NARRATOR: They're watching you.
More than 6,000 satellites circle the Earth.
Every day, they uncover new, mysterious phenomena
that defy explanation.
Revealed from the skies,
the lost castle of the king makers.
CAVELL: What's clear is that something
really catastrophic has happened here.
BELLINGER: This was not just destroyed,
but brutally obliterated.
NARRATOR: Bad science in the Badlands.
RUBEN: This is the sort of test that governments would
not permit today.
NARRATOR: And the city that ate itself.
KOUROUNIS: The ground starts to turn
into this bubbly, soupy mess.
That's got to be terrifying.
NARRATOR: Baffling phenomena. Mysteries from space.
What on Earth are they?
[theme music playing]
The county of Norfolk in the east of England,
a flat, low-lying landscape formed of fields,
forests, and wetlands.
Karen Bellinger has been drawn here
by a mystery captured from the skies.
This is a really intriguing discovery.
It's not what I'd expect to find here at all.
NARRATOR: A LIDAR aerial scanner passing over a remote part of
the county
has revealed something strange concealed
within a patch of woodland.
The LIDAR image is really exciting, because hidden by
those trees,
right in the middle of that field, is something special.
There's no question in my mind that this
is a fort or castle of some sort.
You see the four towers,
and you see the walls around the whole thing.
NARRATOR: What's weird is that this once mighty
fortification has apparently been hidden from prying eyes.
What's clear is that something
really catastrophic has happened here.
It seems to have been wiped out almost
completely, like it's been purposely erased from history.
NARRATOR: The lost castle's location intrigues analysts.
Tribes and warriors have fought
over Norfolk's lands for countless millennia.
The Romans, Saxons, Vikings, and Normans have
all left their mark in the fortifications
littering the landscape here.
HORTON: Norfolk is one of the richest places to
tell the story of England over thousands of years.
Norfolk has such a vibrant and rich history that
I've got to wonder how this fits into it.
NARRATOR: The image leads Bellinger to a rural
area three miles inland from Norfolk's coast.
When she approaches the structure,
it becomes clear that it has been untouched for centuries.
This place is almost completely overgrown.
It's like the castle is
still defending itself, even though
the people who lived here are long gone.
NARRATOR: As Bellinger pushes deeper into the woods,
she discovers what appears to be
the remains of a defensive moat.
Wow! This explains so much.
The moat was the first line of defense,
and then here's the proper defenses of the stone wall.
So substantial.
I mean, I can really see how heavily built this castle was.
NARRATOR: The three-foot-thick flint wall appears to be
medieval in origin
and would likely have once stood at least 20 feet high.
BELLINGER: Astonishing, really,
this amount of destruction.
This structure was totally obliterated.
This isn't natural decay.
AUERBACH: It's extremely unusual to see
a castle completely destroyed and overgrown like this.
CAVELL: This has been leveled, and the question is why?
Why would such a massive facility
be taken down to the ground?
NARRATOR: Bellinger hopes historic land records
will shed some light.
BELLINGER: So the land records here go way back
to a thousand years ago,
and it looks like the land in this part
of Norfolk was owned by a family called the Pastons.
NARRATOR: According to the records,
the Pastons were wealthy, local landowners.
Their rise to power is
a century-long tale of blood and subterfuge.
The Pastons were a big deal here in Norfolk,
but what these documents tell me is that this family was
caught up in one of the bloodiest episodes in
English history.
[bell tolling]
NARRATOR: That history begins in 1348
when the bubonic plague sweeps
across England,
killing around two million people,
almost half the entire population.
Land prices plummet,
creating an opportunity for the Pastons.
HUNT: They profited immensely from the Black Death,
sweeping up many,
many estates, going from cunning peasants
to large land owners with a bad reputation.
NARRATOR: In 1427, the Pastons use their wealth
to acquire the fortress in the woods,
called Gresham Castle,
and large tracts of land around it.
But controversy follows in their wake.
HORTON: The Pastons owned the castle,
but it was claimed by another Norfolk family, the Moleyns.
WALTERS: Lord Moleyns says, "No, this sale's illegal.
This land belongs to me. You've basically stolen it."
The Pastons weren't willing to relinquish their claim on
the castle, and it created a feud
between these families, which lasted for years.
NARRATOR: As the feud between the two families festers,
the Moleyns turn to violence.
HUNT: Lord Moleyns was so angry at the Pastons that he
commandeered a local army of
a thousand people and marched on
this castle.
AUERBACH: The Pastons were massively outnumbered,
and the family is forcibly carried out from the castle.
NARRATOR: After being evicted, the Pastons begged the king
to intervene.
He returns the castle to them,
infuriating Lord Moleyns even further.
The Moleyns, in a fit of pique before handing the castle back
to the Pastons,
completely destroyed it, and that explains why there are no
walls surviving above ground.
NARRATOR: Medieval records reveal the story of
the warring families doesn't end there.
They go on to play a role in a period of bloodshed,
which echoes through history to this day.
This is a time so steeped in violence and political intrigue
that the Game of Throne series is based on this period.
CAVELL: If your family chooses the wrong side,
you could lose everything --
your property, your position, and your life.
NARRATOR: Coming up, murder, treasure, and betrayal.
They don't call it "getting medieval" for nothing.
NARRATOR: And the lost empire of Persia.
This is one of the greatest powers in ancient history.
NARRATOR: Drawn by a mystery structure
revealed from the skies over England,
Karen Bellinger has discovered a lost
castle destroyed during a medieval blood feud.
BELLINGER: This castle charts the rise
of a really gutsy and ambitious family.
NARRATOR: That family is the Pastons, whose stronghold
is captured and obliterated by the Moleyns.
In the mid-15th century,
their generation-long dispute spills over into
some of the bloodiest events in English history.
This is a time that is really tumultuous in England.
You have rival factions warring against each other
about who should legitimately
control England and who should be king.
NARRATOR: At the time,
the English throne is held by King Henry VI.
Seen as an ineffectual monarch, in 1455,
he suffers a mental breakdown,
triggering a battle for control of his realm.
What happens is this dynastic scrap between
two rival royal houses for the British throne.
You've got the Lancastrians on one side
and the Yorkists on the other.
NARRATOR: The prolonged battle that follows between the houses
of York and Lancaster
becomes known as the Wars of the Roses.
It's called the Wars of the Roses because of
the symbol that each side adopted to represent
their family.
The Yorks chose the white rose, the Lancasters, the red.
HORTON: It was basically a slugfest,
and some of the very bloodiest
battles in English history
were fought during the Wars of the Roses.
NARRATOR: Over a 30-year period,
it's believed the Wars of the Roses
claim more than 100,000 lives.
In 1461, at the Battle of Towton alone,
28,000 men are slain,
one percent of the total English population.
The archaeological record shows just
how the dead were utterly mutilated,
people hacked to pieces and then
slung naked into these mass burial pits.
AUERBACH: They don't call it getting medieval for nothing.
We're talking about large men smashing large,
sharp bits of metal into each other.
NARRATOR: As the conflict unfolds, control of
the crown switches from one side to the other.
If you want to come out on top,
you have to be very canny about choosing your side.
If you support the losing side,
you could just as easily be labeled as a traitor,
and the cost of that is your life.
NARRATOR: In Norfolk,
the owners of the ruined castle
gamble on who will emerge victorious.
What the documents tell me is that the Pastons tried to stay
out of the conflict as long as they could,
but eventually throw their weight
behind the Lancastrian cause.
The decision proves to be a wise one.
In 1485, following the decisive battle of
Bosworth Field,
the Lancastrians seize the crown.
This kickstarts the long reign of the Tudor kings,
beginning with Henry VII,
during which time the Pastons' status continues to grow.
After the Wars of the Roses conclude,
the Pastons continue to fight alongside the Tudor kings,
and they grow wealthy and powerful in the process.
In contrast, the Moleyns did much less well
and never really achieved
the prestige that they had held
during the Wars of the Roses.
NARRATOR: Leaving their wrecked castle
to be claimed by the forest,
the Pastons used the spoils of war to construct
Oxnead Hall, where they reside for over 170 years.
Now, that's the payoff for choosing the right side.
Look at this place.
It's a far cry from that ruined castle,
that's for sure.
NARRATOR: This gives rise to another twist in
the tale of the lost castle in the woods.
HORTON: So there is a local legend that
they accumulated so much wealth
that they had a great golden figurine
of a calf, and this was hidden away in the tunnels lying
underneath the castle shown in the LIDAR image.
If you're the Pastons, why not hide it here,
allow the grass to grow, the trees to reclaim
the old castle,
and bury your treasure right there?
NARRATOR: The lost castle has never been fully explored.
It's a reminder of one of
the most divisive periods in English history,
when family turned on family in the pursuit of power.
The ruins we see in this image are an amazing connection to
an age of war and blood
and death, and maybe that's why it's never
been dug up or rebuilt.
NARRATOR: Coming up, Canada's mystery mega blast.
This is truly a crazy experiment.
NARRATOR: And nature's fury.
You can see the roadways bent
and warped, buildings just sort of washed aside.
NARRATOR: July 9th, 2022.
A satellite orbiting above the Badlands of Alberta,
Canada, scans the landscape 400 miles below.
This is a really strange image.
This is the Canadian wilderness, and yet there are
these circles
that are deeply etched into the landscape.
ORWOLL: As you look at these rings,
one of the first things you notice is how perfectly
concentric they are,
but also how large they are.
Very odd.
NARRATOR: The outermost ring measures
more than 20 miles in diameter.
This is some really impressive
piece of engineering taking place here.
My best guess is that this
is some sort of a military installation.
NARRATOR: Government records confirm that the circles sit
close to the largest military research center
in North America.
This proximity suggests the giant pattern could
be connected to highly controversial
experiments here around 80 years ago.
Suffield military base has been
in operation since World War II,
and records reveal that some of
the things that were tested here were chemical weapons.
WALTERS: During the 1940s, Suffield specializes in
the testing of one particularly nasty
chemical weapon, and that's mustard gas.
NARRATOR: During World War I, mustard gas, a sulfurous
compound that blisters and burns the skin and lungs,
kills or injures 120,000 soldiers.
In 1925, the Geneva Protocol
prohibits its use on the battlefield.
But as World War II dawns,
concerns grow that Hitler will defy the treaty.
The Allies feared that the Nazi
forces might start employing mustard gas again,
so wanted to experiment on the effects
on troops and how best to protect them.
NARRATOR: Three thousand Canadian recruits participate in
these experiments at Suffield military base.
Many are ordered to act as human targets
while aircraft rain chemicals down on them.
The image does look like
a large-scale, high-altitude military bombing target.
The military could then measure the effects of
the things like gas masks or decontamination powders
and then what kind of damage the people sustained,
and the damage was horrible.
CAVELL: These tests were really monstrous.
The men who were exposed to mustard gas suffered horrible
burns on their legs, on their buttocks,
on their backs, and for many of them,
this created really long-term health problems.
NARRATOR: Many of the soldiers go on to
suffer from catastrophic respiratory problems
and cancers.
They received the equivalent of just
50 cents a day in payment for the trials.
They're given letters claiming
they are not, quote, guinea pigs.
But unfortunately, that's exactly what they were.
It's safe to say
this is the sort of test that governments
would not permit today,
but, at the time, it shows you how scared governments were
that this sort of weapon could be used in war.
NARRATOR: But when experts dig further into declassified
military files,
they suspect the giant circles are a more recent construction
and may have been used to test
the destructive force of a very different kind of weapon.
ORWOLL: Records show that one of the largest non-nuclear
explosive devices ever
to be detonated was set off where these concentric circles
are located.
CAVELL: This is truly a crazy military experiment,
I mean, on an enormous scale
and the effects were just catastrophic for
the surrounding area.
NARRATOR: During the 1960s, increased Cold War tensions
fuel fears that Soviet TU-95
long range bombers will use Canada
as a shortcut to targets in the U.S.
As panic mounts, the government decides to
simulate the impact of such an attack.
It is code named Operation Snowball.
RUBEN: The goal of Operation Snowball was to test
the effects of a nuclear bomb without the nuclear fallout.
And so they created a conventional explosion
that was as big as a nuclear explosion would have been.
NARRATOR: In July 1964,
scientists place various pieces of equipment
and hardware at points around the predicted blast zone.
At its center, they stack over 30,000 blocks of TNT.
The way they set this explosion up was to bring
in 500 short tons
of TNT, and they effectively created a giant
igloo of explosive.
This is kind of a classic Cold War military experiment.
We have a lot of explosives.
Let's just detonate it all at once
and measure what happens.
NARRATOR: On July 17th, the mountain of TNT detonates.
[explosion blasts]
It's the largest non-nuclear explosion in history.
When it was ignited, the blast was unimaginable.
ORWOLL: When the TNT was set off, there was a mushroom cloud,
a huge one, that was seen for miles around.
It was just a massive explosion.
NARRATOR: The force generated by the blast is
equivalent to more than seven million hand grenades
and turns the TNT into a ball of superheated, pressurized gas.
The diameter of the crater that was left behind
was 240 feet wide, and the shockwaves
from the explosion were felt miles away.
The blast's aftermath provides valuable insight into how
military hardware and infrastructure would withstand
a nuclear explosion.
By excavating a cross section of the crater,
scientists can also analyze how
the shockwaves pulse through the ground.
The information from this informed
more than just military weapons experts.
It informed geologists and geographers and seismologists,
you name it.
There was a lot of data that came out of this.
NARRATOR: In the years following Operation Snowball,
the military carries out more
massive blast tests at Suffield,
ones designed to assess
the effectiveness of its newest defensive technology.
Today, the base continues to conduct
clandestine experiments in the Canadian wilderness.
A lot of military tests are still classified.
So who knows what other tests have taken place
at these circles that we still don't know about.
NARRATOR: Coming up, destroyed in seconds.
You never know when the rug was
gonna get pulled out from under you.
And the slayers of the Roman Empire.
They regarded themselves as kings of kings.
[horse neighs]
NARRATOR: October 2018.
An orbiting camera passes over
the Indonesian island of Sulawesi
and uncovers something strange.
Clearly, this is a city, but right in the middle of this,
something odd is going on.
RUBEN: The strange thing about this image is that it's like
a giant hand has just kind of, like, rubbed out
a bit of the city, but the rest is untouched.
NARRATOR: A mystery force has erased entire
neighborhoods in the city of Palu.
It's like a real-world version of Photoshop, where someone has
gone and used the smudge tool to streak it across
the landscape.
I'm gonna zoom into some of these locations
and try to figure out what's going on.
NARRATOR: Ken Joyce uses Maxar's SecureWatch
technology to scroll through time.
Overnight, whole sections of the city have
shifted hundreds of feet to the west.
Seeing this level of destruction across multiple
sites in the city
makes me think of landslides created
by a heavy rainstorm.
NARRATOR: Indonesia receives some of the highest rainfall on
Earth, with up to 15 inches falling per day.
These deluges can unleash rivers
of mud which envelope entire communities.
RUBEN: This photo was taken during Indonesia's dry season,
so it couldn't have been a landslide.
It has to be something else.
NARRATOR: Analysts turn to local environmental data
and discover a clue.
Cross-referencing with geological records,
we can see that this satellite image was taken very
shortly after a magnitude 7.5 earthquake shook the town
of Palu.
7.5 on the Richter scale is a huge earthquake.
This is not just a little tremor.
This is a notable event.
NARRATOR: Indonesia sits on the Ring of Fire,
a 25,000-mile-long chain of seismically active sites
and home to three quarters of the world's volcanoes.
This makes Indonesia one of
the most disaster-prone countries on Earth.
The Ring of Fire around the Pacific Ocean is
one of the most unstable parts of the planet.
It contains hundreds of volcanoes
and the potential for huge earthquakes.
NARRATOR: The massive quake has its epicenter
43 miles to the north of Palu.
This triggers a chain reaction, which
creates the strange smear in the image.
SALAITA: Usually when we think about earthquakes,
we think of the dangers of falling buildings
and bridges collapsing.
But here, this situation was not that.
NARRATOR: As the quake's seismic waves radiate outwards,
they create a 20-foot-high tsunami,
which devastates coastal areas of the city.
They also generate another rarer but equally
destructive force.
If the conditions are just right,
there's a very unusual phenomenon that
can be triggered by some earthquakes.
When that ground is full of sediment and waterlogged,
it can make the ground do something strange.
NARRATOR: Much of Palu sits on a marshy, sandy soil.
As the earthquake pulses through it,
it is subjected to liquefaction,
the process which creates the carnage visible from space.
Liquefaction is this bizarre process where the soil near
the surface, when it's shaken under
these earthquake conditions, can lose its integrity and turn
into this wet, gloppy, soupy mess.
If the ground shakes violently enough, all of the rocks and
soil kind of settled downward, and the water goes upward.
The soil starts acting like a liquid.
And so the result is that buildings just kind
of slide along it or sink right down into it.
NARRATOR: As the land liquefies,
it consumes 3,500 homes and entombs
many of those living inside.
When we look at these images,
we see the clear effects of liquefaction.
You can see the roadways bent and warped.
You can see the buildings just sort of washed aside.
It must have been terrifying to witness this.
Whole buildings,
buildings with ordinarily strong foundations,
just sliding down the street.
NARRATOR: The satellite image is
a reminder of our planet's unpredictability
and its capacity to destroy lives in an instant.
We think that our world is static and stable.
And then you realize that...no.
You never know when the rug was gonna get
pulled out from under you.
NARRATOR: Coming up, Iran's desert secret.
This is linked to one of the greatest powers in
ancient history.
NARRATOR: And the circuit board city.
RUBEN: Why would anybody build something like this
in the middle of nowhere?
NARRATOR: February 13th, 2019.
A satellite scans Fars Province,
a mountainous region in southern Iran.
This looks like agricultural fields
clearly organized and maintained by humans.
But what's weird is that this ring
is sort of stuck in the middle.
RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: What's really striking about this image
is that it's almost a perfect circle.
NARRATOR: The mystery feature measures
over 6,000 feet in diameter.
It doesn't make sense that so much
land would be cordoned off in this way.
It's almost as if it's being protected in some fashion.
NARRATOR: To aerospace experts,
the structure's shape and location
could be evidence of clandestine activity.
There are rocket launch sites in Iran that do have
similarities to this that
are circular, and if this is a launch site
that could be very problematic.
NARRATOR: Others disagree.
Within the circle, what I can
see are remnants of some old buildings.
They look like they've sort of been crumbling away.
SZULGIT: To me, this looks like an ancient defensive structure,
possibly a fortress or even a massive walled city.
NARRATOR: Analysts turn to local historic documents.
They confirm the massive feature is what
remains of a once mighty city called Darabgerd,
which dates back more than 2,500 years.
This is a settlement linked to one of
the greatest and yet little known imperial powers in
ancient history.
They were known as the Sasanians.
NARRATOR: The Sasanians are a technologically
advanced people
Who rise from these lands around 1,800 years ago.
After taking control of the city
sometime around 200 CE,
they use it as a base to expand
their fledgling territory.
BELLINGER: The circular wall in the image is believed to
be one of the largest mud brick walls on Earth.
It was once up to 30 feet tall and surrounds the ruins
of what was one of the most important Sasanian cities.
NARDI: Based on what we can see in the image
and what's left of it,
this was a massive fortification
that would be pretty impenetrable.
NARRATOR: Ten years later,
the city's rulers attack the Parthians,
a civilization who rule much of Iran at the time.
They finally defeat them in 224 CE.
The Sasanians quickly established themselves as
a formidable force in this region.
They regarded themselves as kings of kings.
They were hunter-warriors
and wanted to aggressively expand their empire.
Over the following years, the Sasanians conquer
2.5 million square miles of territory,
with land stretching from Pakistan to Egypt.
They amass vast wealth by controlling commerce
and taxing luxury goods on the Silk Road,
the 4,000-mile-long trade route that runs through their lands.
SZULGIT: The empire expands quickly,
but this also makes this region a target for outsiders.
So fortified strongholds like the one in
this image are vital for defending their lands.
BELLINGER: To the east,
the Huns were an ever-present threat, as well as the Arabs to
the south, and so the Sasanians had to address threats
from all directions.
NARRATOR: The greatest threat of all lies to the west,
where Sasanian lands meet the boundary
of the Roman Empire.
The Romans were their arch rivals.
They fought many battles over the years, but in the end,
the Sasanians really were the dominant force.
NARRATOR: These bloody clashes culminate in
the Battle of Edessa in 260 CE.
The Sasanian army decimates Rome's legions,
capturing 60,000 soldiers.
This is probably one of the worst defeats in
military history.
Tens of thousands of Roman troops are captured,
along with their emperor, Valerian.
For the first and only time in recorded history,
a Roman emperor was enslaved.
The Sasanians even went so far as to humiliate Valerian by
making him serve as a footstool
for the king to mount his horse.
NARRATOR: Humiliated,
the Romans withdraw from Sasanian lands,
leaving them to reign for another four centuries.
In 642 CE,
a powerful Muslim force known as the Rashidun Caliphate,
emerges from the south and topples their empire.
The giant citadel is slowly claimed by the sands,
only to be revealed once more from space.
This crumbling circular site is now all
that remains of a once dominant empire
that took on the Romans and ruled the Near East
for centuries.
NARRATOR: Coming up, the secret $500 billion city.
It is the people who currently live there
who are the ones paying the biggest price.
NARRATOR: June 14th, 2020.
The GeoEye-1 satellite
orbiting above Saudi Arabia's Red Sea
coastline spots something nestled
in the vast empty sands below.
KAYS: This is a really cool picture.
This is a bunch of buildings packed super tight together.
It's in the middle of a really hot desert.
It's bizarre. It almost looks like
a circuit board, and it's totally out of place.
NARRATOR: Dialing up the magnification yields more clues.
When you zoom in closer, you see there's streets.
It looks like there might be some sort of transport system.
RUBEN: There are houses and large buildings
and maybe swimming pools.
It looks like a military compound.
But why would anybody build something like this
in the middle of nowhere?
NARRATOR: Analysts turn to local news reports.
They reveal that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has
recently announced a plan to transform
this patch of desert into a futuristic metropolis.
It turns out that this structure that we're seeing is
actually just the seed that's being planted
for a huge megacity.
It's a place called Neom.
It's Saudi Arabia's attempt at an oil-free future --
the city of the future.
NARRATOR: The Crown Prince hopes his future city will act as
an insurance policy against the expected decline of
the Saudi oil industry,
an industry which currently generates around
$700 billion annually for his country
and accounts for around 90 percent of its budget revenues.
This industry has brought Saudi Arabia
immense wealth and independence.
They've really gone all in on the petroleum industry,
which puts them in an economically
vulnerable position.
NARRATOR: Some studies suggest that efforts to mitigate
against climate change
could slash Saudi Arabia's oil revenues by almost 50 percent.
KERLEY: Saudi leaders realize that their days may be numbered.
If oil is your biggest industry,
you need to diversify, and that's what they're doing.
NARRATOR: The Saudis hope the circuit-board-like city
will transform the country into a global tech hub,
helping them to replace their oil wells with server farms.
It seems that what they are trying to do with Neom is to
attract high-tech businesses,
people with means, to come and live in a place that they think
will be somewhat utopian.
NARRATOR: In 2019, planners identify an area near Saudi's
Red Sea coastline as the site for their tech megacity,
and the Crown Prince's plans for
a desert dreamscape start to descend into a nightmare.
This may look like it's in the middle of nowhere,
but it's not nowhere to the people who are currently
living there.
There is a tribe that has been there for years,
and many of those individuals
are being told that they have to move.
NARRATOR: The tribe resists the Saudi
authorities' attempts to confiscate their lands.
But this is a country where dissent is not tolerated.
Over recent years, we've seen human rights organizations
repeatedly warning the world
that repression and torture here is simply getting
worse and worse.
MUNOZ: You've seen the country become more
brazen in how it addresses dissenters.
There's no better example than
what happened to journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
NARRATOR: In 2018, Khashoggi, a vocal opponent of Saudi
government policy,
is brutally murdered in Turkey.
MUNOZ: Western intelligence organizations have issued
findings that the decision to kill and dismember
Jamal Khashoggi was decided by the highest levels of
government inside Saudi Arabia.
NARRATOR: In 2020,
security forces try to evict 20,000 people from
the planned site of the Saudi future city,
provoking more international outrage.
The Bedouin aren't given much choice here.
They either need to move or be thrown in jail.
RUBEN: One of the vocal critics of
this project was killed by Saudi police.
So one person's utopia is often another
person's dystopia.
NARRATOR: Once completed, Neom will stretch across
10,000 square miles of desert
and will be run on artificial intelligence
and green energy.
The developers of this city are claiming that they're going
to use cloud seeding to cause more rainfall
to artificially fall on the desert.
People will have autonomous vehicles.
Everything will be connected to the Internet.
This is meant to be the smartest of smart cities.
NARRATOR: The Saudi government is investing upwards
of $500 billion dollars in the project,
but some fear the true cost could be higher.
While we may end up with some metropolis in the desert
as a result, it is the people who currently
live there were the ones paying the biggest price.