender Nehru (Bangalore), General Manager Velu Balasubramaniam (Chennai)

Business Head, CRM/CMS & Senior GM Vikas Malhotra Chief Manager, Operations GL Ravik Kumar Marketing Managers Kunal Bag, Anuradha Rana Production$QXM-DPGHJQL

News stand Sales Chief General Manager DVS Rama Rao General Manager - National Deepak Bhatt Sr Manager - North Manish Shrivastava Sr Manager - East-R\GHHS5R\ General Manager - West 5DMHVK0HQRQ General Manager - Operations Rakesh Sharma

DISCOVERY NETWORKS ASIA-PACIFIC Editorial Board President and Managing Director $UMDQ+RHNVWUD EVP and GM, South Asia5DKXO-RKUL SVP Content Group Kevin Dickie VP, Marketing, South Asia5DMLY%DNVKL VP, Communications Charles Yap VP, Programming Charmaine Kwan VP, Marketing Magdalene Ng

Editorial (Novus Media Solutions) Editor Luke Clark Design Director Richard MacLean Chief Subeditor -RVHSKLQH3DQJ Staff Writer Daniel Seifert Photo Editor Haryati Mahmood Senior Designer Bessy Kim

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Nobody loves food as much as I do. What I eat doesn’t only make me the man I am, it also deﬁnes the person I am at different points of the day. Food governs my mood, my productivity, conﬁdence and motivation. Give me a dark Kit Kit and I’ll give you a listen, give me a Ferrero Rocher Black, and I’ll give you my undivided attention... for a while! I suspect it’s the same for a lot of others. Even Virginia Woolf agrees: “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” Imagine my plight, then, when I ﬁrst read this month’s cover feature. By 2030, new research suggests that developing countries will begin to run out of natural grown food and future meals could be developed in labs. They may be more elaborate than tablets from sci-ﬁ movies and give us our nutrients, but the joy of biting into a cheesy burger or mopping up your favourite sauce with bread will all be over. I’ve always believed we eat for two reasons: to refuel our bodies and satiate our minds. Will eating without indulging ever be eating at all? My resident “Argumentator”, the astute friend I call upon to argue subjects with no deﬁnite answers, scoffed. “If that’s the design of the future, accept it,” she said with a practicality that I detest so lovingly.

“When the telephone was invented, old foggy-minded people like yourself lamented the death of privacy, and the joy of meeting an acquaintance by chance.” I considered her response. (I know better than to talk to her without thinking.) And I realised that she was right. Instead of maginfying the problem, let’s celebrate the solution. Turn to p58 for your dose of unappetising truths that may be a bit hard to digest. Also this month, don’t miss our stunning photo feature on Arctic Travel, and the intriguing story of ﬁve mythical creatures that can scare bravehearts, but science is not sure they exist at all. This issue will indulge your mind, if not your tastebuds. That’s a promise.

Jamal Shaikh Editorial Director twitter.com/JamalShaikh instagram.com/JamalShaikh

CONTENTS ISSUE 09/14

DEPARTMENTS

FRONTIERS

STING THING

When it comes to delivering venom in brutal, sneaky ways, the animal world has us beat NEWS

ALIEN 101

Both NASA and sci-ﬁ writer Michael Crichton agree: our ﬁrst date with aliens will be awkward as heck CHECKING IN WITH

THE COLOUR PRO

Jill Morton, colour psychologist, ﬁlls us in on why world peace might be just a colour spectrum away HISTORY

NON-CIVIL WAR

War does strange things to men — like the time a major US battle stopped so two soldiers could engage in ﬁsticuffs THE MATCHUP

INVENTION WARS

This month, we ask: what's the best invention ever? DCM picks apart the best concepts and objects known to man

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE WOW 10 LOOK INTO THE EYES OF A HUNTED JAY AS A SPARROWHAWK REVELS IN ITS CATCH THE GRID 13 STORMS: IS THERE A CORRELATION BETWEEN THE GENDER OF THE NAMES OF HURRICANES AND THEIR INTENSITIES? TURNS OUT, THERE IS

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SIZE OVER MATTER 14 WHO WOULD IMAGINE A SPIDER EATING A WHOLE FISH. TURNS OUT THESE SPIDERS ROAM ALL THE CONTINENTS

MASS PRODUCED 20 THE LOWLY SOAP HAS ITS MOMENT WHEN THE ILK OF RONALD REAGAN ARE SEEN ENDORSING THESE

TECHNOLOGY 22 WE NEED CLEVER UMBRELLAS WITH TRANSPARENT PATCHES TO SPOT THE TRAFFIC

HOT DOG 18 IT WAS A DOG'S LIFE WHEN TURNSPIT DOGS RAN IN A WHEEL TO KEEP IT RUNNING SO THAT THE MEAT WOULD COOK EVENLY

CAMERA DESIGN 21 A BLOCK OF ALUMINIUM FOR A CAMERA? YES, RECENTLY RELEASED LEICA T CAMERA IS JUST THAT

WHAT'S ON 102 YETI-HUNTING IN RUSSIA, MEDICAL CURIOSITIES WITH TWIN HOSTS, AND THE COOLEST MACHINERY IN THE WORLD

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FEATURES ISSUE 09/14 PHOTO-ESSAY

SUB-ZERO HERO

It took one travel photographer almost an eternity to get to Siberia — but it was all worth it, as he got to shoot a dwindling way of life, and some sneaky reindeer MYSTERIES

BEASTS IN THE SHADOWS

Yetis, nocturnal beasts, mega-sharks, the Loch Ness Monster and ferocious Asian crocodiles. Why do they all boggle the mind, and pop up in sightings time and again? RESEARCH

FOODS TO EXPECT

Brace up for a paradigm shift in the foods you are accustomed to. There could be the creepy crawlies sitting there soon. Already a restaurant in Paris is serving such delicacies, or are they? SCI-TECH

BLAST OFF!

Behind the scientiﬁc wizardry of modern rocketry lies an even more intricate web of interwoven human tales. Discover the stories of the men with stars in their eyes SEEKERS

WILDLIFE HANDLING

Meet the Canadian adventurer and conservationist, Dave Salmoni, who describes himself as a 'tiger tickler, lion lover and adventure addict'. The next time you are faced with a dangerous animal in the wilderness, you will be better prepared

09 SEPTEMBER 2014

PHOTO: PÅL HERMANSEN/ WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR

HUNTER AND THE HUNTED "In the wild, things often happen so fast that by the time you react, the moment is over," says photographer Pål Hermansen, who received a commendation in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition for this image. "So I practised pressing the shutter just before an attack began." By doing this, he was able to capture a rare event indeed — the moment a sparrowhawk caught an elusive jay. Catching a jay isn't easy. When feeding, they regularly scan the sky for danger, and at the slightest hint of a threat will let out a loud rasping alarm call. So when a pair of sparrowhawks started to frequent a feeding station in front of Hermansen's hide in Dalen, Norway, he didn't imagine they would catch a jay. What they did do, though, was bring their young for hunting practice. Time after time their attempts failed, but as the youngsters practised striking, Hermansen was able to practise his shooting skills. On this occasion, he spotted the adult male sparrowhawk lurking nearby and kept focused on the jay until the anticipated strike. Here, the precision and fear expressed in a split second, barely registered by the human eye, manages to capture the height of the action — the moment when life truly hangs in the balance. 10 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

WOW

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FRONTIERS ILLUSTRATION: CARLO GIAMBARRESI AT ILLUSTRATIONROOM.COM.AU

ISSUE 09/14

POISON POWER: NATURE’S CREATIVE DELIVERY SYSTEMS

The latest Angelina Jolie ﬂick Maleﬁcent sees her character slipping a poisoned apple to dear, sweet Aurora. But, as a new exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History shows, the animal world can be just as ingenious as cinematic queens when it comes to delivering death. Think a pit viper and a cobra kill in the same way? The video in conjunction with The Power of Poison proves you wrong: a pit viper injects venom through hollow teeth “just like a hypodermic needle”. Cobra teeth, meanwhile, are very groovy — literally — as venom drips

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down their grooves like the scariest waterslide ever. Or take gila monsters, which force venom out of their jaws through the force of their bite alone — imagine chomping down on a hamburger and splurting all the (deadly, deadly) mustard out. Then there are bee stingers, stoneﬁsh spines, jellyﬁsh stinging cells, scorpion tails and even the duck-billed platypus, which earn them the title of the only venomous mammal. Whatever the creative delivery system, venom often lets tiny animals punch well above their weight.

NEWS

THE GRID

PAINTINGS

STORMS

DISCOVERIES

A S I A- PAC I F I C

STRANGE AND SERIOUS EVENTS FROM ACROSS THE WORLD

AMERICAS

EUROPE

MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA

PROOF IN THE PUDDING We now

SECOND TIME’S THE CHARM In archaeology,

know more than ever what Neanderthals ate, thanks to recent examination of caveman poop from Spain. The 50,000 year-old samples are the oldest hominid faeces ever found. Analysis of metabolites revealed they ate meat, but a lot of plants too. Previous analyses of Neanderthal teeth had been less detailed, say experts. You might say the latter method is number two in terms of accuracy.

sometimes it’s not about discovery so much as rediscovery. Recently, Spanish excavators in the Egyptian area of Luxor re-found an ancient tomb. It had ﬁrst been discovered in 1904 but was later abandoned, forgotten and buried by shifting sands. Preliminary studies indicate the tomb belongs to someone called “As-m-ra Ashemro” who lived around 700BC. It adds a new name to the pharaohic history.

ASIA’S ANIMAL HAVEN

OH, SNAP! You are

Myanmar’s decades of military rule created many hardships for the populace, but proved a boon for local ﬂora and fauna. In the last two years, a huge amount of animals have been found here, including new species of dragon ﬁsh, frog and ginger. These ﬁnds highlight the need to invest in conservation as well as business, says the World Wildlife Fund. Some environmentalists say there are many more species to be found.

legitimately allowed to be terriﬁed of the trapjaw ant. True to its name, its fearsome mandibles look like bear traps, giving it the fastest self-powered predatory strike in the animal kingdom, moving at 2,300 times faster than the blink of an eye. And, as residents of the American South have recently found out, they’ve been living there for years, virtually undetected by science. Experts say the creature is expanding to America’s Gulf Coast.

RAIN, RAIN, COME AND STAY When the June to

FEMME FATALES

TRUE GRIT Movies like

September annual monsoon season kicked off with weak rainfall and sweltering heat, it revealed the power that rain can have. Stock prices for many agricultural ﬁrms fell — a severe blow, considering half of the our population are involved in agriculture — and local governments extended summer vacations at 57,000 primary schools and 18,00 secondary schools.

Hurricanes named after females make for deadlier storms. Analaysing data from every hurricane that has hit the US from 1950 to 2012, researchers found that “a hurricane with a relatively masculine name is estimated to cause 15.15 deaths”, whereas one with a more feminine one is estimated to cause 41.84 deaths. Why? “In judging the intensity of a storm, people appear to be applying their beliefs about how men and women behave.”

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, which, feature powerful, but harmless sandstorms, can paint a beautiful and exciting picture. As well as giving Tom Cruise the chance to do his trademark “run at speed”. But the freak sandstorm which hit Iran’s capital in June proves otherwise. The 120kph gusts blotted out the sun, cut power, caused cars to crash, and toppled trees. As a result, 40 people were injured and ﬁve killed.

PAINT BY NUMBERS

AN IDEA WITH WHEELS

TOMATO, TOM-ART-O

DON’T CAVE IN David

At 365 x 7.3 metres, it’s over twice the size of an NBA basketball court, and thought to be the world’s largest 3D painting. Chinese artist Yong Yongchun drew his eye-poppingly colourful masterpiece on the grounds of the Communication University of China in Nanjing, where it surpasses the current record holder, a work in London which is 106 metres long. It certainly puts our doodles to shame.

It’s more of a utilitarian symbol than a painting, sure, but the global ‘wheelchair sign’ for disability is important. And slightly derogatory, says New York State, where lawmakers want a more dynamic version of the sign, featuring a wheelchair in motion. The head of Disability Rights UK agreed, adding: “the vast majority of [disabled people] are not wheelchair users. The chase is still on for a sign that can capture a range of disabilities.”

Does your salad look like an abstract painting? Then you’ll probably pay more for it, says the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford. The team crafted several salads, including one presented to look like Kandinsky’s Painting Number 201, and found that despite each having the same ingredients, participants liked the taste of ‘201’ better, and would pay twice the price. Time to get artistic with the lettuce.

Coulson has a mission that takes him the length and breadth of Africa: documenting and preserving its ancient rock art. The British adventurer told The Telegraph that millenia-old art should feature more in local education. “People have suggested that the colonials told many African societies they had no history. There is a real and sad disengagement with this past that should be a point of celebration and pride.”

Bear Burglar

A RECENT NEWS STORY FROM ALASKA CONFIRMS WHAT WE ALWAYS KNEW: BEARS ARE THE NINJA CAT BURGLARS OF THE ANIMAL WORLD. “BEAR FALLS THROUGH SKYLIGHT INTO PARTY, EATS ALL THE CUPCAKES,” READ ONE HEADLINE. THE BLACK BEAR LITERALLY CRASHED A ONE-YEAR-OLD’S BIRTHDAY PARTY, AMBLED TO THE FOOD TABLE AND SNARFED THE BIRTHDAY TREATS. THE STUNNED PARENTS SHOOED THE BEAR AWAY, BUT IT QUICKLY SNUCK BACK TO PEER MOURNFULLY THROUGH THEIR WINDOW, STARING AT THE BAKED GOODIES.

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NEWS CRAZY COSTS

US$142.7 TRILLION

THE ESTIMATED VALUE OF THE WORLD’S ECOSYSTEMS, ACCORDING TO A NEW PAPER BY A TEAM OF ECOLOGISTS, IN TERMS OF FOOD, RAW MATERIALS, CULTURAL USES AND MORE

US$343,000 US$34,000 THE AMOUNT IT WOULD COST TO BUY ONE OF EVERY PRODUCT FEATURED IN THE JUNE 2014 ISSUE OF THE US EDITON OF FASHION MAGAZINE VOGUE

COST PER PORTABLE TOILET AT THIS YEAR’S GLASTONBURY MUSIC FESTIVAL. ORGANISERS SAID THE “SUPER LOOS” SMELLED FAR BETTER THAN OLDER MODELS

FANCY A CHAT WITH ALIENS? Try starting with Peruvian tribal chief versus a Russian school boy

the mathematician, biologist, and psychologist must try to predict how to interact with aliens. A tricky problem, considering most movies and even scholarly papers imagining extraterrestrial life have assumed very humancentric values and ways of approaching the world. Something, he writes, which is “obviously nonsense. For one thing, there’s enough variation behaviour to make understanding just within our own species very troublesome.” How, for example, would a Peruvian tribal chief and a Russian schoolboy even begin to establish a dialogue? What’s more, aliens might assume a form so different from ours we could barely begin to imagine it.

Quote Unquote TOM MORRIS ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE BRISTOL PROMS

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Spider Eats Fish

The creepy news: some species of spider can eat prey twice their size. The creepier news: a recent study ﬁnds these ﬁsh-eating spiders are present on every continent but Antarctica.

Imagining Aliens in Sphere

“HE GOT VERY OVEREXCITED. IT WAS THE FIRST EVICTION OF A CLASSICAL CONCERT AUDIENCE MEMBER BY ANOTHER MEMBER WE’VE FOUND SINCE THE 18TH CENTURY.”

THE ULTIMATE GAME OF HIDE AND SEEK

“This creature may be multidimensional, so that it literally does not exist in our usual three dimensions. To take the simplest case, if it were a four-dimensional creature, we would only see part of it at any time. That would obviously make it difﬁcult to kill.” PLEASE, TURN THE VOLUME DOWN!

“Well,” Barnes said, “if this sphere contains a creature that interferes with our basic mechanisms — what would that creature be like? It might produce a sound vibration that would resonate in our skeletal system and shatter our bones,” Harry said. “I rather like that one.” PLANT KILLER

“But, as usual, we’re only thinking of ourselves. The creature might do nothing directly harmful to us at all. It might simply exhale a toxin that kills chloroplasts, so that plants could no longer convert sunlight. Then all the plants on Earth would die — and consequently all life on Earth would die.” Classical concerts are not necessarily thought of as the coolest of gigs. British artistic director Tom Morris wanted to change that when he recently launched The Bristol Proms, an accessible and informal set of concerts. Before a performance of Handel’s Messiah, Morris pointed to the standing “mosh pit” and encouraged the audience to “clap or whoop when

you like, and no shushing other people.” But he wasn’t anticipating the response of audience member Dr David R. Glowacki, a scientist from Stanford University. Glowacki began to lurch from side to side and whoop before attempting a rather ambitious crowd-surﬁng manoeuvre. Several miffed crowd members then proceeded to forcibly eject him from the crowd. Rock on.

PHOTOS: NASA (STORM, OPPOSITE PAGE); GETTY IMAGES (FISH EATING SPIDER), ILLUSTRATIONS: BEN MOUNSEY

NASA recently released a free e-book titled Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication, a text pondering how mankind would communicate with aliens. Couched in academic language so dry it makes Yoda look like Shakespeare, its message boils down to this — communicating with alien life forms will probably be, like, really hard. Because they’ll be, like, totally different from us, y’know? For a far more provocative and exciting read, we recommend Sphere, a thriller by Michael Crichton. In the book, a band of scientists ﬁnd themselves literally out of their depth when what appears to be an alien craft is discovered 300 metres beneath the surface of the Paciﬁc Ocean. Now

CHECKING IN WITH

COLOUR EXPERT JILL MORTON

We catch up with the colour psychologist who gushes about the shades that bring the world together

FIRST INTERVIEWED IN Fifty Shades of Awesome: Inside the Science of Colour Teacher and colour consultant Jill Morton has helped some of the biggest companies in the world connect more strongly with customers. Sometimes, it just takes a tweak in the shade of a product. But there are a lot of things to consider when it comes to why we like or dislike a colour, she told us. Cultural complexities can make it impossible for a multinational company to ﬁnd a single colour that suits everyone. As she revealed, she might start a project by examining the ﬂags of a country, “because most countries embrace those colours.” But “in some countries, I think Finland is one, the ﬂag colours are such a respectable shade you never put it on a product.” Recently, Morton has been doing more pro bono work, travelling to Pakistan to conduct colour workshops with students there. Is she ﬁnding that the universal language of colour can help bring people together? “Absolutely yes!” she says

happily. “During the past two decades she’s “realised that colour is an experience we all share regardless of politics, religion, geography, age.” There are seven billion people on the planet, “and we are all immersed in a colour soaked world.” She adds that as an American, she felt her country had not made sufficient efforts to reach out to the Muslim world. Her workshops “use colour as the basis for interaction” and hopefully help to “build some bridges” in the region. Creativity, it seems, can go a long way to linking cultures, whatever their ﬂag. “It’s worth noting that any design class — regardless of geography — is an ideal environment for students to express personal experiences and for a teacher to connect to students on a personal level.”

WISHFUL THINKING

“I decided to ask friends and students: If you could change one thing in the world what would it be? I’m amazed at how many people would change the colour of their eyes. The gooﬁest answer was ‘leaves: I’d change them to blue.’”

HAPPY THOUGHTS

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN

“I admit that I have to work hard to transmute the negative in my daily life. Every time I can ﬁnd some humour, I win. Or as the old Quaker saying goes, "It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

“If you take a lighter blue on a $3 million dollar printer, people aren’t going to take pastel blue seriously. I mean some of Xerox's printers are as big as the freight car of a train — picture a sky blue printer of that size, my God.”

PHOTO: CORBIS

HER 30 SECOND THOUGHTS ON

HISTORY A CONCRETE ARGUMENT CHINA USED MORE CEMENT IN THE LAST THREE YEARS THAN USA USED IN THE ENTIRE 20TH CENTURY

1901- 20112000 2013 USA USED 4.5 GIGATONS

CHINA USED 6.6 GIGATONS

2 PERCENT POPULATION

HOWEVER, CHINA IS ALSO HOME TO DOZENS OF ‘GHOST CITIES’ THAT HAVE BEEN NEWLY BUILT, BUT REMAIN LARGELY UNINHABITED. ONE OF THE BIGGEST IS ORDOS, WHICH IS 98 PERCENT EMPTY. ONE DISTRICT, MEANT TO HOUSE ONE MILLION PEOPLE, CURRENTLY HAS ONLY 20,000 RESIDENTS

HOT DOG!

From the Middle Ages until the 19th Century, if you walked into certain European kitchen inns you’d see something surprising, a vernepator cur, Latin for “the dog that turns the wheel”. This was the turnspit dog, a small dog which ran in a wheel to turn a spit over a ﬁre, ensuring that meat would cook evenly Shakespeare mentions them in The Comedy of Errors, describing a character as a “curtailed dog ﬁt only to run in a wheel”. Dogs not belonging to the nobility were often ‘curtailed’ (their tails shortened)

To train dogs to run faster, hot coals were

sometimes thrown into the wheel Turnspit dogs would have Sunday off, and

sometimes join families at church — to serve as foot warmers

The Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) was created

It is thought the expressions, “every dog has

after the founder witnessed the appalling conditions of the animals in an American hotel kitchen in the 1850s

his day” and “it’s a dog’s life” stem from these overworked living microwaves, (pictured above, between the ham hocks)

Quote Unquote “IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT”

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EDWARD GEORGE EARLE BULWER-LYTTON This Victorian novelist came up with the most hackneyed storytelling phrase ever, in his 1830 novel Paul Clifford. And that’s not even the full quote, which continues thusly in one long bowel movement of a sentence: “The rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and ﬁercely agitating the scanty ﬂame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.” Still, Sir Edward did have another literary win: “The pen is mightier than the sword".

The American Civil War (1861-1865) still ranks as the bloodiest conﬂict in the country’s history. Over 650,000 people lost their lives in bloody battles. But some skirmishes were stranger than others. For example, the Fistﬁght of Saunders Field, when North and South stopped ﬁghting for a few confused moments to watch two men beat the stufﬁng out of each other. John Worsham of the 21st Virginia Infantry was there that day, and describes how a Southern compatriot dropped into a gully to escape ﬁre. The problem was that the gully had recently been vacated by retreating Northern troops — and one was still in it. Having “commenced to banter”, the enemies decided that "they would go into the road and have a regular ﬁst and skull ﬁght, the best man to have the other as his prisoner.” Slugging it out in full view of their armies, this duel soon brought this major battle to a standstill. “When the two men took off their coats and commenced to ﬁght with their ﬁsts, a yell went up along each line, and men rushed to the edge of the opening for a better view!” Worsham recalls. In the end, the Southern ﬁghter beat the ‘Yankee’, and both sides resumed ﬁring!

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES (EUROPEAN KITCHEN); JERRY WANG (FIST) FROM THE NOUN PROJECT

Boxing in the Battleﬁeld

MASS MASS PRODUCED PRODUCED

SLIPPERY SOAP Six clean machines have some gritty back stories to share 1

TRAVEL SOAP

LIQUID DETERGENT

HOMEMADE

You know, the kind of undersized bar of soap you get in terrible hotels, hermetically sealed in plastic that rips your ﬁngernails off. It takes all of eight seconds before dissolving to the ﬂoor and collecting nine kinds of body hair. Terrible.

Not only does it clean your hands, it is added to glasses of beer in commercials to make it froth more appealingly. Detergent is also the second-most stolen product in the USA (crack addicts trade it for drugs). Seriously!

You just need lard, lye and water. Some outdoorsmen have been known to simply toss ﬁne wood ashes into a greasy frying pan after dinner. The lye in the ash combines with the fat to make a very crude soap.

TRANSPARENT

POWDERED

First produced in 1789, this opaque product is a clear soap with a high level of glycerin, a compound found in fats. Transparent soap is also more gentle on the skin. Just don’t lose it in the bathtub or you’ll be groping for hours.

The A-Z Of Cleanliness 20 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

In his acting days, Ronald Reagan did commercials for the powdered soap brand Boraxo. On the campaign trail, Californian protestors hefted signs that blared, “Who wants Boraxo in Sacramento?” “That may be only soap to you,” Reagan told protestors, “but it was bread and butter to me.”

NOVELTY SOAP

What better way to make your kid wash? Highlights include replicas of Han Solo trapped in carbonite, cat food scented soap, bars with ﬁngers (“hand” soap, gettit?), and for all you Tyler Durden fans, pink bars with ‘Fight Club’ on them.

ACCORDING TO THE GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS, THE FINNISH LANGUAGE IS HOME TO THE LONGEST KNOWN SINGLE PALINDROMIC WORD, MEANING THAT IT CAN BE READ THE SAME WAY BOTH FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS. SAIPPUAKIVIKAUPPIAS MEANS, RATHER PLEASINGLY, “A TRAVELLING SALESMAN WHO SELLS CAUSTIC SODA TO THE SOAP INDUSTRY.” WE'RE GUESSING THAT'S A FAIRLY RARE OCCUPATION. SOME GREEK AND TURKISH BAPTISMAL FONTS BEAR ANOTHER PALINDROME: “NIYON ANOMHAMATA MH MONAN OYIN”, WHICH MEANS “WASH THE SINS, NOT ONLY THE FACE.” GOOD ADVICE.

TECHNOLOGY

ALTERNATIVE CAMERA

Germany’s latest photo kid on the block is this Leica T camera system. Its body crafted from a single block of aluminium, this mirrorless camera is sleek and simple. Maike Harberts, product manager tells... people had to pick just one image out of hundreds. And they always picked the one with less depth of ﬁeld. That’s something that appeals to people and makes images very beautiful. It was interesting seeing the original Ur-Leica, the 1914 model, next to the 2014 Leica T. They’re different yet totally the same. What will cameras look like in 100 years? That’s crystal ball stuff, to be honest. Technology has been skyrocketing. In a way, it’s been too fast. You had records in the old days, then CDs, and now, only bits and bytes. Yet sales of records has never been so high, because people love going back to stuff...100 years from now? I have no idea. Maybe something where you can take photos with your eyes.

I liked the feel and weight of the camera. How important was that in designing the Leica? What we always try to achieve is a seamless, exciting journey. The ﬁrst thing you see when you see a product is what it looks like. We try to excite people with the design of the camera. Next thing is the ﬁrst touch... that is excitement again. And then you use it — exhilaration again. When you see the results — overwhelming! Our aim is to never disappoint at any stage. One would like to have it in your hands, because it is very ergonomic. Nowadays the camera is becoming less of a physical object, with smartphones

and Google Glass becoming popular. What’s your take on that? I see it as a very positive thing. There have never been more people taking images than today, and that’s because of smartphones and so on. When I was growing up, only dads took images with their cameras. Maybe enthusiastic nerds too. Nowadays everyone loves to take pictures. Does it get harder for a photograph to shine with billions taken every day? The best image sometimes is the one that just captures the moment. But there’s also something about having a beautiful shot. There was a study a while back where

What are the design details, the ‘holy grails’ that make a Leica so recognisable? The balance of a camera is important. If you use a camera and you like to hold it in your hands, then you use it more, and you get better. It shouldn’t be too light or too heavy, it should be just right. Touch and feel is always very important. Like what? Like the diameter of certain things. The proportion of width, length and height. These are very special ratios that we always try to keep. And with materials, we try to be as authentic as possible. If you see something that looks like plastic, it should be plastic. If you see glass it should be glass, and not some fake imitation.

Why is it so easy to ﬂy into paroxysms of rage when your printer breaks? Well, error messages like “ERROR 67 DEFECTIVE FORMATTER PCA” certainly don’t help. Their very inhumanity make them easy to blame. In Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things, Donald A. Norman notes that many high-tech systems, “do not do a very good job of gathering trust.” They crash for no apparent reason, yet, “they express no shame”. “Worse,” he adds, “they appear to blame us, the poor unwitting users.” Those cranky machines. This goes double for road rage. A study into the link between gun murders and road rage by the Harvard School of Public Health noted that it’s easy for drivers to get mad at another car because we get territorial about our own auto, yet can’t communicate with the jerk in the Volvo next door. “Usually, when another driver makes a mistake, it is often difﬁcult for him to apologise, to signal ‘excuse me’ in a way that can be readily understood’.” The consequences, of course, can mean a deadly accident or ﬁsticuffs on the freeway. Why has nobody invented an, “I’m terribly sorry! Hugs and kisses!” horn sound yet?

UNEDITED RESPONSES TO A 2005 COMPUTER RAGE SURVEY BY THE LABORATORY FOR AUTOMATION PSYCHOLOGY AND DECISION PROCESSES

I once shot a computer with a .50 cal BMG sniper riﬂe

I sometimes put my hands around my monitor’s “neck”

Throwing stressball at my screen (didn’t help btw) 21 SEPTEMBER 2014

TECHNOLOGY INVENTIONS

T H E M AT C H U P : I N V E N T I O N S OBJECTS

GOGGLE UMBRELLAS ZIPPO How clever are umbrellas with A quick-thinking bystander relit the sputtering Sochi Winter small transparent patches so you can spot when you’re about to Olympic ﬂame with his Zippo walk into traffic? Almost as clever lighter. And at least six people have had their lives saved by ‘bul- as entirely see-through umbrellas. Almost. letproof’ Zippos.

SLICED BREAD Pre-sliced bread was only invented in 1928. Inventor Otto Frederick Rohweder worked on his bread-slicing machine for 15 years. Worryingly, his prototype held slices with metal hat pins.

It’s a Bird, It’s a Dolphin! FRENCH JET SKI CHAMPION FRANKY ZAPATA HAS DEVELOPED TWO NEW SPORTSCRAFT. BUT WHICH ONE SHOULD YOU BUY?

CONC EPTS

FLYBOARD

SPACES BETWEEN WORDS Thisisamazing! “Aerated script” — writing with spaces between words — was only created by Irish monks in the 7th century. Before then “scriptura continua” was the norm. As were migraines.

TEENAGERS The word ‘teenager’ was only coined in 1921. The idea of teenagers as an accepted, prominent social group really ﬂourished after WWII. Before then, you were either a kid or an adult.

LYING We offer our awed, undying respect to the ﬁrst cave-person who could look at their lice-ridden, toothless, sweat-stained signiﬁcant other and say, “Darling, of course you look gorgeous!”

NOT D TE INVENT YE

US$5,850 What is it? A bolt-on attachment that connects to a jet ski and re-routes the water jet through a long hose that connects to a pair of jet boots Maximum height Can reach 12 metres in the air or dive 12 metres below water Maximum speed 30kph

BODY-BASED USB PORTS UNIVERSAL TRANSLATORS A NEW SNACK Preferably a combo that tastes Given that smartphone battery life Heck, even something that could can now be measured in minutes, decode urgent muffled train station even better than chocolate and peanut butter. Oh wait, it doesn’t it would be great if you could plug announcements would be good. an iPhone into your heart and “Hnnenn shnorf ff zzLZ!” Translat- exist because that’s literally the power it with your own bio-eleced: “The train is delayed by ninjas greatest thing that happened to food since sliced bread. tricity. You know, like The Matrix. stealing conductors’ hats.” TOP THREE WINNERS

SLICED BREAD It’s mind-boggling to think that the phrase “_____ is the greatest thing since sliced bread” was ﬁrst used in 1952 — and just 24 years before that, sliced bread wasn’t even a thing. 22 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

#SUPERTASTYLARGEANDINCHARGE TEXASTOASTTWOHANDWICHMADE WITHDELICIOUSONEHUNDRED PERCENTWHITEMEATHANDBREADED CHICKENTENDERSANDYOURCHOICE OFCLASSICORSPICYPAPASAUCE EITHERWAYYOUCANTGOWRONG WOWTHATSOUNDSGOODYOUNEED TOTRYONEITSONLYAVAILABLEFORA LIMITEDTIMEIMGOINGTOHAVETOGO GETONEMYSELFAREYOUSTILL READINGTHISSEEYOUATAANDW

SPACES BETWEEN WORDS UNIVERSAL TRANSLATORS Aerated script also helped spread Never again would we be caught the practice of reading silently, saying, “soy embarazada” to a which was not common before Spaniard, before being told it then. Yet it took about ﬁve cendoesn’t mean, “I’m embarrassed” turies before ‘spaced’ sentences but, “I’m pregnant.” That would were the norm in Europe. never have happened on Star Trek.

Suggested catchphrase whilst using “I am Iron Man!”

HOVERBOARD BY ZR

US$2,657 What is it? A water-propelled surfboard that allows its user to ﬂy above the water to realize multiple freestyle tricks Maximum height 6 metres Maximum speed. 40kph Suggested catchphrase whilst using “I’m hangin’ ten... feet up in the air!”

FEATURES

28 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

PAGE 30 WALK THROUGH THE ENDLESS ARCTIC WILDERNESS

PAGE 72 MEET THE MEN WHO MAN ROCKETS

PAGE 40 CONFRONT THE WORLD'S MOST FEROCIOUS

PAGE 90 HANDLE DANGEROUS ANIMALS LIKE A PRO

PAGE 58 TASTE THE FOOD OF THE FUTURE

29 SEPTEMBER 2014

To gain an appreciation for the beauty and weirdness of Mother Nature, try spending a day and night with a reindeer herdsman. Kiwi photographer Amos Chapple introduces Daniel Seifert to a remote corner of Siberia, carefully avoiding the yellow snow

30 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

RUSSIA SIBERIA EVENKS THE EVENK ARE THE MOST NUMEROUS AND WIDELY SCATTERED OF THE MANY SMALL ETHNIC GROUPS OF NORTHERN SIBERIA, WHOSE MEMBERS CAN ALSO BE FOUND IN NEIGHBOURING CHINA AND MONGOLIA. ALSO KNOWN AS THE TUNGUS, THE EVENK SPLIT INTO THREE DIFFERENT GROUPS, ‘FOOT’, ‘REINDEER’ AND ‘HORSE’ WITH EACH DEVELOPING A DIFFERENT DIALECT AND WAY OF LIFE

PHOTOS: AMOS CHAPPLE/REX FEATURES/CLICK PHOTOS

ANOTHER DAY IN ETERNITY

THE EVENK PEOPLE OF SIBERIA

ARCTIC LIFE

THE REINDEER MAN, VLADIMIR BAGADAEV IN THE WILDERNESS OF NORTHERN SIBERIA OPPOSITE SLEEPING OUTSIDE IN TEMPERATURES OF MINUS 60 DEGREES CELSIUS IS ROUTINE FOR VLADIMIR. HERE HE DEMONSTRATES HOW HE BEDS DOWN IN HIS SLEEPING POUCH TO BEAT THE CHILL

HOOFING IT

KILOMETERS PHOTOS: AMOS CHAPPLE/REX FEATURES/CLICK PHOTOS

THE APPROXIMATE AVERAGE DISTANCE A REINDEER WILL TRAVEL BEFORE NEEDING TO URINATE. THE FINNISH LANGUAGE EVEN USES THIS BLADDER-BASED DISTANCE AS A UNIT OF MEASUREMENT: ONE “PORONKUSEMA” IS 10 KILOMETERS

32 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

ARCTIC LIFE

t is a place where minus 60 degree Celsius temperatures frequently force truckers to leave their engines on all night long, just to stop the diesel from freezing. And where, inevitably, trucks freeze anyway, so you have to thaw out the frosted machine parts with a blowtorch. An area where the nights and days blend into such wintery oneness that reindeer actually change their eye colour, in order to see through the darkness of gloom. But for Vladimir Bagadaev, this northern Russian wilderness is his home and office — and these frigid outdoor conditions are places that, from time to time, he sleeps in. The hardy member of the Evenk tribe, a group of indigenous people, spends his life shepherding a herd of about four dozen reindeer.

A FULL MOON RISING ABOVE A HERD OF REINDEER A FEW MINUTES AFTER THEY RETURNED HOME FROM A DAY FORAGING IN THE FOREST

REINDEER BIOLOGY

DUE TO THE NEAR-TOTAL LACK OF LIGHT DURING SIBERIAN WINTERS, REINDEER EYES ACTUALLY CHANGE COLOUR AT DIFFERENT TIMES OF THE YEAR. IN THE SUMMER, THEY ARE YELLOWISHGREEN. IN WINTER THEY TURN A BLUE COLOUR, WHICH SCATTERS INCOMING LIGHT AND RESULTS IN BETTER VISION THEIR NOSES ARE DESIGNED TO WARM FRIGID AIR BEFORE IT GETS TO THEIR LUNGS REINDEER HOOVES EXPAND IN SUMMER TO ADAPT TO SOFTER GROUND, AND CONTRACT IN WINTER SOME SPECIES HAVE KNEES WHICH MAKE A CLICKING NOISE — SO MEMBERS OF A HERD CAN FIND EACH OTHER IN A BLIZZARD

VLADIMIR LETS OFF A ROUND FROM HIS SOVIET HUNTING RIFLE

33 SEPTEMBER 2014

PHOTOS: AMOS CHAPPLE/REX FEATURES/CLICK PHOTOS

BAGADAEV'S LOG CABIN TAKEN BY THE LIGHT OF THE FULL MOON

34 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

ARCTIC LIFE

His is a way of life that dates back centuries, and the only life that this gutsy outdoorsman, now in his late forties, knows. And looking at the scenery surrounding his office, it’s no wonder Amos Chapple, a travel photographer from New Zealand, wanted to capture this unique slice of his life. At ﬁrst, his idea came from another photograph. “I had seen some images of a reindeer herders' hut taken by a Croatian photographer some time ago, and had been obsessed with ﬁnding the place,” Chapple tells Discovery Channel Magazine. “A friend helped me to locate the place, then the locals made sure I got out to Vladimir safely.” Getting out there was an adventure in itself. You kick off with a seven hour westward ﬂight from Moscow to Yakutsk, located about 450 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle, followed by a seven hour drive north-east to the region of Khandyga. Chapple then hitched a ride on a supply vehicle (“a nearby mine was delivering a new doctor”) to the town of Topolina. “You know you’re well into the wilds when the village you’re in doesn’t even show up on Google Maps,” he says. From Topolina it’s just another three-hour jaunt down a frozen river, before you arrive at Bagadaev's door. With your boots ﬁnally on the ground of the Russian taiga, or forest, you’re in a different world. “Here in the north the wilderness is clean and never changes,” as Bagadaev told Chapple. “That’s why we call it ‘eternity’.” Managing his farm in the middle of ‘eternity’ is no easy task. His herd of reindeer, which provide him with meat 35 SEPTEMBER 2014

THE SUBJECT OF SIBERIA

77 PERCENT

SIBERIA’S LANDMASS MAKES UP 77 PERCENT OF RUSSIA. IF IT BECAME AN INDEPENDENT NATION IT WOULD BE THE BIGGEST IN THE WORLD

1.5

MILLION THOUGH SPARSELY POPULATED, RUSSIA’S THIRD-LARGEST CITY IS ALSO IN THIS REGION. NOVOSIBIRSK IS BUILT ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY AND IS A KEY INDUSTRIAL CENTRE

THERE ARE 30 INDIGENOUS TRIBES IN SIBERIA, COMPRISING SOME 200,000 PEOPLE

1900

PHOTO: AMOS CHAPPLE/REX FEATURES/CLICK PHOTOS

THE EVENK ALPHABET WAS ONLY CREATED IN THE EARLY 1900S, AND THE FIRST BOOK PRINTED IN 1928

36 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

ARCTIC LIFE

VLADIMIR BAGADAEV LEADS A TEAM OF REINDEER HAULING HANDMADE SLEDS AS THE SUN SKIMS THE SIBERIAN HORIZON

37 SEPTEMBER 2014

EVENK HUNTING LANGUAGE

A TRUCK DRIVES ON THE FROZEN INDIGIRKA RIVER

TO COMMUNICATE OVER THE VAST DISTANCES OF THEIR HUNTING TERRITORIES, EVENK’S USE A SPECIAL WRITING SYSTEM

A BRANCH CAREFULLY PLACED ACROSS A PATH MEANS THAT ONE CANNOT GO FURTHER

PHOTOS: AMOS CHAPPLE/REX FEATURES/CLICK PHOTOS

AN ARROW IN THE BARK OF A TREE WHOSE BRANCHES HAVE BEEN CLIPPED CAN MEAN “I AM FURTHER AHEAD” IF IT POINTS UP, AND “I AM SETTING TRAPS NEARBY” IF POINTING DOWN

and fur to sell, have a lot of space to roam in. Sometimes Bagadaev can’t make it back to his cabin before the sun swoops over the horizon, forcing him to bed down outside for the night. To see him through the night alive, he goes through a well-practiced planned routine. First, he will craft a ﬁre with enough wood to last until dawn. Then, he’ll dig a snowbank near his blaze, which will offer some protection from the biting wind. Before snuggling into a thick woollen sleeping pouch, which used to belong to his father, Bagadaev will ﬁrst 38 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

VLADIMIR'S BROTHER ALEXEI WARMS THE DRIVE SHAFT OF HIS TRUCK AFTER IT HAS FROZEN SOLID

ARCTIC LIFE

VLADIMIR'S HERD OF REINDEER IN THEIR NATURAL HABITAT

shuck out of his outer trousers. “ For comfort,” he notes. As Chapple explains, Bagadaev’s ability to survive is more about technique than his powers of adaptation. “The people of the Yakutsk region hate being cold,” he laughs. “But they know what to wear and how to live as best they can, to avoid feeling the chill.” By looking after his herd, Bagadaev is also looking after himself. There’s nary a part of the mammal that goes to waste, providing Evenks with thick, snowproof clothing, milk, cheese and meat. In this landscape, each of these are vital to survival. Despite the brutal conditions, Chapple was struck by the Evenk’s obvious love for the landscape. And it’s a bond driven by ancestral love, not money. The government will only subsidise herdsman with a herd of 800 or more. Bagadaev’s herd numbers just 46 reindeer. “He would talk about the landscape in a way that was almost romantic,” Chapple recalls. It’s a bond that the photographer has witnessed in communities around the world. “But I wasn’t expecting it in a place so desolate.” Nor perhaps was he expecting just how rough the conditions would be on his gear. Cameras get cold fast. Wield an SLR in 55 degrees below Celsius for half an hour and it inevitably shivers to a halt. “It was a constant struggle to keep my camera as warm as possible.” That’s when he wasn’t keeping it away from the clouds of mist that exploded from his mouth with every single breath, smothering many of his shots. To compensate, he would hold his breath a few seconds

before snapping the shutter. But despite silencing his panting, Chapple still managed to be surprised by some very sneaky customers, the members of Vladimir’s herd. Reindeers, Chapple will now tell you, are incredibly quiet. His ﬁrst night out, he was distracted by a dusk that painted the air a thick blue against the silver of a rising moon. “One by one, the deer came walking into camp until I was surrounded by them.” The only sound was the gentle tinkling of their bells. And perhaps a quiet slurp or two. “They love frozen pee!” he marvels. “They dig it out of the snow with their hooves, then eat it like a popsicle.” Indeed, as other journalists who visited the region have noted, if you go for a wee in the middle of the night, you run the risk of kicking up a storm of hooves and antlers, as the thirsty animals stampede happily toward you. Places like this are as unpredictable as they are beautiful, says Chapple. That’s what makes them so attractive. “In a space this isolated, with a culture this distinct, you never know what’s going to happen.” His shots conﬁrm that even in an increasingly urban society, people like Bagadaev still spend their days wrestling with Mother Nature rather than the rat race. “In fact, it’s the exact opposite of going to a shopping mall,” he says. The Evenk’s lifestyle reminds us of some characters from the Discovery Channel, we muse to Chapple. Deﬁnitely, he agrees, then notes cheekily, “He is the bonaﬁde Bear Grylls of the tundra — just without the showing off.” 39 SEPTEMBER 2014

UNDOCUMENTED BY SCIENCE AND AGONISED OVER BY ACADEMICS, SCORES OF MYSTERIOUS CREATURES ARE SAID TO ROAM THE GLOBE. ARE THESE MERELY FICTIONAL SUBJECTS OR DANGEROUS, INTIMIDATING BEINGS FROM ANOTHER WORLD? DCM DELVES INTO THE HISTORY OF THE TOP FIVE MONSTERS ILLUSTRATION BY DARIUS CHEONG

MONSTER FABLES

MESSY NESSIE IF CHARLIE SHEEN CAN’T FIND NESSIE, NOBODY CAN. LAST YEAR, THE ACTOR FLEW TO THE HIGHLANDS, AND SCOURED THE LAKE WITH A LEG OF LAMB ON A HUGE HOOK. HE LATER CONFUSED THE MONSTER’S NAME WITH THE LAKE, TELLING TV HOST JAY LENO, “THAT’S WHERE LOCH NESS LIVES. IN LAKE NESSIE.” LET’S NOT FORGET THIS IS THE MAN WHO ONCE SAID, “I AM ON A DRUG. IT’S CALLED CHARLIE SHEEN. IT’S NOT AVAILABLE BECAUSE IF YOU TRY IT, YOU WILL DIE. YOUR FACE WILL MELT OFF AND YOUR CHILDREN WILL WEEP OVER YOUR EXPLODED BODY.”

MONSTER FABLES

LOCH NESS MONSTER A MURKY MYSTERY

20 SIGHTINGS ON AVERAGE THERE ARE 20 SIGHTINGS OF THE LOCH NESS MONSTER EACH YEAR

85 PERCENT

OF THE ONE MILLION TOURISTS WHO VISIT LOCH NESS EACH YEAR ARE DRAWN BY THE MONSTER

6.6 DEGREES

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES (CHARLIE SHEEN)

THE WATER UNDERNEATH THE SURFACE OF LOCH NESS NEVER ALTERS FROM 6.6 DEGREES CELSIUS

Of all the cryptids — animals with no scientiﬁc explanation for their existence — Scotland’s Loch Ness Monster is the most documented, by both amateurs and experts. First reported to have been sighted in AD565, the sea serpent has enthralled and enticed both crypto-zoologists and scientists to prove its existence. Every year, hordes of tourists travel to the Scottish highlands to chance their arm at sighting this giant sea snake — or living dinosaur as many believe it to be. There have been over 3000 documented encounters. For the last few months, experts at the official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club have

been studying satellite images using Apple’s satellite map app which clearly shows a giant 30 metre beast swimming just below the surface of the water. So big that it could be seen from space, the sighting has put an end to a dearth of encounters over the last 18 months, believed to be the longest time the monster has remained unseen since 1925. Weeks later an unusual sonar image, which appears to show a being with several humps, was picked up by a cruise vessel on the lake, seeming to also point to the fact that the monster is indeed still very much alive.

PREHISTORIC TALES At 36 kilometres long and 248 metres deep, Loch Ness is said to contain more water than all the lakes of England, Scotland and Wales combined. A rainfall of just 0.635 centimetres can add a massive 11 million tons of water to its shadowy depths. At this scale it is clear to see why many who believe in the monster Nessie’s existence say that even the water itself has an almost inky viscosity. The enormity of the loch underlines why the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster has perpetuated throughout the years. According to www. nessie.co.uk, the official site of the serpent of the deep, the many sightings all bear the hallmark of a similar description of a serpent type creature with a head like a giraffe, skin like an elephant and short forelegs with ﬂippers. Those who have glimpsed the monster in the water haver also reported seeing ample evidence of ﬁns or dark humps. Many believe that the Loch Ness Monster shares characteristics with the Plesiosauras, a reptilian dinosaur that shares many of the features of the Scottish sea

serpent, although is believed to have been extinct for 65 million years. While early sightings of the loch’s most famous inhabitant were from a distance, when a road was built around its edge in the early 1930s, the number of reports increased, with the ﬁrst photographic evidence emerging in 1933. More than an intrigue for tourists, some of the world’s top scientists have gone to great lengths to prove the monster’s existence. In 1960, students from Oxford and Cambridge Universities mounted a scientiﬁc expedition to prove that this strange creature lived. Cameras and an echo sounder were used to gather evidence. It was reported that a visual sighting and unusual echoes were recorded on the expedition. This cryptid has had more than its fair share of high proﬁle hunters over the years, with thousands of pounds invested in trying to prove its reality. In 1987, George Hunter, skipper of the loch pleasure boat, The Nessie Hunter, recorded the greatest depth of the loch at 248 metres, veriﬁed in 2006 by sonar technology. Nessie aﬁcionados were delighted with this ﬁnd, many dubbing it Nessie’s Cave. The unchartered waters of the loch further add to the possibility of the monster’s existence. In the 1980s it was also discovered that a shoal of Arctic char inhabited the loch’s depths — a species that would have lived there since the Ice Age, which began 2.4 million years ago. Although there is a mounting body of proof that something exists in these waters, the Loch Ness Monster is adept at playing a cat and mouse game with those that are keen to corroborate its existence.

In 1960, engineer and keen Nessie hunter Tim Dinsdale was delighted to have recorded the ﬁrst footage of the beast which was sent to Royal Air Force photographic experts to be examined, with the only conclusion put forward that his ﬁlm was indeed of an “animate” object.

EXPERTS HAVE BEEN STUDYING SATELLITE IMAGES WHICH CLEARLY SHOW A GIANT 30 METRE BEAST SWIMMING JUST BELOW THE SURFACE OF THE WATER By the 1970s, American scientists became interested in following up Dinsdale’s ﬁnds. A group from the American Academy of Applied Science, led by Dr Robert Rines used cameras and sonar to gather evidence of its existence, with one photograph showing the image of a large ﬂipper and another showing the head and body of the creature. Worldwide excitement ensued. In 1987 Operation Deepscan, a massive search using sonar equipment on 24 boats, failed to ﬁnd evidence of the monster. As did an extensive search by the BBC in 2003, which was using 600 sonar beams and satellite navigation technology. Despite the “evidence”, many believe that the monster is merely a giant sturgeon, which can grow up to 3.6 metres. But with so many academics willing to spend the time and money searching the unchartered waters of the loch, this is one myth that seems to be too intriguing to dismiss. 43 SEPTEMBER 2014

MEGA

LODON SHARK DINO S AUR OF THE DEEP

CARCHARODON MEGALODON (MAXIMUM) CARCHARODON MEGALODON (CONSERVATIVE) WHALE SHARK GREAT WHITE SHARK

1,100 KG

THE AMOUNT OF FOOD CONSUMED BY A MEGALODON IN JUST ONE DAY. AND BY FOOD, THINK SEALS, SEA LIONS AND WHALES

Many would rather not admit to having a fear of the sea after glimpsing the man eating great white shark in the movie Jaws. The fact that the hunter can turn into the hunted with terrifying consequences is a chilling reminder of how insigniﬁcant we humans are as part of the ecosystem of the planet Earth. As frightening as the idea of such a carnivorous monster remains, Jaws, at just under eight metres long, is small fry compared to the C. megalodon. This submarine-sized shark surfaced in prehistoric times — and its outsized offspring may still be alive today. Known as the giant tooth, the megalodon, which is thought to measure around 20 metres, has an impressive six rows of 46 razor-sharp serrated teeth — each measuring just under 18 centimetres long. 44 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

Over the years, scientists have used the fossilised teeth to work out and estimate the true size of these huge ferocious aquatic killing machines. This monolithic monster is said to be related to the great white shark, but even the world record holder for that species— caught in Australia in 1959 and veriﬁed by the International Game Fishing Association at just over 1,200 kilograms — pales into insigniﬁcance against its 45,000 kilogram prehistoric cousin. The megalodon shares the same size characteristics as the gentle whale shark, but its predatory behaviour of consuming almost everything and anything in its path makes the ferocious great white shark, which has been around for just 10 million years, look like a mere pushover. A mammoth killing machine, the megalodon is believed to have ruled the seas for some 16 million years —megalodon teeth have been found all over the world. Some say it may still be lurking in the deep even to this day.

GLOBAL TRAVELLER Its massive jaws have given it the reputation of having the most powerful bite of any animal that ever lived. Despite its size it is said to have been able to reach speeds of up to 40 to 56 kilometres an hour — which underlines why it was so widely travelled. The monster’s teeth are not the only hard evidence of its existence. Like most sharks it is made up mainly of cartilage, but along with evidence of its massive jaws, a small number of its vertebrae, made up of heavily calciﬁed cartilage, have also weathered the test of time. While adults roamed the globe, the discovery of the teeth of baby sharks has added credence to speciﬁc areas being favoured for nurseries. It is thought that the area between

the Paciﬁc and Atlantic oceans were favoured by expectant mothers to give birth, a place where newborn pups would be safe from predators. While many scientists say that the megalodon disappeared millions of years ago, sightings of mammoth sharks lend credibility to the theory that they may still be alive today. With 95 per cent of the planet’s oceans still undiscovered, megalodon believers say that it may not be the only behemoth that is lurking in the depths. Palaeontologists surmise that the megalodon could not survive today, having died out due to the severe cold of the ice age — or the disappearance of its main food source: the blue whale. With a biting force of some 10 tons, the megalodon made light work of its prey, often biting them in two. Its ferocious bite is said to have even exceeded the powerful jaws of the prehistoric land terror Tyrannosaurus rex, which preceded the giant shark by about 36 million years. But truth can be stranger than ﬁction. Although scientists discount the fact that a prehistoric creature still terrorizes the deep, recent evidence may suggest that a relative of this powerful predator indeed remains. A three metre great white shark, tagged for scientiﬁc study, went missing off Australia’s coast in 2004, its data tag resurfacing months later. Bleached by stomach acid and recording a 580 metre deep fall and a huge rise in temperature, this indicated that the shark had fallen prey to a much larger animal. Based on the data tag, the predator had a stomach that was at least a metre wide. While scientists believe that the fate of the megalodon is lost in the oceans of history, the fact that a huge ‘ocean’, three times the size of the world’s entire water mass

was discovered, could explain why so many oceanic myths remain unexplained. The giant reservoir, which lies 70 kilometres below the earth’s crust in eastern Asia, is believed to be the source of the planet’s seas, and scientists say this could clear up why the Earth’s oceans have remained at exactly the same level for millions of years.

SIGHTINGS OF MAMMOTH SHARKS LEND CREDIBILITY TO A THEORY THAT THEY MAY STILL BE ALIVE WITH 95 PERCENT OF THE PLANET’S OCEANS STILL UNDISCOVERED As New Scientist explains: “Jacobsen’s team used 2000 seismometers to study the seismic waves generated by more than 500 earthquakes. These waves move throughout Earth’s interior, including the core, and can be detected at the surface. By measuring the speed of the waves at different depths, the team could ﬁgure out which types of rocks the waves were passing through. The water layer revealed itself because the waves slowed down, as it takes them longer to get through soggy rock than dry rock.” Returning though to the megalodon, believers hope that it may be the next myth in line to become fact — which happened with the giant squid or Kraken, a subject of myth and conjecture since records began. It was not until one was caught on ﬁlm in 2004 that this ﬁsherman’s tale jumped from ﬁction to fact. Time will tell.

MONSTER FABLES

TERRIFYING THE TOOTH FAIRY AMONG FOSSIL HUNTERS, MEGALODON TEETH ARE A PRIZED COMMODITY. NOT SURPRISING CONSIDERING YOU CAN FIND SPECIMENS 17 CENTIMETRES IN LENGTH. BIG ONES IN GOOD CONDITION CAN FETCH HUNDREDS, OR EVEN THOUSANDS, OF DOLLARS. PEOPLE PAINSTAKINGLY SEARCH FOR THEM BY SCUBA-DIVING RIVERS, SCOURING BEACHES AND PEERING AT CLIFF FACES.

BIG SMILES IF YOU SEE A CROCODILE ON A BANK WITH ITS MOUTH OPEN, IT DOESN’T MEAN IT’S ABOUT TO ATTACK. JUST LIKE DOGS PANT TO SIPHON OFF EXCESS HEAT, CROCS COOL OFF BY SWEATING THROUGH THEIR IMPRESSIVELY TOOTHED MOUTHS. THEIR SHARP TEETH ARE MEANT FOR GRASPING PREY. INSTEAD OF CHEWING, THEY SWALLOW STONES THAT ACT AS BALLAST IN THE WATER, AND GRIND THE FOOD IN THEIR BELLIES.

MONSTER FABLES

THE MAN-EATING

CROC OF SARAWAK

A DEADLY MENACE

90 EGGS

A FEMALE CROCODILE CAN LAY UP TO 90 EGGS — INCUBATING THEM FOR THREE MONTHS

70 YEARS

THESE ESTUARINE OR SALTWATER CROCODILES GROW UP TO SIX METRES IN LENGTH, WEIGH 1,000 KILOGRAMS AND CAN LIVE FOR UP TO 70 YEARS

A centuries-old albino crocodile, its scaly body as long as a bus and weighing over a ton, is said to have been patrolling the waters of the Malaysian region of Sarawak, terrorising locals for hundreds of years. While many believe the yellow-eyed beast to be a myth, the disappearance of villagers snatched from the shallows or the water’s edge by an enormous crocodile lends credence to this historical beast. In the last ﬁve years, 40 of Malaysia’s 42 recorded crocodile attacks have taken place in Sarawak, with 81 percent of attacks usually recorded at the water’s edge. Half of the attacks have been fatal, attributed to an enormous reptilian beast that has claimed the shallow murky waters as its kingdom, and the shores as its feeding ground. Research shows grisly footage of limbs being retrieved from the bellies of the beasts; ferocious monsters that seem to have a place gruesomely carved in the annals of history rather than mythology. The biggest crocodile to be caught in these waters was a 5.8 metre long saltwater crocodile. Many believed this to be a legendary crocodile named

GRUESOME LEGEND

which is a characteristic trait of the saltwater crocodile. Earlier in 1988, the legendary beast’s companion Bujang Sudin was caught by a witch doctor, its 180 kilogram carcass sold to a nearby crocodile farm. With two of the distinctive white crocodiles captured, the local legend that Bujang Sedang’s descendants still terrorised the depths became more real. In 2000, so prevalent were the crocodile attacks that plans were made to train Malaysian ﬁremen to help hunt them down. The move came after a 5.5 metre crocodile, suspected of killing a 10-yearold girl, “surrendered” itself to her father on the spot where she died, apparently following the instructions of local bomohs (shaman) who had been asked to track down the beast after forestry officials failed to locate it. The same bomohs were said to be responsible for catching another of the area's toothy killers. In 2006, a boy was snatched from the river just metres from his house, by a crocodile that was described as being “as big as a boat”. Although accountable for fewer attacks than its Nile cousin, the potentially enormous size of the saltwater crocodile (crocodylus porosus) gives it a fearsome reputation. While most would prefer these human-eating crocodiles to be myth, there are several examples through history of enormous reptiles terrorising villages, causing scores of fatalities and remaining elusive for years. Indeed, the immense crocodiles caught in Sarawak look more like huge dragons than mere reptiles.

Legend has it that although Bujang Senang — which incidentally means 'happy bachelor' in the local language — was a fearsome killer, he may not have been the only fearsome predator that roamed the rivers. All the victims were seized from the shore or in shallow water,

The number of crocodiles in the areas is rising, with attacks increasing tenfold in the last decade. This has been attributed to the increase of logging. With nowhere to hide, the crocodiles are being driven

Bujang Senang. It ruled the rivers through fear for years, killing 13 people and evading capture until May 1992 just after it snatched its ﬁnal victim from a footbridge. Locally, the beasts live a peaceful coexistence with their human neighbours but when the reptiles go rogue, they are hunted and killed. A rare albino croc, he was the largest to be killed or captured in the state in two decades. The legend of this monster started through local mythology from the Iban people of Sarawak. The story goes that a huge white crocodile named Bujang Senang was the reincarnation of the warrior Simalungun, who died centuries ago vowing to terrorise and wreak revenge on his enemies and their descendants. Although its skull is displayed in the Sarawak Museum, rumours abound that he was never caught — and its descendants still roam the rivers. So ingrained is the legend in local culture that if ﬁshermen catch a baby crocodile they set it free, to ensure that no bad omen befalls the family. When years of efforts to catch the fearsome beast failed, it seemed as though this was a monster that was certainly of another realm. Reports of hiding a grenade in a dead duck to astonishing tales of hooks with bait being mauled out of shape only added fuel to the mythical ﬁre. When the mighty beast was ﬁnally killed, the one ton crocodile took a large group of men a staggering four hours to haul it from the river.

MASSIVE ATTACK

out of their homes. Some people feel that the evicted reptiles are actively targeting humans in retribution. While many say that they will not attack people, if they are hungry they will eat just about anything. Modern day advances may also be attracting the crocodiles to human prey. The increase of boats with outboard motors attracts them as the motor is said to emulate the sound of another croc.

RUMOURS ABOUND THAT THE ALBINO BUJANG SENANG, WHICH MEANS ‘HAPPY BACHELOR’ IN LOCAL DIALECT, WAS NEVER CAUGHT AND ITS DESCENDANTS STILL ROAM THE RIVERS In June 2012, the hot season saw an increase of attacks, to such an extent that the Forestry Commission issued a permit to cull. The target was to capture 60 crocodiles, all bigger than 2.5 metres long. The move came after two fatal attacks occurred in the Sungai Anak River. The perpetrator was known locally as Bujang Seblak, a monstrous white creature that had been on the prowl since 2007 and had just claimed his fourth victim. Despite the animal taking bullets to its snout, it took two weeks to catch him, along with two other crocodiles measuring 2.8 and 2.7 metres feet long, scarily perceived as his lieutenants. Whether the reincarnation of a former warrior is true or not, fact remains that these crocodiles are too deadly to ignore. 47 SEPTEMBER 2014

THE

YETI A MOUNTAIN MONSTER

THE FIRST SCIENTIST TO INVESTIGATE THE YETI WAS EMPLOYED BY HEINRICH HIMMLER, A COMMANDER OF THE NAZI PARTY IN GERMANY. PROFESSOR ERNST SCHAEFER SEARCHED FOR THE YETI IN 1938 IN THE HOPE THAT IT WOULD TURN OUT TO BE THE PROGENITOR OF THE ARYAN RACE

STRENGTHS

STRONG LIMBS, A POWERFUL JAW AND A THICK HIDE ALLOW THE ANIMAL TO THRIVE IN COLD TEMPERATURES

WEAKNESSES SHYNESS

The yeti, also known as "The Abominable Snowman", has been the stuff of numerous legends. The Greek king and conqueror Alexander the Great is said to have demanded to see one (without success) in India’s Indus valley in 326 BC. Another sighting was said to be in the Himalayas by Buddhist monks in the 19th century. Trekker Brian Houghton Hodgson ﬁrst documented the yeti after a Himalayan trek in 1832 when he witnessed a tall dark beast standing on two feet. Given its nickname because of its snowy habitat, the reclusive animal is said to resemble a human gorilla hybrid, possibly with the characteristics of a bear. Those who have witnessed it at close hand say it stands two to three metres tall and has a threatening yowl and eyes that glow. 48 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

FEET FIRST The search for the elusive creature that walks upright with a stooped gait is big business, and snowballed in the 1950s when a photograph of a “yeti footprint” was taken by British climber Eric Shipton at the base of Everest. The bear-like prints, measuring as long as a US size nine men’s shoe and twice as broad, were discovered almost six kilometres up the mountain in the snow. It is testament to the world’s fascination with the yeti that the photograph sold at auction in 2007 for US$5,900. Last year, tests by Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes on hair samples concluded that there may be a biological animal behind the myth. One hair sample was from the remains of a mummiﬁed creature shot decades earlier by a hunter in Ladakh in India, the other was a single hair found in a bamboo forest by ﬁlmmakers around a decade ago. Interestingly, Professor Sykes told the BBC that he had a 100 percent match with an ancient polar bear jawbone which was found in Norway and dated back to between 40,000 and 120,000 years. Speaking to the broadcaster, Professor Sykes said that while he didn’t think there was an ancient polar bear roaming the mountains, he concluded that the yeti could be a subspecies of brown bear, descended from the ancient polar bear. “The fact that the hunter, who had great experience of bears, thought this one was in some way unusual and was frightened of it, makes me wonder if this species of bear might behave differently," he told the BBC. Maybe it is more aggressive, more dangerous or is more bipedal than other bears.” The cryptic creature was most recently “sighted” in

2013 in Siberia by 11-year-old Yevgeny Anisimov. It’s said to be the only time the yeti has apparently been captured on ﬁlm, although the jury is still out on the validity of the four-minute video. The giant mammal with its stooping

gait was also said to have had a close encounter some miles away with government official Liliya Zenkova, when it stroked her arm through the open window of her car as she lay sleeping while her husband was ﬁshing. A creepy experience. A proliferation of huts made of twigs in the Kemerovo area of Russia further enhanced the reality of the yeti fable. Professor Valentin Sapunov, of the Hydrometeorological University in St Petersburg has apparently infuriated fellow academics by making claims that as many as 200 yetis live in the Siberian wilds, apparently declaring that he is “95 percent sure” that the yeti is real.

MOUNTAIN EVIDENCE While academics may ﬁght over the existence of the yeti, it is interesting to hear from those who know the mountains well and have been convinced the yeti is a living creature — only to change their minds. Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reported seeing large footprints while scaling Mount Everest in 1953. Hillary even mounted an expedition in search of the creature but later became more sceptical as to its existence. Climber Reinhold Messner encountered his ﬁrst yeti near Tibet in the 1980s, standing

around two metres high and covered with hair. Its twolegged agility impressed him and the strange hissing sound it made was imprinted on his memory. An accomplished climber, renowned as one of the best in the world, Messner is said to have always believed the yeti was merely a creation of cryptozoology — until he saw it with his own eyes. For 12 years he scoured the Himalayas for more proof, until he came to the conclusion that his ﬁrst thought was right: the yeti is a myth and is merely an exaggerated tale of the rare Tibetan blue bear. This particular beast will often rear its hind legs to scare off predators and is said to possess almost human capabilities.

GENETICS PROFESSOR BRYAN SYKES CLAIMS THAT THERE MAY INDEED BE A BIOLOGICAL ANIMAL BEHIND THE MYTH BASED ON A HAIR SAMPLE DATING BACK TO 120,000 YEARS AGO Despite the lack of evidence of the remains of a yeti, or the physicality of a living specimen, locals still maintain that the yeti is a real entity and is the guardian of the mighty Himalayas and its people. Whether this creature is the earliest form of a meme or a rare animal that is very much alive, the history of the yeti is a fascinating tale woven with both mythology and scientiﬁc fact. It's one that looks to continue enthralling monster hunters for years to come.

MONSTER FABLES

HUNTING LICENSE IN THE LATE 1950S, THE NEPALESE GOVERNMENT CAME UP WITH AN INGENIOUS MONEY-MAKING SCHEME: THEY ISSUED YETI-HUNTING LICENSES TO FOREIGN HUNTERS WHO WERE STREAMING IN TO HUNT THE BEAST. THE LICENSES WERE HUGELY EXPENSIVE, PRICED AT £400 PER YETI. EVEN WORSE, NOBODY EVER ACTUALLY CAUGHT A SPECIMEN.

THIN-SKINNED MYTH EXPERTS BELIEVE MANY EL CHUPACABRA SIGHTINGS ARE SIMPLY WILD COYOTES WITH MANGE. THIS COMMON SKIN DISEASE, CAUSED BY PARASITIC MITES, CAN CAUSE LARGE PATCHES OF FUR TO FALL OFF, LEAVING SHRIVELED, REDDENED SKIN WITH A SCALE-LIKE APPEARANCE. THIS CORRELATES WITH MANY DESCRIPTIONS OF "THE GOAT SUCKER" THAT HAVE BEEN GIVEN BY WITNESSES OVER THE YEARS.

MONSTER FABLES

EL CHUPA CABRA THE MENACE OF THE NIGHT

PUERTO RICO

ALTHOUGH THERE HAVE BEEN NUMEROUS SIGHTINGS OF EL CHUPACABRA, A FOOTPRINT HAS NEVER BEEN IDENTIFIED

2,000 DEATHS IT IS SAID TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATHS OF OVER 2,000 ANIMALS

Our ﬁrst terrifying beast owns the night and has left a trail of death and devastation in its wake. Since the 1970s, the sinister blood sucking of the fanged monster dubbed El Chupacabra has caused many sleepless nights for the people of Puerto Rico and some of the southern states of the US. And it seems that folklore has crossed the boundaries from mythical legend to scary real life incidents. For adults and children alike, the heavy thud on a rooftop in the night, or panicky cries of their livestock being dragged from their slumber have come to mean only one thing: the arrival of an alien beast that has been sighted by many but whose existence is still shrouded in mystery. Is this the work of a mysterious vampirical creature with its very own take on nocturnal phlebotomy or what? With most sightings taking place in Puerto Rico,

El Chupacabra is said to not only have attacked and killed hundreds of livestock but has also sucked every last drop of their blood, through two tiny puncture wounds it makes with its fangs. Its chilling killing style is why it is known infamously as “The Goatsucker”, from the Spanish chupra for suck and cabra for goat, giving us its name, El Chupacabra. Most proliﬁc for its killing sprees in the 1990s, the description of El Chupacabra by those who have managed to steal a ﬂeeting glance is of an animal resembling a griffin, with an ability to stand on its powerful hind legs. Some describe it as running on clawed feet and displaying a row of sharp ﬁns or long quills along its bony, arched back. Its pale, papery-thin skin has been documented as sprouting coarse, dark hairs. Other sightings detail a beast that wears its wings wrapped around itself like a veined cloak.

ODOROUS DEMONS The Puerto Rican region of Canóvanas is where El Chupacabra has been the most industrious — locals have lost some 150 animals to this nocturnal predator. In one attack, a witness reported a fanged, kangaroo-like creature with red eyes attacking the family goat. Other witnesses tell of a monster with vampire like qualities, giving off a sulphurous smell — an attribute linked to demons in folklore. Others have described seeing a reptile-like creature unlike any other animal on the planet with scaly green-grey skin and a leathery appearance. Rather than being a vampire, many have speculated that these beasts are the product of experiments by secret agents in the Puerto Rico area, which escaped from the laboratory when it was damaged in a severe storm.

Others say they originated from another planet entirely, as UFO sightings have been detailed in the same areas where and when the attacks have taken place. Paranormal investigator Benjamin Radford spent ﬁve years researching the beast for his book, Tracking the Chupacabra. His inquiries included forensic analysis, eyewitness reports and ﬁeld research. One of the reasons he believes that the reports of attacks saw a spike in the mid 1990s was due to the release of the sci-ﬁ movie Species. Showing the power of urban myth, the descriptions of a spiky backed monster at this time mirrored a character from the ﬁlm. El Chupacabra is said to be responsible for the deaths of numerous animals, all of which were found dead, killed by two small puncture wounds made by a pair of fangs — and sucked dry of all their blood. Wild dogs, and mutated coyotes have been framed as the perpetrators of these violent crimes but the scenes are almost devoid of prints and those that believe in the existence of this vampirical beast say that canines do not have the right facial construction, or the ability to suck blood. As the attacks of the 1990s continued and packs of dogs and herds of cattle were found dead as far aﬁeld as Texas, California and Florida, speculation grew as to the logical explanation behind the attacks and sightings of this strange mythical beast. Particularly as the victims were devoid of blood and the hallmark tiny puncture wounds.

NOCTURNAL SCAPEGOAT For the next few years, any strange nocturnal killing was placed at the door of El Chupacabra, who was now being described by people as looking more like a wild eyed hairless dog or coyote,

than having the vampirelike qualities described in earlier years. When a strange nocturnal visitor claimed the lives of all the livestock of the mining town of Calamain in Chile in 2000, hundreds of soldiers from the national guard were mobilised, combing the area. But to no avail. Calamain’s topography includes an intricate maze of caves. Believers are convinced that this is El Chupacabra’s hideout.

MANY HAVE SPECULATED THAT THESE BEASTS ARE THE PRODUCT OF EXPERIMENTS BY SECRET AGENTS IN THE PUERTO RICO AREA, WHICH ESCAPED FROM THE LABORATORY Tests on the animals that were caught at this time are said to be merely mutated coyotes with mange. But even seemingly hard evidence has not quietened speculation. In April of this year, a Texan family captured what they claimed was El Chupacabra. TV crews ﬁlmed footage of the creature, but experts weren’t convinced. “The animal in the cage as best I can tell from the view was some sort of a small canine,” Brent Ortego, a wildlife diversity biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife told the reporters there. While sceptics pin the slaughter of hundreds of animals at the door of a mutated coyote or feral wild dog, until the killing stops, the legend of El Chupacabra will live on. 51 SEPTEMBER 2014

THE RETURN TO DYATLOV

IN ONE OF THE MORE CHILLING DISCOVERY CHANNEL SHOWS YOU'LL SEE THIS YEAR, TWO INVESTIGATORS JOURNEY TO RUSSIA, TO AN ISOLATED MOUNTAIN RANGE THAT WAS THE SCENE OF A MONSTROUS MURDER. AS LUKE CLARK SUGGESTS, DON’T START DIGGING INTO THE DYATLOV MYSTERY, UNLESS YOU’RE GOING ALL THE WAY

It was the stuff of horror movies, and may well have haunted the dreams of a future generation of ﬁlmmakers. Only this was real. On February 2, 1959, deep in the Ural Mountains of the then Soviet Union, a mystery came to pass which, more than 55 years later, still confounds an entire nation to such an extent, that it has become known as 'Russia’s JFK'.

IN A MOUNTAIN PASS, NOW KNOWN AS DYATLOV, ALL NINE OF THE HIKERS WERE SLEEPING, IN TEMPERATURES BELOW FREEZING, WHEN THEY WERE VICIOUSLY KILLED BY SOMEONE — OR SOMETHING Nine university students were hiking in the heights of the Ural Mountains, a vast Siberian range in west-central Russia that forms the traditional boundary between Europe and Asia. In a mountain pass, now known as Dyatlov, all nine of the hikers were sleeping in the wilderness, in temperatures way below freezing, when they were viciously killed by someone — or something. Chillingly, one of the murdered girls was found with her eyes and tongue removed.

Now, a two-hour Discovery Channel documentary is due for release, which appears to have new answers, and some shocking new evidence, that serve to reopen this confounding and brutal murder mystery. In the show, a production team is led by an American explorer, Mike Libecki, and Russian translator and journalist Maria Klenokova. Together with a ﬁlm crew, the two investigators follow a trial of diary accounts, forensic evidence and scientiﬁc theory throughout the vast Eastern European nation — gaining access to official Soviet ﬁles that were formerly off limits to foreigners, and conducting ﬁrst-hand interviews with those who last saw the young adventurers alive, before the tragic 1959 incident which, confoundingly to many, caused some of them to cut their way out of their tents with hunting knives, and then run barefoot into the snow. The pathologist in the investigation of the students’ deaths said the damage to the students could only be inﬂicted by something stronger than a human, while investigators deduced that a “compelling natural force” had caused their untimely demise. When a search and rescue team arrived to their campsite, they found the expedition team's tents empty, yet still containing most of their possessions. Then, one by one, their bodies were recovered. Some were semi-naked, while others had injuries that ranged from broken ribs to a fractured skull. All were dead.

But maybe more shocking even than the brutal incident, is the fact that the mystery remains unsolved for so long — and that the evidence, even the official autopsy, remained shrouded in official secrecy for decades. In a show which blends crime investigation and adventure travel, Libecki and Klenokova uncover a range of tapes, photos and testimonials, as well as many who have remained haunted by the incident ever since. Amongst the evidence is a photo from one of the recovered cameras that appears to point to the culprit. Despite all the years of conjecture, the makers of the show are clear on what they feel killed the hikers 55 years ago. The show’s title, indeed, pulls no punches: Russian Yeti: The Killer Lives. Executive producer Sarah Davies is not your typical conspiracy theorist. But even for the typically logically minded TV professional who cut her teeth working on factual documentary icons like BBC’s

MONSTER FABLES

THE SECTION OF THE URAL MOUNTAINS THAT THE STUDENTS CHOSE TO HIKE, ARE KNOWN BY THE LOCAL PEOPLE, THE MANSI, AS "THE MOUNTAIN OF DEATH"

BELOW THE SEARCH AND RESCUE MISSION FOR THE MISSING HIKERS UNEARTHED SOME HAUNTING EVIDENCE

Panorama series, Davies tells DCM that she walked away from producing the show still enmeshed in the uneasy feeling that the yeti, like the truth, really is still out there. “When we started making it, the only reason it went down the yeti route was because of that photo,” she says. “And then we started digging into it, and we realised there had been footprints, and sightings in other parts of the Urals.” Further to that, there was years of belief from the local indigenous tribe, Mansi, that the creature they called Menk was alive and well. It was this that caused the Mansi people to label the area, ‘The Mountain of Death’. “What really struck me as more frightening was the idea that there could still be a big creature out there,” she says. “That there could be big mammals out there that we just haven’t discovered yet. And that really shocked me, as ridiculous as it sounds that there might be a yeti .”

THE FILMMAKERS CAMPED IN THE AREA TO UNDERSTAND THE HARSH CONDITIONS

FROM THE SANCTUARY OF THEIR TENT, THE FILMMAKERS TRY TO IMAGINE WHAT HORROR MIGHT HAVE GREETED THE HIKERS. WHAT WOULD CAUSE THEM TO SLASH THEIR WAY OUT WITH KNIVES? Indeed, on a personal level, Davies and her fellow executive producer for the US market started off thinking the idea was ridiculous. “And we kind of came 54 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

to the idea that there actually might be something lurking out there.” “They took a photo of something lurking in the woods, and no one’s ever explained what it was,” she says. “It looks like a very odd creature — okay, maybe it’s a person all wrapped up against the cold. But who was it? Who was spying on them, and why were they up there?” Davies is quick to clarify that belief in mythical beasts is not her typical studied position. “I don’t believe in mermaids and dragons, and some of those other ridiculous things. But we have found a lot of big creatures in recent times, like the dwarf humpback and the giant squid. I know those are on water so you can sort of understand why those haven’t been discovered. But the Ural Mountains are a bit like an ocean — it’s so massive, and the area of land it covers is so desolate of

A CHAIN OF FOOTPRINTS, EITHER BAREFOOT OR IN SOCKS, WERE FOUND AT THE SCENE

MONSTER FABLES

humans, if you were going to hide, that’s where you would be.” In the show, Libecki and Klenokova view over 100 shots that were in the cameras of the murdered climbers, and now stored in Russia’s Dyatlov Foundation headquarters. In Moscow, they get to view Soviet documents that had never been seen by foreigners before. Then, out in the ﬁeld, they experience the same extreme snow conditions that the hikers themselves had experienced. In one scene late at night in the Urals, from the sanctuary of their tent, the ﬁlmmakers try to imagine what horror might have greeted the hikers. They can only imagine what would cause them to slash their way out with knives — then run off without boots. Davies says that getting the storytelling balance right, being respectful to the victims and their families, while still retaining lots of intrigue, made the show a hard one to make. Yet the sense of an unraveling mystery, which grows in its level of uneasiness, is palpable. “It lends itself to being a story like that, because it had so many beats and turns, that were real,” she says. She says the crew spent 10 days in Dyatlov, stuck in a hut in temperatures hitting minus 40 degrees Celsius, as they waited for the weather to turn sufficiently to let them ﬁlm. “It was really hard going. Russia is a complex and complicated country, and there is a lot of superstition — so I think it’s a credit to the team that they found people who were willing to go on the record to tell us about the men of the forest, these yetis. They’re traditionally very shy people. There’s great journalism in this story,” she says proudly. Klenokova, the local translator and ﬁxer, was great, she says — though even her typical Russian stoicism later became dented. “She started off really happy and jolly, and I think by the end, she was really scared.” For the Discovery crew too, whether on location or editing back at headquarters, the mystery consumed them. “It was really frightening making this one actually,” says Davies. “We were all slightly unnerved by it.” Other evidence served to stoke the fuel of the ﬁre for those smelling a cover-up, including the fact that the

THE YETI HUNTERS "AFTER DISCOVERING ALL THIS NEW EVIDENCE AND GOING BACK TO THE MOUNTAIN OF THE DEAD, I'M NOT SURE WHAT TO THINK." - Journalist and translator Maria Klenokova "WE HAD NO CHOICE, WE HAD TO LEAVE. WITHOUT THE HUNTER THERE FOR PROTECTION, IT WAS WAY TOO DANGEROUS. I DID HEAR SOMETHING STRANGE. IT WAS SOMETHING I HADN'T HEARD BEFORE. I BELIEVE THAT IT'S POSSIBLE THAT A YETI EXISTS." - Adventurer Mike Libecki "IT WAS THE FIRST EXPERIMENTAL TWO STAGE ROCKET, IT WAS DUE TO EXPLODE IN THE AIR. THERE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE ANYONE THERE. THE MISSILE FELL IN THAT AREA. SO WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DYATLOV GROUP WAS A FATAL COINCIDENCE" - Anonymous Russian man, who claims, on tape, that his grandfather conducted secret Soviet missile tests in the area in 1959 "THE YETI IS JUST ONE OF MANY NAMES FOR THE LARGE HAIRY CREATURES SAID TO LIVE IN REMOTE WILDERNESSES AROUND THE WORLD. IN NORTH AMERICA THEY'RE CALLED SASQUATCH, IN SUMATRA THE ORANG PENDEK." - Show host and narrator, Kevin Conroy "GIGANTOPITHECUS WAS A SPECIES OF GIANT APE THAT EXISTED DURING THE ICE AGES, DURING THE PLEISTOCENE. FOSSILS OF ITS JAWS AND TEETH SUGGEST IT COULD HAVE GROWN UP TO 15 FEET TALL. IT'S VERY POSSIBLE THAT GIGANTOPITHECUS, RATHER THAN GOING EXTINCT, HAS CONTINUED, HAS SURVIVED INTO THE PRESENT AND IS THE SOURCE OF SIGHTINGS TODAY. " - Biologist Jeff Meldrum, Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology, Idaho State University "IF YOU GO TO THE FOREST, DON'T WHISTLE, BECAUSE MAYBE THIS YETI WILL COME AND PUNISH YOU. THEY CAN KILL DEER WITH JUST BREAKING HIS NECK. BUT THEY PREFER TO EAT SOFT FLESH, SOFT LIKE LUNG, HEART, LIVER. THEY ARE VERY POWERFUL. WE HAVE TWO CASES WHERE THEY JUST TORE APART BEAR WITH HANDS." - Igor Burtsev, head of the International Centre of Hominology, an academic institute devoted to studying the Russian Yeti 55 SEPTEMBER 2014

MONSTER FABLES

MANSI HUNTER ALBINA ANYMOVA

THE BODIES OF THE HIKERS WERE FOUND NEAR THEIR CAMPSITE

murder case was officially opened in Moscow 10 days before the searchers found the hikers. Furthermore, Libecki and Klenokova viewed an April 2013 interview with Yuri Yudin, before his death, aged 76 years old. Yudin, then a 22-year-old Economics student, had set off on the hike with the other nine hikers, but turned back after a day due to dysentery. This decision saved his life. In 1959, asked to identify the student’s belongings, Yurin found an item that disturbed him. “I found an item that was odd,” he reveals in the tape. “A military boot cover.” The cover could only have been used by soldiers in the army, indicating that the Soviet military reached the campsite before the search party — despite the fact that there was no record of a military presence.“It was very clear somebody in the Russian authorities, the military, got to the bodies before the search party did,” says Davies. “And that’s why they found a couple of items belonging to the military 56 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

that shouldn’t have been there.” Libecki and Klenokova also uncover official Soviet ﬁles in the Russian Science Academy Archive that shows the Soviets launched an official investigation, known as The Snowman Commission, with a mission to capture a yeti alive. An expedition took place, but the results were never released. And bizarrely, the Snowman investigation was closed in January 1959, just days before the students left for their expedition. “Something very strange did happen to those students, and it has never been explained,” says Davies. “It’s a very creepy story. I’ve no doubt that something sinister happened to them, and that somebody somewhere knows, and doesn’t want to tell us.” She warns that the show may not be an ideal one to watch at home alone. “It’s one where you just want to lock your door afterwards.” Indeed, in one of the most memorable scenes in the documentary, we meet 60-year-old Albina Anymova, who was

THE DYATLOV PASS MEMORIAL

just ﬁve years old when the hikers that went missing. “Children were beginning to disappear, as well as adults too. Many deer were being found with their tongues pulled out,” she says via translation. She describes hunting with her parents as a child. “We were laughing and fooling around, then we heard the whistle, loud, echoing in the forest.” Asked if it was a human whistle, she is clear. “No. More a horrible, whistle-like noise. We knew straight away what it was — Menk. Menk is a forest giant, big and strong, two to three metres high.” If her words don’t ring true enough, the investigators also view a piece of paper, a diary entry that was written by one of the hikers shortly before the attack. The words, translated by Klenokova, carry a message that many who made the show now believe too. Written from a dark tent in the Ural mountains, the notion expressed seems ice-crystal clear: “Now we know the Snowman exists.”

FOOD OF THE FUTURE COULD LAB-GROWN SOLUTIONS PROVIDE THE ANSWER TO MEET THE NUTRITION DEMANDS OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES IN TIMES TO COME? BY 2030, THE DEMAND FOR FOOD WILL OUTSTRIP SUPPLY TO THE TUNE OF 5.9 TONNES A YEAR. ALISON MARSHALL MEETS THE SCIENTISTS EXPERIMENTING WITH OUR FOOD ILLUSTRATIONS BY BEN MOUNSEY

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FUTURISTIC NUTRITION

59 SEPTEMBER 2014

GRASSHOPPER

PHOTO: CORBIS

It is 2020. Of the 8.5 billion people on our planet, many have celebrated a century. If you subscribe to celluloid forecasts, the human race could be queuing for hours for the chance to be sustained by coloured squares of nutrition, necessiated by a scary lack of provenance.

ci-ﬁ ﬁlms of yesteryear loved depicting a fast paced world of tomorrow, where a pill full of vitamins would be a quick and efficient solution to our daily dose of nutrition. By 2022, according to the 1973 sci-ﬁ movie Soylent Green, fresh food will be scarce, with only the rich enjoying the luxury of energy, as global 60 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

warming heat the planet to unbearable temperatures. In this scenario, a single stick of fresh celery becomes a thing of wonder. Way back in the ‘70s, the year 2022 must have seemed an age away. But in 2014, it is just eight years away. So, DCM asks, will we soon be queuing for a blister pack of pills, as the sole component of our weekly food shop? Or might we be looking at a much happier future, where man has made peace with the planet for future generations — and food sources will be as deliciously varied as they are today?

BERRY DELICIOUS Containing a protein that binds to the taste buds, the intriguing African ‘miracle’

berry (synsepalum dulciﬁcum) confuses us to believe that sour and bitter foods taste sweet. But it’s more than a party gimmick; it is said to be a useful medicine, negating the metallic taste in the mouth experienced by cancer patients after enduring chemotherapy. Natural alternatives and man-made creations will all vie for attention on tomorrow’s menu. Weeds, basil-lemon ﬂavoured tomatoes and blue bananas could all be staples as soon as 2042, according to Josh Schonwald, author of The Taste of Tomorrow. Schonwald was one of only two people to taste the ﬁrst lab-grown meat product (which also appears on his

Grasshoppers are a tasty street food snack in Mexico, where they are roasted with chilli and lime and sold by vendors in Oaxaca and eaten by the handful. With a salty, spicy taste the chapulines, as they are called here, are a nutritious (if leggy) alternative to a potato crisp. A 100 gram serving yields 20.6 grams of protein and just 6.1 grams of fat — about the same nutritional values as a similar serving of lean chicken. If there’ s not a suitable bug market nearby, you might consider growing your own at home. Designer Mansour Ourasanah has dreamed up the Lepsis, a kitchen top gadget that allows you to breed, grow, harvest and dispatch grasshoppers in readiness for the pan.

IN MANY CULTURES, GRASSHOPPERS ARE MORE THAN AN INCREDIBLE SOURCE OF PROTEIN; IN UGANDA,THE NSENENE. THE LUGANDA NAME FOR A LONGHORNED GRASSHOPPER, IS CONSIDERED A PRIZED DELICACY

FUTURISTIC NUTRITION

list of predictions). He forecasts that our fruit and vegetable stars of the future could include the weed portulaca oleracea (commonly known as purslane or hogweed), said to be Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite green. Reputedly best eaten with sea salt and olive oil or sautéed like spinach, this bane of many farmers’ lives could become a go-to helath choice. With six times more vitamin A than spinach, seven times more beta-carotene than carrots and a wealth of omega-3 fatty acids, Schonwald predicts it will be a key vegetable of the coming future.

IMAGINE TELLING SOMEONE FIFTY YEARS AGO THAT A FROZEN MEAL COULD BE HEATED IN A METAL BOX BY UNSEEN WAVES IN A MATTER OF MINUTES Fish fans could also be eating cobia, according to Schonwald, a white ﬁsh that tastes like halibut and, importantly for sustainability, grows six times as fast as salmon. Interestingly, a

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

HAVE A MUNCH ON AN INTERNATIONAL SMORGASBORD OF FOOD HISTORY, INCLUDING SPIT-FLAVOURED MEALS

62 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

number of items that are high on Asian shopping lists are also on Schonwald’s list as heroes of the future, including seaweed. He predicts that kelp will be an important future staple. Growing nine to 12 feet in just three months, this seaweed superstar needs no fresh water, fertilizer or deforestation to be able to grow at such a rapid rate. Schonwald writes that just one percent of the Earth’s surface would be needed to grow a bumper crop of seaweed — a haul that would be equal to all the plants currently farmed on land.

BUGS BUFFET From the sea to the lab, and Schonwald also forecasts that genetically modiﬁed foods will create a whole new ﬂavour proﬁle for keen gourmands, who will be able to experiment with colour and ﬂavour, including the possibility of blue bananas and green oranges — all in a biotech friendly way. While strangely coloured fruit and lab-grown meat might sound creepily scientiﬁc to some now, roll back the years and today’s acceptable concepts for preserving food would have seemed as alien back then. Imagine telling someone ﬁfty years ago that a frozen meal could be heated in a metal box, by unseen waves in a matter of minutes? Today, the ping of the microwave in many of the

world’s kitchens, attests to the everyday normality of the notion. Whatever the reality of tomorrow proves to be, the likelihood is that lunch for many will still be a meaty repast. Yet unlike the present day, your protein ﬁx may come from something that looks like meat and tastes like meat, yet has actually never walked over the land. The future of food may lie in laboratory-grown solutions, and may also mean that we research and adopt previously unexplored mass-market options — such as insects. While some may baulk at eating bugs, over two billion people worldwide already supplement their diet with this protein rich food source. Although they are not common ingredients in the West, chowing down on a cricket or any one of the planet's six million species of insects, is almost standard fare in some parts of the East. At Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant in the Danish capital recently named the best restaurant in the world, chef Rene Redzepi is a ﬁrm exponent of using insects as a food source. And not just as a novelty either — but as a viable and alternative protein-rich source of food for the future. Over in Singapore meanwhile, chef Ryan Clift, who heads up the awardwinning restaurant Tippling

GIANT WATER BEETLE Said to pack the same protein punch as kidney beans, the giant water beetle is a predator not to be messed with, as its nickname of “toe biter” indicates. Averaging around 3.8 centimetres in length, they can grow up to 10 centimetres — which makes for a mighty meal in itself. Eat it as you would a prawn (apparently the meat from the head and body can all be eaten) for a mighty calcium hit of 43 milligrams, and a protein portion of 19.8 grams.

3000 BC

1700

THE CHINESE ARE CREDITED WITH INVENTING ICE CREAM — ICE FLAVOURED WITH FRUIT AND NUTS. OTHER HISTORIANS GIVE THE ANCIENT ROMANS THAT HONOUR, WHEN THEY SLURPED ON FLAVOURED SNOW

NOT WANTING TO LEAVE THE GAMING TABLES TO EAT, THE EARL OF SANDWICH ORDERED HIS FOOD TO BE SERVED TO HIM AT THE TABLE BETWEEN TWO PIECES OF BREAD — AND THE SANDWICH HAS BEEN POPULAR EVER SINCE

VENI, VIDI, YUMMY

EAT AT THE TABLE

FUTURISTIC NUTRITION

OUR PERCEPTION OF WHAT FOOD TRADITIONALLY SHOULD LOOK AND TASTE LIKE IS BEING PERPETUALLY CHALLENGED, PARTICULARLY AS IN VITRO FOODS ARE NOW BEING DEVELOPED IN LABORATORIES GLOBALLY

1810

1813

1924

WAY BEFORE LOUIS PASTEUR BECAME THE NAME ASSOCIATED WITH STERILISATION, THE FRENCH INVENTOR NICOLAS APPERT WAS PERFECTING THE ART OF BOTTLING FOOD

IN THE UK JOHN HALL AND BRYAN DORKIN

CLARENCE BIRDSEYE DEVELOPS QUICK FREEZE TECHNOLOGY – WELCOME HOME, TV DINNERS! TODAY, THE AVERAGE AMERICAN EATS AN AVERAGE OF 72 FROZEN MEALS A YEAR

PASTEUR WHO?

CANS TO THE RESCUE OPEN THE FIRST FOOD CANNING FACTORY. HISTORIAN REAY TANNEHILL NOTES THAT CANNED FOOD WAS USUALLY “SOLD TO CUSTOMERS ON THE AMERICAN PRAIRIES, OR IN THE URBAN SLUMS OF MANCHESTER, WHO HAD NO ACCESS TO — OR PERHAPS HAD NEVER SEEN – THE FRESH PRODUCT”

ICE, ICE BABY

PROFESSOR MARK POST'S IN VITRO BURGER HAS ALREADY MADE THE JOURNEY FROM PETRI DISH TO PLATE. IT WAS PRODUCED BY TAKING STEM CELLS FROM A COW’S SHOULDER — AND GROWING THEM IN CALF SERUM IN A LAB

Club, has also already been trialling the use of insects on his ﬁne dining menu. “We created a dish with ants, harvested in Sydney, it was a whimsical idea — although they do contain a whopping source of protein,” he says.

GROWING MEAT UNDER SCIENTIFIC CONDITIONS MIGHT SOUND FAR FETCHED, BUT THE POSSIBILITY WAS TALKED ABOUT BY BRITISH PRIME MINISTER WINSTON CHURCHILL WAY BACK IN THE 1930S “They are very good for the body and have a citrusy favour. I’d also like to do something with wood co*ckroach, which has an almond ﬂavour — but I don’t think people would want that. It’s really all about mind over matter. I can’t see it being fully adopted, but in countries where it has been heritage it could reinvigorate the prevalent food industry.” Clift has also been looking at ways of creating new ﬂavour proﬁles. “For the

last four years, I’ve worked with companies developing ﬂavours in labs — at ﬁrst it freaked me out, to have pear juice not made from pear. It’s something that the lab creates but because it stems from something vegetal it’s considered natural, and is identical in taste. It’s bizarre, but kind of cool. The fact that you can get something that looks like a carrot to taste like a tomato, got me baffled.”

LAB-GROWN MEAT While Clift is open to the idea of insects on the menu and changing ﬂavour proﬁles of fruit and vegetables, lab-grown food is another thing entirely. “Lab-grown meat would have to be up to scratch. I’d want it to be able to produce something comparable to the best meat in the world, before I’d consider putting it on the menu.” “Where lab-grown products can make a difference is where countries are suffering because there’s no food. Who

RED ANTS Stir-fried ant’s eggs or khai mot phat is a popular dish in Thailand. The creamy texture when cooked is said to be similar to that of traditional scrambled eggs. A 100 grams serving yields around 14 grams of protein and 5.7 milligrams of iron — around three quarters of the recommended daily dose of iron for men. The ants produce their eggs during December to January, but collecting them can be a painful task as the ants have a nasty bite.

1940

1960

1974

DIRK AND MAC MCDONALD OPEN MCDONALD’S BBQ RESTAURANT IN CALIFORNIA. THE COMPANY NOW HAS 34,000 GOLDEN ARCHES WORLDWIDE, WITH ABOUT 73 OUTLETS IN MANHATTAN ALONE – THE HIGHEST CONCENTRATION OF MCDONALD’S IN THE WORLD

EXPLORING ASTRONAUTS HAD TO REHYDRATE SEMI-DRIED FOODS WITH THEIR SALIVA. YUM. BY THE TIME THE GEMINI MISSION WAS LAUNCHED IN 1965, MORE PALATABLE OPTIONS INCLUDING SHRIMP co*ckTAIL AND BUTTERSCOTCH PUDDING HAD BEEN PERFECTED

DEHYDRATED MASHED POTATO WAS A STAPLE OF MANY KITCHEN CUPBOARDS IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES. BUT CADBURY’S SMASH BECAME UNIVERSALLY KNOWN THANKS TO ITS ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN, STARRING ‘MARTIANS’. THIS WAS VOTED TV AD OF THE CENTURY BY THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY MAGAZINE CAMPAIGN

MCHATTAN

64 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

SPIT TAKES IN SPACE

DO THE MARTIAN MASH

FUTURISTIC NUTRITION

WHAT MAKES A REGULAR QUARTERPOUNDER PATTY?

PHOTOS: DAVID PARRY/ PA WIRE (MAIN); GETTY IMAGES (CRONUT); NASA (SPACE FOOD)

3.0 KILOGRAMS GRAINS AND FORAGE 199.8 LITRES WATER

FOR DRINKING WATER AND IRRIGATING CROPS

6.9 SQUARE METRES LAND FOR GRAZING AND GROWING FEED CROPS

1983

1994

2013

MCDONALD’S INTRODUCES THE CHICKEN MCNUGGET. DID YOU KNOW THAT THEY COME IN FOUR STANDARDISED SHAPES THAT ARE PRESSED OUT BY A ROLLING COOKIE CUTTER? THERE’S THE BOOT, THE BOW-TIE, THE BALL AND THE BELL

THE GENETICALLY MODIFIED FLAVR SAVR TOMATO MAKES IT TO SUPERMARKETS IN THE USA – IT HAS BEEN MODIFIED TO ENJOY A LONGER SHELF LIFE THAN A REGULAR STANDARD TOMATO

NEW YORK CHEF DOMINIQUE ANSEL INVENTS THE CRONUT – A HYBRID OF CROISSANT AND DOUGHNUT. THEN OTHERS FOLLOW WITH A DUFFIN (DOUGHNUT/MUFFIN). ARTERIES ACROSS THE GLOBE QUIVERED, AS TASTE BUDS SCREAMED WITH JOY

BOW-TIED CHICKEN

TOMATO TECH

GO NUTS FOR CRONUTS

65 SEPTEMBER 2014

CRICKET As well as complimentary after dinner ﬂossing treatment by way of the antennae and legs that can get stuck in your teeth, the nutty tasting cricket is a weight watching wonder with just 121 calories per 100 grams. If you fancy foraging for your own, remember the adage: red, orange yellow, forget this fellow; black, green or brown, wolf it down. If, on the other hand, you prefer not to have to ﬁnd your own, websites like www. thailandunique.com offer such tasty delicacies as lightly salted or chocolate-coated crickets. protein portion of 19.8 grams.

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FUTURISTIC NUTRITION

A BUG LOLLIPOP? Ironically for those that find the idea distasteful, insects are part of our daily lives already. Entomologist Professor Marcel Dicke calculates that we are all eating up to 500 grams of some type of bug or insect every year. When fruit and vegetables are processed for canning, tiny bugs often go straight into the mix. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration allow for a little extra to be permitted in processed food. Up to 225 bug parts are allowable in a 225 gram bag of pasta for example, and 100 grams of frozen broccoli can contain the added extra protein boost of 60 or more aphids.

is to say that lab-grown meat won’t reverse poverty or the problems of hunger? That’s the only way I can see beneﬁt.” Clift maintains that he would want to know about any possible “side effects” before trying a side of meat that has been effectively grown in a jar. “Smoking used to be considered cool. Who’s to say that after eating labgrown meat we won’t start developing strange growths?” We decided to look to the source. Does this “creepy” aspect of lab-grown meat bother the creator of the ﬁrst lab-grown hamburger, Dutch scientist Professor Mark Post, of Maastricht University? “I am not too worried about it,” he tells DCM. “But we certainly need to analyse where the potential fear is coming from. You need to look at acceptance in the framework of changing perception of regular meat, as it becomes scarce and expensive. “We may need to be able to separate the technology from how it is being implemented, to give people a sense of control over production. For instance, DIY, community-based scales of production,” he says. Growing meat under scientiﬁc conditions might sound far fetched, but the possibility was talked about by British prime minister Winston Churchill in the 1930s, when he predicted that man would, “escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing.” Instead, we'd grow them separately under a suitable medium. “Synthetic food will, of course, also be used in the future,” he predicted. “The new foods will from the outset be practically indistinguishable from the natural products, and any changes will be so gradual as to escape observation.” 67 SEPTEMBER 2014

SAID TO BE A PARTICULARLY RICH SOURCE OF FOOD FOR UNDERNOURISHED CHILDREN, CRICKETS MAY BECOME A VIABLE NUTRITIONAL OPTION FOR THE FUTURE. A CRICKET REQUIRES 12 TIMES LESS FEED THAN CATTLE TO PRODUCE THE SAME AMOUNT OF PROTEIN The ‘meat’ for this most expensive fast food was grown by taking stem cells from a cow’s shoulder — and growing them in calf serum in a lab. Ten billion cells were combined with breadcrumbs and egg, and cooked in the same way as an everyday hamburger.

CHICKEN OR EGG Finding future food alternatives is important to the future and survival of the 68 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

SILKWORM PUPAE Beondegi is popular street food in Korea. The name means chrysalis or pupae in Korean. Steamed or boiled, with sugar and soy sauce added for taste, this dish originated as an important food source when protein was scare in the Korean War. Still a popular street food staple today, silkworm pupae are a particularly nutritious source of calcium and can also be found on the menu in Vietnam where they are known as con nhong

entire planet, humans and animals alike. The animal rights organisation, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has offered a US$1 million reward to anyone who can create commercially viable invitro chicken that looks and tastes like the real thing. It may have been Winston Churchill’s futuristic dream, but the original deadline of March 4 came and went, without anyone being able to develop lab-grown chicken to claim the prize. The deadline date was marked the 85th anniversary of a remark made by Herbert Hoover as part of his presidential campaign. He promised that if he became the 31st president of the USA, his countrymen would have “a chicken in every pot.” PETA’s interest is in saving animals. As a result, it has been investing in cultured meat research since 2007. If a way can be found to successfully cultivate in vitro meat (meaning something

taking place outside a living organism) it claims that along with eliminating the slaughter of millions of animals, it could mark the end of clearing precious forests for livestock cultivation. The organisation claims this development would conserve water and energy, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions for meat production by between 78 and 96 percent. PETA says that in the US alone, more than seven billion chickens are killed for their ﬂesh each year — or around one million every passing hour. Post hopes that the development of lab-grown meat means that we one day get to enjoy “the wonderful product that meat is, without the negative consequences for environment, food-security and animal welfare”. “There are many solutions to world hunger and most need to factor distribution issues in. Cultured beef can certainly help relieve some of the pressure on natural

resources.” So while the production of one hamburger is noteworthy, can the production of lab-grown meat ever get to the point where it can be scaled up to become an available, affordable food of the future? “Scaling up is a technical thing that can be implemented,” explains Post. “With sufficient scaling we believe we can make this affordable, if eventually not cheaper than regular meat.” For now, beef is the only meat that has been successfully grown under scientiﬁc conditions. Chicken and ﬁsh are next.“We have not worked on other types of meat yet. The environmental issues are largest with beef. In principle, it can be done with any kind of meat, ﬁsh or fowl.” The inefficiency of beef farming made it a priority, he says. “If we can make it in a more efficient way, we will also reduce impact on resources and environment.” There is a word of warning from Post, though. “Lab-grown meat

PHOTO: CORBIS, DIDIER BAVEREL/GETTY IMAGES

Now, some 80 years later, thanks to Post's laboratorygrown hamburger, the signs are that commerciallyavailable ‘shmeat’ may not be far behind. Dubbed by some the ‘Frankenburger’, it was the ﬁrst lab-grown meat to make the grade, unveiled for a taste test in London last year. At a cost of US$350,000, this seemingly ordinary hamburger is a signiﬁcant step forward in the science of cultured meat.

FUTURISTIC NUTRITION

HERE, YOUNG CRICKETS ARE BEING FED A COMBINATION OF BARLEY, WHEAT FLOUR AND CARROT IN A FRENCH LABORATORY NEAR TOULOUSE THAT BREEDS INSECTS EXCLUSIVELY FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION

is a future food source for vegans and carnivores alike — although I consider vegans starting to eat meat as an unwanted side-effect.” Post became involved with lab-grown meat by coincidence. Previously producing heart valves for surgery, he was coerced with other scientists to start working on the possibility of lab-grown meat. “I felt the potential for a large societal impact from the very beginning as soon as I learned about the idea.” What might be unpalatable to us now is likely to be the norm in the future. Freezing food for future consumption, rehydrating dried foods and sealing something in a can which will stay fresh for years are all part of today’s normal reality, but they would all have sounded far-fetched fantasies in the past.

INSECTS ON THE MENU Today’s diners who happily tuck into chicken, meat and

ﬁsh may in the future be as delighted to dine on insects — whether chunky mealworms or leggy grasshoppers. Said to be a particular rich source of food for undernourished children, crickets may become a viable nutritional option for the future. A cricket requires twelve times less feed than cattle to produce the same amount of protein. Entomologist Professor Marcel Dicke is passionate about the idea that insects will be the most important food solution of the future. His team at The Netherlands’ Wageningen University have been promoting insects as food since the 1990s. Dicke, also a Rhodes Professor, at Cornell University in the United States, is convinced that entomophagy, or the consumption of insects as food, is one of the solutions needed to save our planet. This is not a new food group, either. Mentions are made in the Bible of eating locusts, beetles and multilegged insects are eaten quite regularly in parts of South East Asia like Laos and Thailand as well as being a staple dietary ingredient in some parts of South Africa. Over the last few years, companies in the Netherlands that usually provide insects to zoos have set up special production lines, to provide locusts and mealworms for human consumption.

INSECT INGREDIENTS

AT THE INNOVATIVE RESTAURANT, APHRODITE, IN NICE, FRANCE YOU CAN TUCK IN TO A GOURMET DISH OF WORMS, PEAS AND CARROTS (ABOVE). IN THE FUTURE, THERE ARE A WHOLE HOST OF MULTI-LEGGED CREATURES THAT WE MIGHT ALSO FIND TASTY

AGAVE WORM

The larvae of the hyopta agavis or aegiale hesperiaris moth are often found in tequila bottles — but are also a nutritious menu item in Mexico, according to Daniella Martin, cook and TV host of Girl Meets Bug. JUMIL BUGS

Less than a centimetre long, these juicy bugs are a delicious treat in Mexico and usually seen as a taco ﬁlling. Reputed to have a bitter taste like cinnamon, they are rich in vitamins B2 and B3. LEAFCUTTER ANTS

Another favourite of Martin’s, known as hormigus colonus (big bottomed ants in Spanish) are a favourite in South America. Martin writes on her blog that “they are said to taste like a cross between bacon and pistachio, and are usually toasted.” In Colombian cinemas, you may see it as a crunchier alternative to popcorn. MOPANE WORM

When it’s mopane season in South Africa, this chunky worm can command a higher price than beef. They are also often dried when they taste, writes Martin, “like an earthy jerky.” WATER BUG Popular in Thai cuisine, the water bug is usually eaten in its

entirety. This leggy ingredient is said to have an apple scent when raw, and Martin writes that when steamed, their ﬂesh, which is plentiful enough to ﬁllet, tastes like “a briny perfumy banana or melon with the consistency of ﬁsh.” WAXWORM

A parasite of beehives in the wild, in captivity they are fed on a diet of bran and honey, writes Martin. A high source of essential fatty acids, they are roasted or sautéed and “taste like a cross between an enoki mushroom and a pine nut.” 69 SEPTEMBER 2014

Although it is not recommended that you snack on an indolent insect as it happily goes about its daily life, Dicke says that cooked bugs are generally quite safe to eat.

INSECTS HAVE A PROVEN TRACK RECORD: TWO BILLION PEOPLE ARE EATING THEM ON A REGULAR BASIS ALREADY WHILE LABGROWN MEAT IS A TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTION THAT HAS NOT BEEN PROVEN YET Because insects are so different from humans, encouraging an insect-based diet rather than an animalbased diet would avoid risks of 70 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

co-infections between humans and other animals, stopping potentially fatal infections such as swine fever and avian ﬂu. Breeding insects takes relatively little space, and while no-one is promoting an insect only diet, insect meat added to dishes like meatballs, or dry roasted as a replacement for nuts in cookies, all add a protein-rich nutritional boost. In a taste test run by Wageningen University, 80 percent of diners preferred the sample of meatballs that contained mealworms, to those that were made without. Dicke believes insects are a better food future solution than lab-grown alternatives. “Insects have a proven track record: two billion people are eating them on a regular basis already. While lab-grown meat is a technological solution that has not been proven to be alright yet, in terms of food security.” While lab-grown meat is a new concept to get to grips with, many also view genetically modiﬁed crops with mistrust. Yet our fear of

the unknown is not helping to ﬁnd a solution to future food supplies, which is why many see bugs as a naturally superior alternative. Koﬁ Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, is also keen to promote the important role that insects can play in future food supplies. In an interview with Dicke, he said that we have to acknowledge that at least one in eight people currently do not get enough nutrition in terms of animal proteins, even though they have enough calories to eat. “If we can raise insects as an animal protein source, we should be able to bridge the wide gap.”

SCALING UP If insects are to become a dinner table staple, then they will quickly need to be produced in large quantities. “Eating insects will involve the insects being farmed, not harvested from nature,” explains Dicke. “Farming insects has ample advantages over farming livestock: the

ecological footprint of farming insects is much, much lower than that of farming livestock and there is a much reduced emission of greenhouse gases.” At the heart of ﬁnding viable alternative food supplies for the future, the Netherlands’ ministry of agriculture funded a US$1.3 million programme in 2011 to develop insects as a practical food alternative, feeding them on food waste such as brewers’ grain, soy bean husks and apple pulp. Dicke says he enjoys nothing more than a plate of fried locusts, which he calls “land prawns”, incorporating them in a curry or covering them in chocolate. An insect expert for 30 years, he ﬁrst tasted bugs when collecting tiny mite eggs for his PhD on the subject — saying the quickest way to clean the brush was to lick it. For him, insect-rich menus aren’t simply an idea he has for the future, they are already very much part of his daily life. One of the authors of The Insect Cookbook: Food For A Sustainable Planet, Dicke writes of his reasons for perpetuating bugs as a food source, as well as a host of recipes. While some may feel squeamish at the thought of something with six legs making it on to their plate, Dicke cannot wait for the day. “Steamed rice with freshly prepared deep-fried dragonﬂy larvae is my absolute favourite dish,“ he says. “It makes me salivate when I think back to having eaten this several times in Dali in China.” The idea of a lunch of crispy crickets or lab-grown meat might take some getting used to, yet most of us would rather that than the disturbing consequences of living a life sustained by the troubling diet offered by ’70s sci-ﬁ movies like Soylent Green, with its pouches of mush and blister packs of food pills. That would really be hard to swallow.

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

FUTURISTIC NUTRITION

PHOTOS: NASA

ONE AMERICAN BOY WHO FACED EXPULSION FOR NEARLY BLOWING UP HIS SCHOOL. ANOTHER RUSSIAN, WHO SPENT YEARS IN STALIN’S GULAGS BEFORE SPEARHEADING THE SOVIET SPACE EFFORT. AND YET ANOTHER A NAZI, WHO MOVED FROM RAINING BOMBS ON BRITISH CIVILIANS TO PUTTING AMERICANS ON THE MOON. THESE ARE THE ROCKET MEN WHOSE STORIES, WHILE REMARKABLY DIFFERENT, ARE ALL CURIOUSLY INTERTWINED. CHRIS WRIGHT REPORTS

ROCKET PIONEERS

Our story starts with the earliest of the rocket makers — Robert Goddard, remembered today as the father of modern rocket propulsion. Earlier, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was proposing liquid-fuelled rockets even before the Soviet Union existed — but Goddard was the ﬁrst to send such a rocket aloft. NASA proclaims “The ﬂight of Goddard’s rocket on March 16, 1926 at Auburn, Massachusetts, was as signiﬁcant to history as that of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk.”

Robert Goddard

Wernher von Braun

or any genius, there is a spark that gets them going. For Goddard, there were two. The ﬁrst came, at age ﬁve years old, when his father showed him how to generate static electricity on the family carpet. And the second came in a daydream at age 17, when he climbed a cherry tree to lop its boughs and was captivated by the blue sky above. 74 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

He wrote later: “As I looked towards the ﬁelds in the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow right at my feet.” More than a pipedream, he had a clear sense of the principles of lift and centrifugal force that would be crucial to such a remarkable invention. “I was a different boy when I descended the tree than when I ascended. Existence at last seemed very purposive,” he wrote. It was a moment so signiﬁcant, he commemorated October 19th as its anniversary for the rest of his life. A common complaint of people later seen as geniuses is that they got no respect

“AS I LOOKED TOWARDS THE FIELDS, I IMAGINED HOW WONDERFUL IT WOULD BE TO MAKE SOME DEVICE WHICH HAD THE POSSIBILITY OF ONE DAY ASCENDING TO MARS”

in their early years. It was perhaps not so surprising for Goddard, a frail, thin, constantly ill young man, who by late childhood was two years behind his classmates. Plus he also had a habit of

blowing things up. First it was within the family home, and then at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), a technological university in Massachusetts. NASA recalls: “Goddard ﬁrst obtained public notice in 1907 in a cloud of smoke from a powder rocket ﬁred in the basem*nt of the WPI physics building. School officials took an immediate interest in the work of student Goddard. The School’s administration, to their credit, did not expel him. He thus began his lifetime of dedicated work.” It was constantly interrupted. He had to leave a position at Princeton after contracting tuberculosis in 1913, and was not expected to live. But he did, dreaming of space ﬂight the whole time. Two patents, one for a rocket

PHOTO: NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTRE (MAIN)

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the 'Chief Designer'

ROCKET PIONEERS

DR ROBERT GODDARD'S 6.7 METRE ROCKET IN ITS LAUNCHING TOWER NEAR ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO IN 1940 PREVIOUS PAGE THE APOLLO 16 LAUNCHES FROM THE KENNEDY SPACE CENTRE ON APRIL 16, 1972, USING THE SATURN V ROCKET

5 BER

using liquid fuel, another for a multi-stage rocket, were granted the following year, both instrumental towards the USA putting a man on the moon over half a century later. It was time to blow more things up. He did so care of a new position at neighbouring Clark University, testlaunching a powder rocket in 1915 with sufficient vigour to alarm the campus janitor. But amid the comedy blasts and destruction, real scientiﬁc discoveries were made too. He realised that powder

PHOTOS: MRS ROBERT H GODDARD (MAIN); NASA

GODDARD’S MARK IN HISTORY RESTS NOT SO MUCH WITH HIS POWDER ROCKETS, BUT THOSE PROPELLED BY GASOLINE AND LIQUID OXYGEN. IT WAS THROUGH LIQUID FUELS THAT MAN WOULD LATER REACH THE MOON rockets converted only about two percent of their fuel into thrust. He started applying de Laval nozzles, hourglassshaped punched tubes designed to shape the ﬂow of pressurised gasses, and got much better results, moving the engine’s efficiency above 60 percent. The achievement demonstrated that rockets could theoretically be powerful enough to escape the Earth — putting in place the foundations of today's modern rocketry. Later in the decade, he published research that 76 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

included the idea of putting a rocket into space, and was largely mocked for doing so. The New York Times noted, with inﬁnite contempt: “He seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.” After the lunar landing 49 years later, the newspaper would retract its acid editorial: “It is now deﬁnitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum… the Times regrets the error.” For years, Goddard would be associated with the apparently crackpot idea of sending a rocket to the moon, when in fact his area of interest was getting into the upper atmosphere. He couldn’t win. When he conducted an experiment in 1929, a local newspaper ran the headline: “Moon rocket misses target by 238,799 and a half miles.” Disheartened, he began working alone. Goddard’s mark in history rests not so much with his powder rockets, but those propelled by gasoline and liquid oxygen. It was through liquid fuels that man would later reach the moon, and the world’s vast nuclear missile arsenals built upon these rockets. In his historic ﬂight in 1926, “at Aunt Effie’s farm in Auburn”, according to his diary, he put a liquid-fuelled rocket up 12.5 metres before it crashed 56 metres away in a cabbage ﬁeld. These launches cemented Goddard as a bona ﬁde scientist and inventor, and by now he was attracting the attention of some interesting names. One was the legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh, who became a trusted conﬁdante and friend. One of the joys of research is that even almost a century on, one ﬁnds connections to great moments in the past. Recently Discovery Channel Magazine interviewed Bill

ROCKET PIONEERS

ABOVE DR ROBERT GODDARD AND COLLEAGUES HOLDING THE ROCKET USED IN THE FLIGHT OF APRIL 19, 1932 FAR LEFT A BARGE CARRYING SA-505'S SECOND STAGE PASSES THROUGH A DRAWBRIDGE IN 1968 LEFT THE COMMAND AND SERVICE MODULES FOR APOLLO 11 ARE INSTALLED IN THE ALTITUDE CHAMBER OF THE MANNED SPACECRAFT OPERATIONS BUILDING AT NASA'S SPACEPORT IN 1969

Anders, one of the crew of Apollo 8, the ﬁrst craft to leave the Earth’s atmosphere, and to see the dark side of the moon. The astronaut recalled that the day before the Apollo 8 ﬂight on December 21, 1968, the crew was visited by Lindbergh. Anders still has a long handwritten letter that Lindbergh later sent him, and recalled how Lindbergh had discussed Goddard — and his theory that it was possibly to design a multi-stage rocket capable of reaching the moon. Goddard had said: “It might cost as much as a million dollars.” At that same meeting, Lindbergh asked how much fuel would be consumed at the launch of Apollo 8. The astronauts replied that they would be climbing into a capsule on top of 531,000 gallons (2,010,053 litres) of kerosene and liquid oxygen. Lindbergh began scribbling on a piece of paper. “In the ﬁrst second of your ﬂight tomorrow,” he announced, “you’ll burn 10 times more fuel than I did all the way to Paris,” referring to his solo non-stop ﬂight in 1927 from New York to Paris, which took place as Goddard was launching his ﬁrst liquid rockets. Though Goddard would not live to see space ﬂight — dying four days after the ﬁrst atomic bomb was dropped on Japan in 1945 — Lindbergh was a clear link between Goddard and the ﬁnest fruits of his research, the Apollo space programme. Many of the best inventions end up being used by the military, and so it proved for Goddard — but not in the ways he expected. He pitched his ideas to the military at the start of World War II, only to ﬁnd that nobody seemed interested. He was too early. Then in the spring of 1945, the US army captured a V-2 German ballistic missile from the Mittelwerk factory in Germany’s Harz mountains 77 SEPTEMBER 2014

and shipped it to the naval laboratory in Annapolis for Goddard to examine. He believed the Germans had stolen his work. And here, Goddard’s path crossed with someone who had the most ambivalent relationship with humanity imaginable: Wernher von Braun.

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (V2 ROCKETS); NASA SIDEBAR: MICHAEL CRAWFORD (BOBA FETT)

THE NAZI ENGINEER “He was one of the pioneers of rocketry,” said Walter Cunningham, one of the astronauts of Apollo 7, “and a man I had come to enjoy, admire and respect.” Cunningham, one of the most acerbic of the astronauts, was fulsome in his praise of Wernher von Braun, the man behind the Saturn V booster that made it possible to put man on the moon. “Von Braun was one of these people who ﬁll a room, a large man, with great self-conﬁdence,” he said. “No matter how technical the question, he seldom had to ask a deputy for an answer.” Von Braun was one of the greatest engineers ever to have lived, a visionary who created on a scale that has never been seen since. As the author Andrew Smith says in his book Moondust, “Apollo could not have happened without him and he is the only person of whom this might be said.” But there was a dark side to von Braun’s past. Born into privilege in Wirsitz, then part of the German Empire, he

PROPULSION POWER WHETHER IN POP CULTURE OR HISTORY, ROCKETS HAVE MADE THEIR MARK FELT WITH THE FORCE OF, WELL, A ROCKET. FIND OUT HOW IN 3, 2, 1

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ELTON JOHN’S ROCKET MAN NOT ONLY DID THE HIT SONG INSPIRE SINGER PHARRELL WILLIAMS TO NAME HIS SON ROCKET MAN WILLIAMS, IT ALSO INSPIRED THIS DIALOGUE IN THE 1996 ACTION FLICK THE ROCK, WHEN NICOLAS CAGE IS CORNERED BY AN ARMED THUG. STANLEY GODSPEED: UH – LET’S TALK MUSIC. DO YOU LIKE THE ELTON JOHN SONG, “ROCKET MAN?” [THUG REPLIES BRUSQUELY IN THE NEGATIVE] GODSPEED: OH, OH. WELL, I ONLY BRING IT UP BECAUSE, UH, IT’S YOU. YOU’RE THE ROCKET MAN. [GODSPEED FIRES A ROCKET AT HIM, PROPELLING HIM OUT A WINDOW]

ROCKET PIONEERS

loved astronomy and speed even as a child. Like Goddard, his earliest ventures into rocketry were spectacular and somewhat unpopular. At the age of 12, he attached ﬁreworks to a toy wagon, detonated them and was taken into custody by the local police. In the early 1930s, von Braun worked with Hermann Oberth, another pioneer of rocketry, testing the same sort of liquid-fuelled rockets Goddard had pioneered. He developed a fascination with the idea of space ﬂight, namely how to get up there. Realizing the group most likely to support rockets — and perhaps, space ﬂight — was the Nazis, he signed up as a party member in 1937, becoming an SS Officer in 1940. Von Braun later argued that he was already technical director at the Army Rocket Centre at Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea, and in that capacity he was told to join the National Socialist Party (the Nazis). And also that refusing to do so would have meant abandoning his life’s work for an uncertain fate. Whatever he thought of the politics, or knew about the Nazi party’s other actions, he thrived under its patronage. Von Braun’s principal contribution during this time was the development of a missile, originally known as the A-4 and later the V-2

TOP WERNHER VON BRAUN AT HIS DESK AT MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTRE IN MAY 1964, WITH MODELS OF THE SATURN ROCKET FAMILY THAT HE DESIGNED ABOVE THE LAUNCHING SITE FOR V2 ROCKETS IN GERMANY, 1939 LEFT THE SKYLAB SPACE STATION IS MATED TO A SATURN V ROCKET IN THE VEHICLE ASSEMBLY BUILDING ON SEPTEMBER 29,1972

BOBA FETT HIS NAME MIGHT MAKE HIM SOUND LIKE AN OVERWEIGHT REGGAE ARTIST, BUT BOUNTY HUNTER BOBA FETT IS CLEARLY THE COOLEST CHARACTER IN STAR WARS. AS IS HIS COLLECTIBLE TOY FROM 1980. THE ORIGINAL VERSION CAME WITH A TINY MISSILE THAT FIRED FROM HIS BACK, BUT SAFETY FEARS SOON SAW LATER VERSIONS WITH THE ROCKET GLUED INTO THE FIGURINE’S BACKPACK. ROCKET-FIRING VERSIONS NOW SELL FOR HEFTY AMOUNTS

(V for vergeltungswaffe, or vengeance weapon), a liquidpropelled rocket that would be aimed across the North Sea towards Allied targets, principally at London. It is estimated to have resulted in the deaths of around 9,000 people, mostly civilians. Plus, 12,000 forced labourers and concentration camp prisoners who died producing the weapons, under nothing short of slavery. Von Braun certainly knew what his work was used for and the slave labour involved. He later acknowledged it, but said he had felt unable to change it. As the war came to an end, the Soviets were advancing on Peenemünde from the east, the Americans from the west. Deciding rather prudently which side he wanted to surrender to, von Braun brought his staff together and decided to head en masse for Mittelwerk, stashing blueprints for his rocket research in an abandoned mine shaft en route as a safeguard against destruction by the SS. In May 1945, ﬁnding Americans, he surrendered to them. “We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours, was a moral decision more than anything else,” he said afterwards. Debate continues to this

day how much morality informed any decision von Braun ever made. Either way, the Americans were happy to have him: there had been a document called the Black List, containing the names of key German scientists and engineers that the US had been particularly keen

VON BRAUN WAS ONE OF THE GREATEST ENGINEERS EVER TO HAVE LIVED; A VISIONARY WHO CREATED ON A SCALE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN SINCE to capture and interrogate. Von Braun’s name was at the very top of it. The grab of Nazi scientists and engineers in the aftermath of the war, with Americans taking some and the Soviets others, had a major bearing on the Space Race and the Cold War. The knock-on effects of von Braun’s work were enormous. It can be argued the success — in the worst possible way — of the V-2 led to the Arms Race, which led to the massive stockpiling of weapons, particularly nuclear ones, by the USA and

ASTRO BOY FIRST A JAPANESE COMIC, IN 1963 THIS BOY ROBOT SUPERHERO BECAME A CARTOON, AND IS CONSIDERED ONE OF THE FIRST SERIES TO EMBODY ANIME STYLE. EMPIRE MAGAZINE NAMED THE SPIKY-HAIRED KID ONE OF THE 50 GREATEST COMIC BOOK CHARACTERS. AND CONSIDERING HE HAS POWERFUL ROCKET BOOTS AND, FOR SOME REASON, THE ABILITY TO SHOOT BULLETS OUT OF HIS BUTT, WE CAN’T BLAME THEM 79 SEPTEMBER 2014

THE KNOCK-ON EFFECTS OF VON BRAUN’S WORK WERE ENORMOUS. IT CAN BE ARGUED THE SUCCESS — IN THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY — OF THE V-2 LED TO THE ARMS RACE, WHICH LED TO THE MASSIVE STOCKPILING OF WEAPONS THE CHIEF DESIGNER If Von Braun’s life had involved a metamorphosis,

another key rocket man’s existence was a remarkable story of survival. And secrecy. American author Tom Wolfe captured some of the mystery about this shadowy man in his 1979 book The Right Stuff: “The Soviet program gave off an aura of sorcery,” he wrote. “The Soviets released practically no ﬁgures, pictures, or diagrams. And no names; it was revealed only that the Soviet program was guided by a mysterious individual known as “the Chief Designer”. Wolfe continued, “But his powers were indisputable! Every time the United States announced a great space experiment, the Chief Designer accomplished it ﬁrst, in the most startling fashion.” In 1955, the US announced plans to put up an Earth satellite by early 1958; the Soviet Union put one up in October 1957. The US announced plans to send a satellite into orbit around the Sun in March, 1959; the Chief Designer managed it in January 1959. Even to the elite of the Soviet space corps, the name Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was not widely known. “He was only ever referred to by the initials of his ﬁrst two names, SP, or by the mysterious title of Chief Designer, or simply ‘Chief’,” said Alexei Leonov, arguably the greatest of all Soviet cosmonauts and one of the very few early pioneers

TITAN IV ON AUGUST 12, 1998, AN AMERICAN TITAN IV UNMANNED ROCKET EXPLODED SHORTLY AFTER LAUNCH. THAT EXPLOSION COST OVER US$1 BILLION, AS IT CARRIED A CLASSIFIED MILITARY SPY SATELLITE AT THE TIME. FOOTAGE OF THE BLAST CAN BE SEEN ON YOUTUBE. A YEAR LATER, ANOTHER TITAN IV ROCKET FAILED TO PLACE A COMMUNICATION SATELLITE INTO ORBIT, BURNING UP US$800 MILLION 80 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (MAIN); EPA/CLICK PHOTOS (SATURN V ROCKET F-1 ENGINE); NASA (APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING) SIDEBAR: USAF (TITAN IV); MICHAEL CRAWFORD (BATMOBILE); S.P. KOROLEV RSC (N1 ROCKET)

USSR. This is the downside of rocketry: for many years, its principal function was not to transport humans to the stars, but to attach nuclear weapons, as intercontinental ballistic missiles. By 1982, it is believed the US had 11,000 nuclear warheads and the Soviet Union 10,000, with over 2,000 launchers apiece. The stockpiles were easily sufficient to wipe out humanity many times over, before a period of decommissioning commenced in the 1980s. But ﬁrst, we must meet somebody else.

A RUSSIAN INTERCONTINENTAL MISSILE CROSSES MOSCOW'S RED SQUARE DURING A MILITARY PARADE IN 1965. THIS MARKED THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE END OF THE WAR IN EUROPE

ROCKET-LAUNCHING CARS IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY, CARS WERE STARTING TO BECOME A COMMON SIGHT IN THE US STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA. AND NOT EVERYONE WAS HAPPY ABOUT THAT. SPECIFICALLY, THE FARMERS’ ANTIAUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION. THEY PROPOSED A STRICT LIST OF RULES, INCLUDING: CARS TRAVELLING AT NIGHT MUST SEND UP A ROCKET EVERY MILE, THEN WAIT TEN MINUTES FOR THE ROAD TO CLEAR. “THE DRIVER MAY THEN PROCEED, BLOWING HIS HORN AND SHOOTING OFF ROMAN CANDLES, AS BEFORE.”

ROCKET PIONEERS

APOLLO RISES AGAIN

In terms of raising human civilization to another level, the F-1 rocket engines of Apollo 11 are perhaps one of the most important bits of kit in history. There were ﬁve of them, each producing 680,000 kilograms of thrust and 32 million horsepower, and blazing through 2,700 kilograms of kerosene and liquid oxygen per second. These engines put men on the moon in 1969. Burning for just a few minutes, they sloughed off the main Saturn V rocket and plunged into the Atlantic, where they lay for decades. Until 2013, when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos led an expedition to recover them. Using underwater remote vehicles, the team brought up rusting F-1 parts from a depth of almost 4.3 kilometres (see picture above). Bezos wrote that he was inspired to create the project thanks to childhood memories. “I was ﬁve years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration.” The F-1 parts will likely soon go on display in museums where, Bezos hopes, “maybe we can inspire a few more youths to invent and explore.”

N1 PROGRAMME BLAME THIS SOVIET SERIES OF ROCKETS FOR WHY RUSSIA NEVER MADE IT TO THE MOON. FOUR OF THESE MONSTERS, EACH WITH 30 ENGINES, EXPLODED AT LAUNCH. THE LAUNCH OF JULY 3, 1969 WAS THE WORST. JUST ONE STRAY BOLT GOT SUCKED INTO AN ENGINE IN MID-AIR, RESULTING IN AN EXPLOSION WITH THE FORCE OF SEVEN THOUSAND TONS OF TNT – THE LARGEST NON-NUCLEAR MAN-MADE EXPLOSION IN HISTORY

ELON MUSK WHEN THIS FOUNDER OF SPACEX AND TESLA MOTORS TWEETED LAST YEAR THAT HE HAD “FIGURED OUT HOW TO DESIGN ROCKET PARTS JUST WITH HAND MOVEMENTS THROUGH THE AIR,” WE KNOW HE WAS CHANNELING IRON MAN. HOW? BECAUSE IRON MAN DIRECTOR JON FAVREAU TWEETED HIM, ASKING, “LIKE IN IRON MAN?” ONE MINUTE LATER MUSK REPLIED, “YUP. WE SAW IT IN THE MOVIE AND MADE IT REAL. GOOD IDEA!” PRETTY NIFTY, CONSIDERING FAVREAU HAD EARLIER SAID MUSK INSPIRED HIS PORTRAYAL OF TONY STARK 81 SEPTEMBER 2014

who is still alive, in his book Two Sides of the Moon. “For those on the space programme there was no authority higher.” Leonov had been in the space corp for six months before he was allowed to meet Korolev. “He had the reputation of being a man of the highest integrity, but also of being extremely demanding,” Leonov described. “Everyone around him was on tenterhooks, afraid of making a wrong move and invoking his wrath. He was treated much like a god.”

MERCIFULLY, KOROLEV’S CENTRAL INTEREST IN LIFE WAS NOT NUCLEAR WAR, BUT SPACE FLIGHT. GRADUALLY REHABILITATED BACK INTO THE FOLD OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY, HE WAS ABLE TO PURSUE HIS TRUE DREAM “I remember the ﬁrst time I caught sight of him. I was looking out of the window when he arrived, stepping out of a black ZIS-110 limousine. He was taller than average; he wore the collar of his dark-blue overcoat turned up and the brim of his hat pulled down. ‘Sit down, my little eagles’, he said.” Korolev was the closest thing the Soviet Union had to a rock star. But people knew little about him, and in the West it is only in the last 20 years that we have learned the truth. His path to that period of exalted celebrity was varied, 82 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

to say the least. He rose fast in the period of military activity after the Bolshevik revolution; and was in charge of the ﬁrst Rocket Research and Development Centre within the Group for the Study of Reactive Motion (GIRD) in 1932, “the genesis of which would eventually become the Korolev design bureau that guided Soviet space exploration for more than 40 years,” according to writers Rex Hall and David Shayler in their study of the Soviet space programme, Rocket Men. He was part of the group that ﬂew the ﬁrst Soviet liquid-fuelled rocket in August 1933, which, like its early peers in Germany and America, ﬂew a modest distance before crashing, yet was held to be a success. He rose and rose. Then he made enemies of the wrong people. The Great Purge, a terrible campaign of repression by Joseph Stalin through the late 1930s, involved the detention of more than one and a half million people, of whom 681,892 were shot. Some historians argue that the ﬁgures could be even double that. In the middle of this, Korolev was arrested in 1938, denounced by three colleagues for deliberately slowing the work of the research institute. He was bundled from his house into a car, not given time to say goodbye to his three-yearold daughter or his wife and tortured into confession, then sentenced to 10 years in a Gulag work camp. Unable to believe this was anything other than a mistake, Korolev wrote appeals to everyone he could think of, Stalin included, but was shipped to eastern Siberia to undergo forced labour in a goldmine, where thousands died each month. He did get a retrial, reducing his sentence to eight years, and not in a Gulag, which likely saved his

life. Still, by the time he was sent back to Moscow for the bulk of his sentence in 1939, he had lost most of his teeth. Naturally, work on rocketry went backwards, and the leaders worldwide became von Braun and his Nazi colleagues. Making the best of an unspeakably bad situation, Korolev managed to resume work while in detention, working on rocket-assisted take off boosters for aircraft; his work here eventually getting him out of the camps in 1944, and gaining him the Badge of Honor the following year (he was not formally cleared of the charges until 1957). Upon release, he was among the Soviets sent to Germany in the dying days of World War II to try to ﬁnd the technology of the V-2 rocket and, ideally, the man who had built it. One has to wonder how different the world might be, had he located von Braun and worked with him in Moscow. Back in the Soviet Union, Korolev was tasked with duplicating von Braun’s V-2, which he did with his R series of rockets. Within two years of the end of WWII, his R-2 had doubled the range of the V-2 and became the ﬁrst missile to have a separate warhead. Shortly afterwards his R-3 had a long enough range to hit England from Moscow, and by 1957 the R-7 became the ﬁrst truly intercontinental ballistic missile, a two-stage rocket which could carry a ﬁve-ton nuclear bomb 7,000 kilometres, sufficient to hit America. The nastiest, scariest part of the Cold War was underway. Mercifully, Korolev’s central interest in life was not nuclear war, but space ﬂight. Gradually rehabilitated back into the fold of the Communist party, he became able to pursue his true dreams. As early as 1953, he was trying

to point out that his R-7 design could be adapted to put satellites into orbit. Somewhat mocked at ﬁrst, what changed party opinion was the growing sense of a competition with the US, both in terms of nuclear arms and control of the heavens. The clincher in the end was the appearance of stories in the American press in 1957, suggesting that the US might launch a satellite into orbit. Korolev saw these reports, brought them to the attention of the most powerful people in the USSR, and by presenting it as a race, got his way. Sputnik, the ﬁrst artiﬁcial Earth satellite — a little metal ball that changed the world — was launched by the USSR by October 1957. Galvanised, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev decided there should be another launch, to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution. The idea this time was to launch a much bigger payload, including a dog called Laika. Kolorev and his team designed the entire vehicle within four weeks without testing, but the launch was successful, though less so for Laika, who died from heat exhaustion six hours later. From here, one Soviet success followed another. Yuri Gagarin was launched into orbit on a modiﬁed version of Korolev’s R-7 in April 1961; while the Vostok series of ﬂights, included 100

25 METRES

ROCKET PIONEERS

V-2 CONFIGURATION

A HISTORY OF ROCKETS

1 2 3

WARHEAD

AUTOMATIC GYRO CONTROL

4 5 6

ALCOHOL-WATER MIXTURE

GUIDEBEAM AND RADIO COMMAND RECEIVERS

BEGINNING AS BALLISTIC MISSILES, ROCKETS HAVE EVOLVED OVER TIME INTO LUNAR LAUNCH CARRIERS

V-2 1944-1952

WEIGHT: 12,500 KILOGRAMS WARHEAD: 1,000 KILOGRAMS LENGTH: 14 METRES DIAMETER: 1.65 METRES

ROCKET BODY LIQUID OXYGEN

7 HYDROGEN PEROXIDE TANK 8 COMPRESSED NITROGEN PRESSURISING BOTTLES

HYDROGEN PEROXIDE

REACTION CHAMBER

q w e r

PROPELLANT TURBOPUMP

t y u

WING

R-7A 1959-1968

THRUST FRAME

OXYGEN/ALCOHOL BURNER CA ROCKET COMBUSTION CHAML (OUTER SKIN)

ALCOHOL INLETS JET VANE

DESCRIPTION: FIRST LONG-RANGE BALLISTIC MISSILE DESIGNER: PEENEMÜNDE ARMY RESEARCH CENTRE, DIRECTED BY WERNHER VON BRAUN TRIVIA: INITIALLY DESIGNED AS A “VENGEANCE WEAPON” TO ATTACK ALLIED CITIES IN WWII, ITS GREATEST IMPACT WAS AFTER THE WAR WHEN ITS GERMAN DESIGNERS BEGAN WORKING FOR NASA, DESIGNING BOOSTER ROCKETS

7 9 q w

8 e r

t y u

WEIGHT: 280 METRIC TONS LENGTH: 34 METRES DIAMETER: 3.02 METRES

DESCRIPTION: FIRST INTERCONTINENTAL BALLISTIC MISSILE DESIGNER: SERGEI KOROLEV TRIVIA: IN MODIFIED FORM, IT LAUNCHED SPUTNIK 1, THE FIRST ARTIFICIAL SATELLITE, INTO ORBIT, AND BECAME THE BASIS FOR THE R-7 FAMILY WHICH INCLUDES SPUTNIK, LUNA, MOLNIYA, VOSTOK, AND VOSKHOD SPACE LAUNCHERS, AND LATER SOYUZ/L/U/U2/FG/2

SATURN V 1966-1973

HEIGHT: 110.6 METRES WEIGHT: 3,000 METRIC TONS DIAMETER: 10.1 METRES

DESCRIPTION: HUMAN-RATED EXPENDABLE ROCKET AND LUNAR LAUNCH VEHICLE DESIGNER: MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTRE, DIRECTED BY WERNHER VON BRAUN TRIVIA: THE ONLY LAUNCH VEHICLE TO TRANSPORT HUMAN BEINGS BEYOND LOW EARTH ORBIT, IT REMAINS THE TALLEST, HEAVIEST AND MOST POWERFUL ROCKET EVER BROUGHT TO OPERATION

N1 1944-1952

HEIGHT: 105 METRES WEIGHT: 2,735 METRIC TONS DIAMETER: 17 METRES

V-2

R-7A

SATURN V

DESCRIPTION: MANNED LUNAR CARRIER ROCKET DESIGNER: SERGEI KOROLEV (DIED 1966) TRIVIA: DESIGNED TO COMPETE WITH THE SATURN V TO LAND A MAN ON THE MOON, DEVELOPMENT BEGAN IN 1959. EACH OF ITS FOUR ATTEMPTS TO LAUNCH FAILED. THE N1 WAS KEPT SECRET UNTIL 1989

N1 83 SEPTEMBER 2014

THE FIRST STAGE OF THE AMERICAN SATURN V ROCKET, THE S-1C, IS HOISTED BY CRANE IN THE TRANSFER AISLE OF THE VEHICLE ASSEMBLY BUILDING AT THE KENNEDY SPACE CENTRE ON FEBRUARY 21, 1969. RIGHT KOROLEV'S N1 ROCKET, WITH ITS 30 ENGINES, WAS DESIGNED AS A COMPETITOR FOR THE SATURN V

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ROCKET PIONEERS

the rendezvous (though not physical connection) between two spacecraft in one mission. Still, nobody in the US knew who the man was behind these ventures. “The Soviets persisted in offering no information as to the Chief Designer’s identity,” wrote Wolfe. “For that matter, they identiﬁed no one involved in Gagarin’s ﬂight other than Gagarin himself. Nor did they offer any pictures of the rocket or even such elementary data as its length and its rocket thrust. Far from casting any doubt as to the capabilities of the Soviet program, this policy seemed only to inﬂame the imagination.” But no matter. Having left America trailing in his wake, Korolev now turned his imagination to a new ambition — the moon.

PHOTOS: NASA(MAIN); S.P. KOROLEV RSC (N1 ROCKET)

EYES ON THE SKIES Meanwhile, the American space programme had not been moving smoothly. The recruitment of the Mercury 7 astronauts who would become the ﬁrst Americans in space, had been a subject of enormous fanfare. Yet the rockets that would send them aloft weren’t doing what they were supposed to do. “To almost anyone who had followed NASA’s efforts on television, the odds against the successful launch of an American into space seemed absolutely dreadful,” wrote Wolfe candidly. The Eisenhower Administration’s public attempts to catch up with the Russians made life worse at times too. “People were being treated to the sight of the rockets at Cape Canaveral either blowing up on the launch pad in the most ignominious, if brieﬂy hilarious, fashion or else heading off on crazy trajectories, toward downtown Orlando instead of outer space, in which case they had

to be blown up by remote control,” continues the author. Wolfe witnessed one of these many ﬁascos. One example, the Navy’s ﬁrst attempt to launch an American satellite with a Vanguard rocket, was televised nationally. After countdown, then ignition: “A mighty surge of noise and ﬂames,” Wolfe recalled. “The rocket lifts — some six inches (15 centimetres). The ﬁrst stage, bloated with fuel, explodes and the rest of the rocket sinks into the sand beside the launch platform. It appears to sink ever slower, like a fat old man collapsing into a Barcalounger.” The press called it “Kaputnik” and it became, for a time, the image of the American space programme. “The only obvious American talent was for blowing things up. They had many names, these rockets, Atlas, Navaho, Little Joe, Jupiter, but they all blew up.”Yet on May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard waited to become the ﬁrst American in space. He recalled later, the realisation that every part of his craft and rocket was made by the lowest bidder. Across the nation, people pulled to the side of the highways to concentrate on their radios, more in dread than excitement. “This tiny lad, up on the tip of that enormous white bullet, appeared to have about one chance in ten of living through it,” Wolfe recalled. “This was the greatest deathdefying hell-driver stunt ever broadcast, a patriotic stunt, a hash-mad stunt bound up with the fate of the country.” In the end, sick of delays, Shepard calmly told ground control: “Why don’t you ﬁx your little problem and light this candle.” They did, all went smoothly, and the US space programme was underway. While there was no disguising how far behind

the Soviets, the Americans still were; help was at hand from an unlikely source — Wernher von Braun. Having been transferred to the US in October 1945, given a false employment history and bleached, so to speak, of his Nazism, von Braun found himself working for Uncle Sam. In 1950 he moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where he remained for 20 years. The Redstone rocket in which Shepard went aloft was the result of the rocket development team he led. And much like the Soviet R-7, it was invented ﬁrst and foremost to carry ballistic missiles, not men. Von Braun, who’d never lost sight of his dreams of space ﬂight, was working on something altogether grander: the Saturn V, the machine that would deliver man to the moon. You can still see a Saturn V in Florida. “You can reel off ﬁgures and statistics all you like, but until you’ve stood underneath it, nothing can prepare you for this behemoth,” writes Andrew Smith in Moondust. “You try to ﬁt a meaningful portion of it into a photo, but you can’t, so you give up,” he writes. “To make something this big, and intend it to ﬂy — the audacity of this conceit alone — and then to make it work, to conceive of this impossible twisty chaos of pipes and cables and weird steel tubers and nozzles as big as the bus we just rode in on, bigger, and make them do something predictable and controllable and reliable enough to bet a life on, three lives, every time.” Bill Anders, among the ﬁrst crew ever to ﬂy on a Saturn V on Apollo 8, recalls: “We had simulated everything you can imagine”. Still, atop this missile, he was unprepared for the forces involved. “I’ve always thought of an analogy like an old whip antenna on

an automobile. You’re just some little beetle on the top. I thought we were banging into the launch tower. For the ﬁrst (it seemed like an hour, but it was probably 10 seconds), you couldn’t hear yourself think. I felt like I was in the jaws of a rat or a terrier. It was violent.”

IF VON BRAUN HAD BEEN PICKED UP BY THE SOVIETS IN 1945 INSTEAD OF THE AMERICANS, THERE’S EVERY CHANCE HISTORY WOULD REMEMBER A RUSSIAN NAME INSTEAD OF NEIL ARMSTRONG AS THE FIRST ON THE MOON There is no shortage of footage of Apollo missions going up on Saturn Vs, and they are truly extraordinary to watch. The burst of ﬂame, the slow motion start to the ascent, the rumble of a kind never matched before or since. Nothing this big has ﬂown again. “They say that it stood sixty feet (18.2 metres) taller than the Statue of Liberty and weighed six million pounds (3000 tons) at launch,” writes 85 SEPTEMBER 2014

Smith. “Among the welter of facts and ﬁgures, only two strike me as particularly remarkable. The ﬁrst is that this rocket was trusted to go to the moon on only its third ﬂight. The second is that it contained close to six million parts, meaning that, even with NASA’s astounding 99.9 percent reliability target, roughly 6,000 things could be expected to go wrong on a good ﬂight. Yet the Saturn V never failed, nor looked like failing when it mattered — and it doesn’t take a genius to understand that very likely a super genius was at work here.” That, for all his ﬂaws, was Wernher von Braun.

PHOTOS: REUTERS (MAIN); S-IVB THIRD STAGE OF THE APOLLO 8 SATURN V (NASA)

A LONG WAY FROM THE GULAGS, KOROLEV'S BODY WAS PUT IN THE GREAT HALL OF COLUMNS IN MOSCOW ON A PEDESTAL. RUSSIA HAD LOST ITS “MOST OUTSTANDING SON” This is why Smith says von Braun is the only person without whom a lunar landing would deﬁnitely not have taken place. There were other astronauts, other people who could have been in charge of the astronaut office, others to make the famous lunar modules. But no von Braun? If he had been picked up by the Soviets in 1945 instead of the Americans, there’s every chance history would remember a Russian name instead of Neil Armstrong as the ﬁrst on the moon. Though as things stood, the Soviets weren’t going to give up the 86 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

moon without a chance. Korolev had a plan. Back in the USSR, the Chief Designer realised getting men into orbit was easy, compared to getting them to the moon. He designed a new spacecraft called the Voskhod, an improvement on the Vostoks that Gagarin had used. Like the Apollo modules, Voskhods carried three people. The ﬁrst rocket ﬂew in 1964, and in the second, Alexei Leonov performed the ﬁrst-ever space walk, yet another Soviet ﬁrst. We now know he came incredibly close to disaster in doing so. That was the capsule sorted out. What would they use to get them up there? A new rocket would be required: the N1. They had unromantic names, these Soviet missiles, but the N1 was potentially grander than America’s Saturn V, and its ﬁrst stage remains the most powerful rocket stage ever built. At 105 metres, it was slightly smaller than the Saturn V, but had more thrust, because its bottom stage was powered by 30 engines, arranged in two rings. Yet the N1 never successfully ﬂew. There were four attempts, and all failed. The single biggest reason? Korolev had died.

END OF AN ERA As Alexei Leonov writes in his autobiography, the warning signs about Korolev’s health were ever present. When an unmanned Voskhod mission exploded in 1964, Leonov recalls Korolev visiting. “He looked exhausted and strained. He had not been well,” he writes. Later, Leonov wrote, “Not only was Sergei Pavlovich a brilliant designer and manager, but he had an iron will and an incredible determination born of immense hardship. How great that hardship had been, we were about to learn.” At the end of 1965, Korolev

“THE INTEGRAL!” Referring to US frustration over Korolev, Tom Wolfe writes of “The Integral”, a ﬁgure in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian 1921 novel We, set in an urban nation in which secret police control the population, who are given numbers rather than names. The novel’s protagonist, D-503, is the chief engineer of a spaceship called the Integral. Zamyatin had ﬂed Russia, and his work was in some level based on the post-revolutionary Communist Soviet Union. Forty years on from publication, the novel was starting to look startlingly accurate.

ROCKET PIONEERS

A CHILD PLAYS WITH A TOY SPACE SHUTTLE IN THE ROCKET GARDEN OF THE KENNEDY SPACE CENTER VISITOR COMPLEX NEAR CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA, AHEAD OF ITS FINAL LAUNCH ON 8 JULY, 2011

was diagnosed as suffering from a bleeding polyp in his intestine, and was admitted to hospital in 1966 to have it removed. On January 10, he invited Gagarin and Leonov to his home, a modest two-storey detached house in Moscow, on a street now named after him. At the party, Korolev told Leonov that he viewed his space walk as “the last major work of his life.” The three of them drank Armenian cognac and ate pirozhki. Korolev told the two cosmonauts his life story until 4am. “We had no inkling that night that Korolev wanted to talk because he felt he was close to death,” Leonov writes. Two nights later, Korolev died on the operating table. “The years of hardship in Stalin’s Gulags had taken their toll on his health. Korolev’s heart had stopped.” A long way from the Gulags, Korolev's body was put in the great Hall of Columns in Moscow on a pedestal covered with ﬂowers, while symphonies by Tchaikovsky and Beethoven played. Finally, the name of the Chief Designer was acknowledged, premier Brezhnev saying Russia had lost its “most outstanding son”. It was the end of an era. Gagarin, who would soon die himself in an accident, said: “The name of Sergei Pavlovich is synonymous with one entire chapter of the history of mankind.” According to Leonov, “What Korolev had achieved was far greater than anything so far achieved by any single person in America.” Korolev was replaced by his deputy, Vasily Mishin, a very good engineer but a big drinker and hesitant in big decisions. “I am convinced now that had Sergei Pavlovich lived just a little longer we would have been the ﬁrst to circumnavigate the moon,” writes Leonov. Instead, one 87 SEPTEMBER 2014

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THE S-IVB THIRD STAGE OF THE APOLLO 8 SATURN V, SHORTLY AFTER SEPARATION FROM THE COMMAND / SERVICE MODULE IN 1969

setback followed another, and Armstrong and Aldrin won the race, launched there by von Braun’s Saturn V in 1969. To this day, 12 men have set foot on the moon. All are American, and they all got there thanks to the famous Saturn V rockets.

WITH GODDARD, KOROLEV AND VON BRAUN DEAD, THE GREAT PIONEERS WERE GONE AND IN SOME WAYS ROCKETRY ACTUALLY WENT BACKWARDS Von Braun wanted the Saturn V development continued after the Apollo programme. Bill Anders says von Braun was suffering from cancer and dying, yet wanting to do Saturn V above 88 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

everything else. “He didn’t get much of a hearing. Turns out the manned ﬂight guys didn’t like Wernher, because when he was a Nazi, most of them were World War II vets, and he was getting a lot more attention than they thought he needed. In retrospect, it’s too bad, because that’s what we should have done,” he notes ruefully. Von Braun retired from NASA in 1972, working at Fairchild Industries in Maryland. His health forced him to retire in 1976 and he died the following year. His gravestone refers to Psalm 19:1. “The skies proclaim the work of his hands.” With Goddard, Korolev and von Braun dead, the great pioneers were gone, and in some senses it seems that rocketry actually went backwards in their absence. The Space Shuttle for instance, was supposed to usher in a new era of reusable spacecraft, an economical system that would make space ﬂight routine. It perhaps achieved that, but the double rockets that sent the Space Shuttles up were

not a function of pioneering design, but a lack of money. Mike Mullane ﬂew the Shuttle three times, and wrote one of the ﬁnest ever books about space travel, Riding Rockets. He recalls the development of the Shuttle, just as NASA’s budgets were being slashed. “NASA looked for cheaper booster designs and settled on twin reusable Solid-fuelled Rocket Boosters (SRBs),” he writes. “These were just steel tubes ﬁlled with a propellant of ammonium perchlorate and aluminium powder. These ingredients were combined with a chemical binder, mixed as a slurry in a large Mixmaster, then poured into the rocket tubes like dough into a bread pan. After curing in an oven, the propellant would solidify to the consistency of hard rubber, thus the name solid rocket booster.” Because they were simple, SRBs were cheap, he writes. After burnout, the empty tubes could be parachuted into salt water and reused. There was a catch, however. “They were signiﬁcantly more dangerous than liquid-

fuelled engines,” that can be controlled during operation: valves can be closed to stop the ﬂow of propellant, shutting down the engine, “like turning off the valve to a gas barbecue.” Solid rocket boosters lack such adaptability. “Once ignited, they cannot be turned off and solid propellant cannot ﬂow, so it cannot be diverted to another engine,” writes Mullane. These rocket boosters are fundamentally not too different from Chinese rockets thousands of years ago, he further writes. “After ignition they have to work because nothing can be done if they don’t. And, typically, when they do not work, the failure mode is catastrophic.” Their sheer size (45 metres high) meant they had to be constructed and transported in four propellant-ﬁlled segments, then bolted together to make the completed booster, the joints between them sealed by rubber things called O-rings. It was the failure of one of these that caused the Chall-enger disaster — and the death of seven astronauts — in 1986. There is an immense sophistication to contemporary rocketry — to the extent that guided missiles in the military can supposedly even hit a briefcase-sized target, despite it being hundreds of kilometres away. And modern rockets now put commercial and military satellites into orbit with such a frequency, that it almost renders the process as good as routine. But there is also far less of the pioneering romance now — like the sheer preposterous might of the Saturn V. The result is that the golden age of rocket-powered dreaming has passed us, and with it, the era’s most brilliant and complex protagonists.

OFF THE COAST OF PANAMA LIES COIBA, A FORMER PENAL ISLAND THAT HAS NEVER BEEN PLUNDERED, SETTLED OR POACHED AND HAS AN ABUNDANT WILDLIFE COMPARED TO NEIGHBOURING ISLANDS. DAVE SALMONI WANTS TO KNOW WHY

DANGEROUS LIASONS 90 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

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WHO DO YOU TURN TO WHEN FACED WITH UNEXPLAINED ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR IN A REMOTE, DANGEROUS LOCATION? WILD MAN DAVE SALMONI, OF COURSE, WITH HIS TIPS ON WILDLIFE SURVIVAL OF THE EXTREME KIND 91 SEPTEMBER 2014

LEFT AND RIGHT IN PANAMA, DAVE AND HIS CREW VENTURE TO THE UNSPOILED ISLAND OF COIBA TO UNEARTH ITS HAUNTING SECRETS

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elieve it or not, even in this day and age there still are unanswered questions about some of the planet’s most wellknown animals. Take the South Paciﬁc island of Rangiroa, also known as Shark Island. It’s home to one of the greatest congregations of big-toothed swimmers on the planet, from blacktip reef sharks to tiger sharks, silvertips and hammerheads. These hunters are usually solitary — so why are they congregating in an atoll that’s been described as a marine desert? Who better to answer these kinds of questions than big predator expert Dave Salmoni. Here’s a man who’s done the impossible, lived with African lions and

explored some of the most dangerous towns in the world for Discovery Channel, after all. In Mystery of the Lost Islands, Salmoni is part detective, part survivalist, journeying from active volcanoes on the Galapagos to the wild coast of Alaska. That means, apart from other derringdo, our fearless host voluntarily submits himself to having a vampire bat suck on his feet. In case you were wondering, that’s not as romantic as it sounds. In a recent roundtable discussion with several publications, the Canadian adventurer and conservationist — who, incidentally, describes himself as a “tiger tickler, lion lover and adventure addict”— discussed the challenges of ﬁlming the show, what he thinks of when he meets a certain kind of woman, and why elephants maybe aren’t so lovable after all.

VAMPIRES AND GHOSTS “An example of a great mystery was when we went to Devil’s Island [in Panama], and there was this long chain of jungle islands that have been poached out. There wasn’t a single animal, the trees are getting cut down, and yet this one island in the middle of them all was completely left alone. All of the poachers, the locals or the people that were doing the logging or the animal poaching — they don’t go there. We couldn’t ﬁgure out why. They would all mention vampires and ghosts. I’ve been around way too long to

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believe that anybody in an impoverished country is not going to go to an island because of a ghost and a vampire story. I’ve heard lots of stories around the campﬁre. That’s not usually a reason to protect an entire island and all the species on it, so we had to go out there, have a look and ﬁgure out why were people so scared to be there.”

HOW TO GAIN ANIMAL TRUST “I mean typically, any time when working with a dangerous animal; rather than me trying to worry about whether I trust them, I try to build their trust in me. I’ve learned over the years that different species have different things that they like to see in order for a human being to become predictable. A lion is looking for one type of an action, an elephant is looking for another, and a shark might be looking for something else. So before I even begin an interaction, it’s research, research, research. And then during that research, you’ll always ﬁnd out what is the worst case scenario; and clearly with these types of animals the worst case scenario is typically an attack on myself or someone in my crew.”

OFF THE BEATEN TRACK, INDEED “I would say the coolest thing about the show was the remote locations. Each one 94 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

WHO IS SALMONI? Danger is a by-product of Dave Salmoni's love for animals. His interest is not in putting himself in harm's way, it's in forming a relationship with a wild animal. "If mine was a job where I did not have to consider my own mortality every day, it would be far more fun," says the avid outdoorsman. Growing up, his bedroom wall was plastered with posters of big cats. After studying zoology at university in Canada, he worked as an animal trainer, focusing on large cat training, before travelling with two captive-bred Bengal tigers to Africa with TV cameras in tow.

ABOVE SALMONI FILMING IN THE FALKLANDS, AN ISLAND WHICH QUICKLY BECOMES A PRISON FOR ITS POPULATION OF MIGRATING SEALS, SEA LIONS AND PENGUINS WHEN KILLER WHALES LAY SIEGE BELOW IN PANAMA, DAVE AND HIS CREW VENTURE TO THE UNSPOILED ISLAND OF COIBA TO UNEARTH ITS HAUNTING SECRETS

HIS MUSCLES AREN’T JUST FOR SHOW “Typically to be ready for one of those interactions I have to be mentally prepared; I have to research and be physically prepared, and that’s usually by sitting in the gym. Once we ﬁgure out how a lion, an elephant or a tiger is going to attack, I just need to know what to do with my body. And then I’ll just spend hours and hours in the gym making sure my body can do those things. Then, once I’m actually facing the animal it’s all a matter of making it calm. I can talk to most animals with my body and my body posture. Animals understand tone of voice and they also understand body posture. If you ever look at the footage of all my shows, you’ll see that I rarely approach an animal straight on. I’m almost always slouching or looking sideways. I’m always moving slowly. If I want to calm them down, I’ll drop my proﬁle or raise my proﬁle. And these are all techniques that I’ve learned over the years in order to build this trust and then I’m rolling.”

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of these islands was chosen speciﬁcally because they were in the middle of nowhere. These animals are doing these behaviours, and it’s a mystery because there’s nobody out there to solve them. So we spent the money, spent the time and found a way to get out to these islands and spend long periods of time there. It’s not just a matter of getting to these places; it’s about having consistent fresh water for entire ﬁlm crew; it’s about having food and feeding these people as well as having shelters in some of the most inhospitable climates in the whole world. And you’ve got to have people not only living and surviving — which we’re sort of used to [watching] on TV — these people also have to wake up in the morning like myself and smile and go on camera and try to ﬁnd out the answers to the mystery. So, logistically, it was the biggest task I’ve ever been a part of. We took planes, trains, tiny boats, inﬂatable rafts; we were dropping off things in helicopters. We had people hiking days and days and days with an amount of equipment that you don’t believe any human being would be able to carry. It was one of those journeys where, while we were doing it, it was so difficult, we didn’t think we’d be able to survive it, and after we did it we were so proud of what we’d accomplished.”

ANIMAL REPUTATIONS “Let’s picture something like an elephant. I’d say most people would say, ‘An elephant is the sweetest animal out there; I love looking into his eyes.’ That’s a true statement. However, they’re also one of the most dangerous animals on the planet. When they’re upset, they are really very upset. The contrast to that are animals like sharks ; they’ve been given a bad rap. After Jaws, most people would tell you, ‘Oh, wow. Sharks are so dangerous. How dare you go swim with sharks.’ And if you watch Mystery of the Lost Island, we do have a place called Shark Island and I jump in the water. It’s probably some of the most difficult diving in the world, and I bumped into one of the largest sharks you’d ever ﬁnd in the ocean. And most people would say that’s a recipe for disaster, but I can tell you that if you watch that sequence, you’ll just fall in love with them. The sharks are such a misunderstood animal because there is so little aggression in them, unlike maybe

the larger mammals. Some of us have a lot more intellect and that intellect sometimes creates a malice. I don’t believe that sharks have that.” DAVE IN ALASKA

THE CANADIAN ADVENTURER AND CONSERVATIONIST DESCRIBES HIMSELF AS A “TIGER TICKLER, LION LOVER AND ADVENTURE ADDICT” THE DANGER IS REAL “When we did the grizzly bear shoot for Bear Island, you’ll see me surrounded by bears; bears coming out of the woods everywhere, and I imagine everyone is going to think, ‘Well, there must be someone with a shotgun somewhere or there must be a cage for them all to run in somewhere.’ That’s not true. We’re doing what we say we’re doing, and I believe that’s probably one of the bigger misconceptions [from viewers] only because I feel like the audiences have become very TV savvy these days. I think they’ve been duped a few times and now they expect it. Well, I can tell you that in Mystery of the Lost Island, we do not try to dupe anybody. In fact, we’re so open with what we do that we did a “Making of ” at the end just in case you missed it.”

WE’RE ALL JUST ANIMALS “I feel like if I ever run into someone at work who has a very dominating personality, I start to think to myself, ‘How will I deal with a male lion?’ And if I ever ﬁnd a big powerful female in my life, I wonder, ‘How would I handle that if I was dealing with a matriarchal elephant in an elephant herd?’ And things like that often 95 SEPTEMBER 2014

EPISODE GUIDE VOLCANO ISLAND, FERNANDINA Dave ventures to Fernandina island, a completely protected, uninhabited and actively volcanic island in the Galapagos Archipelago (below). Dave tracks down some of the weirdest and toughest animals on the planet to ﬁnd out how they survive in this hell on earth. His mission takes him into freezing waters with rare marine iguanas and ﬂightless cormorants, before witnessing lightning-fast snakes on the hunt, which in turn are being hunted by eagles. In this do-or-die island, life is always on a knife’s edge.

DEVIL’S ISLAND, COIBA Unspoiled and unexplored Coiba (below) is a shining green jewel off the coast of Panama — rich in trees, rare animals and ﬂora — but it is largely ignored by the locals. But why? In perhaps his darkest mission yet, Dave journeys into the heart of Coiba in an attempt to uncover the secret behind stories of ghosts, torture, vampires and death that seem to haunt the island.

MAKING OF DEADLIEST MOMENTS In this episode, Dave reveals the extreme lengths to which he and his wildlife teams went to produce the series. They battled through many hardships but somehow, despite the trials of the year-long ﬁlming schedule, Dave manages to retain his unique sense of humour, and passion for the animals and islands he is privileged to witness ﬁrsthand. 96 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

"IT'S A FANTASTIC TIME TO BE A WILDLIFE FILMAKER", SAYS SALMONI. "EVERY TIME WE’RE WATCHING A DOCUMENTARY, WE WANT TO SEE ANIMALS IN A WAY THAT WE HAVEN’T SEEN THEM BEFORE — TRYING TO FIND WAYS TO SEE ANIMALS FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE, IN A DIFFERENT LIGHT AND IN HIGHER DEFINITION."

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help get down to the basics of behaviour: ‘Now, where is this behaviour coming from? Okay, I understand that.’ You start to understand where people are coming from in their behaviour, and then it guides me in a way in which I should learn to react.”

TIP: DON’T HIGH-FIVE SHARKS “Now, if you have no control of your body and you start waving your hands around in front of a great white shark, you’re going to lose it. So you have to really do all kinds of really good core exercises that will hold your body in a way that, when bad things are starting to happen, you’re going to have your balance underwater.”

“IT’S ALL A MATTER OF MAKING IT (THE ANIMAL) CALM, AND I CAN TALK TO MOST WITH MY BODY AND MY BODY POSTURE. ANIMALS UNDERSTAND TONE OF VOICE AND THEY ALSO UNDERSTAND BODY POSTURE” SMART ANIMAL CONSERVATION “I can point to tigers, I can point to elephants, I can point to lions, I can point to sharks, and we kind of know what the problems are and why we’re coming into conﬂict. And we also know some of the things we could be doing to resolve those conﬂicts, but we haven’t as a group got together — where the politicians are sitting with the scientists and the ﬁnancial people with the will to do it — and said, ‘Please give me your money, please change these laws and scientists, please action this plan.’ And I think that’s the one thing that I would like to see happen more.”

TIPS FOR ANIMAL TRAINERS? “Well, my usual big tip is, ‘don’t get bitten — that hurts a lot’. I would say the animal training world and the things that you see me do on television, that’s the exciting part of my job. The majority of my job is dealing with picking up poop, feeding the animal, making sure that it’s taken care of, and making sure that it’s happy. That’s a

EPISODE GUIDE JOIN DAVE SALMONI AS HE EXPLORES THE UNIQUE ANIMAL ADVENTURES ON THESE DEADLY ISLANDS

SHARK ISLAND, RANGIROA

The adventure begins on the South Paciﬁc island of Rangiroa (below), a secluded site with a frightening reputation as the shark capital of the world. Blacktip reef sharks, tiger sharks, silvertips, grey reef sharks and great hammerheads; these top predators are normally found in small numbers, but here congregate in incredible numbers.

KILLER WHALE ISLAND, FALKLANDS

Dave travels to a remote speck of land in the wild and stormy South Atlantic. Each year, thousands of elephant seals, sea lions and penguins ﬂock to the Falklands (below) to breed. But they are pursued by the ocean’s greatest predator, the killer whales, who lay siege to the island. But lately, seals have been disappearing at greater rates than normal. What else could be out there preying on them? Dave is determined to ﬁnd out.

GRIZZLY ISLAND, ADMIRALTY

Dave journeys to a harsh, mountainous island off the coast of Alaska — home to the greatest concentration of grizzly bears on the planet. The grizzlies could easily ‘escape’ the island for more fertile pickings on the mainland, but choose not to. Dave sets out to ﬁnd out why, and in the process, is cornered by grizzlies, trapped inside his tent and amazed by what he sees on his camera traps. 97 SEPTEMBER 2014

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"THE COOLEST THING ABOUT THE SHOW WAS THE REMOTE LOCATIONS. EACH ONE OF THESE ISLANDS WAS CHOSEN SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE THEY WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE," SAYS SALMONI, ATOP A PEAK IN THE GALAPAGOS RIGHT RANGIROA ISLAND IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC

lot of hard back-breaking work and not a lot of hugs and kisses.”

THE BEST PREDATOR? “I would say it has to be one of the big cats. It’s going to be a tiger or a lion. I feel like they represent what I love about wildlife. I think a lion and a tiger in its natural essence just represents being free, being out on its own and doing what it wants, imposing its will and doing what it was designed to do. And there’s their beauty and their grace. I just feel like all the things that I value in a life, they sort of embody that. So that’s why I connect to them the most, and that’s why I feel like when I see a lion, I think of all the animals that they live with and vice versa; same with the tiger. They’re sort of keystone ﬂagships for me to be the guards of the natural world.”

PICKING FAVOURITES After a year and a half of filming, surely Salmoni's got a favourite island. "If I had to choose one over another, they would be heartbroken. They’re like little children, each of these islands. " But when push comes to shove, the Alaskan island of grizzly bears has the edge. " I expected it to be old-hat, because I’m a bear scientist — my first degree was in bear biology — and I’ve been to Alaska a zillion times. I expected that to be me in my comfort zone, but because they were doing things so strangely, all of the things that I expect them not to do, they were doing."

SHARKS, SHARKS EVERYWHERE “Now, we won’t be giving out too much of each of episode but I’ll deﬁnitely give you an example of a mystery. So we found Shark Island — it’s an example I’ve been using a lot. Shark Island was this oasis; you know, in the middle of what we would call an ocean desert where there was no life anywhere, it was this one atoll that had the highest concentration of sharks we could ﬁnd anywhere in the world — and that’s not normal. Normally when you’re ﬁnding high concentrations of wildlife it’s because there are groups and ecosystems all interacting and supporting each other, and that wasn’t happening.”

TRAINING FOR BEAR ATTACKS “For Bear Island we’d watch the way in which a bear is going to attack, and I then would say, ‘Okay, I need to get that weight 99 SEPTEMBER 2014

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off me and to the side or I need to manage the teeth because that’s what’s going to kill you while I try to retain my balance.’ So those are things that we’ll look at; instead of focusing on endurance, in that case [my trainer and I are] focusing on ﬁve minutes of power. Five minutes of making sure you don’t get knocked off your feet, because that will kill you. Making sure that your upper body is strong enough to deﬂect teeth as they come in your direction, and in other cases, hug yourself deep enough into its body that you can get yourself to a stalemate that hopefully someone can get their pepper spray out, and get that bear off of you.”

“IF I EVER FIND A BIG POWERFUL FEMALE IN MY LIFE, I WONDER, ‘HOW WOULD I HANDLE THAT IF I WAS DEALING WITH A MATRIARCHAL ELEPHANT IN AN ELEPHANT HERD?’ AND THINGS LIKE THAT OFTEN HELP GET DOWN TO THE BASICS OF BEHAVIOUR”

WHEN WILL WE START PROTECTING ANIMALS MORE? “I’d like to believe that as time goes on we’re going to continue to see shows like Mystery of the Lost Island and we’re going to get a connection back. We’re going to realise that we don’t need to dominate the planet in such a way, and some of the more wealthy places are going to reach out and help the less affluent, so that we’re not asking a poor farmer to give up his land and his food in order for a tiger to survive. I believe that global consciousness will come around to that. Now, the pessimist will say that humanity usually doesn’t react until there’s a major problem. So until tigers are extinct, we won’t be able to have too many long discussions with the government of India as to how we could put them back. I would hope that conversation happens sooner than later.” 100 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

THE FALKLANDS

WHAT'S ON THIS MONTH ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL

Game of Stones Don Kogen, America's most extreme gem hunter, specialises in unearthing rare stones from the most dangerous and lawless places on earth, racing the clock to be the ﬁrst to each new ﬁnd. Each episode of GAME OF STONES features Kogen and his team in all-new countries, including Thailand, Turkey, Tanzania, Brazil and India, always staying one step ahead of the competition - in this industry, there is no second place. AIRS MONDAY TO THURSDAY AT 7 PM, STARTING SEPTEMBER 1

102 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

WHAT'S ON

Revealed: World's Biggest Election Every ﬁve years citizens of the world’s largest democracy – India, gather to vote and elect its new Prime Minister. With over 800 million voters, multitude of political parties campaigning and the billions of rupees spent, it is one of the most challenging and incredible processes of facilitating the elections. Discovery Channel in its exclusive one-hour special REVEALED: WORLD’S BIGGEST ELECTION brings 'behind the scenes' action of the logistical feat of organising and conducting the largest elections in the world — the Indian General Election. AIRS MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 AT 9 PM

103 SEPTEMBER 2014

How Do They Do It? We rarely consider many of the objects that make up the modern world – elevators, carpets, helicopters, street lights, and more. The ordinary and seemingly simple objects that we are surrounded by – and perhaps take for granted – actually have extraordinary beginnings and often intricate working processes. But have you ever thought to ask, HOW DO THEY DO IT? Go behind the scenes to discover how to do the things, and make the things that we use and see all around us every day. From what makes each lock unique and the science behind the humble ball-point pen to how a harbour is built and the technology of speed of racing cars, HOW DO THEY DO IT? will take you on a journey around the world to reveal things that you didn’t know, or perhaps what you thought you knew. AIRS MONDAY TO FRIDAY AT 10 PM

Amish Maﬁa Untrusting of outside law enforcement, some Amish in Lancaster County, PA have for many years turned to a small organized group of men for protection and justice. Lebanon Levi is the Amish insider who holds the power and serves as protector of the community for a price. His team engages in a life outside of Amish and non-Amish community codes as he quietly exerts inﬂuence and control. Levi’s brand of order is precise as he seeks to keep outside forces from inﬁltrating. A sneak peek of Discovery’s new series AMISH MAFIA, provides a ﬁrst-ever look at the men who protect and maintain peace and order within the community in Lancaster. AIRS EVERY SUNDAY AT 10 PM STARTING SEPTEMBER 7

104 DISCOVERY CHANNEL MAGAZINE INDIA

WHAT'S ON

The Big Brain Theory: Pure Genius Who will become America's next great innovator? Discovery Channel's THE BIG BRAIN THEORY: PURE GENIUS is looking for the next great technological mind that could change the future. The Big Brain Theory: Pure Genius is a competitive series that will feature a seemingly impossible engineering challenge to be solved by the contestants each week. Competitors will have just 30 minutes to come up with a solution using their own intellect to complete the challenge. Based on logic and design, the expert panel of judges will determine the best engineering concept and select two captains to lead their team to execute the project. AIRS EVERY FRIDAY AT 9 PM, STARTING SEPTEMBER 19

105 SEPTEMBER 2014

Discovery Channel Magazine India - September 2014 - PDF Free Download (2024)

References