- 18 hours ago
Across the planet, forces we can’t see shape the world we think we already understand. Some places become legends because of the danger waiting just beyond the horizon, while others hide their secrets deep below our feet. From violent waters that have challenged sailors for centuries to strange movements inside Earth’s crust that no one can fully explain yet - the planet is far more unpredictable than it appears on any map. What happens when nature quietly shifts the rules… and people start noticing? Animation is created by Bright Side.
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Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz
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Our Social Media:
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https://www.eastnews.ru
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For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
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This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
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FunTranscript
00:00Trace your finger around the very bottom of the African continent, like this.
00:04Seems like a simple task, right?
00:07But in real life, out on the ocean,
00:09it's basically the nautical version of entering hard mode in a game.
00:13Except you can't rage quit.
00:15Every sailor who's ever faced it knew they were in for a storm buffet,
00:20unpredictable currents, and a constant sense that the ocean was out to get them.
00:25The legendary Cape of Good Hope has a misleadingly cheerful name,
00:29and a way less cheerful reputation.
00:32The story starts back in 1488 with Portuguese explorer Bartholomew Diaz.
00:38He was the first European to make it around the tip of Africa.
00:41When he saw the terrifying storms tossing his ships, he named it the Cape of Storms.
00:47But his king, John II of Portugal, decided to rebrand it to the sunnier Cape of Good Hope.
00:54Yeah, he wanted to promote it as an optimistic route for merchants and explorers.
00:58Plus, the discovery was a good omen that ships from Europe could reach India by sea.
01:04But the sailors who actually had to steer through it soon lost all the optimism the name promised.
01:11The Cape sits where the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean meet, violently.
01:15And the winds there are brutal.
01:18They don't just blow in one direction.
01:20They flip around, like the world's worst fan setting.
01:24In the Southern Hemisphere winter, June to August,
01:27cold fronts from the Atlantic blast through with violent storms.
01:31Add some rain, fog, huge waves, or all of the above.
01:35If you were a sailor back then, your odds of survival felt closer to winning a chest of gold in some 16th-century lottery
01:42than actually getting through in one piece.
01:45And then there are the currents.
01:47The cold Benguela current from the Atlantic slams into the warm Agulis current from the Indian Ocean.
01:54Instead of blending nicely, like a smoothie,
01:57they turn up massive chaos and produce rogue waves that can rise higher than a 10-story building.
02:02Sailors describe them as walls of water that just show up to ruin your day.
02:08With modern equipment, you can survive if you meet them or better avoid them.
02:13But back in the 1500s, when your technology was a wooden ship and a prayer,
02:18one rogue wave could wipe out your entire voyage.
02:21And as if the Cape of Good Hope wasn't enough drama,
02:25a few miles east, there's the even nastier Cape Agulis.
02:28This spot is the southernmost point of Africa, where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans officially meet.
02:35Cape Agulis has shallow waters with reefs, hidden rocks, and sneaky sandbars that shift around.
02:41For centuries, sailors called it a ship graveyard.
02:45Historians have counted hundreds of wrecks here,
02:48including ships loaded with gold, porcelain, and spices that never reached Europe.
02:52The bones of ships still lie under those waves, like a giant warning sign saying,
02:58Don't even try it!
03:00Now, if we zoom out to show the broader history, the stats are brutal.
03:05Between the 15th and 18th centuries, during the Age of Sail,
03:09so many ships sank here that European traders treated the Cape like a terrifying game of odds.
03:15You could make a fortune bringing back silk, spices, and jewels from Asia,
03:20or you could vanish into the ocean.
03:23That's why sailors passed down horror stories like campfire tales,
03:27ghost ships haunting the Cape, cursed waters,
03:30and there was also the famous legend of the Flying Dutchman,
03:34doomed to sail around the Cape forever.
03:37Navigating all this before GPS, satellites, or weather forecasts
03:41in a creaky wooden ship with no compass and some half-reliable maps was almost impossible.
03:48With no ports nearby to duck into for shelter,
03:51the sailors were all alone out there,
03:53sort of like playing hide-and-seek in a thunderstorm while blindfolded.
03:58Historians note that many of these brave folks
04:00regularly got blown off course or smashed into rocks they didn't even know existed.
04:06So, eventually, someone came up with a better idea.
04:09Let's dig a shortcut.
04:12In 1869, the Suez Canal opened in Egypt.
04:16It connected the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.
04:19Ships traveling between Europe and Asia didn't have to play the Cape's stormy lottery anymore.
04:24Using the canal reduced the voyage from the Arabian Sea to London by some 5,500 miles.
04:31Today, the canal handles 12 to 15% of global trade.
04:35That means millions of containers, tankers, and cargo ships take the safe shortcut
04:41instead of risking the so-called Cape of Storms.
04:44Now, there's another less famous danger zone, too.
04:48Cape Correntes in Mozambique.
04:50Portuguese sailors dreaded it in the 1500s and called it a ship-eating monster.
04:55Its name literally means Cape of Currents because the water there rushes with insane force,
05:01strong enough to throw ships off course and onto the shore.
05:05Historians estimate that up to 30% of Portuguese ships sailing the India route were lost there.
05:11So, even before they reached the Cape of Good Hope, they could already be sinking.
05:16Now, let's not forget the economics.
05:19Sailing around Africa wasn't just risky, it was expensive.
05:22More days at sea meant more food, more water, and more exhausted crews.
05:28Losing ships to storms was costing millions of dollars in today's money.
05:33Insurance companies dreaded covering voyages around the Cape
05:35because the odds of having to pay out a claim were so bad.
05:40When the Suez Canal opened, it wasn't just about saving time.
05:43It was about cutting the cost of disasters.
05:45Even today, with modern radar, weather forecasts, and GPS, rounding the Cape isn't a walk in the park.
05:54Of course not, it's water.
05:56Anyways, cargo ships that try to avoid canal fees or blockages, like the infamous traffic jam in 2021,
06:03still face monster waves and storms.
06:06Technology can predict the weather, but it can't stop the ocean from throwing a tantrum.
06:10Every captain who rounds the Cape today still knows they're passing through one of the most dangerous maritime zones on Earth.
06:18Yet another zone most ship captains choose to avoid is the roaring 40s and furious 50s in the southern ocean.
06:25That's between 40 and 50 degrees south latitude.
06:28Unlike the northern hemisphere, where continents break the flow, down here there's nothing but ocean.
06:34It's an endless highway for storms with no speed limit.
06:38Sailors gave this zone its dramatic nickname because when you're here, the wind doesn't whisper, it screams.
06:45Scientists have confirmed that these roaring winds can hit speeds up to 125 miles per hour.
06:51And screaming winds means screaming seas.
06:55Waves in the roaring 40s can reach heights that make skyscrapers jealous,
06:59smashing against ship hulls with the force of a battering ram.
07:02Historically, clipper ships braved these waters to shave time off their voyages between Europe and Asia.
07:09But they paid the price with torn sails, broken masts, and sometimes entire crews swallowed whole by the sea.
07:16Even today, modern vessels avoid the 40s unless they have no choice.
07:21There are safer paths.
07:23Routes that might take longer, but aren't this risky.
07:26The 40s and 50s sure sound scary, but wait until the ocean tightens its grip in the Drake Passage.
07:33This narrow strip of water between Cape Horn and Antarctica is the gladiator arena of the seas.
07:40The entire Pacific Ocean is trying to squeeze through a gap only 500 miles wide and collides head-on with the Atlantic.
07:48Add the southern ocean currents, among the strongest on Earth, and you've got a recipe for chaos.
07:53The Drake doesn't just throw waves at you.
07:56It throws walls of water up to 50 feet high.
08:00Ships here don't ride the ocean.
08:02They cling to survival, like toys tossed in a washing machine on the highest spin cycle.
08:08The reason it's so brutal is pure physics.
08:11With no landmasses in the southern ocean to slow down wind or current,
08:15the Antarctic circumpolar current races around the globe.
08:18When it slams through the narrow funnel of the Drake, it accelerates like a jet engine.
08:24Storms roll in uninvited, and icebergs drift lazily into shipping lanes, ready to take a ship down any moment.
08:31Even experienced sailors describe the Drake as unpredictable.
08:35It's calm one moment, chaos the next.
08:38Historians note that before the Panama Canal opened in 1914,
08:42Every ship heading from the Atlantic to the Pacific had to pass through here,
08:47and countless ones never made it.
08:50Today, cruise liners and research ships still brave the passage to reach Antarctica,
08:55but with enough seasickness bags to remind passengers that they're not on a pleasure cruise.
09:00They're crossing one of the most dangerous ocean stretches on the planet.
09:04The floor is lava!
09:07Haha, just kidding.
09:09But honestly, it's kind of falling apart.
09:12You might not feel it yet, but a huge part of North America has already lost 37 miles worth of rock from its foundation.
09:19And no, this isn't about earthquakes or giant sinkholes.
09:23It's about the continent losing pieces of the very thing that keeps the ground from wobbling around like a bad carnival ride.
09:30A team of researchers has just dropped a geological bombshell.
09:35Part of North America's ground is thinning out like a very sad, very slow ice cream drip.
09:41How do they know?
09:42They basically gave Earth a high-tech full-body MRI and created 3D maps showing how rocks once considered indestructible
09:51are now melting away into the planet's guts, like an upside-down cheese pizza inside an oven.
09:57But to really understand this mess, you first have to meet my old friends, cratons.
10:03Cratons are like the roots of the continents.
10:05They're thick, tough, and ancient.
10:08We're talking billions of years old.
10:11These bad boys survived meteor impacts, super volcanoes, and even the tectonic movement of plates.
10:17If the plates got into fistfights, for example, you can bet we would see mountain ranges being born.
10:24If they got a divorce, drifting apart from each other, then a whole new ocean would be born.
10:29All of these things leave scars on the surface of Earth, but the cratons seem to always remain unfazed, like the cockroaches of geology.
10:40And since a craton can basically get punched in the face and feel nothing, scientists always assumed these things were nearly indestructible.
10:48But then, a group of researchers took their fancy machines to the test and realized that, wait, the cratons are falling apart?
10:57How?
10:58Enter the Ferrolon Plate, a really ancient tectonic plate that started to slide under North America's major plate over 100 million years ago.
11:09This is a pretty normal process, actually.
11:12It's called subduction, and it's how Earth recycles rocks and keeps itself from overheating.
11:17This subduction thing has been happening for so long that, by now, the Ferrolon is almost 400 miles away from the craton,
11:26sitting pretty chill at the lower mantle, weirdly close to the outer core of our planet.
11:32But the Ferrolon has been causing trouble, like that one roommate who moved out but keeps leaving weird stuff in the fridge.
11:38You see, as it sinks, it tugs on the bottom of North America's foundation, stretching it out and causing pieces to fall off into the deep mantle.
11:49And if that wasn't enough drama, the sinking Ferrolon has also leaked water and carbon dioxide into the surrounding rocks,
11:56making the craton even softer and easier to shred apart.
11:59By studying hundreds of earthquakes across thousands of monitoring stations, scientists have confirmed the story.
12:11Big chunks of continental material are dripping downward, thinning the craton by as much as 37 miles.
12:17That's more missing rocks than can fit into a milk carton.
12:21Sounds dramatic, right?
12:22But don't worry.
12:24This is happening at a snail's pace.
12:26It'll take millions of years for anything noticeable to happen.
12:30Your great-great-great-great-few grandkids from the distant future might still be standing on solid ground.
12:37But don't get too comfy.
12:40This thing may not be an urgent problem, but there's another type of sinking that's happening faster than you can say,
12:46Help!
12:46Here's the thing.
12:48By 2050, at least 32 major cities in the U.S., including New York, Baltimore, and Charleston, could be partially underwater.
12:57And guess what?
12:58This one is mostly our fault.
13:01Scientists noticed that, since 2007, some cities have been sinking into the ground between 0.04 and 0.08 inches every year.
13:11Charleston in South Carolina is pulling ahead in the worst way possible,
13:15sinking 0.15 inches annually.
13:19Sure, these numbers sound tiny and a bit ridiculous.
13:23But Charleston is barely 9 feet above sea level.
13:26And a little sinking goes a long way when the ocean is breathing down your neck.
13:30On really bad flood days, people there have to abandon their cars and basically swim home.
13:37This whole phenomenon is called land subsidence.
13:40And when you mix sinking land with rising sea levels, you get a disaster cocktail of flooded streets, salty farmland, ghost forests, and a lot of very cranky homeowners.
13:52And it doesn't stop with just homes.
13:55Infrastructure like bridges, roads, airports, and power plants.
13:59All things we rely on daily are also at risk of serious damage.
14:05Flooded electrical grids and sunken highways could cause billions more in economic losses and create major safety hazards for communities.
14:13Now, let's be fair, not everything is humanity's fault.
14:18Some of this trouble dates all the way back to the Ice Age.
14:22About 12,000 years ago, massive ice sheets covered the northern U.S.
14:26They were heavy, like seriously heavy.
14:30The weight pushed the land down and when the ice melted, the ground didn't just pop back up like a trampoline.
14:36Instead, it started playing a weird game of geological seesaw.
14:40The places that were squished started rising, and the places that weren't got pulled down.
14:46This whole process, called glacial isostatic adjustment, try to say that three times fast.
14:53But of course, humans found a way to make it worse.
14:56Groundwater extraction is a major culprit.
14:59Think of it like pulling the stuff out of the mattress.
15:02After a while, the whole thing just sags.
15:04In places like California's Central Valley, the land is dropping by up to 8 inches a year
15:10because we keep pumping out water during droughts.
15:14In cities like New York, the problem isn't just water.
15:18Skyscrapers themselves are making it worse.
15:21Yep, turns out if you stack millions of tons of concrete and steel onto soft ground, it tends to flatten.
15:28And in case you're wondering, the total mass of New York City's buildings is around 1.68 trillion pounds.
15:37That's about the same as 3.5 million statues of liberty piled up.
15:42With so much weight concentrated over a relatively small area, the underlying soils have no choice but to compress over time.
15:49And if you thought it couldn't get messier, think again.
15:55We've been building dams, which stop rivers from delivering fresh sediment to coastal areas.
16:00That sediment is kind of like Mother Nature's way of fluffing the ground back up.
16:05Without it, coastal lands are compacting like an old sponge.
16:10Plus, when wetlands are drained for agriculture or construction, the peaty soil dries out and collapses.
16:16Honestly, it's like the ground just can't catch a break.
16:22Scientists also noticed that the areas that used to be lush wetlands are now among the fastest sinking spots in the country, especially along the Gulf Coast.
16:33Louisiana, for example, is losing about a football field of land because of this mix of subsidence and rising seas.
16:41So what's the endgame here for us regular people who just want to live above sea level?
16:47Well, it's not looking great.
16:49Ghost forests, which are basically drowned woodlands, are popping up.
16:54Farmland is turning salty and unusable.
16:56And even sunny day flooding, where streets flood without any rain, is becoming a thing.
17:01Yikes!
17:03Meanwhile, over on the West Coast, California is not exactly winning either.
17:08San Francisco and Los Angeles are both sinking,
17:11which means that rising sea levels could hit them twice as hard and twice as fast.
17:17In some places, like the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the ground has been sinking so fast, people over there might as well live like moles.
17:25So, is America turning into the next Atlantis?
17:28Probably not next week, but without serious action, like cutting back on groundwater pumping and planning smarter cities,
17:36at least 500,000 people are in serious danger.
17:40And the housing damage could easily rack up a jaw-dropping $109 billion by 2050.
17:47In the end, while North America isn't about to sink like a poorly made souffle,
17:53it's definitely showing some cracks in the crust.
17:56So maybe let's ease up on groundwater pumping,
17:59rethink how and where we build,
18:02and invest a little more in keeping our feet dry.
18:05After all, if the floor really does become lava someday,
18:09we're gonna wish we had at least fixed the leaks first.
18:13That's it for today.
18:15So hey, if you pacified your curiosity,
18:17then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
18:20Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
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