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During the time that the British ruled India

The British Government became concerned about the number of venomous snakes around Delhi

So they began offering a reward

for every dead cobra that people brought them.

This worked out OK for a time

Until smart people began realizing

that you could simply breed the snakes in large numbers

And turn them all in for a reward

When the British found out about this

they cancelled the whole program

and the snake breeders let their now worthless cobras go

and as a result

the cobra population actually increased

Ever since then

whenever somebody tries to solve a problem

with a solution that end up making the original problem even worse

the situation has been called the cobra effect

And one of the worst cobra effects in history

took place here in the Soviet Union

during the last half of the twentieth century

on a lake that used to be called The Aral Sea

For all of recorded human history

The Aral Sea was the world's fourth largest lake

and a vital piece of the local ecosystem that surrounded it.

It was roughly the same size as Ireland

And supported a thriving community of fishing towns and port cities.

And when you look at different world maps over the past few centuries

You'll always see something there

and even when you look at pictures taken from airplanes in the 1960's

You can clearly see that it's there

But then compare all of these images with an image taken by NASA just last year

This is the same lake in the same place today

So, what happened to all of it?

Tracing satellite images back from the past few decades can start to unravel part of the mystery

These pictures show that the lake began drying up in the 1960's, when it was last full

So, what caused it all to start in the first place?

The short answer is Stalin

But there's more behind the story than just that

During the soviet unions existence

The Aral Sea alone provided 1/6th of all the fish in the country

And employed more than 40,000 people

but a few poor decisions ended up erasing this entire natural landmark

and all of those jobs from the surface of the Earth

You see, this guy named Stalin became the leader of the USSR

And he believed that his government could transform nature itself to benefit his people

There are two rivers that used to feed the Aral Sea

The Amu Darya in the south

And the Syr Darya in the east

Stalin's plan was to have his engineers divert water from both of these rivers

by digging canals towards new fields that would be planted across Uzbekistan

That would begin growing cotton

The plan was to make cotton a major Soviet export at any cost

And little regard was given to what would happen to the Aral and the community surrounding it

And for a time, it kind of worked

By 1988, Uzbekistan became the world's largest producer of cotton

And the Soviets were exporting it across the world

But it was coming at a massive cost

Those canals that the Soviets began finishing in the 1960's

were not only taking enormous amounts of water from the lake

but they were also insanely inefficient and leaked constantly

As a result, the fourth largest lake in the world began steadingly drying up

By 1998, it had shrunk to just 60 percent of its original size

And by 2004, it was down to only 25 percent of its original size

But in addition to this, the other half of the disaster was the rapidly increasing levels of salt

that the lake was getting

What remained of the lake in 2004 was five times saltier than it was back in the 1960's

Which meant that basically the entire ecosystem and the creatures that once lived in and around it

were gone

the larges coastal port town named Heralsk

That was the center of the lake's fishing economy

was now located over a hundred kilometers away from the water

and was surrounded by dried up, worthless land

As the lake receded further, it created a new gigantic desert

instead, covered in salt that made it worthless for things like agriculture

But that's still not the end of the tragedy

Because the lake was often used as a dumping ground for toxic chemicals and weapons for decades, too

Now with the lake bed exposed

those chemicals and weapons were just sitting out in the open

and the winds have began kicking all of this up into huge toxic dust storms

that ravage across the landscape

Life around the former Aral Sea today, is a harsh one.

Infant moratlity is very high, at 75 deaths per 1,000 births

If the Aral Sea region were its own country, that would be the fifth worst rate in the world

Even worse than countries like Nigeria or Mali

The cotton boom that was once exploding in Uzbekistan

has been challenged by the rampant dust storms that deposity salt and toxins across their fields

Even more water is being used from the Aral Sea rivers to wash away the salt

and the lake is just a fraction of what it once was

Down to only 10% of its original size now

There are plans to revive the lake

In both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

but so far the legacy of bad soviet engineering policy still looms high

over the lives of those who still live here

and haven't fled from one of the worst cobra effects in history

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Thanks for watching, and I'll see you again next week