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Silent Killer · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: In the twenty eleven action film X Men First Class,
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  Speaker 1: the metal bending super villain Magneto triumphantly declares that mutants
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  Speaker 1: are the next step in human evolution. It's a bold idea,
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  Speaker 1: and one that crops up in a lot of science fiction.
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  Speaker 1: Just imagine a future where humans brought wings, manipulate objects
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  Speaker 1: with their minds, or control the elements. Definitely cool, but
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  Speaker 1: not exactly scientifically sound. In reality, the idea that our
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  Speaker 1: next stage in evolution will be some kind of obviously
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  Speaker 1: superior human is a complete misreading of how natural selection works.
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  Speaker 1: Evolution isn't a ladder leading to perfection. It's more like
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  Speaker 1: a chaotic, slow motion shuffle where environmental pressures select for
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  Speaker 1: unpredictable and seemingly innocuous traits. And yet, if we had
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  Speaker 1: to name a real evolutionary success story, a creature that's
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  Speaker 1: withstood the test of time and emerged again and again
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  Speaker 1: in nature's bizarre roulette wheel. We wouldn't be looking at
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  Speaker 1: a human with psychic powers. We would be looking at
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  Speaker 1: a crab. That's right, those sideways, scuttling, beach patrolling, pinch
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  Speaker 1: happy crustaceans. It turns out nature loves making crabs, and
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  Speaker 1: it's done it over and over through completely independent genetic trees.
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  Speaker 1: The phenomenon was first noticed by British zoologist Lancelot to
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  Speaker 1: Alexander Boridale. He worked at the turn of the twentieth century,
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  Speaker 1: several decades after Charles Darwin rocked the scientific world with
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  Speaker 1: on the Origin of species. By then, evolutionary theory was
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  Speaker 1: widely accepted, although scientists were still puzzling out many of
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  Speaker 1: its mechanisms. For researchers like Boradale, evolution became a lens
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  Speaker 1: through which to re examine the entire natural world, And
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  Speaker 1: as he looked closely at marine invertebrates, he noticed something unexpected.
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  Speaker 1: Crustaceans that weren't closely related kept evolving into crabs. It
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  Speaker 1: seems like nature kept arriving at the same general blueprint
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  Speaker 1: consisting of a flat body armoured shell, scuttling legs, and
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  Speaker 1: a set of handy claws. These traits would appear in
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  Speaker 1: totally unrelated lineages at different times and in different places.
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  Speaker 1: Boradale called this repeated trend carconization and described it as
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  Speaker 1: an i quote, one of the many attempts of nature
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  Speaker 1: to evolve a crab. More recently, in twenty nineteen, Bordale's
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  Speaker 1: work inspired a group of Yale scientists to delve deeper
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  Speaker 1: into this biological curd. Work they identified at least five
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  Speaker 1: distinct cases of carsonization, meaning that five different animals independently
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  Speaker 1: evolved into something that you or I would recognize as
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  Speaker 1: a crab. To help put that into context, as best
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  Speaker 1: as we can tell, powered flight with wings has only
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  Speaker 1: evolved independently four times in history, suggesting that the crabs
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  Speaker 1: are a more efficient resilient organism than all species of birds, bugs,
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  Speaker 1: and bats put together. If you're wondering why that might be,
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  Speaker 1: consider that crabs actually have a lot going on for them.
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  Speaker 1: Their shape is compact and armored, which is great for
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  Speaker 1: defending against predators. Their claws are multipurpose tools good for grabbing, crushing, digging,
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  Speaker 1: and self defense. While they have gills. Like fish, they
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  Speaker 1: can survive out of water for as long as those
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  Speaker 1: gills stay wet, and their weird scuttling walk, unnerving as
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  Speaker 1: it might appear to us, is actually pretty useful, allowing
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  Speaker 1: them to burrow in the sand or climb straight up
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  Speaker 1: cliff walls. In a sense, crabs are the Swiss Army
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  Speaker 1: knife of the animal kingdom, and thanks to their incredible adaptability,
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  Speaker 1: they can be found all over the planet, from deep
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  Speaker 1: ocean trenches to arid deserts and even tree tops. This
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  Speaker 1: has led to a delightful Internet meme which claims that
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  Speaker 1: all life is slowly evolving into crabs. It's funny because
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  Speaker 1: it's absurd and kind of terrifying to think about humans
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  Speaker 1: sparting claws and shells, even if that's not the point
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  Speaker 1: of carconization. Bordale never suggested that all organisms would eventually
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  Speaker 1: become crabs, and really that's not how evolution works at all.
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  Speaker 1: But let's just say that we want to play along
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  Speaker 1: for a moment. Picture a future Earth ravaged by rising
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  Speaker 1: sea levels, where cities drown and humanity is forced to
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  Speaker 1: adapt to aquatic environments over millions of years, assuming the
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  Speaker 1: right pressures. Of course, could we become something vaguely crab like?
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  Speaker 1: Trade our soft, squishy forms for hardened shells, our hands
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  Speaker 1: for pincers, our legs for ones that are more suited
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  Speaker 1: to scurrying over s, And as wild as it sounds,
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  Speaker 1: it's not impossible, And as Boradale showed, evolution has a
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  Speaker 1: soft spot for the crab shape. So forget Magneto and
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  Speaker 1: his mutants. If any species has earned our admiration, it's
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  Speaker 1: the humble crab. Masters of adaptation, survivors across oceans, caves,
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  Speaker 1: treetops and tides. They're nature's quiet champions and maybe, just
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  Speaker 1: maybe the final form for us. All natural disasters are
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  Speaker 1: existentially terrifying. While some are avoidable, others strike suddenly and
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  Speaker 1: without warning. Their sheer scale and ability to kill massive
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  Speaker 1: amounts of people at one time makes the universe seem
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  Speaker 1: like an especially cruel and uncaring place. It's hard to
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  Speaker 1: imagine so many lives being snuffed out in an instant.
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  Speaker 1: These disasters are so preoccupying that they've led to their
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  Speaker 1: own genre of action films, where Titanic forces wipe out
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  Speaker 1: whole cities. But sometimes in real life, natural disasters aren't
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  Speaker 1: loud and exciting sometimes they're silent, but just as deadly.
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  Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty six, a woman named Prudensia Kane was
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  Speaker 1: settling down for a night in her village near Lake
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  Speaker 1: NEOs in Cameroon, Africa. It's a mid sized country on
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  Speaker 1: the western shore of the continent, right up in the
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  Speaker 1: crook where the coast starts to shift from north to west.
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  Speaker 1: It's a lush region, made so by the volcanic soil
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  Speaker 1: that covers the landscape. Prudencia and others like her live
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  Speaker 1: there for a reason, and the nearby Lake Nios only
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  Speaker 1: adds to its beauty. After Prudencia put her children down
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  Speaker 1: for the night, it wasn't long before she herself drifted
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  Speaker 1: off to sleep. It would be a while before she
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  Speaker 1: woke again, and when she did, her whole world had changed.
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  Speaker 1: She awoke suddenly late in the day with a heavy cough.
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  Speaker 1: Her throat burned as a strange white powder flew out
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  Speaker 1: of her mouth with each spasm. Immediately she knew that
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  Speaker 1: something was wrong. She stumbled to her feet, feeling dizzy,
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  Speaker 1: and made her way to where her children were sleeping.
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  Speaker 1: As she bent down to shake them awake, her heart stopped.
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  Speaker 1: They weren't moving no fluttering in their eyelids, no rising
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  Speaker 1: and falling of their chests. When she checked their necks,
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  Speaker 1: there was no pulse. Her pain was immeasurable. She could
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  Speaker 1: hardly process what was happening. It seemed like a nightmare. Eventually,
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  Speaker 1: she stumbled out her door and into the village. For
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  Speaker 1: the first time, she realized just how unusually quiet it was.
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  Speaker 1: There were no birds chirping, no cicadas in the trees,
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  Speaker 1: no voices. Her eyes were ringing with the silence, and
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  Speaker 1: as Prudencia made her way down the street, she checked
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  Speaker 1: in on her neighbor's homes and found that many of
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  Speaker 1: them were just as still as her children. What had happened.
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  Speaker 1: Her heart nearly broke when she made it a few
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  Speaker 1: more blocks and finally found another survivor. They had strange
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  Speaker 1: red blisters on them their face, and they were just
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  Speaker 1: as scared as Prudensia. Neither of them had any idea
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  Speaker 1: what had happened. In the weeks that followed, government authorities
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  Speaker 1: came to the village and began to treat the survivors
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  Speaker 1: while also counting the dead. They soon found that eighteen
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  Speaker 1: hundred people and thirty five hundred livestock had perished as
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  Speaker 1: well as birds and insects. Many had fluid in their
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  Speaker 1: lungs and the strange blisters on their bodies. The doctors
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  Speaker 1: were just as confused as the victims. They needed outside help. Thankfully,
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  Speaker 1: doctors from England heeded their call, intrigued by the mystery
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  Speaker 1: and anxious to provide assistance. As they examined the victims,
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  Speaker 1: both living and dead, they were able to eliminate several hypotheses.
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  Speaker 1: This wasn't some chemical weapon attack. The blisters were not burns,
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  Speaker 1: but rather the result of asphyxiation. These people had been
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  Speaker 1: deprived of oxygen and their blood had practically cried out,
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  Speaker 1: breaking through their skin. Some of the victims also had
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  Speaker 1: pneumonia and other respiratory issues, showing that they had been
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  Speaker 1: in comas for a short time and deprived of oxygen.
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  Speaker 1: All signs pointed to carbon dioxide poisoning. But where could
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  Speaker 1: the gas have come from. The doctors needed to look
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  Speaker 1: no further than Lake NEOs, the large body of water
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  Speaker 1: just outside the village. The lake is actually a crater lake,
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  Speaker 1: meaning that it was formed from volcanic activity and there
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  Speaker 1: is still magma deep below. Over time, carbon dioxide from
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  Speaker 1: the magma seeps upward to the bottom of the lake,
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  Speaker 1: where it builds up, literally forming a large bubble, and
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  Speaker 1: when the pressure becomes too much, that bubble bursts, releasing
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  Speaker 1: a massive amount of gas into the air, gas that
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  Speaker 1: traveled on the wind and wiped out the local population.
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  Speaker 1: It's called a limnic eruption, and the one on Lake
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  Speaker 1: Nios was one of only three in recorded history, and
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  Speaker 1: it was by far the most deadly as well. Today
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  Speaker 1: the villages around the lake have been resettled. This was
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  Speaker 1: made possible by the installation of large tubes that release
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  Speaker 1: the gas at the bottom of the lake in safe quantities,
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  Speaker 1: keeping it from building up. But the disaster remains a
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  Speaker 1: curious episode in the history of mankind struggle against Mother Nature.
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  Speaker 1: Our planets is large and it's run by colossal forces
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  Speaker 1: like gravity, tectonic shifts, particle decay, the water cycle, solar energy.
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  Speaker 1: The list just goes on and on. All you can
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  Speaker 1: do is pray that you won't end up on the
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  Speaker 1: wrong side of any one of those things, because if
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  Speaker 1: that happens, there's nothing we can do about it. I
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  Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities,
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  Speaker 1: subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the Worldolore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, a Curious