HN generates ~20k page views over the course of a day with a peak of 2k/h: https://harrisonbroadbent.com/blog/hacker-news-traffic-spike.... At ~1MB per page load - not sure how accurate this is, I don't think it fully loaded - this static blogpost requires 0.55MB/s to meet demand. An original raspberry pi B (10mpbs ethernet) on the average french mobile internet connection (8mbps) provides double that.

I don't mean this as a slight to anyone, I just want to point out the HN "hug of death" can be trivially handled by a single cheap VPS without even breaking a sweat.