This is Alcatraz! The world's most famously secure prison, and today I'm gonna 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 - 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. So to pull this off, they gave me unrestricted access to the whole prison. Because our goal is to use modern technology along with our own engineering skills, to determine once and for all whether these 3 escapees actually made it safely to land, - Guys, we are no longer in a raft! - or if they vanish forever in the frigid shark riddled waters of the San Francisco Bay. - I'm not sure we're gonna make it anymore! - We're gonna make it! - I cannot believe they would spend 23 hours a day in this tiny little cell. - On June 11th, 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. 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 preparations. 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, eventually taking them up and out of the prison, down to the water and across the bay to their freedom. To pull this off would require countless strokes of genius, like fake vents to cover up their digging progress, fake bolts to make from sculpted soap, or a homemade raft, fashioned from prison-issued raincoats. But all 6 of those critical steps started right back here with the decoy moments after lights out At 9:35 p.m. Since they weren't expected out of bed until roll call the next morning, they needed a way to not sound the alarms with empty beds when guards came by to perform head counts 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. - 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. The only thing that's missing is the snoring. - Now at this point it's worth mentioning these weren't your average prisoners. Frank Morris 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. 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. Cleo would be the mastermind, and Johnny and I would be the 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. - and began the first test. - I am gonna make a nose. - I'm gonna start mixing. - Mixing what? - When it comes to arts and crafts, - It's a good idea. - It's fair to say - I just need your face. - this team lacked experience. - This is Mark Rober with his hat. - Despite all that, I think they turned out pretty good. - These are amazing - Because it turned out all you really needed was to bring in your art director, Brooke. - Whose do you want to start with? - I will start with... oh God. - Brooke, Brooke, save us! - And having Brooke to help us actually put us on par with the original escapees because they had their own resident artist in one of the brothers, Clarence Anglin, who also worked maintenance and painted as a hobby, so he provided the paint. His brother John, on the other hand, worked in the barbershop, so he provided the actual human hair they used. - Hello! - Is that how you see me? - Here's Mark. - Oh my God! - So with our picture perfect facsimiles finished, we put our heads to the test with prison guard Bam, - Prisoner check! - who'd been told all three of us remained asleep in our beds and our outcome was significantly different than theirs, - I told you, Johnny! - It almost worked. - Why are your eyes so wide open like this? - providing early evidence, these weren't your average prisoners. - All right, next test. - Now that their diversion was set at 9:37 p.m., they grabbed some tools and crawled through a hole in their jail cell wall that they had spent the previous 6 months secretly digging out. - 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. - To give themselves a head start on digging, they decided to enlarge an already existing air vent hole underneath each of their sinks. And since 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 into picks by removing the round parts. So 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 prison cell we built in CrunchLabs using concrete that was similar to what they would have faced. - My fingers are starting to get tired and it's literally been 30 seconds. - Wow, you are so soft. - It quickly became clear why it would have taken them months - Prison breaking is hard! - to painstakingly scrape their way to a hole big enough to escape from. - Sorry! - Which begs the question, how do you cover up your digging progress so the guards don't discover it during their routine room inspections? So to answer that question, I headed to the prison archives to meet a good friend of mine, Adam Savage. - Bring it in! - How are you doing? - Because he has a lot of myth busting knowledge on this topic. - We didn't know that there were still pieces of the original thing until we 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 stole from a maintenance shed. - From a maker standpoint, this is a masterpiece. To make this out of like homegrown materials you're scabbing from the prison shop, and to have looked this good like a concrete wall is incredible. - Back in prison, we were making some progress, but it wasn't exactly quiet work. Our three escapees faced the same issue and came up with a clever solution. Every night from 5:30 to 7 was music hour for all the inmates, 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's so loud! - Dig Johnny, dig! - We're escaping from Alcatraz! - Don't say that out loud! - Oh yeah, sorry! - The guards will know! - 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. Because he ended up getting his hands 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 will find - We have a modified power drill and that ought to speed things up a little bit. - 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, we resorted to an improved method of drilling a series of holes and then using the spoons to remove the remaining excess material between the hole. And as much as this did increase our output as well, it was clear this would still take weeks, 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 until the hole was the exact same size as the holes in their cells. - Look at how much concrete they would have had to remove from the premises, right? - And we think they put it all in their pockets? - And put it out in the yard, yeah. But this is the actual size of the hole they escaped from. I can smell the freedom. So it turns out they were like 135 pounds. - So these are tiny dudes. - They're tiny dudes. I don't know if my head will fit through here. - You got this. - Hat goes first. Now I have to make it. Oh crap. Oh, there is no way. - Let's push him. No, there's no way this guy's got through. - All that work and you don't even get to escape. - Johnny mixes things up with the feet-first approach. - I need the Vaseline! - Which meant it all came down to Cleo. - I can totally do this. - Oh my God. - She's doing it. Oh my gosh! She's doing it! She did it! We're free! - Send help Cleo! Cleo!? Bro, she's already gone. - Wow, OK. - Well, you want a game of Tic Tac Toe, I guess? - 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 between the cells, but the problem was they'd have to silently make their way to step 3, that was 4 stories above them. - Here's the holes. They would crawl out right here into this utility quarter, which honestly is pretty spacious. - But more importantly, They had to make it to the loft, and there's all these pipes 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, there was already a homemade life raft and life vests, 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, bringing up their hidden homemade tools every night as they fabricated their means 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. So they devised a plan every day he would sweep dust down onto the polished floors below. And 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, creating themselves a private little workshop in the process. - So 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, he's an absolute genius. - And of course it makes sense then why during the day they'd 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. - Frank worked in the library, which gave him access to reading materials like Popular Mechanics, where he learned some of the skills they used for designing their paddles and constructing the raft and life preservers made from over 50 army issued raincoats they had borrowed or stole from other inmates. And bear in mind these weren't exactly ideal working conditions. - Any noise they make up here just echoes throughout the entire prison. On top of that, this is where the guards would patrol back and forth with Thompson submachine guns, keeping an eye on all the prisoners. So it's wild that just 15 ft away these guys were literally fabricating their means for escape. - And now that they'd completed step 3 and were ready to head to the roof with all their provisions, it was our turn to do the same by building the actual rafts we would use to make our own escape. - So now we're up to the loft. We're out of our cells, but the next big step is how do you make it through these frigid shark infested waters. What's cool is they had these popular mechanics magazines and inside was how to make a homemade life preserver if you need it. - No way! - Literally your life preserver, how will it 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 is them showing off. - This is absolutely them showing off. It's like get a piece of foam and like a milk jug, you know, it's doing the same thing. Is this a raft? - Our theory is that they made four tubes and then realized, we don't need the second short one because we can just make it a long triangle. - These tubes are something like 14 ft? - Yeah. - That's a yacht. Now those instructions were applicable to the typical material you find in a rain jacket. So these guys collected like 56 of them. They made life preservers and a raft, which we are about to do. - This is 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 jackets and then cut them into rain jacket size strips. - Oh yeah. Wow, that's satisfying. - Satisfying flow. Wow. Oh, that was so unsatisfying. - And then we use period accurate rubber cement to glue the segments together with 2.5 inch seams. - Our life depends on these seams. If one of these even has a little leak, - My applicator already broke. Are there more applicators? - And then fully sealed the deal, - Mallet up, bro. - with some hammer time. And if this seems insanely loud, don't worry. - I'm gonna cover it up! - We brought the accordion. - Guards will have no idea what we're doing! - And with that we rolled it onto itself then sealed the ends which led to the final test, seeing if we could inflate it using the same secret weapon the escapees had. - Oh yes! - They took an accordion and actually used it as an air pump. Yeah. - There you go. - It's pretty strong. See? OK. - The fate of our survival rests on this moment. 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 squeaky pumps, we had a fully inflated raft. - The accordion is the unsung hero, or I guess it's a little bit sung. - Yeah. - But the all important question was, - Listen for a leak. - is it fully airtight? - 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 raft. 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. 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 CrunchLabs Build Box that gets 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. But the best part is, just like I do with my YouTube videos, we hide 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, and if you get it, well, then you're coming out to CrunchLabs to build with me and my team for a day. So 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, head to crunchlabs.com, where we're giving away two free boxes for our holiday special, and where you'll find we finally completed our trilogy of creative engineering subscription box options now ranging from ages 6 to 106. Back with our escapees at 10:45 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. - They had previously sawed through the bolt that held the vent shut and then replaced it with a fake bolt made of soap they had painted to look real. They'd also previously bent away a restriction bar intended to keep a 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. So when they tightened the turnbuckle with their homemade wrench, the two bolt heads would slowly deform the restriction bar until there was room enough to slip through. - So they busted through, pushed up the metal vent, pushed out the rafts, and crawled to the roof and to potential freedom. - We know the exact time they got on the roof because a guard and several inmates reported hearing a loud bang. - If you had to push this thing over, it landed on the roof, that's gonna make a lot of noise. That's loud. If you just imagine, they've made it up on the roof. They've got their rafts, they're running to the edge. They've got the city of San Francisco behind them, Golden Gate Bridge to their left, and they know they are mere hours away from drowning in these frigid waters or total freedom. 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 with all their gear in tow while going undetected by the armed guards on the search towers who were ordered to shoot on site any prisoner attempting to escape. - And the final part of the escape, conveniently, where you can't be seen by the guard tower, they made their way down this embankment and into 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 searchlights. So now that they were down by the water's edge, they inflated the rafts using the modified accordion they turned into an air pump and set off to Angel Island. So 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. - Go, go, go, go, go! Careful or you'll break it. This is it, guys. This has to work. - OK, time to start making the music. Get in there. - I'll hold, you pump. - Johnny, why don't you start filling one of the others with your mouth? - OK. - Can you imagine being here on the beach? You're like, the guards might come at any moment. - Blow harder, Johnny! - I'm trying! - Come on, Johnny! - This is not easy! - Tastes like glue. - Oh no, I didn't prepare for this. Let's get these on. Watch your eye. - Oh shoot, It just broke. It still works. - Getting a core work out here. - Guys, I'm almost full. - This one's full. - No way this last. This is the first thing I'm ditching. All right, we gotta get in the water! - Let's get in the water! Go, go, go, go! Get in there! All right, Cleo, get in, get in, Cleo! Careful on those seams! - It's it floating! - Go, go! - Let's go, Mark! - We're we're free! We're free! - Now you'll notice it's not exactly dark, even though we know they launched after lights out in the evening. That's because we ran some tests of our own by strapping 20 GPS devices in waterproof containers to some driftwood, and then we threw them in the water near their launch spot at various times in the tide cycle, and then we tracked where they ended up. 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 logs got caught up in, 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 logs we threw in, only a few ever made it to land during an ideal 30 minute tidal window 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 tides, meaning all their rumored plans for heading to Angel Island were just diversions, and their real plan was to land here all along. So to maximize our chance of a successful escape, we had entered the water at the same perfect 30 minute tidal window based on the tides for our day. - Start paddling to freedom, folks. Dude, the tide is just pulling us. - Look at us go! - We're moving so fast, man! Guys, this is epic! Look at this! Just look at this! - We're the best, let's go! - We're going to the Golden Gate Bridge! Look around. This is beautiful. We're free. Oh my God. Wow, this is amazing! - Johnny Paddle! - Paddle, sorry! - We were feeling optimistic, but once we got about a quarter of the way to the bridge, the waves drastically increased in size. - Big waves! - All these waves are huge! - Oh my waves. - Oh boy! - I was getting queasy fast, so I ditched the paddle and adopted a new strategy. - OK, at this point, you live and die by the current. Paddling is just totally futile. It's just about surviving and like floating our way in the current. A large portion of my body is underwater right now. I'm just like engulfed in this thing. I cannot move. We're basically sitting in a massive life preserver. - Like the world's most dangerous waterbed. -...with like sharks swimming around you. - And this was a legitimate concern. Here's an actual clip right off the shore of Alcatraz of a great white shark hunting a seal. 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 eats seals? Sharks. - And to make matters worse, I knew in this area great whites hunted primarily at dawn and dusk. - That gives you some real appreciation for what and how they did this. - How do you think they were feeling if they got this far? - Victorious. - This is a win already, but not home-free yet. - Big waves! Oh my goodness! These are 6-footers. - These have white caps. - Literal white caps! Oh my gosh! - We almost capsized. - 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 deflating. - We're definitely losing air! - This is not good. The moment I put a little bit of pressure on it, air comes 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. - Get some air back in please, folks, our survival depends on it. - And to make matters worse, - There's water everywhere in here. - This is more of a bathtub. - Dude, we are up to our waists in the water. - The waves 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 his dinner wouldn't. - I'm nauseous. - Johnny, you better be paddling! - Oh God, I might vomit. - Johnny, paddle! Paddle! - I'm paddling! To the end! I will not be defeated! - Johnny! - Oh I'm so nauseous! - This is for freedom! - For freedom! - Go Cleo! - We're sinking so much faster when I paddle. - But you know what? We've got heart. And if you've got heart, you've got freedom. - That's not actually true. - We are really putting on a lot of water. - That is actually true. - We can do this, guys. We can do this. - Guys, the bridge is right there! - The bridge is right there! I see the bridge. Alcatraz is fading with every minute. - Guys, we are no longer in a raft! This is just in the ocean. - We are going down, guys? Johnny? - I'm up to my sternum now. I'm like mostly underwater. - I'm just swimming. - You okay? Cleo, stay with us! - Stay with us, Cleo. - Johnny looked like he had a plan to fix our sinking situation. But it turns out he was thinking more about content than survival. - We're back 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. - 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 is the most incredible prison escape of all time. I mean, the Alcatraz stuff is pretty amazing too. - We're so close. The current's taking us. It still has a... hold on to that. I am! - The current had done about 90% of the work for us, and now it was up to us to make the final push to freedom. - Big push. Come on! - We're so close! - Which would have been much easier without my prison issued footwear. - These steel toe boots suck! Oh my God, come on, we're there. - We're free. Oh my God, we made it. - Land! We made it! - We did it! We did it, we actually... - We're free from Alcatraz! - We actually did it. - We're free. Oh my God, I'm so tired right now. - That's one of the hardest things I've ever done in my whole life. - So after all that, the question that remains is did they survive that final step? Now what we know for sure is the FBI recovered evidence of their escape like paddles or life jackets in these four locations. 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 death from hypothermia or drowning. 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 the historic tide records on the exact night of their escape for them that vital window would be between 11:30 and midnight. And according to the FBI records, ingenious Frank Morris with access to none of the data we had pushed off right in that sweet spot at 11:40 p.m. Even with all that, realistically, I still put their odds at less than a 50% chance of surviving the final step, but if anyone was gonna beat those odds, it would be the serial escape artist, genius IQ, bona fide 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, go to CrunchLabs.com, or use the link in the video description where we're currently giving away two free boxes as a holiday special.