Darvaza Gas Crater: The Soviet Gateway to Hell

this video is brought to you by squarespace whether it's a new year's resolution or a lifelong passion start your journey to website glory with squarespace check out their wonderful all-in-one platform through the link in the description below more on them in a bit in the middle of the baking carrom desert lies a doorway to another world the devas gas crater is a surreal monstrosity a gigantic pit filled with flames that just never go out sitting alongside the ancient silk road it feels like the sort of place you might meet an evil gin yet its mythical appearance is misleading the crater only came into being within the last 50 years the remnants of a soviet era attempt to extract gas from turkmenistan's desert wastes the pit is said to have been ignited by scientists who assumed that it would burn itself out within a couple of weeks instead it has remained on fire ever since earning it the spooky nickname the gate to hell but while the gate to hell is internet famous today the circumstances surrounding its precise origins shrouded in mystery created under the long shadow of soviet rule almost all documents relating to it have been lost or destroyed today geographics is investigating the tale behind one of the planet's strangest sites and exploring the history of the troubled nation that calls it home [Music] if you're the kind of person who enjoys strange sights they don't come much stranger than the davarza gas crater located in the featureless nightmare that is turkmenistan's caricam desert the pit is many kilometers from civilization the only sign of life aside from the freakishly huge desert spiders is the tiny broken down village of darvaza which means the gate in turkmen but while the location along the ancient silk road is interesting it has nothing on the pit itself at 69 metres wide and 30 meters deep the gas crater dominates its corner of the landscape seen by daylight it looks vast and terrifying but by night it becomes an image out of a science fiction film the walls and floor of the pit are dotted with jets of fire which taken all together have been burning non-stop for decades at the crater floor the temperature exceeds 400 degrees celsius hot enough to kill almost anything because of this intense heat the air above the pit shimmers when the wind is blowing that same heat makes it impossible to look into there's also the glow so far from cities and roads the pit is the only source of light its flames visible from the far distance perhaps it's no wonder the few locals living nearby named at the gate to hell evocative as that is though there's nobody who actually believes this is an entrance to hades as its name implies the davarza gas crater sits atop a natural gas field just one of many in a country with the fourth largest reserves in the world but exactly what caused this pit to form and what led to it becoming the flaming monstrosity of internet law is a complex story one that's tied to the history of turkmenistan itself in order to do that story justice and hopefully teach us all a bit about a place we otherwise know nothing about we're going to go right back to the start coincidentally that's also the start of the long gruesome story better known as how russia and turkmenistan [ __ ] each other over for 200 years the area we now call turkmenistan traditionally had little in common with an actual functioning nation its citizens were nomads with about as much interest in european-style statecraft as you probably have in living in a yurt and dying of dysentery but that doesn't mean other powers didn't see their land as prime real estate in the early 19th century that meant a friendly visit from imperial russia this being the golden age of imperialism the russian empire arrived determined to exploit some resources and civilize some natives unfortunately for some petersburg the nomadic turkmen weren't all that keen on civilization over the next few years expansion into the region was greeted with anti-russian massacres and the capturing of imperial subjects and selling them into slavery finally in 1869 the tsar authorized a massive military force to go down and quell the unrest once and for all the resulting conquest took over a decade at last ending when general mikhail skobalev proved victorious at the battle of gok tepe to celebrate skobalev had every single adult turkmen male executed from then on turkmenistan's future as a part of the russian empire would be assured still it'd be a hell of a bumpy ride [Music] [Applause] of all the regions in the world it's doubtful anywhere reacted to the news of the russian revolution with more glee than the province of turkistan ever since general scholar had got his slaughter on the turkmen had been trying to throw off the romanov yoke there have been battles massacres in 1916 russian settlers in tien had been slaughtered by the nomads yet it would be the february revolution of 1917 that finally brought the imperial order crashing down you can almost imagine how delighted the turkmen must have been their hated overlords finally destroyed you know that phrase out of the frying pan and into the fire while turkestan was about to go leaping out of the frying pan and into a gigantic flaming gas crater the february revolution was followed just months later by the october revolution bringing the bolsheviks to power this was in turn followed by the russian civil war in which the reds and the whites along with their foreign allies dueled for supremacy for turkestan this meant being the epicenter of first british invasion and then a counter-invasion by the red forces that only ended with the 1919 capture of ashgabat after that it was back to being ruled by the russians only now they waved red flags and talked about the brotherhood of workers instead of the glory of the tsar so yes very much a case from a turkmen perspective of meet the new boss same as the old boss over the next few years what is now turkmenistan was organized into the turkmen soviet socialist republic before officially joining the ussr in 1925 but while that overview might make everything sound simple it was anything but all the way into 1936 nomadic turkmen waged a guerrilla war against the soviets the soviets were super keen on everyone living on collective farms which the nomadic turkmen considered worse than death so they fought and when they lost over a million of them fled into both afghanistan and the caricam desert determined to preserve their traditional ways sadly the 20th century would turn out to be a wrecking ball for tradition as the soviet presence became more settled in the turkmen ssr new projects got underway that dramatically altered the landscape the first of these was the 1948 great plan for the transformation of nature basically a fancy way of saying oh boy are we gonna screw the environment up the plan involved turning central asia's unproductive deserts into a heaven for agriculture in turkmenistan this meant building the colossal caricam canal 1 100 kilometer bear moth that swept from amodhara across the desert creating a new fertile land for growing cotton it was a miracle of engineering it was also a really stupid thing to do if you've seen our video on the ecological disaster zone that is the aral sea you know the caricam canal was one of the channels that diverted all of its water away but the canal wouldn't be the only example of a lack of forward planning in soviet central asia in february 1966 the vast oddzak natural gas field was discovered beneath turkmenistan it was the beginning of a mad rush to exploit the republic's reserves one that would soon see the ssr crisscrossed with pipeline and ashgabat turned into a capital flowing with energy wealth it would also be the beginning of a series of screw-ups that would culminate in a tiny village opening the gates of hell now before we continue on today just a quick word from our video sponsor squarespace look we're coming up on 2021 so 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production that means everything officially recorded about the dalvarza gas crater was written in top secret files false moscow still doesn't open for just anyone not even us at geographics hence the exceptionally vague origin story that you are about to hear in the first years of turkmenistan's mad gas rush four more fields were discovered by the time the night 70s dawned the race was on to find the fifth and nobody wanted to be a part of the team that failed because it did too much research or worry too much about health and safety in 1971 this would yield some explosive results the most common version of the devas a gas crater's origin involves a small group of soviet geologists trekking into the carrick and desert to do some exploratory drilling identifying a likely spot they set up a rig and got to work only to discover too late that they were atop a pocket of gas so shallow the ground couldn't support the rig's weight the rig collapsed falling into a newly formed sinkhole that only avoided swallowing any of the workers by a miracle this collapse in turn triggered a chain reaction opening up other sinkholes in the desert one of these holes would soon fill with water another would turn into a pit of boiling mud but it was the initial crater below the rig just outside of the village of dalvasa that was the most worrying it stayed open spewing out vast quantities of methane and this was a serious problem although methane isn't poisonous it can displace all the oxygen from an area suffocating those nearby more to the point it's highly flammable with just a five percent concentration in the air you can set the grounds for a massive explosion in cases where the methane keeps seeping out that can translate to a series of explosions there was simply no way the geologists could leave their new sinkhole as it was luckily they already had an emergency solution flaring is a technique used across the world to burn off excess natural gas basically it's like those fires you see burning atop the towers at the start of blade runner in north dakota alone almost a million dollars of excess gas is flared off every single day so the decision to set the crater on fire it wasn't particularly unusual but what happened next was the scientists dropped in a grenade thinking the gas would flare off in a few weeks instead it's been burning ever since now this is only the most commonly accepted story for the creator's origin other versions more popular among turkmen geologists say the crater was actually formed years earlier in the 1960s and bubbled with mud for two decades before suddenly igniting at the end of the soviet period something that the fire was started by accident possibly by a lightning strike yet others think it was deliberate but not thanks to worried geologists a wonderfully persistent local myth has it that a shepherd's sheep asphyxiated after getting too close to the crater's rim in anger he then lit a tire on fire and rolled it in sparking off the inferno that we still see today whoever really lit the fire it was probably the right call though while it's not great for the environment having a monster pit spewing out co2 day and night it is better than one constantly emitting methane so at this point you might be wondering well hang on why are the origins still a mystery the ussr collapsed decades ago how come these files have never come to light to answer that this video is going to have to take a sharp turn one that leads not to images of a giant fire pit burning in the desert but to a country so repressive it could give north korea a run for its money it's time we talked about independent turkmenistan we're wondering why we don't know more about the divas a gas crater there's one salient fact you have to bear in mind in 2019 reporters without borders released their press freedom rankings for the entire world tuchmanistan finished dead last behind even north korea that fact alone should tell you everything you need to know about researching stories on turkmenistan the rot started in 1985 the same year mikhail gorbachev became leader of the ussr gorbachev may have been all about openness and transparency but he was also all about rooting out corruption and the turkmen ssr was corrupt even by communist standards so gorbachev removed the current leader and replaced him with sappamora niezol an engineer by training niazov was russian educated and divorced from turkmenistan's clan-like circles of corruption this should have made him the ideal leader but he was also sadly a die-hard conservative and budding authoritarian when the ussr under gorbachev turned a blind eye to the national movement sweeping its republics in the late 1980s niazov turned the screws stamping out all sign of descent when hardline generals launched their coup against gorbachev in august 1991 he sided with the coup plotters finally when the coup failed and it became obvious the soviet union was dissolving niazov jumped ship to preserve his power turkmenistan declared independence on october 27 1991. from the get-go nazar's post-communist rule was as oppressive as anything that had come before he rigged elections to keep his role as leader before throwing in the towel in 1999 and declaring himself president for life at the same time he instituted a wave of repression and a personality cult that would make kim jong-un green with envy first the repression underneath of turkmenistan was almost completely cut off from the outside world like north korea entering or leaving became almost impossible special internal passports confined people to their villages and freedom of movement was eliminated then came the anti-russia drive in the early 2000s went after turkmenistan's russian minority with a viciousness that was staggering ethnic russians were fired from their jobs and deported in 2003 those with dual nationality were given three months to announce their russian citizenship or have all of their property confiscated then in 2004 ethnic turkmen who'd been educated in moscow orson petersburg were also fired a figure that included most of the nation's doctors and teachers the result was a health and education system that was suddenly in the hands of loyalists who knew nothing about either unsurprisingly healthcare collapsed as all of this was happening a bizarre personality cult was taking root naiazov was named turkmenbashi or a leader of the turkmen a gigantic gold statue of him was constructed in ashgabat designed to rotate to always face the sun days of the week were named after family members anyone passing a state exam even for a driver's license was forced to memorize his autobiography but while this might sound grimly amusing for tuckmenistan's citizens it was just grim in the early 2000s nazolf created a special presidential fund that diverted 50 of the nation's gdp into his pockets as he got richer and crazier the turkmen economy fell to pieces leaving citizens and this is really saying something worse off than they'd been under the ussr by the time neozov died of heart failure in 2006 turkmenistan was one of the most closed off most repressed most backwards-facing countries on the planet sadly things would only go downhill from there [Music] imagine if kim's north korea and maduro's venezuela somehow got together and managed to create a dysfunctional socialist baby that freaky offspring might look something like turkmenistan post 2006. following niazov's unlamented passing the health minister and this name is a nightmare gu banggooli berder mukhamedov rose to the presidency just to make my life easier i'm going to refer to him as gb given he was only health minister and in a country with non-existent health care no one's quite sure how he managed it but manage it he did in 2007 gb became turkmenistan's official leader although he swiftly took an accident's personality called it was only to replace it with one of his own there were new gold statues new places and institutions renamed after relatives there was even a brand new book people had to study to pass their driving exams this one was gb's story of the turkmen but the real changes were on the ground in people's homes and villages gb made sure all information and movement was totally controlled by the end of the 2010s only 15 of turkmen had access to the internet of those lucky few all of them had their online activity closely monitored by the government vpns were blocked and random blackouts were deliberately caused to stop people stumbling across foreign news satellite dishes were banned from homes and a combination of dire poverty and secret travel blacklists made it near impossible for ordinary people to move around the country but things really went downhill in 2016. that year gas sales to russia were suspended ending what was then pretty much the only thing keeping turkmenistan's economy afloat as the financial collapse began to take its toll gibi seems to have looked at the economic chaos gripping venezuela and declared well that looks good let's do that rigid currency controls were brought in triggering hyperinflation that crippled the country there were food shortages rationing imports of essentials collapsed by 80 percent remember all those semi-recent stories from caracas about even the rich being unable to get hold of basic supplies well it was happening in turkmenistan at the same exact time only gb somehow made it even worse come 2010 turkmenistan's unemployment rate was thought to have reached 50 percent with news hard to come by it's impossible to say what the full effects were but it's been reported that most villagers have been reduced to living off subsistence farming elsewhere others were corralled into forced labor by the state enslaved in a desperate attempt to shore up a collapsing country basically if north korea didn't exist modern turkmenistan would be the crazy brutal nation the world looked sideways at and thanked gods that it didn't live in and just like north korea the only thing propping up this incompetent government is china with beijing now replacing russia to buy 80 of all turkmenistan's gas exports but this is a video about the developer gas crater not a list of the top 10 reasons we should all hate president's stupid name so what effect did all of this chaos have on the gate to hell the short answer is nearly killed it [Music] in 2004 turkmenistan's first president niazov was flying over the carican desert when he happened to glance out of the window below lay the open more of the gate to hell and not far away the village of darvaza then home to three thousand people but rather than be filled with awe at this strange sight or even concern niazov was instead reportedly angered just during the desolation below he declared i don't want to see this next time i fly over shortly after bulldozers arrived in darwaza soldiers gave the villagers an hour to pack their belongings then the machines destroyed their village burying its rubble beneath the sand the tiny darwaza village that exists today is said to be nothing but a reminder sneakily rebuilt several kilometers away by a few of the original inhabitants that anecdote should give you some idea of how tuckmanistan's leadership has always seen its most famous site it's a hatred that carried over into gb's reign in 2010 the new president personally came to visit the devas gas crater there he decreed that it needed to be filled and the fires stopped that of course was easier said than done the thing with gigantic raging fire pits that have been burning for decades is that if anybody had the means and money to put them out they would have done so long ago the centralia mine fire in pennsylvania for example has been burning since 1962 and that's in the usa a country so much richer than turkmenistan it's like comparing monopolies mr moneybags with a kid who just found a quarter but then blowing money on mad projects is kind of what techmenistan is all about over the last decade the president has spent billions on a fancy airport for his country that almost no one is allowed to fly into or out of he's also been trying to build an artificial lake in the middle of the desert because of course he has so when he decided to fill in the gate to hell there were real fears that he was just mad enough to go through with the plan the only thing that saved the crater was the very thing that ruined the rest of the country economic collapse in 2018 the government abruptly dropped its plans to fill in the darwaza gas crater although no announcement was made basic infrastructure even began appearing beside the rim an acknowledgment that just maybe ashgabat was looking to replace its gas income with tourist dollars a year later the president even released a video of himself doing donuts next to the pit because that's just what you're allowed to do when you're a mad crazy dictator but there's also been a real push from turkmenistan to make the crater famous in scientific circles a few years back a team part sponsored by national geographic investigated the floor of the pit for the first time to their amazement they found extremophile bacteria living there amid the constant flames and 400 celsius heat a sign that life may live in similarly intense environments elsewhere in our solar system but sadly this newfound government reverence for the dalvasa gas crater hasn't changed anything for ordinary turkmen the covert 19 pandemic in 2020 kicked away the last pillar of the nation's economy with a massive slowdown in demand from china gas revenues fell through the floor the tiny bit of tourist income also collapsed alongside plans to make the gate to hell a world-class site this being turkmenistan the government responded with a preemptive crackdown disappearing and torturing potential dissidents and slashing already non-existent services to the bone the result is a country suffering from a major food crisis with the majority of people living lives of extreme desperation and all the while the government in ashgabat just looks the other way our story today then has really been two different stories one about how a soviet accident created a strange instagram-ready site and another about how even as the devas a gas crater grew in fame the country around it became more and more like the hell the crater is supposed to lead to usually when we do these videos on soviet relics the ending is the upbeat part the ussr collapses and the aral sea gets a chance to heal and the awful tales of cannibal island at least see the light of day but where darwaza is concerned things are only getting worse the crater remains but the lives of those nearby get ever more desperate we live in an age where awesome photos on social media mean we often look at places without understanding their context without realizing the sometimes strange sometimes awful events surrounding them hopefully where turkmenistan's gate to hell is concerned this video has gone some way towards remedying that so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe please do support this channel by supporting our fantastic sponsor squarespace and thank you for watching you

Channel: Geographics

Views: 366,648

Rating: 4.9402947 out of 5

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Id: muFbgXID87s

Length: 23min 38sec (1418 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020