Atlantropa

AMX · Post by **AMX** » 2005-12-01 02:31pm

So I saw a docu on this a few weeks back, and thought it would be interesting what our local experts think of the idea.

You probably know the basic idea: Dam up the strait of Gibraltar.
This not only allows you to produce a metric shitload of electricity (Sörgel calculated a maximum of 80000MW), but also offers a direct link between Europe and Africa (just put a road on top of the dam), and lowers the level of the Mediterranean, creating new land; plus, the sheer scope of the project would require a common effort by all European nations, something the "great thinkers" of the early 30ies felt was a good idea.

The ultimate version of the project included the Gibraltar dam; a second dam from Italy to Tunis via Sicily; and a Dardanelles dam (obviously necessary to keep the Black Sea intact); the western Mediterranean was to be lowered by 100m, the eastern by 200m.
The building materials should be procured be eliminating a mountain range or two (including any twons that might have happened to be built upon them).
Ancillary projects included a circular dam around Venice (we can't have Venice without water, right?), and damming up several African rivers to create an inland sea, in order to "improve the climate and make Africa useful" (sounds neo-colonialist, which is exactly what it was).

So now I'm asking anyone who feels qualified to answer...
- on a scale of 1 (reasonable) to 10 (crackpot), how insane is the idea?
- what "risks and side-effects" would we be suffering had the project been realized? (feel free to speculate, but please mark the pieces you're not sure about)

Deathstalker · Post by **Deathstalker** » 2005-12-01 03:25pm

I'm not sure of the ecological ramifications, but I remember seeing a Star Trek book that had maps of Federation worlds, and it showed Earth with a dam across the straits and IIRC, took the Med all the way down to the seafloor.

The big problem I see is that it cuts off shipping into the Med, Black Sea and Red Sea. You'd have to all the way around Africa to get to the Mid east.

AMX · Post by **AMX** » 2005-12-01 03:31pm

Deathstalker wrote:The big problem I see is that it cuts off shipping into the Med, Black Sea and Red Sea. You'd have to all the way around Africa to get to the Mid east.

Not if you build the dams with locks (which were, in fact, planned).

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2005-12-02 08:03am

1) What would the estimated cost be?
2) Who would foot said bill?
3) The ecological effects could be disastrous...or they might not.
4) If they ever do start building something like that, I soooo want to work on it.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2005-12-02 08:22am

I'm not an expert on oceanography, but wouldn't a plan like this royally fuck up the global sealevels, currents, and by extension, weather patterns ? Is it even possible to build a dam that can hold back an entire *ocean* ? What about the poor resort owners on the Riviera who'll find themselves landlocked ?

nickolay1 · Post by **nickolay1** » 2005-12-02 10:15am

If possible, instead of building a complete dam why not simply construct a power plant to extract energy from the current flow without changing the water level in the Mediterranean? The consequences of failure of a real dam would be disasterous.

AMX · Post by **AMX** » 2005-12-02 12:07pm

OK, so I went and re-watched the thing to get some hard numbers for you guys...

The Gibraltar dam:
35km long
base 2.5km thick
>300m high
build time: 10 years
power output: 50 000 MW
about 1 000 000 workers
Procurement of materials would have destroyed Tarifa, because the mountain would have been removed under the city

The entire project (without the African inland sea):
200 000 Mio US$ (~1947 or so, possibly a bit earlier)
110 000 MW
time for completion: 150 years
500 000 km² new land

No idea where the "80 000 MW" figure was from; possibly from another draft, considering the project was under development for more than 20 years; note also that the docu talked about a variant that would have dropped the entire mediterranean by 200m, and put a bridge from Sizily to Tunis, there being no need for a second dam at this location.

Molyneux wrote:1) What would the estimated cost be?

About 200 Billion wartime dollars (see above)

2) Who would foot said bill?

In a nutshell?
Taxpayers.
More exactly?
Depending on the time the project would have been initiated:
-) Mediterranean countries and the League of Nations
-) European countries
-) The US, UN, and a few European countries

3) The ecological effects could be disastrous...or they might not.

That's kinda what I'm asking here...

4) If they ever do start building something like that, I soooo want to work on it.

Currently, chances of that happening are pretty close to zero... as one expert said "maybe in 500 or 1000 years, when we understand the effects and have the technology to prevent them".

Bounty wrote:I'm not an expert on oceanography, but wouldn't a plan like this royally fuck up the global sealevels, currents, and by extension, weather patterns ?

Well, the flow wouldn't actually stop (there's got to be something powering the turbines after all), but on a whole, yes.
The project would have rather strong side-effects.

Is it even possible to build a dam that can hold back an entire *ocean* ?

Yes.
It'd be several *kilometres* thick at the base, but it's possible.

What about the poor resort owners on the Riviera who'll find themselves landlocked ?

Uh... collateral damage?
Seriously, though, a damn lot of people would have to relocate if they want to keep their jobs.
Not to mention entire cities.

nickolay1 wrote:If possible, instead of building a complete dam why not simply construct a power plant to extract energy from the current flow without changing the water level in the Mediterranean?

Because that wouldn't produce 500 000 km² of additional land?

The consequences of failure of a real dam would be disasterous.

Indeed, and the Nazis made this a primary point in their anti-Atlantropa propaganda.
Didn't stop Sörgel, though.

CmdrWilkens · Post by **CmdrWilkens** » 2005-12-02 12:10pm

I continue to think it edges towards crackpot in as much as I can't see them diverting flow enough to get building materials in place unless the idea was simply to create a gigantic earthen damn from those destroyed mountain ranges at which point the idea of the first multi-trillion dollar construction project comes to mind. All this plus the political nightmare to get everyone to agree to it AND the potential ecological nightmare which would raise all sorts of hackles around the world makes this pretty high on the crackpot scale.

AMX · Post by **AMX** » 2005-12-02 12:23pm

CmdrWilkens wrote:...unless the idea was simply to create a gigantic earthen dam from those destroyed mountain ranges...

That's pretty much how I understand the plan, yes.

...at which point the idea of the first multi-trillion dollar construction project comes to mind.

Also true.
The Inflation Calculator tells me that 200 Billion in 1945 are slightly more than 2 Trillion in 2005. (US terminology)
And that's an estimate, so we'd probably see some nice overruns.

All this plus the political nightmare to get everyone to agree to it AND the potential ecological nightmare which would raise all sorts of hackles around the world makes this pretty high on the crackpot scale.

How high is "pretty high" on the 1-to-10 scale?
7?
9?
12?

Akhlut · Post by **Akhlut** » 2005-12-02 01:12pm

What's this 500,000 km^2 land going to do for us? It's going to be useless agriculturally (it's going to be salty, salty, salty), it's going to quite possibly ruin fishing in the Mediterranian, it's likely going to fuck up weather throughout the region, in addition to probably being an ecological disaster.

It's about an 8 on the scale, I think.

Quadlok · Post by **Quadlok** » 2005-12-02 01:33pm

It would be a complete ecological and economic disaster. You'd destroy fisheries in the Med, the Black Sea, and probably every river running into them and render every single port on them useless.

Also, 50k Megawatts seems awful low. The Grand Coulee Dam can generate over 8k at max outflow, and its on the upper Columbia River, not the mouth of the largest non-oceanic body of water in the world.

AMX · Post by **AMX** » 2005-12-02 02:16pm

Quadlok wrote:It would be a complete ecological and economic disaster. You'd destroy fisheries in the Med, the Black Sea, and probably every river running into them and render every single port on them useless.

So you say it's a 10?

Also, 50k Megawatts seems awful low. The Grand Coulee Dam can generate over 8k at max outflow, and its on the upper Columbia River, not the mouth of the largest non-oceanic body of water in the world.

6.5, if Google doesn't deceive me.
Now, the GCD is about 1.6km long, and has a hydraulic height of about 115m.
The Gibraltar dam would be 35 km long, with a hydraulic height of approximately 100m - that's close enough, IMO.
And the amount of water behind the dam doesn't affect peak output very much; it mostly determines how long you can keep operating at maximum.
*calculates*
Assuming I didn't make any stupid errors, the Gibraltar dam lags behind in power per dam lenght by a factor of 3 (approximately).
*thinks*
I guess the Gibraltar dam's power output is limited by the maximum amount of water they can allow through - remember, they are trying to lower the sea level on the "downstream" side throughout the first 140 years of operation.

TimothyC · Post by **TimothyC** » 2005-12-03 08:45pm

Deathstalker wrote:I'm not sure of the ecological ramifications, but I remember seeing a Star Trek book that had maps of Federation worlds, and it showed Earth with a dam across the straits and IIRC, took the Med all the way down to the seafloor.

The Dam was mentioned in the TMP Novelization, and is marginally supported by dialoge in DS9's "Home Front". The TMP Novelization however is for the most part out of sync with later canon.