May 7, 2009 • 21 mins
Lakes are usually tranquil bodies of water, but in rare instances, they can be deadly. Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to hear Josh and Chuck discuss lakes that have exploded -- and the factors that create a killer lake.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Chuck Bryants with me. Say hey, Chuck, Hi, Josh.
How you doing. I am recovering from Kids Day? Yeah,
(00:21):
Chuck and I Actually I didn't volunteer. Chuck volunteered himself
and me yes to wrangle kids for Kids Day. I
gotta tell you that adult to kid ratio was one
and a half the one and I'm still wiped. I know.
There were literally four kids and what like eight of
us eight adults? No six six? Yeah, I was worn out, man. Yeah.
(00:46):
Kids Day is just awesome to the energy. Actually, my
favorite part to day was when he brought him on
the tour and then we brought him into the studio
and Jerry looked like she was about to crawl out
of her skin. Yeah, yeah, our producer Jerry does not
like kids. It turns out that was awesome. She put
on a real sweet face and was smiling, going hi everybody,
And then the kids got in the sound booth and
screamed to see if we could hear them, and we could.
(01:07):
Kids are fun, especially twelve year old, So I'm glad
it's over. Yes. I actually actually got tapped to do
it again next year, did you No? I just kind
of figured we did such a bang up job though
they'd want us back. Yeah. Well, anyway, thanks for that, Chuck. Um,
let's talk about exploding lakes then. Okay, okay, sure, So, Chuck,
(01:29):
have you ever seen a three hundred and twenty eight
foot tall cloud of death? There's a bathroom joke in
there somewhere that my wife would appreciate. But the straight
answer is no, your wife like scatological humor. Oh yeah,
I didn't know that. I her for that. She's dirty.
She seems way too intelligent for that kind of thing.
(01:50):
She is, but that means nothing. Still scatological. Well you know, um,
you know, had you lived around a little late call
Lake Nios in August of nineteen eighty six, you would
have seen a three d and twenty eight foot tall
cloud of death, and had you walked in it, you
probably would have died. It was frightening. I bet it was.
(02:14):
Chuck sent me this great picture that you think we
could post that on our blog? When this comes out,
and he keeps saying that we actually that would have
been today with the face transplant, and I did not
get the rights to that. So did you try to
get the rights? I did. I looked into it. You're
such a liar, okay, Well, Chuck sent me this great
picture of all these dead cows just kind of fallen
(02:36):
over on their sides around the lake in nine six.
Basically what happened was on I think the evening of
August one, all of a sudden there was this big
rumbling sound and Lake nas Is it's pretty substantial lake.
I think it's over six hundred feet deep. Yeah this
is in Africa. We haven't even said that. I'm sorry. Yeah,
it's in cam rout Um. And uh, there was this
(02:59):
rumble from within the lake, and all of a sudden,
this huge column of water shoots out of the middle
of the lake, hundreds of feet in the air. And
as its columns going, this this cloud that eventually becomes
a hundred meter tall cloud starts to develop. But the
thing is it's kind of hovering close to the lake,
so it's a really heavy cloud. And then this cloud
(03:21):
gets the bright idea of moving off of the lake
and down into the populated valley, which is I guess
just where the airflow took it, I guess, And it
clung very low to the ground. It sunk. Basically, it
just followed the ground into the valley. UM. And so
you know, you think, hey, there's a cloud. Um, what
harm can a cloud do? But the people who took
(03:43):
that attitude paid with their lives, to the tune of
seventeen hundred of them. Right, people up to fifteen miles
away from the lake. Uh died livestock, livestock people. Um.
Some people were knocked unconscious. It depended on the concentration
the secret ingredient will get too in a second. Um.
(04:03):
And some people were were unconscious for like thirty six
hours and they wake up and all their livestock and
their families dead. Unbelievable. I mean, no, imagine this, like
really put yourself into that situation. You're hanging around, you're
living your life of an idyllic, a grarian life, around
this beautiful lake which is supposedly used to be this
gorgeous blue was really really pretty, and um, all of
(04:25):
a sudden, the lake blows up and there's a cloud
of death that kills your entire family and knocks you
out for a day and a half. Well, in the
lake turned did you see the after photos that turned
really brown? I didn't. In the water level lowered and
uh it was. It was disgusting. It looked like before
after photo of like a hundred years of like pollution
as well. And this was overnight. Yeah yeah. So, um,
(04:46):
finally after about two days, as cloud dissipates, but not
before it moves through village after villages, killing people. Um.
And so obviously when people started to come in to
investigate what happened, they find all these dead bodies. Um,
the government got involved and rightfully so, yeah, it sounds
like an X Files episode. Definitely, It's exactly what it
sounds like. But it was real. Yeah well X Files
(05:09):
is real too, really sure, based on real accounts. As
far as I know, every single one did not. Yeah.
Um so yeah, So the government gets involved, which means
science gets involved, because you know, being an elected official
doesn't necessarily make you a science e type. You know,
you're not an egghead, right, far from it, right, So
the Cameroonian government recruited some scientists to say what the
(05:33):
hell just happened? There's people that were killed by cloud
of death. What has happened, Chuck? What happened in August
of six at Lake NIO's cameroon. Well, Josh, the secret
ingredient and now you know, the answer was CEO two
carbon dioxide. Yes, pretty simple. But where did it come from?
(05:54):
That's the thing is they they quickly realized that it
was CEO two. That wasn't the hard part. Figuring out
actually how this cloud came up from the lake was
a hard part. And there were a couple of theories
at the time. One is that um and underwater volcano
had erupted and pushed this gas up, which sounded pretty
plausible to me and actually looked at some of the
(06:14):
old articles and that's kind of what they said it
was for a while, right, Well, there's a split camp, right. Yeah.
The problem is that they went through and set up
the British Geological Survey set up some seismographs around the
lake and there should have been some small aftershock earthquakes
and they measured nothing. Not. They also didn't find any
sudden sulfur levels um that that would have been residual
(06:37):
from a volcano explosion, right right, So that one kind
of got scrapped and they went with the other camp,
which was which was a gigantic, deadly burp basically is
how it's described in the article, which is exactly what
it was. So I guess we need to go back
in time too, when lat Night was formed to really
(06:59):
understand this, right, we need our backend time music. Okay,
so n six, Chuck, Um, what Ghostbusters is sweeping the nation? Right? Well, no, no, no,
we need to go back when late now it was formed.
It wasn't in Oh, we have to go even further back.
(07:20):
Here's here's our time travel music again. So, Chuck, what
year are we in? I mean, this place doesn't look
very heavily populated. Well, it's a long, long time ago.
We're talking about thousands of years before Ghostbusters. Yeah, seven
or eight thousand years maybe, um, And that that's a
(07:41):
that's a guestimation. So if someone from Cameron writes in
and says it was actually nine thousand years, then give
Chuckers a break on this one. It's a long time ago. So, Josh,
Cameroon in Africa, there's some there's a lot of weak
spots in the crust around that area. And you know
what magma is I do. It's a molten lava that
(08:02):
hasn't reached the the Earth's surface yet exactly, so it's
like liquid rock. And it's another way to put it. Um.
It rises from the Earth's mantle and shoots up quickly
and vertically, and it cuts a tube towards the surface,
and when it reaches the surface, the magma can rain
dine rained down a big pile of rock to form
(08:22):
a cinder cone volcano. Right, absolutely, you're with me? Or
did you have okay? Can I say the other part
because it's yeah, yeah. Or if this magma which is
shooting up out of the ground comes in contact with
wet rock, an explosion happened, huge explosion and this is
what formed Like Nios, it's on a big crater. It
just went kaboom and all of a sudden there's a crater.
(08:45):
And then this crater started to fill in over the
years and now it's a volcanic crater. Like yeah, right,
take a crater add water lake in a very pretty
long day. So basically that's what happened. Um, You've got
at the bottom of the lake. You have an old
tube where the magma rose up and uh to the
surface and it remains there. So if you go down
(09:07):
about six miles you'll hit the magma. Right, it's staying
down there, yes, but there's still CEO two coming up
through this column right right, but it stays trapped because
of the fact that, like Nias was six D and
you know some on feet deep right, there's a every
thirty three ft there's in one atmosphere of pressure UM.
And so this is about twenty atmospheres, which is dense
(09:30):
and heavy enough to keep a bubble of gas held
down at the bottom right right. The problem is is um,
the gas builds up in every kind of lake there is, right,
every lake, every pond. Um. I didn't know this. This
is interesting. I didn't either, but I'm gonna pretend like
it did because watch me go. Um. You know, like
when leaves another organic matter, dead fishies fall to the bottom. Uh,
(09:53):
they they produce gas c O two, maybe methane, that
kind of thing. And this happens in anybody you of water, right.
But the thing is in most climates and temperate climates, um,
there's an actual gas exchange that happens annually. When the
temperature is cool, the surface water cools and goes to
the bottom. Which displaces the gas, and it happens very
(10:15):
calmly and casually, and there you go, there's no explosion. Yeah. Interesting.
The problem with Lake Nios and other lakes and Cameroon
is that there isn't a seasonal change. It's warm all
the time. There's never that turnover, and this bubble of
gas that's coming up from the magma shaft gets bigger
and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. Right, I
(10:37):
think magma shaft would be a good pseudonym for you
that is a good student of magma shaft. Yeah, magma shaft,
so uh yeah. Basically it acts like a champagne cork
called this water sitting on top of it. And in
order actually kind of left out the part of the
beginning that something needs to happen to trigger the gas
to be released. It's just not just gonna happen on zone.
And they think it may have been like a rock slide, right,
(10:59):
or an earthquake. And usually what happens is the whole
bubble doesn't get displaced, or the whole layer of gas
doesn't get displaced. Part of it will, but since it's
a one big cohesive layer, one part of it being
ripped off will displodge the rest of it, and all
of a sudden you've got a huge column of water
coming up, unbelievable gas CEO two going everywhere forming a
(11:23):
cloud of death. Ba boom bata being se villagers and
countless livestock dead. And this happened a couple of other times.
Uh And after there's two other like Cameroon is lousy
with exploding legs. Well, it's because of where it's situated. Yes,
that is true. Check. It's situated over a very thin
part of the Earth's crust, as you said, right right.
(11:44):
And there's two more lakes Lake Monoun that's what I gathered,
or mon Noon, and like Kivu. Yeah, both of those
have had incidents as well, but not nearly as deadly. Well,
Lake Kivu hasn't happened yet. Oh, it hasn't. Lake Kivus
between Rwanda and Congo. And that one, if it does happen,
would be a an amazing, an amazingly catastrophic natural disaster.
(12:10):
It's twice as deep as Lake Nios, which again remember
killed people from the cloud it produced. Uh So this
one's twice as deep. Um, and there's about two million
people living around it, right, so they would be in
really big trouble if Lake Kivu all of a sudden erupted,
and it most likely will. It's it's Uh, they've been
studying it and apparently it's right there about to happen.
(12:32):
No one's doing a thing about it. Yeah. No, they
just finally got around to doing something about like Nios,
they want to talk about that. Yeah, it's a great segue. Actually, Josh, thanks,
you're natural. Thanks, you've been doing this a year. We
had a one year universary, by the way, does any
no one even recognize that? No, I didn't even know when. Yeah,
we had a fan come in and we had our Yeah,
(12:54):
no fan, a fan wrote in and um said that
it was our one anniversary and we all said or
one episode, which I remember, the hundredth episode. Yeah, one
year university. Well, happy anniversary, beautiful you two, you two Jerry, Yeah,
happy anniversary, Jerry. So enough of that. Um, Yes, what
they basically came up with a really basic Some some
(13:15):
of the coolest ideas in science to me are so simple,
Like you would have thought a kid came up with
this idea basically, like the space shuttle. Yeah, exactly, this
thing make a big plane that goes into space. Uh,
they decided to de gass it with a big straw. Yeah.
They just basically put a pipe the bubble and all
(13:36):
of a sudden a bunch of CEO two water came
up and they they de gassi it a couple of
times a year, I'm sorry, a couple of times a day,
I think. Yeah, and there's a webcam. Have you seen
the webcam? No, I saw a picture of it. Looks
like one of those lakes at like a country club subdivision,
the Cheesy Fountain. Exactly, that's exactly what it looks like.
I didn't know there's a webcam. Do you know the address?
(13:56):
I don't off the top of my head. But what
do you type in like nine use webcam de gassing webcam?
You can probably find it. But before you go there,
you should know that the last image is from November
of last year, so it looks like it may be uh,
not actively running anymore, because I think the whole idea
of a webcams to show things live as it happens,
I think so too. Yeah, not from November last year.
(14:17):
So that's basically what they did. They put the first
pipe in in two thousand one a French engineering team.
But the sad thing is that these these foreign scientists
who came to uh Nios to figure out what happened
said pretty quickly like, this is what we should do.
We should drop a straw in that. In two thousand
(14:38):
one the first pipe pointed. But I read that they
were hoping to have the CEO two levels down by
next year. That's what I read. So we'll see what happens. Yeah, Well,
and I think it looks a little bit better than
it used to as well. It's pretty good. I don't
think it's back to where it was six when it
was really really cool looking, like, but I don't think
(15:01):
it's the brown mess that it was right afterward either,
with floating in it and stuff. So you want to
hear something interesting always, Well, first of all, these kind
of exploding lakes are actually called limnic eruptions. That's the
scientific word for it. And we understand the explanation. But
the people in Cameroon who had lived around Lake nyos
(15:22):
Um had another story for it, and basically they they are.
The gist of it is that every once in a while,
evil spirits rose from the lake and killed people in villages.
I'm not entirely certain why. Probably because they were evil spirits, right,
But you know what that's called what it's called a euhemerism,
really when something's explained in a different uh, when a
(15:45):
myth is clearly based on historical occurrences. So they're saying
that these exploding lakes had happened before in the past,
while people were still living around pre science though, so
they explained it with evil spirits, emergency from the lake,
but pretty much the same result, cloud of death at
c O two, cloud of death made of evil spirits.
There's in the end, you're still dead and so is
(16:07):
your livestock. Right, can you imagine being uh, you know,
as man evolved and started to figure things out, when
they started thinking and saw a volcano, like what that
must have I mean they probably thought the same thing
that some some someone was trying to kill them. They
did on evil spirits, didn't they. And now when science
is around there like how does my face read? I know,
(16:29):
but there's no secrets anymore. It's kind of disappointed still plenty,
Like do you know how the space shuttle works? No?
Well I could go read about it, and I guess
you could figure it out, So Chuck, um, Yeah, we've
got Lake Nyos. It seems like under control, Lake Kivu
is still a problem. So they haven't stuck the straw
on that one yet, not as far as I know.
(16:49):
And then there's one in Ecuador, Lake Quilatoa, and that
one's about if it erupted, it would be on the
level of the degree of iOS. Right, So there's exploding
likes just waiting for a limnic eruption all around the world.
So if you live in the tropics near a lake,
move set your advice. That's my advice. Yeah, So what
(17:12):
do you think? Is it done? Did we do it?
I think we covered everything. You're feeling pretty good? Are
we plugging things any longer? Let's see the blog plug?
The blog plug it I like the plug from the
one the face transplant, the hulk one. Blog good? Yeah, Chuck, Josh, right,
blog fire bad, fire bad? Should we just read that one?
Should we just reuse the one from that we recorded before? No? Okay,
(17:36):
Jerry saying no, so start fresh, Chuck. Okay, here we go. So, Josh,
we have a blog. We've been plugging this like, uh,
I'm trying to think of a plug analogy, but I
can't think of any. We've been plugging this for a while.
It's on the right side of the home page, just
where you can get it, so text speak and tech speak,
and we've gotten a lot of fans interacting now, which
is cool. And I'd also like to point out that
(17:59):
the blog is now where you can go just for
a little news. Josh and I are kind of venturing
out into these little UH opportunities now, being interviewed on
ABC News by the way, being tickled by strangers for money.
Little things like that are starting to pop up here
and there. So the blog is, well, we'll promote that
and let people know where they can support us and
that kind of thing. Yeah, I gotta tell you to chuck.
(18:20):
I'm very grateful for some of my friends, like my
friend s G. Actually UH is much smarter than me
and knows all sorts of stuff that I get fed
that makes me look smart because I just go ahead
and post on it. I was just one of the
blog commenters. Yes, yeah, nice. Yeah, so I'm smart lost
without my smart people, Yeah, be lost without them. That
(18:42):
was heartfelt. Thanks. I rarely see that out of you.
I know, I'm usually just so just dark and angry
and evil like a siftboard kind of, except without the
red face paint. Right, So I guess that's plugging. Yeah,
that's the plug fest. You guys have been plugged. And
now it's time for in their mail. Oh not yet, Josh.
(19:02):
And now right now it's time for listener mail. Josh,
you just have one under the banner of exceptional exceptional.
Sorry listener mail. That is a long one, Chuck. You're
gonna read the whole thing, and I'm gonna I'm gonna
do my scan thing. This comes to us from Helen
(19:24):
in Guatemala, specifically in kits Altenango, Guatemala, and she is
writing in about the twelve episode. She lives in the
Western Highlands and there's still mine people there, lots of them,
and uh, she has been fascinated here so much about
this twenty twelve stuff, but only from US media outlets apparently. No,
(19:47):
none of the mines are talking about No one cares about.
I got the impression too when when I was researching,
and I think we even mentioned that that. Yeah, it's
very much western, Yeah, very much. She said. Our own
calendar begins every week, month, the year, et cetera. The
Mind calendars all function in a circular rather than linear
concept of time and form cycles that repeat infinitely, so
(20:09):
they don't believe the world's gonna end to any particular
point on the calendar. The repeating cycles are based on
the idea of keeping counting of the passage of time,
which is very important in the culture. So she did
want to compliment us that we've come closest to just
completely debunking this than most US media outlets. Don't tell
it to the Belgians though, right. She did want to
(20:29):
point out, however, that I believe at one point one
of us said something about the Mind calendars are used
in secret. She said, that's not really true. You can
get them in bookstores all over the place there and
they are used, and different calendars have different uses, which
I thought was interesting. There's three major ones, and everyday
calendar for planning everyday stuff fitting link, a religious calendar
(20:51):
for planning rites and ceremonies, and an agricultural calendar for
planning planting and harvesting. And they still use these and
can get books on how to use them, and it
sounds like a really kind of an interesting thing. So
I can see that daily calendar, you know them selling
it like things to do today if you're mining, right, Yeah,
stock up on canned goods in case world and so
(21:13):
Helen thank us. And she's in Guatemalan. Cool, cool lady,
Thanks Helen. We appreciate it. If you live in Guatemala,
Guam or anywhere else and you want to send chucker me,
yeah an email, Uh, send it to stuff podcast at
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
(21:35):
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot
com Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Chuck Bryants with me. Say hey, Chuck, Hi, Josh.
How you doing. I am recovering from Kids Day? Yeah,
(00:21):
Chuck and I Actually I didn't volunteer. Chuck volunteered himself
and me yes to wrangle kids for Kids Day. I
gotta tell you that adult to kid ratio was one
and a half the one and I'm still wiped. I know.
There were literally four kids and what like eight of
us eight adults? No six six? Yeah, I was worn out, man. Yeah.
(00:46):
Kids Day is just awesome to the energy. Actually, my
favorite part to day was when he brought him on
the tour and then we brought him into the studio
and Jerry looked like she was about to crawl out
of her skin. Yeah, yeah, our producer Jerry does not
like kids. It turns out that was awesome. She put
on a real sweet face and was smiling, going hi everybody,
And then the kids got in the sound booth and
screamed to see if we could hear them, and we could.
(01:07):
Kids are fun, especially twelve year old, So I'm glad
it's over. Yes. I actually actually got tapped to do
it again next year, did you No? I just kind
of figured we did such a bang up job though
they'd want us back. Yeah. Well, anyway, thanks for that, Chuck. Um,
let's talk about exploding lakes then. Okay, okay, sure, So, Chuck,
(01:29):
have you ever seen a three hundred and twenty eight
foot tall cloud of death? There's a bathroom joke in
there somewhere that my wife would appreciate. But the straight
answer is no, your wife like scatological humor. Oh yeah,
I didn't know that. I her for that. She's dirty.
She seems way too intelligent for that kind of thing.
(01:50):
She is, but that means nothing. Still scatological. Well you know, um,
you know, had you lived around a little late call
Lake Nios in August of nineteen eighty six, you would
have seen a three d and twenty eight foot tall
cloud of death, and had you walked in it, you
probably would have died. It was frightening. I bet it was.
(02:14):
Chuck sent me this great picture that you think we
could post that on our blog? When this comes out,
and he keeps saying that we actually that would have
been today with the face transplant, and I did not
get the rights to that. So did you try to
get the rights? I did. I looked into it. You're
such a liar, okay, Well, Chuck sent me this great
picture of all these dead cows just kind of fallen
(02:36):
over on their sides around the lake in nine six.
Basically what happened was on I think the evening of
August one, all of a sudden there was this big
rumbling sound and Lake nas Is it's pretty substantial lake.
I think it's over six hundred feet deep. Yeah this
is in Africa. We haven't even said that. I'm sorry. Yeah,
it's in cam rout Um. And uh, there was this
(02:59):
rumble from within the lake, and all of a sudden,
this huge column of water shoots out of the middle
of the lake, hundreds of feet in the air. And
as its columns going, this this cloud that eventually becomes
a hundred meter tall cloud starts to develop. But the
thing is it's kind of hovering close to the lake,
so it's a really heavy cloud. And then this cloud
(03:21):
gets the bright idea of moving off of the lake
and down into the populated valley, which is I guess
just where the airflow took it, I guess, And it
clung very low to the ground. It sunk. Basically, it
just followed the ground into the valley. UM. And so
you know, you think, hey, there's a cloud. Um, what
harm can a cloud do? But the people who took
(03:43):
that attitude paid with their lives, to the tune of
seventeen hundred of them. Right, people up to fifteen miles
away from the lake. Uh died livestock, livestock people. Um.
Some people were knocked unconscious. It depended on the concentration
the secret ingredient will get too in a second. Um.
(04:03):
And some people were were unconscious for like thirty six
hours and they wake up and all their livestock and
their families dead. Unbelievable. I mean, no, imagine this, like
really put yourself into that situation. You're hanging around, you're
living your life of an idyllic, a grarian life, around
this beautiful lake which is supposedly used to be this
gorgeous blue was really really pretty, and um, all of
(04:25):
a sudden, the lake blows up and there's a cloud
of death that kills your entire family and knocks you
out for a day and a half. Well, in the
lake turned did you see the after photos that turned
really brown? I didn't. In the water level lowered and
uh it was. It was disgusting. It looked like before
after photo of like a hundred years of like pollution
as well. And this was overnight. Yeah yeah. So, um,
(04:46):
finally after about two days, as cloud dissipates, but not
before it moves through village after villages, killing people. Um.
And so obviously when people started to come in to
investigate what happened, they find all these dead bodies. Um,
the government got involved and rightfully so, yeah, it sounds
like an X Files episode. Definitely, It's exactly what it
sounds like. But it was real. Yeah well X Files
(05:09):
is real too, really sure, based on real accounts. As
far as I know, every single one did not. Yeah.
Um so yeah, So the government gets involved, which means
science gets involved, because you know, being an elected official
doesn't necessarily make you a science e type. You know,
you're not an egghead, right, far from it, right, So
the Cameroonian government recruited some scientists to say what the
(05:33):
hell just happened? There's people that were killed by cloud
of death. What has happened, Chuck? What happened in August
of six at Lake NIO's cameroon. Well, Josh, the secret
ingredient and now you know, the answer was CEO two
carbon dioxide. Yes, pretty simple. But where did it come from?
(05:54):
That's the thing is they they quickly realized that it
was CEO two. That wasn't the hard part. Figuring out
actually how this cloud came up from the lake was
a hard part. And there were a couple of theories
at the time. One is that um and underwater volcano
had erupted and pushed this gas up, which sounded pretty
plausible to me and actually looked at some of the
(06:14):
old articles and that's kind of what they said it
was for a while, right, Well, there's a split camp, right. Yeah.
The problem is that they went through and set up
the British Geological Survey set up some seismographs around the
lake and there should have been some small aftershock earthquakes
and they measured nothing. Not. They also didn't find any
sudden sulfur levels um that that would have been residual
(06:37):
from a volcano explosion, right right, So that one kind
of got scrapped and they went with the other camp,
which was which was a gigantic, deadly burp basically is
how it's described in the article, which is exactly what
it was. So I guess we need to go back
in time too, when lat Night was formed to really
(06:59):
understand this, right, we need our backend time music. Okay,
so n six, Chuck, Um, what Ghostbusters is sweeping the nation? Right? Well, no, no, no,
we need to go back when late now it was formed.
It wasn't in Oh, we have to go even further back.
(07:20):
Here's here's our time travel music again. So, Chuck, what
year are we in? I mean, this place doesn't look
very heavily populated. Well, it's a long, long time ago.
We're talking about thousands of years before Ghostbusters. Yeah, seven
or eight thousand years maybe, um, And that that's a
(07:41):
that's a guestimation. So if someone from Cameron writes in
and says it was actually nine thousand years, then give
Chuckers a break on this one. It's a long time ago. So, Josh,
Cameroon in Africa, there's some there's a lot of weak
spots in the crust around that area. And you know
what magma is I do. It's a molten lava that
(08:02):
hasn't reached the the Earth's surface yet exactly, so it's
like liquid rock. And it's another way to put it. Um.
It rises from the Earth's mantle and shoots up quickly
and vertically, and it cuts a tube towards the surface,
and when it reaches the surface, the magma can rain
dine rained down a big pile of rock to form
(08:22):
a cinder cone volcano. Right, absolutely, you're with me? Or
did you have okay? Can I say the other part
because it's yeah, yeah. Or if this magma which is
shooting up out of the ground comes in contact with
wet rock, an explosion happened, huge explosion and this is
what formed Like Nios, it's on a big crater. It
just went kaboom and all of a sudden there's a crater.
(08:45):
And then this crater started to fill in over the
years and now it's a volcanic crater. Like yeah, right,
take a crater add water lake in a very pretty
long day. So basically that's what happened. Um, You've got
at the bottom of the lake. You have an old
tube where the magma rose up and uh to the
surface and it remains there. So if you go down
(09:07):
about six miles you'll hit the magma. Right, it's staying
down there, yes, but there's still CEO two coming up
through this column right right, but it stays trapped because
of the fact that, like Nias was six D and
you know some on feet deep right, there's a every
thirty three ft there's in one atmosphere of pressure UM.
And so this is about twenty atmospheres, which is dense
(09:30):
and heavy enough to keep a bubble of gas held
down at the bottom right right. The problem is is um,
the gas builds up in every kind of lake there is, right,
every lake, every pond. Um. I didn't know this. This
is interesting. I didn't either, but I'm gonna pretend like
it did because watch me go. Um. You know, like
when leaves another organic matter, dead fishies fall to the bottom. Uh,
(09:53):
they they produce gas c O two, maybe methane, that
kind of thing. And this happens in anybody you of water, right.
But the thing is in most climates and temperate climates, um,
there's an actual gas exchange that happens annually. When the
temperature is cool, the surface water cools and goes to
the bottom. Which displaces the gas, and it happens very
(10:15):
calmly and casually, and there you go, there's no explosion. Yeah. Interesting.
The problem with Lake Nios and other lakes and Cameroon
is that there isn't a seasonal change. It's warm all
the time. There's never that turnover, and this bubble of
gas that's coming up from the magma shaft gets bigger
and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. Right, I
(10:37):
think magma shaft would be a good pseudonym for you
that is a good student of magma shaft. Yeah, magma shaft,
so uh yeah. Basically it acts like a champagne cork
called this water sitting on top of it. And in
order actually kind of left out the part of the
beginning that something needs to happen to trigger the gas
to be released. It's just not just gonna happen on zone.
And they think it may have been like a rock slide, right,
(10:59):
or an earthquake. And usually what happens is the whole
bubble doesn't get displaced, or the whole layer of gas
doesn't get displaced. Part of it will, but since it's
a one big cohesive layer, one part of it being
ripped off will displodge the rest of it, and all
of a sudden you've got a huge column of water
coming up, unbelievable gas CEO two going everywhere forming a
(11:23):
cloud of death. Ba boom bata being se villagers and
countless livestock dead. And this happened a couple of other times.
Uh And after there's two other like Cameroon is lousy
with exploding legs. Well, it's because of where it's situated. Yes,
that is true. Check. It's situated over a very thin
part of the Earth's crust, as you said, right right.
(11:44):
And there's two more lakes Lake Monoun that's what I gathered,
or mon Noon, and like Kivu. Yeah, both of those
have had incidents as well, but not nearly as deadly. Well,
Lake Kivu hasn't happened yet. Oh, it hasn't. Lake Kivus
between Rwanda and Congo. And that one, if it does happen,
would be a an amazing, an amazingly catastrophic natural disaster.
(12:10):
It's twice as deep as Lake Nios, which again remember
killed people from the cloud it produced. Uh So this
one's twice as deep. Um, and there's about two million
people living around it, right, so they would be in
really big trouble if Lake Kivu all of a sudden erupted,
and it most likely will. It's it's Uh, they've been
studying it and apparently it's right there about to happen.
(12:32):
No one's doing a thing about it. Yeah. No, they
just finally got around to doing something about like Nios,
they want to talk about that. Yeah, it's a great segue. Actually, Josh, thanks,
you're natural. Thanks, you've been doing this a year. We
had a one year universary, by the way, does any
no one even recognize that? No, I didn't even know when. Yeah,
we had a fan come in and we had our Yeah,
(12:54):
no fan, a fan wrote in and um said that
it was our one anniversary and we all said or
one episode, which I remember, the hundredth episode. Yeah, one
year university. Well, happy anniversary, beautiful you two, you two Jerry, Yeah,
happy anniversary, Jerry. So enough of that. Um, Yes, what
they basically came up with a really basic Some some
(13:15):
of the coolest ideas in science to me are so simple,
Like you would have thought a kid came up with
this idea basically, like the space shuttle. Yeah, exactly, this
thing make a big plane that goes into space. Uh,
they decided to de gass it with a big straw. Yeah.
They just basically put a pipe the bubble and all
(13:36):
of a sudden a bunch of CEO two water came
up and they they de gassi it a couple of
times a year, I'm sorry, a couple of times a day,
I think. Yeah, and there's a webcam. Have you seen
the webcam? No, I saw a picture of it. Looks
like one of those lakes at like a country club subdivision,
the Cheesy Fountain. Exactly, that's exactly what it looks like.
I didn't know there's a webcam. Do you know the address?
(13:56):
I don't off the top of my head. But what
do you type in like nine use webcam de gassing webcam?
You can probably find it. But before you go there,
you should know that the last image is from November
of last year, so it looks like it may be uh,
not actively running anymore, because I think the whole idea
of a webcams to show things live as it happens,
I think so too. Yeah, not from November last year.
(14:17):
So that's basically what they did. They put the first
pipe in in two thousand one a French engineering team.
But the sad thing is that these these foreign scientists
who came to uh Nios to figure out what happened
said pretty quickly like, this is what we should do.
We should drop a straw in that. In two thousand
(14:38):
one the first pipe pointed. But I read that they
were hoping to have the CEO two levels down by
next year. That's what I read. So we'll see what happens. Yeah, Well,
and I think it looks a little bit better than
it used to as well. It's pretty good. I don't
think it's back to where it was six when it
was really really cool looking, like, but I don't think
(15:01):
it's the brown mess that it was right afterward either,
with floating in it and stuff. So you want to
hear something interesting always, Well, first of all, these kind
of exploding lakes are actually called limnic eruptions. That's the
scientific word for it. And we understand the explanation. But
the people in Cameroon who had lived around Lake nyos
(15:22):
Um had another story for it, and basically they they are.
The gist of it is that every once in a while,
evil spirits rose from the lake and killed people in villages.
I'm not entirely certain why. Probably because they were evil spirits, right,
But you know what that's called what it's called a euhemerism,
really when something's explained in a different uh, when a
(15:45):
myth is clearly based on historical occurrences. So they're saying
that these exploding lakes had happened before in the past,
while people were still living around pre science though, so
they explained it with evil spirits, emergency from the lake,
but pretty much the same result, cloud of death at
c O two, cloud of death made of evil spirits.
There's in the end, you're still dead and so is
(16:07):
your livestock. Right, can you imagine being uh, you know,
as man evolved and started to figure things out, when
they started thinking and saw a volcano, like what that
must have I mean they probably thought the same thing
that some some someone was trying to kill them. They
did on evil spirits, didn't they. And now when science
is around there like how does my face read? I know,
(16:29):
but there's no secrets anymore. It's kind of disappointed still plenty,
Like do you know how the space shuttle works? No?
Well I could go read about it, and I guess
you could figure it out, So Chuck, um, Yeah, we've
got Lake Nyos. It seems like under control, Lake Kivu
is still a problem. So they haven't stuck the straw
on that one yet, not as far as I know.
(16:49):
And then there's one in Ecuador, Lake Quilatoa, and that
one's about if it erupted, it would be on the
level of the degree of iOS. Right, So there's exploding
likes just waiting for a limnic eruption all around the world.
So if you live in the tropics near a lake,
move set your advice. That's my advice. Yeah, So what
(17:12):
do you think? Is it done? Did we do it?
I think we covered everything. You're feeling pretty good? Are
we plugging things any longer? Let's see the blog plug?
The blog plug it I like the plug from the
one the face transplant, the hulk one. Blog good? Yeah, Chuck, Josh, right,
blog fire bad, fire bad? Should we just read that one?
Should we just reuse the one from that we recorded before? No? Okay,
(17:36):
Jerry saying no, so start fresh, Chuck. Okay, here we go. So, Josh,
we have a blog. We've been plugging this like, uh,
I'm trying to think of a plug analogy, but I
can't think of any. We've been plugging this for a while.
It's on the right side of the home page, just
where you can get it, so text speak and tech speak,
and we've gotten a lot of fans interacting now, which
is cool. And I'd also like to point out that
(17:59):
the blog is now where you can go just for
a little news. Josh and I are kind of venturing
out into these little UH opportunities now, being interviewed on
ABC News by the way, being tickled by strangers for money.
Little things like that are starting to pop up here
and there. So the blog is, well, we'll promote that
and let people know where they can support us and
that kind of thing. Yeah, I gotta tell you to chuck.
(18:20):
I'm very grateful for some of my friends, like my
friend s G. Actually UH is much smarter than me
and knows all sorts of stuff that I get fed
that makes me look smart because I just go ahead
and post on it. I was just one of the
blog commenters. Yes, yeah, nice. Yeah, so I'm smart lost
without my smart people, Yeah, be lost without them. That
(18:42):
was heartfelt. Thanks. I rarely see that out of you.
I know, I'm usually just so just dark and angry
and evil like a siftboard kind of, except without the
red face paint. Right, So I guess that's plugging. Yeah,
that's the plug fest. You guys have been plugged. And
now it's time for in their mail. Oh not yet, Josh.
(19:02):
And now right now it's time for listener mail. Josh,
you just have one under the banner of exceptional exceptional.
Sorry listener mail. That is a long one, Chuck. You're
gonna read the whole thing, and I'm gonna I'm gonna
do my scan thing. This comes to us from Helen
(19:24):
in Guatemala, specifically in kits Altenango, Guatemala, and she is
writing in about the twelve episode. She lives in the
Western Highlands and there's still mine people there, lots of them,
and uh, she has been fascinated here so much about
this twenty twelve stuff, but only from US media outlets apparently. No,
(19:47):
none of the mines are talking about No one cares about.
I got the impression too when when I was researching,
and I think we even mentioned that that. Yeah, it's
very much western, Yeah, very much. She said. Our own
calendar begins every week, month, the year, et cetera. The
Mind calendars all function in a circular rather than linear
concept of time and form cycles that repeat infinitely, so
(20:09):
they don't believe the world's gonna end to any particular
point on the calendar. The repeating cycles are based on
the idea of keeping counting of the passage of time,
which is very important in the culture. So she did
want to compliment us that we've come closest to just
completely debunking this than most US media outlets. Don't tell
it to the Belgians though, right. She did want to
(20:29):
point out, however, that I believe at one point one
of us said something about the Mind calendars are used
in secret. She said, that's not really true. You can
get them in bookstores all over the place there and
they are used, and different calendars have different uses, which
I thought was interesting. There's three major ones, and everyday
calendar for planning everyday stuff fitting link, a religious calendar
(20:51):
for planning rites and ceremonies, and an agricultural calendar for
planning planting and harvesting. And they still use these and
can get books on how to use them, and it
sounds like a really kind of an interesting thing. So
I can see that daily calendar, you know them selling
it like things to do today if you're mining, right, Yeah,
stock up on canned goods in case world and so
(21:13):
Helen thank us. And she's in Guatemalan. Cool, cool lady,
Thanks Helen. We appreciate it. If you live in Guatemala,
Guam or anywhere else and you want to send chucker me,
yeah an email, Uh, send it to stuff podcast at
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
(21:35):
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot
com Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready, are you
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