The Three Gorges Dam: The Most Important Strategic Target in the World

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China America Taiwan in all the modern world there is no crisis zone no flasho and no geopolitical Hot Zone where the potential for Global cataclysm runs quite so high mainland China lays claim to the Republic of China’s territory on Taiwan and has made clear its desire to bring Taiwan back by force Taiwan

Sitting out on an island and armed to the teeth has made it clear it would resist and as soon as hostilities begin the United States will be right there to take part if any such war broke out it would immediately place two militarily powerful nations with immense nuclear

Stalk bars directly at odds threatening the sort of escalation that could end Life as we know it but China has an Achilles heel the sort of critical vulnerability that if it could credibly be threatened might be enough to put China’s Taiwan aspirations to bed it’s known as the Three Gorges Dam an

Incredibly powerful hydroelectric gravity Dam that has spent nearly a decade as the most electrically productive power station in the world but it’s not just a dam it’s also a time bomb with over 39 cubic kmers of water held back behind it and hundreds of millions of people living Downstream

Destroy it and China would experience a wartime disaster that would make the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like Child’s Play So in this special episode of War Graphics we’re going to be exploring the nature of the Three Gorges D what it is how it’s defended what could happen if it

Were destroyed and what if anything China could do to protect it situated deep in the Chinese Heartland the Three Gorges Dam is one of the most impressive engineering Feats of China’s entire history right alongside the great wall or the modern tiangong space station constructed in several phases

Over the course of decades the dam has been complete since 2006 and has been producing electricity at Peak capacity since 2012 it sits alongside the yangi river the longest river in China and third longest in the world behind only the Nile and the Amazon it is instrumental in preventing floods down

River during the rainy months of the year it’s built to allow oceangoing freers to pass through a series of locks to continue Inland and it Powers Millions upon millions of homes and businesses all across China in order to understand just how strategically significant the Three Gorges Dam really

Is we first got to understand it’s absolutely mind numbing size it’s over 2,335 M long or well over a mile at 7,660 FT its maximum height is 185 M 607 ft and its total volume includes 28 million cubic meters of concrete alongside 463,000 metric tons of steel its deep water reservoir stretches far

Back up River including in the Three Gorges a series of Gorges along the river for which the dam got its name its Spillway has the ability to handle up to 116,000 cubic meters of water per second and its total catchment area spans 1 million square kilm across China this

Thing is not just big it is Big Beyond Comprehension and it’s got major real and symbolic value to the Chinese government just before we continue with today’s video I do want to talk about something a bit personal and that is hair loss now as you can see I’ve had to

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Starts there there’s a link below thanks to keep for sponsoring and now back to today’s video but as much as those facts and figures are genuinely very impressive and if you’d like to learn more you can check out our video on the three gorgees Dam on our sister Channel

Mega projects all those cool trivia items do double duty as a major national security concern the logic here is not very hard to follow but we’ll spell it out anyway the Three Gorges Dam holds back an un believable amount of water which otherwise would be traveling down

The rest of the yangi river if that Dam were to suddenly stop being a dam either due to an attack or another catastrophe then the dozens of cubic kilometers of water in the Dam’s Reservoir will Rush Downstream in a high enough volume that anything and anyone in their immediate

Path is just going to be totally wiped out to get an idea for just how catastrophic the destruction of the Three Gorges Dam would be we’re going to start by ask asking a simple question who lives Downstream of the Three Gorges Dam on the yangi river that would

Include cities like yuch Chang Urban population 1.6 million Jingo Urban population 1 million Wuhan 12.3 million hangi 700,000 and a whole lot more and that’s just in the province where the Three Gorges Dam is located further down river you’ll find major cities like nanging Urban population 9.3 million ju

Jang Urban population 2.8 or Chango Urban population 3.6 6 million all in all up to 400 million people live Downstream of the dam meaning that if the dam were to break a group of people larger than all but two Global nations would be at imminent risk of death these risks

Aren’t a new revelation to the people Downstream either take for example the extreme flooding in the upper Yang Z that happened in the year 2020 in that crisis heavy rainfall Upstream caused a peak inflow of up to 75 million lers of water per second into the Three Gorges

Reservoir that AC has prompted officials in China’s sesan Province to evacuate over a quarter of a million people while the dam itself was made to discharge 49.2 million lers of water every second an unbelievable rate of outflow that eclipsed anything else the dam had been expected to handle in the years since it

Opened during the crisis the Chinese government projected Cal around the situation emphasizing that reservoirs Upstream would help the dam resist the flood but nonetheless the peak water level at the Three Gorges came within 10 m or less from resting over the top that’s 20 M past what’s considered

Warning level the 2020 flooding wasn’t a one-off issue either the yangi River Basin was long known for apocalyptic levels of flooding prior to the dam being built including a flood in 1931 that killed about 3.7 million people and displaced 40 million more but all of

This is just to give an idea of what natural catastrophes could do in the yangi River Basin destruction on that scale while it would certainly have the potential to be devastating still can’t remotely compare to what a complete release of the Three Gorges Reservoir would mean a cubic KET of water is a

Quantity that we can’t really do justice other than suggesting that you picture the nearest major city and imagine a cube of water a kilometer wide a kilometer long and a kilometer tall just sitting in the center of it what we can at least hope to convey is that this

Would be the sort of flood where nothing can even hope to stand in the way against that sort of force entire neighborhood hoods of high-rise buildings would be uprooted bridges and dams Downstream would be wiped away and an unbelievable amount of debris would quickly saturate the Rushing Water

Meaning that anybody else in its path isn’t just dealing with a wall of water that’s higher than the city’s tallest tower it’s a wall of water filled with shrapnel the size of houses plus a whole lot of toxic chemicals flowing at speeds of up to 100 km an hour in cities near

The dam there would likely be little chance of survival at all in cities located further away only the lucky would get out alive as even with hours of time to try and Escape panic and even social breakdown could play a major role in preventing people from getting out of

The water’s path adding insult or injury or really just adding more injury to an already Inc comprehensible level of injury the dam sits on two major fa lines where it’s believed to have caused thousands of small earthquakes and if the reservoirs over 40 billion tons of water was suddenly drained from that

Area major Quakes could rip through the area as well with such an unbelievable potential for destru ction it should be no surprise that the Three Gorges Dam should not just be a prime target but the prime target for any country that expects it might find itself at war with

China at the top of this short list of course is Taiwan but South Korea Japan the Philippines Vietnam India and the United States all have their own tensions with China and a popular sentiment in several of those countries is that they will one day end up at war

With China as China’s Global Ambitions continue to grow now we’ll get more into the specifics of just how an attack might work and how feasible it would be in just a moment but before we do any of that we’ve got to emphasize just how many nations have reason to draw up

Contingency plans for war with China while those nations are not particularly inclined to talk about any plans to strike the Three Gorges Dam or their capability to do so it’s the sort of Target that’s just impossible to miss and while you might be thinking to yourself come on fact boy everybody’s

Got dams it’s not that simple well yes everybody does have dams well yes dams have been major military Targets in the past recently of June of 2023 when Ukraine’s kovka dam was breached and the resulting flood killed at least several dozen people well China is a bit of a

Special circumstance take for example the Hoover Dam in the United States it’s over 700 ft tall 1200t long and its Reservoir Lake me has a total capacity nearly as big as the Three Gorges Reservoir at 35 cubic kilm although we should acknowledge that the water level

At Lake me is nowhere near that high right now but if the huam were to be destroyed there would be no Wuhan sized city in the water’s path instead the casualties would likely include places like llin Nevada population 8,658 neor California population 493 and Lake Havasu City population 57,000 a

Catastrophic break of the huam would so Devastation through those communities but even without evacuations the death hole would be a tiny fraction of what China would experience Downstream from the Three Gorges and not only that but the us would have the benefit of Evac uating those not particularly large

Townships with hours of advanced warning in China millions of people who live near to the dam would likely only have minutes to escape the flood waters while we could certainly identify dams around the world where a collapse and a catastrophic flood would kill horrific numbers of people the sheer scale of

Devastation that would occur after a three gorgeous collapse is a uniquely Chinese problem so with the Strategic value and the devastating potential of the Three Gorges Dam now firmly established we’ve got to move to a second question could a nation hostile to China actually destroy

The dam if they wanted to I’m we going to break that answer down into three sections the weapons other nations could use to destroy the dam the passive factors that make it more or less likely that the dam would be destroyed and the defense measures China has or might have

In place to revent such an attack from being successful first there’s the offensive Weaponry that the dam might eventually have to do deal with and to account for that we’re going to begin with Taiwan conventional missiles have long been an essential component of taiwan’s ability to deter China from

Attacking it using what’s called a porcupine strategy of Defense now we’ve done a separate video on taiwan’s porcupine defense in the past so check that out if you’re interested but basically the theory goes that Taiwan would like to make itself as unpalatable for Invasion as possible by ensuring

That if China attacks Taiwan China will have to deal with massive retaliation and massive casualties as punishment even if Taiwan still loses in the end in that strategic sense the three gorgees dam is perhaps the best thing for Taiwan to attempt to Target in exchange for invading an island and conquering less

Than 24 million people China gets to absorb incredible casualties at a number potentially greater than taiwan’s entire population if Taiwan did want to launch that sort of attack they’d have to do it with one of the missiles in their Arsenal while that Arsenal may not entirely be a matter of public record we

Do know that they’ve got some serious kit on hands and specifically a land attack cruise missile that’s currently in operation called the Young Fang although the size of taiwan’s total young Fang Arsenal is unknown Taiwan is believed to have at least a few dozen of the missiles if not more they utilize

Ramjet engines enabling travel at speeds of over a kilometer per second and they can carry semi- armor piercing explosive Warheads the standard range of a young Fang missile is 1200 km almost exactly the distance from the Taiwanese capital of taipe to the Three Gorges Dam although there is an extended range

Version currently in development that’s capable of traveling up to 2,000 km Taiwan also has well over 100 American made f-16s and nearly 200 older model American F5 and French Mirage 2000 Jets all of which could conceivably fill an attack role and all of which could conceivably make it all the way to the

Three Gorges Dam from Taiwan even if they don’t expect to make it home then there’s China’s other most likely adversary the United States where lands attack missiles are concerned the big one for China to worry about is the to H Hawk which can be launched from ships submarines or land traveler range of

Between 1,250 and 2500 km and be launched in the dozens for even minor attacks let alone The Hundreds the US would likely be willing to expend in a major war just for perspective the arly Burke class destroyer can carry over 90 tomahawk missiles on board also in the American Arsenal are new Hypersonic

Missiles like the longrange Hypersonic weapon expected to already be in Army service and soon coming to the Navy and other high-powered Conventional Weapons of course there’s also all the nuclear warheads the us could deploy against China but for the purposes of averting a global nuclear Holocaust we’re going to

Assume that today’s hypotheticals won’t involve the use of nuclear weapons and then of course there’s the United States Air Force strategic bombers like the B2 Spirit the b1b Lancer and the B-52 strata Fortress are each more than capable of Performing overflights of the entire Chinese Mainland taking off from

One US base and landing at another Halfway Around the World while they fly over they’ll be capable of dropping not just nuclear warheads but Conventional Weapons like the bunk bust massive ordinance penetrator or mop which is designed to be able to destroy wmds buried undergrounds in reinforced

Bunkers they’d also be able to call upon the C130 Hercules a longrange strategic airlifter that could also perform overflights of the Chinese mainlands we dropping the so-called mother of all bombs a nearly 10,000 kg bomb with a blast yield equivalent to 11 tons of TNT those American strategic bombers will be

Joined in a few years by the B21 Raider and they’ll be protected by Legions of fifth generation F35 Fighters sipping on refills from from strategic tanker aircraft that would make them more than capable of staying with their bombers for the entirety of a massive bombing

Run now we could go on of course or talk about the additional Firepower that Japan and South Korea could bring to bear but we trust that by now you’re beginning to get the idea if Taiwan and the US were hypothetically speaking unopposed they could bomb the living out

Of the Three Gorges down with enough conventional or to turn the world’s biggest cities into wastelands but it should be equally obvious that in an actual armed conflict it won’t be that simple so how could China hope to prevent the Dam’s destruction and stop the floods that would follow even before

We consider any active defense measures China might have in place there are things about the Three Gorges Dam that help make it impervious to attack in particular it’s what’s known as a gravity Dam that is to say a dam that resists the outward pressure of water

Simply with its own weight we’ll go back to the dam for a contrast if that Dam were say taken out with an explosion at the base all the concrete above the base would fall downward way below the water level of Lake me and the collapsed structure wouldn’t be able to hold back

Hardly anything the Three Gorges Dam though is a much larger monolith made of reinforced concrete that’s just sitting in a big man-made Mountain it’s also 30 m taller than the typical water level in its Reservoir meaning that even if some of the top parts of the dam were to be

Blasted away there would still be plenty of structure left over above the surface of the water obvious viously flood conditions on the yanki would change this balance significantly but that’s almost certainly something that Chinese military planners would be aware of making it highly unlikely that China

Would choose to begin a war if the reservoir levels were so high that a few well-placed bombs could bring the whole Dam down what this means is that any missile or Air Attack on the dam would have to use specific types of ordinance that don’t just damage its outer face

But cause blasts that would rupture the wall of the dam itself either by using a really huge explosive or by using ones that can borrow into the ground or in this case into reinforced concrete before exploding that’s ordinance that the United States has but Taiwan doesn’t

People both in and out of Taiwan with an incentive to make China nervous about the Three Gorges Dam will dispute that claim but there’s little indicated that anything in taiwan’s Arsenal would be able to create a catastrophic rupture and then there’s the question of China’s active defenses which considering that

We’re talking about an attack deep within China’s own Heartland would certainly be tough to overcome not only is the three gorgeous am insulated by a range of military bases on China’s own territory but any manned Air Attack for example the Strategic bombing runs we mentioned before would have to deal with

The people’s Liberation Army Air Force at its disposal the plaf has over a thousand fourth generation Fighters including the su27 the s30 the J10 and j11 the S35 and the j16 as well as a couple of hundred fifth generation changdu j20 Fighters they’ve also got well over 600 long range surface to a

Missile systems and hundreds more medium and short range including dozens of the wared russian-made S400 system all of these defenses and more would also apply to missile defense making the sky over China One of the most utterly impenetrable noly zones in the entire World the balance of power over China’s Skies could as we’ve explained be disrupted during a major war a massive flyover of the Chinese Mainland by American Air power and its Global Partners would at the very least cause major problems for China around the three Gorge is Dam and the right

Ordinance launched at the right Targets in the right way and at the right frequency could conceivably bring it down that’s a difficult needle to thread and even more difficult if such a strike had to be carried out by Taiwan alone with its missiles or by surprise at the

Outset of a new conflict now we has a guess that some of our more skeptical viewers are thinking to themselves something along the lines of what about all the fancy weapons that the world doesn’t know about but while that’s a valid question it misses the point of an

Attack on the three GD D and moreover the point of taiwan’s entire defensive strategy specifically China cannot get scared off from attacking Taiwan if China doesn’t know about the secret weapons that would be used in retaliation what we’re talking about here is strategic deterrence the practice of dissuading a potentially

Hostile Nation from launching an attack because of the potential costs to themselves but strategic deterrence just doesn’t work unless a nation that wants to defend itself makes sure that its potential enemy has zero Illusions about what they could do to them that’s why most nuclear armed ations have no issue

Disclosing the world ending numbers of nuclear weapons that they have in their Arsenal and it’s why major strategic military advancements like next Generation fighter jets or naval ships get announced to the world instead of being kept secret until they’re deployed into battle so the risk of a destroyed

Three gorg’s dam is certainly a deterrent to China but a brief look at taiwan’s known Arsenal will quickly establish that Taiwan is not the nation to pose that specific deterrent threat instead the deterrent value is to prevent China from willfully entering into a global conflict probably involving the US in which nations that

Consider Taiwan an ally would be willing to use their own deadlier weapons against the Three Gorges Dam of course it’s tough to imagine a world in which China takes over Taiwan and the US doesn’t have anything to say about it but the distinction does matter taiwan’s own porcupine Doctrine would suggest

That if they did have anything in their Arsenal that could bring down the dam they’d be tripping over themselves to tell the world and thus tell China but that hasn’t happened the Three Gorges Dam may be the world’s biggest strategic Target but it’s not a Target Taiwan is

Likely to bring down and we would be remiss to conclude this video without at least some discussion of how for a highly globalized economy the destruction of the Three Gorges Dam would be a double-edged sword not only that but it’s a decision that could come

Back to bite Taiwan the US and the rest of the world in a pretty major way on the one hand there’s the argument of human cost the Dam’s destruction would immediately make the nation that destroyed it culpable for human Devastation on the scale of the black plague or the entirety of the second

World war that’s the biggest single intentional Act of human destruction ever by an order of magnitude but if that’s not enough we’ve also got to emphasize the degree to which a flood of that size would global trade straight up erase a large portion of the world’s food supply and destroy a part

Of the world that is vital for Global Finance manufacturing and scientific innovation all that gone in the span of a few hours thus creating Global catastrophes that would take years if not decades to solve extending that logic outward for just a moment it’s not inconceivable to make the argument that

The destruction of the Three Gorges Dam is a hypothetical deterrent in two directions at once if China fears that Taiwan all the United States could destroy the dam as retaliation if a war breaks out then China is incentivized to do what it can to prevent that war from

Breaking out in the first place or otherwise drawing down hostilities if War does start instead of escalating upward but if Taiwan Us and other potential participants understand that war would likely mean the Dam’s destruction then they too are disincentivized from starting that war in the first place because of the Havoc

That the Dam’s destruction would recool across the world finally we’ve got to extend our conjecture to the idea that if the dam really was destroyed this would likely be taken by China as an act equal to if not greater than the use of a nuclear weapon meaning that from

China’s perspective the use of nuclear weapons might be seen as an appropriate retaliatory measure that means we’ve gotten to the nuclear apocalypse part of this escalation anyway meaning that the US and China might as well have skipped the whole damn issue and gone right to the conclusion so that’s the note of

Hope if you can call it hope that we’ll conclude on today the Three Gorges Dam is without a doubt the biggest strategic Target in the world and just as its defense is absolutely imperative for China its destruction is likely to be the highest priority for Any Nation who finds itself as China’s wartime

Adversary but with the target of this sheer a size that’s so close to indestructible the magnitude of Devastation that would result if it were destroyed is enough that the mere thought of the damn breaking would make anybody super peace it’s a cycle we’ve seen play out between the Americans and

The Soviets during the Cold War any direct conflict leads the potential use of nuclear weapons and the use of nuclear weapons would be so catastrophic that it would be practically Unthinkable to start a conflict now in a face off between mainland China Taiwan and its Global allies where nuclear weapons

Already feature on both sides the Three Gorges Dam is a second form of mutually assured destruction bring it down and everybody loses in what would be the worst man-made catastrophe in human history Master politics fee sometimes the solemn promise of mutually assured destruction is all we’ve got but then

Again it’s also kind of work so far so let’s hope it keeps on working shall we