7 ms·

This is apocalyptic. Imagine something 100km from where you live, and that whole span between you and there being under water tomorrow. in a movie, that wouldn’

This is apocalyptic. Imagine something 100km from where you live, and that whole span between you and there being under water tomorrow. in a movie, that wouldn’t feel real no matter how good the special effects are, it’s too out there

ElijahLynn 4y ago
100km == 62miles
hotpotamus 4y ago
It's the kind of story that gets passed down across generations and even makes it into holy books.
- jimjimjim 4y ago
  underrated comment. semi-localized catastrophe + oral history + time => whole world catastrophe for a population
3pt14159 4y ago
This is Great Lakes of Canada and the USA type distances here ladies and gentlemen. Crazy stuff.
- lhorie 4y ago
  I was trying to figure out a relatable comparison on a map. Looking from one side of the flood lake to the other would be like trying to spot Niagara Falls from Toronto, or San Jose from San Francisco - never mind that the distance is large enough for Earth's curvature to get in the way. And that's just thinking of it as a cross-sectional view of the lake, which doesn't say much about area. The way I ended up explaining it to my kids was that 33M people were affected. San Francisco population is ~800k, so around 40 SFs worth of people are impacted.
- boppo1 4y ago
  Well, not quite. The great lakes are rather deeper. That's not to say this isn't shocking or a sign of radical climate change.
throwrqX 4y ago
I feel like this hasn't gotten the attention it deserves worldwide relative to the amount of suffering it is causing.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  More people should be aware of countries by relative population: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/12/Population-cartogram_World.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/12/Population-cartog... It makes you understand the importance of Brazil, Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia for things that impact people.
- rajman187 4y ago
  Suffering has been normalized for some, unfortunately, and any devastation striking that region is glossed over almost as if calamity is expected to befall. See for instance the outcry and support for Ukraine (not diminishing their dire circumstances by any means) and immediate call to take refugees while sympathy for southern and western Asian states has fallen to the wayside.
  - steve76 4y ago
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  Pakistan is a nation of children and refugees. It's not well positioned to self advocate on the world stage. Pakistan is the world's fifth-most-populous country. The population is young: in 2019 34.8% were thought to be 14 or younger https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_in_Pakistan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_in_Pakistan Pakistan has one of the world's youngest populations. The country's population structure is relatively young, with a median age of 19. Pakistan is also thought to have the world's fourth-largest refugee population, estimated at 1.4 million in mid-2021 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Pakistan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Pakistan
  - okdood64 4y ago
testfoobar 4y ago
Lots of videos of this on TikTok. The volume of water in some videos is mind boggling. https://www.tiktok.com/tag/swatflood?lang=en https://www.tiktok.com/tag/swatflood?lang=en
daveslash 4y ago
This is mind boggling. How deep is it? I mean, I'm sure there are areas that are a few inches deep and others that are dozens of feet, but generally speaking -- is this more or less than the height of a single story? Edit: And is it generally of similar depth or does it vary greatly from locale to locale?
- tromp 4y ago
  Or mouth/nose height?
vondur 4y ago
From the NASA image it looks like the whole area is a flood plain. Similar to a large area of the Los Angeles basin. We have a paved riverbed system to get rid of water from heavy rains which periodically occur. I assume Pakistan doesn't have the resources to do something like that.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mapt 4y ago
  You have a paved riverbed system to get rid of moderate rains which periodically occur. That will be insufficient for a 100-year flood (~1000 acres underwater by current mapping), and a 200-year or 500-year flood would put significant fractions of the city underwater. https://eng2.lacity.org/projects/LARIVER_Glendale_Narrows/docs/USACE_PowerPoint_Presentation_Slides_17October2016.pdf https://eng2.lacity.org/projects/LARIVER_Glendale_Narrows/do...
- boruto 4y ago
  Yes it is Indus river basin
SpaceManNabs 4y ago
> in a movie, that wouldn’t feel real no matter how good the special effects are, it’s too out there This entire thing just reminds me of Day After Tomorrow (2004). Although the movie had a lot of bad science, way too many people called the premise and social outcomes of the movie ridiculous. Hell, the South Park criticism of it alone significantly pushed this current batch of climate deniers.
- codyb 4y ago
  I thought it was telling when South Park basically walked back the whole "The vote's between Shit Sandwich and a Turd" or whatever and said "Vote for Hillary". It was as if they hadn't realized the amount that people draw from their work. It was _pretty explicit_, the turnaround. Or at least it felt that way to me.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    It was as if they hadn't realized the amount that people draw from their work. I think that thinking people massively underestimate the influence that cartoons have on common people. It seems like 90% of the people who argue against religion on the internet got everything they know about religion from cartoons like South Park. Or everything they know about Texas from King of the Hill. There was a newspaper article a few years ago about how some massive percentage of Britons thought The Simpsons was an accurate depiction of Americans, and didn't understand that it was a lampoon.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      Comedy shows/etc sway the opinions of the general public, but shield themselves from criticism by saying "It's just comedy bro, chill out". Quite a conundrum, but what can you do about it? Newspaper editorials do the same thing, using "it's just an opinion" as a rhetorical shield. Virtually any media does something like this in one form or another.
    - nebula8804 4y ago
      The Simpsons humor is funny because it is based in reality...thats how humor works. Every character and trope is a humorous representation of something in America. Are you American? Because I am and i've met someone like every character in the Simpsons in real life.
senectus1 4y ago
Perth, the capital of Western Australia is 100km long. The entire state would grind to a halt, much the rest of the country would suffer seriously as well.
nocoiner 4y ago
Not to minimize the suffering of a poor country with limited state capacity to adequately address this tragedy, but this exact scenario more or less happened in Houston during Hurricane Harvey.

ElijahLynn 4y ago

100km == 62miles

hotpotamus 4y ago

It's the kind of story that gets passed down across generations and even makes it into holy books.

jimjimjim 4y ago
underrated comment. semi-localized catastrophe + oral history + time => whole world catastrophe for a population

3pt14159 4y ago

This is Great Lakes of Canada and the USA type distances here ladies and gentlemen. Crazy stuff.

lhorie 4y ago
I was trying to figure out a relatable comparison on a map. Looking from one side of the flood lake to the other would be like trying to spot Niagara Falls from Toronto, or San Jose from San Francisco - never mind that the distance is large enough for Earth's curvature to get in the way. And that's just thinking of it as a cross-sectional view of the lake, which doesn't say much about area. The way I ended up explaining it to my kids was that 33M people were affected. San Francisco population is ~800k, so around 40 SFs worth of people are impacted.
boppo1 4y ago
Well, not quite. The great lakes are rather deeper. That's not to say this isn't shocking or a sign of radical climate change.

throwrqX 4y ago

I feel like this hasn't gotten the attention it deserves worldwide relative to the amount of suffering it is causing.

ethbr0 4y ago
More people should be aware of countries by relative population: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/12/Population-cartogram_World.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/12/Population-cartog... It makes you understand the importance of Brazil, Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia for things that impact people.
rajman187 4y ago
Suffering has been normalized for some, unfortunately, and any devastation striking that region is glossed over almost as if calamity is expected to befall. See for instance the outcry and support for Ukraine (not diminishing their dire circumstances by any means) and immediate call to take refugees while sympathy for southern and western Asian states has fallen to the wayside.
- steve76 4y ago
DoreenMichele 4y ago
Pakistan is a nation of children and refugees. It's not well positioned to self advocate on the world stage. Pakistan is the world's fifth-most-populous country. The population is young: in 2019 34.8% were thought to be 14 or younger https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_in_Pakistan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_in_Pakistan Pakistan has one of the world's youngest populations. The country's population structure is relatively young, with a median age of 19. Pakistan is also thought to have the world's fourth-largest refugee population, estimated at 1.4 million in mid-2021 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Pakistan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Pakistan
- okdood64 4y ago

testfoobar 4y ago

Lots of videos of this on TikTok. The volume of water in some videos is mind boggling. https://www.tiktok.com/tag/swatflood?lang=en https://www.tiktok.com/tag/swatflood?lang=en

daveslash 4y ago

This is mind boggling. How deep is it? I mean, I'm sure there are areas that are a few inches deep and others that are dozens of feet, but generally speaking -- is this more or less than the height of a single story? Edit: And is it generally of similar depth or does it vary greatly from locale to locale?

tromp 4y ago
Or mouth/nose height?

vondur 4y ago

From the NASA image it looks like the whole area is a flood plain. Similar to a large area of the Los Angeles basin. We have a paved riverbed system to get rid of water from heavy rains which periodically occur. I assume Pakistan doesn't have the resources to do something like that.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mapt 4y ago
You have a paved riverbed system to get rid of moderate rains which periodically occur. That will be insufficient for a 100-year flood (~1000 acres underwater by current mapping), and a 200-year or 500-year flood would put significant fractions of the city underwater. https://eng2.lacity.org/projects/LARIVER_Glendale_Narrows/docs/USACE_PowerPoint_Presentation_Slides_17October2016.pdf https://eng2.lacity.org/projects/LARIVER_Glendale_Narrows/do...
boruto 4y ago
Yes it is Indus river basin

SpaceManNabs 4y ago

> in a movie, that wouldn’t feel real no matter how good the special effects are, it’s too out there This entire thing just reminds me of Day After Tomorrow (2004). Although the movie had a lot of bad science, way too many people called the premise and social outcomes of the movie ridiculous. Hell, the South Park criticism of it alone significantly pushed this current batch of climate deniers.

codyb 4y ago
I thought it was telling when South Park basically walked back the whole "The vote's between Shit Sandwich and a Turd" or whatever and said "Vote for Hillary". It was as if they hadn't realized the amount that people draw from their work. It was _pretty explicit_, the turnaround. Or at least it felt that way to me.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  It was as if they hadn't realized the amount that people draw from their work. I think that thinking people massively underestimate the influence that cartoons have on common people. It seems like 90% of the people who argue against religion on the internet got everything they know about religion from cartoons like South Park. Or everything they know about Texas from King of the Hill. There was a newspaper article a few years ago about how some massive percentage of Britons thought The Simpsons was an accurate depiction of Americans, and didn't understand that it was a lampoon.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Comedy shows/etc sway the opinions of the general public, but shield themselves from criticism by saying "It's just comedy bro, chill out". Quite a conundrum, but what can you do about it? Newspaper editorials do the same thing, using "it's just an opinion" as a rhetorical shield. Virtually any media does something like this in one form or another.
  - nebula8804 4y ago
    The Simpsons humor is funny because it is based in reality...thats how humor works. Every character and trope is a humorous representation of something in America. Are you American? Because I am and i've met someone like every character in the Simpsons in real life.

senectus1 4y ago

Perth, the capital of Western Australia is 100km long. The entire state would grind to a halt, much the rest of the country would suffer seriously as well.

nocoiner 4y ago

Not to minimize the suffering of a poor country with limited state capacity to adequately address this tragedy, but this exact scenario more or less happened in Houston during Hurricane Harvey.