Credit: Maureen/Flickr
The acidic spring in the Yellowstone National Park is one of the largest magma chambers in the world, thanks to the incomprehensibly hot fuel source. But not only is it incredibly hot, it is also mind-blowingly acidic, which is why numerous warning signs are scattered nearby.
Back in June, Colin Nathaniel Scott, a 23-year-old from Portland in the US state of Oregon dissolved alive in the spring after ignoring the warning signs but the information has only just come to light due to the Freedom of Information Act and a request by a local TV network for the information.
Apparently, the man was on the lookout for a new place to “hot pot” which is the insane act of trying to get slightly singed in natural hot springs for no reason whatsoever other than general stupidity. He dipped his finger in just to test the temperature, but ended up falling into the spring and descended beneath the surface, while his horrified sister Sable Scott filmed the incident on her mobile phone.
Search and rescue rangers looked for Scott and found his body in the pool but couldn’t rescue it due to a lightning storm. The following day, when they returned, there was nothing left of the man because he had completely dissolved.
“In a very short order, there was a significant amount of dissolving,” Deputy Chief Ranger Lorant Veress told KULR.
Due to the Yellowstone Plateau’s high elevation the average boiling temperature at Yellowstone’s geyser basins is 199 °F (93 °C). However, despite the fact that they are inhabitable for human beings they are home to a bunch of organisms known as Archaea. So unless you are made of the same stuff as these microscopic organisms, you need to stay well away unless you want to completely disintegrate.
Check out the video below which explains how the hot spring claimed this mans life.