Tell Me a Story: It's Another Rabbit Hole Day

So, I was tooling ‘round the net and stumbled over this interesting phenomena – Turkmenistan has a problem with “Vodka Terrorism.”

Vodka terrorism is a name given to the phenomenon where a local Turkmen either wants a fight, or to rob you, after drinking too much vodka. This can happen in daylight hours not just at night, and is most likely to occur on trains – steer clear of obviously drunk men. (source)

They have a version of my Silica Heaven though. It’s the Köw Ata Underground Lake. According to Lonely Planet it’s like entering Milton’s underworld, only with changing rooms and a staircase. It’s more than 200 feet below ground. If this was a building, that’d be two or three floors down.

Köw Ata is also home to the largest known colony of bats in Central Asia – WAY cool!

Turkmenistan is also home to The Gates of Hell, a 230 foot wide hole in the ground that’s has been on fire for nearly 50 years – half a century. Officially, it’s named the Darvaza Gas Crater but locals gave it the tag it’s best known by.

The Door to Hell began by accident when a bunch of idiots were drilling for oil.

Soviet geologists went to the Karakum in search of oil fields. They found what they thought to be a substantial oil field and began drilling. Unfortunately for the scientists, they were drilling on top of a cavernous pocket of natural gas which couldn't support the weight of their equipment. The site collapsed, taking their equipment along with it…

What remained were a bunch of craters, one of which was leaking methane rich natural gas. Methane leaches oxygen from the air. The local wildlife was having a croak-a-thon.

The scientists decided to light the crater on fire, hoping that all the dangerous natural gas would burn away in a few weeks' time.

It's not as outlandish as it sounds—in oil and natural gas drilling operations, this happens all the time (source)

This pratice, known as flaring, didn’t quite work out as planned…unless of course they were really trying to create a Goth tourist attraction.

I was thinking, Wow, I wanna visit Turkmenistan NOW but then I read the comments and found one from a young woman named Layla. She wrote:

I'm from Turkmenistan, but I live in Sweden now. Last time I was there (I was supposed to be there for 3 weeks) they didn't let me through (in the airport) because they "thought that my passport was fake". They didn't believe that I was 12 years old. They kept me my mother and sister there for an extra week. We were lucky tho. They can keep you there for over 2 years if they want to. This is just one of the things. Even though this country has beautiful places, you don't wanna risk anything, trust me. I can say that Turkmenistan is worse than North Korea, and that says a lot. (source)

So, I went further down my rabbit hole and read s’more about the country.
Apparently, Turkmenistan could easily be our Orange Shitstain’s wet dream or would be if he knew of its existence (maybe his pal Vlad will clue him in).

The Turkmen government has an absolute monopoly of the media. The authorities monitor media outlets, control printing presses, block websites, monitor internet use and lay down editorial policies.