io9
Sometimes a fire just won't go out. Uzbekistan is home to a place called Darvaz, nicknamed by locals "the door to hell." It's a semi-underground gas fire that's been burning nonstop for 35 years. Find out why, and see some close-up pictures of this hellmouth after the jump, plus another fire in Pennsylvania that has also been burning underground for over 30 years.
English Russia explains in a way that totally sounds like it could be dialog ripped from Alias:
The story of this place lasts already for 35 years. Once the geologists were drilling for gas. Then suddenly during the drilling they have found an underground cavern, it was so big that all the drilling site with all the equipment and camps got deep deep under the ground. None dared to go down there because the cavern was filled with gas. So they ignited it so that no poisonous gas could come out of the hole, and since then, it's burning, already for 35 years without any pause.
In the city of Centralia, Pennsylvania, locals accidentally ignited a huge coal mine that snaked underneath the town. Nobody knows for sure how or when it started, but many believe it was due to people burning rubbish near the entrance to the closed mine. Though many tried to put it out, the fire raged for most of the 1960s and some of the 1970s when the ground started collapsing and the roads began to buckle, like in this picture. A gas station owner discovered that the temperature in his underground tanks was hot enough to be extremely dangerous.
So the town was evacuated, and only a handful of holdouts live there still. Centralia's zip code has been rescinded, and the highway now routes around it. It's a ghost town. A ghost town that's still on fire.
Door to Hell (plus crazy video!) [English Russia]
The Burning Remains of Centralia [Damn Interesting] (Thanks, Wishnevsky!)
Comments
OH MY GOD THAT'S AWESOME!
I am looking on Google Maps for directions to Centralia right now.
Okay, it's two hours from my house.
centralia was also used for the basis for the silent hill film (just so you know)
Holy awesome. In soviet russia, ground of fire and brimstone... and this is still not funny.
Wonder if you could use this for some good ole geothermal energy?
And why has no one made a movie using either of these places as a set piece? Sure Uzbekistan isn't stable in the geopolitical sense of the word but still. You telling me Werner Hertzog wouldn't give his left nut to shoot something like that?
Guess this was the real world inspiration for the terrible Silent Hill movie. Interesting.
You can't actually reach Centralia anymore. All the roads leading into the area have been blocked off over the past few decades. If you do decide to go visiting though, be aware of the lovely clouds of CO2 that hang in the area and can sufficate the unsuspecting. Fun!
Speaking of coal seam fires, there's one in Australia that's been burning for somewhere around 6000 years and will probably go on for a few thousand more. It's one of the few naturally occuring coal seam fires. Its in a place called (appropriatly enough) Burning Mountain.
I google earthed it. That town was pretty small anyhow. Still, looks as if most of the town has been bulldozed. 10 or so structures still stand.
@Gyrus: Liability insurance.
You know how much it would cost the studio if one of your cameramen fell into the door into Hell?
@Stueymon:
Not just the film but the game(s) as well.
@braak: i went there on a field trip back in high school. we didn't really get to see the town, but part of the tour went by a place you can still see a huge plume of smoke coming out of a hill. pretty creep-tastic.
Google Sightseeing had a nice article on Centralia, PA back in February.
@wassermelone: except the games were actually good. well, most of them anyway.
Kind of makes you wonder how big a "carbon footprint" these two places have. So don't bug me about the exhaust from my car, dangit!
Lovely pics, Annalee. Good wallpaper material.
"Time is the fire in wich we burn."
Centralia is beyond eerie, I grew up sort of near there. About a half hour or so away. It was quite the cautionary tale for people in the coal region to be careful with the fires.
We should let Hell into NATO.
Door to Hell on Google Maps:
40.25437660372649, 61.28680229187012
We could be living like Perfect green angels and still be screwed by this planet's propensity to burp, belch and puke out tonnes of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Considering how our planet has gone through radical shifts in climate before, without our help, I assume it will happen again. Adapt or Die.
I used to live about 30 minutes north of Centralia. You can still walk through it and there are still a handful of residents who refused to leave (including the mayor). It's extra eerie looking in the winter due to the steam. Definitely an interesting town.
But yea, Silent Hill wasn't based around the town... But the filmmakers did have "Centralia" as one of their working titles for the movie. The game writers had no idea about the town though, and the movie was obviously based around the video game.
Sometime around 1990 when I was in grade school we passed through Centralia on a field trip. They specifically went out of the way to drive through the town. Why they did it I don't know, but it was really damn creepy.
that's the first time I ever heard of this! This is SO COOL! One day, I wanna see that for myself.
@Jeff-Minor: The fact that the planet has gone through radical climate shifts in the past without our help doesn't in any way preclude the possibility that it will undergo a radical climate shift with our help. It likewise doesn't preclude that our own involvement might produce a climate that we are unable to adapt to.
Centralia is eerily beautiful, I agree.
I was up there a year or two ago with my brother and the group of offroad enthusiasts he hangs out with.
Night rides through there were spooky, but fun as hell.
I was introduced to Firesign Theater's "I think we're all Bozos on this Bus" on that run.
Surreal.
@braak: Like the primordial bacteria that farted oxygen and eventually created an atmosphere/climate that they couldn't compete in? The hubris of that primordial ooze...
Cities on flame, with Rock n Roll!
GOD DAMNIT. How did you guys get pics of my front yard! Damn kids and your cameras! Shoo!
:: goes back to dwell in his hellhole::
@braak: Nonsense. People have been able to adapt to live in every climate on Earth. Even if sea levels rise, it won't flood everything ... and technology has progressed to the point that we can build our own islands.
Technology isn't a panacea, but climate change isn't going to kill us all.
@Sihanouk-s-Poodle: Okay, so climate change won't kill us all. I'd still, personally, prefer that it kill less than thirty percent of us. Something tells me that if the floating bio-dome islands can't sustain a population of more than a couple million, I'm probably not going to get a spot.
@tetragami: Hey, if you'd like the same future that the primordial bacteria made for themselves, by all means, keep doing everything the same.
The name must be cursed. I live in Centralia, IL. In 1947, an explosion and fire in a coal mine under our Centralia claimed the lives of 111 miners. But at least it's not still burning!
[www.kentlaw.edu]
@braak: Indeed, a life cowering in the darkest crevasses is the life for me! I always did want to evolve into a mole-person.
@tetragami: Oh. Well, okay, then.
I have to admit, the future post-apocalyptic Morlock world has its appeal.
Darn, I saw this title on my Google Reader and was hoping io9 had finally uncovered the secret boomer cult of Shazam! and Secrets of Isis worshipers. How my dad and me bonded. Whatever happened to Joanna Cameron anyway?
@braak: See! Even you accept that climate change induced evolution could have an upside...for the survivors anyway. I guess the rest of us just get to be interesting fossils?
@tetragami: I'd be really interested to see what alien exo-archaeologists would make of my skeleton. Mind you, it would depend a lot on where I died and what was around when it happened.
@braak:
Sure, it's possible - just very unlikely. Earth's climate=very sturdy. The K-T impact is estimated at 100,000,000 megatons. ACC might be the downfall of civilization if it gets really bad, but it's unlikely to make humanity extinct.
Generally speaking, not such a great thing, but also probably unavoidable.
Oh, and I wouldn't worry about there not being room for you in a Global Warming Island World - chances are, you'll be long dead before ACC causes any giant problems.
-Kle.
@NefariousNewt: I've always wondered what future archeologists would make of my land-based anatomy if I happened to fall into the ocean and get fossilized with the fishes.
San Francisco really needs to get moving on a Dome.
@tetragami: Oh, sure, in theory. Though I'm pretty sure I don't actually have the chops to evolve into a moleman in less than a generation.
@Klebert L. Hall: I don't...I'm not sure why these things are comparable.
@tetragami: It might depend on if you were eaten by one. Still, it's an interesting thought: could they figure out that a land animal was accidentally fossilized in the sea? Imagine if you were scuba diving and died and sank to the bottom f the ocean.
@ShadRS: Actually, no. I took a trip up there last March and it is very easily accessible. In fact, I was amazed at the amount of traffic going through the crossroads at the center of "town": it was rush hour and was incredibly busy.
It's a pretty cool place, though. We walked around taking pictures, and even had some yokels speed by and yell at us to "get the f out of here." The municipal building at the center of "town" still had an ambulance parked in it, so I assume it was still in use. Otherwise, besides a few houses of holdouts and a memorial cemetery, it's a grid of paved streets and grass lots.
Darvaza is actually in Turkmenistan, about a three hour drive from Ashgabat (I know, hard to believe the Internet would lie to you). Josh Kucera wrote an excellent description of it last year- [www.joshuakucera.net]
@braak:
You should go, and bring a painters mask or something like it to help filter the air.
@Arashan: Oh, well, if it's in Turkmenistan, never mind.
Uzbekistan I can get behind, but Turkmenistan? Fuck that shit.
@braak: I suddenly have the urge to play Risk... I have no idea why...
These fires are horrible for the environment. They created massive amounts of carbon dioxide. There is one in China that has been burning for around 100 years. I've heard if they put that one out (which you can't) it would be the same as taking all the cars off the road in America.
@NefariousNewt: Just don't get involved in a land war in Asia.
@tetragami: Is there any other kind?
@braak:
Which ones?
-Kle.
Atmospheric carbon content and the K-T meteor impact.
I'm pretty sure that the K-T impact put a heck of a lot of carbon into the atmosphere, killed off a heck of a lot of carbon-absorbing plants, and in general was a much greater insult to the Earth's climate/ecosystem than a couple hundred years of puny industrial emissions. The planet and life thereon got all messed up, but it recovered pretty quickly by geo/climatological standards.
I expect humanity would survive the equivalent event today, though I wouldn't place any bets on civilization making it.
ACC isn't anything I'd choose , but I think people panic too much about it, and I expect it's inevitable. Even if it could be avoided, the climate is bound to change all by itself, sooner or later. It's what climates do.
We get an awful lot of scare-tactics on this stuff, like that moronic Day After Tomorrow movie, and Mr. Gore's exaggerated 'documentary'. Scare tactics annoy me.
-Kle.
@Klebert L. Hall: Well, okay, but I'm not sure that the analogy is viable here. The K-T impact had a colossal effect on local ecosystems. "Recovered pretty quickly by geo/climatological standards" is incredibly slowly by human standards. Life surviving the upper-limit of catastrophic damage doesn't show that human life will survive a much smaller event. And, even if it did, while it's nice to know that scattered pockets of humans might be able to eke out an existence scraping their subsistence from lichens, or something, it's actually civilization that I'm concerned about.
I don't know about you guys, but for as much as I say that I'd enjoy some post-apocalyptic survival future, I'm 90% sure my blog-commenting skills aren't really going to carry over.
Moreover, if Norway and Costa Rica can put together plans to be carbon neutral, I don't think the rapid escalation of carbon in the atmosphere is not necessarily inevitable.
And, frankly, not desirable. As a science geek and a futurist, I am personally, deeply offended at a civilization that has failed to become a zero emmissions civilization. That shit is god-damned inefficient, and it pisses me off.
Norway and Costa Rica are a marginally industrialized country, and a non-industrialized country, respectively.
Eliminating carbon emissions will require total global cooperation, which has never happened before, to my knowledge. I only tend to believe in things that there's some evidence for the possibility of.
A recent New Scientist article points out the unlikeliness of dramatic carbon-emission reductions, anytime in the near future. [environment.newscientist.com]
I agree with you that the survival of civilization is a good thing to hope for. I have a hunch that dramatically cutting carbon emissions would seem at least as much like the collapse of civilization , as the likely near-term (next 100 years) effects of global warming. Most people (at least in the 1st and 2nd worlds)would probably think of a world where they have access to a quarter (or half, or whatever)as much electricity and only the rich have access to significant travel capability as a world in which civilization has already collapsed. It's also the sort of thing that puts a lot of people out of work.
Most of what we think of as civilization depends directly upon carbon emissions, and will for decades, even if we were to start building fission plants as fast as we can.
I tend to think that keeping things ticking along is probably the best way to come up with energy solutions for the future, and that planning to combat the effects of ACC is a better plan than trying to avoid it.
-Kle.
@Klebert L. Hall: I don't think anyone was making the argument that we should become immediately carbon independent completely. In fact, I think most people who are concerned about the possible effects of atmospheric carbon content are concerned with maintaining quality of life while reducing carbon emissions.
Norway may be a marginally industrialized economy, but they've got oil rigs and coal plants burning, and if they can cut the carbon emissions standards of those down without reducing the power output, then I think that still counts as civilization.
Your argument sounds suspiciously like "we shouldn't attempt to become carbon neutral now, so that we can eventually become carbon neutral in the future."
Likewise, I'm not sure that "we should give up, because China's going to fuck everything up, anyway" is an especially effective way of addressing this issue, or any of the many other issues that that strategy could apply to.
We welcome out flaming under ...over... lords
@braak: Didn't you see Nothing But Trouble?
[www.imdb.com]
Places like those are ripe with mutants...
Whoa...Silent Hill. O_O
Comment%20on%20Underground Fires that Burn For Decades Darvaz serves as a set piece in the James Bond film "the World is Not Enough".
@braak:
Many of the anti-ACC people tend to say that we have to cut carbon emission drastically immediately , or it will be 'too late'. I don't mind the gradually-reduce-emissions w/o wrecking quality of life crowd, I'm more or less there myself. I don't see any advantage to high carbon emissions, after all.
Does Norway's carbon-neutrality include all the emissions from the oil they export? I tend to think many of these plans are the equivalent of 'creative accounting' (like offsets). I don't think the environment can be improved by cooking the books.
My argument is more like "we shouldn't cut carbon so deeply that it screws things up, since technological advancement by strong economies is the most likely route to a real solution".
"Likewise, I'm not sure that 'we should give up, because China's going to fuck everything up, anyway' is an especially effective way of addressing this issue"
Even if it's actually true? Making high carbon emissions into a competitive advantage for the developing world doesn't seem to be prudent. Besides, letting a failed attempt at control get in the way of preparing for the eventual effects doesn't seem like a good idea, either.
I guess my argument above should have a "while hedging our bets by preparing to live with the effects" clause.
-Kle.
Look, folks, the only way that we are ever going to break our dependence on oil, and therefore reduce the effect that burning it may have on our climate, is to use enough oil so that it becomes prohibitively expensive. Make it so rare that only governments can afford it. That would provide the incentive for corporations to invest in other energy sources that consumers can afford.
So, take a scenic drive every day. Turn on every light in your house and mow your lawn twice each week. Enjoy really hot baths. If we all work together we can use up our oil reserves faster and hasten the end of global oil domination!