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, 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. 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. 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, 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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? 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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. 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. 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. 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, 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 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 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? 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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. 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, 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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? 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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. 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. 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. 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, 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 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 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? 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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