Video pLtHyLlLt4Y

[00:00] This is Alcatraz, the world's most famously secure prison, and today, I'm going to try and escape. This does not feel good, but I'll be doing it in a very specific way, by recreating the exact same actions these three daring prisoners took.

[00:14] This is a tight squeeze. When they executed their year-long plan in what many consider to be the most ingenious prison escape in recorded history. To pull this off, they gave me unrestricted access to the whole prison,

[00:26] because our goal is to use modern technology, along with our own engineering skills, to determine once and for all whether these three escapings actually made it safely to land, guys, we are no longer in a row, or to vanish forever in the fringed,

[00:39] sheltered waters of the San Francisco Bay. I'm not sure we're going to make it! Let's do it! I'm not sure we're going to make it! I cannot believe they would spend 23 hours a day

[00:51] in this tiny little cell. On June 11, 1962, at 9.30 p.m., This exact jail cell would have seemed pretty unremarkable to any of the guards on duty and to all but three of the prisoners held here on the island.

[01:03] Because that's the night those three prisoners decided they were finally going to attempt their escape after nearly a year of meticulous planning and preparation. But in order to pull this off, starting right here in their cells, they would need to execute their elaborate six-part escape plan flawlessly,

[01:18] eventually pitching them up and out of the prison, down to the water, and across the base in their freedom. And to pull this off would require countless strokes of genius, like fake vents to cover up their digging progress,

[01:30] fake bolts made from sculpted soap, or a homemade raft fastened from prison-ishened raincoats. But all six of those critical steps started right back here with the decoy, moments after lights out at 9.35pm.

[01:43] Since they weren't expected out of bed until roll call the next morning, they needed a way to not sound the alarms of empty beds when guards came by to perform headcounts several times during the night. So they placed fake heads like these on their pillows that they had spent two months crafting out of soap, concrete dust, toothpaste, toilet paper, and actual human hair.

[02:01] This is kind of creepy and it shows how good the heads are because I feel like I'm in a jail cell with a sleeping man just out of the corner of my eye. We're leaving this movie this morning. Now this morning it's worth mentioning these weren't your average prisoners.

[02:14] Frank Forrest had an IQ of 130 and he was the mastermind who planned everything. Then brothers John and Clarence Anglin, while not as smart as Frank, were resourceful and good with tools. All three had previously escaped from other prisons, so they were sent to Alcatraz because no one had successfully escaped in its 28-year history.

[02:33] So in order to assess and truly appreciate every aspect of their bootleg prison engineering, I needed to recreate all the steps they took in their escape. So I assembled a prison break team of my own with Johnny Harris and Cleo Abrams.

[02:46] Cleo would be the mastermind, and Johnny and I... This is a slightly dumber pair of brothers. Really, really good. So we gathered up all the exact same materials they had at their disposal. Never made a fake head before, but I think we can do it.

[02:59] And we gave him the first time. I might start mixing. Mixing what? When it comes to arts and crafts, it's a good idea. And say, What? I don't want to see your face. This is what I could do.

[03:12] This is Mark Rober with his hat. Despite all that, everything turned out pretty good. These are amazing. This is your doubt. All you really need you to do is bring in your most artistic friend. Who do you want to start with? I'll start with, oh god.

[03:25] Bro, bro, save us. And having worked out, but actually put us on par with original escapees, because they have their own resident artist in one of the brothers, Clarence Anglin, who also works maintenance and painted as a hobby, so he provided the paint.

[03:38] His brother John, on the other hand, worked in the barbershop, so he provided the actual human hair they use. Hello. Is that how you see me? Here's Mark. Oh my god! So with our picture perfect facsimile finished, we put our heads to the test with prison guard Bam,

[03:54] Prisoner test! who had been told all three of us remained asleep in our bed, and our outcome was significantly different than theirs. What?! I told you Johnny! It almost worked! Why do I go wide open like this?

[04:07] Providing early evidence, these weren't your average prisoners. Alright, next test. Now that their diversion was set, at 9.37pm they grabbed some tools and crawled through a hole in their gel cell wall they had spent the previous 6 months secretly digging out.

[04:20] So this is the actual hole they crawled through to escape. As you can see, it is not very large. Wow, this is a very tight squeeze. Ow! To give themselves a head start on digging, they decided to enlarge an already existing air vent hole underneath each of their sinks.

[04:36] Because they obviously didn't have access to power tools, they had to get creative, primarily using stolen spoons from the cafeteria that they'd fashioned in the pick by removing the round part. To gain a better appreciation for what this would actually take, it was time for my jailbreak crew to get to work on a replica person cell we built in Crunch Lab

[04:51] to be concrete that was similar to what they would have been. My fingers are starting to get tired and it's literally... Wow, that is so soft. If we could be clear, why would it take them in months? Prison breaking is hard!

[05:03] It's a painstakingly scrape their way to a hole big enough to escape from. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Which begs the question, how do you cover up your digging progress so the guards don't discover it during their routine room inspection?

[05:16] To answer that question, I head into the prison archives with a good friend of mine, Adam Savage. Hey, how you doing, Dan? Because he has a lot of misbusting knowledge on this topic. He didn't know that there were still pieces of the original thing

[05:28] until he called over here and they're like, yeah, come on down, we can show them to you. One of the first things he showed me was this. Basically, they created an incredibly realistic vent cover made from just cardboard, notebook covers, and soap, which they then painted prison green using spare paint they sold from a maintenance shed.

[05:42] From a maker standpoint, this is a masterpiece. Yeah. To make this out of, like, homegrown materials you're scabbing from the prison shop, and to have look this good like a concrete wall is incredible.

[05:54] Back in prison, we were making some progress, but it wasn't exactly quite at work. Our three escapees faced the same issue and came up with a clever solution. Every night, from 537, was music out for all the inmates.

[06:06] So one of them would loudly play an accordion while one kept watch for guards with a makeshift periscope, and the third one scraped away. And this noise management system turned out to be pretty effective Oh my god that so loud Give me a good job Give me a good job Give me a good job Give me a good job Give me a good job Give me a good job

[06:23] Give me a good job! Don't say that out loud! Both times, no! Our efforts were proving that digging through concrete with a headless spoon was very slow work. And this must have been something Frank Morris, the mastermind, concluded as well.

[06:38] Because he ended up getting someone's on an old vacuum used for maintenance exactly like the model shown here. And then if you pop off the top shell and then remove the fan assembly, you'll find we have a modified power drill. And that honestly figs up a little bit.

[06:52] All the inmates had power outlets in their cells that allowed them to use things like electric shavers, or in this case, bootleg engineered power drills. So with the accordion once again masking the sound,

[07:05] it resorted to an improved method of drilling a series of holes and then using the spoons to remove the remaining excess material between the holes. And as much as this did increase our output as well, it was clear this would still take weeks,

[07:17] and I wanted to get to the crawl-through test. So I raised the white flag and resorted to an air hammer, which they definitely didn't have at their disposal. And so the hole was the exact same size as the holes in their cells. Look at how much, like, concrete they would have had to remove from the premises.

[07:33] Wow. Did you put it out in their pocket? Put it out in the yard, yeah. But this is the actual size of the hole they escaped from. Oh, it's all the freedom. So it turns out they were like 135 pounds.

[07:45] These are tiny dudes. They're tiny dudes. My head will sit through here. Touch those first. Now I have to make it. Oh crap. Oh there's no way. Let's push them. Oh they're so much.

[07:57] No there's no way this guy's done through. All that worked. I'm starting these things up with the heat first to push. I hit so hard.

[08:10] I need the bad police! Which then, it all came down to Cleo. I can do it when we do this! Oh my god! I'm doing it! Oh my god! I can do it! I can do it! No! I can do it! I can do it!

[08:22] Cleo! Cleo! Bro, she's already gone. Wow, okay. Alright, well. You want the camera tic-tac show, I guess? Okay. Back to our prisoners. With step two out of the way, at 9.48 p.m., they found themselves in sort of a secret passageway

[08:39] between the cells. The problem was, they'd have to silently make their way to step three that was four stories above them. Here's the holes they would crawl out right here into this utility corner, which honestly is pretty spacious. But more importantly, they had to make it to the

[08:53] loft. And there's all these types that basically act as ladders that lead them all the way up to right here. This is wild. This was the roof of the cell block. But when they got here that night,

[09:05] There was already a homemade life raft and life rafts, homemade paddles, and makeshift flashlights waiting for them. And that's because this wasn't their first time up here. They had been sneaking up here for months, using the same decoy heads and fake vent covers,

[09:19] bringing up their hidden homemade tools every night as they fabricated their reach for escape. And they knew about this spot because one of them was actually assigned to work up here for a couple hours during the day, painting the ceiling and doing general maintenance under the watchful eyes of the guards patrolling right across the hall.

[09:35] So they devised a plan. Every day he would sweep dust down onto the polished floors below. When the guards and other prisoners eventually complained about the mess, he proposed a simple solution, hanging up blankets in these locations to stop the dust from falling down,

[09:48] creating themselves a private little workshop in the process. Of course, once they hang out the blankets, that means they could work up here undetected for months. coming up every night, doing some work, crawling down in the morning. Frank Morris, the mastermind, an absolute genius.

[10:03] And of course it makes sense then, why during the day they work as slowly as possible, taking months to not even finish painting the whole ceiling. Oh, this is cool. So you could literally see how far he made it over, just to buy themselves more time.

[10:17] But Frank was in a library, which gave him access to reading materials like Poppins or Mechanics, where he learned some of the skills they used for designing their paddles, and constructing their rafts and life preservers made from over 50 army-issued raincoats

[10:29] they had borrowed or sold from other inmates. And better mind, these weren't exactly ideal working conditions. Any noise they make up here just echoes throughout the entire prison.

[10:43] On top of that, this is where the guards would patrol back and forth with Thompson's submachine guns keeping an eye on all the prisoners. So it's wild that just 15 feet away, These guys were literally fabricating their means for escape.

[10:56] And now that they had completed step three and were ready to head to the roof with all their provisions, it was our turn to do this thing by building the actual raft we would use to make our own escape. So now we're up to the loft. We're out of ourselves.

[11:08] But the next big step is how do you make it through these frigid shark-infested waters. What's cool is they have these popular mechanics magazines. And inside was how to make a homemade life preserver.

[11:20] No way. Literally, your life receiver, how it will behave if you need it. This is the one I feel like is the most nonsensical. It's such a refined construction of a life vest. I feel like this has been showing off. This has absolutely been showing off.

[11:33] It's like, get a piece of foam in like a milk jug. You know, it's doing the same thing. Is this a raft? Our theory was that they made four tubes. And then we're like, we don't need the second short one because we can just make it a long triangle.

[11:45] These tubes are something like 14 feet? Yeah. That's a yacht. Now those instructions were applicable to the typical materials you find in a rain jacket. These guys collected like 56 of them. They made license rivers in Iraq, which we are about to do.

[11:57] You need some smart dudes! MacGyver on steroids. Here we go. We found a roll of rubberized canvas that matched the material of the prison issue rain jacket and then touched them into rain jacket size strips.

[12:09] Oh yeah. Wow, that's a satisfying flow. Wow. Oh, that was so unsatisfying! And there was a period-assurate rubber cement to glue the segments together with two and a half in two. Our life depends on these themes.

[12:22] If one of these even has a little leaf. Oh, my applicator already broke. Are there more applicators? And then before we seal the deal, with some hammer time.

[12:35] And it just freezing freezing Wow don worry I gonna cover it up We brought the affair Sorry for what No idea. We'll be doing it. We'll be doing it. And with that, we rolled it onto itself, then sealed the end, which led to the final test.

[12:52] Seeing if we could inflate it using the same secret weapon, the escapee pad. Oh, yeah. And they took an accordion. They actually used it as an air pump. Yeah. There you go. It's a pretty strong. Okay. The fate of our survival rests on this moment.

[13:06] This is the actual raft we will be using to cross the shark-infested Alcatraz waters. Here we go. Oh my god, it's working. It's working. Keep going. And over the course of about 37 squeaking pumps, we had a fully inflated raft.

[13:19] The accordion is the unsung hero. Or, I guess it's a little bit of a song. Yeah. But the all-important question was, this is for Luke. Is it fully airtight?

[13:31] Nothing. Cleo's overjoyed response made it clear that if we just repeated that exact same thing two more times, we'd have a fully functioning wrap.

[13:43] Next for the inmates was making it onto the roof. But before they do that, it's worth looking at their tools and appreciating that while they didn't have college degrees, they certainly thought like engineers because they were resilient problem solvers.

[13:55] And to me, this is what it means to think like an engineer. And this is such an important skill to develop for life. It's written right on the side of every Crunch Labs build box that puts you delivered to your door every month, where we build a really fun toy together, and then learn all about the fascinating physics that makes them work.

[14:11] But the fun part is, just like I do with my YouTube videos, you find the vegetables. So you're learning all these useful life skills like resilience, but every step of the journey is really fun. On top of that, each month, your box has a chance to contain the platinum ticket.

[14:25] And if you get it, when you're coming out to Crunch Labs, go with me and my team right now. If you're a kid looking for something to put at the top of your Christmas list, or you're just looking to be the household hero by giving it to someone else,

[14:37] at thecrunchlives.com where we're giving away two free boxes for our holiday special, and where you'll find we've finally completed our trilogy of creative engineering subscription box options, now ranging from ages 6 to 106.

[14:49] Back with our STPs at 1045 p.m., they were now at step 4 of their escape plan, ready to head to the roof through this vent. This right here is the vent they did it through. and they had previously sawed through the bolt that held the vent shut

[15:01] and then replaced it with a fake bolt made of soap that had painted to look real. They had also previously bent away a restriction bar intended to keep the human from fitting through the ventilation pipe using an ingenious homemade bar spreader consisting of two opposite threaded bolts with a threaded turnbuckle in the middle.

[15:18] So when they tightened the turnbuckle with their homemade wrench, the two bolt heads would slowly deform their restriction bar until there was room enough to slip through. So they busted through, pushed up the metal vents, pushed out their raft, and called to the roof a potential freedom.

[15:33] We know the exact time they got on the roof because a guard and several inmates reported hearing a loud bang. So you had to push this thing over and land it on the roof? That's going to make a lot of noise.

[15:45] That's loud. If you just imagine, they've made it up on the roof. They've got their raft. They're running to the edge. They've got the city of San Francisco behind them. Golden Gate Bridge for their life. And they know they are mere hours away from drowning in these frigid waters with total freedom.

[16:01] It's one or the other. So they came here to the edge of the roof, then climbed down the water pipe, made their way along the exercise yard, down by the water tower, and around the power station. Now what's truly remarkable about that route is they'd have to scale two separate 12-foot barbed wire fences,

[16:16] with all their gear in tow while going undetected by the armed guards on the search tower, In order to shoot on sight, any prisoners had to do to escape. The final part of this escape, conveniently, where you can't be seen by the guard tower,

[16:30] they made their way down this embassment and entered the water right here. Now this beach wasn't the easiest spot for them to access, but Mastermind Frank chose it specifically because it was in a blind spot for all the guard tower first lights.

[16:43] So now that they were down by the water's edge, they inflated the raft using the modified accordion, they turned into an air pump and set off to Angel Island. To get a sense of whether this would even be remotely possible in a homemade raft, we launched our own homemade raft from a beach location that was very similar to theirs.

[16:57] Go, go, go, go, go! Careful, careful, I don't want you to break it. This is it, guys. This has to work. Okay, time to start making the music. Get in there. I'll hold you, pump. Johnny, why don't you start throwing one of the other's with the mouth? Okay. Can you imagine being here on the beach?

[17:10] You're like, the guards might come at any moment. Low hearted, Johnny! I love you, Johnny! This is not easy! I grew up. Oh no, I didn't prepare for this.

[17:22] Get these on. Watch your eyes. Oh shoot, I just broke. It still works. Let's get a cool look out here. Guys, I'm on my call. This one's full.

[17:34] No way to last. This is the first thing I'm doing. Alright, we gotta get in the water. Go, go, go, go, go. Get in there. Alright, Cleo, get in. Get in, Cleo. Careful on those themes. It's funny.

[17:46] It's funny. It's funny. It's funny. We're friends! We're friends! Now you'll notice it's not exactly dark, even though we know they launched after life's out in easy.

[17:58] That's because we ran some tests of our own by strapping 20 DTS devices in waterproof container system driftwood, and then we threw them in the water, near their launch spot at various times in the type cycle, and then we tracked where they ended up.

[18:10] And this experiment yielded some very unexpected results. Whoa, we're looking at some movement here. Wait, this is not what I was expecting to see. We're trying to go over here? Not now! Because of the strong current the Driftwood Lodge got caught up in,

[18:24] none of them even came close to making it to their intended destination, Angel Island, either as the current came in on high tide or went out on low tide. In fact, of all the lodges we threw in, only a few ever made it to land during an ideal 30-minute tidal window

[18:37] at a location right about here next to the Golden Gate Bridge. And this is something Frank probably knew as well by observing debris in the water moving with the tide, meaning all their rumored plans for heading to Angel Island were just aversion and their real plan was to land here all along To maximize our chance of a successful escape we had the water at the same perfect 30 tidal window based on the tides for our day Tard paddling did freedom bro

[19:01] The tide is just moving. Let's go. We're moving so fast, man. Guys, this is epic. Look at this. This is epic. Woo! Let's go. I'm going to go.

[19:13] We have a pilot. Woo! Oh, cool. Wow, this is beautiful. We're free. Oh, my God. Wow, this is amazing! Yay! We were feeling optimistic, but once we got about a quarter of the way to the bridge,

[19:27] the waves drastically increased in size. My waves are always like a huge! Oh my goodness! I'm like, oh! I was getting crazy fast, so I ditched the paddle and adopted a new strategy.

[19:41] Okay, at this point, you live and die by the turn. Paddling is just totally too fast. It's just about surviving and, like, floating our way in the turn. A large portion of my body is underwater right now. I'm just like in gold.

[19:54] It's just sitting. I can't help myself. We're basically sitting in just a massive life preserver. Like the most dangerous water gun. We're like sharks swimming around here. And this is a legitimate concern. Here's an actual clip right off the shore about the trans of a great white shark from being a seal.

[20:11] In fact, when I was scouting out the location the inmates launched their raft, I saw another seal right off the shore. You know what a seal. shock. To make matters worse, I knew in this area great whites hunted primarily at John and God.

[20:24] It gives me some real appreciation for what and how they did this. How do you think they were feeling if they got this one? Victorious. This is a winery. Yeah. But not home three yet. They've wings. Oh my goodness. These are six-footers. These are white cats. Literally white cats.

[20:41] Oh my god! What? What? We're almost fat-sized! It is tumultuous on the open sea. And despite the rough waters, our great escape was going pretty well. Right up until the raft started defraining.

[20:53] We definitely leave the air! This is not good. At the moment I put a little bit of pressure on it, there's some rushing out. I'm holding on tight right here, making sure it doesn't leak. And I'm holding this one on this side. And since our trusty accordion pump was back on shore, we had to get creative.

[21:07] Get some air back in there, please, folks! Our survival depends on it! And to make matters worse, there's water everywhere in here. Before the bathtub, dude, we are up to a lake. It's water.

[21:19] The winds are just so high. The water is freezing cold, but Alcatraz is fading into the distance. And the Golden Gate Bridge is coming closer. And this was good news, because even if Johnny made it, it was looking more and more likely.

[21:33] His dinner wouldn't. I'm not saying... Oh, sorry, that might fall out. Sorry. I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you. Here we are.

[21:45] I will not be defeated. I will not be defeated. I'm proud of you. Oh, I'm proud of you. You think for freedom. For freedom. Go for you. Go for me.

[21:57] I'm thinking so much faster when I'm happy. But you don't like. You don't hurt. You don't hurt. You don't have freedom. That's not actually true. You are really putting on the wrong one. That is actually true.

[22:10] We can do this, guys. We can do this. Guys, the bridge is right there. The bridge is right there. I see the bridge. All the trash is fading with every minute. Guys, we're on the long run around. Are you awesome? Yeah, I'm going outside.

[22:23] I'm done. I'm up to my serum now. I like most of the water. I know. Stay with us. Stay with us now. Johnny looks like he had a plan to fix our speaking situation.

[22:36] But it turns out, he was thinking more about content than survival. We talked together again! Which makes this a good time to mention, no matter what happens here, you should know they both have incredible YouTube channels. Like Cleo just uploaded a video about what we could actually do if a giant asteroid were headed towards Earth.

[22:52] An asteroid impact is worse than you might think. And Johnny just uploaded a video about the infamous El Chapo prison escape in Mexico. This place was considered inescapable. But even still, you need to see through one of his tunnels.

[23:04] The current had drawn about 90% of the workforce, and now it's up to us, and it's a final push to freedom.

[23:20] Which would have been much easier without my prison issue for wear.

[23:34] It's time for no good job! Back for the... We're free. Ah! Oh my god, I'm so tired right now.

[23:46] That's one of the hardest things I've ever done in my home. Yeah. So after all that, the question that remained is did they survive that final step? Now what we know for sure is the FBI recovered evidence of their escape by paddles or life jackets in these four locations.

[23:59] But what we also know is on any given night, there's only a 30-minute window where the high tide current will take you from Alcatraz safely to land. And any attempt outside that time frame basically means certain deaths from hypothermia or drowning.

[24:13] And thanks to a lot of modern science, we of course knew exactly when that 30-minute window was for our escape. And so after checking Shores' tide records on the exact night of their escape, for them, that vital window would be between 11.30 and midnight.

[24:25] And according to the FBI records, ingenious Frank Morris is access to none of the data we had pushed off right in that sweet spot at 11.40pm. And even with all that, realistically, I still put their odds at less than a 50% chance of surviving the final step.

[24:43] But if anyone was going to beat those odds, it would be the serial escape artist, genius IQ, bonafide bootleg prison engineer, Frank Morris. This year, if you want to strengthen that resilience muscle in your brain while having tons of fun along the way,

[24:58] at crunchlabs.com and use the link in the video description, where we're currently giving away two free boxes as a holiday special.