The Lake That Exploded: Nyos, 1986
Coming to Wonder Science on 30 November 2026.
On the night of 21 August 1986, a lake in the volcanic highlands of Cameroon's Northwest Region belched a lake-sized bubble of carbon dioxide that poured downhill like invisible water and smothered some 1,700 people and their herds in their sleep. The story follows Che Emmanuel, a young Nyos cattle herder, and his grandmother Mama Bih, who survive only because he drags her onto a granary roof above the heavy gas; it moves with them down the valley of corpses to Subum, to the crowded hospital yard at Wum, and to the resettlement tents at Buabua, where an army captain, Ibrahim Njie, and a French volcanologist, Hélène Marchand, take up the problem of a lake that can kill again. With the Cameroonian engineer Samuel Ngu they sample the rust-red water, shore up the crumbling natural dam, test a prototype siphon at Lake Monoun, and finally float a platform over the deepest water of Nyos and open a pipe that throws a roaring fountain forty metres into the sky — the lake bled safely, drop by drop, for years to come.
About this story
- Length
- 10 illustrated pages
Who appears
- Che Emmanuel — Nyos cattle herder, nineteen, survivor and guide
- Mama Bih — Che's grandmother, village elder, survivor of the gas night
- Captain Ibrahim Njie — Cameroonian army officer running the rescue and later the lake operation
- Hélène Marchand — French volcanologist leading the lake-gas investigation
- Samuel Ngu — Cameroonian hydraulics engineer who builds the degassing pipe
What happens on 30 November 2026
This story is finished and scheduled. On 30 November 2026 it opens here in full — every page illustrated — as part of Wonder Science. Nothing on this page is a placeholder: the story exists, it has been reviewed, and this is its address.
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