WORLD'S PLACES THAT WILL SWALLOW YOU ALIVE

WORLD’S PLACES THAT WILL SWALLOW YOU ALIVE.

There are some places on earth you should never visit, no matter how much you need a holiday. We're talking lakes that'll kill you in a single hour, caves that will boil you alive, and radioactive islands where the rats will give you bubonic plague. I don't wanna put you off traveling for life, but after reading this article, you won't believe just how dangerous our planet can be. If you're planning a road trip, you might wanna steer clear of Yungas Road in Bolivia. This terrifying track twists and turns along a sheer cliff-face, climbing to a height of 15,260 feet above sea level. In places, the road is only 10 feet wide, with no guardrails to protect you from the blood-curdling 2,000 foot drop. Clouds of dust from the poorly maintained track make it hard to see, while humid winds from the nearby rainforest create regular rainstorms and mudslides. No wonder this place has earned the nickname Death Road. Despite its deadly reputation, plenty of daredevil drivers continue to use the route. Cars, trucks, and lorries often needed to pass each other, forcing one vehicle to teeter on the very edge of the narrow track. During the 1990s, between 200 and 300 people lost their lives each year after losing control of their car and plunging into the abyss below. Thankfully in 2006, the Bolivian government built a newer, safer road which most cars choose to drive on instead. And who can blame them? If you do insist on driving Death Road, which is technically now illegal, though rarely enforced, remember there's no turning back once you begin. You are not going to wanna make a U-turn. With places like Yungas Road, clearly the world can be a scary place.

Naica Crystal Cave. Some of the most beautiful places on earth are also the most deadliest. Just take the Naica Crystal Cave, for example. Located nearly 1,000 feet beneath a mountain in Naica, Mexico, this underground cavern is crammed with enormous milky-white selenite crystals. The oversized pillars were formed by volcanic minerals in water, which crystallized as temperatures in the cave system cooled over thousands of years. Today, they're big enough for several grown adults to walk on, measuring as long as almost 40 feet and weighing up to 55 tons. But you might wanna think twice before paying the crystals a visit with your selfie stick. The cave is situated above an underground magma chamber, which means the temperature can climb as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity can reach 99%. As a result, the air is so saturated with moisture that sweat can't evaporate from your skin to cool you down, making it difficult to survive more than 10 minutes without risking heatstroke, organ failure, and death. Today, scientists who visit the crystals must wear a special cooling suit with its own supply of chilled air, and even then, they can only tolerate the conditions for an hour max. Yeah, I'll probably admire the crystals on Google Images for now. Snake Island. You'd have to be seriously silly to visit this island off the coast of Brazil. Officially named Ilha da Queimada Grande, it's more commonly known as Snake Island. Beneath the treeline you'll find a wriggling, writhing mass of around 4,000 deadly serpents, just waiting to sink their fangs into unsuspecting sightseers. These snakes are actually a rare kind of pit viper called the Golden Lancehead, known to be one of the deadliest snakes in Latin America. Their venom contains hemotoxins that will melt the flesh they bite, destroying red blood cells and causing death in under an hour. These snakes are not messing around. But how did the snakes get to the island in the first place? Well, Snake island was once attached to the Brazilian coast, before several millennia of rising sea levels separated it from the mainland. Because there were no predators and plenty of seabirds to eat, the stranded snakes thrived to a terrifying extent. There are now estimated to be between one and five Golden Lanceheads for every square meter of island, meaning that visitors are never more than a few feet away from a slithering adversary. The risk is so great that the Brazilian Navy has banned any human from visiting Snake Island with the exception of scientists conducting essential research. I can't say I'm disappointed.

Death Valley. Imagine a place so hot that if you get hungry, you can simply fry an egg on the ground. Well, that's a reality in Death Valley in California, a boiling desert basin where temperatures have been known to rise as high as 134 degrees Fahrenheit, or 56 degrees Celsius. That's the hottest air temperature ever recorded on earth. Deep craters in the landscape trap pockets of scalding air, while four surrounding mountain ranges mostly prevent rain clouds forming in the area and keep the valley in perpetual drought. For this reason, every Death Valley sightseer runs the risk of heatstroke and dehydration, with one to three deaths per year from heat-related causes. Visitors also need to keep a watchful eye out for the valley's teeming population of dangerous animals including rattlesnakes, scorpions, black widow spiders, and mountain lions. Sounds like overkill to me. But if all that doesn't turn you off visiting, whatever you do, don't take off your shoes while you're there. In 2017, one tourist was hospitalized with third-degree burns after walking barefoot in Death Valley, where the ground can get as hot as 201 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, just because you can fry an egg on the floor doesn't mean you should. Park rangers spend hours every day cleaning up shells and empty cartons and have informed visitors that their fried egg habit has gone beyond a yolk. Bring a packed lunch instead, you animals.

Oymyakon. Moving from extreme heat to extreme cold now, nowhere will send a shiver down your spine quite like Oymyakon in Eastern Russia. This small town of 500 people is the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth. The average low temperature in winter is -58 degrees Fahrenheit, but has been known to dip to a tooth-chattering -90. Given that the average temperature on Mars is -81 degrees Fahrenheit, you'd actually be warmer on the red planet than in Oymyakon. Unsurprisingly, the chilling temperatures make survival difficult. Because pipes freeze, most homes have outhouses with pit latrines instead of plumbed-in toilets. It's hard to grow crops in the frozen soil, so the local diet mainly consists of frozen meat and fish. Something as simple as a flat tire or a lost key could be life-threatening when every second outside brings you closer to a freezing death. Also, bear in mind that if you do die, the locals will have to burn a bonfire in the cemetery for several days before the earth has thawed enough to dig a grave. If you do decide to visit Oymyakon, don't forget your wallet. Keeping warm is an expensive business. In order to go outside safely, the townspeople must wrap up in thick fur coats that can cost more than $1,5500. As the average wage in Oymyakon is $600 a month, many people take out a mortgage in order to afford the furs they need to survive. Even with furs, the air is so cold that it'll freeze your eyelashes and saliva into painful needles within just a few minutes. This place makes the inside of your freezer sound like a tropical paradise.

Horrible holes. What's 1,500 miles long, 44 miles wide, and full of creepy creatures? No, not the queue for your local McDonald's. The Mariana Trench, of course. Located in the South Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the Philippines, this crescent-shaped scar in the seabed descends seven miles into the earth's crust, making it the deepest point on earth. In fact, the Mariana Trench is so deep that if you dropped Mount Everest into it, the peak would still be 7,000 feet below sea level. That's deep, man. As you've probably guessed, the Mariana Trench isn't a great location for a quick swim. Sunlight can't penetrate its depths, meaning that the water is pitch black and just a few degrees above freezing. The pressure at the bottom of the trench is bone-crushing eight tons per square inch, which is 1,000 times the standard atmospheric pressure on dry land. That means that if you exited your submarine at the bottom of the trench, any pockets of air in your body would instantly collapse under the weight of the water. Wave goodbye to functioning lungs. If that isn't bad enough, it's also worth remembering that while thousands of people have climbed Mount Everest, fewer than 20 have ever visited the bottom of the Mariana Trench. As a result, we know comparatively little about what could be down there, lurking in the darkness. Scientists do know what's inside another of Earth's terrifyingly deep ocean crevasses, though, the 407-foot-deep Great Blue Hole in Belize. This giant marine sinkhole began life more than 14,000 years ago as a limestone cave, before it was flooded by rising sea levels. The hole is large enough to be seen from space and attracts thousands of tourists every year, but be warned, inexperienced divers could easily find themselves struggling against the strong currents at the sides of the hole, which threaten to send you plunging into the abyss. On top of that, it's full of sharks. Nature watchers have spotted Caribbean reef sharks, nurse sharks, hammerheads, bull sharks, and black tip sharks swimming in the dark blue waters. Luckily, sharks rarely attack humans, but anyone who's seen "Jaws" will probably prefer to admire this mysterious ocean hole from a distance. And before you start to feel too safe on dry land, remember that the ocean floor isn't the only place where you can find dangerous gaps in the Earth. Just look at the Mir mine, an open-pit diamond mine in Russia that's over 1,700 feet deep. Back in 2017, a leak caused this man-made chasm to fill with 10 million cubic feet of water, which is enough to fill over 1200 Olympic swimming pools. Getting caught in a flood in a place like this would be pure nightmare fuel. Not only that, but the hole is so deep that helicopters are banned from flying over it in case they're sucked in by downward air currents. That's right, navigators fear that warm air rising from the pit and meeting cold air at the surface will create a powerful vortex, pulling down small aircraft. That's a hole lot of trouble.

Skeleton Coast. You can tell a lot about a place by its name, and the Northern part of the Atlantic coast in Namibia is no exception. 16th Century Portuguese sailors named it the gates of hell. The Bushmen of the Namibian Interior called it the land god made in anger. Today, it's known as the Skeleton Coast, and as all these creepy names suggest, it's no seaside paradise. The Skeleton Coast is actually part of the Namib Desert, a vast and hostile landscape where drinkable water is nearly impossible to find. That means that even though you're right next to the sea, you could easily perish from thirst if you didn't bring your own supply of drinking water. If that wasn't bad enough, the dunes are home to ferocious predators like desert lions, hyenas, cheetahs, and jackals just waiting to munch on any lost soul. Look closely and you'll see the bleached bones of their prey strewn across the sands, a sinister reminder that this place isn't called the Skeleton Coast for nothing. And this lethal coastline has another secret. Take a stroll along its golden sands, and you'll find the rusting shells of around 1,000 shipwrecks. The waters in this region are notoriously dangerous, with strong currents, submerged rocks, thick fogs, and roaring winds. As a result, ships have been running aground on the coast for hundreds of years, adding to its ever-growing collection of ghostly wrecks.

Can you imagine surviving a shipwreck only to find yourself trapped on a beach with no water and a lion problem? Sometimes life isn't just isn't fair, I guess. Life-threatening lakes. Did you know that some lakes can be lethal? Well, it's true, just take Lake Karachay in Russia, for example. This picturesque pool is so polluted that spending a single hour on its banks will kill you. From 1951 until 1953, the Soviet Union used the lake as a dumping ground for radioactive waste from the Mayak Plant, a nearby nuclear waste storage facility. The resulting contamination was so extreme that the Worldwatch Institute, a US-based environmental research organization, named Lake Karachay the most polluted place on the planet. When it comes to working out just how toxic the lake is, scientists use a unit called sieverts, which measures the health effects of radiation on the body. Exposure to just one sievert is enough to cause serious illness, and when it was tested in 1990, Lake Karachay emitted a deadly dose of 5.6 sieverts an hour. That's enough to kill you in around 50 minutes. As of 2015, the lake has been filled with concrete in an attempt to limit radiation. Even so, scientists believe that approximately one billion gallons of groundwater have been contaminated as a result of the Soviet Union's decision to dump radioactive waste into Lake Karachay. This has caused a 41% increase in leukemia as well as spikes in other cancer rates in the surrounding Chelyabinsk region. Not cool, comrades. But lakes don't have to be radioactive to be deadly. The Boiling Lake in Dominica's Morne Trois Pitons National Park is a bubbling cauldron of scalding hot water, and is actually a flooded hole in the earth's surface that emits steam and volcanic gasses from a magma chamber beneath. These gasses heat the water in the lake to 197 degrees Fahrenheit, meaning any human who enters the water risks being poached like an egg.

But you can't talk about dangerous lakes without mentioning Lake Natron in Tanzania. The water in this lake is extremely alkaline due to the high levels of sodium carbonate which drain into it from the nearby volcanic hills. As a result, the lake has a pH of 10.5, nearly as high as ammonia, and can burn any animals that aren't adapted to its caustic conditions. What's more, when an animal dies on Lake Natron, the salt-rich water dries out its remains and ultimately transforms the body into a hard, calcified shell. Just to add to its sinister appearance, the water in the lake is crimson due to the presence of haloarchaea, microorganisms that flourish in salty waters and produce deep crimson pigments.

Blood-red water covered in petrified animal remains, probably not the best picnic spot, am I right? The Devil's Pool. How far would you go to get the perfect holiday photo? If you're willing to risk your life in exchange for those sweet, sweet likes, look no further than the Devil's Pool, right on the edge of the Victoria Falls in Zambia, a narrow lip of rock is all that separates it from a 354-foot drop into the raging waters beneath. Thankfully, the pool is reasonably safe between mid-August and December providing you don't do anything stupid like practice your handstands on the slippery rocks. Between January and July, though, Zimbabwe's wet season sees rising water levels and raging currents which could sweep you over the edge with ease. But whatever time of the year you visit, you'll need to watch out for the crocodiles and hippos that live in the Zambezi, the river which feeds the Devil's Poo.

Danakil Depression. The Danakil Depression has got to be one of the weirdest places on earth. This surreal landscape in North-West Ethiopia looks like a radioactive wasteland, complete with neon yellow craters and deep green waters. But don't be fooled by its otherworldly beauty. This gorgeous volcanic plane is out to kill you in pretty much every way you can imagine. For one thing, the Danakil Depression is located at the junction of three very mobile tectonic plates. Their movement causes regular earthquakes in the area as fissures appear in the ground, threatening to swallow up unsuspecting tourists. These cracks spew up thick clouds of poisonous sulfur and chlorine gasses, filling the air with the smell of rotting eggs. The movement of the tectonic plates also leads to the formation of hot springs filled with scalding waters heated by the layer of molten magma. The magma heats up minerals in the water, creating a dazzling landscape of multi-colored salt-crusts and crystal deposits. But don't be tempted to paddle. The temperatures in the pools can be as high as 226 degrees Fahrenheit. If that wasn't enough, the Danakil Depression boasts not one, but two active volcanoes. One of them, Erta Ale, has a lava lake bubbling at the summit that occasionally overflows, killing anything it touches. This alien landscape may look beautiful, but remember, the Danakil Depression will not hesitate to Dana-kill you.

Wicked water. When you think about the Bermuda Triangle, do you picture something like this? We've all heard stories about vicious sea monsters, whirlpools, and deadly cyclones, but just how dangerous is it really? In case you didn't know, the Triangle is a chunk of the North Atlantic Ocean between Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico where over 50 ships and 20 planes are said to have disappeared without a trace. Conspiracy theorists have come up with some kooky explanations over the years, including a giant man-eating whirlpool, a gang of UFOs, and deadly technology from the lost city of Atlantis. But while danger can certainly be found within the Bermuda Triangle, it's more likely to come from the North Atlantic's unpredictable weather than anything supernatural. The area is subject to sudden, violent windstorms called white squalls and water tornadoes called waterspouts, both of which are common over subtropical waters. These unpredictable events can endanger boats and aircraft, causing structural damage or forcing them off course. Given that the Bermuda Triangle contains some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, it's hardly surprising that these extreme weather conditions would cause tragic disappearances over the years. Just remember that for every ship or plane that disappears, thousands cross the sea without so much as a scratch. But unlike the Bermuda Triangle, some specific parts of certain bodies of water can be truly, abnormally deadly. In fact, this pretty little stream in Yorkshire, England, is one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the world. It's known as the Bolton Strid, and it's said that nobody who's fallen in has ever made it out alive. What on earth could make a simple stream so sinister? Well, despite appearances, the Bolton Strid isn't just your regular stream. It's a powerful river called the River Wharfe, which runs for 65 miles through Yorkshire. When it reaches Bolton, the river is squeezed through a tiny rock channel, instantly narrowing it from 30-feet-wide to just 6-feet across-wide. All that extra water is forced underground where it flows at ferocious speeds through a labyrinth of subterranean chasms. This means that if any passerby lost their balance and fell into the Bolton Strid, they'd likely be caught by the current and dragged down into the void beneath. The strange lesson here is that you'd probably be safer swimming in the Bermuda Triangle than in a pretty Yorkshire river.

Thanks for reading.!