Case file · Folklore / legend
Lake Nyos disaster
On the night of 21 August 1986, a cloud of carbon dioxide rushed out of Lake Nyos in Cameroon and suffocated about 1,700 people and thousands of cattle in nearby villages.
1986 CE · 6.44, 10.30 · status: explained
The account
Many survivors and local leaders read the disaster through older traditions of dangerous lake spirits and ancestral anger; rumours also spread of a secret bomb test. Scientists showed that gas had built up in the deep water and erupted in a limnic overturn. Degassing pipes were installed from 2001.
The sceptical view
The physical cause is well established; the spirit interpretations are about meaning and blame, not mechanism.