It seems the Indians are truly suffering from the extreme heat, and have begun discussing blowing up the Himalayas to let cold air from China flow in!
Since early summer 2026, India has been enduring a "doomsday-level" extreme heatwave. How severe is it? According to data from the Indian Meteorological Department, temperatures in parts of Rajasthan in northern India soared as high as 51°C, while Delhi's daily temperatures have remained above 45°C. The meteorological department also reported that Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh recorded an annual record high of 48.2°C.
Under such living conditions—feeling like one is baking in an oven—Indian netizens, seeking an outlet for their frustration, have started directing their anger toward the towering white barrier stretching across the northern sky: the Himalayas.
Amid this scorching heat, the idea of "blowing a hole in the mountains to bring in wind" has rapidly spread across Indian social media. The proposal is extremely simplistic and brutal: blast a massive gap through the Himalayas so that cold air from the north can continuously flow into the Indian subcontinent, thereby completely cooling down India.
A bizarre geographical misconception circulates widely among the Indian public: this vast mountain range, averaging over 6,000 meters in elevation and spanning 200 to 350 kilometers in thickness, acts like an insurmountable wall. It not only blocks moist air from the Indian Ocean from moving northward but also firmly prevents dry, cold air from China from flowing southward. Thus, the logic goes, if only this wall could be destroyed, allowing cold and hot air to clash, India’s climate problems would be instantly solved.
In 2015, someone even seriously calculated in India’s prestigious science magazine, *Contemporary Science*, that creating a 50-kilometer-wide gap in the Himalayas might require energy equivalent to five Hiroshima atomic bombs combined.
But here's the problem: the Himalayas are nothing like a small dirt mound that can be shattered by just a few cannon blasts. Stretching over 2,400 kilometers long, with widths exceeding 300 kilometers at their broadest points and an average elevation above 6,000 meters, they are far more massive than most people imagine. Professional internet users estimate that to create a gap capable of substantially altering atmospheric circulation, trillions of cubic meters of rock and soil would need to be removed.
This engineering scale is tens of thousands of times larger than the Three Gorges Dam project. The explosive energy required would demand thousands—even up to ten thousand times—the total arsenal of all existing nuclear weapons on Earth. Essentially, it's as absurd as trying to detonate the planet using a single bullet aimed at its core. One must admit, Indian netizens really dare to dream.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1867026360675328/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.