Underground Coal Fires

[Moozik: The Beloved - Your Love Takes Me Higher]

Every once in a while I read something that makes me realize there's a whole world out there that I'm blissfully unaware of. Today's example, thanks to kottke, underground coal fires. There has been an underground coal fire burning in Centralia, Pennsylvania since 1962.

Since the summer of 1962, a fire, fueled by rich anthracite coal deposits, has been burning beneath the mining town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. Nonstop. You feel the heat in your feet. The smell of sulfur lingers in the air. The town, appropriately enough, resembles a “post-nuclear war wasteland.”