The Most Dangerous Places On Earth

Intro
From its churning, sometimes stormy atmosphere to its shifting tectonic plates, Earth can be a dangerous place. Earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters killed more than 780,000 people between 2009 and 2009, according to the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction Secretariat. Millions more were injured or displaced. No one knows how the next decade will shape out, but some areas have more reason to worry than others.

Lake Nyos, Cameroon
A silent killer hides beneath the surface of this lake in West Africa. A pocket of magma well below the lake bed filters carbon dioxide into the lake above. Under the pressure of 650 feet (200 meters) of water, this carbon dioxide remains dissolved, as does carbonation in a soda bottle.

But on the night of August 21, 1986, the lake's water overturned abruptly, and the carbon dioxide now depressurized exploded like an agitated soft drink. The resulting carbon dioxide cloud rushed downhill, suffocating 1,700 people and thousands more animals. In the 15 miles (24 kilometers) of the valleys below the lake, almost nothing survived.

Nowadays, the pipes are used to extract water rich in carbon dioxide from the bottom of Lake Nyos. The pipes prevent carbon dioxide buildup, but that does not make Lake Nyos completely safe, said George Kling, a geochemist at the University of Michigan who was on the team that originally investigated the 1986 disaster.


"We are getting ahead of the game, but we are not reducing gas very quickly," Kling said. "That means it's still a very dangerous lake."

Naples, Italy
In 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius blew up its summit, burying the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. More than 50 subsequent eruptions and the horrifying human-shaped cavities left in the volcano's ashes have not deterred people from populating the slopes of this volcano by the sea. The city of Naples is at its base, and up to 650,000 people can live on its slopes, according to Guido Bertolaso, head of Italy's civil protection agency. An imminent eruption could force the evacuation of more than one million people.


Vesuvius is not the only active volcano that threatens this densely populated area. The Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Italy is full of volcanoes. The most worrying, according to Bertolaso, is the tourist island of Ischia. An eruption would affect Naples and "could be worse than a hypothetical eruption of Vesuvius," said Bertolaso.

Miami Florida
No one can predict where the next hurricane will come, but South Florida is always a reasonable bet. The United States Geological Survey estimates that the southern tip of Florida can expect more than 60 hurricanes over a 100-year period. And in 2008, sustainability company SustainLane ranked Miami as the most risky city for natural disasters in the United States.

The destruction of the hurricane in Miami and the nearby Florida Keys is nothing new. In 1926, the Great Hurricane of Miami destroyed or damaged all buildings in downtown Miami and killed at least 373 people, according to the Red Cross. Less than 10 years later, the 1935 Labor Day hurricane killed 408 people in the Florida Keys. In 1960, Hurricane Donna roared through the Keys and south Florida, bringing storms of 11 to 15 feet.


Perhaps the most famous hurricane to hit South Florida was Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Andrew went through Florida as a Category 4 storm with winds so high that they broke measuring instruments. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Andrew killed 23 people in the United States. The destruction totaled more than $ 26.5 billion.

The Sahel region of Africa
Drought often does not receive as much attention as other natural disasters, but it can be a killer. According to the UN Environment Program, more than 100,000 people died from the drought in the Sahelian region of Africa from 1972 to 1984. Another 750,000 were unable to grow their own crops and were completely dependent on food aid.


The arid region of the Sahel borders the Sahara desert, extending through northern Africa through Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Algeria, Ethiopia and Eritrea. According to the U.N., human exploitation of the limited waters of the area is causing desertification, which increases the risk of future droughts and famines.