There are two ways of getting rid of excess water in the kitchen that could apply to sea defenses.
1. Drains. Drill deep shafts and huge chambers in appropriate places in the ground to funnel away onrushing water. To prevent the chambers being filled by rainwater the shafts would be covered by lids that would only open when the volume of water reaches a certain threshold.
2. Sponges. Erect a huge sponge-filled dyke parallel to the coast, again protected from rain and runoff with waterproof coverings and base.-- oscil8, May 16 2012 Tufa... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tufa [not_morrison_rm, May 16 2012] you could always go for a Tufa-one and put the sponges in the drains. (moved onto names of rocks, for a spot of variety)-- not_morrison_rm, May 16 2012 Huge sponges affixed to the outside of seawalls might also help absorb kinetic energy from incoming tsunami.-- Alterother, May 16 2012 Not living right on the shoreline has been found to be 100% effective as a protective measure against both tsunami and hurricanes.-- 8th of 7, May 16 2012 These drains... how big? I'm assuming that a modest tsunami is enough to dump at least 10 metres of water on a band of land at least 100 metres inward of the coastline.-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 16 2012 // at least 10 metres of water on a band of land at least band of land at least 100 metres inward of the coastline //
And the rest… the tsunami from Krakatoa were 50m high and ran up to 5km inland.
Hence the merits of the "live somewhere else" approach.-- 8th of 7, May 16 2012 //Not living right on the shoreline...tsunami and hurricanes
That just leaves the earthquakes,typhoons and tornadoes and then you're right in the schist.
Got bored of trying to find the tsunami that zapped south-west England circa 10,000 years ago, there's a fault-line off south-east (?) Ireland..it's on the net somewhere..anybody know the URL?-- not_morrison_rm, May 16 2012 You forgot blizzards, landslides, avalanches, and country music, all of which can also be the cause of National Emergencies.-- Alterother, May 17 2012 There was a tsunami that flooded the Severn in the early 1600s, that killed about 2000 people.
There's also evidence that a landlocked body of water in present-day Norway/Sweden broke out in a landslide about 8-9000 years ago, cutting England off from the European mainland, in a rush of water.
Similar events associated with meltwater from the receding ice age seem to have occurred in North America and from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea, through the Dardanelles Strait.-- UnaBubba, May 17 2012 Can you imagine how deep the oceans would be if sponges had never evolved?-- UnaBubba, May 17 2012 //sponges had never evolved
So what we really need is a crash-breeding program of sponges to counter the sea level rising.-- not_morrison_rm, May 17 2012 // cutting England off from the European mainland//
Surely you mean 'cutting the European mainland off from England' ?-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 17 2012 And a jolly good thing it was, too.-- 8th of 7, May 17 2012 Yes... can you imagine what a fucking mess we'd be in if Blair and Brown had been running all of Europe for the last ten years?
Or if Thatcher had had all of Europe to herself for the 1980s?-- UnaBubba, May 18 2012 Without Thatcher, ice cream would have been a lot runnier. Really.-- Phrontistery, May 19 2012 // Or if Thatcher had had all of Europe to herself for the 1980s? / /
It's one od those sad ironies of history that Charles" Non! " De Gaulle and The Divine Margaret ("She Shall Rise Again! ") missed one another by just a couple of decades.
That would have been a discussion worth watching (from a concrete bunker some tens of kilometres away, rather like Trinity…)-- 8th of 7, May 19 2012 // It's one od those ..
so even the borg get colds..-- not_morrison_rm, May 21 2012 Just thinking... if vulnerable shorelines were populated by Netherislands-style dockable homes that could be released when the wave hits, perhaps locking to other homes, the resultant rafts might be safely carried inland until the wave loses momentum. Hence more survivors.-- Phrontistery, May 24 2012 Only among those who end up on top, as it were.-- Alterother, May 24 2012 Whatever works... I don't think I'll ever forget seeing that car sink in the Sendai whirlpool with the driver desperately looking up at the helicopter.-- Phrontistery, May 24 2012 I'm trying to imagine the scale of a system capable of absorbing or moving the top ten meters of the ocean in one location for 10 hours.
Let's look at 10 meters of coast for simplicity. You have a 10x10 meter pipeline being filled at a flow rate decided by the speed of the incoming current and water pressure. I believe the second measurement is high enough to render water movement speed almost irrelevant. If only I had payed more attention in vector fields class...-- Voice, May 24 2012 random, halfbakery