Abstract This article summarizes recent advances in our knowledge of the past 1000 years of earthquakes in the Himalaya using geodetic, historical and seismological data, and identifies segments of the Himalaya that remain unruptured. The width of the Main Himalayan Thrust is quantified along the arc, together with estimates for the bounding coordinates of historical rupture zones, convergence rates, rupture propagation directions as constrained by felt intensities. The 2018 slip potential for fifteen segments of the Himalaya are evaluated and potential magnitudes assessed for future earthquakes should these segments fail in isolation or as contiguous ruptures. Ten of these fifteen segments are sufficiently mature currently to host a great earthquake (M w ≥ 8). Fatal Himalayan earthquakes have in the past occurred mostly in the daylight hours. The death toll from a future nocturnal earthquake in the Himalaya could possibly exceed 100 000 due to increased populations and the vulnerability of present-day construction methods.

Out-of-sequence thrust faulting in the Himalaya poses a great challenge to our understanding of the slip distribution on faults, in particular those that are active. The Kashmir Basin in the NW Himalaya is a classic example of out-of-sequence faulting where the geomorphic analysis of tectonic landforms was possible because of a variety of readily available satellite data, including Shuttle Radar Topography, Google Maps, Global Earth, and Global Multi-Resolution Topography. This was augmented with geologic, seismologic, geodetic, and historical earthquake and flood data. The results show the NW extension of the previously mapped SE-dipping Kashmir Basin fault, where newly mapped discontinuous fault traces are freshly broken and back-tilted, and they preserve warped fluvial surfaces in the Quaternary to Holocene succession. The morphology of the basin suggests that it is rising along an active NE-dipping thrust fault. Importantly, two traces of this fault system cut through the course of the Jhelum River, the only river that drains the Kashmir Basin, and movement on the fault has modified its path. Recent movement on the fault potentially caused damming of this river that resulted in flooding of the Kashmir valley during major earthquakes around A.D. 1505 and/or 1886. Such movement likely caused historical drainage reversals, impoundments, and SE tilting, which were previously attributed to some unknown structures under the Pir Panjal Ranges.