Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • Paywall. I'm not sure how you expect anyone to read this
    by yeah879846
  • I agree, paywall makes it literally literally unreadable
    by NooneAtAll3
  • Is there a text of this elsewhere? I'm hard-paywalled (archive.is doesn't seem to capture a copy).
    by dredmorbius
  • another good article, without paywall: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/27/nepal-tibet-fl...
    by croisillon
  • Is Switzerland exposed to similar risk, given the amount of glaciers?
    by tintor
  • That and other risks.

    There's the 1963 Vajont Dam collapse in northern Italy (just south of the Swiss border).

    Nutshell summary: one of the tallest dams ever built (262m / 860ft) created a reservoir in a high valley surrounded by the sedimantary limestone slopes of Mounte Toc. Layers of limestone were separated by clay a few cm thick. As the reservoir filled, the clay was hydrated, effectively becoming a lubrication layer. On 9 October 1963 a 2km long landslide of roughly 260 million m^3 slammed at 110 kph into the reservoir creating a tsunami of 115 million m^3 of water which overtopped the dam itself in a 250m high wave. The primary impact was downstream in the Piave Valley utterly destroying several villages and towns, with 1,900--2,500 deaths. (Other waves washed across the reservoir and upstream causing additional damage.)

    There's a detailed Wikipedia article: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam>.

    Also several good videos detailing the specifics of the disaster on YouTube.

    Generally the Alps are at a far lesser scale than the Himalaya, but yes, glacier, flood, and landslide risks exist.

    by dredmorbius
  • Yes, but apparently they monitor the glaciers stability / Temperature closely and evacuate required
    by bamboozled
  • As someone from the Austrian alps: Of course as the climate is warming the glaciers are collapsing. At this point thst has been observable with my own eyes during my relatively short lifespan.

    That of course means the old wisdom in which places to settle is safe no longer holds. However placed like Austria or Switzerland have top notch tech and public serviced, meaning glaciers are condtantly surveiled and such risks have a much bigger chance of getting noticed here than in the relatively poor Nepalese mountain region. But that doesn't mean black swan events are always preventable.

    It really hits the most kind and humble people in Nepal as I know from the stories my grandparents (both avid alpinists) told me about being there.

    by atoav
  • It's already happening: Swiss and French Alps, Italian Alps, Dolomites…

    Marmolada glacier collapse, Italian Dolomites (2022)

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/05/within-five-mi...

    https://www.politico.eu/article/climate-change-italy-canazei...

    Village buried, Blatten, Switzerland (2025)

    https://planetski.eu/2025/05/29/swiss-village-hit-by-landsli...

    Evacuations after rockfall (2025)

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/30/rockfalls-ital...

    Evacuations, mudslides, bridge destroyed (2026 – last week)

    https://italien.news/en/chronicle/severe-weather-hits-northe...

    Village threatened, Kandersteg Switzerland (2026 – last week)

    https://planetski.eu/2026/08/19/monitoring-continues-on-moun...

    by manarth
  • Probably not. Most alpine valleys were carved by glaciers and have a characteristic U-shaped profile. When you get a landslide into a glacial valley, it hits the relatively flat floor and breaks itself apart. The valleys themselves are usually wide enough that they don't dam either. The alps also have significantly less relief than the Himalayas.

    The valley where the floods occurred in Nepal has a V-shape, and the peaks around it have much more relief. It's much easier for a large landslide to fill the bottom, creating a dam that can burst, or just continue down the valley without wasting all its energy on a broad flat plain at the bottom. The upper valley immediately below the cliff face that toppled was also a glacial U-shaped valley though, so this speculation might need adjustment as more work is done.

    It's worth emphasizing just how much less monitored and dangerous Nepal's mountains are though. The (greater) Himalayas are unlike any other mountain ranges I've ever seen.

    by AlotOfReading
  • Really helpful on navigating what happened. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZvUQ7aoehw
    by blondie9x
  • There was a video on threads earlier today (probably long gone now) of some of the bodies they were finding. Just truly horrific what that amount of sheer force can do to a person.
    by Magi604
  • The CCTV footage was one of the most heartbreaking things I have seen on the internet lately.

    It makes me think a bit of the Johnstown flood from 1889:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood#/media/File:Th...

    by decasia
  • I haven't yet been able to properly internalize the horror of this scene. Maybe because we're exposed to so many images from disaster and action movies/videogames, I got somewhat desensitized to the "graphics", so to speak. It's like my brain is denial.

    At the same time, I know this is real and a tragedy in an unimaginable scale. Every "little walking figure" is a full human being with dreams, fears and a rich life story.

    I'm afraid that at one point it will just hit me super hard.

    by glimshe
  • Tragedy happens every day, this is likely one of those freak events we cannot do anything about. Millions of people die from hunger and malnutrician every year. Perhaps we could focus our energies on that were it not for the media (us by proxy) that prefers the edgier stuff, since we've desensitized ourselves and seek that fix with something new
    by verdverm
  • About 160,000 people die each day if less dramatically.
    by tim333
  • You might want to take an intense media break. I went to 4chan to find more videos of the event, something it's rather good for, and even those guys were largely shocked and flabbergasted at the scale of the carnage and destruction
    by IncreasePosts
  • What scares me about climate change is how frequent these “little figures” are getting wrecked.

    In Japan we have had these sudden flood events this year, people just die as their cars are washed away.

    Never in my life have I considered checking the weather forecast and flood watch warnings almost every time I get in the car but I do this year.

    We have really fucked the climate and this is just the beginning.

    by bamboozled
  • About 18 years ago, some guy at work was laughing at a video of someone being blown to pieces by an explosive device. People kept walking by his desk and laughing, I suppose because it looked so cartoonish that it felt more like looney tunes than real life.

    As an experiment, I showed the same video to my 85-year old grandmother, and she cried out in horror and prayed for the people in the video for a solid hour afterwards.

    by debo_
  • https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-nepal-tibet-glacie...

    CCTV footage is there. Horrific scene. When you see it coming at you it’s already too late.

    by pm2222
  • I don't understand why the push so hard on AI and the greenwashing / misleading information about its impact on the natural world.
    by blondie9x
  • Exactly what you see on YT clickbait thumbnails but terrifyingly real.
    by cube00
  • It's awful to see dozens of people running and knowing they're all gone. It wasn't even close. They were so small compared to that absolute FORCE.
    by kulahan
  • What was the comment of the form "climate change will manifest as a series of phone videos of disasters that get closer and closer until you're the one holding the phone?"
    by pjc50