The five scariest places in nature

Good old Mother Nature, brings us rain, land for growing crops, and giant mountains that spew molten rock on anything close to them. She can be beautiful in many ways but every now and again creates something on earth that reminds people just how dangerous she can be. Here are the five scariest places in nature.

The River Strid – Yorkshire

Located on part of the river Wharfe running through Yorkshire is a small stretch of water called the Strid, and it is widely regarded as being the most dangerous river section on earth. Most of the river is quite safe and flows pleasantly through the English countryside, but when it gets to the section known as the Strid, this previously safe river enters a section that has a 100% death rate. It hasn’t been officially confirmed that 100% of people who fall in die, but it also hasn’t been disproven as there is no evidence of anyone making it out alive.

The reason it’s so dangerous is because the river thins out in the section leading up to the Strid, greatly increasing the flow rate. It then rapidly washes over a series of small waterfalls, aerating the water to a point where it becomes less dense than the human body, making it impossible to swim in. The real danger is the underground cave system that the river has washed out, which is permanently home to a violent whirling current of water that constantly smashes against the rocks. If you fell in the Strid, you’d sink like a brick before being repeatedly smashed against the sides of the underwater caves by a current strong enough to demolish a car.

The gates of hell – Turkmenistan

Officially known as the Darvaza gas crater, this 230 feet wide hole has been burning for over 40 years, and doesn’t look like it’s going to stop any time soon. It all started in 1971 when a soviet drilling rig punctured a huge gas-filled cavern which caused the drilling machine to fall inside. The hole then began to send dangerous gases into the atmosphere at a rapid rate and to avoid yet another massive soviet disaster, someone thought it would be a good idea to set it on fire and let it burn itself out.

They thought it would only burn for a few weeks, but this estimate was a complete guess and no one had any idea how much gas was actually down there. Today the hole is still burning at the same rate it has done for decades, and doesn’t show any signs of stopping, but it has made the area a popular place for tourists to visit and camp next to.

Poison cave – Romania

In 1986, a team of geologists were digging a small shaft to research the rock formations of the area when they managed to puncture the roof of a small cave which has come to earn the name “poison cave”. Its real name is actually movile cave but the reason it’s so dangerous is because it has been sealed off from the outside world for an estimated 5.5 million years.

(One of the creatures that has adapted to the unique conditions of the cave. Like all other creatures down there, they are blind and completely lack certain skin pigments)

Due to its extended separation from the outside world, it has been able to develop its own mini eco-system, which just so happens to be deadly to anything that hasn’t evolved down there. The air within the cave contains about 1/3 of the oxygen on the surface, and around 100 times as much carbon dioxide, along with high amounts of methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and various other things that make the air deadly to breathe. If you fell into the cave, you would pass out and then die from some kind of poisoning before you had the chance to climb back out.

Centralia – Pennsylvania

This small mining town started out in the early 1900s and soon became a popular place to live, with the many jobs available in the mines providing enough income to support an entire town. This would all change in the 1960s when the mines started to close and Centralia turned into a town just like any other, but with numerous empty mine shafts lying around. In 1962, someone thought it would be a good idea to use one of them to burn a load of rubbish, and everything would have gone smoothly if there wasn’t still a huge amount of coal down there.

(One of the many cracks in the roads of the town, throwing out dangerous gases from the burning coal)

The fires burnt quietly underground for the next 17 years until the local gas store owner noticed the temperature of his underground fuel store was dangerously high, forcing him to close down. A couple of years after this a young boy fell down a 150-feet deep sinkhole that opened up in his back garden, a scene that caused the town to take real notice and investigate the problem. After looking into things, it turns out that the entire town is sitting on top of a raging coal fire that has burnt away numerous caverns under the buildings and has raised the surface temperature of some roads to a level that can ignite a match. It goes without saying that after this was found out, the population of the town rapidly decreased.

The Devils kettle – Minnesota

Located in Judge C. R. Magney State Park in Minnesota, flows a waterfall that has come to bear the name of the devil’s kettle, due to the mysterious disappearance of anything that falls into it. The river is the same as any other in the region, but at the point of the devil’s kettle, it splits into two flows, one of which carries on as normal and the other falls into the kettle, never to be seen again.

People have put everything from colored dye to GPS tracker balls into the hole, but none have ever been seen again. The most common scientific explanation for the disappearance of anything that falls into it is that the objects get smashed to pieces on the underground rocks and then the water joins the river again at either a later point or within Lake Superior further downflow. The only problem with this explanation is that no one has actually been able to find the point where the water re-joins the main flow, and with such a large volume flowing back into the river, surely it wouldn’t be hard to find.