Photo: Douglas C. Pizac/AP

Nietzsche said: if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you. If we look deep into these man made holes we might face our own monstrosity we fight ever since, or witness humankind’s majesty.


The following collection of mining pits, atomic craters, scientific achievements show some of the largest scale direct impact on nature done by humans.

The 2.5 miles wide and 3,937 feet deep Bingham Canyon open-pit copper mine (aka Kennecott’s mine) in Bingham Canyon, Utah is the deepest excavated hole


Photo: Rick Bowmer/AP

Photo: Expedition 15/NASA




Photo: Staselnik/Wikimedia Commons


The Canadian Diavik Diamond Mine is located on a 7.7 square mile island devouring half of its land.


Photo: DDCorp

The Big Hole (aka Kimberley Mine) in Kimberley, South Africa is an open-pit and underground mine 463 meters across and 240 meters deep. It’s one of the largest pits dug by hand.


Photo: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen/Wikimedia Commons

Chuquicamata in North Chile is the largest open pit copper mine in the world by excavated volume, and the second deepest open-pit mine (after Bingham Canyon Mine), with its 2,790 feet depth.





Photos: Codelco

The ever burning hole widely known as the Door to Hell is located in Derweze, Turkmenistan. It was created by accident and negligence, when Soviet engineers found natural gas instead of oil, and the ground beneath the drilling camp collapsed in 1971. Geologists set the leaking gas on fire to protect nearby towns from dangerous gases, expecting the field was going to run out of gas soon.


Photo: Tormod Sandtorv

The bottom of the Kola Superdeep Borehole is the deepest artificial point on Earth. The Soviet scientific drilling project on the Kola Peninsula attempted to drill as deep as possible into the Earth’s crust. The deepest branch reached a 40,230 foot depth.


Photo: Andre Belozeroff/Wikimedia Commons


Photo: Bigest/Wkimedia Commons // Rakot13/Wkimedia Commons



The 72 foot wide Glory Hole of the Monticello Dam, North California is one of the largest drain holes in the world. The concrete spillway can drain 48,400 cubic feet water per second from the reservoir.


Photo: Daniel Clanon


Photo: Vaidotas Mišeikis

The Gibson Dam glory hole spillway in Montana.


Photo: Joe Rohde/Bureau of Reclamation

Looking down the Yellowtail Dam spillway tunnel from above the air slot.


Photo: Joe Rohde/Bureau of Reclamation

The 100 feet deep Chand Baori stepwell in the village of Abhaneri, Rajasthan, is one of the deepest and largest stepwells in India.


Photo: Chetan/Wikimedia Commons

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Project Gnome, the first nuclear Plowshare experiment created this 76 feet high 161 feet wide underground cave by detonating a 3.1-kiloton nuclear weapon at a depth of 1,181 feet near Carlsbad, New Mexico.


Photo: LLNL

The 320 feet deep and 1,280 feet wide Sedan Crater was created when a 100-kiloton nuclear explosive buried under 635 feet was fired at the Nevada Test Site on July 6, 1962, displacing 12 million tons of earth.


Photo: National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office/DOE

This crater was caused by an underground, intermediate yield, atomic detonation known as the Mississippi Event, May 10, 1962 at the Nevada Test Site.


Photo: DOE

The huge craters of Yucca Flat, Nevada Test Site, after several underground tests, 1967.


Photo: DOE

The Sedan Crater’s closest Soviet counterpart is the 328 foot deep and 1,338 foot wide Chagan crater


Photos: Timofey Yuriev



Photo: Arcanum


Photo: Chris McGrath/Getty Images


Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images




Photo: Brian Kersey/Shelbourne/AP



The Super-Kamioka Neutrino Detection Experiment is a neutrino observatory located 3,300 feet under Mount Ikeno near the city of Hida, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. It consists of a 136 foot tall and 129 foot wide cylindrical tank with 11,146 photomultiplier tubes on its walls.

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