Natural disasters, also known as natural disasters, natural disasters, famines, etc., refer to abnormal phenomena that occur in nature, which can cause serious disasters to surrounding organisms and human society.
This is the definition that humans give to natural disasters.
Putting aside the docile explanations, in fact, from the beginning of humankind's birth, we have been fighting various natural disasters and paying a sufficient price.
In winter, snowstorms can kill people.
In summer, drought will kill people.
Plateaus, avalanches, can kill people.
Along the coast, tsunamis can kill people.
Normally, typhoons, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and meteorite impacts will still kill people.
Natural disasters often occur suddenly and unpredictably, resulting in heavy losses. Of course, over the long years, humans have also summed up a lot of experience, learned to detect natural disasters, and used various methods to prevent them.
For example, on snow-capped mountains, never make loud noises or strong vibrations to prevent avalanches. On large rivers, many dams and reservoirs are built to regulate the flow of river water and prevent floods. In addition, artificial rainfall is used to alleviate droughts, meteorological satellite warnings and crowd evacuation are used to reduce losses caused by typhoons, and so on.
However, under the terrifying power of nature, human power is too small. We can only prevent, avoid, and reduce losses. It is really difficult to resist.
Take typhoon as an example.
Typhoons are the most common natural disasters. They occur frequently, are powerful, have a wide range of impacts, and cause serious losses.
Some people have asked whether typhoons can be eliminated with the level of science and technology on the modern earth. For example, detonate a large-yield nuclear bomb at the center of a typhoon to destroy the typhoon and eventually calm it down.
In fact, it can't.
The heat released by an ordinary mature typhoon is basically equivalent to detonating a 10-million-yield nuclear bomb every 20 minutes, and the heat released per hour is thousands of times equivalent to the Hiroshima atomic bomb. If there were just a few ordinary nuclear bombs detonated in the center of a typhoon, they would not have much effect at all.
In a word: Nature is the master of the planet, and humans are just parasites on the surface of the earth.
Sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid with a diameter of about 11 kilometers hit the Gulf of Mexico, causing the Cretaceous mass extinction. About 75% of the world's living creatures, including dinosaurs, were wiped out, leaving the earth unaffected.
The earth has existed for nearly 4.6 billion years, and will continue to exist for billions of years.
Human beings, with only a few thousand years of civilization and a few million years of biological evolution, are really not worth mentioning to the earth, at least for now.
Regarding natural disasters on the earth, humans can only try to avoid and prevent them, but they cannot resist them.
One troublesome thing is that some common natural disasters have obvious signs and can be detected in advance, giving them enough time to prevent them.
As for other uncommon natural disasters, no abnormality can be found before they occur. Once they occur, they will take away a large number of lives very quickly, making it difficult for people to prevent them, and they can only seek the blessing of the goddess of luck. One of the most famous natural disasters of this type is called... lake overturn.
There are very few recorded cases of lake overturning natural disasters, only two so far, but each caused considerable casualties.
The first case, Lake Monoun.
Lake Monoun, located in Cameroon, a country in west-central Africa, suffered a natural disaster on August 15, 1984.
When a natural disaster occurs, there is no warning, and it occurs extremely quickly, like a god of death wielding a sickle, accurately taking away lives one by one, and then hiding in the darkness.
People affected by natural disasters had no ability to resist, let alone send messages to the outside world for help, and all died within a very short period of time. In the case of natural disasters, people who have nothing to do with it, because of accidental circumstances, enter the scene after the natural disaster breaks out and realize that something is wrong.
The first person to be discovered was named Alhaji Abdul. While he was on his way, he saw corpses strewn on the road, cars crashed off the road, and no one survived.
According to subsequent statistics, a total of 37 people died in this natural disaster.
This number is still nothing. The most important thing is that the people who died showed no signs of struggle. It was like they suddenly died of some acute infectious disease. It caused huge panic for a time, but it took a long time to find out.
The second case, Lake Nyos.
Lake Nyos, also located in Cameroon, a country in west-central Africa, suffered a natural disaster in the early morning of August 21, 1986—two years after the first case.
When the natural disaster occurred, it was late at night and located in a densely populated area, so a large number of people who were sleeping were collectively killed before they could react.
Witnesses who entered the area after the incident described: There was no one in sight, or they were all dead.
Because it was located on the outskirts of the area, an eyewitness who was extremely lucky to save a life from the disaster described: He was standing alone in a pile of dead people, there were dead people inside and outside the house, all the cattle, sheep, and dogs were dead, and the whole family 56 53 of them were not breathing.
Postmortem statistics showed that more than 1,700 people died in this natural disaster, and countless livestock died!
This obviously caused huge panic, especially just two years after the first case.
To this end, scientists from all sides came and conducted rigorous investigations and studies, and concluded that the incidents in Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun were both caused by the overturning of the lakes.
What is a lake flip
It turns out that Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun are not ordinary lakes. There is a magma zone under the lake bottom. The existence of this magma zone will cause carbon dioxide (CO2) to continuously leak into the water and accumulate at the bottom of the slow-flowing, extremely high water pressure lake.
When the carbon dioxide accumulates to the limit, it will erupt. At that time, hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide will quickly rush out of the lake and spread around.
Because the density of carbon dioxide is 1.5 times that of air, the large amount of carbon dioxide is like laying a thick carpet on the earth. It drives away almost all the air wherever it goes, first creating an area of high concentration of carbon dioxide, and then Create an area of pure carbon dioxide that will take a long time to dissipate.
Carbon dioxide is a gas that is part of the air and is not harmful at low concentrations, such as 0.04%.
But when the concentration rises to 1%, people will feel shortness of breath, dizziness, and heart palpitations.
When it reaches 5%, people will feel asthma, headache, and dizziness.
When it reaches 10%, human body functions will be severely disrupted, causing people to lose consciousness, become confused, stop breathing, and die.
As for higher concentrations, reaching the level of pure carbon dioxide, not to mention humans, as long as plants, animals, and microorganisms that rely on oxygen for aerobic respiration cannot survive.
This is a lake flip!
Some people gave this natural disaster a vivid name, calling it... the fart of the earth.
Well, earth fart.
The Earth farts and takes hundreds of lives.
And this is the power of natural disasters.
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It is certain that Taklimakan Lake is a lake that undergoes "lake reversal" periodically.
However, Richard did not know this when he first became interested in Taklimakan Lake. The reason why I am interested in Taklimakan Lake is entirely because of its name.
After all, not every desert is called Taklimakan. The name of the desert on the earth was actually placed on a lake in the current world, which made Richard curious.
After hearing the legend about the God of Death in Taklimakan Lake from the wizard Teddy, Richard really wanted to explore the secrets of the lake.
There were many speculations at the time, and later during the exploration of the small village of Atis, more discoveries were made. After entering the lake to check, it was finally determined that Taklimakan Lake was a lake prone to natural disasters such as "lake overturning".
Then everything can be explained.
In the legend of Taklimakan Lake, the so-called God of Death is nothing more than the hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide gas accumulated at the bottom of the lake. And every few hundred years, the God of Death will wake up from his slumber and take away all life in sight. This is because every time carbon dioxide is erupted into the outside world, it takes a long time to accumulate again. Hundreds of years are an accumulation cycle.
After understanding this, Richard became more vigilant about Taklimakan Lake and warned Nancy, Gro and others that it was best to stay away from the lake.
Although he could see that the amount of carbon dioxide accumulated at the bottom of the lake was far from reaching its limit and would not erupt to the outside world within a few decades, many things were not absolute.
A small earthquake, or a boulder falling into the water, is enough to disrupt the delicate balance between carbon dioxide and lake water at the bottom of the lake, causing the carbon dioxide to be released early. By then, the killing effect and range may be somewhat reduced, but those in the core area will still die without sufficient defense.
After understanding this, the matter came to an end. As the exchange conference was held, Richard threw Taklimakan Lake aside. After all, his main goal is the treasure of the Black Spirit King and the ultimate secret of the Black Spirit Empire, not a geographical expedition.
He just wants to wait until after the exchange conference to find a way to stay and continue digging and searching for the small village of Atis. He will not invest too much energy in a lake, even if this lake is very rare and three have been discovered in the entire earth.
But who knew that things would develop unexpectedly. The exchange conference turned out to be a huge trap. Deep Blue Castle actually colluded with the mysterious organization and prepared to kill all the wizards attending the conference.
Richard was not very interested in such traps and conspiracies, and was not prepared to participate in them at all. After helping Gro, Nancy and others break out, he was ready to leave.
He was thinking more about one thing in his mind: After the commotion of Deep Blue Castle, the entire east coast was in chaos, and the surrounding area of Deep Blue Castle became extremely dangerous. I'm afraid it will be difficult to continue digging and looking for the small village of Atis, and we need to find another way.
Just as I was thinking about a solution, a new problem came. The black-robed wizard of the mysterious organization, for some reason, regarded him as a must-kill target and mobilized a large amount of power to surround and kill him, making it impossible for him to escape even if he wanted to.
In a critical situation, he remembered the dangerous existence of Taklimakan Lake. He simply fled to Lake Taklima, and before the enemy noticed anything was wrong, he released a large amount of carbon dioxide at the bottom of the lake in advance, solving all his troubles.
He didn't feel there was anything wrong with this act of taking advantage of others' advantage, nor did he feel that victory was too much.
In any case, through this method, he no longer needs to expend energy to kill people or continue to escape. Now he only needs to receive the trophies from the many corpses.
Well, receive the spoils.
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