Mark 4 Morrel Barrel
Banned
I was just wondering what would the effects be if the 3G dam was destroyed. Say perhaps there's a civil war in China and the dam gets destroyed. What would happen??
Oh boy, this is sort of my field of work. The worst dam breach in history so far was the Vaiont Dam collapse in Italy in which 4000 people died in the resulting flood wave. Now take into account that more than 75 million people live downstream of the Three Gorges Dam in an intensly cultivated floodplain that provides a LOT of food to China. The catastrophic failure of the three gorges project would be as bad as a 1000 year flood or worse.
In other words, thousands dead immediately followed by massive depletion of food supply.
What about the complex of dam failures in 1975 along the Huai River, also in China? At least 26,000 people drowned as a direct result of the Banqiao Dam and others exceeding their capacity limits and failing. I would guess a catastrophic, sudden Three Gorges failure would kill at least that many, if not more. You could be talking about 100,000 or more people drowning, and who knows how many dying later of secondary effects.
Yeah the civil war scenario was just an example. I was just wondering what would happen if the dam was destroyed somehow. I've been looking at dams recently. They've been a.blind spot for me, I never realized just how much damage they could do