25 Places on Earth Humans Can Barely Survive

[00:00:00]Most of the planet is technically habitable.

[00:00:03]Most of it.

[00:00:05]But a lot of Earth is still actively trying to kill us.

[00:00:08]I'm talking about places where the air is toxic, temperatures swing 100° in a day, or the water pressure would crush you like a soda can.

[00:00:16]No sci-fi, no hypotheticals. These are real spots where just staying alive is a full-time job. I'm Mike with List25, and here are 25 places on Earth where humans can barely survive.

[00:00:30]25. The suffocating lake.

[00:00:33]In 1986, Lake Nyos burped up a massive cloud of carbon dioxide. Since CO2 is heavier than air, this invisible cloud rolled down in the surrounding valleys.

[00:00:44]Within hours, over 1,700 people and thousands of animals were dead from asphyxiation.

[00:00:50]Survivors just felt drowsy and passed out.

[00:00:53]Today, a piping system constantly vents the gas to keep it from building up again. But if that pipe fails, Lake is a ticking time bomb.

[00:01:02]24.

[00:01:04]The Danakil Depression.

[00:01:06]Sitting way below sea level in Ethiopia, the Danakil Depression looks like a different planet. You've got bubbling lava lakes, acid pools, and hydrothermal vents all baking in an average year-round temperature of 93° F that regularly spikes past 120.

[00:01:23]Yet, the Afar people have lived and traded salt here for centuries.

[00:01:28]It's crushing heat, toxic gas, and acid water all in one place.

[00:01:32]And people actually work right in the middle of it.

[00:01:35]23. The highest gold mine.

[00:01:38]Way up in the Peruvian Andes sits La Rinconada, the highest permanently inhabited town on Earth.

[00:01:44]About 50,000 people live here just to work a gold mine jammed inside a glacier.

[00:01:49]Up here, you're breathing half the oxygen you get at sea level. Add in freezing cold, zero sewage systems, and toxic mercury from the mining.

[00:01:58]Miners work 30 days for free and on day 31, they keep whatever gold they can carry.

[00:02:04]It's a brutal system designed for a totally brutal environment.

[00:02:08]22, the Gates of Hell.

[00:02:11]Back in 1971, Soviet engineers drilling for gas accidentally collapsed the ground into a massive cavern.

[00:02:18]To stop the methane from spreading, they lit it on fire figuring it would burn out in a few weeks.

[00:02:24]Well, it's been burning for over 50 years.

[00:02:28]The crater is over 200 ft across and pumps out intense heat and toxic fumes.

[00:02:33]Get too close without gear, you'll pass out and die.

[00:02:37]It's a massive continuously burning man-made mistake that we just can't seem to put out.

[00:02:43]21, the Challenger Deep.

[00:02:46]Almost 7 mi underwater, the Mariana Trench is the deepest known point on Earth.

[00:02:51]The water pressure here is over 1,000 times what you feel at sea level.

[00:02:56]If you were down there unprotected, your body would compress into a fraction of its size in milliseconds.

[00:03:02]It's pitch black, freezing cold, and arguably more hostile than the surface of the moon.

[00:03:08]Only a handful of people have ever made the trip down in highly specialized titanium subs.

[00:03:15]20, the Valley of Death.

[00:03:18]In Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, there's a valley that's been secretly killing animals for centuries.

[00:03:24]A volcanic vent at the top pumps out a heavy mix of toxic gases.

[00:03:29]Since the valley floor is low, the gas just pools there.

[00:03:33]Bears, foxes, and birds wander in and drop dead because the toxic layer is invisible and odorless.

[00:03:39]From the outside, it looks like a totally normal, beautiful valley.

[00:03:43]That's exactly what makes it so lethal.

[00:03:46]19, the Pitch Lake.

[00:03:49]Trinidad is home to the world's largest natural deposit of asphalt.

[00:03:53]It looks like a massive parking lot, but it's actually a churning pit of semi-solid bitumen, clay, and gas.

[00:04:00]Some parts hold your weight, others swallow you whole, and you can't tell the difference just by looking.

[00:04:08]Things that fell in thousands of years ago occasionally bubble back to the surface.

[00:04:12]You can take a guided tour, but those guides are strictly there to keep you from sinking into the earth.

[00:04:18]18, the deep Sahara.

[00:04:21]Most deserts kill you with heat.

[00:04:24]The Sahara does that, cooking the ground hot enough to fry an egg.

[00:04:27]But then night time hits, and the temperatures plummet 40°, bringing on severe hypothermia.

[00:04:34]If you walk out here without water, you're dead in hours.

[00:04:37]You sweat out fluids way faster than you can replace them.

[00:04:40]The Tuareg people have navigated this for centuries, but for anyone else, miscalculate your water out here, and your rescue simply won't reach you in time.

[00:04:49]17, the acid crater lake.

[00:04:53]At the top of Indonesia's Ijen volcano sits the world's largest highly acidic crater lake.

[00:04:59]It's absolutely stunning, but that turquoise water has a pH near zero, acidic enough to dissolve metal.

[00:05:07]Every day miners hike down into the crater to haul out heavy blocks of sulfur using wet rags as improvised gas masks.

[00:05:14]They face chronic lung and eye damage for just a few bucks a trip, working in one of the most chemically toxic environments on earth purely out of economic necessity.

[00:05:24]16, McMurdo Dry Valleys.

[00:05:28]When you picture Antarctica, you picture ice.

[00:05:31]But the McMurdo Dry Valleys are totally bare rock.

[00:05:34]It's freezing, relentlessly windy, and so dry that things just don't decompose.

[00:05:40]Seals that wandered in centuries ago are still perfectly preserved mummies.

[00:05:45]NASA actually uses this place to test Mars equipment.

[00:05:48]Without serious shelter and supplies, the air would suck the moisture right out of you, making it fatal in hours.

[00:05:55]15, Remote Heard Island.

[00:05:58]Heard Island has no people, no harbor, no runway, and absolutely zero shelter.

[00:06:04]It's dominated by 9,000-ft active volcano and surrounded by some of the most violent oceans on the planet. The winds whip around the globe with no landmass to break them up, making just landing a boat here a total nightmare.

[00:06:17]Scientific expeditions visit every few years, but staying alive requires a massive level of self-sufficiency.

[00:06:25]14, The Coldest Village.

[00:06:28]About 500 people live in Oymyakon, Russia, holding the record for the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth. It once hit -90° Fahrenheit.

[00:06:38]At that temperature, exposed skin gets frostbite in under 2 minutes, diesel fuel turns to jelly, and cars literally cannot be turned off or they'll never start again.

[00:06:48]Locals survive thanks to generations of adaptation, but the nearest decent town is a brutal 400-mi drive down the Road of Bones.

[00:06:57]13, The Skeleton Coast.

[00:07:00]The Namib is one of the oldest deserts on Earth, and parts of it see less than half an inch of rain a year.

[00:07:07]The coastline is literally called the Skeleton Coast because it's littered whale bones and wrecked ships.

[00:07:12]Ocean currents create massive fog banks, but almost no rain.

[00:07:17]Shipwreck survivors who washed up here usually die in anyway. You're slowly dying of thirst while staring at water you can't drink with nowhere to go.

[00:07:27]12, The Highest Battlefield.

[00:07:30]Since 1984, Indian and Pakistani armies have faced off on the Siachen Glacier, making it the highest battlefield on Earth.

[00:07:38]But honestly, the mountain is doing most of the killing.

[00:07:42]More soldiers die from frostbite, avalanches, and altitude sickness than enemy fire.

[00:07:47]It drops to -76° F in the winter and the oxygen is halved.

[00:07:53]It's a brutal environment that would challenge elite mountaineers.

[00:07:56]Yet troops have fought over this ice for 40 straight years.

[00:08:00]11. Death Valley Basin.

[00:08:03]In 1913, Death Valley recorded an air temperature of 134° F, the highest reliably recorded temperature in history.

[00:08:13]The valley sits below sea level, acting like a giant basin that traps and compresses hot air.

[00:08:18]The ground literally gets hot enough to cook food and summer humidity routinely drops below 10%.

[00:08:24]It's a national park, but the constant stream of emergency rescues every summer proves exactly how fast this heat will kill an unprepared hiker.

[00:08:33]10. The underground fire.

[00:08:37]Back in 1962, a coal seam caught fire underneath the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania.

[00:08:42]It's been burning underground ever since and probably will continue for another 250 years.

[00:08:48]The fire ate away the coal, leaving massive sinkholes and vents shooting toxic combustion gas straight out of the ground.

[00:08:55]The earth gets so hot that snow melts instantly.

[00:08:59]It turned a totally normal American town into a toxic collapsing wasteland all from one fire nobody could put out.

[00:09:06]Nine. The Boiling Lake.

[00:09:09]Deep in the rainforests of Dominica is a lake that literally boils.

[00:09:13]It sits over an active volcanic vent, keeping the water churning at around 190° F. The whole surrounding area is in a minefield of hot springs and mud pots that can blast scalding water without warning.

[00:09:26]You can actually hike to it, which means casual tourists are regularly walking right into one of the most geothermally explosive and deadly valleys on Earth.

[00:09:36]Eight. The Desolation Islands.

[00:09:39]They call these the Desolation Islands.

[00:09:42]The name is spot-on.

[00:09:43]Sitting way down in the southern Indian Ocean, it's 2,000 mi from civilization.

[00:09:49]There are no trees because the brutal 90-mph winds rip them right out.

[00:09:54]The weather brings about 300 stormy days a year.

[00:09:57]It's strictly maintained by a rotating crew of tough scientists.

[00:10:01]The first explorer to land here said it felt like the end of the world. He wasn't wrong.

[00:10:07]Seven, the driest desert.

[00:10:10]The Atacama is the driest non-polar desert on Earth.

[00:10:14]We aren't talking low rain.

[00:10:16]Some weather stations have recorded literally zero precipitation for decades.

[00:10:21]High mountains block out storms and cold ocean currents kill evaporation.

[00:10:25]NASA tests Mars rovers here because soil samples from the dry spots contain absolutely zero living organisms.

[00:10:32]It's so dry, it hasn't just crossed the threshold for human survival, it crossed the threshold for any life at all.

[00:10:40]Six, Tristan da Cunha.

[00:10:42]About 250 people live on this remote island.

[00:10:46]There's no airports and no way on or off except by boat.

[00:10:49]The sea is often so violent that scheduled supply ships just can't land.

[00:10:54]If you have a medical emergency, evacuation to South Africa takes days.

[00:10:59]Assuming the weather even lets a boat move.

[00:11:02]In 1961, their volcano erupted and everyone had to flee.

[00:11:06]Most actually came back, completely accepting that if things go wrong, help is weeks away.

[00:11:13]Five, Hawaiian lava fields.

[00:11:17]Hawaii's Kilauea volcano has been erupting almost non-stop since 1983.

[00:11:22]Where the lava hits the ocean, it creates a toxic plume that causes instant chemical burns to your eyes and lungs.

[00:11:29]Walking out on the fresh lava fields is basically playing [music] roulette.

[00:11:33]The crust might look solid, but be only an inch thick, hiding a 2,000° lava tube right below your feet.

[00:11:40]It's constantly creating new land, but doing it in the deadliest way possible.

[00:11:46]Four, remote Puncak Jaya.

[00:11:49]Just 4° off the equator, Puncak Jaya is a massive mountain capped with glaciers.

[00:11:55]It sits over 16,000 ft high, mixing extreme altitude, intense tropical sun, and violent storms. Acclimatizing here is brutally hard. Add in technical rock climbing and dense jungle tracking just to reach the base camp.

[00:12:10]It requires massive logistics, permits, and dealing with remote terrain.

[00:12:14]It's arguably the hardest major peak on Earth simply to get to.

[00:12:18]Three, Yellowstone Supervolcano.

[00:12:22]Right under one of America's most popular national parks, sits a massive supervolcano.

[00:12:27]While a full eruption probably isn't happening tomorrow, the park is packed with immediate deadly hazards right now.

[00:12:35]Boiling mud pots, acid pools, and geysers can cause third-degree burns in seconds.

[00:12:41]Just a few years ago, a guy slipped into a thermal pool, and the superheated acid completely dissolved him before rescue could even reach him.

[00:12:48]Two, the High Arctic.

[00:12:51]Up in the High Arctic, the sun vanishes for months at a time.

[00:12:54]>> [music] >> The temperature drops so low that the windchill hits -90° Fahrenheit.

[00:13:00]Exposed skin freezes in under 30 seconds.

[00:13:03]Batteries die. Once again, fuel turns to gel. And the total darkness messes with your brain.

[00:13:09]A few hardcore research stations operate up here, but their survival relies 100% on perfectly engineered infrastructure.

[00:13:18]If the heater breaks down, the Arctic kills you fast.

[00:13:22]One, the open ocean.

[00:13:25]Far from the coast, the open ocean is the largest and most hostile environment on the planet.

[00:13:31]Without a survival suit, you'll die of hypothermia within hours almost anywhere.

[00:13:36]You have no fresh water, no food, no shelter from the sun, and no stable ground.

[00:13:41]Rescue is incredibly rare because the distances are just too vast.

[00:13:47]Unless you hit the absolute jackpot of luck with a passing ship, an unequipped person simply will not survive.

[00:13:55]From massive tourist spots to total isolation, what these 25 places share is physics and chemistry our bodies just weren't built for.

[00:14:04]The craziest part isn't the danger. It's that humans are living and working in some of these spots right now, relying on centuries of hardcore survival skills.

[00:14:13]The safe parts of Earth are a lot smaller than your map makes it look.

[00:14:17]If extreme spots are your thing, click the video on screen to watch 25 most extreme places on Earth.

[00:14:22]As always, I'm Mike McEachran. Stay curious, and I'll see you in the next one.