Joseph Nkwain, of the village of Subum in northwestern Cameroon, awoke one summer’s night to find he could barely breathe because of a terrible smell. He heard his still-sleeping daughter “…snoring in a terrible way, very abnormal,” he later said. While struggling to walk to her bed, he collapsed and passed out. It was not until after 9:00 that next morning that he regained consciousness. He noticed his clothing was stained red with something he described as having the consistency of honey, and that he had some sort of starchy substance on his body. His arms had developed what he called “wounds.”

“I opened the door,” Nkwain said, “I wanted to speak, my breath would not come out.”

He staggered to his daughter’s bed, thinking she was still asleep, but discovered she was dead. He passed out again and remained so until about 4:30 that afternoon.

“I managed to go over to my neighbors’ houses. They were all dead.”

Most of Nkwain’s family did not live there in Subum, but in the village of Wum, so he got on his motorcycle and rode there. As he traveled through the countryside, he was disturbed not by what he saw, but by what was missing.

“I didn’t see any sign of any living thing,” he recalled. “When I got to Wum, I was unable to walk, even to talk. My body was completely weak.”

1,746 people across several towns and villages over a wide area had suffocated in their sleep. 3,500 livestock and an unknown number of other creatures also perished. 4,000 inhabitants of the region fled with burning pains in their eyes and noses. They were coughing, and showing signs of asphyxiation similar to being strangled. Many of them developed respiratory problems, lesions, and paralysis.

If you have any memory of long-ago news reports about this story from 1986, you know this was no chemical attack perpetrated by terrorists, no murderous act carried out by soldiers in service to some despot. No. This happened because Earth burped, and a cloud containing 100,000-300,000 tons of carbon dioxide gas rose at 62 miles per hour from Cameroon’s Lake Nyos. The lake’s blue waters turned a deep red. A 330 ft fountain of water and foam formed at its surface, the turbulence spawning an 82 ft wave that scoured the shore of one side. The cloud of gas spilled over the northern lip of the lake into one valley running east-west, then rushed down two other valleys branching off to the north. It then descended, displacing the air and settling over the land like a blanket, killing or injuring all who slept beneath it.

I am reminded of this tale because Earth regularly gives us reasons to remember. On the last of November 2018, the media headlines during the early part of the day, at least in this country, were all about a 7.0 magnitude earthquake centered near Anchorage, Alaska. Despite whatever else may be going on in our lives, such occurrences tend to give us pause. We consider that ours is a planet prone to spewing fire, molten rock, ash, and poisonous gases. It is a world given to quaking and sending the sea onto cities. Lightning strikes ignite raging forest fires; torrential rains create massive floods and mudslides. Lands are scorched by drought and are swept by overpowering winds. Such is our lot, yet we endure.

Though it has not happened in our lifetimes, there have been calamities that have come from beyond; the twenty, confirmed impact craters scattered across the planet’s surface are testament to this. There would be more hypervelocity impacts of that nature were it not for Earth’s fellow traveler, the great giant, Jupiter, which bears the brunt of the pummeling the inner planets would otherwise suffer from celestial objects hurtling our way. How would we fare following something like that?

While all of this is worth bearing in mind, none of this, of course, is worth worrying about. All of it falls into the come-what-may category. If anything, our greatest concern should be our own contributions to global catastrophe and the fact we share this planet with those who believe no such contributions are being made. If we do worry, I suppose most of us don’t need to worry about being smothered in our sleep by gas from some nearby lake. There are only three lakes in the world that are known to be saturated with carbon dioxide: Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun, both in Cameroon, and Lake Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But, note that I wrote they are the only ones known.