28 US Cities Are Sinking and You Might Live in One

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]If you think living far away from the coast makes you safe, well, you're wrong. The ground beneath us is literally giving away.

[00:00:11]Every time we hear about sinking cities, we immediately picture coastal metropolises like Miami or New Orleans.

[00:00:18]It's not some kind of a geological glitch, but a serious threat of sinking into the earth for major inland hubs like Denver or Columbus.

[00:00:28]Zoom in at the US map. A massive 2025 study from Virginia Tech just exposed exactly how bad this underground crisis really is. Scientists examined 28 major cities in the US and revealed the terrifying truth. In 25 of those, at least 65% of the land area is actively collapsing.

[00:00:55]You have entire city blocks just dropping into the ground all at the exact same time. This is way bigger than just a local minor issue. It's more like a systematic breakdown. It's the right time to ask the crucial question, why is this happening?

[00:01:14]Try to forget about those complex climate debates for a second because the main cause is entirely mechanical.

[00:01:22]Scientists claimed that we are aggressively draining the ground from underneath ourselves. Math is simple.

[00:01:29]Massive urban populations require massive amounts of water. The easiest way to get it is to pump it out from the underground aquifers.

[00:01:39]Now, we need to think of the earth below like a giant water- fil sponge. As the water leaves those deep geological layers, the dry rocks and soil simply compress under its own weight, and all the concrete cities above. The ground has no choice but to cave in. Look at Houston, Texas. The city is subsiding at enormous speed, shifting the terrain into a massive topographical bowl. Or take Phoenix, Arizona, out in the desert. It's collapsing three and a half inches every single year.

[00:02:15]According to scientists, nowadays over 29,000 buildings across the US are sitting directly in extremely high risk zones. The land drops at different speeds, which means concrete foundations are violently cracking. And it's not only about our houses and skyscrapers.

[00:02:35]Also, vital infrastructure like highways and even gas lines are facing the exact same problem. We are actually watching live how the soil is swallowing entire cities.

[00:02:52]Humans are at the top of the food chain.

[00:02:55]But despite this, some creatures cause us a lot of trouble and we can't do anything about them.

[00:03:02]Look at these flies with red eyes and blue green bodies. These are some farmers worst nightmare in the United States of America. Meet the New World screworm flies. These little troublemakers have been munching on livestock from Florida to California for centuries, racking up some serious damage to the agricultural scene.

[00:03:22]To combat these pesky flies, the US Department of Agriculture dropped a whopping 15 million sterile screwworm larvai from helicopters along the Panama Colombia border. There's even a factory in Panama cranking out these sterile larae like it's factory fresh fruit.

[00:03:40]This action sounds weird, but it makes a lot of sense. The thing is, female flies only get one shot at mating in their entire lives. So, if they happen to mate with a sterile dude, that's it. No offspring ever.

[00:03:55]This clever trick means healthy screworms can't reproduce when surrounded by sterile pals, which keeps their numbers in check. But how do we make these male flies sterile in the first place? Simple. A little radiation zap does the trick. You throw a bunch of flies in a lab, give them a quick spin through an X-ray machine, and then drop them from a helicopter into the wild where their relatives are hanging out.

[00:04:21]If screw worms start making a comeback, inspectors hop on ATVs and cruise thousands of miles to hunt down any infected animals and stop the spread.

[00:04:31]There's no magic trick to wipe out these parasites completely, but the game plan is clear. Keep the sterile fly drops coming and stay one step ahead of these pesky little critters.

[00:04:43]Do you know why it's too dangerous to move animals from one habitat to another? There's a possibility that they won't encounter predators in the new area and will become an invasive species that will provoke an ecological disaster. Here's a simple example.

[00:04:58]In the 30s and the 20th century, farmers from Australia faced a serious problem.

[00:05:04]Cane beetles were spoiling sugar cane in the northern part of the country.

[00:05:08]Insects devoured a huge amount of the harvest and people couldn't stop it.

[00:05:13]They didn't want to spoil the cane with poisonous pesticides. So, they brought a group of cane toads from South America in the hope that the toads would eat the pests. But when these toads found themselves in the reed fields, they couldn't reach the bugs as they lived on tall reeds. The toads just couldn't jump at such height and get the pests. So instead of beetles, they began to eat other insects.

[00:05:39]Amphibians started multiplying at a tremendous rate. The female cane toad can lay about 30,000 eggs at a time.

[00:05:47]After 3 days, small tadpoles hatch from the eggs. They swim in the water for 20 weeks and then turn into grown-up toads that live from 5 to 10 years. Millions of jumping animals began taking over the entire northern part of the continent, destroying all the biodiversity around.

[00:06:05]Leaves, grass, insects, carryon. Toads ate all this and didn't leave food for other animals. The problem was that the toads turned out to be very hardy creatures. Heat, cold, rain, droughts, they could breed anywhere and nothing can stop them. But what about other animals? Australia is full of alligators, big birds, and other creatures that would love to feast on croaking amphibians.

[00:06:30]Yes, it's true. But any animal that tried to eat these toads didn't survive.

[00:06:37]The problem is that cane toads are venomous. There are special glands behind their eyes that produce strong toxins that cause serious health problems in any animal. Some farmers saw birds falling from the sky after they had swallowed these amphibians.

[00:06:53]More than 80 years have passed since farmers brought 100 cane toads to Australia. Now there are about 1.5 billion of them. They have already covered 386,000 square miles, which is about the same area as the states of Texas and Oklahoma combined. And so far, scientists and biologists haven't come up with an effective way to deal with them. People tried to catch them, but it was useless.

[00:07:22]Even if you catch 98 toads out of 100 next to a small pond, the two remaining toads can produce 30,000 eggs per night.

[00:07:30]Nature may be able to restore balance when some animals with immunity to toad toxins appear in Australia. But at the moment, cane toads are unstoppable.

[00:07:42]How can we stop the uncontrolled population of mosquitoes that are dangerous to humans? The correct answer is to create 735 million genetically modified mosquitoes and mix these two groups.

[00:07:56]All over the world, many species of mosquitoes carry infections that cause serious health problems to humans.

[00:08:03]Almost no one likes mosquitoes. These buzzing insects prevent us from sleeping and their bites are incredibly itchy.

[00:08:11]Many people would probably be happy if these creatures disappeared from the face of the earth. And scientists might have found a way to make this wish come true.

[00:08:22]Only female mosquitoes bite us because they need food to produce eggs. So scientists released genetically modified male mosquitoes with a special protein in their bodies. After two mosquitoes come into contact, this protein is transmitted from the male to the female and then prevents it from producing offspring. All this happens before they age when females begin to bite.

[00:08:46]So, females can't create offspring, which means they don't need to bite people and animals anymore. And the more of such proteins scientists spread, the smaller the mosquito population will be.

[00:08:58]It sounds good, but about 240,000 people have signed a petition to cancel this experiment.

[00:09:05]Many scientists believe that the disappearance of one insect species can lead to a biological catastrophe.

[00:09:12]Nature is a complex balanced system where the slightest change can lead to serious problems. Mosquitoes are a food source for many reptiles and amphibians.

[00:09:23]The extinction of mosquitoes can trigger the disappearance of many species. It's like a chain reaction of catastrophes, the end of which is unknown.

[00:09:33]Nevertheless, modified mosquitoes have already been released in Florida, and it seems that nothing terrible has happened. The good news is that people have fewer health problems after that.

[00:09:45]Moreover, since 2019, about 1.5 billion mosquitoes have been released worldwide.

[00:09:51]It has saved millions of lives and hasn't disrupted the delicate balance of nature yet. Recently, scientists have released another group of safe mosquitoes in East Africa. Well, let's hope that scientists have everything under control.

[00:10:08]Invasive species are not always mosquitoes, flies, or amphibians. These can also be large animals such as feral pigs or super pigs. These pigs are a mix of domestic swine and wild boar. There are already almost 7 million feral hogs in the south of the USA. Thanks to people's efforts, these animals haven't spread to the north yet, but the danger to the northern states comes from Canada.

[00:10:36]Pigs were brought there in the 80s to support agriculture. But in the early 2000s, wild boars lost their popularity.

[00:10:44]They just stayed in the wild and farmers were sure that those animals wouldn't survive the harsh Canadian winter. Oh, how wrong they were. Wild pigs turned out to be hardy, mobile, and capable of rapid reproduction.

[00:10:59]These animals dig and tear up the ground, eat almost everything they come across, and thus take food from other animals.

[00:11:07]By the way, other creatures can become their lunch, too. Wild pigs attack mice, geese, ducks, and some species of deer.

[00:11:15]They trample crops, grass, and flowers, and are not afraid of anything. They're like natural bulldozers. Any farm is in danger of extinction if it's in the path of thousands of super pigs and people can't do anything with them. The northern states understand that an invasion is imminent, so they're preparing for a long battle. Super pigs love swampy areas with tall grass.

[00:11:41]Canadian and American farmers will try to drive them into more open areas and fence those places off. The plan is not perfect, but it can slow the pigs down and save some time.