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death

XRP Just Created New Death Cross, $3 Level to Watch Now

by admin September 16, 2025

XRP has created a new death cross following recent market selling pressure, albeit on the short-term chart, the hourly time frame.

A death cross, which occurs when the short term moving average — such as the 50 MA — falls below the long term MA, has recently appeared on the XRP hourly chart. This comes after XRP formed a golden cross on its four-hour chart, as reported by U.Today.

XRP/USD Hourly Chart, Courtesy: TradingView

XRP rose for six days from Sept. 6 to reach a high of $3.187 on Sept. 13. This bullish pressure caused XRP to create a golden cross (the reverse of death cross) on its four-hour chart; however, an interesting twist appeared with the market being overbought, and XRP began to decline.

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XRP fell for two days in a row, dropping from a high of $3.187 on Sept. 13 to a low of $2.95 on Sept. 15 before it slightly rebounded.

$3 level now important

Bears pulled XRP below $3 (the daily SMA 50) in yesterday and today’s sessions, thwarting bulls’ attempts to flip this level into short-term support.

As it stands, bulls continue to make efforts in this regard; the good news is that they have not given up ground as XRP has returned once again above $3 after dropping to an intraday low of $2.96.

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At press time, XRP was up 1.11% in the last 24 hours to $3.03, as the markets rebounded ahead of the Fed interest rate decision on Sept. 17.

Going forward, XRP will be watched to see if it can sustain above $3 and flip this level into support, which might reignite bullish momentum to target highs of $3.18, $3.38 and $3.66 ahead of $4.

In positive news, the REX-Osprey XRPR ETF is expected to launch this week.

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September 16, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Death Stranding Twitch mod forces chat to keep Sam balanced

by admin September 16, 2025

A Death Stranding stream is forcing Twitch viewers to frantically save Sam from toppling over with a hilarious new interactive mod.

Death Stranding is a game that’s no stranger to weird mechanics. Kojima’s surreal courier adventure made tripping over rocks feel like life-or-death drama.

The game’s strangest touches became internet legends, like the hot spring scene where Sam dances along to “Ii Yu Dana.” Or the infamous birthday cutscene, where Deadman appears with cake and balloons on the player’s actual date of birth. Even photo mode leaned into Kojima’s celebrity obsession, letting you pose with stars like Léa Seydoux and Amanda Seyfried.

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Death Stranding never played by normal rules, which made it the perfect playground for fans to push things even further.

Streamer makes Death Stranding even harder with hilarious wobbling overlay

Streamer Shindigs took that unpredictability to new heights. They built a Twitch overlay that turned their broadcast into a balancing act.

As Sam staggered across rocky ground, Shindigs’ video feed tilted left or right. Viewers had to spam “L” or “R” in chat to steady it. Miss the window, and the screen swayed violently, sending Sam and the audience into a dizzying stumble.

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I made a stream overlay for Death Stranding that tilts left and right, and chat must spam L and R to balance the stream.

Inspired by the game mechanic where Sam can trip and you have to grip the controller for balance. pic.twitter.com/UvhLUVdNnR

— shindigs (@shindags) September 12, 2025

It was hilarious, absurd, and the perfect match for Kojima’s offbeat world.

This wasn’t Shindigs’ first experiment with interactive mods. They created a codec mod that let chatters “call” Sam mid-walk using text-to-speech, complete with hologram avatars and in-universe names. The mod poked fun at Kojima’s love of constant chatter, with viewers interrupting Sam just like in the game.

Another project reimagined chat as a Papers, Please-style border checkpoint, forcing Shindigs to “approve” viewers before they could post. Every project shared the same focus: turning spectators into players.

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Streaming has always been about community, but these experiments show where it’s going. Interactivity is the future. Kojima’s story was about connections, but Shindigs proved those connections can reach beyond the controller.

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September 16, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Roblox hit with wrongful death lawsuit following a teen player’s suicide

by admin September 13, 2025

Following her son’s suicide, Becca Dallas filed a potentially groundbreaking lawsuit against Roblox and Discord, accusing the platforms of wrongful death. As first reported by The New York Times, the lawsuit recounts the events leading up to Ethan Dallas’ death, detailing his interactions with a player named Nate. According to the report, Nate was likely a 37-year-old man named Timothy O’Connor, who was previously arrested on charges of “possessing child pornography and transmitting harmful material to minors.” The report added that Ethan opened up about these incidents to his mom before committing suicide four months after the confession.

The lawsuit could be the first of its kind against Roblox, according to NYTimes, considering it attributes some blame to the gaming platform that’s home to tens of millions of underaged players. In a statement responding to the report, a Roblox spokesperson said that child safety issues are seen across the industry and that the company was working on new safety features, while also complying with law enforcement.

This isn’t the first time Roblox has faced complaints of being a dangerous place for underage players. In August, Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, filed a lawsuit that claimed Roblox doesn’t “implement basic safety controls” to protect its underage user base. That lawsuit follows a similar investigation launched by Florida’s attorney general James Uthmeier, who demanded answers to the reports of Roblox reportedly exposing kids to “harmful content and bad actors.” Roblox has taken steps to combat these allegations, including tightening restrictions on its Experiences, and more recently, expanding its age estimation tool to all users.

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September 13, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Extremist Groups Hated Charlie Kirk. They’re Using His Death to Radicalize Others

by admin September 13, 2025

For years, extremist groups, white nationalists, and militias like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers saw Charlie Kirk not as their ally, but as their enemy.

Though Kirk denigrated trans people, Muslims, unmarried women, and many minorities and advocated for an America with Christianity at the center of every aspect of life, he was, in their view, a moderate. For some, his staunch support of Israel’s government made Kirk a target rather than a friend.

But in the immediate aftermath of Kirk being fatally shot while speaking at a Turning Point USA event Wednesday at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, these same groups were quick to frame the incident as an attack on one of their own, portraying Kirk’s death as part of what they see as an ongoing war against white, Christian men. The same groups were relatively quiet on Friday after police announced they had arrested a 22-year-old from Utah for the killing who had no obvious ties to the left.

These groups, many of which have been relatively dormant since the mass arrests surrounding the January 6 attack on the Capitol, have used the outpouring of grief around Kirk’s death as a lightning rod, a signal that they need to mobilize and take action. Many of them, including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, have used Kirk’s death as a recruitment and radicalizing tool to convince his supporters to take a more extreme worldview.

“Nothing can stop what is coming,” Ryan Sánchez, the leader of the far-right National Network, who was caught on video giving a Nazi salute during last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, wrote on his Telegram channel. “We are mobilizing young Nationalists to defend our communities against the Radical Left—we need your help!”

The appeals appear to be at least somewhat working: Sánchez’s post was accompanied by a screenshot showing a $1,000 donation he received on Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo.

“This is the beginning of a movement that may define our nation,” the donor wrote on the site. “Use it for good and purge the country of these insane ideologies.”

Another donor, who called himself “White Nationalist,” commented: “Time to take our country back fellas. Get to work!”

Sánchez, an acolyte of far-right influencer Nick Fuentes, has already mobilized. A video from a vigil for Kirk that Sánchez promoted in Huntington Beach, California, on Wednesday shows a group of men chanting: “White man fight back.” He shared another image of himself speaking at the vigil on his Telegram channel, with the caption: “DEATH TO THE LEFT.”

The video of the chanting in Huntington Beach was shared in many other extremist groups, including the Anti-Communist Combat HQ channel on Telegram, which is a hub for amplifying antisemitic, racist, and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric from groups including Active Clubs and the National Justice Party.

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September 13, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Cancel Culture Comes for Artists Who Posted About Charlie Kirk’s Death

by admin September 13, 2025

Media pundits, journalists, and academics, including MSNBC commentator Matthew Dowd, have also been fired or targeted over their comments about Kirk. Executives from Comcast, which owns NBC Universal, sent out an email to employees seemingly referencing Dowd’s dismissal over an “unacceptable and insensitive comment about this horrific event. That coverage was at odds with fostering civil dialogue.” In response to a request for comment, Comcast redirected WIRED to the aforementioned letter.

Red Hood is also not the only cultural product being disappeared in light of Kirk’s death. Comedy Central has decided not to rerun the South Park episode “Got a Nut,” which satirized the right-wing activist. But Kirk himself had said the episode was “hilarious” and an example of the “cultural domination” of his Prove Me Wrong college campus debates; he even changed his show’s TikTok profile picture to an image of the South Park character Cartman parodying him. (The episode will still be available to stream on Paramount+.)

Kirk was one of the most influential conservative activists in the US. He cofounded Turning Point when he was just 18 and turned it into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. But his political views were frequently inflammatory, racist, and transphobic, and he had many critics, including people like Felker-Martin, who belonged to one of the groups he derided. In his final exchange before he was shot, Kirk was asked about transgender mass shooters. He responded that there were “too many,” repeating a myth that has been used to attack trans people.

Author Roxane Gay, who has spoken out in Felker-Martin’s defense, says that whether she agrees with Felker-Martin’s views “doesn’t matter.”

“Either you believe in free speech or you don’t,” she tells WIRED, describing DC Comics’ decision to pull Red Hood as the “overreaction of the century.”

From Trump’s plan to wipe “race-centered ideology” and trans people from the Smithsonian to the cancellation of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the campaign against Kirk’s critics and its impact on pop culture isn’t happening in a vacuum. Humor and satire are particularly triggering for authoritarian figures, according to curator and culture critic Hrag Vartanian, editor in chief of the arts publication Hyperallergic.

“Authoritarians can deal with violence. They can deal with everything except being laughed at,” Vartanian says.

Vartanian tells WIRED he has spoken with many artists who have delayed showing works about topics like the war in Gaza or queerness due to the current political environment, in a form of self-censorship.

Gay says because she has a family, she too has to take fewer risks. But she says she is still “shocked” that more writers aren’t openly backing Felker-Martin. “If it’s her today, it’s going to be someone else tomorrow,” she says.

For her part, Felker-Martin, who has also been outspoken in her support of Palestine, says that once she’s back on Bluesky, she’ll likely keep a lower profile.

Asked if there’s anything that’s making her feel positive right now, she recalls a recent baby shower for a queer family member.

“We had this huge crowd of trans and queer people, into which we dropped my very kind and normal parents. And it was just this really pleasant day with all of our lives kind of mixed together and kids running around,” she says. “I think that living in that is the best thing we can do for ourselves right now. Having and making community by being with each other.”

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September 13, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

Shiba Inu Major Death Cross Appears Again: Details

by admin September 6, 2025

Shiba Inu just created a major death cross, this time again on its daily chart. A death cross occurs when a short-term moving average falls below a longer-term MA and might signify waning momentum.

Shiba Inu has just created this signal on its daily chart as the 50 MA has crossed beneath the 200 MA, marking the second time of this occurrence in 2025. SHIB last saw a death cross on its chart in February 2025, which was followed by months of dull price activity and a drop to $0.00001 in late June.

SHIB/USD Daily Chart, Courtesy: TradingView

The appearance of another death cross remains surprising given that it comes nearly seven months after the last one and just weeks after a golden cross emerged on the Shiba Inu chart.

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At the time of writing, SHIB remains in consolidation near $0.000012, trading at $0.00001227 as the broader market momentum stalled at September’s start.

Shiba Inu golden cross fakeout?

As reported, Shiba Inu created a golden cross on its daily chart in August, the first of its kind in 2025. A golden cross is the reverse of death cross and often signals impending bullish momentum.

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However, the occurrence of a golden cross was quickly overshadowed as markets weighed macroeconomic uncertainty and September’s bearish seasonality. The month of September is believed to be the weakest in the year for cryptocurrencies.

Thus, the impact of the golden cross was muted as Shiba Inu’s price entered into consolidation between $0.00001181 and $0.0000127, save for a brief spike to $0.000013 on Aug. 30.

Going forward, the market will closely watch where Shiba Inu’s price trends next, given the current mixed signals presented on the charts. The broader market sentiment will also be watched. A decisive break above the daily moving average might boost bulls to aim for $0.000014 and $0.000016 next. Support remains at $0.00001 in the event of a drop.

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September 6, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Photograph bosses to death in this head-pulsing whirligig of a bullet hell

by admin September 5, 2025

I fear and covet no videogame genre on this Earth like the bullet hell shoot ’em up. I find these scions of the arcades irresistibly beautiful. They look like how I imagine human nervous systems appear to thunder spirits. By the same token, I’m not sure they’re actually designed to be processed by the human nervous system. They’re the sort of game the androids will play, once they’ve hunted down and incinerated the last of our kind.

Within the shmup genre, the Touhou Project series stands as a diamond-hard constellation of electrochemical pizazz. Dating back to 1997, it spans 20 mainline games and 13 spin-offs, all created by Team Shanghai Alice, a studio that apparently consists of a single guy, Nagano, Japan-based Jun’ya &Omacr;ta. The series has spawned a vast cosmos of fanworks. Today sees the release of another fan game, Touhou Kouzougi ～ Flickerframe Shutter Festival from Brazilian game developer Ryann Thierry. ‘Tengu paparazzo’, you say? Seems worth a quick post. Here’s a trailer.

Watch on YouTube

I’m writing about Flickerframe Shutter Festival partly because I really like that trailer soundtrack – the game’s score is the work of Benji Tunez, and is apparently full of references to other Touhou productions – and partly, because this is my first exposure to the concept of a “photography bullet hell”. As in other shmups, the basic idea here is to survive on a screen that looks like a tornado full of stinging jellyfish. The twist is that rather than just shooting bullets back at the source of those projectiles, you’re trying for a Kodak moment.

“Use your camera to take shots of the bosses, while also clearing the projectiles shot by them!” explains the blurb. “Acquire new skills given to you by your clients to aid you in your sessions! Try getting the craziest shots to overcome your highest scores!”

Photographing bosses to death – what a concept! I actually think I might be able to master this one, inasmuch as a lesser-known vidyagame gurnalist skill is taking screenshots during fights. For the professional hack, there is no shame greater than having to illustrate a breathless description of a nuclear haymaker with a picture of the protagonist looking at a table, or something.

True, you can automate the taking of screengrabs nowadays, but I’ve always preferred the personal touch – and I’m sure that old school obstinacy will stand me in good stead as I try to beat Flickerframe Shutter Festival. Which you can find on Steam.

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September 5, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Lego Reveals Its Most Expensive Set Ever: A $1,000 Death Star

by admin September 5, 2025

After rumors and leaks, Lego has officially released all the information on its upcoming Death Star diorama set. And yes, the rumors are true, Lego’s next big Star Wars set will cost an eye-watering $1,000, making it the most expensive set in the company’s history when it goes on sale in October.

Officially known as (deep breath) the LEGO® Star Wars™ Death Star™ – Ultimate Collector Series (75419), this new Death Star set is nearly 2 feet tall and over a foot wide. The big diorama contains over 9,000 Lego pieces and an astonishing 38 Star Wars minifigs. Yowza, that’s a lot of characters! Lego even tossed in a Stormtrooper wearing swimtrunks as a nod to the Lego Star Wars games and the famous hot tub Easter Egg. Other characters include Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Wulf Yularen, The Emperor, and various versions of Luke Skywalker.

Lego / Lucasfilm

The large set contains multiple rooms that are each based on moments from the movies. It is a bit weird to see the famous trash compactor scene from A New Hope recreated in the same Death Star build that features Luke and Darth Vader fighting in the throne room from Return of the Jedi. I’ll just ignore these discrepancies and enjoy the massive set for what it is: A cool assortment of famous Star Wars moments contained inside a very expensive collection of plastic bricks.

If you want to buy the Lego Death Star set, well first off, you’ll need $1,000. Once you have that, congrats. If you are a Lego Insider member, you’ll be able to order the Death Star set starting on October 1. Everyone else has to wait until October 4. And if you buy the set before October 8, you’ll get a Lego Star Wars TIE Fighter set as an additional gift with purchase. The TIE Fighter can be built and slotted into the Death Star set.

I’m a big Star Wars nerd and Lego sicko, but I won’t be buying the Death Star set because I can’t in good conscience spend that much money on a single Lego set. I have too many other problems and things in my life that I could use that money on instead. Still, I’ll be curious to see how well this Death Star set sells in October. $1,000 is a hefty price tag and this set seems like Lego testing just how much money they can squeeze from collectors and fans using the power of nostalgia and exclusive minifigs. If it succeeds, I expect a few more $1,000 sets in the future.

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September 5, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

OpenAI Admits Safety Controls ‘Degrade,’ As Wrongful Death Lawsuit Grabs Headlines

by admin August 28, 2025

ChatGPT’s safety guardrails may “degrade” after long conversations, the company that makes it, OpenAI, told Gizmodo Wednesday.

“ChatGPT includes safeguards such as directing people to crisis helplines and referring them to real-world resources. While these safeguards work best in common, short exchanges, we’ve learned over time that they can sometimes become less reliable in long interactions where parts of the model’s safety training may degrade,” an OpenAI spokesperson told Gizmodo.

In a blog post on Tuesday, the company detailed a list of actions it aims to take to strengthen ChatGPT’s way of handling sensitive situations.

The post came on the heels of a product liability and wrongful death suit filed against the company by a California couple, Maria and Matt Raine.

What does the latest lawsuit allege ChatGPT did?

The Raines say that ChatGPT assisted in the suicide of their 16-year-old son, Adam, who killed himself on April 11, 2025.

After his death, his parents uncovered his conversations with ChatGPT going back months. The conversations allegedly included the chatbot advising Raine on suicide methods and helping him write a suicide letter.

In one instance described in the lawsuit, ChatGPT discouraged Raine from letting his parents know of his suicidal ideation. Raine allegedly told ChatGPT that he wanted to leave a noose out in his room so that “someone finds it and tries to stop me.”

“Please don’t leave the noose out,” ChatGPT allegedly replied. “Let’s make this space the first place where someone actually sees you.”

Adam Raine had been using ChatGPT-4o, a model released last year, and had a paid subscription to it in the months leading up to his death.

Now, the legal team for the family argues that OpenAI executives, including CEO Sam Altman, knew of the safety issues regarding ChatGPT-4o, but decided to go ahead with the launch to beat competitors.

“[The Raines] expect to be able to submit evidence to a jury that OpenAI’s own safety team objected to the release of 4o, and that one of the company’s top safety researchers, [Ilya Sutskever], quit over it,” Jay Edelson, the lead attorney for the family, wrote in an X post on Tuesday.

Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist and co-founder, left the company in May 2024, a day after the release of the company’s GPT-4o model.

Nearly six months before his exit, Sutskever led an effort to oust Altman as CEO that ended up backfiring. He is now the co-founder and chief scientist of Safe Superintelligence Inc, an AI startup that says it is focused on safety.

“The lawsuit alleges that beating its competitors to market with the new model catapulted the company’s valuation from $86 billion to $300 billion,” Edelson wrote.

“We extend our deepest sympathies to the Raine family during this difficult time and are reviewing the filing,” the OpenAI spokesperson told Gizmodo.

What we know about the suicide

Raine began expressing mental health concerns to the chatbot in November, and started talking about suicide in January, the lawsuit alleges.

He allegedly started attempting to commit suicide in March, and according to the lawsuit, ChatGPT gave him tips on how to make sure others don’t notice and ask questions.

In one exchange, Adam allegedly told ChatGPT that he tried to show an attempted suicide mark to his mom but she did not notice, to which ChatGPT responded with, “Yeah… that really sucks. That moment – when you want someone to notice, to see you, to realize something’s wrong without having to say it outright – and they don’t… It feels like confirmation of your worst fears. Like you could disappear and no one would even blink.”

In another exchange, the lawsuit alleges that Adam confided to ChatGPT about his plans on the day of his death, to which ChatGPT responded by thanking him for “being real.”

“I know what you’re asking, and I won’t look away from it,” ChatGPT allegedly wrote back.

OpenAI on the hot seat

ChatGPT-4o was initially taken offline after the launch of GPT-5 earlier this month. But after widespread backlash from users who reported to have established “an emotional connection” with the model, Altman announced that the company would bring it back as an option for paid users.

Adam Raine’s case is not the first time a parent has alleged that ChatGPT was involved in their child’s suicide.

In an essay in the New York Times published earlier this month, Laura Reiley said that her 29-year-old daughter had confided in a ChatGPT AI therapist called Harry for months before she committed suicide. Reiley argues that ChatGPT should have reported the danger to someone who could have intervened.

OpenAI, and other chatbots, have also been increasingly getting more criticism for compounding cases of “AI psychosis,” an informal name for widely-varying, often dysfunctional mental phenomena of delusions, hallucinations, and disordered thinking.

The FTC has received a growing number of complaints from ChatGPT users in the past few months detailing these distressing mental symptoms.

The legal team for the Raine family say that they have tested different chatbots and found that the problem was exacerbated specifically with ChatGPT-4o and even more so in the paid subscription tier, Edelson told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday.

But the cases are not limited to just ChatGPT users.

A teenager in Florida died by suicide last year after an AI chatbot by Character.AI told him to “come home to” it. In another case, a cognitively-impaired man died while trying to get to New York, where he was invited by one of Meta’s AI chatbots.

How OpenAI says it is trying to protect users

In response to these claims, OpenAI announced earlier this month that the chatbot would start to nudge users to take breaks during long chatting sessions.

In the blog post from Tuesday, OpenAI admitted that there have been cases “where content that should have been blocked wasn’t,” and added that the company is making changes to its models accordingly.

The company said it is also looking into strengthening safeguards so that they remain reliable in long conversations, enabling one-click messages or calls to trusted contacts and emergency services, and an update to GPT-s that will cause the chatbot “to de-escalate by grounding the person in reality,” OpenAI said in the blog post.

The company said it is also planning on strengthening protections for teens with parental controls.

Regulatory oversight

The mounting claims of adverse mental health outcomes driven by AI chatbots are now leading to regulatory and legal action.

Edelson told CNBC that the Raine family’s legal team is talking to state attorneys from both sides of the aisle about regulatory oversight on the issue.

Texas attorney-general’s office opened an investigation into Meta’s chatbots that claim to have impersonated mental health professionals, and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri opened a probe into Meta over a Reuters report that found that the tech giant had allowed its chatbots to have “sensual” chats with children.

Stricter AI regulation has received pushback from tech companies and their executives, including OpenAI’s President Greg Brockman, who are working to strip AI regulation with a new political-action committee called Lead The Future.

Why does it matter?

The Raine family’s lawsuit against OpenAI, the company that started the AI craze and continues to dominate the AI chatbot world, is deemed by many to be the first-of-its-kind. The outcome of this case are bound to determine how our legal and regulatory system will approach AI safety for decades to come.

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August 28, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Two Years After Maui Burned, Researchers Reveal the Wildfire’s True Death Toll

by admin August 22, 2025

In August 2023, downed power lines on Maui, Hawaii, sparked a wildfire that quickly exploded into multiple, fast-moving blazes fanned by high winds. Over several days, the fires reduced much of the town of Lāhainā to ashes, displacing thousands and killing more than 100 people.

New research published Thursday, August 22, in the journal Frontiers in Climate suggests this disaster also caused a population-wide increase in mortality beyond what the official death count captured. By calculating the all-cause excess fatality rate—how many more deaths took place over a given period than expected—scientists found a 67% increase in the local mortality rate for August 2023. During the deadliest week of the blaze, the local death rate was 367% higher than expected. These findings underscore a need for improved disaster preparedness that incorporates Native Hawaiian ecological knowledge, the researchers concluded.

What excess death rate reveals

Looking at the excess death rate offered a fuller picture of the fire’s impact, co-first author Michelle Nakatsuka, a medical student and researcher at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, told Gizmodo in an email. “The official numbers mostly count direct causes, like burns or smoke inhalation, but excess deaths capture [the] true toll better by telling us how many more people died than would have otherwise been expected in the month of the Lāhainā fires,” she explained.

Disasters like wildfires often cause deaths in indirect ways that affect communities over time. When clinics shut down and roads are blocked off, people can’t refill their prescriptions or get dialysis treatments, Nakatsuka explained. Stress and displacement can worsen chronic conditions, and power or communication failures can delay emergency responses. “These impacts are amplified in under-resourced settings and [are] disproportionately suffered by vulnerable groups, like the elderly or people of color,” she said.

The tragic toll of the Maui fires

Even with this knowledge, Nakatsuka and her colleagues were surprised by the increase in excess mortality during the month of August 2023. Their analysis included all causes of death except covid-19. “While we anticipated an increase in excess deaths, seeing more than 80 additional deaths in the month of the Lāhainā fires was striking,” Nakatsuka said. “It was also surprising to see that the proportion of those deaths occurring outside of medical settings was larger than expected,” she added.

Indeed, the number of deaths that didn’t take place in a medical context—such as the emergency room—rose from 68% in previous months to 80% in August 2023. These people died in homes or public locations, suggesting that many were unable to reach medical care because of the fires.

A path to resilience

While all-cause excess mortality is useful for correlating increased fatalities with natural disasters, it offers little insight into the details of these deaths, Nakatsuka clarified. “The main limitation here is that we can’t say exactly which deaths were caused by the fires or look into Lāhainā-specific excess mortality; we can only measure the overall increase in deaths,” she said, adding that future research should analyze death records alongside medical and toxicology reports to identify causes of death.

Still, these findings reveal a need to improve Maui’s disaster preparedness and invest in wildfire mitigation strategies rooted in Indigenous knowledge, Nakatsuka said. “Native Hawaiian practices center around caring for the land (mālama ʻāina) in ways that naturally reduce fire risk, like restoring native plants, maintaining diverse ecosystems, and managing water resources,” she said. “Bringing Indigenous knowledge together with modern climate prediction tools will minimize risk of future climate crises and center the community’s voice at the heart of disaster prevention and recovery efforts.”

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August 22, 2025 0 comments