This Lake Suffocated an Entire Village

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]This is the lake that killed people in their sleep. This is Lake Nyos in Cameroon, and for years volcanic carbon dioxide was leaking beneath it. But the gas didn't escape, it stayed trapped at the bottom under pressure. But one night in 1986, something disturbed the water and the lake exhaled. A white cloud rolled down. Carbon dioxide is heavier than air, so it crawled along the ground into the villages and pushed oxygen away. They suffocated without ever seeing the thing that killed them. By morning, more than 1,700 people were dead and the lake had turned rust red, not from blood, but from ancient deep water finally reaching the surface.

[00:00:33]Today, pipes slowly bleed the gas out because Lake Nyos isn't just a lake, it's a volcano holding its breath.