Three Gorges

About last week I started hearing about the floods in southwest China and Tibet. The Three Gorges Dam is no longer doing flood-control; all efforts are on draining the place downstream. Like Hurricane Harvey.

If a dam's water level gets too high, the force of the water shifts upward. Unless the dam is designed by Abdel-Nasser of Egypt, dams tend to the vertical and are thin on the horizontal. High water can tip the dam over, at least parts of it. Then a wall of water rushes downstream and tsunamis all the people there.

It gets worse. Nuclear power plants need water and are usually placed near-ish the people they serve, who also like water. China being China, there are many many nuclear power plants downstream.

Even before all those plants were erected, Chinese engineers were complaining that this dam was good only for 100 year floods and hadn't considered the (high) probability for a 200 year flood along the way. Bayes Theorem, yo! (See also: northwestern Boulder County, September 2013.)

Last night I saw official Chinese news claiming nahh it'll be fiine it's under control. The party itself is now singing a different tune. The dam is displaced and deformed.

Even if this thing holds, and I give it about 40% at this point, the dam has already failed for purpose as all the floods coming in keep coming through. I think lower Shanghai, for instance, is already underwater. If the people aren't dead, look to New Orleans Katrina: homeless Chinese in Wuhan ... yes, that Wuhan. Whatever CoVID strategies were in place to keep social-interactions controlled, that's already done wit'. This virus is coming back.

Expect that war on India to be called off, for a start. Plus: if China could beat the US Navy (UPDATE 7/20 - big if), how would they follow up on it? If the dam fails, I don't even know if Xi survives or his Party, which suggests more warring-states and a retreat from that non-Chinese west they're holding.