Top 10 Best Terrifying Natural Disasters You've Never Heard About

Natural disasters are often thought of as one of the most terrifying things that the human race can encounter because we have no control over them. For millennia, these disasters have changed our lives; changes that we could never have anticipated. So it comes as a surprise that there are life-changing natural disasters that a lot of people haven't even heard of! All Best of 10's is here to tell you all about exactly this in 10 Terrifying Natural Disasters You've Never Heard About.

10) Lake Nyos

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with global warming, the risk of a pandemic, and the ever-looming threat of nuclear war. Now we have to add farting lakes onto our list of things that can kill you.
Lake Nyos in Cameroon is what’s known as a “crater lake”. That is, a lake formed by a volcanic eruption.

Nyos is linked underground to an active volcano, which constantly pumps low levels of CO2 into the lake. If that sounds dangerous, well it is. When the CO2 build up under crater lake gets too much, there’s an explosive release of poison gas. Just like after eating too much Taco Bell.

Normally experts can tell if one of these lakes is building up too much CO2, because the water bubbles. However, Lake Nyos was unusually placid. So no-one knew how dangerous the build up was until, 1986, the poison gas burst out of the lake and into the surrounding area.

The 1.6 million tonne cloud of gas spread as far as 25 km from the lake, killing 3,500 livestock and 1,700 people. What’s more, the nearby villages of Nyos, Kam, Cha, and Subum had their populations wiped out entirely.

9) Peshtigo Fire

Every year, California is engulfed in a state-wide hellfire. Presumably as God’s punishment to Hollywood for being friends with Epstein. But even the worse of those fires are still less deadly than the Peshtigo fire that burned across the middle of the country. On October 8th 1871, a wildfire caught in Wisconsin.
The local forestry service started a control fire in the woods. But the fire spread out of control and spread like… well, wildfire.

Pretty soon the flames were raging across two states, Michigan and Wisconsin. The fire burnt out 1,200,000 acres of land, costing millions in the process. In fact the total cost of the disaster came in at $169 million. More importantly, up to 2,500 people died.

And many many more were devastated as the fires burned away their homes. Everyone was terrified. Except apparently this girl, who’s watching the fire like it’s a movie. Bet that bucket’s full of popcorn too. 16 towns burned down, including Peshtigo where 800 people died. So, why do so few people remember this apocalyptic hellfire? Well mainly because it had the misfortune of being on the same day as the Great Chicago Fire, which has clucked this fire’s memory out of existence.

Also Read: Top 10 Countries That Have Never Lost A War

8) The Antonine Plague

No-one’s entirely sure what disease the Antonine Plague was. Historians mostly agree that it must have been a strain of smallpox or measles, but the specific nature of the pandemic has been lost to history.

Regardless, the mystery disease was ruinous to Rome when it reached the city in 165 AD. Brought back by soldiers fighting abroad, the disease spread across the city, killing unbelievable swathes of people. No-one was safe. The Emperor himself, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, died at its hands.

What’s more, after 4 years of the plague, it seemed the Romans had finally eradicated disease. But a second, far more virulent, outbreak struck nine years later. At its peak, the plague was killing 2,000 Romans a day, meaning even disposing of the bodies became a nightmare.

Before the plague was eventually fully quenched in 180 AD, some 5 million Romans had died: roughly a third of the city population. The disease had also been spreading across the Empire’s military garrison’s, temporarily crippling Rome’s army and their ability to wage war.

7) Huascarán [Who-ass-k-ran]-as Avalanche

On May 31st 1970, Peru was struck with an earthquake so powerful it registered as a 7.9 on the Richter scale, the universal scale for measuring earthquake power. For comparison, an earthquake that hits 8 on the Richter is releasing the same amount of destructive energy as detonating 6,270,000 tonnes of TNT. This mammoth earthquake was deadly enough. It killed 70,000 people and has since been remembered as the Great Peruvian Earthquake. But the location of the earthquake led to another, deadliest natural disaster. You see, the quake was near Mt Huascarán.

And that much energy shaking the slopes led to a massive combined avalanche and landslide. A 900m stretch of the mountain’s face collapsed, bringing roughly 100 million cubic metres of water, mud and rocks down on the mountain village of Yungay.

Only 350 of the village’s 25,000 inhabitants survived the flood of rock and snow. And 300 of those were local children who’d been out of the town to visit the circus on a day trip. Yep, it’s the rare story where creepy clowns probably saved children’s lives. The village has since been rebuilt, but this natural disaster is still remembered in Central America as one of the worst in history.

Thank God Padding-ton got out of there in time.

6) Aleppo Earthquake

As one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world, Aleppo in Syria has had to put up with a lot over the last few thousand years. Being invaded by the Romans, being ravaged by ISIS, being completely forgotten about by Gary Johnson in 2016. Mental to think he wasn’t even the worst candidate in that election.

But one of the most devastating events in the city’s storied history came on Oct. 11, 1138: when the city was hit with one of the most destructive earthquakes in antiquity. You see, the city sits right on the meeting point of two tectonic plates: the Arabian and African.

 That means the region sees earthquakes reasonably often, but even so, this was a bad one. Houses across the entire city crumbled to dust and Aleppo’s citadel collapsed. Although the exact death toll is hard to ascertain, a 2004 paper in the Annals of Geophysics puts it as high as 230,000.

5) Aberfan

Wales is famous for lots of things. Tom Jones, leeks, thinking they’re the best rugby team in the world, boasting that they’re the best rugby team in the world, and not actually being the best rugby team in the world. But one famous feature of Wales is the coal mines dotted along the nation’s countryside. And that can cause problems when the weather decides to wreak havoc.

Aberfan is a village under one such mine. Specifically, it was under the mine’s colliery spoil tip, where the excess dirt and rock dug out of the mine is stored. In October 1966, there was a period of intense rain in the area.

The prolonged rainfall caused the excess dirt to congeal into a slurry and pour down the hillside into Aberfan. The deadly sludge trapped and suffocated 144 villagers. Worst hit was Aberfan’s junior school, which 116 of its young students. At the time, this was a national story across the UK. In response, the Aberfan Disaster Memorial Fund was established, receiving nearly 88,000 donations. In total £1.75 million was raised for the struggling locals. Yet, nowadays, most people not from the area are completely unaware the incident ever occurred.

4) The Bhola Cyclone

A cyclone is a rapidly rotating front of storm weather that travels in a spiral along coastal areas. Basically, it’s like a hurricane but wetter. And it usually brings along not only the dangerously fast winds of hurricanes, but also thunderstorms, and heavy rain.

The coast of South East Asia is pretty used to getting these kinds of storm. In fact the infamous Bhola cyclone of 1970 was the sixth cyclone to hit the area that year. But even an area used to storms wasn’t ready for just how ferocious this cataclysm was to be. On November 3rd 1970, the Bhola cyclone struck East Pakistan and India's West Bengal. Forming over the Bay of Bengal, the storm brought in winds of 115 miles an hour, stripping the roofs of many buildings and fully ripping apart others.

But the deadliest part of the storm was the rain it brought with it. The sudden flash storm of heavy rain, caused widespread flooding across the low-lying region. At least 500,000 people lost their lives in the floods. And in the most severely affected like Tazumuddin Upazila, over 45% of the population was killed by the storm.

3) Iran Blizzard

Iran is a country in the Middle East. At least, it will be until Trump decides to nuke it off the face of the Earth.
But entirely man-made disasters aside, Iran’s location makes it generally pretty arid and desert-y. I mean, the weather in the nation never really deviates from “way, waaaay, too hot”. Sure, Iran has mountains, but so does Tatoonine and you wouldn’t pop there for your next ski holiday.

Which is why it might surprise you to learn that in 1972, the nation played host to the deadliest blizzard in recorded history. On the 3rd of February 1972, Iran was hit with a cold front of weather blown through from Azerbaijan. The temperature lowered to a “brisk” -25 C, and the carpeted every Iranian village in the mountains under 8 foot of snow.

Isolated without food, water, and medical people start to die quickly. What’s more 200 villages in the Iranian mountains were completely lost to the snow. By the time rescue teams managed to free the trapped villagers by 6 days later, there had been over 4,000 deaths.

Also Read: Top 10 Best Terrifying Natural Disasters You've Never Heard About

2) 2003 European Heatwave

So far in this video we’ve seen exploding lakes, devastating earthquakes, and full on land spills. But in 2003, Western Europe had to face that most deadly of weather disasters: warm summer days.

Alright, that’s slightly unfair. In 2003, Europe was hit with the deadliest heatwave in history. Caused by an anticyclone, which is just a cyclone that spins anti-clockwise and not a spray that prevents cyclones, a stretch of warm, dry air hovered over the west for weeks.

This led to insanely hot weather in the continent, and a rash of deaths from things like heatstroke and dehydration. Across Spain, France and Italy some 55,000 people died. And in France, where the government isn’t as prepared for hot weather as Spain or Italy, monasteries started running out of space to bury the bodies. Some cities resorted to keeping dead bodies stored in refrigerated corpse warehouses until the heatwave ended.

If that sounds like your idea of fun, well then here’s some good news. Scientists predict that, thanks to our old friend global warming, by 2050 every European summer will be as hot as the one in 03.

1) Martinique Volcano

Martinique is a small island nation in the Caribbean. A former French colony, the idyllic West Indian country is home to beaches, palm trees, and a volcano that nearly wiped out the island.

The eruption is Mt Pelee is not as well remembered as other deadly volcanic explosions like Mt St Helens and Mt Krakatoa. But when this little known mountain started to rumble in 1902, it led to the most deadly volcanic eruption of the 20th century.

Before the eruption ever happened it caused problems. As per-eruption tremors began, a swarm of poisonous ants and snakes fled the mountain, making their way to the nearest town, St Pierre. That only led to the deaths of 50 children and probably felt like the beginning of some biblical punishment.

But what made this explosion so deadly was the fact that the eruption came not in the form of a gradual spewing of lava but in a pyroclastic flow: a 300mph avalanche of rock, ash gas. And lava too, just for good measure. St Pierre was obliterated. That morning there were over 2,500 people living in the town. By the end of the eruption, just 2 had survived.