The UnXplained

Deadly mountain ranges

that draw thousands

of ambitious thrill-seekers.

Boiling hot eruptions

whose lethal beauty

lures scientists to the edge of imminent peril

and a lush mysterious island

that hides the prospect of

certain death.

All over the globe,

there are places so hazardous,

volatile and precarious,

visitors are urged to "keep out."

And yet, despite monumental challenges,

unmistakable signs of peril

and even deadly consequences,

there are those who are compelled to push fear aside

and rush headlong into the unknown.

Why are some people willing to risk their lives

for the thrill of experiencing a dangerous place?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

Every day, we all face a certain level of risk

in life's normal routines.

We trust other drivers on the road

and fly in airplanes

at 30,000 feet.

We even take our chances walking on a flight of stairs,

a simple activity that claims around 12,000 lives each year.

But while danger is an inescapable part of life,

there are those who choose to deliberately

put themselves in unmistakable jeopardy.

There are

some people who are sort of drawn towards

dangerous things over and over again

without really considering the risks.

You would think that danger

would sort of suppress curiosity.

But for some people, the danger actually heightens it.

I would never want to go

off of a cliff or cliff dive or skydive,

jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

What would make someone want to do that kind of thing?

And I think really,

it's sort of who they are as a person,

as part of their identity.

Through human evolution,

our brains have become programmed to prioritize

self-preservation and survival above all else.

So what is really going on in the minds of those

who seem to be all too willing

to put their lives at risk?

The psychological concept is called

sensation seeking, and there are

different components to it.

One is called thrill and adventure seeking.

These are dangerous situations that are more physical.

Like skydiving, bungee jumping.

But there's also experience seeking.

That's sensations of the mind and of the senses.

The really interesting thing about high sensation seekers

is they have different kinds of chemical alarms

that may go off in their body

during these really chaotic situations.

When we're around things that are dangerous,

we have that fight, flee or freeze response.

It gets our body ready to either

fight the danger directly,

freeze to avoid detection,

or flee from those dangerous situations.

And that's set off by a chemical called cortisol in our body.

The high sensation seekers, when they're around these really

chaotic experiences, don't have that much cortisol,

so they're pretty calm in those situations.

What they do have is an increase in a chemical called dopamine.

It's a pleasure neurotransmitter.

So, when they're in these really highly chaotic situations,

they're feeling a lot more pleasure,

but less stress than average people.

The world is full of danger and-and new things to explore.

If we-we only had people who were low sensation seekers,

we would never explore those things.

Could unique brain chemistry be the difference

between a risk taker

or someone who plays it safe?

And while the pursuit of a dopamine rush may trigger

certain dangerous behavior,

the prospect of a life of adventure

is also motivation

for those who seek their next thrill.

I've had this conversation many times with friends.

"How did you end up being this guy

"who wanted to go off and do these crazy things?

To go off into the wild blue yonder and risk it all?"

It was born into me. Something started very early,

and it would often be fueled by the books that I read

of adventurers and mountain climbers

that I aspired to be like.

And come hell or high water,

I found a way to go find some amazing adventures.

There's a certain type of person

who's just looking for adrenaline.

I'm more interested in the unknown.

I think I was born with extra curiosity,

and when I go to these places, it's gonna be dangerous.

And I'm like, "Woo-hoo, this is cool."

'Cause I don't want my last few minutes

to be filled with terror,

if they are my last few minutes.

I do have less fear than most people.

So, I think that's not normal.

For some, walking in the footsteps of their heroes,

or simply experiencing the unknown, is a rush.

But is it also possible that some adventurers are just

addicted to danger?

I feel most comfortable and happiest

when I'm pushing the edges of risk.

I don't know if I was destined for adventure,

but it certainly was a

intense compulsion to explore.

And it became somewhat addictive.

The Explorer's Grand Slam is climbing the highest mountain

on all seven continents

and skiing at least

100 kilometers to the North and South Poles.

I've done that.

That took me on this

25-year path to climb

the Seven Summits.

But after I climbed those,

then I was very curious

about the Poles.

What would it be like to go for a long distance

in extremely difficult conditions?

I've been able to go into high altitudes in aircraft.

I've been to space on a rocket that exploded

a couple of months after I went up in it.

I've been to the bottom of the ocean

with my submersible.

It takes four and a half hours

to go from the surface to the bottom.

If there was any kind of catastrophic failure

with the submersible,

you would be gone

before your brain could even register it.

It was one of the most dangerous things I've ever done.

These are things

that are not normal, and yet

I have to explore or I'm bored.

One of the concepts we look at for sensation seeking

is called "boredom susceptibility,"

how easy it is for a person to get bored

and how irritated they get when they get bored.

I worry a lot about high sensation seekers

who get bored really easily.

Those are the people who are gonna try

the next thing, the next thing and the next thing.

While elite explorers

and highly trained athletes venture into

hazardous environments for a variety of reasons,

remarkably, there's a growing trend

where inexperienced people risk their well-being

in a dangerous pastime known as extreme tourism.

Extreme tourism is

people wanting to go into an environment

that they are not qualified to enter.

Whether you're going into space,

you're running hardcore white water,

you're going to high altitude.

This is someone who,

without the infrastructure and the guide,

cannot survive in that environment.

It's quite dangerous.

Extreme tourism makes an opportunity

that was never there before,

but it also means that anyone can say,

"I've always had a dream to be able to go up into space."

And so, if you have the money to be able to finance the trip,

then you don't have to have all the training of an astronaut.

I mean, it's always been a dangerous thing

to do, when you strap someone to a big tube

full of fuel and then you shoot them rocketing up to space.

And now, more and more people can do that.

Some people will spend money

to travel halfway across the world

to go visit something like the Claw at Chernobyl.

This was a grappling fixture

which was meant to move material around

and got intensely contaminated with a lot of radiation.

That can cause human health problems.

Not just cancer, but a breakdown

of the cardiovascular system, Alzheimer's-like effects.

And, well, there are people

who travel all the way around the world to see this,

and, in some cases, sit on it.

Tourists are lining up all over the world

to visit abandoned minefields.

They could be war zones or places where

there have been natural disasters.

I think people are drawn to places where they shouldn't be.

This is a kind of exploration of ourselves.