World of Knowledge 2016-12

PLUS! Was Queen Victoria the world's biggest drug dealer? ISSUE 46 DECEMBER 2016 $7.95 (INCL. GST) NZ $8.90 (INCL. GST)

CIA Mind Control + Big Brother + Terrorism Cover-Ups SPACCE EXPLORATION

WILD WEATHER

Why NASA wants YOU to go to Mars

The super-clouds dumping a BILLION litres of water

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Tomaree Head Summit Walk

Tomaree National Park

Ben Boyd National Park Greencape Lightstation Keeper’s Cottages

W

ITH ONE OF THE WORLD’S great whale migrations taking place along the NSW coastline this winter, it’s time to head to a coastal national park to see the ocean’s most majestic creature. National parks make up almost 50 per cent of the NSW coastline and provide some of the best lookouts, headlands and foreshores to see whales on their annual migration. The north coast – from Tweed Heads to Port Stephens – offers some of the best whale watching in the country. Popular spots such as Cape Byron State Conservation Area and Tomaree National Park (NP) are ideal for seeing breaching humpbacks and southern right whales. Sydney and its surrounds offer many places for whale watching and it’s an incredible opportunity to see them migrating past Australia’s largest city.Top spots can be found in Sydney Harbour,

Ku-ring-gai Chase and Kamay Botany Bay national parks. The south coast, from Shoalhaven to Batemans Bay and Eden, is home to several generous stretches of coastal wilderness, with large numbers of whales making an appearance on their annual migration. Head to Jervis Bay and Meroo national parks for fantastic vantage points. There’s also a range of accommodation in NSW national parks that offers a unique holiday experience. Stay in a restored lighthouse cottage perched on a headland. Choose from spectacular locations including Cape Byron, the wildlife sanctuary of Montague Island Nature Reserve and Green Cape Lightstation in Ben Boyd National Park. For family-friendly coastal cabins and a fun whale-watching getaway, enjoy a stay at Pretty Beach and Depot Beach, in Murramarang National Park on the south coast.

Visit www.wildaboutwhales.com.au to plan your whale-watching adventure

SPECIAL ACCOMMODATION OFFERS atching

To make the most out of your whale-w experience, take advantage of great accommodation deals in NSW national parks, ranging from luxury lighthouse cottages to coastal cabins. Visit: www.wildaboutwhales.com.au for more information, plus terms and conditions.

NITY JOIN THE WHALE-LOVING COMMU whale sightings Stay connected and get the latest and information:

Warwick Kent.

Website – for all your whale info, best vantage points, tips for whale watching and coastal accommodation, visit www.wildaboutwhales.com.au FREE Mobile App – download the Wild About Whales app to see whale sightings and record your own – just search ‘whales NSW’ in your app store Facebook – join the whale-loving community to stay updated and share photos and experiences at: www.facebook.com/wildaboutwhales Twitter – share your sightings on Twitter with the @wildaboutwhales community using #whaleon

Humpback breaching off Ben Boyd National Park

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BOYAN SLAT Inventor The 22-year-old Dutchman is on a mission: he wants to completely rid the world’s oceans of plastic – using a kilometre-long catchment system floating on the surface of the sea. PAGE

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CHARLES BOLDEN NASA chief The US space agency is beginning the greatest adventure in the history of mankind. Find out how even you can go to Mars. PAGE

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eard the one about Kim Kardashian being a shapeshifting alien from Uranus? Too bad. Don’t worry though, it’s probably on an internet list somewhere, wedged between the latest 9/11 speculation and that story about Obama’s heritage that just won’t lie down. Who knows how many conspiracy theories exist. New ones sprout at the same rate as world childbirths; existing philosophies are more viral than women-inChewbacca-mask videos. For an idea of the infinite but ever-expanding size of this universe, scroll down Wikipedia’s ‘List of Conspiracy Theories’. There’s 45 sub-headings. Within each category is another set of theories. There’s more niches within those. Niches within niches. That’s how you know a movement has crawled up to the overground. In the same way pop music began with one

STEVE LUDWIN Experimenter For 30 years, the American has been injecting himself with some of the deadliest snake venom in the world. But why? PAGE

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strain of rock’n’roll in the 1950s and then splintered into the hundreds of different sub-genres we have today, so The Conspiracy Theory started with JFK’s assassination and proceeded to fork so many times that there’s now a group of people who believe the Large Hadron Collider is a device for awakening an Egyptian god. I kid you not. But not all conspiracy theories are created equal. For every two dozen crackpot shots-in-the-dark, there’s one that almost hits the target of plausibility. And from those, another small percentage which have, through credible scientific processes, been proven true. Here’s where this month’s issues lifts off, then, with the conspiracy theories that defied the odds. Guess which famous celebrity doesn’t feature among them. Vince Jackson, Editor Follow me on Twitter: @vince_jackson1 3

ON THE COVER

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ON THE COVER

Leave your tin-foil hats at the door; these conspiracy theories were no fakes

Apply now for

the greatest adventure in the history of mankind!

22 How does one of the largest army transporters in the world work?

36

A harrowing journey into a twisted mind…

42

JETZT

62 4

Plastic waste is threatening to suffocate our oceans – but a 22-YEAR-OLD wants to stop that from happening

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Their tricks are designed for extreme situations  but you can use them too

CONTENTS DECEMBER 2016

Food on trial:

28

the havoc that ADDITIVES wreak in the body

96 SCIENCE 22 Job Hunt For Mars Get the gig and you’ll be more famous than Matt Damon

WORLD EVENTS 62 An Ocean Of Plastic Can a super-filter save our oceans?

74 What Would A Navy Seal Do?

ON THE COVER

Experts reveal how to really make yourself safe

36 The Dark Side Of Couchsurfing The disturbing tale of a rogue policeman

THE HUMAN BODY AND MIND 58 The Man Who Injects Snake Venom Why does this man inject himself with toxins?

28 Is My Food Killing Me? Our dinner in the dock

High in the sky and weighing millions of tons:

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WHAT CLOUDS TELL US

NATURE 50 The Real Cloud Atlas The incredible science of cloud spotting

70 Food Glorious Food Ground squirrels: small rodents, huge appetites

TECHNOLOGY 42 The Flying Monster In the cockpit of the 263-ton C-17 Globemaster

ON THE COVER

HISTORY 10 Conspiracy Theories That Came True Sometimes, the truth is scarier than you imagine

80 History’s Forbidden Questions What the world wasn’t supposed to know

REGULARS 3 Experts In This Issue Professional people offering their insights this month

6 The Story Behind The Photos Two fascinating photos and the stories behind them

90 Questions And Answers Amazing facts from science, technology and everyday life

96 And Finally How a ‘useless’ lion confounded the sceptics

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98 Letters

The questions no one has ever dared to ask…

Your views and questions aired

AMAZING PHOTO

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THE NOT-SO GIANT PANDA M

acau, China, 26th June 2016: the staff at the Giant Panda Pavilion nervously hold their breath. They’re hoping to witness one of the rarest events in the animal kingdom: the birth of giant panda cubs. For decades, zoos around the world have tried to breed the endangered bear in captivity – with little success. It’s notoriously difficult to do, with a multitude of complicated factors hampering the mating process. But nine-year-old Xin Xin suddenly heaves herself upright, leans back and gives birth to two tiny cubs. The keepers are jubilant but know that the hard work has only just begun. Giant pandas are finicky creatures. For instance, despite technically being carnivores, they prefer to munch on bamboo for 12 hours a day simply because it’s easier. The woody grass makes up 99% of their diet – even though they can’t digest it properly. This extreme fussiness also extends to their reproductive process. The first difficulty is that female pandas only ovulate once a year, meaning there’s a very short window to conceive – usually just two or three days. The second is that they’re picky about their

partners: you can’t just introduce any male and female and immediately expect a healthy brood of cubs. It requires patience and depends on the couple’s compatibility, the setting and the male’s ‘previous experience’. In fact, the black-and-white creatures are so easily disturbed that the Giant Panda Pavilion had to close to the public entirely 12 days before the delivery. The most pressing issue for the panda handlers in Macau, though, was the sheer vulnerability of the two delicate babies. Giant panda offspring are some of the smallest animal newborns compared to their parents, who are often 1,000 times heavier and 100 times larger than their young. The larger of the two weighed a measly 135g, while the smaller barely troubled the scales at 53g. Furthermore, the blind, almost hairless kids are utterly dependent on their mother for warmth, milk and security. The keepers rushed the runt to intensive care, where it responded to treatment and began to gain weight. At the time of going to press, both cubs were in good health, had stopped looking like “glutinous rice balls with grated coconut” and had been given names: Dabao, meaning “big treasure”, and Xiaobao, “little treasure”.

WORDS: Max Figgett. PHOTO: Alamy

It may look like a balding guinea pig but this tiny, pink tot will become one of the largest carnivores on Earth

AMAZING PHOTO

9.30AM, PORT ST JOHNS, SOUTH AFRICA

THE BUFFET IS OPEN WHO LAID THE TABLE? The ones who served the buffet on the east coast of South Africa have already disappeared from the scene: dolphins tracked the shoal of sardines using echolocation and rounded up the fish into a bait ball. The hunters then darted in and out of the rotating vortex of fish, gorging themselves on the easy pickings. But so engrossed were the dolphins in the glittering feast that they failed to notice the other bandits attracted by the growing commotion in the water…

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE ARCH-ENEMY TURNS UP? Blacktip sharks pick up every tiny movement in the water from hundreds of metres away – including, of course, this sardine bait ball. So, within minutes, the dolphins’ sworn enemies have crashed their party. The bottlenose dolphins could live with having a few sharks at the dinner table (hey, there’s enough to go round), but when more than three dozen turn up, they decide to beat a hasty retreat. After all, you never know what a shark is going to bite next during a blood frenzy…

WHAT‘S THE COMPETITION FROM ABOVE? The most effective sardine hunters don’t lurk underwater, but 30 metres above the sea: no one has a better strike rate than the Cape gannet. It’s nearly 100%. In comparison, sharks are only successful half of the time. The reason? Cape gannets hit the water at speeds of up to 120km/h, a third faster than the sharks. Before the sharks realise what has hit the buffet table, the gannets are long gone…

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN EVERYTHING RUNS AWAY?

PHOTO: Geo Cloete

The swirling sardine swarm comes under attack from every angle: sharks shoot in from the sides and below as gannets divebomb from above. In an attempt to escape them, the bait ball constantly changes direction and formation, which makes filming the writhing mass a huge challenge for underwater photographers. However, the biggest danger isn’t the sharks or gannets, but the pitch-black depths. That’s because the last guest to arrive at the buffet is often a truck-sized Bryde’s whale, which hoovers up pretty much everything in the way into its eight-metre mouth. Consequently, the old adage among divers is: if the sharks retreat, get away from the bait ball as quickly as possible.

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HISTORY

CONSPIRACY

THEORIES THATCAMETRUE Think all conspiracy theories are bonkers? The paranoid delusions of the loony fringe? Among the hundreds of far-fetched viewpoints, there’s a handful which are firmly rooted in reality. And they silenced the establishment

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THE THEORY…

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU THE FACTS...

George Orwell’s novel 1984 was a chilling vision of what Great Britain would be like under totalitarian rule. In Orwell’s nightmarish world, citizens were under constant government surveillance, a programme overseen by the state’s terrifying figurehead, Big Brother. The novel, written in 1949, quickly gained classic status, and over the years the term ‘Big Brother’ evolved into a catch-all term for the abuse of civil liberties through mass surveillance. But essentially, 1984 remained a work of fiction. Then came Edward Snowden. Snowden, a former employee of the US intelligence agency, the NSA, leaked reams of classified information to The Guardian and The Washington Post in 2013, proving that Orwell’s prophetic visions had been accurate: governments around the world were spying on their citizens on a scale few would have dared to imagine. Thanks to Snowden, we now know that in the US alone, the NSA collects data from more than three billion phone calls every day – from metadata (information such as the date, time and

length of calls) to recording the actual “With no need to even get supervisor content of conversations; more approval on the part of the analyst.” than 200 million text messages are But that’s just one weapon in the stored by the agency every day. NSA’s armoury. Snowden announced A series of leaked PowerPoint last year that the world’s major spy presentations also revealed the agencies now have the technology to extent to which the NSA monitors hack anyone’s smartphone – a set of communications through nine major tools dubbed ‘Smurf Suite. Using this companies via its PRISM programme, tech, governments can take control of including Facebook, Microsoft, Google your phone’s functions, or covertly turn and Apple (all of whom strenuously on your device’s mic and listen to your deny they knew this was conversations. happening). Emails, Think your own videos, photos, voicegovernment is above chats, social-network such antics? In August details…all of this info 2014, it was reported was up for grabs, that Australian laweven to low-level enforcement agencies analysts at the NSA. had been accessing “And it’s all done citizen’s web-browsing AGENT OF TRUTH with no need to go histories with internet Former NSA employee to a court,” says The providers such as Edward Snowden proved Guardian’s Glenn Telstra and Optus mass surveillance is real. Greenwald of PRISM. without a warrant.

“An iPhone has special software that can activate itself without the owner having to press a button and gather information about him.”Lawyer for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden

THE THEORY…

GOVERNMENTS ARE INVOLVED WITH DRUG DEALING THE FACTS… FACTS

Long before crystal meth fever gripped middle America, crack-cocaine was flowing freely into the country’s urban ghettos. By the mid-1980s, neighbourhoods like the South Central District of Los Angeles were plagued by epidemic levels of drug use. The guys peddling crack were the usual garden-variety street dealers. But further back in the supply chain was an even murkier cast of characters: cocaine kingpins, Nicaraguan rebel fighters and, ultimately, the CIA. The story of the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement in the 1980s crack-cocaine trade was broke by American investigative journalist Gary Webb in the San Jose Mercury News in 1996. Webb claimed he’d uncovered evidence that the US-backed Contra rebel army in Nicaragua was shipping cocaine to the US by the tonne. Webb also implied that the money from the sale of the dope was being funnelled back to the Contras in Latin America – all of which was known by the CIA. “It is one of the most bizarre alliances in modern history,” wrote Webb in the Mercury. “The union of a US-backed army attempting to overthrow a revolutionary socialist government and

the uzi-toting “The ‘gangstas’ of cocaine that Compton and South flooded Central Los Angeles.” in helped Webb went on to explain how spark notorious cracka crack cocaine dealer Ricky explosion ‘Freeway’ Ross was in urban supplied with high volumes of cheap GANG INFILTRATION America.” drugs by Nicaraguan The CIA was linked to the Garry Webb, exile Oscar Danilo crack-cocaine trade in investigative Los Angeles in the 1980s. Blandón Reyes. journalist Blandón belonged to one of his home country’s most prominent political families and South LA with crack,” says LA Weekly was a major financial backer of the journalist Nick Schou. CIA-supported Contra rebels. Webb’s claims triggered four The story turned Webb into an investigations by the US Government; overnight sensation, boosting both his unsurprisingly none went so far as to and his newspaper’s profile. But other substantiate his story. But an Inspector news outlets began a sustained General report in 1998 did admit that campaign to discredit him. for a decade the CIA had covered “No newspaper tried harder than up business relationships it had with the LA Times, where editors were Nicaraguan drug dealers like Blandón. said to have been appalled that a Webb committed suicide in 2004 distant San Jose daily had published in a suburb of Sacremento, shooting a blockbuster about America’s most himself in the head. Last year, his powerful spy agency and its possible story was turned into a Hollywood role in allowing drug dealers to flood movie, Kill The Messenger. 13

THE THEORY…

THE CIA ENGAGES IN MIND-CONTROL THE FACTS...

In the Bourne spy-movie series, lead character Jason Bourne (played by Matt Damon) is haunted by visions related to his involvement in Operation Treadstone, a secret CIA programme designed to brainwash and modify the behaviour of its operatives. Far from being a flight of fancy, the movie was inspired by a real CIA enterprise codenamed Project MKUltra. Launched in the early-1950s, the BRAIN MANIPULATION project spent 20 years experimenting Mind-control projects were with mind-control techniques on hatched at the CIA’s Langley human subjects, many of whom were HQ during the 1950s. unaware they were taking part. Using biological and chemical agents such as “Perhaps most disturbing of all was the fact LSD, morphine and amphetamines, the that the extent of experimentation on human CIA was particularly interested in how subjects was unknown.”Senator Ted Kennedy behaviour modification could be used during interrogations. be using g mind-control techniques. q Several of these tests involved the As with so much US intelligence Details of Project MKUltra’s atrocities administration of LSD to ‘unwitting activity after World War Two, might have remained a secret had it subjects in social situations.’” Project MKUltra was entwined not been for an administrative error. The hearing revealed more details; with America’s paranoia with After 1973’s Watergate crisis, CIA physicians, toxicologists and other Communism; Russia, China and director Richard Helms ordered the specialists were lured into MKUltra by North Korea were rumoured to already project files to be destroyed. But grants from CIA front companies, and 20,000 documents [see left] were had no knowledge of the nature of their mistakenly stored in a financial records work; tests were even conducted on building. It was these papers that terminally ill cancer patients. prompted a 1977 probe into the CIA’s Since most of the MKUltra records activities by a Senate Select Committee. were destroyed, the full impact of the During a speech on the Senate floor, project will never be known. But at Ted Kennedy said: “The Deputy least two deaths have been associated Director of the CIA revealed that over with the scheme: most notably that of thirty universities and institutions were Frank Olson, a US Army biochemist involved in an ‘extensive testing and whose drink was spiked with LSD by experimentation’ programme which CIA operatives in November 1953. included covert drug tests on unwitting A week later he hurled himself from citizens ‘at all social levels, high and a thirteenth-storey window while under low, native Americans and foreign.’ the supervision of a CIA doctor.

MORE CIA SKULLDUGGERY REWRITING HISTORY > At the end of World War Two, the US began recruiting scientists from Nazi Germany. Even though President Truman rubber-stamped Operation Paperclip, he forbid accepting Nazi Party members or sympathisers. So the CIA deleted and rewrote the backgrounds of Nazi scientists like Wernher von Braun, who would as a US citizen build the Saturn V rocket that took US astronauts to the Moon. CONTROLLING THE PRESS > It’s no secret that governments seek to influence the media, but the strength of the CIA’s grip over US journalists from the 1950s to the 1970s was startling. Under the codename Operation Mockingbird, the agency paid staff and editors on some of the country’s most powerful newspapers and TV channels, including Time, The New York Times, The Washington Post and CBS. CIA agents also worked in foreign posts under the guise of being reporters. FAKING REASONS FOR WAR > In 15-year-old Nayirah, the public saw a poor Kuwaiti girl testifying to US Congress that she’d seen Iraqi soldiers pulling Kuwaiti babies from incubators, causing their deaths. The story helped the US win major public support before 1991’s Gulf War. But it was later

UNDER THE INFLUENCE The CIA had journalists and editors from major media companies on their payroll.

exposed as a hoax, organised by a public i i relations firm. The girl was the niece of a prominent Kuwaiti politician, and had been encouraged by the CIA to take up acting lessons. PRODUCING FAKE PORNOGRAPHIC MOVIES > In order to discredit Indonesian president Sukarno, who ruled the nation from 1945 to 1967, the CIA concocted a plan to make a fake pornographic movie featuring a lookalike of the leader. The movie made it into production – stills were reportedly produced – yet the CIA decided at the last minute not to release it. Similarly, before the second Gulf War the CIA also considered making a fake gay adult film 'featuring' Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden.

"Our special committee was formed to accomplish a film purportedly showing Sukarno and his girlfriend engaged in his Russian favourite activity." Joseph Burkholder Smith, CIA officer ASSASSINATING ENEMIES > In 1975, the Church Committee looked into the legality of the CIA’s intelligence gathering. To say the agency had violated its charter is an understatement. The Committee discovered CIA links to assassinations across the world, from the Middle East to East Asia. Details also emerged of a ‘Heart Attack Gun’ used by CIA agents to murder people without being detected. Very James Bond, but very real. 15

THE THEORY…

SHADOW GOVERNMENTS ARE AT WORK THE FACTS...

For years, the idea of all-powerful, invisible ‘shadow’ governments existing behind the ‘public’ administrations was ridiculed as a lunatic-fringe fantasy. That was until 9/11, when the terror attacks on the World Trade Centre forced the US to initiate the Continuity of Operations (COOP) for the first time in its history – a plan that proves a shadow government is in place. It’s believed the COOP had been sitting dormant since the Cold War. Created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, its purpose was to ensure the US government could still operate during a nuclear war by combining staff from every federal executive department into one joint force. By the time 9/11 came around, the plan’s remit had been expanded to include other threats relevant to the era – assassinations, right-wing coups and terrorism incidents. President George Bush wasted no time in activating the COOP in the days and months after 9/11, secretly moving 100 senior officials into fortified and highly classified locations along America’s east coast. But he came under immense pressure after the 16

plans were made public by The from the shadows… thus, a debilitating Washington Post in March 2002. attack would give unchecked It emerged that key Congressional executive, legislative and judicial power leaders weren’t told about the to the executive branch and its administration’s move; even unelected minions.” House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Revelations about America’s second in line to succeed the government-in-the-wings refuse to die. President, was kept in the dark. Documents published by the FBI in Bush’s dramatic move – which under October make reference to a group the rules of the COOP don’t require called ‘the Shadow Government’ who Congressional approval – also raised examine Freedom of Information concerns about the possibility of an requests linked to Hillary Clinton. unelected group of officials running the “There was a powerful group of very world’s biggest superpower. “The little high-ranking STATE officials that some that has leaked out referred to as ‘The 7th merely serves to Floor Group’ or ‘The reinforce concerns Shadow Government’. that an authoritarian This group met every government waits in the Wednesday afternoon wings,” said attorney to discuss the FOIA and president of the process, Congressional Rutherford Institute, records, and everything John W. Whitehead. “All CLINTON-related to SECRET STATE it will take is the right FOIA/Congressional President George W. Bush event – another terrorist inquiries,” the FBI’s organised a ‘shadow’ attack, for example – for government after 9/11. interview summary said. such a regime to emerge

“We take the continuity-of-government issue seriously because our nation was under attack.” President George W. Bush

THE THEORY…

PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES POISON CONSUMERS THE FACTS… FACTS

When German pharmaceutical giant Bayer discovered that one of their products – a blood-clotting medicine for haemophiliacs – was tainted with the HIV virus in the mid-1980s, they pulled it from shelves in the US and Europe, and then set about making a safer version for consumers. And yet Cutter Biological, a division of Bayer, were faced with a dilemma; they still had massive stockpiles of the risky potion and several fixed-price contracts they had to honour. So Cutter did the unthinkable; they released the infected medicine in Asia and Latin America. The potion, a liquid called Factor VIII, provides the missing ingredient that helps haemophiliacs’ blood clot, enabling them to lead normal lives. What patients didn’t realise when they were injecting the product three times a week is that it used plasma from around 10,000 donors, none of whom had been screened for the AIDS virus. Documents obtained by The New York Times in 2003 showed that Cutter sold the tainted medicine in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and Argentina after February 1984, knowing the risks it

“These are the most incriminating internal pharmaceutical industry documents I have ever seen.” Dr Sidney M. Wolfe, public health director posed. In Hong Kong Armour and Taiwan alone, more Pharmaceutical than 100 haemophiliacs Company and Baxter contracted HIV as Healthcare Corporation a result. also produced “These are the most contaminated incriminating internal haemophiliac blood pharmaceutical products, which industry documents resulted in between I have ever seen,” said 6,000 to 10,000 Dr Sidney M. Wolfe, Americans getting BAD BLOOD German company Bayer sold director of the Public HIV. To date, the four Citizen Health Research tainted medicine that gave firms have paid out HIV to at least 100 people. Group. Wolfe has more than US$600 been investigating the million in lawsuits industry’s practices for three decades. brought by haemophiliacs in the US. Bayer said in a statement that The last decade has seen a flood they believed Cutter had “behaved of similar cases around the globe. responsibly, ethically and humanely” A former French health minister was in selling the old product overseas: convicted for failing to adequately some customers, claimed Bayer, screen blood in 1985 that led to the doubted the new drug’s effectiveness, deaths of five people from AIDS, and and some countries were also slow 4,000 HIV infections. Three suits to approve its sale. were brought against the Canadian Bayer were by no means the only Red Cross after it was revealed company mixed up in the scandal; 60,000 people were infected with Alpha Therapeutic Corporation, Hepatitis C from tainted blood.

THE THEORY…

THE FACTS... FACTS

‘False flags’ are a popular hobbyhorse in conspiracy theorist circles, used to describe a state-sponsored operation – for example, an assassination, terror incident or military invasion – that seeks to blame another party for the wrongdoing. The purpose of a false flag is usually to engineer political events by creating fake enemies, thereby giving the state a reason to fulfil its objectives. Among conspiracy fans, the 9/11 attacks are a classic false flag, manufactured, they claim, by the US government to justify its invasion of Iraq.

GHOST ARMY A secret ‘stay-behind’ NATO force carried out attacks in Europe, blaming them on Communists.

While there’s no evidence to confirm that 9/11 was planned by dark forces within the George W. Bush administration, it’s been proven that false flag operations have indeed been schemed by governments in recent times. And it’s no surprise that the CIA was embroiled in history’s most infamous case. Operation Gladio was a secret ‘stay-behind’ army organised by NATO during the Cold War, in close cooperation with the CIA. Its main role was to protect Europe, and therefore the US, from a Soviet invasion through

sabotage and guerrilla warfare. Attacks were often blamed on Marxists or other left-wing opponents in order to discredit Communism. The operation was destined to remain one of history’s best kept secrets until Italian right-wing activist Vincenzo Vinciguerra revealed Gladio’s existence while on trial in 1984 for the 1980 Bologna bomb massacre. “The knowledge should by now be clear that there existed a real live structure, occult and hidden, with the capacity of giving a strategic direction to the outrages... [it] lies within the state itself.” He added in a later interview: “You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any

“You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game.” Right-wing terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra

WORDS: Vince Jackson; PHOTOS: Getty Images (13); Alamy (2); PR (2)

TERROR ATTACKS ARE COVERED-UP

HISTORY’S FALSE FLAGS

political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the State to ask for greater security. This is the political logic that lies behind all the massacres and the bombings which remain unpunished, because the State cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened.” If anyone considered the testimony of a convicted terrorist to be unreliable, Italy’s Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti put that to bed some years later. In 1990, he admitted Gladio’s existence to a parliamentary commission, referring to a “structure of information and safeguards”. He spoke of arms caches across Europe, and even supplied a list of 622 civilians who were part of Operation Gladio. The commander of the Italian branch of Gladio from 1971 to 1974, General Gerardo Serravalle, also shed light on “the secret structures of Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg, the Netherlands and Italy. These representatives of the secret structures met every year in one of the capitals. At stay-behind meetings, the CIA were always present.”

REICHSTAG FIRE > On one of European history’s most infamous nights, the German parliament – the Reichstag – was burned down in Berlin in February 1933. Young Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe [above] was convicted of the crime, and the event helped turn public opinion towards the Nazi party. But Nazi general Franz Halder testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Göring had admitted responsibility. IRANIAN COUP > When the US decided it wanted to replace Iran’s nationalised oil company with a handful of American firms, it set Operation Ajax into motion in 1953. Using propaganda and intricate political movements, the CIA engineered a public revolt that resulted in Iran’s democratically elected leader Mohammed Mossadegh being overthrown and a more brutal, US-friendly monarch being installed. The operation is now described in detail in declassified CIA archives.

TARGET MAN FBI head J. Edgar Hoover oversaw some of the agency's COINTELPRO activities.

THE LEVON AFFAIR > Israeli defence minister Pinhas Levon resigned after it was revealed Israel was behind a false flag operation in 1954 designed to discredit the Muslim Brotherhood and create regional instability. Under Operation Susannah, Israeli intelligence agents recruited Egyptian Jews to plant bombs in several US- and British- owned locations. The plan failed but Levon still faced the music. AIRPLANE SCANDAL > Declassified NSA documents show that in 1962, American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up American planes – and then blame it on the Cubans, giving the US a reason to invade its Communist foe. Other recommendations put forward included innocent people being shot on American streets and a wave of terrorism in Washington DC – all to be falsely pinned on Cubans.

"It is possible to create an incident which will convincingly demonstrate that a Cuban aircraft has shot down a civil airliner from the United States." Declassified NSA document FBI SMEAR CAMPAIGN > A US Congressional Committee revealed that from the 1950s until the 1970s, the FBI [left] infiltrated domestic political organisations, then set about rubbishing their reputations by committing criminal acts. Groups targeted under the FBI’s COINTELPRO programme included Vietnam War critics, civil rights leaders, feminist voices and the Black Power movement. 19

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SCIENCE

JOB HUNT

FOR MARS It’s set to be the greatest adventure in

the history of mankind. NASA is looking for volunteers for its first manned mission to Mars. Have YOU got what it takes?

23

M ankind’s greatest adventure of the 21st century begins, somewhat ironically, with an understatement: “Applicants must be willing to travel and not be afraid of heights.” NASA’s job spec might not look particularly exciting at first glance, but it’s a call to arms. A call for intrepid pioneers to come forward and help kick-start the long-mooted colonisation of Mars. After years of intensive preparation, work began in earnest earlier this year with NASA publishing a clearly defined timetable. The next class of astronaut is being readied to embark on the long expedition. Anyone applying now has a chance to become the first person to set foot on the red planet. “NASA is on an ambitious journey to Mars and we’re looking for talented men and women from diverse backgrounds and every walk of life to help get us there,” explains NASA administrator and former astronaut Charles Bolden. But what exactly does that mean? What lies in store for the candidates hoping to make the trip to Mars? And what attributes do they need to bring to the table?

the drop in pressure, and your body’s cells would vaporise from the inside out. Working conditions will also be a lot less comfortable than you might expect from a multi-billion-dollar company like NASA. The astronauts will spend at least 200 days squeezed into a spacesuit filled with cold air, while being up close and personal with five other crew members in a capsule no bigger than a couple of camper vans. The actual trip to Mars may be a tedious one, then, but the fun starts when they land. The job description in NASA’s advert reads like something from a science fiction novel: successful applicants

HOW MUCH WILL THE FIRST HUMANS ON MARS EARN? Those who make it through the selection process and are included in the Mars programme will become employees of the US government. Their salary will be subject to the federal government’s General Schedule pay scales (GS-11 to GS-14), meaning an astronaut will earn between US$66,000 and US$144,000 per year, depending on their experience and education.

THE ADVENTURE BEGINS The road to Mars is a long and winding one. It’s 400 million kilometres away to be precise, through the treacherous -270˚C vacuum of the solar system. Space is the ultimate death zone for us simple humans: step outside the craft without your spacesuit and radiation from the sun would burn your skin in seconds, your lungs would burst due to

will control the propulsion system of the spacecraft to land on Mars, before embarking on the search for extraterrestrial life in the Martian soil. They’ll control robots used for transport and lifting, carry out astrophysical and medical experiments such as documenting the reaction of the human body to life in space, and don special spacesuits to take part in extra-vehicular activities. To prevent their muscles wasting away in the low gravity environment, they’ll also need three hours of exercise per day. In other words, everything you’ve seen in blockbusters like The Martian, starring Matt Damon. However, before they clamber aboard NASA’s Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, which will serve as their exploration craft on the red planet, the prospective

WEIGHTLESS IN THE POOL To prepare for space, future astronauts train using a replica of the space capsule, submerged in a 13-metre-deep pool in Houston, Texas. The buoyancy of the water replicates zero-gravity conditions. This image also shows just how big the spacesuits are.

astronauts will need to prove they’ve got their heads screwed on. The minimum requirement is a bachelor’s degree in either engineering, science, maths, IT, biology or physics – together with three years’ professional experience in those areas. Pilots with 1,000 hours of flight time under their belts will also be considered. Certain anthropometric conditions will need to be met: to fit in the $25 million spacesuit they can’t be taller than 190cm or shorter than 157cm. An uppermost weight limit isn’t specified, though; anything goes in zero gravity – as long as the cardiovascular system is healthy. NASA can’t be accused of being ageist – indeed it is actively encouraging older people who meet the physical demands to apply. It’s felt they have the mental stability

needed for a long-term mission to Mars. This has also been shown in previous space programmes: the average age of the 12 men to visit the moon was 39.8 years.

HOW DO YOU BECOME AN ASTRONAUT?

EVERY ASTRONAUT IS A CAREER CHANGER Fulfil these conditions and it’s not that difficult to get into space, according to former astronaut Ulrich Walter: “You pass a couple of selection tests and, if all goes well, you’re an astronaut.” Essentially, every astronaut is a bit of a career changer who has previously done something completely different. Brian Kelly, Director of Flight

1 CAN AN AUSSIE WORK AT NASA?

>

In theory, yes. While only American citizens are allowed to work at NASA, it is possible for Australians to get citizenship. That’s precisely what Australianborn Andy Thomas did in 1986, hoping to fulfil his life-long dream of becoming an astronaut and going into space – a feat which he achieved in 1996 aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

2 HOW DO YOU APPLY? You can apply online or by post. The application period for Mars pioneers (astronaut class 2018) is expected to begin sometime in 2017. Once the date is announced, you’ll find the job specification at www.usajobs.gov. After uploading your CV, you’ll be directed to the official NASA Staffing and Recruitment System.

3 WHO CAN APPLY?

You’ll need a degree and some previous professional experience. Candidates will also have to pass a health and fitness test, but there’s no age or weight limit. NASA is looking for Mars mission applicants who can remain calm and think quickly in stressful and unpredictable situations. Panic merchants need not apply. There’s more information here: www.nasa.gov/astronauts.

25

“NASA is on an ambitious journey to Mars and we’re looking for talented men and women from diverse backgrounds and every walk of life to help get us there.”

Charles Bolden, NASA chief

“WE WANT YOU!” NASA wants to send the first people to Mars by the early 2030s. The US space agency is now using posters (pictured) to attract candidates. The 400 million kilometre journey will be a long one with missions lasting in the region of 1,100 days, so it’s little wonder that NASA is looking for applicants who are “willing to travel”.

ALONE IN THE DEATH ZONE However, physical and mental fitness isn’t everything. According to Brian Kelly, many applicants underestimate the scope of the Mars astronaut training. Basically, everyone in the crew must be able to do everything. Astronaut Ulrich Walter, who flew on board the space shuttle Columbia in 1993, says there’ll be no help from the

outside: “During a Mars mission, you can’t just turn around if there’s an emergency. Once you’re on the way, there’s no going back.” To prepare for all eventualities, every candidate will need to carry out hundreds of flight hours, acquire medical and surgical expertise, and become an expert on plants. They’ll need to transform themselves into a kind of space farmer, finding new ways of growing fresh food. At the end of training, they’ll be as technically gifted as Matt Damon’s character, who is stranded alone on the red planet in The Martian. Even though their destination is a desert planet, the candidates will also undergo swimming and diving tests. This is because they’ll be practising manoeuvres underwater in a special pool designed to simulate zero-gravity conditions. Even Russian is on the curriculum. Most people don’t know that in space there are two official languages: English and Russian. Unlike here on Earth, Americans and Russians still work closely with each other in space. One of the most difficult and unpredictable tasks for the new Martians will be the creation of their home. They’ll endure at least 300 days on Mars before it and the Earth are in the right orbital position for a return flight. Not only will they have to build secure living quarters, they’ll also need to successfully extract water from the frozen ground and cultivate edible plants. “We’ve long dreamed of terraforming Mars,” says space veteran Walter. “This mission will show us how feasible that aim is.” In the long term, NASA wants to bring greenhouse gases to Mars. Their aim is to trigger a chain reaction to create an atmosphere. This will heat up the planet and melt the ice, thus making it habitable. The Mars pioneers will not only become the first people to set foot on an alien planet, they’ll also have the opportunity to craft a new Earth.

NASA’S TO-DO LIST FOR THE TRIP TO MARS RETURN JOURNEY

The so-called Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) will be assembled on the Red Planet for the return flight. Its unfueled weight will be 18 tons, or 18 times heavier than the Curiosity rover, the only thing humans have so far sent to Mars. The MAV’s fuel will be produced locally from the Martian atmosphere.

CONVOY

To get all of the technology for the residential unit, survival module and return capsule (MAV) to Mars, NASA expects to conduct a total of five transport flights.

LIFESAVER

Water, oxygen and energy will be produced on Mars. A solar module and oven-type contraption will melt the ice in the frozen ground, converting it to water and oxygen. Nitrogen, necessary for breathable air, will be extracted from the Martian atmosphere.

WEATHER

We don’t know which climatic extremes will predominate on Mars. However, a serious threat to the first people on the planet will be the huge, 400km/h dust storms that can envelop the whole planet.

PHOTOS: NASA (4); Shutterstock; Fotolia; Fox

Operations at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, explains: “Some people would be surprised to learn they might have what it takes. We want and need a diverse mix of individuals to ensure we have the best astronaut corps possible.” Applicants are tested on one particular prerequisite before training even begins: patience! Partly due to the sheer volume of people interested, it will take NASA’s selection panel several months to choose its candidates. Over 18,300 people applied for the 2017 intake between December 2015 and February 2016, despite the fact that they will only be involved in test flights to the moon. Next year’s intake is confidently predicted to surpass that figure. For the lucky few selected at the end of the first application phase, several years in lecture theatres, gyms, laboratories and construction halls lie ahead. The candidates’ hearts and nerves will be tested in the truest sense of the word. Their mental aptitude will be probed in a series of medical and psychological interviews. The elephant in the room will be addressed straightaway: even if NASA is officially planning to return its Mars astronauts to Earth, the mission is not without risks – and bringing them back might not be possible. It’s a troubling thought that all of the applicants must be able to cope with from the outset. Those who can’t will be rooted out. The candidates will be put under the microscope like never before, until, at the end of the gruelling selection and training process, only a handful of men and women will remain. These elite astronauts will be the vanguard of the human race, the first to venture into a completely unknown world.

27

IS YOUR FOO KILLING YOU Much of the food you eat contains additives that reprogramme

your senses in order to make products sell better. Here we reveal the dangerous ingredients you didn’t know you were ingesting

OD U?

HUMAN BODY

UNDER THE MICROSCOPE Surveys show that 80% of consumers have blind faith in the food they eat. But are their loyalties misguided? In the World of Knowledge lab, we’ve found out what’s really hiding in our meals.

29

W

hat does our food actually consist of? We know it contains the fats, proteins and carbohydrates that give it its energy value, as well as vitamins, minerals and trace elements. What’s less obvious, however, is that food not only contains nutrients, but also information. “Each food is like a file that holds a large amount of different types of information,” says food researcher and nutritionist Anja Knumbe. When we eat something, we open this file using the body’s “operating system” – our metabolism..

CAN YOUR BODY BE HACKED? What happens next can be compared to the processes that take place on a computer’s hard drive. It’s an exchange of information. Consider this simple example: we eat some chocolate. The taste data (sweet and creamy) signals the arrival of two important sources of energy: sugar and fat. From here the body’s entire metabolic process swings into action, prompted by the information that the tongue has extracted from the chocolate ‘data’. This is important for several

reasons, chief among them the fact that the body’s complete energy requirement always has to calculated and analysed – and organised in advance. That’s the only way to ensure a proper supply of energy, one that doesn’t produce an energy surplus. Put another way, this system is one of the main reasons we normally eat only as much as we need – and no more. But like a computer connected to the internet, our body’s metabolism is constantly being exposed to new threats. As long as the data is ‘clean’, the process is trouble-free. But if the files contain false or unreadable information, or if viruses and trojans get in on the act, operations can quickly become problematic. You may have guessed that ‘clean data’ for the body means basic foodstuffs that are unadulterated and unprocessed. Wholesome foods, in other words. Our metabolism has been familiar with the data contained in an apple or a handful of oats for thousands of years. But the food industry is constantly adding ‘unclean data’ in the form of flavourings, thickeners, artificial colours and flavour enhancers that our metabolisms are unable to classify. The problem isn’t limited to false signals, however. The sheer volume of data is increasingly becoming an issue: many industrially produced foods contain so many different additives and flavourings that the body can barely process them all.

But even the food data that our metabolism can process poses risks. Again and again undesirable data files slip through. Just as wanted criminals and potential terrorists can sneak across borders despite strict security controls, our body’s immigration measures do not always function exactly as they should.

DANGER DATABASE FOR YOUR BODY Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) are tasked with assessing the danger posed by the terrorists in our food. Anything not prohibited should be okay to eat, so long as the recommended daily amount is not exceeded. But there is very little research on what happens when several additives interact, something that occurs with almost all processed foods. That’s hardly surprising given that the food industry is one of the most powerful in the world. In Australia, the food and grocery sector generates around $115 billion annually – or almost four times the annual defence budget. And just as the military protects its secrets, Felix Ahlers – chairman of frozen food giant, Frosta Foods – warns that some in the food industry attempt to “obscure the facts”, putting millions of customers at risk.

p'XGT[ RKGEG QH HQQF KUNKMGCFCVCƂNG KP YJKEJ XCTKQWU DKVU QH KPHQTOCVKQPCTGUVQTGFq 30

SUSPECT FOOD

TOMATO UNDER INTERROGATION: Methomyl

ALIAS: LANNATE

We found you in the supermarket. How did you get there? Well, you know, I travel a lot. I have a lot of friends like tomatoes, oranges, lettuce, kiwis, strawberries, apples, peppers, bananas, plums, grapes. They took me along with them. What’s your name? My trade name is Lannate, but most people call me methomyl. We don’t have a dossier on these names. Well, I’m Chinese, but I work mostly in South America. Google ‘Haihang Industry Ltd’ – the company is one of the world’s largest suppliers of chemicals. So you’re a pesticide, then? Yes, that’s my job. I kill caterpillars, worms and beetles, and make sure that fruit and vegetables look nice and tasty. But if you’re such helpful things, why do you have such a bad reputation? My use is extremely restricted. How come? Oh, probably because I don’t just kill insects. I’m carcinogenic, you see. I can damage human nervous systems and alter people’s DNA. So you’re a killer! What if I am? We’ll lock you up and throw away the key! No chance. I have diplomatic immunity. Are you mad? We caught you red-handed in a whole bunch of UK supermarkets! Yes, but I haven’t worked there. And just because I can’t be used there, it doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to be there. The EU has even set certified maximum limits. It’s all written down in law. Go and check. Hmmm. Apparently, traces of you up to a maximum of 0.02mg per kilo of food are permitted. See! You can’t touch me. But you’ve exceeded the maximum amount permitted in grapes by over 1,000%! That means if a child ate just 20 grapes or a large tomato salad they’d be over the safe limit! Then the grapes are to blame. My part ended after the planting and growing was done. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve better things to do. But don’t worry, we’ll be seeing each other again soon…

FOOD PROTOCOL As methomyl is acutely toxic to humans, it can only be purchased and used by certified applicators. CAN ALSO CONTAIN METHOMYL:

Cherries, tangerines, grapes, plums, hops, spring onions, lettuce, cucumbers

SUSPECT FOOD

SUSPECT FOOD

LEMONADE

CHEWING GUM

UNDER INTERROGATION: Cyclamate Your codename? E952. You’re sweet. Oh, thanks! I get that a lot. In fact I’m 35 times sweeter than household sugar. And yet you’re so slim. Amazing! Well, that’s my job. I might taste sweet but I won’t make you fat. How does that work exactly? Nobody really knows why I taste so sweet. But the human body can’t break me down. It simply cannot use me to gain energy. That’s why I contain zero calories. You’re not allowed to enter the USA though. Why’s that? I’ve been banned there since 1969 because I am suspected of causing bladder cancer, and possibly even bowel cancer. But there’s still no real evidence of that, except maybe where extremely high doses of me were

UNDER INTERROGATION: Aspartame

involved. That’s why I’m still being used in Europe. What you’re saying is, if you can’t be broken down in the body, you must pass through the bladder and the bowel without doing any damage? Yes, in a nutshell. Don’t suppose you like bacteria, do you? Clostridia, enterococci, enterobacteria… stuff like that? No, I hate them. They destroy me and can sometimes turn me into cyclohexylamine. You do realise that this substance is extremely corrosive and highly toxic, and that high doses of it lead to cardiac arrest? Yes… and? The bacteria that I’ve just mentioned are often found in the digestive tract! That means you are responsible for chemical attacks in the body!

We came across your name in some old CIA files, where you were listed as a biochemical warfare agent. All lies. I was never deployed. The chewing gum packaging says something different. E951 – that’s your code name, isn’t it? I have many different names: E951, NutraSweet, Equal, Canderel, Sanecta. And what’s your job? I am 200 times sweeter than sucrose. That means I’m not just used in sweets and lemonade. I’m also found in ‘light’ and ‘diet’ products. What’s your relationship with formaldehyde? We don’t have one! That stuff is extremely toxic. I stay away from it! What do you do when you get inside the body? In the stomach I break down into my basic components: 40% asparagine acid, 50% phenylalanine. And the other 10%? Search me. I mean, who cares about a measly 10%? We do! What’s left is methanol, which breaks down into formaldehyde. And what does formaldehyde cause in humans? Cancer!

FOOD PROTOCOL In 1937 US scientists Michael Sveda and Ludwig Audrieth inadvertently discovered cyclamate while trying to create a fever-reducing drug. The sweetener has been used in food since 1950. CAN ALSO CONTAIN CYCLAMATE:

Almost all sugar-free foods (drinks, desserts, spreads, jams, preserved fruit)

FOOD PROTOCOL 18mg of aspartame per lb of body weight per day is considered to be a safe amount. Based on that rule, a child weighing 30kg can consume 1,200 milligrams per day. That’s equivalent to two diet lemonades.

ALIAS: E952

CAN ALSO CONTAIN ASPARTAME:

Cream cakes, biscuits, tinned fish, preserved fruit, snacks, desserts, sugar-free drinks

ALIAS: E951 32

SUSPECT FOOD

CAKE MIX UNDER INTERROGATION: GM corn You were arrested at the scene, is that right? Yes, so? What’s the problem? You’ve been genetically modified! Sounds awful. What’s that got to do with me? You are a genetic mutant! Look. This is all a big misunderstanding. I was modified to make me immune to weedkillers, that’s all. This makes me easier to grow. You’ve been banned from some countries though, haven’t you? Yes, but it’s silly. These days

FOOD PROTOCOL GM corn has been cultivated in the US since 1994. To date, the genetic modification of food has not shown any consistently negative effects. Corn starch and cornflour are commonly added to many foods in Europe too. CAN ALSO CONTAIN CORN:

Gravy, custard powder, baking mixes

ALIAS: HERCULEX I

genetically modified food is seen as a threat on the same level as terrorism. That’s just paranoid. No it’s not! In animal testing it’s been proven that eating GM corn can reduce the fertility of mice and changes their insulin resistance. And how exactly did I cause that, then? Well, that’s what we’d like to know. So you have nothing against me except circumstantial evidence, then. No need to detain me any longer. I’m off…

A BE BLO

SUSPECT FOOD

BEEF

UNDER INTERROGATION: Carazolol Don’t we know you already from psychiatry? That’s right. I’m often used to treat depression and schizophrenia. Any side effects? I slow down the heart rate, and can lead to erectile dysfunction and a raised cholesterol level. Do you have any other uses? I travel with cattle to the abattoir. Basically I make sure the animals stay calm and don’t flip out while they are being transported. But if you’re only used in transporting them, why have you been found in the meat that ends up on the plates of millions of customers? I can’t help that. That’s down to the fattening farms and the slaughterhouses… So you can’t do anything? Hey, guns don’t kill people, people do. Do you know what I mean? But we caught you red-handed! Yes, but I didn’t pull the trigger, did I? I’m innocent.

FOOD PROTOCOL The use of Carazolol in small doses as a sedative is permitted in Australia. The reason: animals who have been given it are less likely to injure themselves in transport, thus ensuring the quality of the meat is not adversely affected. Higher doses can be found in imported livestock from countries outside the EU. CAN ALSO CONTAIN CARAZOLOL:

Pork, veal

SUSPECT FOOD

SUSPECT FOOD

SALAD DRESSING

FROZEN PIZZA

UNDER INTERROGATION: Tocopherol

UNDER INTERROGATION: Potassium nitrate

I think you have the wrong guy. I’m completely healthy and useful. What do you do? I make fats solid and protect the vitamins in healthy oils. Even after they are opened. We’ve found traces of you in the bodies of millions of people. How do you explain that? I’m found in many kinds of salad dressings. I can even be used in organic products – in unlimited quantities – because I occur naturally. What exactly is your purpose? Healthy fatty acids are easily oxidised, that’s to say rebuilt, by oxygen radicals. But when I’m added to oils, I am oxidised instead – so the fatty acids remain unchanged. That’s why you’ll often find me in large quantities in oils. And what happens if you enter the human body? I protect fats there, as well as amino acids, from oxygen. You protect all amino acids – the building blocks of proteins? Certainly do. So that includes platelets, which, like all cells, are made from proteins. They are the small blood cells that are responsible for clotting. In other words: blood clotting is reduced!

FOOD PROTOCOL Tocopherol was first discovered in 1922 and classified as Vitamin E. It is also used in the production of condoms. A coating of tocopherol improves tensile strength. CAN ALSO CONTAIN TOCOPHEROL: Chewing

gum, frying fat, dressings, desserts, baby food

ALIAS: E306

You can’t lock me up! The law is clear on this! You really think we won’t interrogate you? We’re aware that by law you don’t need to be declared on the list of ingredients, but still… Well then. You’ll only find me in the pepperoni and salami. I’ve got nothing at all to do with the pizza I’m lying on top of. That’s the reason I don’t have to declare myself. What do you have to hide? I am a curing salt. I make cured meat last longer and give it a nice red colour. Your codename? E249. We have reason to believe you can cause cancer… Don’t be daft. Millions of

people eat me every day. Precisely. We think you’re planning a global attack! You can’t prove anything! You say your job is to colour meat red. How does that work exactly? I change the structure of the protein components in the natural colours. You mean you bind to amino acids? Yes. And? And what happens when you’re heated up? I turn into nitrosamines. Which, if we’re not mistaken, are carcinogenic! Right? But who heats up salami and pepperoni? People only put me on bread. You’re found on pizza. The case is clear!

FOOD PROTOCOL In its pure form potassium nitrate is extremely dangerous. It irritates the skin and eyes and can cause coughing and sneezing. When heated to just 20°C, it can poison the air. This leads to headache, dizziness, sore throat and loss of consciousness to the point of fainting. CAN ALSO CONTAIN: POTASSIUM NITRATE: Goose and duck pate , salted bacon

ALIAS: E249

34

SUSPECT FOOD

LEMON CAKE UNDER INTERROGATION: Aluminium

What are you doing in the icing on top of cakes? I give them a wonderful silvery sheen. They look great and simply fly off the shelves! So you’re a food colourant? Basically, yes. I’m popular. I’m used in glazes on baked goods, and I also add colour to liquorice and other sweets. Your codename? Some people call me E173. Well, a little birdy tells us you’re planning an attack on human brains… Rubbish. I’m innocent! The body only absorbs tiny traces of aluminium, which can’t even get into the brain. That’s been scientifically proven! There’s not even a limit on how much of me people can consume. Does the number E330 mean anything to you? No, not really. You might know it as citric acid. We’ve been looking into its connection to you. You

two always show up together on millions of ingredient lists around the world. That’s not a coincidence! What have you and citric acid got planned? Nothing. We just work together. I make cakes look nice; citric acid makes them taste good. You’re hiding something… Okay, okay. You win. Citric acid did mention that it can get into the brain, because it hasn’t been discovered by the bloodbrain barrier. You mean it’s a kind of smuggler who can get through the border unnoticed. And it takes you along with it. Only on very rare occasions. Liar! You’re smuggled in all the time. Our investigators have found aluminium deposits in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. We figure they came from you, and now you’re given us the name of the smuggler to prove it.

FOOD PROTOCOL For an attack on the brain, E173 always requires a middle man. Citric acid works well. But aspartame and flavour enhancers like glutamate can also transport aluminium across the blood-brain barrier. This very combination of additives is often used in the following foods… CAN ALSO CONTAIN ALUMINIUM: chewing gum,

sweets, processed cheese, tinned vegetables, fruit juices

ALIAS: E173

YOGHURT

ALIAS: E407

UNDER INTERROGATION: Carrageenan You’re an emulsifier? Yes, I make sure that yoghurt stays nice and firm. Your codename is E407? Yes. But I’m totally harmless. Everyone says so. What’s the problem here? You can cause tumours to form and trigger allergies. You must be confusing me with someone else – that’s probably my little brother. Your little brother? Yes. He looks like me but is much smaller. Some people call him degraded carrageenan. Why is he so dangerous but you’re not?

The small size of his molecules allows him to slip through the mucosal membranes of the gut and cause tumours. You see him once in a while? No, never. We don’t talk. So you consist solely of harmless carrageenan? Well, there are always small traces of degraded carrageenan. But we’re talking tiny amounts… provided you don’t heat me up. Why, what happens then? I turn into my younger brother. We’ve also found you in ketchup. It doesn’t matter where – turn into your younger brother and we’ll lock you up.

FOOD PROTOCOL The European Food Safety Authority has specified an upper limit for carrageenan: up to 34 milligrams per 0.45 kilos of body weight per day. The amount of degraded carrageenan should not be more than 5%. CAN ALSO CONTAIN CARRAGEENAN:

Milk drinks, marmalade, ketchup, ice cream, powdered puddings, sauces

PHOTOS: (M) David Marquez + Getty Images, iStock; Shutterstock; Fotolia

SUSPECT FOOD

CRIME Every day tens of thousands of Couchsurfers bed down in the homes of complete strangers. But for some a simple sleepover turns into their worst nightmare. Because what they don't realise is that their seemingly harmless accommodationprovider might just turn out to be a serial rapist

THE DARK SIDE OF

WORLD EVENTS WHAT IS COUCHSURFING? Staying overnight with a stranger for free and making new friends in the process – that’s what couchsurfing.com offers. Since 2003, members all over the world have been able to offer and search for places to sleep. Twelve million users in over 200,000 cities are active on the social site. But the clientele has changed. The platform isn't only a hospitality network, as it was intended to be, but also a meeting point for dodgy pick-up artists and criminals. More and more users are reporting assaults, thefts and even rapes.

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NO REMORSE Just a few hours before he drugged and raped these women, ‘Leonardo M’ asked them to pose for a photo together.

WOLF IN POLICE CLOTHING

DOUBLE LIFE At first the police officer seems charming and hospitable, and even shows his guests around the city. But during dinner he spikes their drinks with a sedative – and later rapes them.

His modus operandi is always the same. Using the user name ‘Leonardo M’ on couchsurfing.com, Dino Maglio presents himself as a welcoming host offering free accommodation. But his real intentions are more sinister: the police officer almost always seeks out lone female travellers to stay in his apartment in the city of Padua in northern Italy. It was only when a 16-yearold victim filed a complaint with the police that the true extent of his crimes became clear. During their investigations, the police discovered that Maglio had

assaulted at least 16 female couch surfers in just one year. The rapist drugged young women with lorazepam, a strong sedative that he mixed into their drinks. Most victims stayed quiet after their ordeal, but when one left a negative review on his Couchsurfing profile, he sent her a threatening message: “You are ungrateful. In Italy defamation is a crime. Delete your comment or I will contact the authorities. I am a policeman – I’ll see to it that you have trouble travelling in Europe.” Maglio was eventually sentenced to six and a half years in prison.

T he flat looks lovely and the location is ideal. Laura Powell* can hardly believe her luck. The small, homely looking apartment is in Padua, just 40 kilometres or so from Venice. It’ll offer a nice, relaxed hideaway for her and her two daughters, the Australian thinks. Even better, they won’t have to pay a penny for the accommodation – because she found it on couchsurfing.com, a website where locals can offer a free place for travellers to sleep. Any misgivings Laura might have about staying in a stranger’s flat with her two daughters vanish as soon as they meet their host. ‘Leonardo M’ is charm personified and still wearing his police uniform when he greets his three visitors. On the second evening the 36-year-old cooks a pasta dinner for his guests, opens a bottle of wine – and the cosy evening gets underway. The next morning Laura awakes with a start just before dawn. Her eyes slowly adjust to the light as she glances around the room. One of her daughters, Angelique*, is sound asleep on the couch. But there’s no sign of her sister, Catherine*. It’s then that Laura

starts to feel a strange, panicky sensation in the pit of her stomach. Something is not right.

WHEN THE DREAM BECOMES A NIGHTMARE Driven by her instincts, Laura searches the apartment for her 16-year-old daughter. She tries the bathroom and then the kitchen. Nothing. Perplexed, and with the feeling of panic growing ever stronger, she knocks on the door of Leonardo’s room. When the host opens the door, she sees Catherine lying on his bed wearing the same clothes she was in the evening before. She isn’t moving – and continues to lie still even as Laura yells her name and tries to rouse her. It’s almost as if she is in a coma. Laura has to summon all of her strength to drag a glassy-eyed Catherine back into her own bedroom. It’s only then that the teenager begins to come round. Without waiting to hear exactly what happened, Laura hurriedly packs the family’s belongings and leaves Leonardo’s apartment. Memories of the night before begin flooding back to Catherine as the HOUSE OF HORROR Maglio raped at least 16 young women in his flat in Padua.

family hurry through the streets of Padua. Slowly, the fragments of the story emerge. Fearing that the local police might cover Leonardo’s back, Laura and the girls leave the city and head for Venice. They go to the nearest police station and press charges – charges of rape. Leonardo thought he could get away with it by drugging his victim with a sedative, but he reckoned without her remembering every single detail of the crime… In her witness statement, Catherine recounted that Leonardo had offered her a glass of wine and later a Baileys, one or both of which was seemingly spiked. Shortly afterwards she began to feel dizzy and fell asleep. When she came round, she discovered that Leonardo had removed her underwear and was assaulting her.

>

COUCHSURFING VICTIM MARCIA

“I SENSED THAT SOMETHING AWFUL HAD HAPPENED, BUT MY MEMORIES APPEARED TO ME AS IF IN A DREAM.”

*Names have been changed 39

TROPHY HUNTER Maglio had installed hidden cameras around his home. He captured every step taken by his victims – even as he asked them for photos

“I WOKE UP AND DIDN’T HAVE A CLUE WHAT HAD HAPPENED. LEONARDO WAS LYING DIRECTLY BEHIND ME.” COUCHSURFING VICTIM VIVIAN

Unable to defend herself – or even move – Catherine was forced to watch on helplessly. Listening on in horror, Catherine’s mother blurts out: “This happened last night in Padua! We came here because the man who did it is a police officer in Padua and we felt we couldn’t trust anyone there.” The

official gives her a long, hard look. And then reaches for the phone… Later that day a special police unit storms Leonardo’s apartment and arrests a man. Dino Maglio, aka Leonardo, the Couchsurfing host. Catherine’s underwear and a used condom are taken away for analysis. A search of the apartment uncovers some disturbing bits and pieces: an unregistered Bernardelli 6.35mm mini pistol, hidden cameras, copious amounts of sexuallyexplicit material – including child

pornography – and 40 pills of the powerful sedative lorazepam. But that’s not all. As the investigation progresses, it becomes clear that Maglio has hosted scores of Couchsurfers over the years. His was considered a good address; some guests left positive feedback commenting on how he cooked for them and showed them around the city. From the outside the slightly-built police officer appeared charming and trustworthy. Nobody seemed to notice the pattern that ran through his couchsurfing.com profile like a line of blood-red thread.

WHAT’S REALLY HIDING BEHIND THAT COUCHSURFING PROFILE? In order to shine a light on some of the murky goings-on in this dark underworld, World Of Knowledge spoke to reporters from the research network Correctiv and representatives from the IRPI (Investigative Reporting Project Italy). What we learnt was shocking. Like all good websites, it didn’t take long for couchsurfing.com to establish itself. What it offered seemed almost too good to be true: travel the world and sleep for free in the houses of cool locals found online. You’d feel at home in a foreign country, you could travel the world on a shoestring. What’s not to like? Setting up a profile on couchsurfing.com takes just a few minutes. All you need is an email address and off you go: you’ll already see people searching for accommodation in your city. Once you’ve hosted your first guests and received positive feedback, you’re well on your way to becoming a respected Couchsurfer. And for a while, it really did work beautifully. But over the years the Couchsurfing community has grown massively in size. The not-for-profit project turned into a profit-orientated start-up that today has more than 12 million users. But the truth is, among the many well-meaning hosts lie an

increasing number of unscrupulous pick-up artists. There are even instructions circulating online that advise men on how best to cajole female Couchsurfers into having sex – and posts of how they performed in bed. And it’s not always just flirting and consensual sexual intercourse. Scanning various blogs and forums, Correctiv has documented an increasing number of reports of attacks on female travellers. There are details of rapes by hosts in England, France, China, the USA, Norway and India. And what’s notable is that the profiles of many of the perpetrators don’t seem dodgy or suspicious. But dig deeper and the real truth quickly becomes clear.

THERE WERE MANY CLUES – BUT NOBODY FOLLOWED THEM UP Men like Dino Maglio feel completely at home in this kind of environment. These are the men who use Couchsurfing for one purpose only – luring young women into their homes. For a long time the Italian police officer was one of the most dangerous hosts on the Couchsurfing scene, constantly on the hunt for young girls. Serial abusers like him know exactly how to set their trap while still appearing trustworthy. Maglio worked tirelessly to ensure that only positive reviews appeared on his ‘Leonardo M’ profile. If a guest dared post something negative, he became aggressive and threatened to turn them in and press charges of defamation (not entirely implausible, given his job as a police officer) unless they removed it. It was only when a Portuguese woman named Marcia set up a Facebook group for victims of Maglio that a reporter from the IRPI was contacted and began to

research the case. During the investigation the list of victims kept growing and growing. It turned out that many women had in fact filed complaints against ‘Leonardo’– but not until they had returned to their home countries. One, an American living in the UK named Anna*, tried reporting her ordeal to a police station in Staffordshire, where officers told her the process would be “difficult” and “lengthy” as her statement would need to be translated and sent to Italy. So lengthy that Maglio was free to carry on his assaults… Thankfully, after Catherine Powell and her mother contacted the police, the Italian authorities finally sprung into action. Maglio was arrested, tried and sentenced to six and a half years in prison. Nobody knows how many serial offenders continue to operate on couchsurfing.com. Many victims choose to remain silent. However, Maglio’s case did raise the question of how safe the online portal is. Clearly, it is not in a position to filter out even the most dangerous psychopaths. Marcia reported her concerns about Leonardo to the Couchsurfing safety team. Confronted with the case, Jennifer Billock, then-CEO of Couchsurfing, responded: “Our sympathies are with the women who were affected. The safety of our community is of the utmost concern and we work with local law enforcement groups to the full extent permitted by law.” The question of whether current safety precautions failed in the case of Maglio remains unanswered. “We’re constantly working to improve our safety precautions,” Billock continued. Still, users would do well to heed what it says, in large letters, on the couchsurfing.com website: “Every Couchsurfer is responsible for their own safety.”

PHOTOS: Getty Images; Correctiv.org (4)

Nobody suspected that Maglio was in fact a sexual predator, who always seemed to offer his place to young women. Preferably women who were travelling alone. But now it is clear: over the course of a year, Maglio assaulted at least 16 women in his flat. What’s even scarier is that his isn’t an isolated case – he may even be the tip of the iceberg in the sinister world of Couchsurfing…

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TECHNOLOGY

THE FLYING 42

AIR SUPERIORITY The Globemaster lives up to its name: it can reach any runway on Earth without stopping to replenish its 130,000-litre fuel tanks. That’s something done in mid-air by aircraft such as this Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker.

azing transport aircraft in the world: the hold 17 Globemaster III can carry missiles, tanks y point on the planet – within just 18 hours

ighttime over Alaska. The hand signal comes up: two more minutes. Adrenaline pumping, the paratroopers lined up against the side of the aircraft return the

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gesture. In the inky darkness, the 263-ton plane races between mountain peaks at an altitude of just 100 metres. “We’re not in a stealth aircraft so our tactic is to avoid radar detection by flying low to the ground,” explains Captain Nick Carr. Outside the open side-doors the wind hurtles past at 320km/h, mixing with the roar of the four Pratt & Whitney engines to drown out the voices of those inside. The dim, dark-red combat lighting in the hold means the tense expressions on the soldiers’ faces can only be guessed at. “Four, three, two… one,” counts down co-pilot James Rayden, before the lights by the door suddenly switch from red to green. “Out! Out! Go, go, go!” A race against time begins in the belly of the US Army’s monstrous flying powerhouse, the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III.

HOW QUICKLY CAN A PLANE’S HOLD EMPTY? Like a snapped pearl necklace, the 102 elite soldiers of the US 82nd Airborne Division spring into action. One after another, they leap into the gloom through the two side-doors. Sixty-five seconds later, the aircraft is empty. “We have a strict window to get all of the paratroopers out,” explains pilot Carr. “Any longer, and we’ll run out of time to bank and risk flying into the side of a mountain.” Senior Airman Neal Gabino hauls in the static lines used to open the soldiers’ parachutes as they exit the plane. “This time, it all went well. Sometimes these lines snag, leaving the jumper dangling helplessly in the air like a fish on a hook. If that happens, we have to drag them back in.” It doesn’t happen often. Nothing much ever goes wrong, actually, as the Globemaster is perfectly suited to dropping troops, equipped as it is with specialist kit such as a wind deflector. This is deployed before the soldiers jump to prevent them being hurled back against the side of the plane like rag dolls. >

EXPORT MODEL A total of 268 Globemasters have been sold to nine air forces around the world. This Royal Air Force C-17 took off from the Ghanaian capital Accra in support of an anti-terror mission in Mali.

HOW DOES THE TRUCK OF THE SKIES WORK? The Globemaster asks a lot of its small crew of two pilots and a loadmaster. That’s because every last centimetre of the $218 million plane’s hold must be expertly packed, with the heaviest cargo positioned slap bang above the aircraft’s centre of gravity. If the plane was nose-heavy, it wouldn’t be able to get its front wheels off of the ground during take-off and would speed over the end of the

QUADRUPLE BACKUP To protect against outages or attacks, there are four electronic flight control systems on board. There’s also a mechanical control system that can be used in emergencies.

GRAVEL RUNWAY The landing gear is designed for short, temporary runways. Even with a maximum load the C-17 only needs 920 metres to land.

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runway. If the C-17 was tail-heavy, on the other hand, it would stall shortly after taking off because its rear end would drag the aircraft down. The flying weightlifter is stationed at 12 US Army bases around the globe, meaning it can respond quickly to any crisis. Although the C-17 has been in continuous service since 1995, only one has ever crashed.

TRACK VEHICLE Built-in rollers can move cargo to anywhere in the hold. This means soldiers can move heavy pallets by themselves, without using a crane.

OVER

WEAPON DEFLECTOR At 53 metres long the plane makes a large target for the enemy. To see off any heat-seeking missiles, the pilot can fire flares that burn at over 1,000˚C, making them hotter than the exhaust heat from the engines.

52 ME

TRES

WIDE

3 MILLION FLIGHT HOURS have been racked up by the US Army’s 224 Globemasters – the equivalent of 60,000 times around the world or an operating time of 342 years.

JETTISON POINT Not only can the C-17 transport Humvees, artillery, missiles and helicopters, it can also jettison them in mid-air: objects weighing up to 27 tons can roll over the loading ramp during a flight.

TANK CARRIER Around 77 tons of cargo can fit into the hold, including the M1 Abrams. The vehicle, which is ten metres long and weighs 62 tons, is the principal tank of the US Army.

ONE OF THE » GREAT SUCCESS REVERSE GEAR Together, the four Pratt & Whitney F117-PW-100 engines provide 760 kilonewtons of thrust, which is roughly equivalent to the power of a large train. The C-17 is one of the few planes that can reverse on its own, thanks to integrated thrust reversers on the ground – it can even cope with a 2% incline.

STORIES IS THE PERFORMANCE OF THE AIR FORCE’S C-17 GLOBEMASTER. REPORT BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

MINI CREW The giant plane only needs two pilots and a loadmaster. The exception to the rule: on long, intercontinental flights, the number doubles and the team works in shifts.

SPACE STATION The 27-metre by 5.5-metre hold is big enough to accommodate several large trucks. Even an Apache helicopter or Patriot missile system can be squeezed into the four-metre-high space.

HOW DO YOU DROP AN ARMY OUT OF A PLANE? American airborne troops have just 18 hours after they’re scrambled to be ready to fight anywhere in the world. It’s only thanks to the C-17 Globemaster III, the US military’s most versatile transport aircraft, that this tiny window is achievable. Everything needed to go into battle – soldiers and their equipment, plus heavier, bulky cargo like tanks and armoured personnel carriers – are all carried in its cavernous belly. The enormous plane doesn’t even

need a runway: of the 3,250 troops in a typical, large taskforce, three-quarters parachute in from the air, along with around 3,500 tons of equipment. The latter is simply jettisoned from the rear door, rolling over the seven-metre landing ramp and out of the plane. The parachute is either deployed immediately using a static line or via a sensor that responds to the increased air pressure near the ground. But that’s not all: if the target area is too small for a parachute

IT ALWAYS » DOES WHAT I WANT. YOU ONLY GET AN IDEA OF ITS SIZE WHEN IT’S ON THE GROUND. NICK CARR, GLOBEMASTER PILOT

drop, the Globemaster can hand deliver the cargo. After a rapid descent, the objects are unloaded out of the rear door without the plane actually landing. Special palettes protect the equipment from being damaged. The risks for the crew and aircraft are much higher, though: “Imagine flying at 240km/h with a 27-ton object rolling out of the back. It alters the plane’s centre of gravity enormously,” explains pilot Gary Clayton. It’s a challenging manoeuvre, then, but one that his

colleague Nick Carr thinks the plane is more than capable of: “For such a huge aircraft, it handles incredibly well. It always does what I want in the air. Only when you’re on the ground, in front of that seven-metre-high fuselage, do you get an idea of the size of the thing.” The flying monster even has a canny trick up its wing: to descend as rapidly as possible to a combat zone, the aircraft’s thrust reversers can be deployed in flight to provide added drag. Like during emergency braking, the thrust is thus directed

forwards to dramatically slow the aircraft – something civil aviation pilots do everything to avoid because of the high risk of crashing. With all this praise flying around, surely there must be a gripe or two waiting to be aired? Well, there is one thing that annoys the Globemaster pilots, especially during long intercontinental flights. Captain Carr looks at a passenger jet passing by at 900km/h with a rueful smile: “We can do a lot of cool stuff with the Globemaster, but we can’t fly as quickly as them”

PHOTOS: Steven Garbett/GoPro; DPA; Dreamstime; U.S. Air Force; PR ILLUSTRATION: Alex Pang

HIGH FLIERS 48 in the middle and 54 against the walls – the C-17 can drop up to 102 paratroopers plus their equipment over the target area. Soldiers jump out of the plane at a rate of nearly two per second.

49

NATURE

Many mysteries still surround the world of water, dust and ice above our heads. The World Meteorological Organisation’s International Cloud Atlas aims to reveal the last secrets of the world’s ‘sixth ocean’

CLOUD TSUNAMI An apocalyptic-looking shelf cloud looms over the coast of New South Wales. This rare type of cloud forms when strong downdraughts near a thunderstorm cell mix with rising warm air. The winds can reach speeds of up to 200km/h.

51

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Helicopter pilot Jerry Ferguson can’t believe his eyes when he sees the gigantic tower of clouds threatening to topple onto the desert city of Phoenix, Arizona. But what seems like a huge mushroom cloud is actually the largest waterfall on the planet. It’s caused by strong air currents called downbursts, which normally occur near thunderclouds when cold air sinks, hits the

 KM/H

 BILLION LITRES OF WATER According to atmospheric scientists, a downburst can cause a billion litres of water to suddenly plunge towards the ground. These droplets can be smaller than a hundredth of a millimetre, while large hailstones can be several centimetres big.

In a strong west wind, clouds can reach speeds of up to 100km/h. Close to a cyclone, they can even travel as fast as 200km/h.

ground and spreads out in all directions. The downdraughts reach gale force speeds of 160km/h, bringing down millions of litres of rainwater and centimetre-thick hailstones with them, and are sometimes confused with tornadoes. The soaring clouds can extend into the stratosphere and release the same amount of energy as an atom bomb.

 KILOMETRES HIGH A thundercloud can be up to 17 kilometres high. Inside, there is an extreme drop in temperature from 0˚C at the base to -60˚C at the top.

 BACTERIA Thousands of types of bacteria, algae and microscopic creatures are trapped inside tiny raindrops in clouds around the world. Just one millilitre of cloud water can contain between 1,500 and 430,000 bacteria.

he world’s ‘sixth ocean’ contains around 15 trillion tons of water, but it’s not at sea level. It’s above our heads. Look up and the chances are you’ll see part of it. Some 60% of the world’s surface is covered by clouds at any one time. They are divided into ten types, form at four altitudes and are part of a complex, constantly changing system. The fascinating thing? Every cloud is different – yet all have one thing in common: condensation nuclei. These are tiny particles that pick up condensed water droplets, forming a cloud embryo from the moisture in the air. They can be tiny specks of dust, pollen or even bacteria. But for scientists, exactly how gigantic clouds grow from these minuscule flecks is still a puzzle. To improve our understanding of the giants of the sky, the World Meteorological Organisation has launched an appeal: photographers across the globe are being asked to send in pictures of clouds to bring the International Cloud Atlas up to date. Due out next year, the new edition will help sailors and pilots better distinguish between the 100-plus combinations of clouds and so assess their potential danger. Climate scientists also hope to discover new types of clouds from the images. Here we present just a few of the fascinating formations in the atmosphere. 53

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A NEW CLOUD Since their discovery in the US, asperitas clouds have been sighted over Scotland and Norway.

Meteorologists distinguish between ten kinds of cloud, but a puzzling sky formation was first spotted around ten years ago that defied definition. In fact, it’s so different that a new category had to be created for it – the first since 1951. What marks out the asperitas from other clouds is its jagged bottom edge that undulates in huge waves across the sky. Varying levels of illumination and thickness of the

cloud can lead to dramatic visual effects. It can look like an upsidedown mountain range or rolling ocean surf. The formation is regularly observed east of the Rocky Mountains in the US. When warm and cold airflows hit each other there, supercells are formed. They last longer than regular thunderstorm cells and can transform into powerful cyclones or tornadoes.



HOW DO YOU MAKE ARTIFICIAL CLOUDS?

At the CERN research centre in Geneva, Jasper Kirkby and his team have simulated the moment clouds are born in a 26-cubicmetre chamber (pictured). The aim of the Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets (CLOUD) experiments is to create a global model showing which particles contribute to the formation of clouds. Along with dust particles, which make up around 50% of the condensation nuclei, pollen and fungal spores are also rainmakers.

 NANOMETRE PARTICLE Only particles roughly 50 nanometres in size are suitable condensation nuclei for cloud droplets. However, several hundred particles need to be brought together to form a cloud, which can last for hours or even days.

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VORTEX CLOUD Lenticular clouds are found at altitudes between 2,000 and 8,000 metres. Their updraughts make them a popular draw with glider pilots.

They’re heaven for glider pilots, as long as they keep a safe distance from the danger zone. Lenticular clouds are formed when strong air currents flow perpendicularly to an obstacle – such as a mountain range – before hitting it and starting to churn. Like a wave of water, the air masses rise upwards before plunging down again, potentially helping glider pilots to soar over 10,000

metres up into the sky. If they contain enough moisture, these waves will be visible as flying saucer-shaped lenticular clouds. But there’s a catch: the violent rotation of the cloud creates dangerous turbulence, with wind speeds approaching 120km/h. This turbulent zone can range up to 20 times the height of the peak and can therefore even be dangerous for airline pilots.

TORNADO WARNING Mammatus clouds are bag-like formations attached to the underside of thunderclouds. They’re probably caused by sinking bubbles of cold air. This weather phenomenon is ten times more likely to occur in the summer than the winter and can be a sign that a severe storm, or even a tornado, is on its way.

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Clouds come in all different shapes, but their weight depends on three factors: size, temperature and density – or, more precisely, the amount of water they contain. Even though they may look light and fluffy, a comparatively small cumulus cloud can weigh as much as two elephants and scientists estimate

that an average-sized cumulus cloud could contain as much as 200 tons of water. But that’s a lightweight compared to water-heavy mammatus thunderclouds. According to meteorologist Bjorn Alexander, these distinctive, bag-like thunderclouds can weigh up to 1.5 million tons – or even more in tropical areas.

PHOTOS: Hirsty Photography; Bruce Hoffner; Witta Priester; CERN; Getty Images (2)

How much does a

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SNAKE HOUSE Steve Ludwin’s London flat is home to 18 highly venomous snakes, this bamboo viper among them. Four of the snakes belong to some of the most deadly species in the world. It’s their venom that the reptile keeper is particularly interested in…

HUMAN BODY

TOXIC ROULETTE

THE MAN WHO INJECTS SNAKE VENOM Steve Ludwin has been pumping himself with potentially deadly snake venom for almost 30 years. You might assume that the American is trying to end his life – but the very opposite is true

59

I

t is one of the deadliest cocktails in the world: just a few milligrams, injected into the bloodstream by the monocled cobra’s bite, unleashes a devastating chain reaction. The aggressive neurotoxin spreads rapidly through the body, destroying nerve cells and devouring tissue from the inside out. Those bitten find themselves barely able to think for nausea – and without antivenom will often die from respiratory arrest within 24 hours. But Steve Ludwin won’t. One morning the 50-year-old calmly injected himself in the arm with monocled cobra venom, finished his coffee and went off to play a spot of tennis. But how was that even possible? And why would a person do such a thing?

“The venom burns like battery acid under the skin – but the pain is worth it.” For 30 years Steve Ludwin has injected himself with some of the most deadly snake venoms in the world. He often varies his cocktails, mixing toxins from various species of snake together or testing different doses. And he has all of the ingredients he needs to hand: Ludwin keeps 18 snakes in his London flat. Among them are four of the deadliest species on the planet: the monocled cobra, the Baja California rattlesnake, the eyelash viper and the Pope’s pit

BALANCING ACT This bamboo viper has a fiendish trick: it is able to rotate its fangs and bite through its upper lip. This means Ludwin must be even more cautious when he milks the snake using a shot glass.

“When I take cobra venom I’m always incredibly fast. It ives me so much ener y.”

HOW DO YOU MILK A DEADLY KILLER? Ludwin hauls this bamboo viper out of the vivarium by grabbing the back of its head with his fingers, so that it can’t bite him. He presses the snake’s fangs through the film that covers the shot glass, and watches as the venom dribbles out. Though just a few drops can kill a human, Ludwin often mixes together the venom of different snakes which he then injects under his skin. Thanks to the contrasting neurotoxins and gradually increased doses, his body has become ever more immune to snake venom with every injection.

“One injection burned a hole in my le . I could see that the tissue inside had rotted away.” It’s hardly surprising that science has now taken notice of the eccentric venom mixologist. Ludwin is currently working with Professor Brian Lohse at the University of Copenhagen who believes the snake man’s antibodies could help to produce more effective antivenom in the future. In spite of this, Ludwin’s toxic regime remains a life-threatening balancing act. He recently made a nearfatal mistake after injecting himself with three different types of snake venom. “As soon as I’d injected the cocktail, I knew it was game over. My hand swelled up to the size of a baseball glove and my arm filled with fluid all the way up to my shoulder. I spent three days in intensive care and almost lost my arm.” He survived and recovered from the incident in record time: “The doctors told me they’d never seen someone cope with the recovery process so well.” Yet Ludwin is still well aware that an experiment could wipe him out at any time: “I don’t see myself as invincible – despite my immune system.”

PHOTOS: Getty Images (5); Shutterstock

viper. To extract their venom, Ludwin milks the animals by forcing them to bite into a shot glass covered in a layer of plastic. Despite his somewhat eccentric antics, Ludwin is neither a man with a death wish nor an adrenaline junkie – in fact, his regime has a highly practical effect: with every injection and the gentle, steady increase in the dose, the American appears to have immunised his body against snake venom – and, at the same, time slowed the ageing process of his cells. For Ludwin the toxins have an effect akin to a combination of energy drink, performanceenhancing drugs and a time machine. “An hour before I play tennis, I inject myself with a mixture of cobra and rattlesnake venom,” he explains. “Then during the game I feel like a 23-year-old.” And it’s true that his appearance is far from that of your average 50-year-old. A dermatologist has told him that he has the skin of someone 30 years his junior. Not for nothing have some anti-ageing products been found to mimic snake venom in

their chemical composition. His DNA is also unusually youthful: “When I was 42, I had my DNA telomeres analysed. The results were similar to those of a 22-yearold,” Ludwin says. Even his immune system appears to have been strengthened: “I haven’t had a cold or a fever for 13 years.” These days researchers agree that snake venom has healing, curative properties. In March, Professor Ian Smith from Monash University in Melbourne proved that snake venom can delay the onset of Alzheimer’s by destroying the peptide amyloid beta. These are thought to play a major role in causing the onset of the illness.

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WORLD EVENTS

A new study has found that by 2050 there could be more plastic waste in the ocean than fish. Boyan Slat (right) is determined to prevent that happening. The young Dutch inventor has developed a breakthrough technology to stop our seas from suffocating

WAVE OF RUBBISH Around 88% of the global ocean surface is currently polluted with microplastics. It takes around 450 years for a plastic bottle to decompose.

63

THE YOUNG MAN AND THE SEA Boyan Slat has been working on The Ocean Cleanup, a project that aims to rid the world’s seas of plastic, for four years. Millions of tons of the stuff is currently lapping around the oceans.

+++

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ open sea, 23 kilometres off the Dutch coast. “The North Sea is particularly rough at this point of the storm season,” says Slat. His prototype, dubbed “Boomy McBoomface”, needs to withstand harmful UV radiation, saltwater and the destructive force of the stormy sea – for a whole year. The Dutchman is convinced: “It’s pretty safe to say that if it survives here it will survive anywhere.” But even if the waves crush the barrier, he’ll still continue his mission. “Once I get an idea, I stick to it,” he says.

he motorboat moves the 100-metre floating barrier into position. Boyan Slat watches on from the ferry. “This is a historic moment,” says the 22-year-old. After four years of hard work and intensive laboratory testing, it’s almost there: the plastic collection system he has developed is being trialled for the first time under real-life conditions on the

HOW DO YOU SIFT 150 MILLION TONS OF PLASTIC OUT OF THE SEA? Slat has set himself a mammoth task, one that many experts have been openly scornful of. One of the biggest problems facing mankind being solved by a mere teenager? Impossible. Besides, they say, you can’t clean the ocean, only try to reduce the amount of plastic in it. Today, there are roughly 150 million

tons of plastic floating in the sea. In one square kilometre, there can be up to 48,000 particles that will take centuries to decompose. Environmentalists warn that if the trend doesn’t stop, there will be one ton of plastic to every three tons of fish by 2025, with more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050. It would be fatal: this toxic waste isn’t just a threat to the millions of birds and fish that eat it and die in agony. “It really is a ticking time bomb,” explains Slat. “If the large pieces disintegrate and the toxins enter the food chain, mankind’s got a real problem.” Studies have shown that the process only takes a year and poisonous chemicals are released when UV radiation, the saltwater and physical forces break them down. Once they enter the body, they attack the hormonal system, which can lead to allergies, infertility and even cancer. “That’s why we have to act now. We need to collect the bits of plastic

>

65

++

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

HOW DO YOU STOP THE PLASTIC FLOOD? With a team of 150 experts, including biologists and fluid mechanics boffins, Slat has developed a system that skims large pieces of plastic off the sea’s surface before they disintegrate into micro-particles and sink into the murky depths forever.

Phase I The 100-metre-long prototype is currently being tested in the North Sea, off the Dutch coast. The barrier – made from vulcanised rubber, polyester and fabric – has a moveable underwater curtain that can hold 80 tons of plastic waste and can catch microparticles as small as one millimetre.

Phase II In 2017, a twokilometre-long catchment barrier will be installed off the coast of Tsushima Island in Japan. Powered by solar panels, the filtration system will fish plastic out of the ocean for two years.

Phase III The 100-kilometrelong final version will enter service in the Pacific in 2020. Held in place by huge plastic ropes anchored 4,000 metres down on the seabed, the barrier will skim 150 tons of plastic per day and pump it into a 58-metre container. A ship will arrive every six weeks to carry the waste away to be sorted.

THE REAL DEAL Phase I began in June 2016: the tugboat Union Bear installed Slat’s plastic catchment system off the Dutch coast to test it for the first time on the open sea. The technicians had to attach the barrier to large yellow buoys (pictured).

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

HOW MANY YEARS WILL IT TAKE TO RID THE WORLD’S OCEANS OF PLASTIC? “Some eight million tons of plastic enter the world’s oceans every year, which is the equivalent volume of two Empire State Buildings every week,” says inventor Boyan Slat. The Dutchman claims it would take 75,000 years to fish the rubbish out of the sea using ships and nets. By why go after the plastic if you could wait for it to come to you? Slat wants to harness the power of the ocean’s currents

PLASTIC VORTEX Boyan Slat wants to exploit the ocean’s powerful currents by positioning his collection system so the rubbish flows naturally into it.

and leave the plastic to drift into a V-shaped catchment barrier, which has a thin curtain that reaches down three metres into the sea. Since it’s not a mesh-like net, fish can simply swim under the barrier, while the plastic is filtered out of the ocean and collected in containers. Slat estimates we’ll need at least 24 of these facilities to reduce the amount of floating waste by half in ten years.

Current Barrier Plastic

67

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“If our system survives here, it’ll survive anywhere.” Water

Bar

FLOATING BARRIER The 100-metre-long prototype is being tested in the North Sea to check its durability.

rier

Current

1

2 3

4

5

MEETING PLACE Water currents mean most of the plastic collects in five gigantic vortexes. The largest of these ‘ocean gyres’ extends over 650,000 square kilometres in the north Pacific (1). floating on the surface before they disintegrate into micro-particles and sink into the depths where we can’t reach them,” warns Slat. He realised the seriousness of the situation four years ago during a diving holiday in Greece. “I saw more plastic bags than fish,” recalls the 22-year-old. Shocked, Slat began his mission straight away. He packed in his studies and, in 2013, founded The Ocean Cleanup, a company based on a strikingly simple concept: “Why should we chase after the plastic?” asks Slat. “Why not wait for it to come to us and then simply pick it up?” Like all good ideas the Dutchman’s is a simple one. He suggests using

68

a series of rubber booms anchored to the seabed. These will form a V-shaped barrier on the ocean surface that will collect plastic lapping against it. A three-metredeep underwater ‘curtain’ will filter out millimetre-sized micro-particles, while allowing fish and other marine life to pass freely underneath it.

HOW MANY BILLIONS OF DOLLARS ARE FLOATING IN THE OCEAN? Slat is following a three-step plan: if the 100-metre North Sea prototype works, then next year a larger, two-kilometre-long system will be tested off the coast of Japan. A successful trial there will lead to the full-scale, 100-kilometre barrier entering service in 2020 – this time to tackle the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Much of the plastic waste is relatively easy to locate because it collects in five rotating ocean currents, or gyres, which are often thousands of kilometres wide. The largest vortex is located between Hawaii and California and is the size of central Europe. “Around a third of all of the plastic waste ever thrown into the sea is there,” says Slat. The problem facing Slat is that his mega-system would be the largest human construction ever to float on the sea and would cost nearly $480 million. The North Sea prototype

was paid for via a three-month crowdfunding campaign that saw 38,000 people from 160 countries donating over $2 million. However, to bring the final version to life, there needs to be a larger-scale solution and the inventor already has an idea: “We can recycle the old plastic into commodities like crude oil.” According to information on industry website letsrecycle.com, every ton of plastic can bring in up to $545. The 150 million tons of plastic floating in the ocean is potentially worth around $80 billion, then – many times the amount the Dutchman needs for his project. Slat is aware that a large number of people doubt his mission will be successful, but he doesn’t let their views put him off: “History is littered with stories of things that couldn’t be done, and then were done,” he smiles, as he watches his vision become a reality from the ferry in the North Sea. He’s convinced that his prototype is only the first step and has tackled his critics head-on with a feasibility report backed by 70 scientists and engineers. To save the oceans, though, he needs more help – or, as the Dutch State Secretary for the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment Sharon Dijksma puts it, “We need a whole army of Boyans.”

PHOTOS: Getty Images; DPA; Ocean Cleanup (2)

Plastic

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FOOD

The two rodents nibbling away at this flower have just

$)($67 )25 7+( (<(6 As one squirrel sinks its 22 tiny teeth into a purple flower, the other scans the sky for birds of prey. It might seem a nice, sociable way to eat, but actually this table-for-two feeding arrangement is vital to the animals hanging around long enough to see the dessert menu. After all, enemies are everywhere. “View before you chew!” is the ground squirrel’s mantra. Meanwhile, midnight feasts are off the table – because as soon as dusk sets in, the rodents become practically blind. Consequently, mealtimes rarely begin before 10am. Instead of wandering unprotected and disorientated over the meadows in the evenings, ground squirrels prefer to retreat, tired and hungry, to their burrows. Stuffing their faces whenever they can is, therefore, vital to their survival. This is especially true in the run-up to the European winter because they hibernate from September to March. Before bedding down, the rodents will stash a modest spread in their burrow ready for when they awaken, belly rumbling, after their six-month nap. Once that’s devoured, they’re ready for the next challenge – mating.

one goal: to double their bodyweight before they hunker down for the winter. Ground squirrels’ eating habits can teach us a lot about these quirky little creatures

NATURE

*5281' 648,55(/ (Spermophilus citellus) SIZE: 18-23cm WEIGHT: 200g (spring) to 430g (autumn) HABITAT: The Eurasian Steppe, Turkey, the Balkans, and parts of central and eastern Europe, including Austria and the Czech Republic.

71

$5(7+(6( +,*+,1 )$7$1' 3527(,1" The European ground squirrel has relatives all over the world, including in North America and as far north as the Arctic Circle. They vary enormously in size, from larger ones like marmots or prairie dogs, down to the smaller, less bushy-tailed chipmunks. All of the species have sizeable internal cheek pouches for carrying food, which brings us to another maxim by which ground squirrels live their lives: “Eat only energy-rich foods with plenty of fat and protein.” They’ve also got a soft spot for seeds, which is somewhat apt as the creature’s Latin name Spermophilus literally translates as “one that loves seeds”. Nobody knows why they are so fond of dry, barren landscapes – they’re certainly not so keen on empty calories!

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PHOTOS: Julian Ghahreman Rad; Georg Struempf; Henrik Spranz

Despite the urgency of the situation (yet another motto: “Put on at least five millimetres of fat or the next winter hibernation will be your last!”), ground squirrels are showoffs who love to play around. For example, tasty berries hanging from swinging branches are a chance to exhibit their acrobatic prowess. But if you think that the ground squirrel always has a sunny disposition, one thing really gets their goat: rain. Ground squirrels hate drizzle like nothing else and will scuttle off to their burrows at the first sign of the stuff. Once there they won’t budge – even if the downpour lasts for days. The animals loathe any kind of moisture: after all, their ancestors once lived on the desert-like steppe. The ideal ground squirrel weather forecast is, therefore, a warm summer, a relatively cold winter (so that they don’t wake up early, thinking it’s spring) and absolutely no rain. Well, alright, maybe a little bit. Otherwise those tasty seeds won’t grow…

73

WORLD EVENTS IMPROVISATION A Navy SEAL’s combat gear can weigh up to 30kg, but these elite forces are able to fend for themselves without any high-tech equipment.

WHAT WOULD A

1$9< 6($/ DO? Blend into the crowd, make the hit and disappear – Navy SEALs are no strangers to covert missions deep behind enemy lines. Their operations rely on techniques designed for the very worst-case scenario, but even us civilians can use their elite methods to stay safe

xplosions, car chases, hostagetaking – there are situations that most of us would need a serious stroke of luck to survive. But other people have a much higher success rate when their lives are in danger: military special forces such as the US Navy SEALs always seem to be able to wriggle out of a tight spot, even when the odds are heavily stacked against them. Of course, these soldiers spend years honing their skills and are armed to the teeth with high-tech equipment during missions. But in many cases, simply using the right manoeuvre at the right time can mean the difference between success and failure, life and death. They’re vital life-saving skills for worst-case scenarios. Former Navy SEALs are usually reluctant to reveal their secrets, but Clint Emerson isn’t one of them. Here he shares five detailed strategies to vastly improve your chances when an emergency strikes.

CLINT EMERSON 100 Deadly Skills In this in-depth illustrated guide, retired Navy SEAL Clint Emerson lifts the lid on 100 techniques the elite unit relies on when there’s no way out…

BOOK TIP

$27.99, SIMON & SCHUSTER

+2: '2 , %(67 6+,(/' 0<6(/) )520 $ %8//(7" 7,3 MISSION: TO QUICKLY IDENTIFY OBJECTS THAT PROVIDE SAFE COVER.

#01

When danger strikes, you only have a split second to take cover. If no cover exists, you should lay flat on the ground with your face down. If there’s about to be an explosion, cross your legs, turn away from the bomber, press your hands over your ears and open your mouth to stop the shock waves shredding your lungs.

Cover is always better than safety in numbers: in some cases, attackers will shoot indiscriminately into a crowd.

326,7,21,1* They may be narrow, but load-bearing elements like pillars provide better cover than some walls: even small-calibre bullets can penetrate plasterboard.

0$7(5,$/ Try and identify possible cover

before an attack happens. The following materials will shield you from shrapnel and bullets. DENSE WOOD CONCRETE

STEEL

GRANITE

5(/2&$7,1* Move rapidly from cover to cover and in zigzags if crossing an open space. Avoid stopping behind any objects a bullet could penetrate. RELY ON CONCRETE AND STEEL

AVOID PLASTERBOARD

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GRANITE-TOP TABLE

NOT UPHOLSTERY

books stacked on top of one another will provide some protection against gunshots. Add an extra layer of ceramic tiles, wrap it up in duct tape, and you can make your own improvised bulletproof vest.

CERAMIC TILES

BEHIND THE CAR’S ENGINE

CONCRETE PLANT POT

NOT THE BOOT OR PASSENGER SIDE

Use strong tape to attach the makeshift vest to the front and back of your torso

NOT THIN-WALLED OBJECTS SUCH AS RUBBISH BINS

75

+2: '2 <28 7(// ,) <28¶5( %(1* 63,(' 21" 7,3 MISSION: TO PROTECT YOUR PERSONAL BELONGINGS

#02

You can’t take personal possessions like laptops everywhere with you. Suspect that someone is rummaging through your stuff or tampering with it while you’re away? Here are some crafty traps you can set to catch them red-handed.

Apps such as Photo Trap are designed to compare images of before and after you went away.

&203$66 75,&. Align objects such as a coffee cup in a particular direction.

),1*(5 75,&. Use your thumb, finger or

:('*( 75,&. Wedge objects into tight spaces.

3+272 75,&. Take a photo to remember exactly how things are arranged on your desk.

Wedge the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign between the door and its frame. Take note of the last letter you can see.

Intruders aren’t likely to see a ball of lint or a strand of hair wedged into a drawer, so they won’t notice when it falls to the ground.

forearm to measure the distances between objects.

+2: &$1 <28 /26( 620(21( :+2 ,6 7$,/,1* <28" 7,3 MISSION: TO ESCAPE SURVEILLANCE AND DISAPPEAR WITHOUT A TRACE

#03

Keep spotting the same person in different places, even though they’re miles apart? Do the person’s clothes and body language make them stick out? Then the chances are you’re being followed. Remember to remain calm and avoid making any suspicious, panicked movements.

$&&25',21 ())(&7 Find an area with a lot of traffic lights. The stop-and-go traffic will stretch out a surveillance team. The fear of being discovered may force the last car to give up the chase.

Make a discreet escape: it’s best if your pursuers think they lost you as a result of their own carelessness.

67236 Surveillance teams often lose sight of

their targets when they stop. Take advantage of this by making frequent breaks. Always park on a bend or by an exit so you can quickly disappear from view.

APARTMENT

CAFE (8 MINUTES)

NEWSAGENT (6 MINUTES) THE PURSUERS

YOU

DRYCLEANERS (4 MINUTES)

BOOKSHOP (14 MINUTES)

SHOPPING CENTRE (11 MINUTES)

38%/,& 75$163257 Regularly change lines

when you use buses and trains.

+,',1* 3/$&(6 Public areas are ideal for disappearing into the crowd.

77

:+(5(¶6 7+( %(67 3/$&( 72 67$6+ 7+,1*6 ,1 $ +27(/" 7,3 MISSION: TO FIND SAFE PLACES TO HIDE YOUR VALUABLES

#04

Thieves often frequent large hotels so it’s advisable to keep them guessing. Vary the times you’re in the room and try to use different entrances and exits. If possible, avoid checking into rooms on the ground and top floor because that’s where burglars prefer to loiter. 86()8/ 722/6

PLASTIC BAGS WITH ZIPPER

Be vigilant! The more creatively you hide things, the harder they will be to discover.

INSIDE CABLE TV SOCKET Inside the hem of curtains.

STICKY TAPE

SMALL SCREWDRIVER

ELASTIC BANDS

Inside the cover of the ironing board or inside its metal frame.

Inside the zipped-up cushions on chairs and sofas. Taped to the bottom of a heavy piece of hotel furniture.

ILLUSTRATIONS: Ted Slampyak/Riva Verlag

Taped to the underside of a drawer. The bottom drawer is most difficult to reach.

Under the edge of a carpet.

INSIDE THE SHOWER CURTAIN ROD Inside the soap dispenser. BEHIND THE REMOVABLE PANEL ON THE BACK OF THE TELEVISION OR OTHER ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES.

In a waterproof bag inside the toilet cistern.

:+$7 326785( ,6 %(67 :+(1 <28¶5( 7,(' 83" 7,3 MISSION: TO ASSUME POSITIONS THAT WILL HELP YOU ESCAPE

#05

When someone ties you up, there are a few tricks that can increase your ability to move. You can use the legs of a chair or your own limbs to create sufficient slack to wriggle out of restraints. You’ll need to wait for your captors to leave the room first, of course.

Spread your fingers out as much as possible while the restraints are being attached. Then relax to loosen them.

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Open your hands and press your wrists together, but only where the bases of your thumbs meet. This will increase the diameter of your wrists and force the captors to set a larger size on the handcuff ratchet.

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Captives are usually tied to a chair during an interrogation. Use all your strength to spread out as much as possible and allow for slack between yourself and the chair.

When you hold out your hands, hide the gap between your palms.

If your body is limp, captors can make the restraints tighter.

Take a deep breath and hold it.

Try to keep your arms straight, not bent at 90° angles.

Curve your back as far away from the chair as possible.

Move your feet to the outside of the chair legs.

*5$% Try to discreetly grasp a loop of the restraint and hide it in your hand.

When you release the slack later, the restraint might be looser, enabling you to slip through.

79

HISTORY +RZ FRXOG 2EDPD EH FKDUJHG with 1,700 counts of murder?

$UH 6ZLVV EDQNV VWLOO SURÀWLQJ from the Holocaust?

Is democracy even possible without slave labour?

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How many WLFNLQJ WLPH ERPEV has Germany invited in? Why did the US drop WZR DWRPLF FKDUJHV"

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off-limits depends on the context. Back in the Middle Ages, for example, you could be executed for questioning the existence of God – something that still occurs in some countries today. Scientific trailblazers such as Galileo Galilei and Charles Darwin risked their lives and reputations when they dared to challenge the established wisdom of their time. Without these courageous people, these fearless pioneers of history, progress would be impossible. However, not all forbidden questions break taboos or threaten traditional values: they can also expose criminal activity, reveal cruel experiments or unmask fanatical ideologies. That’s why certain people will do everything in their power to make sure some questions

remain unanswered, particularly when they are under attack. Those who dare to ask questions often face dangerous opposition: they are discredited or mocked as conspiracy theorists. People guarding the secrets query the sanity of journalists, politicians and activists when they get too close to the truth. Nevertheless, throughout history, scores of seemingly far-fetched conspiracy theories have later turned out to be true, such as the many coup attempts planned and executed by the USA. During the Cold War, asking too many questions about the power behind a regime change would have been career suicide for a politician. But don’t despair, there’s some hope in these examples – after all, the truth always prevails. 81

CLEANSING Mission accomplished for the CIA-backed coup: soldiers from new dictator Carlos Castillo Armas’ army execute supporters of the democratically elected Jacobo Árbenz and his government in Guatemala.

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Test tube nation In order to build the Panama Canal, the US created a new country: the Republic of Panama. It split from Colombia after a violent conflict.

Operation Ajax British and American troops overthrew the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq (right) to prevent his plan to nationalise the oil industry.

Bomb export The CIA supported a coup against democratically elected President Sukarno – and sent bombers as well as pilots.

Contract coup Dictator Joseph-Désiré Mobutu overthrew the democratically elected and Soviet-backed Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba (right) under US pressure.

GUATEMALA 1954

+2: 0$1< ',&7$7256+,36 81,7(' 67$7(6 &5($7('" he army marching across the border at 8.20am on 15th June 1954 is hardly formidable. Around 480 soldiers are invading Guatemala to conquer a country with three million inhabitants. What seems like a suicide mission ends after just a few days. At first glance, it may look like a small band of rebels, but, in reality, the US is behind the attack. The most powerful democracy on Earth has started a covert war against Guatemala’s President Jacobo Árbenz, who was elected with 65% of the popular vote. But why? Is it down to oil or ‘security concerns’? Far from it: the reason is literally bananas… To conceal the real firepower behind the apparent rabble army of mercenaries, the newly founded CIA (established 1947) unleashes an unprecedented campaign of psychological warfare: they spread propaganda on a huge scale with airdropped leaflets and radio broadcasts, while sabotaging the official media. A handful of camouflaged US fighter jets manage to drop bombs on highly symbolic targets, despite armed resistance from the ground, and panic spreads. The ominous “liberation force” gains the upper hand: they make it clear to the nation’s military that it cannot win. Árbenz is forced to resign and flee. The country descends into a decades-long civil war costing some 200,000 lives and becomes the stage for a revolving cast of dictators and drug cartels, but the CIA never intervenes in Guatemala again. But why would you launch a coup for a bunch of bananas? In 1952, Árbenz passed Decree 900, or the Agrarian Reform Law, which expropriated idle land owned by the US United Fruit Company (UFC). The firm responded by lobbying against Árbenz in America, which led to him seizing 200,000 acres of uncultivated land in 1953. Compensation equalling the value stated in UFC’s tax

returns was offered by Guatemala, but US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, lost a lot of money in the deal. Both men were on the payroll of the powerful corporation and Allen was even a board member. So they spun the tale of a communist conspiracy to legitimise a coup. It wasn’t an isolated case. Be it Chile, Congo, Iran or Brazil, the US has initiated or supported government coups in a dozen or more nations. And that number rises if you count the countries where they have propped up governments led by unscrupulous dictators (see timeline below). “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a

“Most of the information in the files is far from flattering, but that’s just the history of the CIA.” MICHAEL HAYDEN, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR

bitch,” President Franklin D Roosevelt is rumoured to have said about Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García. To the US, state-run terror was okay as long as it didn’t happen under the communist banner or block access to free markets, natural resources or transportation routes. If you questioned the policy, you risked being accused of treason. “The problem with this type of policy: not only does it run counter to the official policy of the US government at the time,” explains Robert Funk from the University of Chile, “but it’s also extremely short-sighted: the population hates the friends of the dictators to this day.” If there hadn’t been several successful freedom of information suits brought by American activists, we wouldn’t even know many of the details today. “Most of the information in the files is far from flattering,” admits former CIA Director Michael Hayden. “But that’s just the history of the CIA.” So, are we allowed to ask about these crimes today? No, nearly 99% of the Guatemala files are still classified.

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Prison sentence Nelson Mandela (right), a vocal opponent of the apartheid regime, was put behind bars for 27 years, with the CIA helping authorities find him.

Reform stop When democratically elected president João Goulart tried to introduce land reform, the army seized power in a coup d’état – with CIA support.

Project FUBELT Before and after Salvador Allende was elected president, the CIA unleashed a campaign of terror throughout the country, ultimately ending in the military coup of General Augusto Pinochet.

Holy war The US and Pakistan provided weapons and funding for the Islamist mujahedeen in its fight against the Soviets. Their successors, the Taliban, terrorise Afghan citizens. 83

GERMANY 2016

+2: 0$1<7,&.,1* 7,0(%20%6+$6 19,7(',1" “They can no longer rely on their own parents for support and are searching for a new identity. That puts them at risk of becoming a victim of radicalisation.” EVA MOEHLER, TRAUMA PSYCHOLOGIST

ne man wildly swung an axe at people on a train, another blew himself up outside a music festival. Within the space of a week, two young men carried out terror attacks that stunned Germany. The common factor: they were both refugees – two of more than 1.4 million in the country. But how many of them are ticking time bombs? It’s a controversial question because anyone who dares to ask is labelled a right-wing sympathiser. On one hand, that’s down to parties like the right-wind AfD (Alternative for Germany), which is exploiting the issue without looking for objective answers. On the other hand, it’s down to the established political parties, which are unable to provide any solid statistics. Any real attempt to answer the question has to be free from political or religious views and based instead on purely psychological factors. Around 70% of all refugees have experienced violence – more than half first-hand. “At least half of the refugees have a psychological illness,” says Dietrich Munz, president of the

SOLDIER OF THE CALIPHATE Riaz Ahmadzai wounded four people, two of them critically, on 18th July 2016. In a video (right), the refugee acknowledged receiving orders from Islamic State.

German Federal Chamber of Psychotherapists. According to his estimates, up to 80,000 refugees are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and are in urgent need of therapy. Trauma psychologist Eva Moehler sees the greatest need among unaccompanied children: “They can no longer rely on their own parents for support and are searching for a new identity. That puts them at risk of becoming a victim of radicalisation.”

PTSD is an extreme psychological condition that can cause fear and panic. “And that makes victims even more desperate to find something that gives their life meaning,” says Moehler. “It can be something relating to Islam, but it could just as easily be something else that makes a refugee blow a fuse, without religion being a factor at all.” And that’s exactly what happened in both cases during the European summer. Mental illness, however, is not covered in asylum legislation, despite the fact that the atrocities most refugees experience in their native countries leave scars of trauma. When German Minister of Health Hermann Groehe calls for the government “to provide appropriate treatment as soon as possible for severely traumatised and mentally ill people”, it’s nothing more than window dressing: the specialist centres for trauma victims in Germany are only equipped to handle roughly 13,500 people per year. Consequently, at the current levels, it would take decades to give the refugees in Germany the therapy they need. Meanwhile, the time bombs keep on ticking.

ATHENS 500 BC

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eople huddle together on a limestone hill west of the Acropolis. Over 6,000 citizens of Athens are gathered on the Pnyx to govern, with no elected representatives or all-powerful monarch. All issues are resolved right here in an assembly called the Ecclesia. “Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it,” said Pericles, the influential Athenian statesman. At no other time during the next 2,500 years of world history would democracy be so perfectly realised as in Athens, ancient Greece’s most powerful city state. Every citizen – be they a judge, lawmaker or military commander – had the same opportunities. However, the Pnyx is also symbolic of democracy’s most

THE DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP The Athenians championed the “rule of the people” over 2,500 years ago, but it was only possible thanks to slaves like these grape-crushers.

“Democracy is the free world’s whore, willing to satisfy a whole range of tastes, available to be used and abused at will.” ARUNDHATI ROY, INDIAN AUTHOR obvious obstacle: the full citizens of Athens stood next to a silent majority who had no rights, but without whom the ‘rule of the people’ would collapse overnight. Would democracy have even been possible without exploiting these slaves? Up to 400,000 slaves lived in Athens at the time, with an average of ten slaves working for each citizen. Add to that about 20,000 foreigners, who lived in Athens but had no civil rights. Tens of thousands of women were also excluded from the democratic process. So it was less the rule of the people and more the rule of the male elite:

fewer than one in ten people had any power at all. This system has been put in place throughout thousands of years of history: the working class during Britain’s Industrial Revolution, the slaves in the USA and the soldiers in the Prussian army. Democracies are always founded on an exclusion of a major section of society. For centuries, people were exploited and enslaved by the European colonial powers. However, the UN’s International Labour Organisation estimates that western democracies still owe their prosperity to as many as 21 million modern slaves across the world, people who are victims of forced labour. Some former colonies like China have become economic superpowers in their own right and have a financial power over the Western democracies that can’t generate wealth at the expense of other countries as they once did. “Representative democracy is a 19th century construct,” according to political scientist Wolfgang J Koschnick. It’s a phenomenon that Harvard economist Dani Rodrik calls the “globalisation paradox”. But can you criticise democracy in this way? Anyone who tries to start a debate risks being called authoritarian. Twelve million EU citizens are classified as long-term unemployed. Furthermore, according to UNICEF, almost 12% of children in Spain alone didn’t have enough to eat in 2014, only slightly less than in the Central African nation of Chad. Without modern-day slavery, the future doesn’t look bright for democracies, proving that very little has changed over the past 2,500 years. Pericles was convinced that “fish live in the sea, as men do on land: the great ones eat up the little ones” and introduced payments for attendance at the Ecclesia, leaving the women, foreigners and slaves to stay home to do the real work. 85

FIREBALL The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki killed around 22,000 people instantly. A further 40,000 people died in the four months after the attack.

JAPAN 1945

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he world collectively holds its breath as the huge mushroom cloud billows over Hiroshima. It’s the morning of 6th August 1945 and America has just detonated its new super-weapon. Approximately 80,000 Japanese citizens die instantly in the fireball, many evaporating into thin air. Hospitals, temples, schools: every building in the city has been ripped apart. At first, the people in Tokyo think that a bomb has hit a munitions depot. Even hours later, the Japanese military still has no idea what exactly happened because Hiroshima is radio silent. Two days later, on 8th August, the horror is finally revealed in leaflets dropped over 47 Japanese cities. They explain that “a single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2,000 of our giant B-29 bombers

could have carried on a single mission” and ask the Japanese people to urge their government to end the war. The next day, the Japanese Supreme War Council met at 11.00am to submit a peace proposal to the US. At exactly 11.02am, a second bomb exploded over Nagasaki. To this day, hardly anyone in the US would dare ask: why was a second bomb needed? After all, the implication is the US perpetrated a war crime. The official version is that, without two bombs, the Japanese would never have surrendered. It was the only way President Truman could avoid sending ground troops into Japan and prevent hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese casualties on the battlefield. It’s a moral justification for

“You could say that, and I think it’s probably sadly true, if we also had a thorium bomb, we probably would have taken out three cities.” PETER KUZNICK, HISTORIAN AT THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON DC

an immoral massacre – and there the questions stop. But was that the case? Wasn’t there enough destructive power in one atomic bomb? Or was there another motive? As far back as 1944, Leslie Groves, the military director of the atomic programme, claimed it would take not one, but “two bombs to end the war”. Eight months before the launch, he was talking about two bombs. So, was the number of bombs determined long before the attack, whether Japan capitulated or not? The fact that the two bombs were different arguably suggests that it was a ruthless experiment. The Hiroshima bomb, dubbed “Little Boy”, was a uranium weapon while the Nagasaki bomb, “Fat Man”, had a plutonium core. A few weeks before the launch, Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, said that Little Boy was the safe choice, but that Fat Man still needed testing. Was that precisely what the Americans were planning to do? Producing a plutonium bomb costs less than a uranium bomb, and the military had an interest in seeing the cheaper version in action. According to US historian Peter Kuznick, we should be happy that they left it at two bombs: “You could say that, and I think it’s probably sadly true, if we also had a thorium bomb, we probably would have taken out three cities.”

FLYING EYE Unmanned drones such as this Global Hawk are only used for reconnaissance operations. Similar aircraft like the Reaper are armed and can strike from a range of up to 17 kilometres.

USA 2023

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eptember 2023. Barack Obama stands with his head bowed. For four long years he has been on trial in The Hague, and today the verdict is being announced: “Guilty!” Five years after Interpol arrested the ex-president in a surprise operation, the judges have convicted him for 1,700 counts of murder – the number of people illegally killed during his presidency. Obviously, this is a fictional scenario. After all, the US has never signed the statute of the International Criminal Court in The Hague and, therefore, does not recognise its authority. But why has the US flat-out refused to acknowledge an institution designed to prosecute genocide

“CIA personnel are not trained in the law of armed conflict, they are not part of a chain of command and they wear no uniform.” MARY ELLEN O’CONNELL, PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL LAW and war crimes? It’s a question that no one in America’s political elite would dare to ask, because it puts all of them in an uncomfortable position. Not only would Obama have to answer for his actions in The Hague, but so would his predecessor George W Bush, the Secretary of State, the US Attorney General, the drone pilots and even the lowliest soldier – in short, anyone who (following orders) has violated international law.

Experts in legal circles have long speculated that former US president George W Bush and his gung-ho defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld rarely venture outside the country for fear of arrest. Similarly, in theory, a criminal prosecution is straightforward in Obama’s case: it’s all there in black and white because he signed the CIA’s “kill lists” that the drone pilots then worked their way through. A US president and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize gave orders for targeted assassinations? What seemed unimaginable when he accepted the Nobel award seven years ago has become so normal today that no one even questions it. “Extrajudicial killing” is the name given to this type of political murder. As the term implies, it means the US is flouting international law. Mary Ellen O’Connell, from the University of Notre Dame, explains why she thinks the drone killings are unlawful. “CIA personnel are not trained in the law of armed conflict,” she says. “They are not part of a chain of command; they are not subject to a system of accountability for battlefield conduct, and they wear no uniform or insignia.” This is true whether or not the US recognises the authority of the International Criminal Court. However, even Obama’s staunchest political opponents in America stick to a strict protocol: don’t ask, don’t tell. After all, and in this the experts agree, we could see drone attacks increase exponentially, depending on who becomes the next president. 87

CHINA 1839

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+ PHOTOS: iStock; Winter/The New York Times/Laif; DPA (5); Akash/Panos; Fotolia; Getty Images (3); Imago; DDP; BPK, Wikipedia

ow dangerous is it to ask a question? In 1839, one brought a 3,000-year-old empire to its knees. It’s in an open letter to Queen Victoria, written by the Chinese court official Lin Zexu: “By what principle of reason should foreigners send a poisonous drug, which involves in destruction those very natives of China? We have heard that in your own country opium is prohibited with the utmost strictness and severity – this is a strong proof that you know full well how hurtful it is to mankind.” With this statement, Lin Zexu made a powerful enemy in Queen Victoria. For years, Britain had been flooding China with opium, a precursor of heroin, and turning millions of people into junkies. The East India Company, Britain’s largest trading firm, controlled the opium trade on a grand scale – under the protection of Her Majesty the Queen. In the 19th century, the British had a massive trade deficit with China. Chinese goods – namely porcelain, silk and, above all, tea – were in huge demand back home. But the Chinese didn’t want the products that Europe had to offer in return and would only accept silver as payment. This led to a shortage of the precious metal, inflating trading costs for Britain. The highly profitable business of smuggling cheap opium from

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India to China was the only thing that saved the British from financial collapse. The East India Company increased its illicit opium business by a factor of five and the number of addicts in China quickly grew to around 12 million, forcing Lin Zexu to pen his famous letter to the Queen. After receiving no reply, Zexu decided to up the ante and burn 20,000 chests, or 1,400 tons, of opium. He also made trading in opium a capital offence. Britain responded by sending 16 state-ofthe-art battleships to sink China’s antiquated fleet. It was the beginning of the first of the

“We have heard that in your own country opium is prohibited – this is a strong proof that you know full well how hurtful it is to mankind.” LIN ZEXU, CHINESE OFFICIAL

two infamous Opium Wars, which resulted in thousands of Chinese casualties. In the end, Britain’s military expeditions forced China to open its borders. The Emperor reluctantly allowed the opium trade to begin once again and turned Hong Kong over to the Queen. The power of the ruling Qing Dynasty was so shaken that riots and rebellion broke out across the country. However, what lingers in the collective memory of the Chinese is Europe’s humiliation of their 3,000-year-old empire. To the present day, the memory of the dishonour influences Beijing’s policies with the West.

QUEEN OF THE WORLD During the 19th century, Queen Victoria reigned over more than a fifth of the world and one-third of its population. She sat on the British throne for over 63 years.

SWITZERLAND 1945

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ow much does it cost to avoid answering a question? Well, that mainly depends on the answer you have to give. Twenty years ago, when Swiss banks were asked to put a number on Nazi assets that have been gathering dust in their accounts since the Second World War, the managers demurred. Instead they offered to settle with a payment of $1.25 billion in compensation. On the surface, this appears to be an unprecedented amount of hush money, but it’s now become clear that the loot deposited in the Swiss vaults is worth a great deal more than $1.25 billion. But let’s start at the beginning. They murdered, looted and robbed until entire city districts were empty: during the Second World War, the Nazis stole the assets of millions of Jews. Most of the tons of gold, art and life savings were hoarded by Adolf

“There was a conspiracy among the banks to stonewall the heirs of survivors.” EDWARD KORMAN, US SENIOR DISTRICT JUDGE Hitler and his cohorts in Switzerland – in vaults and accounts at the country’s most powerful financial institutions. In the last months of the war, with the Nazis’ fate sealed, huge sums were transferred into the neighbouring country. Convoys of trucks carrying cash and valuables made their way to Davos. The Americans reported seeing middlemen “with diplomatic passports coming to Switzerland” and depositing money at various banks – estimates today suggest

a figure north of £5 billion. To that sum can be added the millions that thousands of Jews deposited in Swiss bank accounts in the run-up to the war – before being executed in Hitler’s concentration camps such as Auschwitz (pictured). The Swiss banks classified these as “dormant bank accounts”. As it was apparently impossible to get in contact with the relatives of the account holder, the assets and securities in these Jewish accounts were simply retained – a fact the banks kept secret for decades. It wasn’t until 50 years later that the truth finally came out. However, despite the efforts of an independent expert commission to get to the bottom of the situation, only a fraction of the Nazi gold and dormant Jewish money has been paid out to the families of Holocaust victims. The $1.25 billion payment was, after all, nothing more than hush money designed to make the questions go away. So the small country in the Alps that has always proudly celebrated its neutrality is still profiting from the Nazis’ looting. As with most major crimes, there are silent accomplices in this case and the story is far from over: new regulations that came into effect late last year forced the Swiss Bankers Association to release a list of dormant accounts worth a combined $45 million. On the list, which was published last December, were 2,600 untouched safe-deposit boxes and bank accounts with no transactions for over 60 years.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS HOW DO YOU BUILD THE SAFEST

CAMPER

IN THE WORLD? LUXURY LIVING There are two bedrooms in the 16-metre vehicle, as well as a bathroom and a kitchen. The top can even be extended into a penthouse.

DEPLOYMENT VEHICLE Hanging from the rear of the camper is a high-performance motorbike, ideal for that quick trip to town or an adventurous trip further afield.

DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION FOR OUR TEAM OF EXPERTS?

Simply send us an email with ‘Questions and Answers’ in the subject line to [email protected] Bran Ferren has poured several million dollars and six years of planning into building the world’s safest camper van. The KiraVan, named after Ferren’s young daughter Kira, is equipped with some innovative technology. A specially modified Mercedes-Benz Unimog truck powers it from A to B, while the outer layer of the 16-metre, 23-ton camper is made from a blend of fibreglass and aramid fibres to protect it from lightning strikes. Indestructible, Kevlar-coated tyres enable it to negotiate slopes as steep as 45 degrees. Outside,

22 cameras mounted on 17-metre extendable poles monitor traffic and the surrounding area. On the roof is a drone that can report back on jams or other potential problems further up the route. Navigation shouldn’t be an issue while driving the 208Nm beast: if the satellite signals fail, gyroscopes and acceleration sensors will display the van’s location. All very impressive. There’s just one problem that Ferren didn’t anticipate when designing his dream vehicle: its sheer size makes it tricky to find a spot on a campsite…

COCKPIT The base of the camper van is a remodelled Mercedes Unimog truck. Using 11 monitors and six touchscreens, the driver can control all the technology and keep an eye on the surroundings.

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QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

30m

was the height of the wave surfed by Garrett McNamara in 2013 in Portugal. The American still holds the world record for the feat.

HOW FAR CAN A SURFER FALL?

If a surfer rides a wave too slowly and it breaks while they’re on the peak, or if the wave’s simply too steep, they could be heading for a huge wipeout. Tom Dosland survived one such encounter when he plummeted from a 12-metre wall of water at Waimea Bay in Hawaii. Falling headfirst at 50km/h, Dosland was immediately swallowed by the swirling gulf of water. It was a miracle he lived to surf another day as his board was completely wrecked. Tumble from

such a giddy height and the water can be as hard as concrete. “I was freefalling for a while,” he recalls. “It felt like I jumped off a cliff… I hit the face and it was just a brutal beating, like I was in a car crash.” But how do you measure a wave’s height? Samsung Brazil has developed a prototype ‘smart surfboard’ that not only calculates the height and frequency of the waves, but also has an LED panel so surfers can read messages from their fans on Twitter.

TOP 10

MOST SUCCESSFUL 1 VIDEO GAMES 1. TETRIS 495 MILLION* Super Mario, Pokémon, Grand Theft Auto: no game gets close to Tetris’ colourful blocks and iconic music.

2

Will planes ever be powered by seaweed?

2. MINECRAFT 107.9 MILLION

Jet off on holiday in a plane powered by seaweed: it might sound like a scene from SpongeBob SquarePants, but it’s now technically possible. Algae kerosene, extracted from the oil of marine plants, is considered the fuel of the future. However, at the moment, the annual harvest from 1,500 square metres of the stuff would only keep a passenger plane in the air for a measly six minutes. Scientists at Germany’s Jülich Research Centre have, therefore, been working on growing a more productive species of algae in their greenhouse (above). They hope to cultivate a plant that grows quickly and can store lots of solar energy. They may be spoilt for choice: there are approximately 100,000 different species of algae.

Mining raw materials, building vast palaces and fighting creepy monsters – that’s what Minecraft is all about.

3

3. Wii SPORTS 82.8 MILLION Be it tennis, bowling or boxing, the sports game hit the bullseye and is the third most successful game of all time.

4. GRAND THEFT AUTO V 65 MILLION

4

Sales of Rockstar Games’ fast-paced action title surpassed $1 billion in the first three days alone.

5. SUPER MARIO BROS. 55.8 MILLION The platform game from Japanese gaming giant Nintendo struck gold and remains popular to this day.

6. MARIO KART Wii 36.4 MILLION Mind that banana! The game involves comedic car antics with cult character Mario and his petrolhead friends.

7. Wii SPORTS RESORT 32.8 MILLION

8

This expanded version of Wii Sports offered 12 more sports to play, including frisbee…

IS THE FBI COMPILING A DATABASE OF TATTOOS?

8. NEW SUPER MARIO BROS

Tattoos could soon be as valuable as fingerprints for the FBI. That’s because the symbols inked onto people’s skin often reveal membership of a criminal gang or group. These tattoos are on prominent parts of the body so members can easily tell friend from foe. It’s great news for the FBI because 15,000 of the suspicious tattoos are already stored on a database – with another 10,000 soon to follow. Algorithms recognise similar elements in the ink, place them into categories and produce connections between the groups at lightning speed. The goal is to recognise and arrest criminals more quickly. However, the technology has proved controversial: “These experiments exploit inmates, with little regard for privacy, free expression, religious freedom and the right to associate,” argues digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

30.8 MILLION Following the success of the classic original, Nintendo developed a version that’s almost as well-loved.

9. Wii PLAY

10

In this Nintendo party game, you can create your own character and do activities such as fishing and laser hockey.

10. GRAND THEFT AUTO: SAN ANDREAS 27.5 MILLION Together, all six parts of the GTA series have been purchased 100 million times.

*Number of copies sold

28 MILLION

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QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

WHICH ANIMAL IS AN ALCOHOLIC?

40%

of the aye-aye’s drinks can contain alcohol, depending on the season. The bug-eyed primates particularly love fermented nectar.

Like a glassy-eyed old soak, the Madagascan aye-aye has a rule of thumb: the stronger the brew, the better. In their natural habitat, the nocturnal lemurs drink fermented plant nectar. So, to find out if they really do enjoy booze, researchers offered the animals cocktails of varying strengths over the course of a month. It turned out that the more potent the mixture, the more popular it was with the primates. The scientists also offered them water, but it was left untouched.

But before you challenge one of the big-eared mammals to a drinking contest, consider this: unlike humans, aye-ayes can quickly break down alcohol thanks to the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which means it’s virtually impossible for them to get drunk. So while you slide off your barstool, the aye-aye will be reaching for the next shot. Chimpanzees also drink alcohol, but show the effects. The chimps regularly consume fermented palm sap, which contains 6.9% alcohol.

When the aye-aye isn’t drinking alcohol, it’s feeding on grubs. It digs them out from cracks in the tree bark using its long fingers.

HOW DO YOU REFUEL A WAR SHIP?

A small, non-nuclear aircraft carrier requires approximately 400,000 litres of fuel per day. If a ship on the open sea needs filling up, refuel ships come into play. During the tricky procedure, both ships must keep at least 30 metres apart – otherwise a dangerous phenomenon known as the Venturi effect could occur. As the vessels displace water into the space

between them, the flow increases in speed, which reduces water pressure and leads to a suction effect. This draws the ships towards one another. During the refuelling process, a cable is catapulted from the tanker to the aircraft carrier and fixed in place. This is connected to the fuel tube, which pumps up to 3,800 litres of diesel per minute into the warship’s fuel tank.

Just a cable and a tube connect the fuel ship to the aircraft carrier.

Why do you get a lump in your throat when you’re sad?

Where is the deadliest garden in the world? The skull outside the entrance to Alnwick Garden in Northumberland, UK, isn’t just decorative. Many plants in these beds could actually kill. Foxgloves, snow-on-the-mountain, cow bell (left): over a hundred dangerous plants grow in this garden, laid out by Jane Percy, Duchess of Northumberland. The most toxic plant grown there is deadly nightshade. For children, just three of its jetblack berries (and, for adults, ten) could lead to a painful death.

PHOTOS: PR (9); Bo Bridges; Laif; Fotolia; U.S. Navy; Alamy (3)

Whether it’s the result of sorrow, stress or anger, before the tears start to flow, you might find yourself with a lump in your throat. Why? It’s a chain reaction unleashed by the body. If an animal fears for its life, it produces huge amounts of adrenaline – and flees. Humans react in a similar way. The heart pumps blood through the veins at a high pressure and the breathing quickens. Due to the increased flow of oxygen, the larynx expands. If you want to swallow, the epiglottis attempts to close. However, the muscles fight back against it because they are holding open the epiglottis in response to the crying. So, even though there is no real lump in the throat, the enormous muscular tension makes it feel that way. The strange feeling of a lump in your throat is a chain reaction triggered by the body.

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AND FINALLY...

T

here are 23 character traits a lion needs to become leader of the pride. Confidence, courage and determination to name just three. And then there are the many challenges lions face in the wild – they have to prove themselves in times of famine, in territorial battles and in skirmishes with rival males. After all, the survival and wellbeing of the pride rests on the lion’s experience and decision-making prowess. For years, rescue organisations across Africa have been working with orphaned lions, using specialised training

programmes to prepare the animals for precisely these challenges. There’s just one problem: not many lions seem to have what it takes to fill the leadership role. And so, in a peculiar process of elimination, an unlikely cat named Mephisto had a chance to rise to the top. Every box on the negative side of his behaviour checklist is ticked: he is the only lion in the history of the rescue programme to sleep through all of the simulated elephant, hunter or hyena attacks. Mephisto shows no reaction to the scent of bush fire or a rival male. He cannot pass a single test and rates so lowly in his capacity for learning it

HOPELESS

HERO

How a lion no one believed in turned science on its head

the size of its territory without any conflict. And it was the only pride with a new leader: Mephisto.” No one knows exactly how this lion managed to land such a coup. But one thing is certain: “No matter how many leadership traits you identify,” Brugge says, “the truth is this: real courage can’t be measured by sheer bravado, or determination by stubbornness. And sometimes the trick to power is staying above the fray.” Mephisto did end up teaching the scientists one lesson: perspective is everything. Since that time, many rescue stations have put their lion reintroduction programmes on hold. It’s time for a bit of re-evaluation.

PHOTO: William Dow

barely registers at all. One note in his file reads: “Zero out of 23 required character traits identified”. It goes without saying that a lion like this should never be released – and yet released he was. Jake Brugge took the plunge and reintroduced him to the wild. “I just had this feeling,” the biologist says, “a feeling I was willing to risk everything for.” Six months later, Brugge receives an update on the lion activity in the area. All of the prides are behaving normally – except one. “There was one group that experienced a 70% reduction in injury and mortality rates,” the researcher reports. “It was the only pride that was able to maintain

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LETTERS

AUSTRALIA

WorldOfKnowAU worldofknowledgeau

*Letters may be edited for publication

Welcome to World Of Knowledge’s Letters page, where you can share your thoughts on anything you see in the magazine. Write to us at World Of Knowledge, GPO Box 4088, NSW, 2001 or email us at [email protected]

Rush of blood

Mother tongue HANNAH DAVIES I loved your article about the Ring of Brodgar (‘The Original Stonehenge’, November), especially since I recently visited it while on holiday in the UK. Do we know what the people who built it sounded like? Did they have a modern-style language or was it more a case of caveman grunts? > Unfortunately, there is no evidence of the specific languages spoken in the UK during the Neolithic period. However, American linguist Don Ringe argues that Neolithic Europe was a linguistically diverse place, similar to North America before the arrival of Europeans. The main reason for this is that there were no nations as we know them today and, therefore, no official languages, meaning the various local dialects had free rein. If you want to get a general sense of what Neolithic people may have sounded like, head down to the Basque Country in northern Spain and southern France. Basque is a so-called ‘language isolate’ that bears no relation to other tongues. It developed before the modern, IndoEuropean languages swept across the continent and is the closest we’ll get to hearing ancient voices.

Cheek by jowl MIHIR SHARMA I’ve only just noticed that a friend of mine has prominent dimples. It got me thinking: what are they, scientifically speaking? > A dimple, or gelasin, is actually a facial muscle deformity. There are two main types: cheek and chin. Cheek dimples are caused when the zygomaticus major muscle has a different structure to normal, causing an indentation when a facial expression is made. In contrast, a chin dimple, like the one famously sported by Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas, stems from a small cleft in the chin bone. It was long thought that dimples are a dominant genetic trait, meaning that if both of your parents had them, you would too. However, recent research has argued that the indentations are irregular dominant traits – so you’re not guaranteed to have them if they run in the family. There’s also a theory that we’re predisposed to find dimples cute, as they remind us of a baby’s face.

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DAVID CHURCH I’m concerned about a misunderstanding in the item on nosebleeds (‘Help! I’m bleeding!”, November). It mentions that a sufferer could “try sliding a small sanitary pad along the roof of the mouth to the back”. This should not be done, as it carries the risk of choking. What should be used, preferably by someone who has been trained, is a tampon narrower than a menstrual tampon. It needs to be lubricated before use, but not with a water-based lubricant as this could cause expansion and prevent insertion. It needs to be inserted into the nose and along the roof of the mouth (the “floor” of the nose) – not in an upwards direction in line with the entry to the nose, which should never be done in cases of trauma. It’s effective, and much better than ribbon gauze packing, which is what the specialists usually use. Bipolar forceps and laser cautery are used when the bleeding has stopped, and silver nitrate or hot cautery is common. Specialists stem the flow of heavy bleeds with cocaine, but adrenaline may be an alternative.

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BRAND MANAGER Thea Mahony EMAIL: [email protected] PHONE: 02 9282 8583 INTERNATIONAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Uwe Bokelmann INTERNATIONAL EXECUTIVE EDITOR Sebastian Junge INTERNATIONAL CREATIVE DIRECTOR Thomas Maresch

In the driving seat CHRIS HOLLAND Your piece about aircraft testing (‘What Can My Holiday Flight Withstand?’, November) was fascinating. It’s strange that the examination procedure for planes is so rigorous, while cars can seemingly hit the road riddled with major faults. Why is this the case? > One of the reasons the testing process for passenger aircraft is so thorough is that the stakes are so high: one malfunction and hundreds of lives are put at risk. That doesn’t mean, however, that cars are released willy-nilly. It’s in the car companies’ interests to make vehicles as safe as possible, giving them an advantage over the competition. The trialling methods can include: driving the car through extreme environments, track testing, releasing a handful of test vehicles to the public and extensive crash-test dummy testing.

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