LIQUID MERCURY
This shiny metal is always in a liquid state. It’s much denser and heavier than water. And if you jumped into a pool of this stuff, you’d instantly regret it. The metal I’m talking about is liquid mercury. Swimming in it would feel like swimming in Jell-O. Only worse. It would burn and seriously irritate your skin. And if you stayed in this pool long enough, liquid mercury would get absorbed by your skin and make it to your organs. Even your brain.
Eventually, it could cause you speech difficulties and lack of coordination. You could lose your vision too. And if you think this is bad, you haven’t seen the worst on our list yet. Buckle up as we submerge you in the most dangerous things known to humanity. From painful stings to severe frostbite, this journey could get fatal quick. Can you make it to the end?
LAKE NATRON
For your next dangerous dive, let me take you to Tanzania. Here, there’s a lake so dangerous it could turn you to stone. Lake Natron has uncomfortably high pH levels. All thanks to being too close to an active volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai. This volcano spews out a rare kind of lava rich in sodium and potassium carbonate. Mix this stuff with water and you got yourself a mummification pool.
After only five seconds in Lake Natron, you’d get third-degree burns. That’s because this lake can get as hot as 60 °C (140 °F). Don’t swallow any of its waters because Lake Natron could burn your insides. If you could not get out of this hot water and stayed submerged long enough, your entire body would calcify and harden. Lake Natron would preserve you so well that even one hundred years later, people could find your hair and what’s left of your organs intact.
POOL OF STINGRAYS
Let’s take it up a notch and throw you into something even more dangerous. Like a pool of stingrays. These guys might look cute, but don’t let them fool you. They’re armed with long, venomous stringers, ready to kill you at any moment. As you got stung by one stingray, the venom would flow into your bloodstream. And it would hurt. A lot.
That’s because of serotonin in a stingray’s venom. It would cause your muscles to contract badly. Now imagine being stung by a pool worth of these creatures. Not only would you feel as if your body was twisting all around, but you could also experience a severe allergic reaction. In that case, you’d require proper medical attention immediately. But luckily for you, stingrays wouldn’t go after you unless they felt threatened. So try not to disturb them, and you’d be fine. Likely.
POOL OF SHARKS
When it comes to swimming with creatures, you could do a lot worse. Ever swam in a pool filled with sharks? Well, you’re about to give it a try. Yes, sharks could smell your blood. They could also hear you very well. Their hearing is on par with their amazing sense of smell. But if a shark took a bite of you, it doesn’t mean it wanted to harm you.
Sharks are extremely curious. And they use their teeth like you use your hands. They investigate their surroundings by touching things around them (dramatic pause) with their teeth. That’s weird, and it really would be unlucky for you to get stuck with a curious bunch of sharks in one pool. But chances are, they wouldn’t be interested in you at all.
They’re wired to hunt fish. And you’d be a lot bigger than most sharks anyway. So they might be scared of you more than you’d be of them. As long as you don’t make any sudden movements, you could get out of that pool unharmed. But I can’t say that about the next item on our list. Volcanoes.
VOLCANO
Active volcanoes are hot. As you were standing at the rim of one, you’d be breathing in some ridiculously hot mix of gases like sulfur and ammonia. I’m talking 500 °C (932 °F) hot. That alone would cause you to pass out. But things are about to get worse. As your unconscious body hit the magma inside a volcano, the impact would be so hard that it would break most bones in your body.
Your skin would be flaming, your lungs would get seared. But contrary to what you might think, you wouldn’t sink. That’s because magma can be thousands to millions of times more viscous than water. Oh, but there’s one more thing. Within seconds, the intense temperature inside a volcano would make you go poof. You’d ignite into a ball of flames. And only your bones would be left of you, but not for long.
POOL OF LIQUID NITROGEN
I think it’s time to cool off as you took the number one most dangerous dive on our list. A dive in a pool of liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen is nonflammable, it has no odor and no color. And it makes a ton of fun fog when you expose it to room temperature air. So why is it the most dangerous thing on our list?
For starters, liquid nitrogen would displace oxygen around the pool. You wouldn’t be able to breathe and might pass out before you get a chance to feel anything else. But that would be just the beginning. This stuff boils at a very low temperature of -196 °C (−320 °F). So if you took a swim in a pool of liquid nitrogen longer than a few seconds, you wouldn’t be coming back out.
You would get severe frostbite all over your body. Your muscles, fat and blood would be frozen solid. If you managed to stay conscious and kept your head above the surface, your body would freeze and sink right down. But there’s good news. Since you would instantly turn into a human icicle, you’d also experience extreme nerve damage. You simply wouldn’t feel any pain.
You would just drown in a freezing cold boiling nitrogen pool. And that’s why it’s number one on the list of things you don’t want to jump into. But hey, some journeys might be worth the risk.
