January 21, 2010 • 13 mins
During 1986, an unusual thing happened in Cameroon: Lake Nyos exploded, expelling a toxic cloud that killed roughly 1700 people. How could this happen? More importantly, could it happen again? Learn more about exploding lakes in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Wow, hey, guys, welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison Madermillick at how stuff works dot com
Science editor, and this is Robert Lamb, science writer for
(00:21):
how stuff works dot com. Today we're talking about excluding lakes. Robert, Yes,
do you have this talent of making yourself out talent?
But this this ability to make yourself burp? Yes, I
I do have this ability. You've never done it at
work there, Um, I haven't burped in years. I just
I just try and keep just practice manners as much
(00:45):
as possible. I do have have the ability to make
myself burp, although I will not do it on on
the microphone, and I'm not necessarily very proud of it.
But lakes, as it turns out, can also release some
pretty massive burps. These exploding lakes in particular that we're
going to talk about today and on the evening of
August one, when such burp happened. That's right, Lake NEOs
(01:10):
Uh in western Cameroon, in the very crook of Africa. There,
it's like nine thirty at night. Um, you know, villagers
are tending to their cattle and then their livestock in
the area, and suddenly there's this monstrous rumbling from the
lake and they look out there and there's just this
gas frothing up out of the lake like like like
(01:31):
somebody's open a champagne bottle, just rising up into the air.
And this column and then just beginning to expand outward
from the lake. It's like a bat out of hell
just moving out across the valley. Yeah, and uh, and
then you know, these guys see this in there, confused,
they're they're frightened, they're going to check it out. Oh no,
don't go out to check it out, because we have
always in a horror movie. Yeah, never never walk into
(01:52):
the mist. Just tight, hide in the closet, hide in
your No, that's not gonna work. That the mist is
going to come for you. And it did. It did.
Like the guys who went in to check on it
didn't come out in the miskept spreading. Livestock keels over,
people are stumbling to the ground, people are collapsing in
their tracks pretty much wherever they were, whether it was
in the closet or outside or by the lakeside. But
(02:13):
it's spread throughout the whole canyon there. Yeah, the valley
it was about I think it. I think it's spread
to Um fifteen point five miles from from the source
of that original eruption, if you will. And in the
first two towns, the first two closest towns, NEOs and Cam.
I believe everyone but four people died. And I mean
that that accounts for the massive scale. About sevent people
(02:35):
died with the eruption of this, with this Limnic eruption
or this Lake eruption. I had no idea what happened. Yeah,
like thirty six hours later, some of the people wake up,
right and find that most of the people are un dead.
Can you imagine how horrifying that is? I can't even
even manage. I mean, you just have to think it
was the end of the world. Yeah, totally. When you
(02:57):
wake up, you look around, your family members are dead,
drew neighbors, your livelihood, and in the form of live stock,
they're all keeled over. It's pretty terrible to think about.
So um the cloud. The cloud's gone. About thirty six
hours later, right, and people are asking questions, just you know,
what what happened here? You know, they had no idea.
I mean there, you know it could have been a
(03:18):
lake spirit. It could have been any number of things.
They weren't really sure. Yeah, so they do what most
people would do in this situation. You call in scientists
to examine the hard facts and figure out what in
the world happened. And the sciences is pretty pretty quickly
figured out that CEO two had a carbon dioxide had
a big role to play. Right. Basically, this cloud was
a mixture of c O two and air just that
(03:40):
rose up out of the depths of the lake and
expanded outward um and everybody breathed in in either lost
consciousness or died. Those people who breathe in more than
carbon diactside died and those who were like enough quote
unquote lucky enough to breathe in less lost consciousness and
revived you know about it and off later roughly right.
(04:02):
So the big question then becomes, how did this CEO
two come to apparently be at the bottom of the
lake or come up from the bottom of the lake.
Where to come from? What source? A lot of CEO two?
There are two theories were two theories arose, each one
related to magma, liquid rock. Okay. One theory is that
(04:23):
this is basically a volcanic eruption underneath the lake. We
just had a geologic upheaval where magma comes surging up,
releases c O two. C O two explodes out of
the out of the water, and then the other The
other theory was more of a gradual time frame. And
if they basically said that, well, listen, TU two has
been gradually seeping into the bottom of the lake from
(04:45):
for for a long time. And the way it might
have done that is if you think about how a
volcanic lake is formed, as as Lake NEOs is and
and was at that time. It's formed because you have
this you know, hot liquid magna in the earth and
there's weak spots the Earth's crust, and the magma all
of a sudden, you know, just busts up and blasts
this giant hole in the ground and forms this hole,
(05:08):
and eventually rain water fills it and makes a nice lake.
What was once the crater of an active volcano is
now a peaceful, serene lake, right like NEOs. Anyhow, the
tube that the magma uses to blast up through the
surface is actually still in existence, and what happens then
is that the CEO two takes advantage of this existing
(05:28):
tube and it just kind of keeps coming up, kind
of keeps chiling up the you know, three to six
miles because you have a lot of pressure down there,
and the pressure actually pretty much squeezes the CEO two
out of the magma, and uh that's that's that's how
it rises to the surf, well, to the bottom of
the lake, right, and then it just sits because right
CEO two is uh is pretty heavy and it likes
(05:50):
to sit. And you know this this dense water and
of water on top of it. So when we're talking
about a pretty thick layer there. Well, so they had
to fgure out which of these hypotheses was right. And
they figured out that, you know, the first one maybe
wasn't such a good one. Why why wasn't it a
good one? Well, because we sent some guys out or
(06:10):
we uh some guys went out to Cameronian government government,
some scientists out there, and uh they ended up bringing
in some seismologists. These guys are used to you know,
encountering like, you know, really shaky conditions, you know, the
near the summits of volcanoes or you know, high highly
active earthquake zones, and uh, they come here and there's
(06:32):
nothing happening. There's like little or no seismic activity. Yeah,
they're probably just sunning themselves lakeside and drinking Guinness the
whole time, because Guinness is the the beer of Western cameraon.
But but then there was another another tail tale son
who this was not a volcano, right, oh right. They
didn't find any sulfur or I believe chloride in the lake,
(06:53):
and that would have been indicative of a full volcanic eruption.
But they found neither of those um so that led
them to their second theory, which was the C O
two had gradually been seeping into the bottom of the lake.
But C two in and of itself is really not
enough to cause one of these massive lake eruptions. You
need a couple other things. Basically, you need to have
(07:14):
it needs to be pretty deep, which this is six
two ft because if there's if there's only a small
amount of water between that bubble of gas and the surface,
then like a stiff wind or or you know fish
or you know, a tree falling into the water and
anything like that, nessy you know, monsters could set it
off as well, but it would not take much for
(07:35):
that gas to be released. But if you have a
lot of water. You know, the more water you have
between the surface and that gas, the more of a
disturbance it is going to take. And then you're also
going to need to, uh to be in a pretty
stable climate, like a tropical zone where you're not experiencing
summer and winter and freezes and and and summer heat.
(07:55):
You know, you're just keeping it more or less a
constant temperature. With constant temperatures, I mean, lakes tend to
hold their position more. And what you mean position is
that you know, the cold, denser water stays on the
bottom and the warmer water stays on top near the surface.
And when they trade spots that cold and the cold
and warm water, that's caused an exhalation or that's when
(08:17):
the lake turns over. And that's what happens. Where with
climates that experience season will change, you know, like in
the natural release valve. Sure sure, sure, so you really
I mean this lake exhalation is a good thing, but
it doesn't tend to happen in UH in the tropical
climates like a Cameroon for example. And then you have
I mean that you need a trigger as well, right, yea,
(08:38):
In this case, they're they're thinking that there was there
was apparently a rock slide around the same time, so
they think that enough rock may have collapsed into the lake,
disturb that gas on the bottom and send it rising
up to the top, kind of like if you've ever
had a mixed drink where you can you can look
at the side of the glass and see a distinct
difference between the layer of alcohol and the air of
(09:00):
nixer throw an ice cube and then everything moving. So
that's that's may be that maybe what had happened here, right,
and then I mean there's also scientists like to think
that or some signs just like to think that CEO
two is inherently unstable in a in a freshwater environment,
so that it really wouldn't even require a trigger. It's
just generally a bad situation if you have those first
(09:22):
three factors that we talked about already set up, so
it just kind of builds up to it until it
reaches a natural breaking point. Sure, So are there other
lakes that face this situation? There are, There's at least
one in the in pretty much the same area, Lake Monoun. Yeah,
and it happened it had already exploded two years earlier
in see actually sixty two miles in southeast of NEOs,
(09:46):
killing thirty seven people. Then there's a lake kivu Um
it's also in the African Rift Valley. And then there's
a lake Quilitoa. S a picture of this, right, they
really really beautiful looking place um tourists trekking into, you know,
relaxed by the water. But imagine after this explosion, though,
(10:08):
wouldn't be a very beautiful lake because like NEOs changed color.
I mean, it was this beautiful, deep, still blue lake
and then after the explosion it kicked up all this
iron rich bottom water and so like the color of
blood or something. Yeah, so how do you keep like
that's that becomes a challenge. How do you keep a
potentially explosive lake from exploding or exploding again? Well, I
(10:31):
mean it kind of makes sense if you think about it.
You stick a giant straw down there, and you suck
up all the CEO two and release it in the
controlled fashion. And that is in fact what scientists did
at Nios and uh and Minuon, although and the case
of like NEOs, it took them like fifteen years to
get those darned straws in the ground, so it's such
a safe environment for for for a while. Although they
(10:54):
did take some other measures, right, Oh yeah, they also
put up c O two monitors in the area to
keep been eye on two levels as well as just
just keeping an eye on the conditions. Yeah. So, I
mean without work, just like a one of your carbon
man accident. Pretty much pretty much just ye, just CEO
two rises to a certain point, it's going to set
off alarms and they're just gonna try and get the
(11:17):
heck out of dodge. Yeah. Although I have seen this before,
I'm not sure that I'm not sure that people could
outrun it. It's in the case of Lake News, I
don't I don't know that people could have escaped it. Yeah,
I mean it seems to have spread pretty quickly, and it,
you know, sure claimed a lot of lives, so it
may have been a foregune conclusion at the time that rumbling. Yeah.
(11:38):
So now that we've contributed to your fear of swimming
in lakes, now do we have to worry about this
around here? Though? Not so much. I mean take Lake Lanier.
Have you been to Lake Lanier. It's frightening, and that
our pretty matter producer has grew up around there and
probably swimming its murky depths, although there are there are
so many depths these days to la here anywhere, so
(11:59):
that's one factor. It's not really that deep. Probably that's
a strike against it, strike against it, and the fact
that it's man made it's probably another strike against it.
Another that's another strike. And I I'm not really sure
what the level of volcanic activity beneath Lake Cleaner is either,
so so we probably don't have to worry about it
in these parts. But I mean we're also not a
tropical area, so even if it's right snow this year, yeah, yeah, first,
(12:25):
but it was the first for me since I moved
down here. So Camearonians perhaps have more to worry about
than than people and colder climates, fluctuating climates. So now
that we've contributed to everybody's fear, I know, if there
wasn't enough to be afraid of anyway, you know, they're
la monsters, exploding lakes, snakes, lake disappearing lakes, yes, nibbling fish,
(12:50):
submarines with ghosts in them. So you can read all
about these crazy lake happenings at Houston works dot com
and you can always check out our our science stuff
flog at blogs dot how stuff works dot com. All right,
thanks for listening, guys, and a happy swimming at the lake.
(13:13):
For more on this and thousands of other topics because
at how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Wow, hey, guys, welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison Madermillick at how stuff works dot com
Science editor, and this is Robert Lamb, science writer for
(00:21):
how stuff works dot com. Today we're talking about excluding lakes. Robert, Yes,
do you have this talent of making yourself out talent?
But this this ability to make yourself burp? Yes, I
I do have this ability. You've never done it at
work there, Um, I haven't burped in years. I just
I just try and keep just practice manners as much
(00:45):
as possible. I do have have the ability to make
myself burp, although I will not do it on on
the microphone, and I'm not necessarily very proud of it.
But lakes, as it turns out, can also release some
pretty massive burps. These exploding lakes in particular that we're
going to talk about today and on the evening of
August one, when such burp happened. That's right, Lake NEOs
(01:10):
Uh in western Cameroon, in the very crook of Africa. There,
it's like nine thirty at night. Um, you know, villagers
are tending to their cattle and then their livestock in
the area, and suddenly there's this monstrous rumbling from the
lake and they look out there and there's just this
gas frothing up out of the lake like like like
(01:31):
somebody's open a champagne bottle, just rising up into the air.
And this column and then just beginning to expand outward
from the lake. It's like a bat out of hell
just moving out across the valley. Yeah, and uh, and
then you know, these guys see this in there, confused,
they're they're frightened, they're going to check it out. Oh no,
don't go out to check it out, because we have
always in a horror movie. Yeah, never never walk into
(01:52):
the mist. Just tight, hide in the closet, hide in
your No, that's not gonna work. That the mist is
going to come for you. And it did. It did.
Like the guys who went in to check on it
didn't come out in the miskept spreading. Livestock keels over,
people are stumbling to the ground, people are collapsing in
their tracks pretty much wherever they were, whether it was
in the closet or outside or by the lakeside. But
(02:13):
it's spread throughout the whole canyon there. Yeah, the valley
it was about I think it. I think it's spread
to Um fifteen point five miles from from the source
of that original eruption, if you will. And in the
first two towns, the first two closest towns, NEOs and Cam.
I believe everyone but four people died. And I mean
that that accounts for the massive scale. About sevent people
(02:35):
died with the eruption of this, with this Limnic eruption
or this Lake eruption. I had no idea what happened. Yeah,
like thirty six hours later, some of the people wake up,
right and find that most of the people are un dead.
Can you imagine how horrifying that is? I can't even
even manage. I mean, you just have to think it
was the end of the world. Yeah, totally. When you
(02:57):
wake up, you look around, your family members are dead,
drew neighbors, your livelihood, and in the form of live stock,
they're all keeled over. It's pretty terrible to think about.
So um the cloud. The cloud's gone. About thirty six
hours later, right, and people are asking questions, just you know,
what what happened here? You know, they had no idea.
I mean there, you know it could have been a
(03:18):
lake spirit. It could have been any number of things.
They weren't really sure. Yeah, so they do what most
people would do in this situation. You call in scientists
to examine the hard facts and figure out what in
the world happened. And the sciences is pretty pretty quickly
figured out that CEO two had a carbon dioxide had
a big role to play. Right. Basically, this cloud was
a mixture of c O two and air just that
(03:40):
rose up out of the depths of the lake and
expanded outward um and everybody breathed in in either lost
consciousness or died. Those people who breathe in more than
carbon diactside died and those who were like enough quote
unquote lucky enough to breathe in less lost consciousness and
revived you know about it and off later roughly right.
(04:02):
So the big question then becomes, how did this CEO
two come to apparently be at the bottom of the
lake or come up from the bottom of the lake.
Where to come from? What source? A lot of CEO two?
There are two theories were two theories arose, each one
related to magma, liquid rock. Okay. One theory is that
(04:23):
this is basically a volcanic eruption underneath the lake. We
just had a geologic upheaval where magma comes surging up,
releases c O two. C O two explodes out of
the out of the water, and then the other The
other theory was more of a gradual time frame. And
if they basically said that, well, listen, TU two has
been gradually seeping into the bottom of the lake from
(04:45):
for for a long time. And the way it might
have done that is if you think about how a
volcanic lake is formed, as as Lake NEOs is and
and was at that time. It's formed because you have
this you know, hot liquid magna in the earth and
there's weak spots the Earth's crust, and the magma all
of a sudden, you know, just busts up and blasts
this giant hole in the ground and forms this hole,
(05:08):
and eventually rain water fills it and makes a nice lake.
What was once the crater of an active volcano is
now a peaceful, serene lake, right like NEOs. Anyhow, the
tube that the magma uses to blast up through the
surface is actually still in existence, and what happens then
is that the CEO two takes advantage of this existing
(05:28):
tube and it just kind of keeps coming up, kind
of keeps chiling up the you know, three to six
miles because you have a lot of pressure down there,
and the pressure actually pretty much squeezes the CEO two
out of the magma, and uh that's that's that's how
it rises to the surf, well, to the bottom of
the lake, right, and then it just sits because right
CEO two is uh is pretty heavy and it likes
(05:50):
to sit. And you know this this dense water and
of water on top of it. So when we're talking
about a pretty thick layer there. Well, so they had
to fgure out which of these hypotheses was right. And
they figured out that, you know, the first one maybe
wasn't such a good one. Why why wasn't it a
good one? Well, because we sent some guys out or
(06:10):
we uh some guys went out to Cameronian government government,
some scientists out there, and uh they ended up bringing
in some seismologists. These guys are used to you know,
encountering like, you know, really shaky conditions, you know, the
near the summits of volcanoes or you know, high highly
active earthquake zones, and uh, they come here and there's
(06:32):
nothing happening. There's like little or no seismic activity. Yeah,
they're probably just sunning themselves lakeside and drinking Guinness the
whole time, because Guinness is the the beer of Western cameraon.
But but then there was another another tail tale son
who this was not a volcano, right, oh right. They
didn't find any sulfur or I believe chloride in the lake,
(06:53):
and that would have been indicative of a full volcanic eruption.
But they found neither of those um so that led
them to their second theory, which was the C O
two had gradually been seeping into the bottom of the lake.
But C two in and of itself is really not
enough to cause one of these massive lake eruptions. You
need a couple other things. Basically, you need to have
(07:14):
it needs to be pretty deep, which this is six
two ft because if there's if there's only a small
amount of water between that bubble of gas and the surface,
then like a stiff wind or or you know fish
or you know, a tree falling into the water and
anything like that, nessy you know, monsters could set it
off as well, but it would not take much for
(07:35):
that gas to be released. But if you have a
lot of water. You know, the more water you have
between the surface and that gas, the more of a
disturbance it is going to take. And then you're also
going to need to, uh to be in a pretty
stable climate, like a tropical zone where you're not experiencing
summer and winter and freezes and and and summer heat.
(07:55):
You know, you're just keeping it more or less a
constant temperature. With constant temperatures, I mean, lakes tend to
hold their position more. And what you mean position is
that you know, the cold, denser water stays on the
bottom and the warmer water stays on top near the surface.
And when they trade spots that cold and the cold
and warm water, that's caused an exhalation or that's when
(08:17):
the lake turns over. And that's what happens. Where with
climates that experience season will change, you know, like in
the natural release valve. Sure sure, sure, so you really
I mean this lake exhalation is a good thing, but
it doesn't tend to happen in UH in the tropical
climates like a Cameroon for example. And then you have
I mean that you need a trigger as well, right, yea,
(08:38):
In this case, they're they're thinking that there was there
was apparently a rock slide around the same time, so
they think that enough rock may have collapsed into the lake,
disturb that gas on the bottom and send it rising
up to the top, kind of like if you've ever
had a mixed drink where you can you can look
at the side of the glass and see a distinct
difference between the layer of alcohol and the air of
(09:00):
nixer throw an ice cube and then everything moving. So
that's that's may be that maybe what had happened here, right,
and then I mean there's also scientists like to think
that or some signs just like to think that CEO
two is inherently unstable in a in a freshwater environment,
so that it really wouldn't even require a trigger. It's
just generally a bad situation if you have those first
(09:22):
three factors that we talked about already set up, so
it just kind of builds up to it until it
reaches a natural breaking point. Sure, So are there other
lakes that face this situation? There are, There's at least
one in the in pretty much the same area, Lake Monoun. Yeah,
and it happened it had already exploded two years earlier
in see actually sixty two miles in southeast of NEOs,
(09:46):
killing thirty seven people. Then there's a lake kivu Um
it's also in the African Rift Valley. And then there's
a lake Quilitoa. S a picture of this, right, they
really really beautiful looking place um tourists trekking into, you know,
relaxed by the water. But imagine after this explosion, though,
(10:08):
wouldn't be a very beautiful lake because like NEOs changed color.
I mean, it was this beautiful, deep, still blue lake
and then after the explosion it kicked up all this
iron rich bottom water and so like the color of
blood or something. Yeah, so how do you keep like
that's that becomes a challenge. How do you keep a
potentially explosive lake from exploding or exploding again? Well, I
(10:31):
mean it kind of makes sense if you think about it.
You stick a giant straw down there, and you suck
up all the CEO two and release it in the
controlled fashion. And that is in fact what scientists did
at Nios and uh and Minuon, although and the case
of like NEOs, it took them like fifteen years to
get those darned straws in the ground, so it's such
a safe environment for for for a while. Although they
(10:54):
did take some other measures, right, Oh yeah, they also
put up c O two monitors in the area to
keep been eye on two levels as well as just
just keeping an eye on the conditions. Yeah. So, I
mean without work, just like a one of your carbon
man accident. Pretty much pretty much just ye, just CEO
two rises to a certain point, it's going to set
off alarms and they're just gonna try and get the
(11:17):
heck out of dodge. Yeah. Although I have seen this before,
I'm not sure that I'm not sure that people could
outrun it. It's in the case of Lake News, I
don't I don't know that people could have escaped it. Yeah,
I mean it seems to have spread pretty quickly, and it,
you know, sure claimed a lot of lives, so it
may have been a foregune conclusion at the time that rumbling. Yeah.
(11:38):
So now that we've contributed to your fear of swimming
in lakes, now do we have to worry about this
around here? Though? Not so much. I mean take Lake Lanier.
Have you been to Lake Lanier. It's frightening, and that
our pretty matter producer has grew up around there and
probably swimming its murky depths, although there are there are
so many depths these days to la here anywhere, so
(11:59):
that's one factor. It's not really that deep. Probably that's
a strike against it, strike against it, and the fact
that it's man made it's probably another strike against it.
Another that's another strike. And I I'm not really sure
what the level of volcanic activity beneath Lake Cleaner is either,
so so we probably don't have to worry about it
in these parts. But I mean we're also not a
tropical area, so even if it's right snow this year, yeah, yeah, first,
(12:25):
but it was the first for me since I moved
down here. So Camearonians perhaps have more to worry about
than than people and colder climates, fluctuating climates. So now
that we've contributed to everybody's fear, I know, if there
wasn't enough to be afraid of anyway, you know, they're
la monsters, exploding lakes, snakes, lake disappearing lakes, yes, nibbling fish,
(12:50):
submarines with ghosts in them. So you can read all
about these crazy lake happenings at Houston works dot com
and you can always check out our our science stuff
flog at blogs dot how stuff works dot com. All right,
thanks for listening, guys, and a happy swimming at the lake.
(13:13):
For more on this and thousands of other topics because
at how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page
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