What's the deal with sinkholes?

Hill music, that is the gold, this is the silver. Yeah, I would, I would call that the platinum in this the goal. Okay, how about that? Just to be contrary though, just no bronze. Those guys are losers, bronze medal winners. Yeah, third place bronze. I don't even know why you'd like bring it home just leaving on the plane in that little magazine pocket in front of you. Um, chuck, Yes, I know that you have been to Guatemala, and I

know that you know. I've been to Guatemala too. Jerry's been there, and we learned pretty quickly that Guatemala has it hard. But um, we also learned that translated into English from I think Spanish, Guatemala means God's whipping post. All right, I thought you're gonna say land of many sinkholes.

That's just one of the many problems facing Guatemala. Yeah. Um, we talked, you know, extensively about mud slides, about civil war, just about all these problems that Guatemala has, and uh this past week, this past weekend, Guatemala faced even more problems. Last week there was a volcanic eruption volcano like twenty click south of Guatemala City, started raining ash down and

then incomes Hurricane Agatha from the Pacific. I think, um to get rid of all the ash, but flood the area, UM create mud slides, kill a hundred and eighty people. And then getting to the point of this podcast, hasten a major sinkhole that's almost unbelievable looking in the middle of Guatemala City. Yeah. All our Facebook lit up with fans saying, have you seen this sinkhole picture? It looks it was, Yeah, it does. It looks completely fake. It is uh sixty six ft across twenty and uh almost

a hundred feet deep. But when you look at it, it looks like the very gates of Hell have opened up. It looks and considering there's a building in there and that you can't even see it swallowed a three story apartment building. Yeah. Well, now it was a factory, it wasn't. Yeah, it was a clothing factory. Um. And they said that the guys who worked there, the people who work there, left at six in the afternoon, an hour before the

earth opened up, so they got out. And then there's some security guard too that had a schedule altered that earlier that day, so he wasn't there. So just like the church group that, like every buddy um in the fifties,

everybody showed up late to this um like church choir practice. Uh, and for all these different reasons, like all like twelve or fifteen people were put were delayed and getting to the practice, and the church happened to catch fire, and had they all gotten there on time, they would have burned to death. One imagines at the very least thing I had to have gotten out of the church good fortune. Yeah.

So well, I guess maybe God does like Guatemala a little maybe so maybe he just doesn't overtly hate it like we thought. Yeah, this sinkhole was um, like you said, Saturday, and um three miles from a similar sinkhole from what was that two thousand seven? Yeah, yeah, the residents have been complaining of all of the signs of sink whole's developing. One happening two years earlier. That's a pretty big sign. But then there's also creaking noise. Is um, the pavement

isn't exactly you know, perfectly flat. Um. There there's been uh slight tremors maybe, yeah, I think. And they said in the O seven one which f y I was three hundred and thirty ft deep, and it appeared instantly, almost instantly, killing three at least three people and like swallowed at homes. They said that they felt the ground shaking a month before it appeared, and that at the time the government was going to send down like a robotic camera. But it's Guatemala, so they were like, where

do we get a robotic camera? So it never happened. Yes, that is a good point, chuck. Um. It's a kind of an evil point, but it's a good point, right yeah. Um, So we're talking about sink Cole's here. This one's not about tropical storms, hurricanes, mud slides, right. I alway should mention though that our friends at co ED and Guatemala are all okay. They sent word and we posted on Facebook that they weren't affected and everyone's doing fine down there. Awesome, Okay, okay,

we're good. So what what what's the deal with the sinkhole? Josh? Well, it depends on who you ask, schuckers Um. One of our fellow colleague coworkers over at Discovery News, guy named Michael Riley, had a blog post um that interviewed a Guatemalan based geologist who's like, do not call that a sinkhole? That is not a sinkhole. And he's like, well, what would you call it? He said, I would call it a piping feature. And I'm pretty sure the guy made

that term up. I think he did too. We did a Google search for piping feature and it brought up a description of pajamas, baseball uniform has something to do with email possibly uh, and that's it. There's no there's no geological feature formation or happening that's called a piping feature. So this guy was like, don't call a sinkhole. Let's all call it this term that I just made up. Well,

that's how you coin a term, my friend. It is, But I don't think you need to be using Michael Riley's blog to do it at the very least to say and I just made that up, you know. Anyway, um man made sinkhole is what I think it is, right, Well, he What he was talking about though, was the the the bedrock under Guatemala is actually old volcanic deposits, and usually with sinkhole's what you're talking about is a different

kind of bedrock that's actually bedrock. It's not volcanic, it wasn't just deposited thereby, you know, something spewing it um and you have things like limestone, dolomite. Yeah, my favorite mineral basult. Wait, how did we ever come up with how to say that? I think it's basalt, one of those two gypsum. Yeah, the the carbonate or what's the other evaporate evaporate classes of rocks, right, Yes, that is typically what is underneath what's called the overburden, and the

overburden is just the soil that's on top of all that. Right. So, for those of you who have never tried this, if you go out in your backyard and dig a hole, eventually you're gonna run out of dirt and you're gonna hit rock. Yeah, and when you run out of dirt, you you can say I have dug through the overburden and have now made contact with the bedrock. Right. And the reason you mentioned all this is because that's how

sinkhole forms, at least this type of sinkhole. You have to dig it up exactly the bedrock underneath the overburden. It gets uh whittled away by water. This turns acidic from absorbing c O two and interacting with plants, so it carves out a little conduits, little pathways of sort of like an underwater stream almost right, very much like that, And then it loosens the soil, and then then soil

starts to fall down in these cracks. And although the surface and the overbird may look okay up top, this is why they seem to happen like overnight, there's just a lot going on underneath it. We don't see right for weeks, months, years. Sure, you know EON's that kind of thing. Um. So when the when the water whittles away, say, um, a chamber the future sinkhole, which you can also call a cave. When you're going caving, what you're doing is

walking through basically a dry conduit sinkhole system. Right, good point. So when the uh, the sinkholes formed right whettle away by water and the overburden starts spilling into it, which is called spawling. It's spawling, right, Um. That means that there is much less of it above. It's like an hour glass basically, yeah. Right, And then when somebody walks on it, drives on it, builds a building on it. Yes, that that salt, what appeared to be solid, is now

in the bottom of this hole. Yeah. And oftentimes it can um that the what I called the overburden is solid enough to hold up even though it might be hollow underneath. It can hold up for a little while if nothing is on it. But like you said, the problem comes when something is planted on top of it, like a car, right, And that's actually called a cover collapse sinkhole. And that's what we think of like for sinkholes,

these really dramatic, sudden, holy cow sinkholes. Right. I would like to call it the coolest sinkhole, but since you know, people do die, Yeah, exactly, Chuck. There's two other kinds of sinkholes, right, um that are slightly less dramatic. Yeah, the cover cover subsidence sinkhole. Yeah, this is this is possibly the least dramatic syncole. Basically it is, Um, this is this is a very similar process happens, except uh, you get the impression it happens much more slowly, right

Chuck was talking about. Imagine like, um, a straw coming into you know those little nitro sock side tubes, the little chargers. Yeah, for like for the little industrial arts cars that you made sure or making whipped cream or whatever. You know. Um, you've got a straw going into one of those in a straw coming out. So it's like narrow, narrow, fat narrow. Again, that would be like conduit sinkhole or cave, um, because it's pretty much a cave until the top collapses. Uh,

and then conduit again. All right, So these conduits allow water to go in and out, but as spalling occurs, the the dirt, the sediment, the overburden the soil spills into the loose parts right right, and it can clog up the conduits. Right. So what you have then for the cover subsidence sinkhole is basically just a depression in the earth, but a dirt depression and a lot of times they're not very big either. We're talking like a

few feet. Right. One of the ways across one of the ways to deal with the sinkhole small one is to fill it with sand and boom bang bam. Yeah, that's what the Florida Management UH District says. And Florida's kind of allows you with sinkholes because of all the sand. But these cover subsidence. Sinkholes often turned into ponds because rainwater starts collecting, it has nowhere to go because the kinduests are blocked, and bam, you get yourself a brand

spanking new pond and it's good fishing. Yes, it is, I imagine. Uh. And then the third one, chuck a dissolution or solution sink coole. Are you starting to see a pattern here? Not spilling, spawling, dissolution or solution sinkhole. Right, it's a geology. It's like take your pick. Yeah that these are um actually not as dramatic either, And that's usually if you just have like a thin overburden that washes away and the rhodes over time and umposes the bedrock. Yeah, exposed.

I always want to say twitch twitch after you say bed rock each time from the flint Stones remember that, No, you're like flint Stones. I mean I remember the flint Stones and they lived in Bedrock. But what's the twitch the that was the one episode where they had the movie star singer come to town, Tony Kurt Rock or was Yeah, and that was a song in Bedrock twitch twitch I don't remember that one. Wow, showing my age.

I like the one with Mr. Rock She's a hot cartoon. Yeah, it's so funny that all the names were like rock oriented. Never figured that one out because they lived in the Stone Age's just kidding, um. But the big rack of ribs on the car that tipped the car where that was normal? That was a Bronosurus rib rack. Yeah, that's good eating. That's what they ate in the Stone Age. Yes, So, like you said, you can get a new um, a

new pond when you have a dissolution syinnkhole. Is that where we were, Yeah, you can get a pond from that to Basically, the difference between a cover subsidence and a dissolution sinkhole is one is possibly grassy right, the other is exposed rock right, So a grassy depression both can be ponds. Both of them have their conduits covered. Really, when you think a sinkhole, the one we're talking about is the cover collapse. Oh my god, save me, sink whole.

So we need to talk about human beings and what we can do. There's actually those you know, a lot of those are naturally occurring sinkholes just because of erosion. But humans can actually contribute to sinkholes, uh, in a lot of ways. Yeah, I mean think about it. We talked about reservoir induced seismicity. Yeah, same deal, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Totally. We are really screwing

with the geophysical properties of Mother Earth. I'm constantly amazed every time I go to New York that New York is still like a standing, functioning city for now. Yeah, well it's true. Well yeah, let's hope it's keeps standing for at least the next week exactly. Uh, drilling, Josh, mining, um foot traffic, vehicle traffic, increased water flow, broken pipes. The other thing that you know, we talked about humans causing an earthquake, extracting water from the subsurface. That can

be a big problem CAUs sinkholes. So that's how man. Those are just a few ways that man can create one basically, and that's what they think happened in Guatemala, right yeah, um, basically with plumbing, and we have the same problem here in Atlanta. I'm a little nervous to admit our sewer system is like a hundred years old. Guatemala cities is not too much older, you know, or younger. It's right about the same age. Um. So a sewer pipe bursts, right and you think, well, okay, this is

very bad. Erodes the soil because of the water movement, not just that it has it. It provides a double whammy. Actually, um, it erodes the dirt and it actually gives it a place to be carried away through that first sewer pipe. So imagine the sewer pipe and then bam, it burst and there's a big hole there. The spewing water, the water pressure is just eroding soil above it, right uh. And it's it's eroding the overburden and and then it's also this big hole in the pipe is giving a

place for the soil to be taken away. So it's eroding it taking it away, creating a cavern and the bam and that's yeah, that's exactly what happened in Guatemala City both times. Well, actually the I mean I read today they said they still aren't sure what happened in this most that's what happened, Okay, they said, the guys that we have to descend into it to find out what happened. The guy who called it a piping feature, No, it was some other guy that you like better. Uh,

let's talk about Polk County, Florida. Yeah, I think we should. That was a human caused sinkhole. And here's what's going on in Florida. You know when you use for fertilizer in your yard, which and you'd like to do, Yeah, it's got phosphate in it, and about thirty of the entire world's phosphate. Uh stash comes from Florida. So the problem with this stuff is this radioactive Miley radioactive. And so Florida said, well, well, here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna stack it up and huge stacks, so it's all in one place, and we're talking hundreds of acres, millions of tons. The result, years later, in central Florida, a billion tons of it basically created a sinkhole. The weight crushed the sand underneath it and create a huge sinkhole. Right, Yeah, Florida is already. Um what what's known as a CARST

region and CARST region is it's a type of topography. Yes, yes, And if you want to see some cool video on a carst on CARST regions, um, check out watersheds dot org slash earth slash krst awesome stuff. Um and uh, CARST region is basically it's a type of topography that features a lot of caverns, sinkholes, um springs, all this geological these geological features created by the movement of water. Right, Um,

Florida is lousy with this stuff. But then, as you were saying, it had this extra added benefit of billions of tons of FoST foot chips radioactive byproducts. And then bam, Yeah, and in that one collapse in Polk County, the stuff collapsed into the water supply and polluted the entire state supply. Yeah that's not good. Well, it's not good. But I mean, if I'm gonna go silver lining here, which I'm not one to do. Uh, it did make them all take a hard look at how they dispose of you know,

harmful byproducts. Right, They're like, you can't just stack it up until it falls through the earth. They're like, well, what should we do? Right, and they're still trying to answer that one. Yeah, which I took. Took a lot of money in time that would clean up their water supply. Yeah, and chuck, let's get in our balloon and go over to Barzynski, Russia. We haven't been our balloon in a long time. I know it's got a little dusty you need to clean up in here. I know there's a

dead raccoon in the corner that's creepy. Yeah, don't look at it. Uh. And so in Barzynski, Berezni, Breznicki, Breznicki. Yes, yeah, I almost took us to Brezynski. Jeez, that was close. We're going to Breznicki Russia. Uh In uh I think six They had another fertilizer related sinkhole problem. Right. Pot Ash potash, it's actually pot that's what the lady said on the pronunciation guide. Really and she said potash. So's

the robot, that's what we're going with. Yeah, six hundred and fifty six ft deep, two d and sixty ft LONGDT one ft wide and growing. So for our non American non librarian. And then what Burma may be sure. Uh, that would be two hundred meters deep, eighty meters long and forty wide. That's a huge sinkhole. And the reason was they were just removing uh, potash, potash from the ground through mine and it became flooded. And that was

that question. The sink holes always caused massive destruction and killed people in swallow buildings. Yes, no, not true. They're actually a lot of times you're just kind of like an annoyance. Um the ones you can fill with sand, right, or ones that aren't around, um, you know, an urban civilized area, like if they're out in the boonies, it's kind of cool, like really cool. If we're talking about the ones in Venezuela, the sorry sorry Nama sinkholes. Did

you see those things? I saw this picture of them. Yeah, well I didn't mean literally have you descended into them? But those are really cool because those are in the Tapui region, these really high mass Basically it's like at the top of a mountain, you'll just see a forest, dense forest, and then these huge, perfectly round holes thousand ft deep yea deep in these crazy oh yeah, these crazy dudes like put the parachutes and jump into them. Yeah,

very cool. They did on that the Planet Earth. Um. Actually I don't think it was there, but did you ever watch that the Planet Earth Discovery thing. Yes, they gave us that when they bought us as a gift. It was really cool. But it has the base jumpers jumping into these things. It's crazy. That's awesome. They also have a say no taste. Yeah, did you see those into loom? Yes, because they got a lot of them down there, right, Yes, they do. They're everywhere into loom

and they're awesome. So basically that is um a sinkhole that is now a pool, right yeah, and they're there for some reason. There's I guess the water collects. It percolates down from the top, so there's always a dripping sound, and then it collects in the bottom of the sinkhole, usually bedrock or light sediment um. But during the percolation process it becomes purified. So it's this incredible like bluish water um that's totally pure. We're just yeah, huge for snorkeling,

scuba diving, that kind of thing. And they're also very um sacred places I guess among the Maya maybe um. And there's like a big movement to uh preserve these saint no tastes because they were they were believed to be um um portal to the next world, and so they'd like sacrifice people and stuff there. They are wicked cool looking. I plan to go one day, okay and tread the ground that you tread into Loom. There is uh. There's also a lot of the ruins around on the

Yucatan or will have a saint note. Well, they have ruins near to Loom, right, huh and then chuck. Lastly, probably the biggest sinkhole on the planet is the Qatara Depression right in Egypt. It's like three hundred feet deep or four hundred and thirty six, yes, four hundred and thirty six hundred and thirty one deep size of Lake Erie basically. Yeah, but it's like seventy five miles wide, which is add twenty kilometers. Yeah, it's it's not I kind of expected more to Did you see pictures It

looks sort of just looks like a desert basin sort of. Yeah. I thought it's not nearly as cool looking as the ones in Venezuela. No, And if you want to see cool picture of the ones in Venezuela. You can type sinkhole into how stuff works dot Com. There's also a cool flash animation on zero of how sinkhole's form and really to sum up sinkhole's form, because water moves underground,

it rose erodes the overburdened above combat. There you have it. Okay, Um, and I think I said handy search bar at how stuff works dot Com? Right? If not, I just did, which means it's time for a listener. Meant yes, Josh, serial killers. I just need to say, judging from the Facebook and fan reaction, that we have a sick and twisted audience. I thought it was funny that a lot of people felt they need to be like, you know, not to be morbid or anything, but real coach, everybody

loves serial killers. Okay, just go with it. Before I read these, Josh, I should just point out a quick correction. Ted Bundy Um did his final Sorority House actions at Florida State, not Florida, and I knew that too. I don't know why I said UF Yeah, I thought it was Florida the whole time. I'm not a big Florida Gator fan, as you know, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with it. You. Uh, we heard from a bunch of people. Josh kind of jokingly said, if

you know of any serial killers. Turns out a bunch of people have come into contact with surprising amount. Uh, And so I have a bunch of them. I'm gonna run down you. You want to read some of these two? Oh, sure, I'll give you that page. Uh. This is from Solomon. My mom told me a story when she was in Washington in the late seventies. She graduated college, moved there

to work as a social worker in Seattle. She was supposed to meet up with a friend one day and co worker in her roommate, and they waited for hours and hours, but they never showed. She spoke to her co worker later and said the reason she never came because her friend was missing. Turns out, long story short, that she went to help a guy with a sailboat and the parking lot buffalo bill style, can't help me get this couch in the van. She got there and

there was no sailboat. And it turns out that this guy was Ted Bundy and the friend was janics Ott, one of his final victims. It's from Solomon. All right, I've got a give one. This is my favorite. This is from Justin. My grandfather once knew a serial killer. They were in the same fantasy baseball league. I do not know his name. Unfortunately, he was kicked out of the league for cheating and his family left him, so he resorted to shooting people in the head with the pistol.

The police had him cornered in a motel, so he covered himself in baseball cards and committed suicide. That's from Justin. I don't know about that one, just said at the very least Justin as a great imagination. Yes. Uh. This one comes from Karen h. Just a tidbit, guys. My aunt's first husband was a corner on the Manson murders, Tate la Bianca. I never met him because they divorced before I was born, but my aunt always talked about him during the murders. Her ex husband also founded the

Los Angeles Coroner's gift shop. I thought that was strange, strange and awesome kind of the gift shop at least. Uh. This one's from Megan. I just wanted to tell you that my stepdad's brother murdered two people. They were my stepdad's friends. My stepdad recounted always feeling a little odd around his brother. There. He said the hair on his arms and neck would rise when his brother would talk

to him. His brother's His brother used to catch sparrows as a child and show firecrackers into their butts and let them go after he lit them, which is pretty awful. Thanks Megan. Yeah, that's part of the McDonald triad. I would say, uh, two quickens here on Jeffrey Dahmer. Apparently he had a bunch of neighbors that listened to our show. Joel says, around the time of the killings, my mom lived next door to Jeffrey Dahmers. She met him twice and she said he seemed like a nice guy, but

a little weird. I would say so anyway, I just thought I would share my little anecdote with you guys. Joel and from Coal and Cincinnata says, my father went to preschool with Jeffrey Dahmer. He doesn't remember him torturing small animals or anything, but one fact sticks out. He liked to walk around with his cheeks sucked in. My dad said, picture someone making a fishy face. My dad's theory was that Jeffy was saving his taste for human flesh.

But that's pure speculation. Wow, that is pure speculation. Thanks for that. Checkov had a couple more, uh, if that's okay with you, Yes, all right. There's one from anonymous in Florida who wanted to give the attention to the victim and not take any for herself. I went to high school with a girl who became the victim of a serial killer known as the Gainesville Ripper, Danny Rolling. I wasn't close friends with her, but she was in

my freshman English honors class. So that's from anonymous. Kurt's lived eight minutes away from Dennis raiders home the bt K killer, and the house where he murdered one of his victims is across the street from the hardware shop where I shop. And it turns out b t K Dennis Raider uh murdered more than three people over the course of his career. Still kind of a poop poo serial killer career, in my opinion, said I was, you

got any more? I got one more? Go ahead. Back in night, my dad's best friend's family was targeted by the Zodiac Killer. We recently met up with her daughter and she told us the story that one of her relatives, David Arthur Faraday, was killed by Mr Zodiac and the fear of someone else being killed caused them to leave California, which meant my dad lost contact with her. Thanks for the podcast and fully expect you to to release new

episodes even after you are dead. Jerry. Slightly disturbing. It was, especially in relation to the Zodiac killing and especially since it was written by our own Jerry. Yeah, it was, wasn't it. I got one more? This is from Leslie, and Leslie has Josh known three murderers. Wow, and she's still around. The First person Robert Bennett, a k a. The handcuff Man, who I think was caught in Atlanta.

He lived just across the street from me in to wand Up, Pennsylvania, and we used to sneak through the alley beside his house to get to school and we would sneak into his pool. Yeah, dangerous business. Second was Eric Smith, a kid from Sonoma, New York, who murdered a four year old boy. His grandfather was my science teacher and a family friend. And finally, the recent murderer I've known was Messak Dumas, who murdered his family here

in Naples. I worked with him for a while at a restaurant and knew his wife from the grocery store right shop. And that's from Leslie. So she's done three murderers and good for her, Leslie. UM, keep your eyes peeled. That's what I want to remain on point. I've never known anybody who's known that many murderers before. UM chuck tag teaming listener mail makes me feel like Michelle Norris and Robert Siegel. Okay, Uh, and it's Thursday even so,

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