
Door to Hell - rajeemcariazo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_to_Hell
======
prawn
Similar but different - naturally occurring fires of Chimaera:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanarta%C5%9F](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanarta%C5%9F)

Believed to be the origin of the stories of Mount Chimaera.

Short hike out from Cirali in Turkey on the south coast. You can extinguish a
flame temporarily but it will soon re-ignite. Picture of the area here:

[http://www.fazturkey.com/Files/User/Product/Orjinal/430_cira...](http://www.fazturkey.com/Files/User/Product/Orjinal/430_cirali.jpg)

~~~
maaku
What are the stories of Mount Chimaera?

~~~
prawn
The Chimera was a fire-breathing creature from Greek mythological, part-snake,
part-lion, part-goat.

Thought to have origins in the burning rocks near Cirali.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Chimaera](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Chimaera)

Apparently sailors used those flames as a form of navigation though they
might've needed to have been a lot larger hundreds of years ago to be visible
from that far out to sea. When I was there a few years ago, none of the flames
would've been bigger than about 20cm. We could barely see them in the dark
from down the mountain let alone some way out on the water.

Absolutely recommend Turkey as a travel destination by the way, and especially
the boat trips along the South coast. Awesome experience cruising along by
sail, then anchoring in a sheltered bay to dive off the boat, eat, visit
ruins, etc.

~~~
maaku
Interesting, thank you!

------
bagels
Coal mine fire burning since 1962 in Pennsylvania:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire)

~~~
jacquesm
And one that is even older than that!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_Run_mine_fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_Run_mine_fire)

------
nl
The Oklo[1][2][3] natural nuclear reactor is even stranger.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor)

[3]
[http://jdlc.curtin.edu.au/research/oklo/oklo.cfm](http://jdlc.curtin.edu.au/research/oklo/oklo.cfm)

~~~
huhtenberg
You must've seen this on HN, haven't you? It was on the front page not few
days ago.

~~~
nl
No, I missed it then. I would assume it's been on a few times - it's quite
interesting.

Not sure where I first heard about it.

------
chrisBob
Ha. 1971? I used to occasionally drive by one in Kirkuk Iraq that is featured
in the old testament.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Gurgur](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Gurgur)

It was the safest route between two of the bases we frequently traveled
between, but the sulfur smell was _horrible_.

------
mik3y
Fascinating; aren't fires like these typically extinguished by starving them
of oxygen, for instance with an explosive charge? Wikipedia doesn't even say
if it's been attempted, and the panaorma makes the site look like it would be
small enough to be feasible.. (IANA natural gas fire fighter.)

~~~
jader201
_> Derweze's large crater with a diameter of 70 metres (230 ft)._

~~~
pavement
So, cap it with concrete. It's not quite the scale of the Hoover Dam. Recover
expenses later, by selling the natural gas that would've otherwise burnt off.

How many cubic meters of gas have been wasted since 1971?

~~~
simcop2387
I don't think this would work. you'd have to cap it long enough for the
concrete to set. otherwise it'll bubble through and likely end up with a
channel in the middle of the concrete that'll let the gas out anyway.

~~~
jonmrodriguez
Concrete sounds too expensive anyways, just cap it with a big flame-proof
tarp. Wouldn't cost more than $10k or $20k I'd imagine.

------
pjc50
Note to people complaining about the waste of gas and CO2 emission: this is a
drop in the bucket. _Vast_ quantities of gas from oilfields is flared,
deliberately, continuously.

[http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-09-03/gas-flaring-
the...](http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-09-03/gas-flaring-the-burning-
issue)

"140-150 billion cubic meters of flared natural gas translates into 270-290
million tons of C02 emissions per year. Accounting for roughly 1% of global
carbon emissions"

------
chubbiguy40
Serious question:

Why isn't a power plant built over this?

~~~
dognotdog
I've been to that campfire. Turkmenistan's main non-urban tourist attraction.

First, the gas seeps up through the ground, not through a single bore at the
surface. So it is hard to capture.

Second, the amount of gas coming out of that hole is simply not that enormous.
Enormous by an individual human scale, but by and large, it doesn't have the
same menacing quality as a high pressure oil well being on fire. You can walk
right up to the crater's edge without protection, while the oil well fires
radiate so much heat you can't even get close. I doubt it's a significant
amount of gas leakage, compared to what the country already drills for.

It's also in the middle of nowhere. Quite literally, it's almost exactly in
the middle of the turkmen desert.

~~~
ozh
Interesting OT for the non English native speaker: meaning and origin of the
expression "by and large" which got me confused for a second --
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-
bya1.htm](http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bya1.htm)

~~~
eric_h
Interesting OT even for a native english speaker. I'm frequently surprised at
the origins of idioms that I use all the time.

------
kevinwang
Another fire that's been burning for over 5 decades:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire)

------
tomw1808
While I find that very interesting, that hoax which I just found on the bottom
of the wikipedia page made me quite lough tough...
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_to_Hell_hoax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_to_Hell_hoax)

------
protomyth
Would a large fuel-air detonation above it suck enough air to put it out?

~~~
hartror
You need to cut off oxygen long enough for the rock to cool below the
temperature at which the gas will ignite.

~~~
ars
Wait for a very rainy day and do it then. Store some extra water in tanks on
the sides.

Does it rain there much or is it arid?

~~~
eCa
It's pretty arid [1]. The rainiest month in Ashgabat (the Turkmenistan
capital) is February, with 40 mm (less than two inches).

[1]
[https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40.252611,58.439389&q=loc:40...](https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40.252611,58.439389&q=loc:40.252611,58.439389&hl=en&t=m&z=15)

------
ommunist
The actual legendary one is in Norway. Around Lofoten Point.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskstraumen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskstraumen)

------
roshansingh
Another one in India
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jharia#Coal_field_fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jharia#Coal_field_fire)

------
syassami
Also check out
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanar_Dag](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanar_Dag)

------
DAddYE
How cool will be having a bbq over there?

~~~
Zircom
I imagine it'd be fairly hot actually.

------
jmnicolas
I wonder what is the quantity of CO2 that is released annually by this crater.
Must be tremendous.

I'm under the impression that whatever ways to pollute less we come up with,
it will be annihilated by things like this or just sheer overpopulation.

~~~
cobbal
It's probably not that much, on a global scale. What's more, CO2 is a better
gas to be venting to the atmosphere than methane is. [citation needed]

~~~
ccozan
Indeed, methane is at least an order of magnitude greenhouse gas as C02 : "
over a 100-year period, it traps 29 times more heat per mass unit than carbon
dioxide".[0]

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane)

------
z3phyr
On the first look it seems like a crater in Venus, Awesome.

------
unreal37
Interesting that it was lit on purpose by Russian petro-chemists in 1971, and
has been burning ever since. The fire was originally supposed to last a couple
of weeks...

~~~
iLoch
I too read the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article.

