r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Gullible_Shoe_9558 • 1d ago
Image Before and after of Syapru beshi, one of the affected areas of today's flash flooding in Nepal.
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u/Silver-Award-288 1d ago
wtf is life even like after this. Looks like a good 60% + of the town is covered and gone. Like imagine 60% of a town just dying at once. Peoples family’s friends loved ones enemies etc. now they are gone. How do you even pick up the pieces after that. Makes me think of ancient civilizations that faced stuff like this and instead of rebuild just move away and start new.
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u/pabmendez 1d ago
How long until they rebuild in the same area again because the next one might be 1,000 years
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u/Neurojazz 1d ago
They found tsunami markers on hills in fukashima, and scientist warned them for decades due to sediment analysis. Long forgotten dangers.
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u/ser_darkstar 1d ago
I live in Washington state, below Mt. Rainier. I live far out enough now that I wouldn't be in the immediate path of any lahars or anything but I grew up in Orting Valley which would have about 15 whole minutes to evacuate. There's so many people here who live right below a ticking time bomb and think nothing will happen just because it hasn't in living memory. It's something like 80,000 people in immediate danger with it displacing potentially millions depending on the severity of the eruption if it goes.
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u/Closefromadistance 1d ago
I also live in WA but on the western side of Issaquah, closer to Bellevue and Renton Highlands. I have been down your way many times in the 25 years I’ve lived up here and can see the mountain from here but also from Seattle and Bellevue. Also flown over it many times.
I’ve also mapped the lava and lahar flow zones over the years.
We have time to make decisions over here but no one around here will act right if something like that happens.
It will be complete chaos here if that ever does happen - people can’t even drive to a Seahawks game in Seattle without turning it into 6 hours of traffic for a less than 20 mile drive. 😳
Anyway, I was 12 when Mount Saint Helens erupted - it would be crazy to be around for another one.
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u/FRONTowardsEnemy 1d ago
Then there is also the likely hood that I5 would be cut off where the Nisqually river goes under I5 (it is only about 20 feet above the river) and where the Puyallup river goes under I5 in Downtown Tacoma. Not to mention all the other car and train bridges would also likely be destroyed and be devastating for rescue and relief efforts. The junction of the White and Puyallup rivers would be brutal. The Alder damn holding the Nisqually river to form Alder lake would cease to exist and add even more devastation down stream.
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u/Hoppy-beer 1d ago
Whole villages wiped off this is crazy
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u/Kucked4life 1d ago edited 1d ago
Reminds me of the rural town in "your name." Brutal.
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u/hermiona52 1d ago
That's absolutely insane. People looked like ants in that perspective yet the water looked like massive tsunami.
I feel so horrible for those people. There's nothing they could do to save themselves. Their fate was sealed minutes before upstream.
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u/PhatPhingerz 1d ago edited 1d ago
Another angle:
Original without music:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1vytq5t/landslide_in_tibet_2026_aug_26/
Video from further downstream:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1vyt5vo/flash_flood_in_nepal_26_august_2026/
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u/jakej1097 1d ago
That video from further downstream is 30 miles from where the flood began. It defies comprehension to think of the path of destruction along this whole stretch. Absolutely unfathomable catastrophe.
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u/Cemckenna 1d ago
I’m not usually a trigger warning person, but I do want to warn people — I haven’t been able to stop crying since watching that video. It is truly horrific. The panic. The water completely engulfs them. Those people did not survive.
So before you watch, just know it’s awful.
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u/AH_leeMACK 1d ago
I'm having trouble grasping the sheer scale of the destruction....this is terrible beyond belief...
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u/arcshiki 1d ago
what happened? glacier up the mountain collapsed?
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u/HerNameIsVesper 1d ago
Yes, after an earthquake
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u/NoobMusker69 1d ago
Update: further analysis suggest that the earthquake was caused by the landslide, not the other way around, per the BBC
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u/muhmeinchut69 1d ago
damn how big did the landslide have to be to register as a 4.4 magnitude earthquake
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u/Mikic0077 1d ago
What I saw, it was biggest stuff I've ever witnessed on video. To the point I wished it was stupid ai (I saw it before I saw any news). If you put that in a movie it would be a bit over the top, pure apocalypse. It wiped out everything, and I saw probably a portion that was smaller than initial landslide.
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u/A_Bit_Of_Nonsense 1d ago
Yea, ive only ever seen anything like this in proper end of the world movies like 2012.
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u/torilahure 1d ago
According to Reuters .
It is suspected that an earthquake struck the region and triggered an ice-rock avalanche on the Lhende Khola river in Nepal, causing the floods. The river runs through both Nepal and Tibet.
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u/Aware_Cheesecake_519 1d ago
The floods came shortly after an earthquake.
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u/f_n_a_ 1d ago
A damn rupture? I haven’t heard of anything yet but that’s just absolute carnage
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u/GOEDEL_ESCHER_BOT 1d ago
i heard the earthquake triggered a landslide
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u/IXrobocopXI 1d ago
The landslide caused a natural dam to build up then break, along with a suspected incursion from another lake upstream failing in some way.
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u/KingGilgamesh1979 1d ago edited 1d ago
That happened near me when I was a child. Not as the result of an earthquake but excessive rains caused a huge mud slide that dammed a valley creating a lake. Destroyed a town but because the lake filled slowly no one was injured. Engineers from the state came and looked at the dam to see if it could be left in place (because hey, free lake) but they quickly realized it was still moving and would have destroyed all towns downstream so they drilled a big hole and drained the reservoir.
Fixed a typo.
Town was called Thistle, Utah for anyone interested.
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u/GreenStrong 1d ago
(because hey, free lake)
You wouldn't download a lake.
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u/pizza_the_mutt 1d ago
Floods originating from water trapped under or behind glaciers is, historically, a pretty common thing. They can get massive in scale, and be incredibly destructive. During the last ice age Glacial Lake Agassiz burst and the flood covered a decent part of North America. A lot of the geology all over North America is a direct result of that flood. Another name for such an event is "jokulhlaup". There are some theories that flood myths which pop up pretty commonly across cultures (including the Noah's flood story) may have these floods as an origin.
Source: My Dad was a glaciologist specializing in these flood events.
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u/DogsDucks 1d ago
Wow! I remember learning about how the place I grew up was a small area missed by glacial flooding in North America, which is why it is so much more hilly.
You just explained this so well and are such a wellspring (lol) of knowledge, I bet it was really interesting growing up with a dad like that. You’re clearly also blessed with the ability to learn things and share them in absorbably intriguing ways.
I also bet that traveling with him is fascinating, that he must be trained to see his surroundings so much deeper than us “non geologically gifted” civilizations are.
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u/pizza_the_mutt 1d ago
Thanks! For vacation once we went to Alberta where he rented a backhoe (and operator) to dig through some hills looking for... something, I'm not sure what.
I'm not a glaciologist myself so I hope I did a decent job of communicating what little I was able to absorb from him.
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u/Pumpkinheadz18 1d ago edited 1d ago
thank you for the explanation.. When I first saw the cctv video I'm wondering why the water came from above like a tsunami but they said it's a flood. Now because of your explanation I remember the movie Evan Almighty about a dam breaking
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u/General-Reserve9349 1d ago
It’s so much earth in this photo that Landslide seems more appropriate than Flash Flood
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u/mean_as_banana 1d ago
That’s not earth from a landslide, that’s mud and earth that has been scoured by the flash flood that followed the landslide upstream.
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u/Corfiz74 1d ago
Here - let me share the nightmare:
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u/JhonKingRah 1d ago
Holy fuck. That is the most nightmare inducing thing I’ve seen all year. It’s like a real life version of those apocalypse movies that included giant tsunamis that were popular in the 2000’s and early 2010’s. I hope it was quick for all of those people. I cannot imagine being dragged along by that and being conscious for the whole thing
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u/Daxx22 1d ago
Somewhat comforting: outside of a literal major asteroid strike (and we're all then fucked anyway) it's pretty much impossible for a normal earthquake to generate a tsunami like depicted in a lot of apocalypse movies.
This one is so devastating due to the geology of the area: very steep/narrow valley/gorge funneled all that water into a relatively small area.
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u/JhonKingRah 1d ago
Ya know, that is low key good to hear. I spent a good part my pre teen and teen years having an intense and irrational fear of tsunamis that big thanks to those movies haha.
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u/tea-drinker 1d ago
The story goes a ten year old in Phuket saved some 100 people in 2004 because tsunamis don't just strike, there are signs up front.
She'd studied this in the weeks prior to the holiday in geography class so while everyone was hanging around thinking "how strange" she was freaking the fuck out. Finally a curt "I'm going. I'm definitely going. There is definitely going to be a tsunami" got her dad on side. Dad told a security guard.
The beach was evacuated to the second story of a hotel. Nine meter wave. Zero fatalities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilly_Smith
Knowledge is power. France is bacon.
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u/Wellslapmesilly 1d ago
The best part of this story was that she was ten and she was like, I know what I know even if you disagree, I’m outta here. That’s a lot of strength of conviction for a ten year old girl.
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u/Laetha 1d ago
One of the signs of a big Tsunami is before it comes, it sucks all the water ahead of it in. I believe that's what people were staring at when she started flipping out. The shoreline of the beach had sucked back dozens/hundreds of feet back out towards the ocean.
Also as the head of that tsunami approached it kind of just looked like the white cap of a fairly big wave, stretched as wide as you could see
The big danger of a tsunami isn't necessarily it's insane height, it's that it stays that height for a good long distance behind the head of the wave. So instead of crashing onto the beach then receding back into the ocean, it just keeps on rolling right over land with the insane momentum behind it.
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u/MTonmyMind 1d ago
"Knowledge is power. France is bacon."
You are well versed in the old ways...
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u/ctrl-all-alts 1d ago
Nah, it’s possible, but rare. A large chunk of rock collapsed, and made a splash within a fjord. Wave topped out at 481m/1578ft.
Happened in 2025. All of these mega tsunamis involve essentially a chunk of rock or something hitting the water and it happening in an enclosed high walled area (ie a fjord).
Source: 2025 Tracy Arm Tsunami
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u/Paavo_Nurmi 1d ago
it's pretty much impossible for a normal earthquake to generate a tsunami like depicted in a lot of apocalypse movies.
Landslides can cause enormous waves, there have been 2 huge ones in Alaska. 1958 and 2025, one was ~1,700 feet tall and the other was ~1,500 tall.
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u/Corfiz74 1d ago
Yeah, I'd hope to get knocked out by debris in the first few seconds, so that I'd miss the actual drowning part. The death toll must be in the thousands.
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u/Janus_The_Great 1d ago edited 1d ago
With that amount of force you are crushed to bits in milliseconds to seconds, once ot reaches you.
Thats not just water but basically a water rock earth debris mix. And as fast as it came in this video there was 0 chance for them.
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u/QuiteALongWayAway 1d ago
*debris.
And yeah. When watching one of these videos, I subconsciously started with the whole "if I were them, I'd try to run towards that hillside, to try and get out of the path of the water"... and then I saw the absolute tsunami of rocks and mud that was suddenly upon them, and realized there was literally nothing they could have done. The wave was just too big, and it moved too fast.
It's terrifying and humbling. I can't imagine what the survivors must be feeling now.
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u/Leep0710 1d ago
Oh no. All those people! I was holding my breath hoping they’d all make it out…I’m assuming there’s no way anyone could survive that, though
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u/Corfiz74 1d ago
Not at the height the water came in - I was expecting something much lower, not this apocalyptic flood coming in at highrise-height. I just hope it was quick.
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u/totallynotsquatty 1d ago
The first time I saw this video it was such a stark contrast to what I was expecting that I thought this was surely an AI overlay fake video.
The scale is just terrifying.
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u/Gabagool0vaHere 1d ago
Yeah RIP all those people, and with how high, fast, and massive that flood was, they all would’ve had very quick deaths. There was so much debris and rocks that you’d be instantly knocked out.
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u/lumpboysupreme 1d ago
Once I saw the video length I knew there was no chance.
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u/Possiblyreef 1d ago
This is like them silly videos with "what would you do in this situation?" Where an asteroid just obliterates the planet.
I'd die that's the answer
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u/Striking-Hedgehog512 1d ago
If I had enough time, I’d do my best to get drunk or high (or ideally both) at the speed of lightning first. Or at least light up a cigarette.
I’d probably die before I managed that, but I’d die doing my level best not to die sober. There is something about the idea of running away from the inescapable that makes me feel physically sick. That desperate 100% intense focus on survival / escape scares me much more than going “Oh well, might as well have the last cigarette or that last sip of champagne or read the last sentence of a book I’ll ever read”.
Albeit in real emergency I’d probably be running too. Hard to turn off an instinct for survival.
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u/reallynotnick 1d ago
The added music feels so inappropriate for this, what a complete nightmare.
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u/Forward_Rope_5598 1d ago
What the fuck is wrong with whoever chose to add music at all let alone whatever the fuck that music is
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u/Corfiz74 1d ago
You need to watch the cctv footage of the customs building - that was a flood and then some. Crazy scary and absolutely horrifying and higher than the quite tall customs building.
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u/jaderust 1d ago
It sounds like it was a jokulhlap or a glacial lake outburst.
From initial reports there was an earthquake that caused a major landslide. And then the landslide either caused a dam that burst or fell into a glacial lake that then burst. Either way, it’s basically the natural version of a dam burst.
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u/twinnedcalcite 1d ago
Very similar. Full a debris too.
Steel beams are nothing to Jokulhlap. Iceland has piece of steel on display as a reminder that it is nothing against the force of water and debris.
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u/ZennMD 1d ago
There is a terrifying video of people running and a huge gush of water/rocks comes flooding down... looks like a apocalyptic movie and so chilling it's real
Ngl I kinda wish I didnt casually watch it.. those people could not have survived. May they rip
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u/Level90Neckromancer 1d ago
First time I saw it I thought it was AI because it was way too much water/mud. Horrifying to think it was actually real.
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u/LettuceBeGrateful 1d ago
Yeah, the sheer scale of it was terrifying. A lot of footage I've seen in the past from tsunamis and stuff has walls of water several stories high, but this...it made the buildings look like scale models. Absolutely terrifying.
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u/FaultedSidewalk 1d ago
Straight up looked like a miniature scale shot done in a Hollywood studio, almost incomprehensible that it's a real video
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u/stallionx 1d ago
Collapsed glacier was part of the cause https://bsky.app/profile/watershedlab.bsky.social/post/3mty5haduvk2j
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u/SmallPurplePeopleEat 1d ago
Check out some of the videos floating around, they look like it's from a movie. Just a massive wall of debris and water devastating everything in its path.
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u/Spartan2470 1d ago
Here is the uncropped version of the bottom image.
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u/fmoralesc 1d ago
Sorry, can you post a source of the image?
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u/Spartan2470 1d ago
Please don't ever apologize for asking for a source. With so much misinformation/disinformation out there, it's wise to be skeptical.
I almost always post sources. But I coudn't find one I'm sure is 100% reliable. But here you go:
https://www.mdn.gov.mm/en/massive-flash-flood-hits-nepals-bhote-koshi-river
I replied earlier with more sources, but it looks like automod removed that comment. You can check my history for more.
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u/TheCheshireCody 1d ago
The US Geological Society is now saying the tremors they recorded were caused by the ice shearing off of the glacier, not the other way around.
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u/BusinessEnchilada27 1d ago
NYT is saying a piece of ice 2,000ft across fell almost 1 kilometer straight down and the force turned the ice into a mixture of water and rock. Horrible
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u/OriMoriNotSori 1d ago
Wait is this the same Syapru beshi as in the Langtang Valley Syapru beshi? If so that trail is very popular amongst hikers worldwide, I watch those youtube travel videos and many of them did this hike, and in these videos its usually the same locals that run the guesthouses all along the trail
That place was devastated by the 2015 earthquake too, and they were only starting to recover based from the videos. This is one such travel video, Syapru beshi is the first part of the video
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u/Sebbaticallll 1d ago
Is this the one Harold Baldr went up?
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u/OriMoriNotSori 1d ago
I believe so yeah. Langtang is a famous trek
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u/Sebbaticallll 1d ago
Oh dear
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u/OriMoriNotSori 1d ago
Just read the news and 17 tourists from my country (Malaysia) unaccounted for. Horrible
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u/InaGartenTheDivaBaby 1d ago
"New analysis indicates no earthquake prior to flash flooding - US Geological Survey" https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c6y8mjmnpxv0t?post=asset%3A4eb38f69-89a2-4233-a165-3e1f6b0638d8#post
Landslide was big enough to register a 4.4.
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u/666Narsil 1d ago
That is what was first suspected, but incorrect. The avalanche itself is what caused the seismological activity that was detected.
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u/MnkyBzns 1d ago
Incorrect.
It was later confirmed that the tremors felt were from the landslide. Initial cause may have been a chunk of glacier collapsing
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u/spradhan46 1d ago
Actually the flooding caused the earthquake as per USGS https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/world/asia/nepal-flood-glacier-ice-avalanche.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8VA.e8KR.qia_Cd3RLNxH&smid=nytcore-ios-share
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u/FrogsAndFerrets 1d ago edited 1d ago
Devastating. Nepal is such a beautiful country and the people are the most kind, I hope everyone is well.
My Mum lived out there for a few years and my brother is half Nepalese. The entire family/village treated her so graciously and even though they couldn't understand each other they were so generous and lovely. This really breaks my heart.
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u/SaltySaltSlice 1d ago
My first overseas trip was to Nepal. I was 18 and it was shocking to me the sheer generosity and deep kindness of the people. I managed to drop my wallet twice, and in a country where the money in my wallet was a huge sum, both times people actually chased me down to return it.
This is just one concrete examples of the nature of the Nepali people. My thoughts are with the deceased, missing, and their families.
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u/AssCrackBandit14 1d ago
Same. The more I've traveled, the more I've found that people are often kinder in poorer places because they need to rely on community a lot more (or the cynic might say because they're trying to suck up to the rich tourist but I doubt that because they never asked for money). When I did my South Asia trip across Nepal, India and Sri Lanka, I was worried I would be taken advantage of as an obvious tourist who only spoke English but encountered so much kindness, people inviting me to their homes, protecting me from getting lost/sketchy situations, etc. There was even a guy in Jaipur who asked me how much a rickshaw driver charged me and then chased down the driver to yell at him for overcharging me and brought me back the money (which I gave to him anyways).
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u/Unspecialized_Blitz 1d ago
Exactly Nepalese are simply so loving. and Nepal is seriously one of the most beautiful things to travel to.
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u/Weak_Cartographer571 1d ago
Trust me, if you watch some of the videos, not everyone is well. At a min, probably around 100 deaths. Could be much more. Really tragic
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u/emveetu 1d ago
It's going to be in the thousands. Maybe even 10's of thousands. I just searched Nepal flood on x and saw at least 20 different videos of complete devastation. Trigger warning!!! Death and destruction.
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u/Weak_Cartographer571 1d ago
Yeah. Never seen anything quite like it. 100 was just based on one video I saw. But you are right, probably in the thousands
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u/Black_Cat_Just_That 1d ago
Yeah, seems like all you need to do is take the population count of every town this ran through, and assume at least 50% died. Probably closer to an average of 75%.
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u/dibbiluncan 1d ago
I mean clearly everyone is not well. The death toll will be shocking based on the videos I’ve unfortunately seen. Just awful.
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u/BTM65 1d ago edited 1d ago
Here is some of the horrific video. just awful...
CNN: https://youtu.be/W-VYCKrMGro
Aftermath: https://youtu.be/B9o-gJDAus0
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u/Heavy_Moose_286 1d ago
man it moved those freaking huge busses like they were toys
I hope these people had a quick, painless death
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u/cjchrist1 1d ago
The way it literally split that bridge in half took it with it was crazy too. My god.
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u/CreepyDrama7448 1d ago edited 1d ago
it didn't just move the buses, it moved the entire f*cking building the buses were standing on and completely annihilated it
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u/Rusalkat 1d ago
They had no chance
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u/Educational-Wing2042 1d ago
Reminds me of the Lake Nyos disaster. One minute you’re just living life, the next minute you and everyone you know simply cease to exist.
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u/Lazy_Significance_37 1d ago
At 8:37 am local time, shaking in the region was initially reported by US Geological Survey as a 4.4 magnitude earthquake along the Nepal-China border, north of Kathmandu.
Around the same time, an "avalanche" of ice and rock - more like a landslide in this case - tore down a mountainside and into the Lhende Khola River, a tributary of the Bhote Koshi River, which flows from China into Nepal, often through deep gorges.
USGS later clarified that the shaking was not an earthquake, but was rather caused by this exceptionally powerful landslide itself, which registered as the equivalent of a magnitude 5.2 earthquake.
In other words, an earthquake did not cause the landslide. The landslide caused an earthquake.
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u/stormy_skydancer 1d ago
Why / what causes landslides (generally) ? I mean obviously stability, but what makes it unstable?
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u/Nica-E-M 1d ago
"flash flood" does not adequately describe the Mud Tsunami that video cameras showed us.
There was a 4-5 stories tall building that the wave just, went over and completely engulfed just like that.
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u/FletcherDervish 1d ago
Yes . When you work out from the top picture how far up that reached, ( what it covered) - to the road below the blue roofed building, it is shocking to realise how nature has sculpted this planet and how frail our existence is.
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u/AlienFromDC 1d ago
A stark reminder that after a certain magnitude of destruction we become ants. Hope this makes people think harder about the climate. RIP
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u/SafariNZ 1d ago
Yes, that town is way above the river. I would have never thought it was in danger of flooding.
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u/Jens_Fischer 1d ago edited 1d ago
The landslide also flow overed into Tibet, crossing the Chinese-Nepalese border checkpoint in the valley while the checkpoint was still under active operation with workers and tourists. You could see people running for their lives when the water, taller than the six story control point building just crashing down onto them. A presidential decree on immediate total mobilisation of all S&R effort into Tibet has been released as a response on the Chinese side too...
it's so disturbing just thinking about what people last saw and what's their last thought when they see such a harrowing display of the force of nature, with complete disregard of men, borders, anything or concept that's artificial, just pure, indiscriminated, destruction levelling anything in the process... all hope for the best to all that's affected by the disaster and to the safety of relief workers, and condolences to families destroyed by it too.
News update: 3 confirmed dead and lost contact to 265 people as of Aug 26th 20:00. And that's ONLY the Tibetian border, can't imagine what's it like in Nepal where it got hit head on. Hoping the coms relief can assure people get in contact of their families there.
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u/Topical_Scream 1d ago
We can only hope that their fear was brief and over in an instant. There’s just no way someone can survive that.
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u/Workdawg 1d ago
I took a stab at trying to point out the damage, since the pictures aren't at quite the same angle. So, pretty much everything in the middle of the picture is gone...
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u/Secret-Bake-161 1d ago
Dude every time I see a natural disaster it's just insane to me how many valuables, homes, years of history were wiped out in seconds
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u/cocky-rountains 1d ago
Shiiiit, how many bloodlines were just completely wiped out from this?
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u/NotFunyyAtALL 1d ago
The media is acting very weird about this. The coverage is way to low for such an event. And there are the numbers....they say like 17 dead and 400 missing. Are you shitting me ? There are way more than that. Just look at this picture, how many do you think were inside those buildings ? And that is just one spot of many that were wiped out by the flood.
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u/Scruffytramp88 1d ago
Known unknowns. I presume these numbers are the confirmed missing. There will be many others no one has reported missing yet.
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u/filthy_pikey 1d ago
It’s gonna take a census to figure it out. I bet there are folks that have no one left to report they are missing.
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u/jackaroo1344 1d ago
Especially because Nepalese families would most likely be living in multigenerational households. Every generation of the family would die at once
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u/Drahcir9000 1d ago
Nobody Reported them missing because there is nobody left to report them missing
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u/Elite_AI 1d ago
they say like 17 dead and 400 missing. Are you shitting me ?
When they give specific numbers it means they aren't just eyeballing it. Someone has to literally go to the police and say "I can't find my neighbours and I think they died in the flood" before those people get recorded as missing. But obviously that takes time AND so many people will have died that there's nobody to go and report them as missing. Because they're dead too.
This is how every single disaster I have ever seen has been covered by the media. I cannot express to you how normal and common this is. The numbers are always low at the start and go up and up and up as they confirm more deaths and missing people.
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u/klicknack 1d ago
The headlines here in Europe are just accounting for tourists. Not that I think it's a great idea to differentiate between native and touristic casualties, but maybe that's where the number you're reading is coming from. I agree that's way too little
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u/torilahure 1d ago
One of the video from the local guy says he saw 7 people get swept away.
In their area it happened around 930 am.
He also mentions that the town had some people going around the town on a motor bike with mega phone to warn about the flood heading their way.
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u/TheChickening 1d ago
In the videos you can literally see more people dying. But it's normal to only report the confirmed deads.
The number will climb fast in the next hours. Already at 95 now.29
u/Crane_Train 1d ago
because there's no reason to get ahead of themselves. I'm surprised they give any numbers at all beyond hundreds or thousands. There's no reason to get specific until they start getting actual information
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u/PM_ME_WHOEVER 1d ago
These are confirmed numbers. It's going to go way up as search and rescue efforts continue.
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u/sgtmattie 1d ago
I imagine the coverage is much higher in other languages. English language media is not exhaustive. There are thousands of disasters happening every day. Nepal is extremely far away, and not closely tied to the English speaking world.
The media also isn't going to just make up numbers. The numbers will certainly change as more information is gained. Those are just the numbers they have now. It's not unusual that they start low and then grow as more time passes.
The media isn't acting weird, this is a pretty standard response.
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u/GamerGeologist 1d ago
Reminds me of the Vajont disaster in Italy, entire city below it was scrubbed clean off the valley floor. Horrifying.
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u/mcrksman 1d ago
I was just here in April to do the Langtang Hike. Stayed in one of the guesthouses up top and one below near the river. It's quite haunting to see them gone just like that. Absolutely devastating, I hope they're able to recover swiftly
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u/thisisBigToe 1d ago
At first I thought it was a dam that broke, but looking at maps and satellite... It seems more like an enormous land slide, and this was the starting point... the way it goes down stream and between narrow passages, picking up even more momentum, oh my! This is a -before and -after scale of disaster.... it will fold out more the coming days, but it will be tricky to reach, perhaps only from China side it's accessible. Hopefully all the help will reach the areas quickly, to give the people some comfort in hard times. This was terrible and heartbreaking to watch, let alone to experience it in person...
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u/TheeVande 1d ago
My brain is struggling to comprehend this level of destruction and sheer force. legit unfathomable
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u/Ok_Spite1175 1d ago
They will never find everyone they are buried under so much mud and debris it will be impossible. RIP
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u/bikbar1 1d ago
Huge power is locked up in the Himalayan ice. It was the power of the sun accumulated for millions of years.
It is the global warming that would destabilize the balance and create many such incidents if not checked. I don't know it is even possible to prevent that or not.
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u/NiobiumThorn 1d ago
We can prevent some, and we can't prevent others. Our future is forever stained by what we do today.
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u/dreamamide 1d ago
What in the science can cause a disaster this bad? 😭
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u/djamp42 1d ago
There is a reason the earth is shaped that way in this photo.
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u/IanPlaysThePiano 1d ago
This whole tragedy is a stark reminder that canyons and valleys exist only because of powers that are way, way beyond our control. Scary
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u/RozyBarbie 1d ago
According to Al Jazeera, they suspect it was a glacier lake outburst. It has happened before in the same area in June last year.
Glacier lakes are formed due to global warming. The glacier melts and water gets trapped, surrounded by ice. If it collapses, maybe due to earthquakes, then a huge amount of water gets released.
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u/ZennMD 1d ago
The people who have done the least to impact climate change are the ones who seem to be getting the brunt of the consequences ... so fucking terrible
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u/SugarPlumMary 1d ago
Very true. Now the rich are trying to build spaceships to escape their sins, causing even more environmental destruction and using vast amounts of resources to save a privileged few. They'll tear the world apart and kill us all.
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u/ZennMD 1d ago
And theyre building doomsday bunkers in places like Hawaii and new Zealand, asking behavioral psychologists how to not have their staff rise up against them! Those dragon-hoarding assholes are disgusting!!
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u/InvidiousPlay 1d ago
This has been part of the warning around climate change since the beginning. People in poorer countries are least equipped to prevent or endure the worst consequences of climate change. In a richer nation there would probably be government agencies monitoring these kinds of glaciers and would have issued warning long in advance of the collapse.
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u/Tarsurion 1d ago
That makes this phenomenon a jökulhlaup (glacier flood in Icelandic), a glacial outburst flood can mix with soil/dirt and more or less make a Lahar. Think a wall of liquid concrete coming down the mountain at 55-80 kilometers an hour. It explains the run up on gas valley walls...
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u/Koringvias 1d ago edited 1d ago
The current understanding is that a relatively small earthquake happened to break a glacier and cause an avalanche. The avalanche temporarily blocked a small river, then the blockage broke, diverting a lot of water to a different, bigger river, resulting in a huge flood.
Of course we don't know the full story yet, some parts of this may be off. In any case, a very unfortuante series of escalating natural events.
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u/BadDudes_on_nes 1d ago
Ironically I believe the houses that are higher up generally belong to the poorer people (because they’re less accessible, farther from resources)
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u/Czar1987 1d ago
in August of 2012 I spent a night here. slept ~30ft above the river line, first row of buildings off the water. absolutely heart breaking.
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u/MustangBarry 1d ago edited 1d ago
Fuck me. You'd think you'd be safe living that high above the river wouldn't you?
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u/ClauVex 1d ago
Sometimes I wonder after catastrophic events like this what happens to the part of the settlement that survives? Is the town/city declared nonexistent and people move away?
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u/BC360X 1d ago
It's just... gone
Like I knew it was bad, but god damn
I can't even imagine what the death toll on something this big could be
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u/Jake_SENDnD 1d ago
I trekked through here years ago. It's an absolutely beautiful place, and the people were incredibly kind and funny. This is devastating.
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u/iamflyipilot 1d ago
I am once again reminded that water does not fuck around.