Listen, as we know, there are terrible things in lakes. Monsters. There are monsters. This week we learn that there ALSO can be buildups of poison underneath lakes that can 'erupt' at any time and do a clean sweep of all animal life around it. We'll talk about two times in recent history (and we have reason to believe it happened in ancient times) when methane gas killed everyone around Lake Kivu and Lake Nyos in Africa. More terrifying ways the earth can kill you, good thing we're taking such good care of her, right?
Listen, as we know, there are terrible things in lakes. Monsters. There are monsters. This week we learn that there ALSO can be buildups of poison underneath lakes that can 'erupt' at any time and do a clean sweep of all animal life around it. We'll talk about two times in recent history (and we have reason to believe it happened in ancient times) when methane gas killed everyone around Lake Kivu and Lake Nyos in Africa.
More terrifying ways the earth can kill you, good thing we're taking such good care of her, right?
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
Going to a fundraiser tonight for our friend Derek who is running for Congress
>> Speaker A: In the matter of the people of the state of California v. Orenthal James Simpson, case number ba zero nine six.
>> Speaker B: And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. And we are back. Taylor. I'm just pumped full of energy, just thrilled right now, and everything's just gravy. How are you doing?
>> Speaker A: Good, good. Going to a fundraiser tonight for our friend Derek is running for Congress.
>> Speaker B: Oh, Derek? Derek Marshall?
>> Speaker B: Wait, so he got through his primary?
>> Speaker A: Yes, he did. Last time as well? Yeah, he did both. He did in 2020.
>> Speaker B: And now, is a Republican. Is he running a Democrat?
>> Speaker A: He's running as a Democrat, yes. Against Republican.
>> Speaker B: Is it a republican district?
>> Speaker A: Yes.
>> Speaker B: okay. Is it a big republican district? Is it like a 70 30 swing republican district?
>> Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Speaker B: Wow.
>> Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I know, but I am excited and you know, it's nice. Like some of the parents that I know are there and that kind of thing, you know.
>> Speaker B: What is it, like a gala fundraiser?
>> Speaker A: no, it's at this place, in Joshua tree called sacred Sands, which my kids soccer coach owns. And it's like an event space hotel. you can get married there. It's like a really pretty house in the middle of Joshua tree.
>> Speaker B: Very cool, very cool. we'll have fun event. Tell him I said hi. M if he even remembers me, he.
>> Speaker A: Probably doesn't list off people we might know at the same time.
>> Speaker B: Yeah. Sweet.
Taylor: We cover history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week
So it is my time to share.
>> Speaker A: Oh, wait, I'm sorry. Let me intro.
>> Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
>> Speaker A: Can you hear if I do this with my fan? Not really. It's so hot. It's like 100 degrees still. hello, everyone. Welcome to doom to fail. I'm Taylor, joined, by fars. We cover history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week. And today is Thursday.
>> Speaker B: And as far as turn and I'm pars and I'm going to be sharing a fun new way to die that I just learned. Yeah, this is a. Ah. And it's funny because there's actually some overlap with, with your story of this week. So, this is a natural disaster I'd never heard of before, which is rare to discover a new type of natural disaster and thought I'd cover it. you might have heard of this because you might have researched this as part of the volcano series, but have you ever heard of a thing called a, limnic reuption?
>> Speaker A: Not top of my head.
>> Speaker B: Okay, so it is a thing that if it happens around you, like, you will almost certainly die, but it is seemingly pretty rare. There have only been two cases of alemnic eruption actually being, like, documented and recorded within history. although it is almost impossible that this has only happened twice, we only know about these two because of the death toll that it had associated with it. but so it's very possible that this thing, this occurs around the world on a regular basis, and it's just not observed because nobody's around to see it happen and see the bodies dropping. So, so let's get into what it is. And it shares some similarities, with, your story around, sarin gas.
Limnic eruption occurs when there's an abundance of CO2 in a lake
>> Speaker A: Oh, great.
>> Speaker B: So a limiting eruption. It's an event that occurs when there's an abundance of CO2, carbon dioxide contained within a very, very deep lake that is deep enough to dissolve the CO2 underwater pressure. It has to be a calm environment, meaning there's not a bunch of stuff happening around it, so that the CO2 has a very, very long, protracted period of time to build up, get dissolved within this lake. Then another thing has to happen, which is a natural phenomenon has to occur that creates a disturbance in which all the CO2 is released. So the way to, if you're trying to, like, do a cross section visualization of this, the way to think about it, it is like, imagine like a cross section of a lake in the very bottom. You have all this dissolved CO2. Then there's all this water above it. And then there's no reason for the CO2 to kind of migrate further up because the pressure is so high, it's keeping it low. But then something can happen that just disrupts everything on the bottom and then shuffles it all the way to the front. all the way to the top.
>> Speaker A: Is it a gas?
>> Speaker B: No, CO2 is a gas.
>> Speaker A: So it's like the gas under the water. Like a bubble?
>> Speaker B: Yeah, gas in the water.
>> Speaker A: Okay. It's just like that part of the water has extra CO2 in it.
>> Speaker B: Yes.
>> Speaker A: Okay.
>> Speaker B: Yes.
>> Speaker A: I hate lakes. I hate them.
>> Speaker B: This is gonna be a scary one then. so I'm gonna break this episode down into three parts. It's gonna be a fairly quick episode, actually, because this doesn't happen that often, thankfully. but im going to talk about the largest known limnic disaster in history, the possibility of it happening again, and also how it can be avoided.
>> Speaker A: So im going to say dont go to lakes.
>> Speaker B: Dont go to lakes. So the largest known limnic eruption ever recorded was in lake Nyos. Which is in Cameroon. It is about a, half of a square mile around and it reaches a depth of 682ft, which is pretty deep.
>> Speaker A: Wow.
>> Speaker B: So below the lake is an inactive volcano. And despite the volcano being extinct, it still contains a magma. It still contains magma in its chambers 50ft or 50 miles beneath the lake in the magma very far, that mag magma produces CO2 and kind of burps up CO2 into the rocks and the sand and eventually migrates its way under like at the very bottom of this lake where given its depth of over 600ft, there's an immense amount of pressure that is applied to it. I did a calculation for this. It is roughly 21 atmospheres of pressure. And what you need to dissolve CO2 is like, you need about a fourth, maybe a half of that pressure to be able to dissolve CO2.
>> Speaker B: You need it dissolved because it has to. If it doesn't dissolve, it can just go to the top and be released.
>> Speaker A: Whoa.
>> Speaker B: Yeah, we are doing what. What's happening is the CO2 just breaking up in the water and it's becoming part of the water. And that's where that's, therein lies the problem. It's called saturation. It's being overly saturated with the CO2. And I'm going to, I'm going to give you a really great example of how big of a deal this is in like two paragraphs, give or take. So next to Lake Nyos is Nios Village, which was built about a half mile from the shoreline and populated by around 4000 people and just thousands of their livestock. A little village in Cameroon.
>> Speaker A: Mm
>> Speaker B: On August 21, 1986, what we assume is a landslide occurred. We don't know definitively. Scientists and geologists have ruled out that they're saying it's unlikely that it was a small earthquake that happened because nobody reported tremors and they never, they didn't document any tremors. They, like, it had to have been a landslide that occurred. And that is what ended up causing the events that are about to unfold. This landslide disturbed the lake enough that all that CO2 that was dissolved and captured within the water at the very bottom of this lake was released up the water column, and out. To put into perspective the magnitude of what happened, the lake dropped 3ft when this, when this. Yeah, it was, this is a lot of CO2. Like, that's a crazy amount, like, for a lake to drop. It generated a wave 82ft tall. Like, this was like a crazy event to, if anybody actually observed it. So because CO2 is denser than air. The CO2 settled on the ground and then traveled with the wind which was going downstream to the village. The final tally of what happened was 1746 people and around 3500 cattle, all suffocated to death.
>> Speaker A: I thought you were saying two people were going to die. Like everyone died or just happened twice.
>> Speaker B: So it happened twice. in this case, about half the people in this village died. The rest of them were cognizant and aware enough of what was going on to run away. Only chance you have to run away because carbon dioxide poisoning is also called hypercapnia and there's various stages of it. So like a light version of this would be you get a little bit dizzy, you get a little bit confused, a more, intense version of this. You can fall into a coma, you can convulse yourself to death, but no matter what, you're breathing something that your body cannot absorb to run your body. And so you suffocate, as in the, in the process. Cause you're, you're too saturated with, CO2 and not enough oxygen.
>> Speaker A: Whoa.
>> Speaker B: And that's what happened to these 1700 people. There's, ah, the other one that happened, actually happened. I think that was also in Cameroon, but it was only two years earlier. It was only two years earlier, I think 86 people died. It was like a smaller village there, but it was, it was just right in this exact same time zone. That was 84. And then this was, in 86. So thinking about the possibility of it happening again. So 1300 miles from Lake Nyos is an even scarier place called Lake Kibu. it is in the middle and on the border of both Rwanda and the Congo. And it is way m bigger. It is about, oh, it's over a thousand square miles of surface area and it has a max depth of just under 1600ft. It is way bigger. Yeah.
>> Speaker A: I hate it.
>> Speaker B: Yeah. What's crazy, it's like the 12th biggest lake or the deepest lake. Like there's like lakes that are like ocean depth.
Lake Nyos is between two active volcanoes and has methane in it
It's crazy.
>> Speaker A: I hate, I hate it.
>> Speaker B: Yeah. So this lake is also between two active volcanoes and also has magma kind of funneling CO2 underneath it. but it also has other things, has other gases, things like methane that are also being introduced into this, into the, into the lakebede. So scientists have found evidence of mass extinction events all around this lake. Meaning this thing has had limnic eruptions in the past and it just keeps happening over and over again.
>> Speaker A: I just picture like a hand coming out of the lake and being like, yeah. You know, like, everything around me pretty.
>> Speaker B: Much as a gas.
>> Speaker A: The plants, too?
>> Speaker B: I m don't think so.
>> Speaker A: Okay. It wouldn't, like, instantly kill them, but, like, everything. Okay, continue.
>> Speaker B: Yes. Plants don't, like, breathe like we do. And so, like, by the time the gas dissipates, it'll have time to recover. also, it consumes CO2 and it spits out oxygen. So it's the exact inverse of us.
>> Speaker A: So it had, like, a really good day. The people are gone.
>> Speaker B: It had a really good day. The plants were just thriving. Yeah.
>> Speaker A: People going to, like, an oxygen bar.
>> Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So, because they saw that all around this thing was all this mass extinction. Extinction stuff, because they could see through, like, time, all these fossils, basically. And they realized that, like, this thing is due for one of these, anything at this point, and it would suck, because roughly 2 million people live near the lake. And so the government and the scientific community kind of decided, like, hey, what do we do about this? Like, we can't just let this thing burp up the way the other one burped up and kill everybody around us. So the question becomes, how do you avoid it? There are different solutions for different types of gas mixed into lake water. In the case of Lake Nyos, basically what they did was very simple. They installed, like, going all the way down from the top, these pipes to the bottom of the lake bed. They attached that to a water pump. What happened is that the water pump would draw water from the very bottom, this over hyperco, two saturated water, right? As it rises in the water column, the water pressure reduces and the water releases the CO2, and the CO2 just starts burping out of the top of this pipe. And because of the, something about how water pressure works, because of this, it's a self perpetuating cycle. So you just leave this, this pipe there, and the CO2 water, the CO2 evaporates or goes out the top, and then it draws more water from the bottom, and the cycle just is self sustaining at this point. So that's all it is. All they did was they just dropped a bunch of pipes in Lake Nyos to remove the CO2. And at this point, it is incredibly unlikely for there to be, one of these limnic eruptions, on. On that lake, at least. Lake Kivu is different in the sense that because it's so close to so many active volcanoes, there's a ton of methane in there, and so you can have the same situation happen if it was to release methane, because you also shouldn't be breathing methane. So, on the one hand, they did the same thing they did at Lake Nioh, was just drop these pipes all the way to the bottom and have that kind of filter the water out and filter the CO2 out. But they also had to figure out a way to deal with the methane situation. So what they ended up doing, the government did, was they ended up selling the rights to the lakes methane to energy companies who could run methane extraction platforms on the lake to then sell back to businesses and consumers. So, as of 2016, a $200 million power plant was built to harness and use the methane extracted the lake, and as a result, it has made the lake safe. Well, as safe as a 1500 foot lake could be. But it's also become like a huge economic stimulant to the area. And so that's what they do now. They just run methane extraction platforms and then self sustain, which is kind of cool.
>> Speaker A: That is cool.
>> Speaker B: Yeah. So that's. That's, again, a short one. But given the week I've had, I don't think anybody is going to blame me. And. And hopefully you all learned of a new way that nature can kill us again.
>> Speaker A: Ugh. I mean, those big lakes, nothing good ever happens to them.
How crazy is this death toll with the hurricane? I know 600 people are missing
>> Speaker B: Speaking of which, how crazy is this death toll with the hurricane?
>> Speaker A: I know 600 people.
>> Speaker B: Is that real? Was that what I read? 600?
>> Speaker A: Maybe. I heard that they were telling people, like I said, 128 dead, hundreds are missing. So. Yes, definitely more than that. But they were saying, like, if you were told to leave and you didn't leave, write your name on your leg and permanent markers we can identify you. Could you imagine?
>> Speaker B: And I think it hit Asheville.
>> Speaker A: It did destroy big parts of Asheville. We were there just a year ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's pretty. My brother's boyfriend from there and a lot of his friends, like, they just were sharing photos and it's really terrifying.
>> Speaker B: That is nuts. That is nuts. Yeah. I hope whoever could get out of the way, got out of the way.
>> Speaker A: I know. It's just like whenever. I mean, whenever I hear those and see those, just, like, the destruction is crazy, the death is crazy. It's just. It's awful.
>> Speaker B: Yeah. Like, how do you go back to normal life after that? I guess you can't.
>> Speaker A: I mean, I guess you just. I mean, you just gotta rebuild and people, you know, still live in these dangerous places that we live in and all the things, but. Oh, yeah, it's really bad, hopefully. Yeah. I don't know. It's terrible. Harrington Lake in Kentucky is 249ft deep. That doesn't even feel that bad. Oh. Oh, my God. I actually kind of want to throw up thinking about that deepen of lake.
>> Speaker B: Yeah. The one in Russia is 5400ft deep.
>> Speaker A: Oh, my God.
>> Speaker B: yeah, it's over a mile deep.
>> Speaker A: Nope.
>> Speaker B: Terrifying.
>> Speaker A: More than 20% of the earth's unfrozen fresh water is there.
>> Speaker B: Where?
>> Speaker A: In Lake Baikal in Russia.
>> Speaker B: Call. Yeah.
>> Speaker A: Oh, here's an image. Shows you how deepest. Oh, my God. world's deepest lakes. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I feel like the ocean is deep and that's also terrible, but like, a deep lake feels worse. Yeah.
>> Speaker B: I don't know why.
>> Speaker A: I think maybe I just like. Yeah. Like, there's stuff in there that has never had the chance to leave. I don't know. You know what I mean? Well, we were in, we were in open, like, we were canoeing in like, the Chesapeake Bay and like a little inlet over the summer. And we like, went in a canoe and then Juan and Flo were on a paddle board and the kids jumped off the canoe and we're swimming and then we came back and as we're pulling the canoe up, there was a snake in the water. And I was like, oh my God, I hate it so much. It was just like on the top of the water.
>> Speaker B: Hey, it's their environment. yeah. Sweet.
Is there volcanic activity under here? Like, I don't know
Well, that was my story again. I know it's a short one, but I'm trying to, you know, it's not that much about this topic because it doesn't happen that often.
>> Speaker A: Yeah. And, like, they figured out a way to stop it from happening.
>> Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I thought it, like, really.
>> Speaker A: Is a danger that it looks like it's happened before in like, the past, which we would never know, be able to, like, find out the details of because it killed everyone around it, you know?
>> Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's weird because like, a.
>> Speaker A: Monster living in your lake, it requires.
>> Speaker B: So many conditions to be present.
>> Speaker B: Which, like. Yeah, like, it's just like, who's thinking about that? Like, is there volcanic activity under here? Like, I don't know. It has a lot going on because usually you don't equate volcanic activity with it not being or, with it being calm. Usually the two don't kind of work together.
>> Speaker A: Right. But, like, so much is happening underneath the calm.
>> Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
>> Speaker A: Like, in every case, like, I like when the Russians try to dig, like, the deepest hole possible. And they can't get very far. Yeah.
>> Speaker B: What happened to that hole?
>> Speaker A: And they can't get very far because like, at a certain point, like, everything you try to put in there melts. You know, the world is crazy. you can't just dig all the way through it.
>> Speaker B: Cola super deep borehole. It is 40,000ft deep. See, that's kind of scary too.
>> Speaker A: I was watching something, maybe it was for kids, but it was like if you dug a hole all the way through the earth and you jumped into it, if no one stopped you, the way that gravity works is you would just fall all the way to the other end of the world, pop out and then go right back down and it would just keep happening. Yeah. You would just go like in and out of the. Of the earth.
>> Speaker B: Anyways, do you have anything, anything to list off?
>> Speaker A: no, just thank you, everyone, for listening. I've got a couple ideas via Instagram from Lindsey and Kiera, so thank you both. and keep them coming. I really appreciate it. And please again, tell your friends, email us doom to fill a podmail.com doflapod on all the socials and give us reviews and let us know what you want here.
>> Speaker B: Sweet. We'll go ahead and cut it off there. Thank you, Taylor.
>> Speaker A: Thank you.