Deep beneath the Earth,
something is gearing up to explode!
It shoots boiling hot liquid up into the air
as high as 160 m (525 ft).
No, these aren't volcanoes.
They're geysers.
Usually,
people stay hundreds of meters away from geysers,
but what if we got a bit closer
and fell right into one?
Geysers are like hot springs under intense pressure.
They cause eruptions
and send steam and water
hundreds of meters into the air.
And they're quite rare.
There's less than 1,000 of them around the world.
If you're not careful,
these things could cause some severe damage.
They've killed more than 20 people.
So now that we know geysers are dangerous,
obviously our next step is to send you
right into one.
First, you'd need to choose
which geyser you'd want to fall into.
There are some in Iceland, Russia, and lots in America.
And when we say lots, we mean it.
About a third of the world's geysers are located in Yellowstone National Park.
So you may want to go there.
Regardless of which geyser you end up falling into,
the results would all be mainly the same.
As soon as you fall into the geyser,
your skin would react to the incredibly hot water.
Old Faithful in Yellowstone
has been measured at 95.6°C (204°F).
You would feel an immense amount of pain,
and it's safe to say that
this would be the most intense burn
you've ever experienced.
You'd be in agony from a full-thickness burn,
with all three layers of your skin affected.
First, Your top layer skin would start to burn,
and then your blood vessels would burst.
Your underlayers of skin would lose their water
and turn black,
causing them to feel leathery.
And any fat you might have would
quickly bubble and be melted off.
What's left of your body might
then be shot up into the air,
as a geyser can erupt it's water every couple of hours.
So all the tourists visiting this geyser
would see your body as it goes up!
And then back down!
And then up!
And then back down again.
After the eruption,
your body might fall to the bottom of the geyser.
What would you find down there?
Well, geysers have a long tube
with loops and side pockets that run deep into the crust of the Earth.
So at the bottom,
you're going to find magma,
which is what makes the water so hot.
The water and the steam
would build up in the loops and side pockets.
And after it reaches a boiling point
of around 100°C (212°F) at sea level,
the geyser will erupt yet again.
If you somehow managed
to survive all the burns and
being thrown about by the geyser,
you'd still have even more to worry about.
That's because most geysers have extremely acidic waters,
and combined with the high temperatures,
there's a good chance they'll be able to dissolve
your body entirely within just a couple of hours.
So yeah, these things are beautiful
and you might want to get a closer look but,
it's best to stay further away from them.
Getting too close can prove to be deadly.
What's something we could fall into that we could actually survive?
Maybe falling into a pool of spent nuclear fuel rods?
We'll leave that story for another WHAT IF.