The Gates of Hell are Still On Fire....for now

Not to be confused with the late 1800s piece by sculptor Auguste Rodin, the Gates of Hell crater doesn't have as nice of a background/ history. The semi-mysterious crater is about 230 feet in diameter with a depth of about 66 ft. There are a few different origin stories of the crater; the records that would prove its origin are classified or otherwise inaccessible.

So, the rumors are that the land collapsed into a crater in the 1960s and it was then set on fire in the 1980s to prevent the spread of poisonous gasses it was emitting at the time. The other origin story is that the site was drilled by Soviet engineers in 1971, but shortly after the land collapsed forming a crater. The Soviet engineers then determined that there were poisonous gasses being emitted and flared the crater in order to control the spread. Both of these origin theories have something in common: an unknown volume of presumably poisonous gas.

Is the crater actually dangerous? We suspect so. In 2013, George Kourounis became the first person to set foot in the bottom of the crater to gather soil samples for the Extreme Microbiome Project. His expedition was sponsored and filmed by National Geographic in case you wanted to see first hand what the bottom of the Gates of Hell looks like. It probably should come as no surprise that this expedition was fruitful and a temperature resistant bacteria was discovered.

Have the locals near the crater been affected by it? In short, yes. The crater became a minor tourist attraction and the only way to get to the Gates of Hell is via a local guide since there are no roads to access it otherwise. We're sure you're thinking "this history is cool, but why did they say 'on fire for now' at the beginning of this article?" and that's because last year the president of Turkmenistan made an announcement that he plans to extinguish the crater now that there have been negative effects observed on both the environment and the health of the people who live near it. So far, the plan to extinguish the Gates of Hell are still being developed and it has been confirmed that a commission was established in order to do so.

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