Nature’s Deadly Missiles

Climate scientists and disaster response teams are increasingly using the phrase “nature’s missiles” to describe unstable mountain glaciers that have become vulnerable to global warming for the first time in 10-12,000 years. There are more than 200,000 glaciers in the world. The explosive presence of nature’s missiles, a la Nepal, destroys any illusion of some kind of global warming hoax by exposing climate deniers to the wrath of all humanity as outcasts deserving expulsion.

This existential threat has never been so openly exposed to the world as it was around 09:00 NPT (Nepal Standard Time) on August 26, 2026, when a massive flash flood debris avalanche surged down the mountainside at 100 mph, starting more precisely at 8:44 AM in the mountains forming a wall of water 30 feet tall in 30 minutes downstream clobbering villages and Gyirong Port, nearly fifteen-hundred people instantly killed, several thousand still missing.

“A month after catastrophic floods swept through Nepal’s Nuwakot district, the town of Devighat still smells of death. Excavators continue to claw through vast layers of grey mud that swallowed homes, businesses and roads. As the earth is turned over, the smell of decay rises again.” (A Month after the Nepal-Tibet Floods, Survivors are Still Waiting to Find out What Comes Next, ABC.net.au.news, Sept. 24, 2026)

“For millennia, the high peaks of the Himalayas were held together by an invisible, frozen cement — permafrost and glacial ice that bound ancient rock into seemingly unshakable fortresses. But as the planet continues to warm, this alpine glue is liquefying… The torrent was the direct result of warming-induced glacial collapse, which dumped millions of tons of rock, unleashing a high-velocity wave of mud and debris. The new reality in the era of human-caused climate change, a CNN headline put it, is that ‘living downstream from a glacier has become a deadly liability.” (Michael Mann, Nepal’s Glacial Collapse Foreshadows a Future of Climate Disaster, Earth Island Journal, Sept. 1, 2026)

Michael Mann, director of Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, University of Pennsylvania claims the primary solution to Nepal alpine collapses is targeting the root cause of global warming, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Global policies must phase out coal, oil, and gas as soon as humanly possible. This is the first order of business, nothing else really counts until the greenhouse gas CO2 emission machine is stopped dead in its tracks. (What Happens When Earth Passes 1.5 Degrees of Warming? Inside Climate News, Sept. 19, 2026)

What have oil & gas & coal CO2 emissions wrought?

Iconic Mont Blanc, the oldest known ice in Western Europe at 12,000-years, and the highest mountain in Western Europe, 15,777/ft aka: “The Roof of Europe” has enormous exposure to the dangers of falling glacier chunks and rockfalls whilst towns in the immediate region prepare for the unknown.

As of August 2026, there have been 450 rockfalls in the Mont Blanc massif (29 miles long): “Something never seen before,” according to Ludovic Ravanel, geomorphologist and research director at the CNRS at Edytem (Environnements, Dynamiques et Territoires de la Montagne) headquartered in Le Bourget-du-Lac, France. “That is an absolutely staggering figure, given that just 10 or 20 years ago, there were only a few dozen rockfalls.” There’ve been 50% more rockfalls this year than the record set in 2022. (Heatwave in France: 2026 Sets Record for Rockfalls in the Alps, Euro News, August 20, 2026).

A 2026 scientific assessment of Alaknanda Basin/Garhwal Himalayas (India) discovered 219 unstable hanging glaciers. The glaciers lack structural support.

In the Sikkim Himalayas (India) more than 50 potential GLOFs (Glacial Lake Outburst Floods) have been identified susceptible to a single ice avalanche crashing into a glacial lake and wiping out infrastructure hundreds of miles downstream.

Mount Huascarán/Cordillera (Peru) has some of the world’s most precarious hanging glaciers. The Bolivian Andes satellite mapping of 2026 identified numerous proglacial lakes sitting immediately below steeply retreating glaciers, eleven (11) flagged with exceptional high risks of cascading GLOFs.

A significant worldwide study conducted under the supervision of the University of Portsmouth identified “3,100 surging glaciers.” These are not regular glaciers that melt over time. These are missile glaciers that trigger floods and avalanches. (Scientists Warn of 3,100 ‘Surging Glaciers’ that can Trigger Floods and Avalanches, UNDRR – United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, April 17, 2026)

The study claims climate change has made surging glaciers more complex as extreme weather events such as sudden pounding rainfall or excessive heatwaves are more capable than ever at triggering surging glaciers. It’s a different world today than anytime in human history. It’s difficult for society to understand radical changes in a climate system that’s been ‘perfect for life’ and steady for thousands of years. That’s gone.

As such, it’s incumbent upon the world’s developed nations to get ahead of this rogue climate that’s threating civilization and take appropriate action, whatever that may be?

‘Climate Change’ Ignored at G7 & G20 Meetings

World leaders, with lips pursed, turned away from climate change when gathered for G7 & G20 meetings even as climate change had its most disastrous year, especially hard-hit Europe: “Until recently, the response to climate change was firmly established at the center of the international agenda. This year, however, the topic disappeared from the debates of the G7 and G20 forums that bring together the largest carbon emitters. It is time to resume the offensive and inflict a defeat on denialism. Nature reminds us every day that we live on one planet. The glaciers in the Himalayas are melting. The super El Nino may cause torrential rains, droughts and forest fires in different parts of the globe.” — Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Presidente/Brazil. (In their words: From across the world, leaders call for action on climate change at the UN, The Associated Press, Sept. 24, 2026)

World citizens should be in an uproar, fighting mad, when the parties responsible for emitting excessive levels of GHGs, such as CO2, fail to address and properly take ownership for consequences they have caused, shattering the world order, uprooting ecosystems supportive of life. How is it possible to sit straight-faced in G7 and G20 meetings and ignore the biggest threat in human history when civilization hangs in the balance overwhelmed by an unforgiving climate system gone rogue. Nobody knows what to expect.

People have two realistic choices (1) meekly accept an accelerating trip to the Eschaton (2) fight like hell to change the socio/economic landscape because the current one is not working for a well-balanced planet. Instead, it’s tearing everything apart.

According to the most recent United Nations estimates, the current world population, as of Sunday September 27, 2026, is 8,317,383,355. What if 8.3B (minus “the 1%”) hit the streets in the world’s largest-ever protest? After all, nobody, absolutely nobody, is looking after their best interests. They have everything to gain, not much to lose, because they’re already hanging on for dear life at the bottom of the socio/economic system.

Indeed, world leadership is a shambles behaving like a deer in the headlights faced with the biggest existential threat of all time. But they don’t know what to do! No ideas!

Eight billion pissed off protestors should be able to change that… shouldn’t they?

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at [email protected].