The Lake Nyos Disaster: The Silent Death That Killed Hundreds

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35 years ago I was at a Haloween party. The host had decorated the house with the usual cobwebs and such and had rented a dry ice (CO2) fog generator. He was disappointed that his drafty main floor prevented the build up of fog so he moved the generator and party to his basement. The effect was much better there as the fog gradually rose up our legs. The host and I were much taller than everyone else and at one point I realized that just talking was making me out of breath. I looked around and realized that every one but the host and I had fallen asleep. We began shaking them awake and moving them upstairs. That was close.

Only when one has a mosquito on their testicle, does one accept that not all problems can be solved with violence.

This is one of those little known disasters that shows one of the many ways that the planet can wipe out life. It is shocking that a few bubbles under pressure over time can create a ticking time bomb.

This remind me of old warning stones that exist some places in Japan, just saying “don’t make houses between here and the shore (paraphrase).” They were put up have after prior tsunamis destroyed houses within the danger area.

When people develop a tradition it is usually a good idea to understand why that tradition developed in the first place before doing away with it. In a lot of cases there's a good reason and the ancestors may at some point have known something that we don't.

That tale of the surviving infant in his deceased mother's arm is just shivering. It also shows that old stories have a grain of truth that when ignored can have dire consequences. Traditions and myths are ancestors' ways of solving problems we forget still remain.

“If a conspiratorial mind puts 2 and 2 together, they’ll get 666 inside an Illuminati triangle” Too damn true, Simon, and it speaks to how hard it is to break through someone with such a mindset with logic and reason.

They quite literally burped a lake. In all seriousness though, this was devastating and interesting all at the same time. Those poor people and animals! And it just goes to show that ancient lore should never be dismissed just because it may not be true in a literal sense. I used to live in Central Australia and there was a waterhole about an hour west. It’s thought to be about 30m deep but has never been confirmed. I was at a canoe camp there in the mid-90s, we were out on the water and suddenly this rush of bubbles came up through the water that was so thick we thought it was a solid object. Although it wouldn’t be volcanic in origin, and my experience wasn’t as drastic, this video makes me wonder if a similar kind of process made those bubbles come up the way they did.

"Mother nature is neither friend nor an enemy... In fact, she's quite impartial." - Senku Ishigami, Dr. Stone.

I have inhaled pure CO2 once. It takes your breath away, instantly giving one the feeling as if been without air for minutes. Our breath reflex triggers at ~4%CO2 So it goes in alarm mode at sensing 100% CO2.

As a midshipman got to go into the ship’s Talos missile magazine for USS Long Beach (CGN-9). Along sides, entire walls were lined with bright red cylinders. One of our group piped up and asked why they were there. The missile tech said if the horn sounded / flashing light comes on you have seconds to climb up the racks and out of the magazine before the CO2 kills you. Basically you were dead as it was at least 30 feet from where we were standing up to main deck level where you could exit the magazine. PS - Reading about the Russian ship Moskva, it brought back memories of touring the Talos magazine. PS2 - Recall reading about this tragedy in National Geographic.

The priest that actually went into the village to save people is awesome

I was in the Peace Corps at this time. I was in training in Bamenda, the provincial capital where Nyos is located. There were lots of international aid workers in the days after the disaster.

I remember this making international news. The comment made about a neutron bomb (that went viral) had everyone talking. When the actual cause was discovered, I wondered about the volcanic crater lakes here in the U.S.

one of my highschool science professors was there on peace Corp at the time and talked about how many of the groups that arrived to investigate brought preconceived ideas about what must have happened and only investigated their own hypothesis. Also a few hours after it was still chillingly quiet and you could see lines of ants crossing paths, absolutely still as if frozen (because they were dead) he described an infant who survived by being smothered so they couldn't breathe the co2, absolutely horrifying.

I was surprised to find out how subtle this effect is at times. Working as a medical courier, I have dry ice in my vehicle as I travel. this necessitates measures to avoid a build up of CO2 in the car. One day I got into my car to go to work, I cracked the windows and set there for a second trying to figure out why I was feeling so out of breath. After a moment I remembered that my usual routine for unloading had been interrupted the night before and I had neglected to remove my spare dry ice cooler which is seldom needed. So I got out and ventilated the car before continuing on. Lesson learned for sure!

when it's "deemed to expensive" to save lives..... how we have fallen.

What's more frightening. One of the lakes prone to Limnic eruptions is Lake Kivu, 2 million people live on it's shores and shows a localised extinction event every 1000 years. That's a disaster that could wipe out so many without warning.

“neutron bombs, evil water nymphs, etc” I never understood why some prefer the most far-fetched, bizarre explanations for events over than the straightforward ones (such as Marjorie Taylor Greene speculating that California wildfires were due to Jewish space lasers, instead of that California is hot, dry and windy, with dried leaves everywhere.). I guess we want someone to blame, and not that just that it was a random, a personal event.