Hell, Built to Soviet Safety Standards

Officially, it's called "The Shining of Karakum." The rest of the world just calls it the Gates of Hell. Turkmen authorities gave this crater a poetic name — and honestly, they're not wrong. Out there among the sand dunes and salt flats, in the middle of the night, it really does glow. Just... a bit intensely.

The story of how it got lit is almost embarrassingly simple. In nineteen seventy-one, Soviet geologists were drilling a borehole when the ground gave way, and the desert swallowed itself into a crater about sixty meters across. Gas started pouring out. The engineers thought it over and made a call: burn it off. Better than poisoning people and livestock with methane. The math seemed sound — a few weeks, and the fire would burn itself out. More than half a century has passed since. Picture the look on that engineer's face if he could see it now.

Inside, it's not one single flame — it's hundreds of separate tongues of fire, and the temperature at the bottom sits around eight hundred degrees Celsius. In two thousand thirteen, explorer George Kourounis rappelled down into it on a rope, wrapped in heat-resistant gear, the way you'd want to be. He said the strangest part down there wasn't the heat. It was the sound — a continuous roar you feel vibrating through your whole body.

But here's the twist: the Gates of Hell are going out. Observations from twenty twenty-four and twenty twenty-five show that the glow, once visible for kilometers, can now only be seen up close. The methane feeding the crater is running low. The fire nobody could put out for half a century seems to be quietly putting itself out.

Soviet geologists tried to extinguish it in days and failed. Now it's fading on its own — and travelers are rushing to see it before all that's left out there in the sand is just a dark hole in the ground.

The world is enormous and one question is enough to start. moygid dot online.