Why this “falling rocks” sign is more important than most

Why this “falling rocks” sign is more important than most

In Brienz/Brinzauls, a small village in the east of Switzerland, there’s a village slipping into a valley and a road that’s surprisingly dangerous. Thanks to everyone I interviewed: pull down the description for links and more details!

CCTV footage from Geopraevent, used with permission: https://www.geopraevent.ch/
More details on the Brienz radar: https://www.geopraevent.ch/project/rockfall-radar-brienz/

CSD Engineers: https://www.csd.ch/en

Camera: Alicja Pahl
Producer: Sebastian Capeda at Viven https://viven.ch
Editor: Michelle Martin https://twitter.com/mrsmmartin

I’m at https://tomscott.com
on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tomscott
on Facebook at https://facebook.com/tomscott
and on Instagram as tomscottgo

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51 Responses

  1. Tom Scott says:

    This was a really difficult video to find a title for without giving away the story. I think it’s fascinating, but sometimes it’s really frustrating how everything has to be summed up into a single title and thumbnail!

  2. ShortHax says:

    This wasn’t the Rolling Stones concert I paid for

  3. Mistah MegaManFan says:

    It was quite jarring to suddenly hear him say “worst case scenario” in English, but not nearly as jarring as if you were driving down the road and got hit by a car sized boulder at 20 km/h!

  4. Arkensor says:

    As software engineer developing this I would have very very swaty palms every time it goes off … A lot of responsbility for correctly judging such a complex envionment. Lots of respect for their seemingly working solution.

    • Henrik Oldcorn says:

      It going off is fine, I’d worry all the time it’s *not* going off!

    • AndrĂĄs BĂ­rĂł says:

      This is no big deal, even if you screw up the chance of anything bad happening is still small.
      A bit more stressful job is to write software for nuclear missile launch systems. You misplace a semicolon and the world ends.

    • Danceofmasks says:

      Imagine if such a system had a devastating bug, caused by something as simple as misspelling a word in the code.
      Such as environment. Kappa

    • afelias says:

      just wait till a data scientist just comes along with a machine learning based solution fed on all the past data

      A part of me wonders if they’re willing to take responsibility for whatever happens next

    • Neolexious Neolexian says:

      @afelias “Machine learning”? Do you mean random mash of data and linear algebra that no one really understands?

  5. Treasure Quest - JD & Company Chronicles says:

    Just image if this video was done in one take, and the rock fall started right on cue. Tom would have died of happiness!

  6. JeremiCzarnecki says:

    There are only two questions that remain to be answered:

    1. How does a geological radar specialist in Grisons end up with an Australian accent?
    2. Is it alright to wish the residents of Brienz “Guten Rutsch” ahead of the new year?

  7. Tom Baldwin says:

    My GCSE German is really paying off, I understood “worst case scenario” without even trying

  8. JohannFlies says:

    Villagers: *Literally live next to a mountain where rocks come raining down.*
    Geologist: “It’s not life-threatening, just unpleasant.”

    • SloSandwich says:

      “Roses are dead”
      “Violets are dying”
      “Outside I’m smiling”
      “But inside I’m crying”

      “I just wish people would give my content a chance”

  9. GoHerping says:

    that has to be one of the coolest looking villages ever

  10. Not Just Bikes says:

    Fun fact: some Dutch traffic lights use radar like this to detect if a person is waiting at the intersection, so that the system can stop the cars and let the pedestrians cross.

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