When danger is coming, people get scared. That is normal — fear is built into us to help us survive. But fear can go two ways. It can push us to get ready: reinforce buildings, learn first aid, keep emergency supplies, and heed real warnings. Or it can drive us toward rumors, superstitions, and self-proclaimed prophets.
The goal is to turn fear into constructive action — not let it degrade into superstition, or allow opportunistic actors to profit from public anxiety.
A Story From My Childhood
In 1961, a rumor spread across Nepal that a catastrophic earthquake was imminent. Panicked by the predictions, countless families abandoned their homes to sleep outside in tents.
My father, Dharma Ratna Yami, spoke up against the panic. He was not asserting that earthquakes could not happen; he was insisting that it is wrong to treat a guess as a verified fact. Many thought he was reckless, but he refused to back down.
We lived in a four-story house back then, and all seven of us children slept on the top floor. One night, worried neighbors came to our home and urged my parents: "Even if you choose to risk your own lives, at least send the children to sleep safely in our tents." My mother, Heera Devi Yami, firmly declined. She refused to let collective panic dictate how she protected her children.
Looking back, my parents were fighting two complementary battles. My father questioned the rational basis of the fear; my mother refused to let that fear control her choices. Neither denied physical risk — they simply refused to let panic replace common sense. Their actions capture the core challenge of disaster management: maintaining skepticism toward unproven panic requires real courage. My father demonstrated intellectual resistance; my mother, practical autonomy. Refusing to collapse into helplessness is precisely the mindset modern crises demand.
Real Risks and Physical Realities
Disasters in Nepal are physical realities governed by geology and climate science. Nepal sits on the collision zone of two tectonic plates, making seismic activity an ongoing certainty. High in the Himalayas, moraine-dammed bodies of water pose another grave threat: when loose rock and ice give way, glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) send devastating walls of water and debris downstream.
Of the 47 hazardous glacial lakes identified across the region by climate scientists, 21 lie directly within Nepal’s borders, 25 in the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, and one in India. Recent flood damage in Rasuwa serves as a stark reminder that these are not rare, historical anomalies — they are recurring hazards.
For generations, society has leaned on traditional mythology to cope with catastrophic events. But myths do not reinforce a hillside or stop a flood. True resilience requires verifiable risk mapping, clear evacuation routes, enforced building codes, and community-wide emergency planning.
Data-Driven Advocacy and Climate Justice
Nepal contributes negligibly to global emissions yet bears a disproportionate burden of climate impacts. Securing international climate compensation and loss-and-damage funding requires moving past purely moral appeals. Global financial mechanisms demand rigorous empirical backing.
Achieving this requires action on two fronts:
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Breaking Down Institutional Silos: Government ministries — covering water resources, environment, disaster risk reduction, and finance — must consolidate risk assessments, economic loss data, and meteorological trends into a single, unified national strategy. Fragmented data leads to weak claims that are easily dismissed.
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Standardized Loss Documentation: Nepal must produce standardized, verifiable loss data that meets international criteria at venues like UN climate conferences. Sympathy alone does not mobilize international resources; coordination and empirical evidence do.
Furthermore, post-disaster recovery funds must be managed with institutional clarity. Capital held under the Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund cannot remain frozen in centralized accounts or dispersed through ad-hoc measures. Following the 2015 earthquake, the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) provided a unified governance mechanism to allocate capital transparently across sectors. Modern recovery operations under the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) require that same structured administrative model to eliminate bureaucratic bottlenecks.
Human Capital and Local Capacity
A critical vulnerability exposed during events like the Rasuwa floods is an over-reliance on external technical expertise. True national preparedness requires building local capacity. Nepal must invest in upskilling native engineers, hydrologists, emergency responders, and local leaders so that immediate, life-saving interventions do not depend on international arrival timelines. Public communication must be led by trusted local voices who understand both the science and the local cultural landscape.
Achieving this demands structural reform in higher education. Elevating premier public institutions — such as the Institute of Engineering (IOE), the Institute of Medicine (IOM), and the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) — into Institutions of National Importance (INIs) through dedicated Acts of Parliament is a practical necessity. Granting these bodies autonomous status ensures they can serve as permanent engines of advanced research, policy advice, and high-level human capital.
Psychological Resilience: From Natural Disasters to AI
Whether confronting seismic hazards or technological disruption, human anxiety follows a predictable pattern: uncertainty creates a market for false promises.
When an individual performs a ritual during a crisis and feels temporary relief, the brain registers that the action worked. However, emotional calm is not equivalent to physical safety. While cultural traditions provide psychological comfort, danger arises when unverified rituals are promoted as physical protection. Moreover, fear is frequently commercialized — resources spent on unproven remedies are resources diverted from structural safety.
This dynamics extends directly to emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence. Rapid technological shifts induce widespread anxiety regarding economic stability and professional identity. Simultaneously, AI tools accelerate the spread of synthetic media and deliberate misinformation.
Protecting a population from both predatory superstition and technological misinformation requires systemic investment in critical thinking skills and psychological support:
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Cognitive Hygiene: Educating youth early to systematically distinguish correlation from causation, rumor from empirical evidence, and belief from proof.
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Community Mental Health: Institutionalizing community-based psychological first aid so that anxiety is managed through proper care rather than exploited for profit.
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Workforce Adaptability: Pairing technological adoption with structured career retraining and digital literacy programs.
Preparedness is fundamentally an act of human agency. Shifting from a culture of passive endurance to one of active preparation honors the real risks we face without surrendering our common sense to fear.