...And Then 1700 People Died.

This sounds crazy, but it's true. There are lakes in the world that randomly explode, and it works in much the same way as soda cans, but on a massive scale, and cause massive death and destruction. They're called limnic eruptions, and they're super weird.

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LINKS LINKS LINKS -
About the Lake Manoun eruption
About the Lake Nyos eruption

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Diet Coke Geyser
2:09 - Carbonation
3:48 - The Lake Monoun Disaster
6:02 - Limnic Eruptions
7:14 - The Lake Nyos Disaster
9:10 - Unanswered Questions
10:40 - Degassing Efforts
11:08 - Lake Kivu's Danger
12:21 - Power Plant Plans
13:27 - Sponsor - Brilliant

[jcortese]

I've never done diet coke and mentos, but when I was in grad school a couple of us put some liquid nitrogen in a 2 liter bottle and left it in the middle of the park at the center of campus. To be fair, we made sure no one was around, but yeah it was not the wisest thing a bunch of grad students have ever done. The cops that stopped by when they heard the explosion were unamused but thankfully didn't haul us in.

[theCodyReeder]

Co2 being released from pressure is cold. Those blisters are frost bite.

[VirtualRiot]

the song playing backwards at 2:54 took that joke from somewhat corny to hilarious, thank you 😂

[evonne]

There's a phenomena called "olfactory fatigue" which is when you smell something for long enough your nose stops smelling. Not permanently, just temporarily until your removed from the smell and your nose readjusts back to normal. Sulfur is particularly quick to cause olfactory fatigue. So people can be tricked into thinking the air no longer smells bad, but really nothing changed thier noses just got fatigued. This is a dangerous thing and why no matter if a space smells OK or not, the air should be monitored by air monitoring equipment for proper safety.

[oumarh.gassama]

That face you make at 3:14 after whispering "That's the sound of water crying" will haunt me until the end of days. Thank you Joe. Just thank you.

[zakiducky]

So much death, and yet not a single fly nor a single sound. I can’t imagine how horrifyingly apocalyptic such a scene must’ve been. It’s like everything in the area just got simultaneously raptured and dropped dead. It’s the type of event we would have called biblical if it happened and was written down before modern science. Next level scary shit.

[euansmith]

One of my uncles was home brewing beer in a multi-gallon "beer bomb"; a spherical plastic container with a pressure release valve. He striped down the bomb and cleaned it, reassembled it, put his brewing mixture in, and left it. A week or so later, he discovered that he had reassembled the pressure valve back to front; when he came home to find an exploded beer bomb and a bedroom drenched in beer.

[kimatwood]

I first saw the Cameroon stories a few years back when James Cameron did a documentary on the biblical plagues of Egypt. The Nile ran red with "blood" (iron deposits), resulting low oxygen levels in the water caused fish to die, frogs left the water, and... all the first born Egyptian males died. It was thought that the heavy clouds of gas released form the Nile drifted into the low lying areas of the city. First born males were the heirs to the family assets and got to sleep in a special place in the home... the basements.

[TheCardinal]

Here i was thinking 1700 people died from dumping mentos into diet cokes?...

[douglasdietrich]

"Still a better love story than Twilight" One of the countless reasons why I really love you and your content. Thank you, Joe.

[fontamufor]

As a cameroonian, I can confirm this is so true. People don't live around that area anymore. We say "lake nyos has belch" just so we insert some fun in this horrific situation. By the way, your pronunciation of lake nyos isn't correct but that's not an issue.

[CyBirr]

02:54 OK, playing Under Pressure backward was art.

[deljayniecorp]

I am Cameroonian and this still brings chills even now. I have tried to explain it to several people I know, but there is still skepticism among people here about what happened. The name is lake “Niyos”

[matthewwells]

6:00 "How do you add pressure?"
Me: Send it to high school?

[batteryacid]

this subject is super serious but i cant stop laughing at the under pressure bassline why is it so comedic to me

[StevenBanks]

I found out through personal clumsiness that diet versions of sodas are actually not sticky. This makes cleanup so MUCH easier.

[postpunk]

Fun fact: Nyiragongo is probably the only volcano in the world that looks like people usually imagine volcanoes: a hollow mountain with a lava lake in the middle.

[sylviegauthier]

I remember seeing the news reports when lake Nyos exploded, it was shocking to see so much death. I've since thought of it, on and off, as the lake that farts very deadly. I'm glad to see that measures have been taken to lessen its impact in the future.

[MyNathanking]

3:37: "...but it can also happen in nature." Without watching anything beyond this, I know EXACTLY where you're going with this. There's only one possibility: The Lake Nyos eruption.

[Skittenmeow]

2:49 and my brain immediately fills in _"Ice ice baby"_ despite me being a massive Bowie fan. Mope 🥺