AHC: Close The Strait Of Gibraltar

You mean like the 'Atlantropa Project', there excruciatingly difficult (if not, nigh impossible) plan to set up a dam to harness the hydroelectric power of the Strait Of Gibraltar. IMO, I find this plan ridiculously ludicrous and very, VERY difficult to pull off, but if you want a wall across the Strait, this is a good place to start.
 
I guess for this to happen, we need someone powerful enough to build such a dam, but stupid enough to actually build it...
So, therefore, let's try something different.

POD: about 1000 AD

Al-Andalus survives, and extends its reach. It ends up as a caliphate covering OTL Morocco, Algeria, Spain, Portugal, UK, France, and the Low Countries. By 1500 virtually all of the population is Muslim, and speaks Arabic.

There's a strong Muslim/Christian divide in Europe, though both are progressing technologically at similar rates.

Most Christian Europeans fear the advance of the Muslims. United by a common religion, the Byzantine Empire turns into a theocratic Catholic state, and absorbs many of its former territories to keep the population safe.

For nostalgic reasons, its capital is moved back to Rome. Both Andalusia and the Roman Empire crack down heavily on "heretics", and the theocracies gradually strengthen.

Roman Empire ends up controlling OTL Italy, Greece, the Balkans, Germany, the Baltics, Poland, Ukraine. Scandinavia becomes a neutral-ish Viking empire.

With scientists persecuted by the state, technological development stagnates in Europe, seemingly permanently. The cultures of the empires slowly start to homogenize.

Come 2200 CE. China, and its vicinity, is divided into several rival states, starting to develop technologically. The main states are Hui, Han, Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, Japan, and the Ainu state on Hokkaido and Sakhalin.

2200 CE China ITTL is an analog to OTL 1500 CE Europe.
2200 CE Europe ITTL is an analog to OTL 1500 CE China.

America is discovered in 2186 CE by a Japanese trading ship seeking to find a naval trade route to Europe.

Japan has the strongest navy in the world, due to its unique position on the sea. Many nations colonize the Americas, but Japan is most successful.

By 2450 CE, Industrialisation is now well underway in much of East Asia.

Japan and Han, the two main empires, cover much of the globe, spreading new technology to the natives. Other states, such as Korea and Ainu, play a role.

Europe is colonized; the Roman and Andalusian empires finally fall to the conquerors by 2550 CE.

Decolonization comes eventually, but such states still remain with the governing systems of their former masters. (Mostly the Republic, a form of representative government invented in the aftermath of the 2366 Manchu Civil War)

The Republic of Andalusia is finally declared independent from Japan in 2641. The government is still corrupt, though, and heavily influenced by religion.

Using their newfound technological prowess, Andalusia begins construction of a dam across the Strait. Such a project takes up a large fraction of the country's budget, but it's seen as being necessary in order to "make more land for our crowded population".

In reality, it's just flipping the bird at Italy. Removal of the sea will cause widespread desertification in the lands of the Christian enemies to the east.

Shame they can't do anything about it. It works, too: Italy became little more than searing desert after the dam was formed. But the dam is very well defended by Andalusia.

Eventually, due to concerns of global sea level rise, Korea (controller of the OTL Suez Canal area) digs a canal to allow water to flow back into the Med.

Thus ended the "Seven Years of Hell". It is an event that never should have happened, and will hopefully never happen again.
 
Given that there are currents through the strait, simply dumping rocks or sand isn't going to work - they'd be swept away by the current once the opening was restricted much. I could have sworn I'd posted something significant, but I can't find it.

So. a couple of possibilities
1) use huge (like 1 tonne blocks) that aren't likely to get swept away by any current
2) build an ordinary sort of dam, but with Massive, massive conduits built in to allow water to flow. Some of these would eventually be used for power generation, but most would be blocked off.
3) some combination of the above

Note, that the sheer scale of the thing is horribly daunting. Someone calculated in one of the threads that a concrete dam would take 40 years of the entire world's production today. IIRC. Something like that, anyway.

This is a major, MAJOR effort that would only BEGIN to be possible with the advent of railways and/or steamships (about the only way to get that much fill to the site).

You'd pretty much need some megalomaniac power in charge of all of Europe to be able to even make a major start on the project. Like a victorious Nazi regime, or Stalin's USSR conquering all of Europe. Each of which is ... improbable, shall we say.



See also the list I provided at https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=8227362&postcount=6
 
Just as a comparison...

what's the biggest, deepest, fastest-flowing sea that has been dammed?

I am only aware of oodles of dams-into-sea (i.e. not actually blocking flow, just rerouting it) and a couple of rivers actually dammed. The Dutch afsluitdijk comes closest, at 32 km long (more than Gibraltar) but only roughly 7 metres deep and with water formerly flowing at a few hundred m^3/s at minimum.
 
It's a good thing I guess someone has taken this proposal seriously enough to engage with it; my impulse was to sarcastically ask if the author would like us to lay waste to several other vital regions of the world while we are at it.

The OP gives no hint whatsoever of why anyone would do such a ruinous thing. I figured from the title alone it meant "close" it in the naval sense; reading the excerpt of the OP mousing over gives made me sarcastc-mad.

I have to take my hat off to other AH people who took the challenge in good spirit and came up with some scenarios. I don't think they'd think I was attacking them to point out the scenarios (including the OTL Nazi one:rolleyes:) are pretty insane.

The Med is worth far more as a body of water more or less irrigating its shores, and most of all as a conduit of trade, for any net gain to result from trying to drain it!

And kudos to fluttersky, but it would take more than a mere seven years to dry out the Med. It certainly is true it does depend mainly on flow in from the Atlantic and would dry out eventually, and indeed has done so I believe more than once in the past ten million years or so. But the timescale would be more like several thousand years than seven!

I'd far sooner read an ATL where the Gibraltar barrier never did fall and humanity spread around a great Death Valley where it is, as was known to exist in recent geological history, than one where some humans were damn fool enough to try to create it deliberately, and so innumerate they didn't realize how many dozens of generations it would ever be before their folly was accomplished.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
The most neat thing (it would be neat) about a dry or less-wet Mediterranean would be the higher air density down there.
We don't really have many places in the world where the air is denser than sea level - but down there it'd be almost half again, I believe. That would mean that much larger animals could fly there, and that aircraft could take off more easily.
Of course, it's still a disastrous thing to happen in any time where civilization exists in the Med region. But... you know. Not entirely terrible to have happened before then.
 
I'd far sooner read an ATL where the Gibraltar barrier never did fall and humanity spread around a great Death Valley where it is, as was known to exist in recent geological history, than one where some humans were damn fool enough to try to create it deliberately, and so innumerate they didn't realize how many dozens of generations it would ever be before their folly was accomplished.

There's an actual short story by Harry Turtlepigeon, "Down in the Bottomlands", with that premise. Contains Neanderthals. http://turtledove.wikia.com/wiki/Down_in_the_Bottomlands
 
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