101 Places Not to See Before You Die - Catherine Price [51]
According to the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, “If another large caldera-forming eruption were to occur at Yellowstone, its effects would be worldwide. Thick ash deposits would bury vast areas of the United States, and injection of huge volumes of volcanic gases into the atmosphere could drastically affect global climate.” Luckily, they insist that there’s no indication that a catastrophic eruption is imminent. But Bryson points to a different statistic: the supervolcano has erupted, on average, every 600,000 to 700,000 years. The last major eruption is estimated to have happened around 640,000 years ago. As Bryson puts it, “Yellowstone, it appears, is due.”
Even if the supervolcano remains dormant, there’s another threat: a giant earthquake. Yellowstone lies on a major fault line. In 1959, it was hit by a 7.5-magnitude quake that was so sudden that it caused an entire mountainside to collapse, sending some eighty million tons of rock hurtling off the mountain at more than one hundred miles per hour and killing twenty-eight campers.
Chapter 82
The Shores of Burundi’s Lake Tanganyika When Gustave Is Hungry
Gustave is not an irascible Frenchman; he’s a giant crocodile in Burundi with a taste for human flesh. Thought to be more than sixty years old, Gustave is said by locals to have killed and eaten more than three hundred people.
This number is likely exaggerated, but scientists agree that unlike Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, the huge croc actually does exist. Experts say it’s quite possible he is twenty feet long and weighs around a ton—four times more than a typical crocodile. As one observer described him, Gustave has the girth of a killer whale and teeth the size of railroad spikes.
They also don’t dispute the idea that he preys on humans. Corroborating reports from witnesses all describe a giant crocodile with the same distinctive dark scar on its head (thought to be an old bullet wound), and Patrice Faye, a researcher (and irascible Frenchman) who’s been studying Burundi’s crocodiles for more than twenty years, claims to have seen Gustave with people in his jaws. In 2004, he allegedly killed four swimmers in the span of eight days.
In addition to his stomach capacity, Gustave has impressive powers of evasion. Faye has made several attempts to catch him, including one involving a massive, 32´ x 5´ x 7´ cage baited with a live goat, chickens, and, at one point, a sorcerer’s unwanted dog. Gustave simply lingered in the river, his glowing eyes captured by nighttime cameras.
According to Faye’s research, Gustave likes to alternate between an area of river in the Rusizi National Park and the banks of Lake Tanganyika, one of the world’s largest freshwater lakes. When he eats, Gustave goes for quantity over quality, gobbling up easily detached body parts like heads, limbs, and abdomens and leaving the torsos behind. Satiated, he then retreats for up to months at a time. But don’t be fooled by these temporary disappearances. Crocodiles have a neat trick where they can turn off their production of stomach acid and survive without new food for up to a year—just long enough for wary swimmers to let down their guard.
Chapter 83
Ancient Rome On or Around the Night of July 18, 64 A.D.
The night of July 18, 64 A.D., was not a good time for Rome. A fire broke out that evening in a shopping district near the Circus Maximus and quickly spread across the city. By the time it was finally extinguished more than a week later, ten of Rome’s fourteen districts had been damaged or destroyed.
The causes of the Great Fire of Rome, as it was subsequently dubbed, remain mysterious. It could have been an accident—an estimated ten fires a day broke out in the city. The emperor, Nero, could have had the fire started to clear out a section of Rome where he wanted to build a new palace. Or, as Nero himself claimed, it could have been the Christians—there’s evidence that Roman Christians of the time believed that Rome was destined to be destroyed by fire in 64 A.D., and someone could have just