On August 21, 1986, Lake Nyos, located in Cameroon, Africa, became dreamlike and beautiful under the setting sun. Occasionally, birds pass by at great speed, and the startling wind causes orange ripples on the surface of the lake.
The villagers of Nyos village are still sitting in groups by the lake as usual, quietly enjoying the beautiful scenery, children chasing and playing, and the lake is full of laughter.
However, what the peaceful villagers did not know was that a huge disaster was quietly striking.
As dusk approached, the sky changed abruptly, and the clouds that had been dyed with sunset gradually turned into thick dark clouds, and the villagers, accustomed to this kind of thing, began to pack up their things unhurriedly, and called the children to walk towards their homes, and a rainstorm was coming.
It didn't take long for the rain to crackle and fall, and the rain became heavier, and the villagers were unable to go out at all, so they had to stay at home and sleep.
The rainstorm gradually stopped, and at about half past nine in the evening, the sleeping villagers suddenly heard a loud noise, and someone hurriedly got up to check the situation, and they vaguely saw that the sky over Lake Nyos was shrouded in a white fog.
The white mist gradually spread out from the lake, and countless animals began to flee one after another, as if they were avoiding the pursuit of something terrifying. When the white mist drifted into the village, the villagers obviously smelled a sulfur-like smell, and soon they felt hot all over, as if they were about to catch fire, and people finally realized that this white fog was obviously strange, so they called their families and began to flee out.
During the escape, more and more people began to fall without warning, as if they were asleep, and could no longer wake up.
The next morning, a village woman living by the lake covered her head in pain and walked out of the room, shocking her by the scene before her. The village was littered with the carcasses of chickens, ducks, cows and sheep, and some familiar villagers had fallen on the road. She stepped forward and probed with her hands, only to find that they had long since lost their breath.
At this time, more and more people find that the husband or wife lying next to them has become a corpse. Yet they have no idea how or when their families died.
On the 22nd and 23rd, the market around the village of Nyos was the day of the market, and when the people of several nearby villages arrived near the village of Nyos, they also found groups of corpses, both birds and beasts, and people, scattered in the grass and on the village road, without exception, without any injuries on the corpses. Fear began to spread, and the news that the village of Nyos had been cursed by the gods spread throughout Cameroon.
On 24 August 1986, a helicopter with a Roman Catholic priest and a navigator, plus some medicine and food, landed near the village of Nyos. Soon after, the Cameroonian government sent a large number of military and medical personnel to the village of Nyos. At the same time, a US medical rescue team also came to the scene.
After preliminary investigation, military personnel reported an alarming number: 1,200 people in the village of Nyos died, only 6 survived, all chickens, ducks, poultry and livestock in the village were spared all violent deaths, even the eagles in the sky and ants in the ground did not escape the poisonous hands.
Such data shocked everyone present, and the command immediately asked most of the people to take the wounded, leave the village of Nyos immediately, and evacuate the surrounding villagers to avoid secondary damage. However, during the evacuation of surrounding villagers, new dead people were found.
The disaster caused a total of 1,746 people to die in a number of villages within a 25-kilometer radius of Lake Nyos, more than 6,000 livestock and countless wild animals. Even among the villagers who survived, some developed inexplicable burns and comatose within 36 hours.
What caused this disaster? For a while, everyone began to think about this problem. Before a definitive answer was obtained, rumors began to spread throughout Cameroon.
At first, some people believed that the disaster near Lake Nyos was caused by the neutron bomb dropped by the Israelis.
Because many people in the village of Nyos are Muslim, that is why Israel launched the massacre.
However, this possibility was quickly dismissed, let alone whether Israel had a neutron bomb, and even if it did, Israel would not have been able to drop a bomb on a village for the sake of a few Muslims.
There is nothing good to say, the condemnation of the international community is enough for Israel to drink a pot.
After this statement was rejected, another statement was generally accepted.
Cameroon's education level is low, and many people believe in the existence of God, so the rumor that Nyos village offended the god of Lake Nyos began to circulate again, which made the villagers of several villages around Lake Nyos live in fear all day long, fearing that they would be punished by the lake god again.
The government cannot stop the rumors of the people, and it is imperative to find out the main cause of this disaster.
Because of the limited level of scientific research, the Cameroonian government decided to turn to the international community for help, and soon several international scientific research teams came to Cameroon.
When researchers arrived, the first thing they did was to disprove the absurd "neutron bomb" rumors.
When scientists arrived near Lake Nyos, the first thing they did was to measure the temperature around them, because according to survivors' descriptions, the sky over Lake Nyos was shrouded in white fog that night, which should be the key to breaking the game.
Cameroon, due to geological structure, has many volcanoes in the country, and Lake Neos is a volcanic lake formed when the Neos volcano erupted about 40,000 years ago.
So scientists hypothesized that the "white fog" should be a toxic gas produced by volcanic movement that heats up the lake.
However, when they measured the surrounding temperature, they found that there was no abnormality at all, and immediately rejected this hypothesis.
Later, the scientists examined the lake and found that there were no typical volcanic gases in the lake, and another question arose: how did the villagers smell the smell of eggs and sulfur-like smells?
Finally, after a random check of the gas 200 meters from the bottom of the lake, the answer was revealed: it was related to "carbon dioxide".
It turns out that the bottom of Lake Nyos stores a large amount of carbon dioxide, and the higher the concentration of carbon dioxide, the higher the air pressure at the bottom of the lake, and over time, the air pressure at the bottom of the lake becomes more and more unstable.
Just like a balloon, the more gas is inflated, the more it expands, and when it expands to a certain extent, once it is pierced with a sharp object outside, the gas inside the balloon will completely erupt.
However, during the period of the tragedy, there were no volcanic eruptions around Lake Nyos, and there were no plate crushing movements such as earthquakes, so what was the opportunity to break this "balloon"?
After investigation, the mystery was finally solved, it turned out that on August 21, due to the mudslide triggered by heavy rainfall, a large number of boulders rolled into Lake Nyos with the mudslide, breaking this balance and causing a part of the bottom of the lake to erupt carbon dioxide.
After inhaling too much carbon dioxide, people will enter a state of drunken oxygen, and if they cannot be rescued in time, they will suffocate and die.
The mystery is finally solved, however, the villagers around Lake Nyos do not agree with this answer, insisting that they have offended the lake god and have been punished by the lake god.
Despite any persuasion from the local government, they are still unwilling to move, and still go their own way to herd cattle and sheep by the lake.
At this time, Professor Michel, a physicist at the University of Savoie in France, thought of a way.
Professor Michel decided to invent an "automatic siphon device", the principle is to connect a tube with a heavy object, sink to the bottom of the lake for more than 200 meters, and then pump water continuously, and the carbon dioxide at the bottom of the lake will turn into bubbles as the lake rises, thereby releasing outward.
In 2001, Professor Michel's "automatic siphon device" was finally completed, and he rushed to Cameroon with more than 10 scientists to begin work.
After installing the equipment, Professor Michelle pressed the button in his hand, and not long after, a powerful stream of water gushed out from the pipe of the "automatic siphon device" and rushed straight to 40 high altitudes. Seeing this, the researchers cheered one after another.
According to scientists' calculations, this "automatic siphon device" can clean up more than 20 million cubic meters of carbon dioxide from the bottom of the lake every year, and the crisis in Lake Nyos has finally been perfectly solved.