I couldn't find much more on this. One blog entry I read from someone who'd been to Darvaz: "Used to be a mining town, then there was an ENORMOUS gas explosion (the crater is more than 30 metres across and almost twice as deep) so the Soviets pulled out. Now there are just people living in houses in the shadow of rusting industrial equipment and Soviet vehicles with no tyres. And the wind blows....." The blog entry: http://www.h4ppy.com/blog/archives/2002_09_01_h4ppy.html

eerie........I like that site englishrussia.com many good articles

I agree. englishrussia.com is one of my all-time favorites.

also known as the best place to make s'mores

haha

ok it took at little trickery and some help from snapz pro, but I posted the video to youtube and clipped it: http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/5FA9BC57-A276-41F0-B6FC-092FF9496091/

mmmm s'mores

The door to hell... hmm. Why does this clip remind me of my ex mother-in-law's house?

I looks like a volcano, but it's not a crater. Interesting.

interesting, i wonder if there is something like that in other parts of the world?
can they use this to generate some alternative energy?
(inquiring mind wants to know : ))

sidegik I couldn't find much of anything on this. It really is intriguing. I've set up a google alert for keywords about this place, so if something shows up, I can post it here.

That sounds like a weird place on this one site I went where they said you could hear the screams of tortued souls in agony that's why they called it the door to hell.

Our Earth degases at tremendous rate globally. Discovered and undiscovered oil-gas fields are a very small portion of overall hydrocarbon flow going from the interior of the Earth, just remnants of the process. In some places (oil-prone area, rift structures) gas flows are more concentrated than in others. In this case, very exotic though,drilling operation caused very concentrated gas discharge that was dispersed at the territory before. Probably, cavernous limestone rocks aggravated the situation to create this exit from hell when people disturbed it.

amgumen, that's really good information - I posted the video to youtube and it's been getting a large number of views, so I may copy your text over to the video's URL.