r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/MrOrangeMagic • Aug 26 '26

Video Flash Floods hit Nepalese-Chinese border region, hundreds missing including 384 foreign nationals NSFW

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u/marktwoen Aug 27 '26

Even "flash flood" sounds like an understatement. That looks more like a catastrophic dam breach.

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u/ChaoticSixXx Aug 27 '26

Nepal is a landlocked country and this morning people were saying it was a tsunami so I looked it up. Apparently it was caused by a massive glacier collapse which triggered an ice avalanche that crashed into the upper river channels, sweeping up the heavy soil that was already water-logged from active monsoon rains. This created a high-speed, concrete-like slurry that overwhelmed the region.

The impact from the glacier collapse was so powerful that it registered on seismographs as a 5.2-magnitude event. Scientists have since confirmed that the falling ice caused the quakes, rather than a tectonic earthquake, triggering the collapse. Scientists and researchers are warning that climate change is causing the Himalayas(and the world) to warm rapidly. Rising temperatures destabilize glaciers and permafrost by allowing meltwater to seep into rock cracks and weaken them causing catastrophic disasters like we saw today. This is going to keep happening.

Its so, so awful and my heart goes out to all the people who were affected.

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u/ItsAllFunAndGangs Aug 27 '26

Thank you for the info!

It's terrifying and I can't forget the quote I heard the other day: "We have to be aware that climatically speaking this isn't the worst year of the last 100 years. It's the best (i.e. least horrible) of the next 100 years."

I felt that as well as those pictures.

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u/iAmUnintelligible Aug 28 '26

makes you understand why the rich are amassing wealth at such an insane rate now

3

u/isthis_anon Aug 27 '26

As far as the composition of the material, this would be similar to a lahar event I suspect.

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u/der_Schalk Aug 27 '26

Wooow... that means "understatement"
is also quite the understatement in itself, too.

a lot of those people never will be found,
no matter how much they search for them.
Because there is simply nothing left.

Those caught in it
are ground up between the stones,
ice fragments, pieces of buildings, etc.,
until they are reduced to less than fine paste.
Imagine a bunch of ants being trapped
between two grinding sheets of sandpaper
with a ton of pressure.

And no one will ever know.

I’m usually a bit less sensitive,
but that thought makes me feel sad and sick at the same time.

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u/Relative_Drop3216 Aug 27 '26

Id say that looks more like the end of the world