| To: qam1
"One Cruise missle hit on the Three Gorges Dam, war over, [the United States wins]."
That might end the war straight away--you have a point there--but it would be even more controversial than the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the carpet bombing of Dresden. If it needs to be done to win the war without a huge (on the order of tens of millions) loss of life, then destroying the dam and flooding that region of China could be done. But just as with the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima, it has to be weighed against the cost of a more conventional attack. Furthermore, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets, just targets with a lot of not-so-innocent civilians. The flooding would kill a lot of people in cities not used for military purposes. Add onto that that millions of Chinese might not be killed by the destruction of the dam. Using the pictures below, the amount of the population immediately along that part of the Yangtze Rive may not be as densely populated as in other parts of the China, particularly on the eastern coast. 'Only' one million people were displaced to make room for the reservoir the dam is projected to create. Also, one of the dam's roles, along with producing electricity, is to prevent flooding in land adjacent to the Yangtze. So, unless people flock to live there after the dam is created (which could happen), the 'floodable' region caused by the sudden destruction of the dam might be sparsely populated. Shanghai is at the end of the Yangtze, but by the time the water from the flood gets there, there probably won't be that much destructive kinetic energy.
Posted on 10/10/2007 2:48:21 PM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu ( What is your take on Acts 15:20 (abstaining from blood) about eating meat? Could you freepmail? ) |
