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So this is the Mediterranean Sea, which is surrounded by 21 different countries.
But what would happen to these 21 countries and the rest of the world if we somehow
managed to drain all of the water out of it?
It's not as far-fetched of an idea as you may think it is at first
Back in the 1920s a man named Herman Sorgel had a very similar idea that helps to illustrate how this may be
possible. His idea was called the Atlantropa project.
And it's basically what engineers create whenever they've had a bit too much whiskey to drink the plan took into
consideration that the Mediterranean Sea is naturally evaporative,
which means that more water evaporates out of the sea then flows into it by rivers and streams.
The difference is made up by salt water that flows into the sea through the Strait of Gibraltar,
which means that in theory, if you could block off this water flow you could begin to drain the water out of the entire rest
of the sea. Sorrell intended to build a colossal dam here for that exact purpose
Along with another dam here between Sicily and Tunisia to divide the Mediterranean into two separate
halves and a third dam here to block off the water from the Black Sea from getting through. The plan involved lowering the water levels
by 100 meters on the western side of the Mediterranean and by 200 metres on the eastern side. This would have drained about
one-fifth of the entire
Mediterranean Sea, which means that it would have created about 576,000 square kilometers
of new land (an area roughly the size of Spain and Ireland combined)
The continents of Europe and Africa would be directly connected and this new continent was
intended to be called Atlanta. The new land around the Mediterranean was intended to be colonized by new
European settlers. The combined two dams could probably have provided enough clean
hydroelectric power for all of Europe and the project would have employed hundreds of thousands of people for the
100 years that it was planned the project would last for. So why wasn't it ever built? Well, for starters, the
Mediterranean Sea is salty which means that all that freshly exposed land would be salt flats and useless for any agriculture.
It was also
calculated by some architects that there wasn't enough concrete in the entire world to build the dam of Gilblter. Anyway let alone the other two
dams that were part of the project,
it would have also required an enormous amount of international cooperation and the 21
Mediterranean coast countries that I mentioned previously, all would have coastal cities.
That would be very upset that they were no longer on the coast. Even if it was somehow built, one well-placed
nuclear bomb on the Gibraltar dam would cause a biblical style flood that would destroy the entire project
instantly and ruin the lives of millions of people. In addition, the planners didn't take into
consideration at all how the project may have impacted weather patterns across Europe and Africa.
But let's get back to what the title of this video is all about: what if the dam at Gibraltar was actually somehow
built and we decided to drain out all of the water in the Mediterranean Sea?
What would happen next?
Well ,for starters, the entire area that once made up the sea would likely become a vast desert with the hottest
temperatures anywhere on earth enormous canyons would plunge as deep as five
thousand metres below sea level and the temperature down here could approach an
unbearable 80 degrees Celsius. For comparison, the hottest temperature ever recorded so far on the Earth's surface was
54 degrees Celsius in Kuwait. In addition, even though the water in the
Mediterranean would be gone, the salt that used to be in the water would remain on the land in thick built-up layers.
All of the newly exposed land would be a salty dry and fiercely hot desert
that would be incredibly hostile to any form of life or
settlement. It could almost be seen as an extension of the Sahara Desert in Africa.
But the desert wouldn't just end here: an
enormous amount of southern Europe and Turkey would rapidly become a desert, as well with Portugal, Spain, France, Italy,
Albania, Greece and Turkey being the most severely affected.
The entire balkan and Alpine regions would see significantly less rainfall as a result - which means that
agriculture across most of Europe would be severely damaged.
But the rest of the world would be severely impacted. Well,
because the massive amount of water located inside the Mediterranean would have to go somewhere,
it would end up being redistributed
into the world's oceans.
Which would raise sea levels everywhere else by roughly 10 meters from where they are today.
This would be catastrophic in an opposite way and lead to cities like New Orleans, Sacramento Amsterdam
Copenhagen and Shanghai going completely
underwater.
Predicting the weather is a very hard business AND predicting how exactly removing an entire body of water as large as the Mediterranean
would impact the global climate is nearly impossible!
But it certainly wouldn't be good needless to say this entire thing is probably a very bad idea.
Figuring out what would happen if we drained the Mediterranean Sea without actually doing it is complicated.
There are many different possible scenarios.
And I've made several simplifying assumptions in this video to arrive at the answer. If you've watched other videos of mine
then you know that I love figuring out all kinds of absurd
scenarios from what the economy of a reunited British Empire would look like today to how much a
supermassive black hole would weigh in units of Toyota Corollas. As much as I love explaining the absurd,
I think that everyone should be able to do that and the best way is to practice it yourself.
brilliant.org is the perfect website to do this on. It's a problem solving website that teaches you how to think like a
scientist by guiding you through problems to solidify your understanding.
They take real-life problems like these, dissect the problem into manageable bits,
analyze the implications and present an interesting
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membership. If you learn anything interesting then please let me know below in the comments! :D