HORRENDOUS JOKE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ACTUAL EXPLODING LAKES!

‘Kay.

So up until this point, I think the scariest thing I’ve posted involving lakes was this drilling accident that happened in 1980 on Lake Peigneur.

But I just stumbled upon the Wikipedia article for a phenomenon called a limnic eruption. A limnic eruption occurs when a large amount of CO2 gas “erupts” out of a lake that is nearly saturated with it. The eruption of CO2 kills pretty much every oxygen-dependent thing in the near vicinity and also may trigger a tsunami from the rapid displacement of the gas.

Limnic eruptions are said to be triggered by such things as landslides and volcanic activity. Luckily, though, they’re rare; only two have been observed in recent history. The first occurred in 1984 at Lake Monoun in Cameroon and killed 37 people. Two years later, a much deadlier eruption occurred in Lake Nyos, a neighboring lake to Monoun, which killed between 1.700 and 1,800 people.

The consequences are fairly immediate. The CO2, denser than air, displaces the breathable atmosphere close to the ground. People either suffocate from lack of oxygen or die by CO2 poisoning. The erupting gas is also supposedly cold enough to cause frostbite, as the survivors of these two historical eruptions had frostbite-like blisters on their skin. Also, according to Wiki,  “the survivors also reported a smell of rotten eggs and feeling warm before passing out; this is explained by the fact that at high concentrations, carbon dioxide acts as a sensory hallucinogenic.”

Even though this type of natural disaster is rare, scientists are keeping a close eye on Lake Kivu, a lake between Rwanda and the Republic of Congo. A much larger lake than Nyos and situated in a much more densely populated area, Kivu’s CO2 and methane saturation levels have been increasing over the years, making it a potential candidate for an eruption sometime in the future. It is also near Mount Nyiragongo, an active volcano that last erupited in 2000. As of now, scientists are trying to figure out if scrubbing the lake of CO2 could have any real impact in reducing the danger of a limnic eruption.

Freaky stuff, nature, freaky stuff.