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Context: https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/26/world/live-news/nepal-flash-flooding-floods-intl https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/26/world/live-news/nepal-flash-f...
by ChiperSoft 1mo ago
Context: https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/26/world/live-news/nepal-flash-flooding-floods-intl https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/26/world/live-news/nepal-flash-f...
- delichon 1mo agoI don't think I've seen a snuff film of that scale before. I'm not good with even fictional horror. This may haunt my dreams. For most of the people there was just nothing they could do. But others would have had a chance if they had run perpendicular to the flow and climbed like their life depended on it. I'll try to remember that the next time I'm fleeing in panic from a flash flood. Looks like a warning siren could have saved some lives. But apparently this was a black swan.
- markdown 1mo agoI think the Japan tsunami videos showed as many, but it was spread out over the course of almost 2hrs and happened in slow motion over a large area. You could see some cars speeding to safety while others were washed away. Some stayed in taller structures assuming they were safe and were slowly washed away.
- ghastmaster 1mo agoPerpendicular is not the scientifically best path. 45 degree angle is the best angle if the threat is moving toward you at the same velocity that you can move. As the velocity of the threat increases, the angle gets closer to perpendicular. The size of the threat and distance of course matter as well. I think about this before tree felling. In chainsaw classes they teach you to move at a 45.
- dreamcompiler 1mo agoLikewise if your car stalls on a railroad crossing, run at a 45 degree angle toward the train. This puts you away from the path of flying debris.
- Reason077 1mo agoLooking at the footage, the water/avalanche was moving far faster than anyone could move on foot. Well over 100 km/h, I would estimate.
- dgellow 1mo agoAnd taking the entire infrastructure with it, including buildings and roads
- dredmorbius 1mo agoScrubbed bare from what I've seen to date of post-incident footage, though that's still preliminary.
- ANH 1mo ago| But apparently this was a black swan. What is your definition of black swan? This paper is from 2022 and scientists have been warning about climate change for decades. It's not like this possibility wasn't anticipated. It seems likely we'll see more glacial events as the atmosphere warms.
- throwup238 1mo agoThere have been maybe three such events in the 21st century (glacier or landslides producing more than a magnitude 5 quake), and none of them have happened in an area like the Himalayas. The other two were in Alaska on Mt Steller in 2005 and the Lamplugh Glacier in 2016, neither of which produced massive downstream floods. It usually takes entire icebergs calving off to produce such seismic events and intense monsoons to create such flooding.
- ElProlactin 1mo ago> There have been maybe three such events in the 21st century It seems that past history (especially recent) will not be a good predictor of future events.
- throwup238 1mo agoSpoiler alert: that’s the whole point of a black swan event.
- ElProlactin 1mo agoA black swan event is an event that is unpredictable because it is so rare. While I'd wait for confirmation about the cause of this specific incident, the point you seem to be ignoring is that, due to climate change, events that would have been considered "black swans" historically will become more and more common, to the point that they are expected to occur.
- throwup238 1mo ago
- suzzer99 1mo agoI wonder if the river went dry first, like the water receding off into the horizon before a tsunami?
- ghastmaster 1mo agoIt is possible if you consider madaxe_again's theory(comment here). If the debris just started descending without interruption, there would be no receding.
- suzzer99 1mo agoWell supposedly it was caused by a landslide blocking the river for a few minutes, then the dam burst all at once.
- dredmorbius 1mo agoBased on video footage which has emerged, no.
- colechristensen 1mo agoThe great flood myths across the world are quite possibly ancestral memories of this kind of flood on a continental scale. Retreating ice age glaciers would make lakes the size of states held at bay by an impromptu dam of various kinds of debris (or more glacier) which then would break dumping great lake amounts of water hundreds of miles into the ocean within days. This kind of thing probably happened in lots of places.
- delichon 1mo agoYou just pushed me into a rabbit hole called the Zanclean megaflood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood
- hommelix 1mo agoIt is supposed that such an event happened, when the land between continental Europe and England got flooded. This was as well during a warmer period when glacier melted. And there was human population on that land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
- colechristensen 1mo agoOh there's geological evidence of these things happening in the pacific northwest, the waves and water scouring the landscape in an unimaginable fashion left evidence to be seen today. Like 1000 Niagra falls for a month straight. Outflows measured in billions of gallons per second or 10+ cubic kilometers per hour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channeled_Scablands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channeled_Scablands
- GolfPopper 1mo agoThe Missoula Floods in the northwestern US were a similar sort of event, though I'm not sure how the scale compares. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_floods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_floods
- 1mo ago
- scheme271 1mo agoThere was another similar flood on the same river about a year or two ago. The problem was the the glacial flooding started in Tibet and affected people just over the border (one of the videos is from the border crossing). There's no international data sharing for this sort of thing between China and Nepal and Nepal can't deploy sensors in Tibet to give sufficient warning.
- 21asdffdsa12 1mo agoWe have tsunami warnings all the times now. Nobody is stopping people from burying sensor posts upstream.
- regularfry 1mo agoI suspect you are dramatically overestimating how fast humans can climb. I hope I'm wrong.
- dredmorbius 1mo agoFrom further information that's emerged: - The site captured in the video, the Gyirong Port border crossing between China and Nepal, was struck by the flood roughly seven minutes after the presumed avalanche thought to have triggered the event. - Flood inundation is seen up to 800 m (2,600 ft) above river level, and the camera position in the video at approximately 20--25m (roughly 6--8 stories) above ground level was engaged in the debris flow. - It would take a fit person 4--8 minutes to climb even 250m or so above ground level, presuming instant notification and a clear evacuation path. Even with an instant warning of upstream conditions survival was overwhelmingly unlikely. - Subsequent footage appears to show complete obliteration off all structures, with no trace remaining. This is based on preliminary imagery, without precise location information, and in a landscape changed beyond all recognition. - Astoundingly, two survivors from the Port are mentioned in Wikipedia presently. Though yes, one of the peculiarities of flood risk is that elevation equals safety. That's modulo a number of other factors though. In particular, with an event of this magnitude, wind blast is a major effect. Toward the end of one video a line of buses in a car park is seen shifting backward, I suspect due to wind. These can reach well above hurricane force, and of course carries its own debris and threats, where even grass and straw can penetrate deeply. There's also the risk of secondary landslides and the like in steep terrain. One of the regions affected by this event has an etymology from "mud wall", which may be a reference to the geology of the canyon walls themselves. Those could easily be unstable. Best option is to be lucky and not be there when things go horribly wrong.
- arjie 1mo ago150 confirmed with 47 Americans? Surprising fraction. Mountaineers or that area is popular for some reason?
- markus_zhang 1mo agoNepal is popular for Westerners I think. Maybe for religious reasons?
- porridgeraisin 1mo agoMountaineering. For indians, you also have the religious aspect because the immigration center you go to to visit Mt Kailash is there. That immigration building was the white one that got completely shredded in the popular video going around.
- markus_zhang 1mo agoAh thanks for clarification.
- janhaa 1mo agoi understand it as 150 dead, with more people missing, of which 47 are americans.
- 1mo ago
- markus_zhang 1mo agoI have watched a few and they look like the four horsemen TBH.
- alephnerd 1mo agoIt is harrowing. It also explains why the villages in my ancestral region in India (JK, HP, UK) with close cultural and ethnic ties with Nepal used to build them at the upper portions of the sides of mountains/hills and only shifted to building at the bottom of those kinds of valleys when motorized roads became a thing in the 20th century. Rescue operations in Nepal are in good hands, but this is sadly because those same response orgs had to respond to a similarly brutal cloud burst floods back in 2013 [0], 2021 [1] and 2025 [2]. It also shows the very real and brutal effect climate change is already having, and will only get worse. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_North_India_floods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_North_India_floods [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Uttarakhand_flood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Uttarakhand_flood [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Kishtwar_district_flash_flood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Kishtwar_district_flash_f...
- totetsu 1mo agoThat makes sense. You can see lots of settlements on the hills above the sight of this flood too. I also found this study of the risk perceptions of people living there interesting too. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212420924002383 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221242092...
- dgellow 1mo agoLook at the CCTV at https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-nepal-tibet-glacier-collapse-floods-61b592d428e4631add31ce052d0daf1f https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-nepal-tibet-glacie... (second video in the carousel). That’s just pure horror, nightmare material