Even Locals are Afraid to Live in these Villages

[00:00:00]Every village on this list exists right now. [music] People are sleeping in them tonight. On crumbling cliffs, next to active volcanoes, on islands disappearing into the ocean, and in places so extreme their own governments [music] have tried to get them to leave.

[00:00:17]These are not ruins or ghost towns.

[00:00:20]These are places people still call home.

[00:00:23]Even when survival is not guaranteed.

[00:00:27]Gamsudul, Dagistan, Russia.

[00:00:31]High in the mountains of Dagistan, Russia, sits what remains of Gamsudul, a village of stone houses built into a cliff face at 1,400 m above sea level.

[00:00:42]The village is estimated to be between 2,000 and 5,000 years old. And at [music] its peak, it was home to up to 3,000 people. It had shops, a post office, and a hospital, all perched on the edge of a mountain that no road has ever reached. Starting in the late 1950s, residents began to leave. Life on a cliff with no road access and no modern infrastructure was becoming impossible to sustain. By 1970, the population had fallen to 200. By 2002, only 17 people remained. The last resident, [music] a man named Abdul Shalilof, refused to leave as the village crumbled around him. He called himself the mayor and became known across Russia through television reports about his solitary life at the top of the mountain. He died in 2015 [music] and Gamsudul became a ghost village.

[00:01:38]Today, the buildings are collapsing slowly into the cliff face. No one lives there. Not because a disaster destroyed it, but because life in a location that extreme simply could not hold.

[00:01:53]Gamsodel stood for thousands of years, survived wars and centuries of harsh winters and was [music] not killed by any single event. It was abandoned because even the people who built it eventually admitted the land had won.

[00:02:08]Kulhara, Rajasthan, India. In 1825, the entire population of Kuldara vanished overnight. Around 1,500 people from Kulara and 83 surrounding villages disappeared in a single night, leaving behind full houses, untouched belongings, and no explanation.

[00:02:30]According to local accounts, the Paliwal Brahman community, which had lived there for 500 years, fled to escape a tyrannical local official named Salam Singh. Before leaving, they are said to have placed a curse on the land, declaring that no one would ever successfully settle there again. Every attempt to build a permanent settlement in Kulhara since 1825 has failed. The Archaeological Survey of India has banned entry after dark. Visitors who have spent time inside the village after sunset report disorientation, equipment failures, and unexplained sounds. The Indian Paranormal Society conducted an investigation and reported activity they could not account for. Whether the cause is supernatural, psychological, or simply the weight of a place that carries 200 years of abandonment, the effect is the same. No one has lived in Kulhara since. The ruins are preserved in near perfect condition. Doorways still stand. Streets are still intact, but the silence inside Kulhara is absolute and locals from nearby villages refuse to go near it at night. Whatever drove 1,500 people to vanish in a single night. And whatever has kept the land empty for two centuries since, it is not broken.

[00:03:50]Bhangar Rajasthan, India. Bhanger is officially the most haunted place in India. Not according to legend alone but according to the archaeological survey of India which has posted a government notice at its entrance forbidding entry before sunrise and after sunset. The sign reads entering the premises of Bhar before sunrise and after sunset is strictly [music] prohibited. No other heritage site in India carries this restriction. Locals say anyone who enters after dark does not come back.

[00:04:23]Built in the 17th century, Ponger was once a fortified city with temples, markets, and palaces. According to the most well-known account, a sorcerer placed a curse on the city after a failed attempt to use dark magic to win the love of a princess. Every structure within the fort's boundaries is roofless, not [music] just from decay, but because locals claim any roof that is built there collapses. Historians point to a famine in 1720 [music] and political instability as the likely reasons for the city's abandonment, but the physical facts on the ground have never been fully explained. [music] Visitors consistently report the same experiences. Disorientation, electronic equipment failure, sounds with no visible source. The government's formal ban on nighttime entry adds official weight to what might otherwise be dismissed as folklore. Whether the cause is history, geology, acoustics or something else, Bhangar is a place the Indian government itself has decided people should not be in after dark. And that is a fact. Whatever you believe about the reason, Bolivia. The only road connecting Koro to the rest of Bolivia is known simply as the death road. The North Jungus Road is a 64 km stretch of dirt and gravel [music] cut into cliffs above drops of more than 1,000 m. Before a bypass was completed in 2006, [music] between 200 and 300 people died on this road every single year.

[00:06:01]The Interamerican Development Bank formally called it the most dangerous road on Earth in 1995.

[00:06:09]Built in [music] the 1930s by Paraguayan prisoners of war, the road was carved directly into near vertical cliff faces at altitudes [music] up to 4,700 m. It is so narrow in places that two [music] vehicles cannot safely pass. There are no guardrails along most of its length.

[00:06:27]Waterfalls pour directly onto [music] the road surface, creating permanent mud and blind corners. When vehicles went off the edge, the drops were so deep that recovery operations were often impossible. Entire buses full of passengers [music] plunged into gorges that could not be reached on foot. Even after the bypass removed most of the traffic, the death road is still in use by cyclists seeking the descent and by residents of villages in the youngest region who have no other route home. The people of Koro have grown up knowing that the road [music] connecting them to the world has killed thousands. It is not an abstract risk.

[00:07:07]It is the way to [music] the market. For them, the death road is simply the road.

[00:07:13]Kavalina, Alaska, USA. Kivalina is a village of approximately 400 Inupia people living on a narrow barrier island in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska. The island is 8 mi long, in some places less than a/4 mile wide, and it is disappearing. Erosion, rising seas, and the loss of sea ice that once shielded the coastline from storm surge are stripping the island away. The US Army Corps of Engineers has estimated the cost of relocating Kalina at between $100 million and $400 million. The village has nowhere higher to go. Storms that were once blocked by thick sea ice now hit the shore directly, removing meters of land per year. Buildings are cracking. The runway connecting Kavalina to the outside world is at risk. The community has voted to relocate, but the process is trapped in a cycle of funding disputes and bureaucratic delays that have left 400 people stranded on land that is visibly shrinking beneath them. The Inupia people of Kivalina have lived on this island for thousands of years. Their culture, their food sources, and their entire identity are tied to the Arctic coast. Leaving is not simply a matter of packing and moving. It means dismantling a community that has survived in one of the harshest environments on Earth longer than most civilizations have existed.

[00:08:43]The island is going. The [snorts] only question now is whether the people will get out before it takes them with it.

[00:08:51]Shisharf, Alaska, USA. Shisharf is another Inupat village on a barrier island, and it is facing the same fate as Kolina, only further along. The island has lost between 100 and 200 ft of land to erosion over the past 30 years. Homes have already fallen into the sea. In 2016, the 600 residents of Shisharf voted to relocate [music] their entire village. The estimated cost was $180 million.

[00:09:24]As of the time of this video, most residents are still there waiting for the process to move. The village sits [music] just 5 mi south of the Arctic Circle with no road access to the outside world. Perafrost, which once gave the island structural stability, is thawing as temperatures in the region rise at twice the global average.

[00:09:46]Without frozen ground beneath them, buildings sink, foundations crack, the land loses the strength to hold structures [music] upright.

[00:09:55]Shisharf has been inhabited by the Anupiad people for 4,000 [music] years.

[00:10:00]Elders there have watched the landscape change beyond recognition within a single lifetime. The ice they once read like a map has become unreliable.

[00:10:11]The island their community [music] was built on is no longer the same island they voted to leave. But leaving a place your people have lived for 4,000 years even when staying is dangerous is not something that happens quickly or without grief. Longear bayan Swalbard Norway.

[00:10:32]>> [snorts] >> Longear Bayan is the world's northernmost town, sitting at 78° north on the Swalbard Archipelago between Norway and the North Pole. It operates under rules that exist nowhere else. It is illegal to die in Longear Bayan.

[00:10:47]Anyone who is terminally ill must be evacuated by air before death occurs.

[00:10:53]The town's cemetery stopped accepting new burials in 1950 after it was found that perafrost was preserving bodies and old graves were found to contain active remnants of the 1918 Spanish flu virus.

[00:11:07]Polar bears outnumber the human population of around 2,400 [music] residents. It is required by law to carry a firearm or be accompanied by someone who does when leaving the town limits. Avalanches are a regular hazard.

[00:11:23]In 2015 and 2017, deadly slides destroyed homes and killed residents.

[00:11:28]Climate change is accelerating the risk.

[00:11:30]The perafrost holding the surrounding hillsides in place is thawing, making the slopes above the town increasingly unstable. The government has since demolished entire neighborhoods that fell within avalanche risk zones.

[00:11:45]Despite all of this, Longyear Bayern has a university, hospitals, and a population that [music] chooses to be there. But it operates under a constant awareness that the environment is hostile by default. You cannot get sick enough to die there. You cannot be buried there. You cannot walk outside the town without protection from predators that treat humans as prey.

[00:12:09]Longyear Bayern is a place where civilization exists at the pleasure of the Arctic, not the other way around.

[00:12:16]Tana Island, Vanuatu. On the island of Tana in the Pacific nation of Vanuatu, the Yasur volcano has been erupting almost continuously for at least 800 years. Locals living in villages on and around its slopes go to sleep each night to the sound of explosions.

[00:12:34]The ground shakes, the sky glows orange, ash falls like rain. And yet, the communities surrounding Yasour are some of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the Pacific. Maintained by the Teneise people who have a deep spiritual connection to the volcano beside which they have lived for centuries. Yasour is classified as one of the world's most accessible and consistently active volcanoes. Eruptions happen multiple times per hour. Lava bombs, chunks of molten rock, are periodically launched beyond the crater rim. [music] In 2016, a tourist was killed after being struck by volcanic debris on the crater. The danger zone around Yasour shifts depending on activity level, and villages occasionally require evacuation when eruption intensity increases. The ash covering crops and rooftops is not occasional. It is a permanent feature of daily life. The Tanese people do not live near Yasour purely out of poverty or lack of options. They live there because they believe Yasur is sacred and because the fertile volcanic soil produces crops that sustain their communities. The danger is known and accepted. Every generation grows up with the sound of the volcano as the background to their lives. For them, Yasur is not a threat to be evacuated from. It is home. Danakill depression, Ethiopia.

[00:14:01]The Danakill Depression in northeastern Ethiopia is one of the lowest, hottest, and most geologically violent places on Earth where human beings still live. The average annual temperature is around 34° C. But that is the average, not the peak.

[00:14:18]In summer months, surface temperatures exceed 50° C. The landscape is covered in acid pools with a pH close to zero, sulfur vents that spray [music] toxic gas and hydrothermal fields that bubble at over 100° C.

[00:14:35]Locals have called it [music] the gateway to hell. Scientists have described it as one of the most hostile environments [music] on the planet. The Afar people have lived in and around the Danakill Depression for centuries, surviving by harvesting salt from vast salt flats. A trade [music] that has sustained their economy since ancient times. Camel caravans that carry slabs of salt out of the depression travel routes unchanged for hundreds [music] of years. There are no paved roads into the deepest parts of the depression. And until recently, the journey from the nearest city [music] took more than a day by camel. Armed conflict between Afar clans over salt and water resources [music] has historically made the region dangerous beyond its natural conditions alone.

[00:15:20]Sandstorms here are called fire wind.

[00:15:23]Superheated gusts capable of causing rapid dehydration and death in open terrain. The thin crust around acid pools can give way without warning, dropping a person into boiling water below. Despite all of this, the Afar communities have not left. They have developed knowledge of the landscape that allows them to move through it safely. Knowledge passed through generations, not written down and not available [music] to outsiders.

[00:15:50]The Danacle depression is not survivable by accident. It requires generations of understanding and the people who carry that understanding are still there. Mani Nazer, Cairo, Egypt.

[00:16:04]On the northeastern edge of Cairo sits Mani Nasair, a neighborhood of between 60,000 and 70,000 people who live and work in one of the largest waste processing communities in the world.

[00:16:17]Known widely as Garbage City, the area functions as Cairo's informal rubbish collection and recycling system.

[00:16:24]Residents known as the zabalene, meaning garbage people, collect waste from across the city, haul it back to the neighborhood, and sort it by hand in the streets, on rooftops, and in their homes. The conditions in Mount Naser are dangerous by measurable standards.

[00:16:40]Mountains of waste line every street.

[00:16:43]Disease risk is high. Air quality is poor from decomposing organic material.

[00:16:49]Children sort through rubbish alongside adults [music] from a young age. In 2009, the government ordered the mass slaughter of pigs that had been used to process organic waste, creating a collapse in the neighborhood's waste management system and a significant public health [music] problem that took years to recover from. What is often missed in accounts of garbage city is what the Zabalene have built within it.

[00:17:13]Behind the piles of waste carved into the cliffs at the edge of the neighborhood are churches, schools, and community murals. The Zabalene recycle up to 80% of the waste they collect. A rate no industrial system operating in Cairo has matched. For the people who live in Maniader, Garbage City is not a place they are trapped in. It is a place they built, run, and have sustained for generations through their own ingenuity.

[00:17:41]Supai, Arizona, USA. Supai is the only village in the United States that still receives its mail by mule. It sits at the bottom of Havasu Canyon, a side branch of the Grand Canyon, reachable only by a 10 km trail by helicopter or on horseback. There are no roads in or out. The 208 members of the Havasupi tribe who live there are served by a post office with the most remote zip code in the continental United States.

[00:18:10]Every piece of mail, every supply, and in [music] many cases, every medical resource must travel into the canyon on the back of an animal.

[00:18:20]The isolation is not simply inconvenient. It is dangerous. Medical emergencies require helicopter evacuation, which can be delayed by weather or equipment issues. The village sits directly below the famous Havsu Falls in an area that has proven highly vulnerable to flooding. In 2008, a dam failure sent a wall of water through Supai, destroying homes and infrastructure. Residents were evacuated by air. Repair [music] work took years.

[00:18:50]And then they came back. The Havasupai people have lived in this canyon for centuries. Their name means people of the blue green water. Their connection to Havasu Canyon [music] predates any modern boundary drawn around it. The isolation that makes their lives logistically difficult is the same isolation that [music] preserved their community, their language, and their land. The mule trail is not a quirk. It is the only way they chose to live in a place most people could not reach even if they wanted to. Bandapur, Nepal.

[00:19:25]Bandapur is a hilltop village in central Nepal. A place of preserved old buildings and wide valley views and one built directly over one of the most seismically active zones on earth. Nepal sits at the collision point of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, a geological process that builds the Himalayas higher each year and that produces earthquakes with devastating regularity.

[00:19:51]In April 2015, a magnitude 7.8 8 earthquake struck Nepal, killing nearly 9,000 people and injuring more than 22,000.

[00:20:01]The region near Bandapur was severely affected and the older brick construction throughout the area showed exactly how vulnerable it was. The earthquake risk in central Nepal is not an occasional threat. It is a permanent condition. Scientists have long warned that the main frontal thrust fault running through Nepal could produce a magnitude 8 or greater earthquake at any point. A 2015 study warned that a major rupture could kill tens of thousands in minutes. Buildings in Bandapur, including many traditional brick structures, are not engineered to survive that scale of event. The 2015 quake made clear what the consequences of that gap look like. And yet Bandapur was rebuilt. The people who lived there before the earthquake came back. Some rebuilt their original structures. The reasons are layered. Land, family, history, livelihood, and the reality that for most residents, there was no realistic alternative. The beauty of Bandapur's hilltop and the danger beneath it occupy the same ground. The people who live there know both of these things and stay. Linkanatada, Peru.

[00:21:17]Linkinatada sits at 5,100 m above sea level in the Peruvian Andes, the highest permanently inhabited settlement on Earth. The air holds roughly half the oxygen available [music] at sea level.

[00:21:30]Altitude sickness is not a risk for new arrivals. It is [music] a baseline experience. For the approximately 50,000 people who live there, that altitude is simply the price of access to the only economy available. Gold mining. Mining in La Rinkanatada operates under a system called Kakoro. Miners work for free for 30 days and on the 31st day, they are [music] permitted to take whatever ore they can carry in a single load. There is no salary, no safety net, and no benefits. Accidents in the mines are common and often fatal. Mercury [music] used to separate gold from ore is discharged into the water supply and soil. Mercury poisoning among residents [music] has been documented by researchers and is widespread. There is no sewage system. Waste runs directly through the town. At night, temperatures at Linkanada regularly fall well below freezing. In winter, they can drop to minus25° C. The nearest major city is hours away on largely unpaved roads.

[00:22:35]Medical care is extremely limited. And yet, tens of thousands of people chose to live at the top of a glacier in the most physiologically hostile, permanently settled place on Earth.

[00:22:47]Because the gold in the mountain is the only economy they can reach. Linkonada is not a place people stumbled into.

[00:22:54]They climbed to the top of the world to get there. Izzu Oshima, Japan.

[00:23:00]Izuoshima is a volcanic island about 100 km south of Tokyo, home to around 7,500 people and one of Japan's most active volcanoes, Mount Mahara. The island has erupted repeatedly throughout its history with a major eruption in 1986 [music] forcing the evacuation of all 10,000 residents for several months. But volcanic activity is only one of the dangers that define life on Isuoshima.

[00:23:30]In October 2013, Typhoon WIFA made direct landfall on the island, triggering massive landslides that killed 39 people, one of the deadliest single disaster events on a Japanese island in modern times. The 2013 disaster revealed a specific danger that is unique to Izu Oshima.

[00:23:52]Past volcanic eruptions [music] had deposited thick layers of loose ash and debris across the island's hillsides.

[00:23:59]When the typhoon's rainfall hit those slopes, the material became unstable almost instantly, sending walls of mud and debris through villages at speed.

[00:24:09]The combination of volcanic deposit and typhoon season rainfall creates a hazard profile found in few other places. And Izzuima sits in the middle of one of the most typhoon active ocean corridors on the planet. After 2013, some residents relocated. Most stayed. Izzizuima has fishing, agriculture, and tourism built partly around Mount Mihara itself. The volcanic soil is fertile. The hot springs are wellnown. The same geology that generates the danger also generates the conditions that make life viable.

[00:24:42]Residents of Izuima have lived with volcanic eruptions and typhoon seasons their entire lives. They made a different calculation about where home is. They are still there. Kiraabati, Pacific Ocean.

[00:24:57]The Republic of Kiraabati is a Pacific island nation made up of 33 atals spread across an area of ocean roughly the size of the continental United States. Most of Kiraabati sits no more than 2 m above sea level. On South Terawa, the most densely populated atal, approximately 63,000 people live on a strip of land so low and narrow that the ocean is visible from almost any point. King tides regularly flood homes, contaminate freshwater supplies, and destroy crops.

[00:25:32]What is happening to Kiraabati right now is not a future scenario. It is already the present. Climate scientists have consistently identified Kiraabati as one of the nations most likely to become entirely uninhabitable within this century. Salt intrusion is destroying the freshwater lands beneath the atoles.

[00:25:54]Coastal erosion removes land year after year. In 2014, the Kiraabati government purchased land in Fiji as a contingency relocation option. [music] The first national government in modern history to formally prepare for the possibility of becoming a nation without land. The Iiciabati people have lived on these atoles for over 3,000 years. Their identity, their ancestors, and their entire relationship with the sea are tied to land that may not exist within a generation. Former President Anode Tong spent years before international bodies describing the situation with the words, "We are already dying."

[00:26:36]The villages of Kiribati are not impossible by choice. They are impossible by circumstance and the clock is running. Mosenrem, India. Mosenrem in the Megallaya state of northeastern India is the wetest place on earth.

[00:26:53]Average annual rainfall exceeds 11,870 mm, nearly 12 m per year. London receives around 600 mm annually by comparison. During the monsoon season, which runs from June through September, the rain falls so heavily and so constantly that residents have traditionally fashioned portable grass and bamboo shields called nups, worn like a personal roof just to move [music] between buildings. A standard umbrella is not adequate. The rainfall is structurally destructive. Landslides are a recurring seasonal event. Roads wash out. Bridges are swept away.

[00:27:33]Flooding isolates villages for days or weeks at a time. In 2022, catastrophic floods and landslides across Megala killed dozens of people and displaced thousands, blocking main routes and cutting communities off from outside help. Mossenramm and the surrounding area experience this cycle not as an occasional disaster but as a regular feature of the calendar. Despite this, Mosen has been continuously inhabited for centuries. The same monsoon that makes life dangerous also feeds the rivers and forests the local Casi people have depended on for generations. The region's ancient root bridges, [music] living structures made from the trained roots of rubber fig trees grown across rivers over decades, are an adaptation to a landscape that floods regularly and destroys [music] anything that is not alive. Mossen is a place that demands ingenuity simply to exist in the people who live there have been providing it for a very long time. Miyakima, Japan.

[00:28:38]On the Japanese island of Miyakima, residents are required by law to carry a gas mask at all times. This is not a historical policy or an emergency measure. [music] It is a daily legal requirement. The reason Mount Oyama, the island's central volcano, continuously releases toxic sulfur dioxide gas at levels that can be lethal without warning. Sensors across the island trigger alarms when gas concentrations reach dangerous thresholds, and residents must be able to seal their masks within seconds of an alert. In 2000, [music] Mount Oyama erupted with enough force to trigger the mandatory evacuation of all 3,800 residents. The entire island was emptied. Residents were relocated to mainland Japan for 4 and a half years, the longest volcanic evacuation in Japanese history.

[00:29:34]When they were finally allowed to return in 2005, they came back to homes buried in ash, destroyed infrastructure, and an island still venting active gas. The gas mask requirement was implemented as a permanent condition of residency. Today, approximately 2,500 people live on Miyakajima. There are schools, a hospital, and a working fishing economy.

[00:29:59]Life continues as it does anywhere, except that every person on the island is prepared at any moment to seal their face against air that could kill them.

[00:30:09]Children grow up with gas mask drills the way children elsewhere practice fire safety. The volcano that emptied the island is still active. The alarms still sound. The masks are always within reach. Newk, Alaska, USA. [music] Newk is a UPIC native village in western Alaska, [music] and it has the distinction of being the first US community in history to complete a full climate-driven relocation.

[00:30:36]The village sits on the Ninglick River, where erosion has been stripping away land at a rate of up to 70 ft per year.

[00:30:44]perafrost thaw, declining sea ice, and intensifying storms combined to make the original site physically unsustainable.

[00:30:53]By the time relocation began in earnest, the riverbank had closed to within meters of the village's key infrastructure. The process of moving new took decades. Discussions about relocation began as early as 1994. A new site called Murvvic, meaning getting water from the spring, was identified 9 miles away. The estimated relocation cost ran [music] between 80 and $130 million.

[00:31:23]Funding came in pieces over many years, and as [music] of the mid 2020s, more than half of Newk's population had moved to Murdervik, while a significant number remained at the original site waiting.

[00:31:36]The river keeps coming. What new talk represents is larger than one village.

[00:31:41]Alaska has more than 30 native communities that need to relocate due to erosion, flooding, and perafrost failure. The total infrastructure protection cost across those communities is [music] projected at $3.45 billion over 50 years.

[00:31:58]New is both a cautionary example and a test case. Proof that relocation is possible and proof of how slow, painful, and expensive it is to move a community that has lived in one place for thousands of years. The original site will eventually be gone. The land beneath it is already leaving. Sero Rico, Pottoy, Bolivia.

[00:32:22]Terror Rico, rich mountain towers above the city of Poty in Bolivia [music] and has been continuously mined since 1545.

[00:32:31]In nearly 500 years of extraction, [music] an estimated 8 million people have died inside or on its slopes.

[00:32:39]Colonial era forced labor killed indigenous workers by the [music] hundreds of thousands. Deaths have continued at a lower but still significant rate ever since. Miners working inside Sero Rico today operate in tunnels without adequate ventilation, breathing silica [music] dust that causes silicosis, a fatal lung disease, often within a decade of starting work.

[00:33:01]The average life expectancy of a minor at Sero Rico [music] is roughly 40 to 45 years. The mountain itself is collapsing. Centuries of extraction have left Saro Rico honeycombed with tunnels so dense that parts of the peak have already caved in. The mountain has visibly shrunk. A 2011 assessment identified a major sinkhole near the summit and international mining organizations warned that uncontrolled extraction was accelerating the collapse. The Bolivian government listed Sero Rico as a world heritage site in danger. The mining continued regardless.

[00:33:38]The communities on the slopes of Sero Rico [music] in the neighborhoods clinging to the mountain above Poty send men into the tunnels every day. They do so not because they are unaware of the danger. They do so because the mountain is the only economy they have. Tero Rico has been consuming miners for nearly 500 years and the men going in tomorrow know exactly what it has done to the men who came before them.

[00:34:05]Sundustra coastal villages Indonesia.

[00:34:08]The coastal villages stretching along the Sunda Strait in Indonesia between the western tip of Java and the southern coast of Sumatra live in the direct path of one of the most dangerous volcanoes on earth. Anak Krakatau which means child of Krakatoa sits at the center of the straight and has been building and erupting since it rose from the sea in 1930.

[00:34:31]Scientists had warned for years before 2018 that the volcano's steep southwestern flank was at risk of collapse and could generate a tsunami with almost no warning. On December 22nd, 2018, that is exactly what happened. A section of Anak Crakatau's flank collapsed during an eruption, displacing the water around it and sending a tsunami into coastal communities on both sides of the straight. Because the tsunami was triggered by a volcanic landslide rather than an earthquake, no seismic warning was detected, no alert was issued.

[00:35:08]Waves struck the coastline at night during a busy holiday weekend with no prior warning whatsoever. The official death toll reached 437 people. Over 31,000 were injured. Thousands were displaced. Entire beachfront communities were wiped out in minutes. The coastal villages that were destroyed were rebuilt. People moved back. Ana Krakatau is still active, still erupting, and still capable of generating another tsunami with zero warning time.

[00:35:41]The same communities that were struck in 2018 are occupied tonight. Scientists have continued to raise concerns about the stability of the volcano's remaining flanks. The people living along the Sunda Strait know what happened in 2018.

[00:35:57]They know where they live and most of them stayed. Every village on this list is occupied right now. The land beneath some of them is eroding. The air above others is toxic and the people living in them have made a calculation that [music] most of us will never have to make. That the place they call home is worth [music] the risk of staying in it.

[00:36:19]If you enjoyed this video and want to learn more beyond belief facts, [music] click on the video appearing on your screen now and remember to hit the subscribe button.