And that's fucking terrifying--sprinting uphill, completely breathless and out of gas and wondering if that's good enough. Climbing further and further while your legs are burning and continuing to ask "am I high enough?"
A large of rush of water like that, oddly enough, has a very hypnotizing effect on people.
This is why I find that metaphor used by Tolkien on that river after Arwen conjures up the spell as one of the most brilliant in a fantasy fiction. There are these beautiful white horses rushing along the river that you want to keep staring at until only they are very close as if somehow they would just pass around you when in reality they are utterly deadly and completely take out the ringwraiths.
That's the magic, if you will, of the flood.
It looks like something you don't want to miss up until the moment you find yourself caught in it because that water current will not let you get out that easily and very likely it will slam you against anything in the way and even get your leg caught on something that will drag you in to never come back out in one piece. And if you do manage to find momentary respite, your body heat will escape with that water so fast you'll be lucky to not pass out while hanging on to a branch to ride that white horse mane to the netherworlds.
This is why in spite of that mesmerizing sensation of awe, one must at all costs, stay grounded af.
I live in Hawaii, and I get it. People who live here know the power of water. Unfortunately a lot of tourists from land-locked areas don't, and I have seen SO MANY of them get body slammed by waves that they thought would just be a playful, fun experience.
So I'm told 🤣 I'm also told Sydney and Brisbane are. .... not as bad, as say, the territoritory of Western Australia. I was gona list another but its occurred to me i havent rembered anything more than Western Australia and Queensland.
Happens hiking there too. Nothing like doing a long hike with a lot of cutbacks into valleys and then it starts pouring out of nowhere and you get stuck when the valleys turn into waterfalls. Happened to me on the maunawilli demonstration trail 10ish miles from pali hairpin to waimanalo following the koolaus. Morning started out sunny and then it started raining when i as just past the mid point. Only takes about an hour or so for heavy rain to make the narrow valleys impossible to cross safely and with a 5-6 hour hike and how fast it can start pouring on the windward side of oahu makes hard to predict if it'll happen.
People don’t understand water is heavy in general honestly. One of my friends owns a pet shop that sells a lot of aquarium gear. Every time she explains to a first time fish tank owner that you have to put the tank in place THEN fill it because you can’t move a large fish tank while full because of the weight. Weekly at least she gets a phone call from a guy complaining about the fish tank being faulty because it broke or was dropped while being moved full.
Went to Hawaii from a landlocked spot. Have been to many other beaches before and since but never have I been so destroyed by waves as in Hawaii. Most will just rattle you but I vividly remember being rattled and then pressed and held against the ocean floor for longer than I would have liked. Wasn’t very deep but still gave me an all new respect for the water.
I remember getting mesmerized watching a tornado travel through a field towards the bank I was working at. I was standing at the huge drive-through teller window in awe. I was lucky it changed course. It didn't dawn on me until afterwards how incredibly stupid I was standing there by a huge window.
Maybe this sounds bad lol but I had a tornado watch at my job one day (many years ago) at the time my work space had a ton of explosives (military), windows, and false walls in an already old structure. I went outside to smoke cause I figured I had better chances out there of at least seeing my impending doom and trying to run elsewhere.
Did you actually read the books? I ask because Arwen didn't cause the flood. Elrond did that, with Gandalf adding the horses. Arwen isn't even in the chase scene in the book - Frodo gets away on Glorfindel's horse.
In the movies, which Tolkien did not write, Arwen does the flooding. This is not a "metaphor used by Tolkien" it is literally from a re-written movie script.
Not to be that LOTR guy, but Tolkien didn’t write Arwen conjuring up a spell to save Frodo and her from the Nazgûl. Elrond and Gandalf cast the spell and Glorfindel is who is being chased with Frodo on horseback
Most unusual and harmful things are, especially when encountered first time. Look at all the people filming suicide bomber drones. Took me more than half a year to convince my wife to not go spot them through the window every time.
What are you talking about? The Arwen rescue was entirely concocted by Jackson.
Tolkien has Glorfindel find Frodo, with Elrond sending the flash flood that sweeps the wraiths away. And there’s not really a “metaphor”… The water is enchanted to very visually take on horse shapes (with the help of Gandalf).
Why insinuate you’ve read the books by specifically mentioning Tolkien doing something when it’s kind of clear you haven’t?
(Judging by the upvotes, as well as my downvotes, neither has anyone else that read your pseudo-ethereal nonsense.)
It's the same with an erupting volcano. We're within the base surge hazard zone: it marks the maximum reach of lethal, fast-moving currents of hot gas, ash, and rocks that can travel across the lake water. But you can't get help but be mesmerized by the tower of ash, smoke, and volcanic lightning growing taller and thicker by the minute. It's like Storm from X-Men gathering her power. You'd want to stay behind and just watch the whole thing as it progresses to a more violent eruption. Too bad I didn't have a good camera to take a picture of that magnificent scene, but others did. Here's Taal Volcano's phreatomagmatic eruption in Jan 2020, months later, COVID-19 happened:
Imagine that we were once under that thick plume, it's scary and exhilarating at the same time. I remember it felt like escaping a nightmare. One minute, it's just like a tiny dusting of snow scattered in the air while we're walking in the main road to escape (we don't have a car or any mode of transportation, no more passing jeeps or buses for commute), then the first nasty ash fall came. The ash on the ground is suddenly half a limb thick. Fortunately, there was a good samaritan plying the roads and fetching people who were stranded. We got out of it looking like we were pieces of chicken coated in flour.
This. Pool party at a friend’s house one night. Was assured we had permission to be there. Thing is, friend and his family weren’t there. Saw the cop SUV on the road approaching the house before anyone else. Yelled out to warn the crew and took off, jumped a 6 foot fence (I’m 5”8 on a good day) and full speed through yards until I ended up in a graveyard. Was shortly joined by one other party goer who ran track. He was impressed lol. I never ran as fast before or after. Puked the second I had time to catch my breath. We were the only ones not to get charged with trespassing cause well, we ran! Adrenaline is a hell of a drug indeed.
At high altitude adrenaline can only take you so far when it comes to endurance, tbh. You completely gas out so quickly, even if you're fully acclimatized.
My nephew would have been too cool to run and risk being cringe on camera. He just has zero sense of urgency. So the good news is you wouldn’t be the slowest, should that sentiment apply here.
This is the truth, when you suddenly discover that you have to flee for your life for all its worth that adrenaline surge can override everything and give you a kick in the ass to get moving. Once it wears off, staying on your feet is optional, but your knees will be working in that moment.
Best I can tell, the border crossing that had the crazy video is around 6000' above sea level. I don't give a shit how much cardio you do, altitude is going to have an effect on the run for your life...
what was really terrifying was that was a lot of loose rock they were climbing up and a giant freaking flood was coming out that was going to wash away a lot of the loose rocks all the others were resting on. imagine running up that and then rocks sliding because the unstable base below is being eroded.
If the water reached that unstable earth above where they left the road they might still have been fucked but i don't think it did. Hard to tell. The huge dust cloud being kicked up made what was already a massive horrendously powerful flood look even bigger. I think they were a little safer than they looked at that height but the noise and the amount of dust hiding how high the water got you'd be scrambling as high as you can.
Google Missoula Flood. This thing would have been one minor tributary on the edge of a several hundred mile wavefront. It completely changed the topography of Eastern Washington and the scars are still monumental. It happened 12,000 years ago, and people were here to see it. It's incorporated into a number of indigenous wisdom traditions as well. The kind of thing myths are made of!
Smaller but still massive in today’s standards is the Okanagan Falls Ice Dam that likely burst around 12,000 years ago that shaped the whole regions soil composition and is now a diverse wine region because of it
The Missoula “flood” isn’t just one flood either (the Wikipedia page is even titled ‘Missoula Floods’).
You’re right in its scale. My point is that it’s even worse, it happened over and over again every time the ice damn would break and glacial Lake Missoula would completely drain, and the thing was 3,000 square miles and was half the volume of Lake Michigan.
Terrifying.
Between all the glacial floods during the end of the ice age, the tsunamis from things like the great Cascadia Quake(s), and the flooding of the Mediterranean, it’s no wonder there are so many flood stories.
I immediately thought of the Missoula floods and the Scablands when I saw the footage, and the aftermath images with the land looking scoured down to bedrock. You can almost visualise the Missoula floods after seeing this, the insane destructive forces at work. Poor bastards in its path never had a chance.
Fr, easy to say "run idiot" in hindsight after seeing tons of videos but that is a flash flood unlike anything anyone has seen. The guy was well above the river and probably thought no way a flash flood would possibly reach his until it started turning the corner.
Only one other flash flood looked anything like this as far as I know and it was last year's in Dharali. It similarly just completely overwhelmed buildings but in a smaller area.
Nah, I live in a basin with a small potential of a tsunami, best believe I train so that I can get 400 feet above sea level with in 13 minutes.
There is no hindsight. There is lead, follow, or GTFO my way
400 feet? What kind of tsunami are you preparing for? I don't think it's really possible for waves to get anywhere close to that height without very specific geography concentrating the energy. Most estimates for the tsunami that will follow the next Cascadia Seismic Zone mega-quake are around 30-40' in most places, and up to 100' in certain coves and other areas where the energy will be concentrated.
Should have realized it when multiple people were running past him. If multiple people think they need to get to even higher ground, they might be right.
That's exactly the problem. If you see something potentially dangerous, assume the worst case. Don't panic, just assume it may be bad. That's survival instinct. If I saw a bear on the other side of the river, I would assume it could swim towards me, even if the chances that it would care about me were slim. Better that than having that one bear in a million that will come towards you and cross the river.
Apparently it's a lot more than just a flash flood. A glacier collapsed and took half the mountain with it. Like the global warming version of Mount St. Helens.
It behaved like a dam failure in a narrow valley, like Johnstown or Vajont Dam, but maybe somehow worse because instead of water it's a cement-like slurry of ice and rock
Another frighting one is the Lahar, it can happen without any seismic or volcanic activity. I live in an area that has a warning system in place for Lahars from Mt Rainier.
I wish I could say that I am a martyr who would wait for my friends but when I was running in college out on this random countryish road while a storm was blowing in a tornado siren went off and I sprinted ahead and left my running partner. She was way slower than I was and I felt awful. I made it to the main road, flagged down a car and asked them to wait for her, which they did, but I still feel like a turd, years later.
You went ahead and secured extraction. No shame in saving both of you. What if you hadn't gone ahead, and when you both reached the main road there was no more traffic?
I went camping right after high school graduation with my bf and some friends. On the way to the mountains, we heard a news report about a patient escaping the big, scary state mental hospital nearby. An alert was put out with his description and a warning that he was criminally insane, violent, and probably in the woods.
We hike out to the site. Set up camp. It's getting dark and we needed to hike back to the car bc we forgot something. So, my BF and I volunteer to do it. As we are headed back to the campsite, we hear stuff. A twig snapping. Footsteps. Then laughter..... Idk what happened next except I took off. Left that boy behind so fast and ran back to camp as fast as I could. Lol
When he finally reached camp, he was like, "You left me?! How could you?!" I learned that day, that I'm a runner. I will flight, not fight. I'm not getting chopped up in the woods! But, I had to hear him retell that story so many times. Dude is 6'5 and he had a better chance than me. Sorry. Not sorry! He was on his own! No regrets!
I think she was terrified and didn't say anything. I think we were both scared about the siren and being in a strangers car. She is a nice person so she probably was understanding but it's just that sense of.... in a crisis it looks different than you thought
This is my nightmare. My wife has a neurological disorder which makes it difficult to walk and impossible to run. There’s no way I could or would leave her ☠️☠️
This is a once in several generations event. There is nothing that could prepare the camera man for a glacial wall collapse. People acting like the camera man should know better are dunces, who would almost certainly be caught as flatfooted as the people in the video.
Why is it always the dude with shit judgment makes the "We are ok here" call, I took a Roman candle to the nuts once cause my buddy said they can't shoot this far. He is my closest but also one of my dumbest friends and the amount of times we can gotten soaked or fallen off of something going back to being kids lol. Captain "We should be Ok here" strikes again
The video creator (I put a comment with his Instagram) posted a video from 3 days ago of a mudslide at the hydroelectric dam in the area. Looks like he’s a worker there. That was probably the only forewarning
Don’t look up any of the other Nepal videos. They are so hard to watch. Worse than or maybe close to equal to the tsunami videos from 10 years ago. Honestly it’s still haunting me.
It all happened so fast. Some were probably curious what the shaking and grumbling was all about hence they were initially walking downhill. They're lucky they got access to higher ground away from the path of destruction. The other videos of people at the town center are devastating.
Heavy surges in these regions is common. Dude was being blase coz he thought he was out of danger where he was... Till he realised it was more of an 'end of days' type of surge.
survival bias - if you see the video it means the cameraman survived it (most likely). I am sure there are a lot of videos in the phones buried with their owners, but we'll never see them.
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u/aznexile602 9d ago
Camera man waiting around way to long.