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During the time that the British ruled India
The British Government became concerned about the number of venomous snakes around Delhi
So they began offering a reward
for every dead cobra that people brought them.
This worked out OK for a time
Until smart people began realizing
that you could simply breed the snakes in large numbers
And turn them all in for a reward
When the British found out about this
they cancelled the whole program
and the snake breeders let their now worthless cobras go
and as a result
the cobra population actually increased
Ever since then
whenever somebody tries to solve a problem
with a solution that end up making the original problem even worse
the situation has been called the cobra effect
And one of the worst cobra effects in history
took place here in the Soviet Union
during the last half of the twentieth century
on a lake that used to be called The Aral Sea
For all of recorded human history
The Aral Sea was the world's fourth largest lake
and a vital piece of the local ecosystem that surrounded it.
It was roughly the same size as Ireland
And supported a thriving community of fishing towns and port cities.
And when you look at different world maps over the past few centuries
You'll always see something there
and even when you look at pictures taken from airplanes in the 1960's
You can clearly see that it's there
But then compare all of these images with an image taken by NASA just last year
This is the same lake in the same place today
So, what happened to all of it?
Tracing satellite images back from the past few decades can start to unravel part of the mystery
These pictures show that the lake began drying up in the 1960's, when it was last full
So, what caused it all to start in the first place?
The short answer is Stalin
But there's more behind the story than just that
During the soviet unions existence
The Aral Sea alone provided 1/6th of all the fish in the country
And employed more than 40,000 people
but a few poor decisions ended up erasing this entire natural landmark
and all of those jobs from the surface of the Earth
You see, this guy named Stalin became the leader of the USSR
And he believed that his government could transform nature itself to benefit his people
There are two rivers that used to feed the Aral Sea
The Amu Darya in the south
And the Syr Darya in the east
Stalin's plan was to have his engineers divert water from both of these rivers
by digging canals towards new fields that would be planted across Uzbekistan
That would begin growing cotton
The plan was to make cotton a major Soviet export at any cost
And little regard was given to what would happen to the Aral and the community surrounding it
And for a time, it kind of worked
By 1988, Uzbekistan became the world's largest producer of cotton
And the Soviets were exporting it across the world
But it was coming at a massive cost
Those canals that the Soviets began finishing in the 1960's
were not only taking enormous amounts of water from the lake
but they were also insanely inefficient and leaked constantly
As a result, the fourth largest lake in the world began steadingly drying up
By 1998, it had shrunk to just 60 percent of its original size
And by 2004, it was down to only 25 percent of its original size
But in addition to this, the other half of the disaster was the rapidly increasing levels of salt
that the lake was getting
What remained of the lake in 2004 was five times saltier than it was back in the 1960's
Which meant that basically the entire ecosystem and the creatures that once lived in and around it
were gone
the larges coastal port town named Heralsk
That was the center of the lake's fishing economy
was now located over a hundred kilometers away from the water
and was surrounded by dried up, worthless land
As the lake receded further, it created a new gigantic desert
instead, covered in salt that made it worthless for things like agriculture
But that's still not the end of the tragedy
Because the lake was often used as a dumping ground for toxic chemicals and weapons for decades, too
Now with the lake bed exposed
those chemicals and weapons were just sitting out in the open
and the winds have began kicking all of this up into huge toxic dust storms
that ravage across the landscape
Life around the former Aral Sea today, is a harsh one.
Infant moratlity is very high, at 75 deaths per 1,000 births
If the Aral Sea region were its own country, that would be the fifth worst rate in the world
Even worse than countries like Nigeria or Mali
The cotton boom that was once exploding in Uzbekistan
has been challenged by the rampant dust storms that deposity salt and toxins across their fields
Even more water is being used from the Aral Sea rivers to wash away the salt
and the lake is just a fraction of what it once was
Down to only 10% of its original size now
There are plans to revive the lake
In both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan
but so far the legacy of bad soviet engineering policy still looms high
over the lives of those who still live here
and haven't fled from one of the worst cobra effects in history
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