Name: 地球上最危險的湖泊 (The Most Dangerous Lake on Earth)
Uploaded: 2025-07-17T08:44:33.000Z
Duration: 33 min 50 s

程度副詞

In August of 1984, something very strange and very scary happened in a very remote part of Africa.

1984 年 8 月，在非洲一個非常偏遠的地方發生了一件非常奇怪、非常可怕的事情。

Lake Manown is a small, bone-shaped lake in a rural part of the country of Cameroon, nearby to nothing that most people from the outside world have ever heard of.

馬諾恩湖（Lake Manown）是喀麥隆鄉村地區的一個骨狀小湖，附近沒有任何地方，外界大多數人都沒聽說過。

情態副詞

Surrounded by farms, a small village immediately to the northeast, and a small local road running just to the east,

周圍都是農場，東北面緊挨著一個小村莊，東面有一條當地的小路、

Lake Manown was always a quiet, rustic, and obscure location, until it was struck by an unprecedented nightmare.

馬諾恩湖一直是一個寧靜、質樸和不起眼的地方，直到它遭遇了一場前所未有的噩夢。

Late on one August night in 1984, local villagers around Lake Manown would later report that they heard a loud, rumbling noise, but hardly anyone thought anything about it at first.

1984 年 8 月的一個深夜，瑪瑙湖附近的當地村民後來報告說，他們聽到了轟隆隆的巨響，但起初幾乎沒有人對此有任何想法。

At around 11.30 pm at night, a mysterious cloud of white mist shot up out of the lake, and then poured across the road immediately to the east of the lake.

晚上 11 時 30 分左右，一團神祕的白霧從湖中升起，然後湧向湖東面的道路。

By the time the sun began rising the following morning, the mysterious cloud remained across the road, and villagers from the town just to the northeast began waking up and traveling down the road to go to work, directly through the mysterious cloud.

第二天早上太陽昇起時，神祕的雲層仍然橫在路上，東北方向小鎮上的村民開始起床，直接穿過神祕的雲層，沿著這條路去上班。

Assuming that the cloud was just some unusual morning mist, hardly anyone thought anything about it and simply traveled through it, only to find that immediately after they entered it, they could no longer breathe.

幾乎沒有人認為那雲只是不尋常的晨霧，他們只是簡單地穿行其中，卻發現進入其中後立刻就無法呼吸了。

Gasping for air and immediately suffocating, anyone who entered into that cloud that morning along that road would be dead within only a single minute.

喘不過氣來的人立刻就會窒息而死，那天早上沿著那條路進入那片雲層的人都會在短短一分鐘內死去。

Eventually, by around 10.30 am in the morning, local winds had swept the deadly cloud away, and then, to everyone's horror, the number of unfortunate victims who had entered into the cloud over the preceding hours became immediately apparent.

最終，到上午 10 時 30 分左右，當地的大風將致命的雲層捲走，然後，令所有人驚恐的是，在之前的幾個小時裡，進入雲層的不幸遇難者人數立即顯現出來。

Eventually, a local police officer and a doctor arrived to the scene, where they discovered the bodies of 37 people strewn across the road, who had been killed by the mysterious mist.

最後，一名當地警察和一名醫生趕到現場，發現 37 具屍體散落在路上，他們都是被神祕的霧氣殺死的。

Some of them who had walked, and others dead in their cars, and at least one man dead slumped over his motorcycle, all unfortunate enough to have chosen to walk or drive through what they thought had only been a cloud.

他們中有些人是走著死的，有些人是死在車裡，至少有一個人是癱倒在摩托車上死的，他們都很不幸，選擇了步行或開車穿過他們以為只是一片雲彩的地方。

In the immediate aftermath of this incident, there was no good explanation for what had happened.

事件發生後，人們對所發生的一切都沒有很好的解釋。

Some superstitious local villagers believed that the lake was cursed and contained evil spirits who came out to kill the victims that morning, while the Cameroonian government initially suspected that the incident was a chemical weapons attack committed by terrorists or rebels attempting a coup d'etat.

一些迷信的當地村民認為，該湖受到了詛咒，湖中有惡靈，這些惡靈在當天早上出來殺害了受害者，而喀麥隆政府最初懷疑該事件是恐怖分子或企圖發動政變的叛亂分子實施的化學武器襲擊。

But the chemical weapon explanation didn't really make any sense.

但化學武器的解釋並沒有任何意義。

Chemical weapons are a difficult thing for anyone to actually acquire, and even if some group of rebels in Cameroon had actually somehow managed to acquire them, why would they have wasted them attacking a random, rural road in the middle of nowhere, rather than a more valuable target?

對任何人來說，化學武器都是難以獲得的，即使喀麥隆的某些叛軍真的設法獲得了化學武器，他們為什麼要浪費在攻擊一條荒郊野外的鄉間小路，而不是一個更有價值的目標呢？

And why had nobody claimed any responsibility for it?

The search for an explanation quickly turned to the search for a natural cause, and some people quickly began pointing to the existence of the Cameroon Line, a volcanic chain of islands and mountains that spans from the Gulf of Guinea into the West African interior, directly through the location of Lake Manoune, which sat directly above one of the volcanoes in this chain that had long been believed to be dormant.

一些人很快開始指出喀麥隆線的存在，這是一條由島嶼和山脈組成的火山鏈，從幾內亞灣一直延伸到西非內陸，直接穿過馬努恩湖的位置。

But perhaps there was a chance that it had reactivated again and triggered the disaster.

但也許它有可能又重新啟動，引發了這場災難。

And so, the American embassy in Cameroon summoned an expert named Harold Dersigertsen to come to the country and investigate what had taken place at Lake Manoune.

於是，美國駐喀麥隆大使館召來了一位名叫哈羅德-德西格森的專家，讓他來喀麥隆調查馬努恩湖發生的事情。

Dersigertsen was a well-respected Icelandic volcanologist and geochemist who at the time worked at the University of Rhode Island in the United States.

Dersigertsen 是一位備受尊敬的冰島火山學家和地球化學家，當時在美國羅德島大學工作。

He eventually arrived at the scene of the Lake Manoune incident in Cameroon many months after it had happened, and he began conducting a plethora of tests to try and get to the bottom of what had killed 37 people there.

最終，他在喀麥隆馬努恩湖事件發生數月後抵達現場，開始進行大量試驗，試圖弄清造成 37 人死亡的原因。

But Dersigertsen quickly found no evidence that a volcanic eruption had recently taken place in the area, and frustratingly, he found very little other evidence of just about anything else natural having happened either.

但 Dersigertsen 很快就發現，沒有任何證據表明該地區最近發生過火山爆發，而且令人沮喪的是，他也幾乎沒有發現其他任何自然發生的證據。

The lake bed beneath the surface showed no signs of having been disturbed.

水面下的湖床沒有被擾動過的跡象。

He discovered no sulfur compounds that would have indicated a volcanic eruption, and he found no signs that the water in the lake had ever even recently increased in temperature.

他沒有發現任何表明火山爆發的硫化合物，也沒有發現任何跡象表明湖水的溫度最近有所上升。

The eureka moment for Dersigertsen only came after he lifted up a bottle with a water sample inside from deep within the lake.

當 Dersigertsen 從湖底深處提起一個裝有水樣的瓶子時，他才迎來了 "靈光一現 "的時刻。

After the bottle reached the surface, its lid popped right off like a shaken up carbonated beverage might do.

瓶子到達水面後，瓶蓋就像搖晃的碳酸飲料一樣直接彈開了。

Dersigertsen realized after that that the water from the deeper depths of the lake was absolutely saturated with dissolved carbon dioxide, or CO2, as if it was a massive bottle of carbonated water like La Croix.

Dersigertsen 之後意識到，來自湖泊深處的水絕對飽和地溶解著二氧化碳，就像一大瓶像 La Croix 一樣的碳酸水。

And it was shortly after that when Dersigertsen also realized that the deaths of those 37 victims who had entered into that mysterious cloud were all consistent with carbon dioxide asphyxiation, which in its gaseous state is colorless, odorless, and heavier than air, which he theorized was why the CO2 cloud had remained so low on the ground for so long.

此後不久，德西格森也意識到，進入那團神祕雲霧的 37 名遇難者的死因都與二氧化碳窒息相吻合，而二氧化碳在氣態時無色無味，比空氣重，他推測這就是二氧化碳雲霧在地面上停留如此之久的原因。

CO2 is also extremely deadly in its gaseous state, and it'll kill people rapidly in the same way as what happened to the victims around Lake Manown.

二氧化碳在氣態下也是極其致命的，它會以與馬諾恩湖附近受害者相同的方式迅速致人於死地。

Dersigertsen then began expanding on this theory, attempting to explain how dissolved CO2 in the deep waters of the lake could suddenly transform into a cloud of deadly gas above the lake.

隨後，Dersigertsen 開始擴展這一理論，試圖解釋湖泊深層水域中溶解的二氧化碳為何會突然變成湖面上的致命氣體雲。

For the next nearly two years, Dersigertsen steadily developed and expanded on his theory.

在接下來的近兩年時間裡，Dersigertsen 穩步發展並擴展了他的理論。

He eventually concluded the Lake Manown was, effectively, a highly bizarre geologic anomaly.

他最終得出結論，馬諾恩湖實際上是一個非常怪異的地質異常點。

He theorized that magma from deep beneath the lakebed had been slowly degassing and allowing CO2 to percolate up into the lake's lower layers for decades or even centuries, where the CO2 would dissolve and mix with the lower, heavier, and remain trapped by the lighter, warmer waters above in the lake's upper layers.

他推測，幾十年甚至幾個世紀以來，湖床下深層的岩漿一直在緩慢地脫氣，讓二氧化碳滲入湖泊的下層，在那裡，二氧化碳會溶解並與較低的、較重的水混合，並被上面較輕的、較溫暖的水困在湖泊的上層。

This isn't a problem in most lakes because most lakes' waters frequently mix together and prevent this steady buildup of CO2 in the lower lake layers from being possible.

這在大多數湖泊中都不是問題，因為大多數湖泊的湖水經常混合在一起，使二氧化碳無法在湖泊下層穩定積聚。

During the winter, the surface water of lakes grow colder and denser and sink, and so they shift the lower, warmer, lighter, and less dense layers up to replace them.

在冬季，湖泊表層水變冷、變密並下沉，是以它們會將較低、較暖、較輕、密度較小的水層上移來代替它們。

Well, in the spring and summer, the opposite process ends up happening too, which keeps the layers of the lake constantly shuffled around.

在春夏兩季，相反的過程也會發生，這就使得湖面上的水層不斷變化。

Lake Manown, however, is located near to the equator within the tropics, where the climate remains warm throughout the entire year and never shifts, meaning that this usual process of layers mixing together within lakes throughout the procession of the seasons doesn't really happen, meaning that the lower layers of lakes in the tropics will often remain stagnant for multiple centuries at a time.

然而，馬諾恩湖位於赤道附近的熱帶地區，那裡的氣候終年保持溫暖，從未發生變化，這意味著在整個季節過程中，湖泊內各層混合在一起的通常過程並不會真正發生，也就是說，熱帶地區湖泊的下層往往會停滯數百年之久。

Dersigertsen theorized that in the specific case of Lake Manown, the CO2 percolating upwards and to the bottom of the lake was probably causing the trapped lower layer of water at the bottom of the lake to steadily grow more and more saturated with CO2 over a very long time frame, and that it was only all contained by the warmer, lighter layer of water above it that acted like a cork on a bottle of champagne.

Dersigertsen 提出的理論認為，就馬恩恩湖的具體情況而言，向上滲入湖底的二氧化碳很可能導致湖底被困的較低水層在很長一段時間內二氧化碳飽和度持續上升，而這一切都被其上方溫度較高、重量較輕的水層所阻擋，就像香檳酒瓶上的軟木塞一樣。

The moment that something disturbed that cork, or after the lower layer of water reached maximum CO2 saturation, he theorized that the upper and lower layers of the lake would suddenly and rapidly shift, and that all of that pent-up dissolved CO2 at the bottom of the lake would rapidly erupt into its deadly gas estate and kill everything unlucky enough to be nearby.

他推測，一旦有東西擾動了軟木塞，或者下層水達到最大的二氧化碳飽和度之後，湖的上層和下層就會突然迅速移動，湖底所有被壓抑的溶解二氧化碳就會迅速爆發，變成致命的氣體，殺死附近所有倒黴的人。

Lake Manown, in other words, had potentially been a slowly ticking time bomb for centuries, completely and insidiously impossible to detect by the people who chose to settle around it.

換句話說，幾個世紀以來，馬諾恩湖一直是一個潛在的定時炸彈，選擇在其周圍定居的人們完全無法察覺到它的存在。

Sigurdsson referred to his theory of what had happened at Lake Manown in 1984 as a hitherto unknown natural hazard that had the potential of annihilating entire towns.

Sigurdsson 提到了他的理論，即 1984 年在馬諾恩湖發生的事件是一種迄今未知的自然災害，有可能毀滅整個城鎮。

And in 1986, two years after the Lake Manown incident had happened,

而在 1986 年，也就是馬諾恩湖事件發生兩年之後、

Sigurdsson submitted his entire study and theory as a paper to the prestigious journal Science, which rejected it on the grounds that it was too far-fetched.

西古德森將他的整個研究和理論作為論文提交給了著名的《科學》雜誌，但該雜誌以過於牽強為由拒絕了他的論文。

Sigurdsson's theory thus remained extremely obscure and niche, known only to a small handful of his fellow experts in his own field.

是以，西古德森的理論仍然非常晦澀和小眾，只有他自己領域內的少數同行專家才知道。

But only for a few more months, because astoundingly, only about a hundred kilometers away to the northwest of Lake Manown, there was another one of these ticking time bomb lakes in Cameroon that nobody was aware about that was also, almost impossibly coincidentally, at that very moment, also on the verge of exploding as well.

但這只是幾個月的時間，因為令人震驚的是，就在馬諾恩湖西北方向約一百公里處，喀麥隆還有另一個無人知曉的定時炸彈湖，幾乎不可能巧合的是，就在此時此刻，它也瀕臨爆炸的邊緣。

And this one was going to be orders of magnitude more deadly than what had happened at Lake Manown.

而這一次要比在馬諾恩湖發生的事情更致命。

As the sun set on the evening of the 21st of August of 1986, the small villages around Lake Nyos in Cameroon were calmly quiet.

1986 年 8 月 21 日傍晚，夕陽西下，喀麥隆尼奧斯湖周圍的小村莊一片寧靜。

At about 9 p.m. that night, a few of the very small handful of people who had survived what was about to happen would later report that they heard a loud rumbling sound, consistent with eyewitness reports from what had happened just before the Lake Manown incident as well.

當晚 9 點左右，在即將發生的事件中倖存下來的極少數人中，有幾個人後來報告說，他們聽到了轟隆隆的巨響，這與馬諾恩湖事件發生前的目擊者報告一致。

Many of the villagers around the lake had already gone to bed, completely unaware of the enormous danger that was imminently about to bear down on them.

湖邊的許多村民已經上床睡覺，完全沒有意識到巨大的危險即將降臨到他們頭上。

Suddenly, with little warning, like what happened to Lake Manown, a massive cloud containing up to one cubic kilometer, or about 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide, erupted out from the lake in a deadly, low-lying, thick white mist.

突然間，就像馬恩恩湖的情況一樣，在幾乎沒有任何警告的情況下，含有多達一立方千米（約 30 萬噸）二氧化碳的巨大雲團從湖中噴發出來，形成致命的、低窪的、濃厚的白霧。

Scientists who investigated the site later found evidence that the gas eruption from the lake also triggered a tsunami about 25 meters high that crashed onto one of the lake's shores.

後來，科學家們在現場調查時發現，有證據表明，湖中的氣體噴發還引發了約 25 米高的海嘯，海嘯衝到了湖的一個岸邊。

The cloud of CO2 gas initially shot up at a speed of nearly 100 kilometers an hour from the lake, but since it was heavier than the air, it rapidly collapsed back down onto the nearby villages around the lake's rim and then poured down into the lower-lying valleys and into multiple smaller villages nearby, carrying death with it as far away as 25 kilometers away from the lake.

二氧化碳氣體雲最初以每小時近 100 公里的速度從湖中噴射而出，但由於它比空氣重，是以迅速倒塌，砸向湖邊附近的村莊，然後傾瀉到地勢較低的山谷和附近的多個小村莊，將死神帶到了距離湖泊 25 公里遠的地方。

Within the closest two villages to Lake Nyos at the time of the eruption, called Nyos and Kham, only four people who were fortunate enough to be located on higher ground managed to survive the low-lying toxic cloud.

在爆發時距離尼奧斯湖最近的兩個村莊--尼奧斯村和坎村--中，只有四個幸運地位於地勢較高的地方的人在低窪的有毒雲層中倖存了下來。

A few people in some of the villages were initially fortunate enough to have only been rendered unconscious by the CO2 cloud rather than killed by it.

一些村莊的一些人最初還算幸運，只是被二氧化碳雲霧弄昏了過去，而不是被它殺死。

Some of them remained unconscious for as long as 36 hours before suddenly awakening to the unbelievable horror of finding that their entire families and all of their neighbors were all dead.

其中一些人昏迷了長達 36 個小時，然後突然醒來，發現自己的全家和所有鄰居都死了，這簡直令人難以置信。

Many who survived the cloud were left with permanent respiratory problems, lesions inflamed on their skin, and even paralysis in a few extreme cases.

許多從雲層中倖存下來的人留下了永久性的呼吸道疾病、皮膚發炎，少數極端病例甚至癱瘓。

Over the next couple of days following the eruption of Lake Nyos, the survivors and people from surrounding areas began entering into the valleys around the lake to discover what many of them legitimately believed to have been the apocalypse.

尼奧斯湖噴發後的幾天裡，倖存者和周邊地區的人們開始進入湖周圍的山谷，發現他們中的許多人理所當然地認為這是世界末日。

The cloud that had thundered out from Lake Nyos that night had ended up killing a total of 1,746 people across the night as if it were a biblical plague, nearly 50 times as many people who were killed by the similar gas eruption from Lake Manown only a couple of years previously.

當晚從尼奧斯湖噴發出的雲霧猶如《聖經》中的瘟疫，一夜之間共造成 1746 人死亡，是幾年前馬諾恩湖類似氣體噴發造成死亡人數的近 50 倍。

The cloud also spared no life whatsoever as it spread around the lake that night, claiming the lives of humans and animals alike.

當晚，烏雲在湖面上蔓延，奪走了人類和動物的生命。

Around 3,500 cattle were also killed by the cloud, their carcasses left behind adding even further to the overwhelming sense of devastation.

約有 3500 頭牛也被雲層奪去了生命，它們留下的屍體進一步加劇了災難的嚴重性。

As people began entering into the scene over the next couple of days and discovering the hundreds of bodies and dead cattle strewn all about, one of the eeriest things that they began reporting was the utter quietness and the lack of flies on any of the bodies or carcasses because the cloud was so lethal, it hadn't even spared any of the insects either.

在接下來的幾天裡，人們開始進入現場，發現了散落在各處的數百具屍體和死牛，他們開始報告的最令人毛骨悚然的事情之一，就是現場一片死寂，屍體或屍體上沒有一隻蒼蠅，因為雲層是如此致命，甚至連昆蟲也未能倖免。

It was an event of almost complete localized annihilation of all nearby life, a miniaturized extinction event.

這是一個幾乎完全局部消滅附近所有生命的事件，一個小型的滅絕事件。

To make the whole scene appear even more apocalyptic, the lake itself, usually a picturesque blue, had turned completely blood red and looked like rusted out iron.

為了讓整個場景顯得更加末日化，湖泊本身通常是如詩如畫的藍色，現在已經完全變成了血紅色，看起來就像生鏽的鐵塊。

The sheer scale of this disaster around Lake Nyos understandably attracted significantly more attention from the outside world than the much smaller disaster that had taken place at Lake Manown only a couple of years previously.

與幾年前發生在馬諾恩湖的規模小得多的災難相比，尼奧斯湖周圍的這場災難規模之大，引起了外界更多的關注，這是可以理解的。

And it quickly introduced the theory to the world that Harold R. Sigurdsson had brought forth and attempted to have published in Science just a few months beforehand.

它迅速向世界介紹了哈羅德-R-西古德森在幾個月前提出並試圖在《科學》雜誌上發表的理論。

Scientists and researchers from all around the world came pouring into Cameroon and descended on the location of the disaster zone around Lake Nyos in the weeks and months that followed.

在隨後的幾個星期和幾個月裡，世界各地的科學家和研究人員紛紛湧入喀麥隆，來到尼奧斯湖周圍的災區。

And they steadily began to piece together what had happened there from the evidence that was available.

他們開始根據現有的證據逐步拼湊那裡發生的事情。

Lake Nyos was a very similar geological anomaly, a lake in the equatorial tropics that sat above a volcanically active area, with a lower, cold, and heavier stagnant layer that had been quietly building up in CO2 concentration through underwater springs for potentially centuries, and a higher, warmer, and lighter layer of water than acted as the cork on the bottle.

尼奧斯湖是一個非常相似的地質異常現象，它是赤道熱帶地區的一個湖泊，位於火山活躍區的上方，湖中有一個較低、較冷、較重的停滯層，通過水下泉水，二氧化碳濃度悄無聲息地積累了可能有幾個世紀之久，還有一個較高、較暖、較輕的水層，就像瓶子上的軟木塞。

The exact reason for why Lake Nyos erupted and killed nearly 1,800 people that summer night in 1986 has never been conclusively proven.

1986 年的那個夏夜，尼奧斯湖爆發並導致近 1800 人喪生，其確切原因至今仍無定論。

But the leading theory is that a landslide of boulders could have crashed into the lake, and that that could have been enough to disrupt the layers and to have triggered the dissolved CO2 at the bottom to rush up to the surface and explode into its toxic gas estate.

但主要理論認為，可能是山體滑坡的巨石衝入湖中，這足以破壞湖層，並引發湖底溶解的二氧化碳衝上湖面，爆發成有毒氣體。

It was noted that many of the surviving local residents reported hearing a loud rumbling or crashing noise just before the toxic cloud had appeared, which could have been them hearing a landslide.

據悉，許多幸存的當地居民稱，在毒雲出現之前，他們聽到了轟隆隆的巨響或撞擊聲，這可能是他們聽到了山體滑坡的聲音。

While several of the researchers who arrived afterward observed that one of the cliff faces adjacent to the lake did show signs of a fresh rock slide.

雖然隨後趕到的幾位研究人員觀察到，湖邊的一處懸崖峭壁上確實有新的岩石滑落的痕跡。

Other alternative theories for the potential trigger of the disaster include a sudden drop in air temperature that might have cooled down the surface water and caused it to suddenly drop and mix in with the lower CO2-rich layer, triggering the explosion in the process, or a sudden gust of strong winds or cool, heavy rainfall that might have all done the same thing.

關於這場災難的潛在導火索的其他理論包括：氣溫驟降可能使地表水冷卻，導致地表水突然下降並混入富含二氧化碳的下層，在此過程中引發爆炸；或突然颳起一陣強風或降下涼爽的暴雨，這些都可能起到同樣的作用。

Whatever the cause, the disaster at Lake Nyos showed the world that Sigurdsson's theory of a hitherto unknown natural hazard was correct, and that something that was initially believed to only exist in myth was in fact very terrifyingly real.

無論起因如何，尼奧斯湖的災難向世人表明，西古德森關於一種迄今未知的自然災害的理論是正確的，一種最初被認為只存在於神話中的東西實際上是非常可怕的真實存在。

These kinds of lake explosion disasters eventually acquired the name of limnic eruptions.

這類湖泊爆炸災害最終被命名為湖泊噴發（limnic eruptions）。

And most alarmingly, the scientists who arrived to investigate the scene around Lake Nyos discovered that the 1986 explosion had not actually removed all of the pent-up dissolved CO2 down at the bottom layers of the lake.

最令人震驚的是，前來調查尼奧斯湖周圍現場的科學家發現，1986 年的爆炸實際上並沒有清除湖底底層所有積聚的溶解二氧化碳。

And neither did the 1984 explosion at Lake Manaun either.

1984 年在馬瑙恩湖發生的爆炸也是如此。

In fact, in both instances at Lake Nyos and at Lake Manaun, the concentration of CO2 in their lower layers were still continuing to increase, leaving the possibility that both of the lakes could cataclysmically explode and kill again in the future.

事實上，在尼奧斯湖和馬瑙恩湖，其下層的二氧化碳濃度仍在繼續增加，這使得這兩個湖泊在未來都有可能再次發生災難性的爆炸和死亡。

In order to solve this problem and to remove the dangerous CO2 from the lakes, the researchers involved came up with several different ideas, some more outlandish than the others.

為了解決這個問題，清除湖泊中危險的二氧化碳，相關研究人員提出了幾個不同的想法，其中有些想法更加離奇。

One idea put forward was to dump an enormous amount of lime into the lakes using helicopters in order to neutralize the gas, but that was considered to be too expensive.

提出的一個想法是用直升機向湖中傾倒大量石灰，以中和氣體，但這個想法被認為過於昂貴。

Another idea put forward was to simply blow out the CO2 from the lakes by dropping bombs into them, but that was considered to be too dangerous.

人們提出的另一個想法是通過向湖中投擲炸彈來清除湖中的二氧化碳，但這個想法被認為過於危險。

While still another idea was to dig out a series of channels or tunnels from the bed of the lake in order to drain out the CO2 heavy water from the bottom, which was considered to be far, far too expensive of an option to try.

還有一種想法是從湖床挖出一系列通道或隧道，以排出湖底的二氧化碳重水，但這一方案被認為過於昂貴，無法嘗試。

Eventually, the researchers decided to take one of the cheapest and low-tech options to remove the CO2 from the lakes instead.

最終，研究人員決定採用一種最便宜、技術含量最低的方法來清除湖泊中的二氧化碳。

In 2001, they simply placed a floating dock on the lakes and used a pipe that was placed into the lakes that connected the lower CO2-laden water layer with the surface and released the CO2 heavy water through the pipe up to the surface, basically as if it were a natural geyser.

2001 年，他們只是在湖面上放置了一個浮動碼頭，並在湖中鋪設了一條管道，將含有二氧化碳的低水層與湖面連接起來，然後通過管道將二氧化碳重水釋放到湖面上，這基本上就像是一個天然噴泉。

This allowed the CO2 gas at the bottom of the lakes to safely vent upwards in a miniature, controlled version of a limnic eruption that steadily drained the lakes of their dangerous CO2.

這樣，湖底的二氧化碳氣體就可以安全地向上噴發，形成一個微型的、可控的石灰岩噴發，不斷排出湖中危險的二氧化碳。

Additional pipes were added later to speed the process up and eventually by 2009,

為了加快進程，後來又增加了管道，最終在 2009 年完成、

Lake Mondaun was considered to be fully and safely degassed, while the larger Lake Nyos was eventually considered to be fully and safely degassed as well a decade later by 2019.

蒙代恩湖被認為已完全安全脫氣，而更大的尼奧斯湖最終也被認為在十年後的 2019 年完全安全脫氣。

But just as both of these lakes were being rendered safe from the hitherto unknown natural hazard of limnic eruptions, it was becoming clear that there was still another third lake in Equatorial Africa that contained all of the same conditions to eventually explode just like Lake Mondaun and Lake Nyos as well.

然而，就在這兩個湖泊從迄今為止未知的湖泊噴發自然災害中變得安全的時候，人們逐漸發現，在赤道非洲還有另外第三個湖泊，它也具備了像蒙達恩湖和尼奧斯湖一樣最終爆炸的所有條件。

And this third lake was way, way, way more potentially deadly and apocalyptic.

而這第三個湖的潛在致命性和世界末日性要大得多、大得多、大得多。

The exact conditions required to make a lake susceptible to limnic eruptions are very rare.

使湖泊容易發生石灰岩噴發所需的確切條件非常罕見。

They can basically only exist within a narrow band of the world where the tropics converge with tectonically or volcanically active areas and in regions and not too high of altitudes that experience colder temperatures, while the lakes themselves have to be deep enough to have distinctly separated layers of water within them that aren't too disturbed by natural phenomenon.

它們基本上只能存在於世界上熱帶與構造或火山活躍地區交匯的狹長地帶，以及海拔不太高、氣溫較低的地區，而湖泊本身必須足夠深，內部水層分明，不會受到自然現象的太大幹擾。

These conditions are so rare and far and few between that only one other lake in the world has ever been discovered since the 1980s that is also susceptible to limnic eruptions.

這種情況非常罕見，而且少之又少，自 20 世紀 80 年代以來，世界上只發現過一個同樣容易發生石灰岩噴發的湖泊。

Lake Kivu, in between the countries of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo or DRC.

基伍湖，位於盧旺達和剛果民主共和國之間。

Lake Kivu is a part of the African Great Lakes region in Eastern Africa and compared to Lake Mondaun and Lake Nyos that are thousands of kilometers away in Cameroon,

基伍湖是非洲東部大湖區的一部分，與之相比，蒙代恩湖和尼奧斯湖在數千公里外的喀麥隆境內、

Lake Nyos is relatively small at just about 1.7 kilometers long by 1.5 kilometers wide, and it's only about 213 meters deep.

尼奧斯湖相對較小，長約 1.7 公里，寬約 1.5 公里，水深僅約 213 米。

In comparison, Lake Kivu is nearly 50 times a bigger lake than that, measuring more than 88 kilometers long by 48 kilometers wide at its widest point, and with more than double the depth reaching down to 475 meters below the surface.

相比之下，基伍湖比基伍湖大近 50 倍，長 88 多公里，最寬處 48 公里，深度是基伍湖的兩倍多，深達湖面下 475 米。

Similar to how Lake Mondaun and Lake Nyos exist along the tectonically active Cameroon line,

這與喀麥隆構造活動線沿線存在蒙達恩湖和尼奧斯湖的情況類似、