Why Is Australia Dangerous 2 Meters Underground?

want to hear some really spooky stories well today you'll find out about the death lurking underground why you should actually be afraid of the dead and how people manage to travel around the world using human fat is fuel let's go they called it black summer for more than half a year from July 2019 to March 2020 wildfires were raging in Australia you may remember the reports of these events because they were disastrous Australia was hit not by a couple of dozen not hundreds but 15 000 separate fires yes fires are not uncommon in Australia but even for this continent this is too much nobody has ever seen anything like it on some days the fires have been so wild and erratic they've surpassed the worst case scenario predictions of the sophisticated computer program used by the fire service about 72 000 square miles of land were burned that's more than two and a half times the size of Ireland and about the size of Syria just imagine how huge is this area in addition to burning the ground the fires destroyed about 3 500 homes and wiped out about 3 billion animals it was like hell or at least like an apocalypse because that's how it's usually portrayed well you know when everything around is on fire animals die by the thousands and even the sky is no longer blue some areas of Australia were basically littered with animal carcasses and it was impossible to walk even a few feet without coming across another carcass for every thousand carcasses of koalas Kangaroos and birds Rescuers found only one koala that was still alive can you imagine the magnitude of the catastrophe even the animals that managed to survive in the fire died of hunger afterwards keep in mind something had to be done with all these carcasses the authorities ordered to dig Mass Graves at least for livestock in order to prevent a biosecurity hazard but even after burying the dead animals you still can't get rid of them completely at the very least there will be bones underground an incredible amount of Bones everywhere just think about it no matter where you go there's one huge Cemetery underneath actually the idea of burying animals in the ground is not the brightest one not only because everything around turns into a graveyard yes simply leaving the carcasses to rot in the open could be a real biosecurity Hazard at the same time carcasses serve as food for Predators which will distract them from the remaining herbivores and allow the latter to survive plus the carcasses of dead animals are food for pollinators that help recover the land after a fire you didn't think that wasps that fly from flower to flower would miss the opportunity to eat meat right a dead carcass has so many nutrients for the soil it helps form a Halo of greenery around it which persists for a couple of years sounds good for land that's been damaged by fire also there's a serious problem with burying carcasses in the ground if done incorrectly it can pollute the groundwater and this is deadly not only for surviving animals but for people as well there are also less obvious risks some farm animals didn't die during the fires but were so badly hurt they had to be euthanized and naturally they were it was no longer possible to help the poor animals they could only end their suffering surprisingly enough euthanasia makes burying an animal more dangerous than natural death I'll explain how it works most pets are euthanized with an extremely concentrated anesthetic agent which is painless and quick however this agent persists in the body and doesn't stop working that is it stays even in the already buried body for up to a year now imagine vets had to euthanize approximately 4 000 farm animals affected by fires probably some of these poor creatures will be dug up by scavengers who will get poisoned then yes the meds used for euthanasia can actually kill an animal that decides to gnaw buried bones Steve and I managed to find at least one such case two dogs dug up the bones of a cow that had been euthanized months before one dog died immediately the other was in a very serious condition for several days to be honest I didn't even think about such risks the likelihood that someone will be poisoned by the bones of a euthanized animal is quite small but never zero another disadvantage of bearing animals is that dangerous diseases can lurk in the carcass and they can be easily spread by cats foxes and actually any animal drawn by the smell of rotten carcasses remember the Halos of plants around the carcasses after all these are not only beautiful grass for the lawn and some flowers but also weeds that spread at a mind-blowing rate try getting rid of them then among the insects that feed on carcasses there are several species that do more harm than good for example wasps that exterminate other insects also if there are not too many scavengers carcasses can lie untouched for longer than expected which means that the likelihood of infection developing inside will be growing bearing bodies can be compared to sending garbage to a landfill breakdown will be slow and no useful end product is created but what to do then I mean it looks like bearing carcasses is dangerous not bearing them is also dangerous so what do we do with the dead animals then well it turns out that there is an alternative carcasses can be composted I agree it doesn't sound very pleasant but composting accelerates the decomposition in an environmentally friendly way composting kills most pathogens rather than hiding them underground it also suppresses smelly odors and doesn't attract scavengers the resulting material can effectively fertilize the soil but composting takes a lot of time and demands strict adherence to the guidelines you need a certain temperature and a certain humidity to make sure that all pathogens are destroyed and odors are suppressed but the most interesting thing is that composting works not only for dead animals but also for people yes this is an even more controversial practice and yet it has its benefits the population of the planet is growing and there are fewer places for cemeteries cemeteries also run out of available space and each grave site costs a lot of money it'd seemed that cremation is a plausible alternative but it's not as simple each cremation releases about 110 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as well as harmful toxins approximately 170 800 people die on Earth every day and if they suddenly decide to cremate all of them the planet will most likely suffocate composting burials take care of these issues actually it's far from being as terrible and barbaric as you might think first the body's placed in a vessel containing a mix of soil wood chips straw and Alfalfa as decomposition begins microbial activity creates Heat this speeds things up and eliminates germs from the mix over time in about four weeks a person turns into 200 gallons of soil full of nutrients some of which is returned to relatives to create a Memorial Garden or for some other ceremonies or for landscaping projects of course in comparison it takes a couple hundred years before an ordinary grave can be reused and most importantly this costs a tad bit less than a classic burial but brings much more benefits the more widespread this practice becomes the more affordable it will be everything works according to the standard scheme in the laws of the market by the way I hope you aren't having a snack right now since composting is not the only way to recycle the dead body this might seem a bit weird but animal bones could be a decent fuel yes they're mostly made up of calcium which doesn't burn but roughly 10 percent of the bone matter is fat this is what acts as fuel first you need some wood to heat the bone but then the fire melts fat the fat acts as fuel heat is released as well as smoke but they say that it doesn't smell as bad as you might expect the important thing is to avoid it otherwise your clothes might stink for a couple of days though I'm certain this sort of thing didn't bother our ancestors actually there's a lot of archaeological evidence that point to the fact that animal bones were used as fuel by ancient people especially in tundra areas where trees are scarce excavations have shown that groups of hunter-gatherers who lived in Central and Eastern Europe between thirty thousand and twenty thousand years ago specialized in Mammoth killing they ate Mammoth meat its skin was probably used to build dwellings bones and tusks were raw materials for making tools and jewelry plus they were also used for building dwellings and for heating when placed in fires perhaps it was humans who became one of the main reasons the mammoths went extinct that is climate change and the lack of food of course were factors too but people could well force it they used The Woolly Giants too much and eventually they simply ran out of mammoths of course a modern person needs much more energy resources than our distant ancestors so burning bones will definitely not satisfy all our needs even if we use the bones of those three billion animals that died in the fire even if there would be mammoths among them but there's an idea to use human fat for refueling cars biodiesel that is a fuel that's made from soybean rapeseed or vegetable oil is already used today it's also made from animal fats which means human fat will do too in 2007 an ecoboat called the Earth race broke records by circumnavigating the globe in less than 61 days this was partly made possible by fat three people underwent liposuction for this challenge their combined fat was enough for the boat to go almost nine miles that's not much in terms of the circumnavigation but the experience is definitely unique and in 2008 a cosmetic surgeon from Beverly Hills claimed he produced biodiesel from the fat he liposuction off his patients as soon as the Department of Public Health found out about this the surgeon had to quickly leave California for South America and although there's little evidence that the doctor actually did something like this in theory he could well he could set up a soap production business this is a tried out scheme in the world but back to Australia I hope you haven't forgotten what we began the video with it just so happened that this continent has become a leader in the extinction of wild animals Australia has lost 34 mammal species since colonization that's about the same number as the rest of the world combined lost over the past 200 years it all started with hunting rapid urbanization and development of Agriculture the situation was aggravated by imported cats rabbits and rats and then the government made the matters worse in the 1800s they introduced laws that first encouraged and then actually mandated the killing of native marsupials all for the sake of combating the perceived competition for food between livestock and these marsupials soon the government began to pay for the killing of dingoes and foxes between 1877 and 1930 more than 27 million animals were killed in Queensland and only then did this madness stop but the Extinction was Unstoppable today it keeps getting worse although people have ceased to outright exterminate animals land clearing habitat degradation bushfires the pressure from invasive species all this could be the reason even species that used to be common have disappeared and black summer fires only made an already sad situation worse as I already said not only wild animals were affected by these terrible fires to understand the extent of livestock casualties here are a couple of examples the farmer in his family had to flee the city of coryong when the fire reached it but when they returned they found that 11 of their cows had died and others were so badly injured they had to be euthanized another farmer saw at least 30 of his 400 cows killed by fire in the mass Graves aside from cows there were also kangaroos that died on farms or near them that looks creepy but not as creepy as what happened on Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia before black summer it was a true Wildlife Paradise tourist magnet an agricultural Hub the fire destroyed about half of the island and the nature reserves were reduced to ashes local farmers were also affected by the disaster one of them buried more than half of his nine thousand sheep he just buried them all in Mass Graves I'm scared to even imagine such a huge Cemetery for animals though I gotta say that so many different animals have died in Australia since it was colonized that Cemetery should no longer surprise anyone take at least rabbits everyone seems to know this story they were brought by settlers to have access to meat but then the rabbits realized they really felt great in Australia and began to breed at a catastrophic rate as a result the country faced an invasion of rabbits that destroyed pastures on their way so they had to fix the problem urgently rabbits were exterminated and mass with all available means I wouldn't be surprised if one day scientists say that Australia is one huge rabbit graveyard but so far there's one Memorial installed by animal rights activists in memory of those terrible events however rabbits are not the only animals in Australia that are considered a problem there are also camels apparently soon camels will also be buried everywhere because they like rabbits are considered invasive species after all the ancestors of modern Australian camels were once introduced to Australia by settlers to use for personal purposes and the camels really like their new home today the world's largest herd of wild camels lives there their population is estimated at about 300 000 individuals all these animals need something to eat this is how camels become pests because they do more damage than good and they are exterminated most often snipers simply shoot them down from helicopters killing them by thousands for example in 2012 about 75 000 camels were gunned down in Australia and from the point of view of the government this was considered completely ethical since camels are not native species you can get get rid of them Australia's endemic species the kangaroos were the ones most affected by such purges I've already mentioned that killing kangaroos was allowed and even encouraged by law but you simply don't see the whole picture yet over 10 years 31.5 million kangaroos were cold in Australia which essentially became the largest commercial killing of land-based wild animals in the world in the entire world and this is a very unusual situation on the one hand kangaroos like all Native wild animals are under protection killing them is a crime but that doesn't stop people farmers who own livestock claim that kangaroos destroy fences create hazards on the roads and compete with their sheep and cows for food and water kangaroos even damage the land in its biodiversity I don't know how they managed to do this given that no one brought kangaroos to Australia on purpose but the fact still stands kangaroos continue to be killed people believe this is Justified and even perhaps beneficial for other species but the kangaroos can't be blamed for this they don't bother people it's people who spread their influence and simply deprive kangaroos of their habitat of course they begin to compete with the sheep and accidentally run out into the road what else are they supposed to do when people in their Farms are literally everywhere ah this is all very sad indeed but Australia is actually full of the bones of animals that died there it's not always people's fault and dead bodies are not always dangerous in fact the belief that any dead body is a Potential Threat is nothing more than a myth people have always been afraid of death and have come up with many superstitions related to it for example you must have heard that the bodies of victims of natural disasters increase the risk of epidemics but there's no scientific evidence for this moreover scientists are certain that corpses pose a lower risk of infection than living people and this is logical a dead person's unlikely to sneeze when someone's around until the end of the 19th century doctors and scientists assume that diseases spread along with foul air and the corpse smells disgusting which means it's potentially deadly this belief even has its own name miasma theory of disease but even such a theory had a positive effect thanks to it people began to actively use the sewer because it helped eliminate unpleasant odors and therefore diseases but there are also microorganisms that are responsible for decomposing however many people believe that they also cause diseases to set the record straight they don't these tiny guys do nothing bad at all and are not pathogenic whereas the mass death of animals can cause serious long-term consequences well for plants as corpses decompose they release gases and Cocktails of liquefied remains acidic bodily fluids and microbes the soil absorbs all this eagerly because why not but if it happens in Mass the toxicity can kill any plants including trees and of course living beings killed by diseases pose a danger to people in any case because they continue to be carriers of the infection and they don't just pose a danger right after death or in the coming months like those euthanized cows burial pits with infected animals continue to be sources of infection even 30 years later in the 1990s there was an outbreak of mad cow disease in the UK it's estimated that 180 000 animals were infected at its peak and all of them died due to the lack of incinerator capacity to properly dispose of infected animals more than six thousand cows were buried in Mass Graves at nearly 60 sites across the country problem solved as it would seem but more recent research has shown that the infected spinal cord was not amputated before burial as expected so the infection could have been washed through soil by rain water because of this the added bodies of water near the burial pits could be polluted this means poisoned groundwater and the risk of new outbreaks of the disease among cows which can eventually infect people to contract mad cow disease a human only needs to eat some Infected should beef in short these are alarming prospects and it's not entirely clear what we should do with all this what about zombies this time cows have nothing to do with that this is a story about minks and you may have heard it trying to counter the spread of the coronavirus Denmark decided to get rid of 17 million minks that were raised on farms all because 12 people were infected with a mutated strain of the virus which passes from humans to minks and back to humans so they decided to play it safe back then everyone was horrified but imagine how frightened everyone was when the minks began to resurface from the grave several thousand animals buried at a military training ground about six feet deep began to rise from the ground like zombies scientists rushed to explain everything with natural causes due to decomposition the gas built up in Mink's bodies pushed them up the ground in this burial place turned out to be too light and the unfortunate minks were not buried deep enough in general that's not a zombie apocalypse in order to cope with the manx that had risen from the graves more soil was laid on top although there were proposals to dig up the animals and burn them well you know that's how they usually fight all sorts of evil spirits and the Coronavirus well doctors and researchers argued that there was no threat of Contracting coronavirus from already killed and buried manx even taking into account the fact that there's a lake nearby I'd hope so because there are viruses that actually don't care about time at all and I'm not even talking about mad cow disease although prions are damn tenacious meet pithovirus severicum it belongs to the class of giant viruses was described in 2014 and is the largest virus known at the moment but size isn't the most important thing here the thing is this virus was discovered in the Siberian permafrost about 98 feet deep and remained there for 30 000 years in a dormant State without infecting anyone just imagine this giant virus was active back when our ancestors in the Paleolithic carved figurines of women from Stone then pithovirus severicum simply froze and it would stay deep underground if it hadn't been dug up and thought in the laboratory by French scientists turned out that the cold had no effect on the virus at all and it continued to infect as if nothing had happened after 30 000 years sometimes I can't remember how to work after the weekend and this virus managed to do it even after such a long time tests have shown that the virus attacks amoeba which are single-celled organisms but doesn't infect humans or animals these tests were also conducted in 2014 and since we still haven't heard anything about the epidemic coming from the upper Paleolithic we can relax for now but don't drop your guard just yet you don't need me to tell you that the permafrost is gradually melting and who knows how many dormant viruses it hides it's quite possible that there will be those who will prefer people over amoebas and they won't need any lab to become active again the good news is that most likely not all viruses are as strong and tenacious as pithovirus a miracle the bad news is that we have no idea what pathogens might actually be hiding in the permafrost this is potentially a very unpleasant surprise a simple example in 2016 an Anthrax epidemic broke out in one of the federal subjects of Russia known for its Polar climate how could that possibly happen in the 21st century well the summer was very warm the permafrost thawed deeper than usual and the deer absorbed the dirt contaminated with bacteria along with the plants about two thousand deer died 72 people were hospitalized one of them died perhaps we know much less about viruses and bacteria than we should and in the future we'll see what's actually hidden underground not necessarily in Australia or in permafrost and although it might seem scary nature is sure full of Wonders see you later

Channel: WATOP

Views: 591,828

Keywords: WATOP, Wa Top

Id: 6pBQROQHJVQ

Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 19 2022