00:00In August 1986, an entire village went to sleep and never woke up.
00:04Lake Nyos in Cameroon looked completely normal.
00:08No volcano, no earthquake, no warning of any kind.
00:11Then, just after midnight, the lake burped.
00:14In a single instant, 1.6 cubic kilometers of dissolved carbon dioxide exploded from the water
00:19and rolled across the land like an invisible flood.
00:22Silent, odorless, invisible.
00:24It moved faster than anyone could run.
00:26Survivors described a faint sulfur smell, then a strange warm feeling, then nothing.
00:31They woke up hours later surrounded by the dead.
00:341,746 people never woke up at all.
00:37Families were found exactly as they had fallen.
00:40People slumped at dinner tables.
00:41Children collapsed mid-step.
00:43Livestock frozen in the fields.
00:45No wounds, no signs of panic, just silence across an entire valley.
00:49Scientists call it a limnic eruption.
00:51A lake so saturated with volcanic gas that one disturbance triggers a catastrophic release.
00:56And Lake Nyos was not the only one.
00:59Dozens of similar lakes exist right now, still waiting.
01:02Make it up or drink it.�
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