It’s the stuff of nightmares. Around 11pm on 28 February 2013, in a suburb east of Tampa, Florida, 37-year-old Jeff Bush was asleep in bed when the ground opened up and swallowed him. Hearing an almighty crash, Jeff’s younger brother Jeremy rushed into the bedroom. “Everything was gone,” he told CNN. “My brother’s bed, my brother’s dresser, my brother’s TV. My brother was gone.” Jeremy jumped into the hole in a desperate attempt to find his brother. But as the floor began to collapse further, piling more rubble into the void, a sheriff’s deputy arrived to haul Jeremy to safety. Jeff’s body was never recovered.

The opening that took Jeff Bush was a sinkhole. These sudden events occur across the world – earlier this week, two people in South Korea survived being swallowed by one – but areas like Florida are particularly susceptible because of the local geology. Hundreds appear in the Sunshine State every year.

Should we see these huge holes as unpredictable acts of nature, or could there be a way to see them coming? In future, others might be spared Bush’s fate: geologists are busy identifying areas that are particularly prone to sinkholes, while Nasa scientists have test-driven a system that might even identify when the next catastrophic sinkhole might appear. You might assume that such efforts would have the universal support of local residents – but some claim to have good reason to oppose a sinkhole forecasting service.