Submitted by jfd0037 t3_10ra4yx in Futurology
Iron_Baron t1_j70khpw wrote
Reply to comment by JeremiahBoogle in Would you live in a "Floating City"? by jfd0037
Thanks for starting off with an insult, when it's your reading comprehension and subject knowledge that's at issue. I'll elaborate for you:
The future will undoubtedly continue toward increasing scarcity of resources among the majority of the world's population. The uber rich will hoard wealth and power, as automation drives down wage growth and job opportunities for large swathes of humanity, even in the developed world.
Zero nations have a game plan for what to do with their economy, as AI and robotics take every job from surgery to coding and repairing themselves. This will lead to increased civil and economic unrest, necessitating increased authoritarianism, as those in power decline to relinquish it, without being forced.
Simultaneously, climate change and technological advancements will increase conflict over finite sources of potable water, arable land, dwelling space within human temperature limits, rare earth metals, etc. The collapse of the oceanic food web due to rising temperature, acidification, and disruption of gyre currents like the Gulf Stream due to lowered ocean salinity, will destroy a significant portion of humanity's sustenance.
All of these effects will lead to increased exploitation of workers, especially minorities and immigrants, as societies become more insular in the face of dwindling access to habitable space, wealth, water, education, etc. This means an increase in terrorism, wars, corporate espionage, ethnic conflicts, revolutions, etc. Now couple everything I've just said with the typical issues of corruption in municipal development, engineering mistakes, human hubris (such as building "The Line" or "The World" archipelago), etc.
That paints a very unsafe picture for human existence. Placing humans in floating cities, which could be shore anchored or deep sea, invites all of the above calamities to impact that city, to an extent much greater than land bound or especially land locked cities. Floating cities are likely to be good candidates for bases of petroleum extraction, desalination, and aquaponic food production. That paints a giant target on that city when it comes to human conflict.
The hypothetical possibility of destroying a floating city utterly is far greater than for a traditional land based city. Making floating cities then prime targets for terrorism and first strikes by nuclear or conventional forces, not to mention pirates and insurgents. Additionally floating cities would be far easier for attacking forces to reach (you can't drive a boat to attack Denver).
Coastal cities have always been more vulnerable to attack for all of recorded history. This flaw would expand with floating cities, as they could be attacked from literally 720 degrees. Depending on the location of the city, it would be as vulnerable (likely more so) to damage from natural disasters, like the ones I mentioned in previous comment, as traditional coastal cities. A near shore city is highly vulnerable to typhoons (or hurricanes) which cover the majority of the world's oceans, in the prime human habitable latitudes. Even deep sea cities would be at risk from super storms, that will become increasingly common.
They are also more vulnerable to tsunami, as they couldn't be anchored in bedrock to the same extent a traditional city could. They would fare even worse than the cities we've built on dredged "reclaimed" shorelines. Likewise they are vulnerable to rogue waves, should they be open water or shore impacting. You need to learn more about rogue waves if you think they only occur on open ocean. One sank the Edmund Fitzgerald on a Great Lake, for example, and rogue waves can absolutely hit shorelines.
All of the climate and human based calamities I listed will be exacerbated by the factors I mentioned. On top of that, add the terrible job maintaining municipal infrastructure we already do as a species, which would be even worse when moved to a maritime environment. Now, maybe you understand why I said I would not live on a floating city. Or, perhaps you'd like to insult me again. Luckily, I do not care, either way, and am done with this conversation. Good bye.
JeremiahBoogle t1_j70srny wrote
>They are also more vulnerable to tsunami, as they couldn't be anchored in bedrock to the same extent a traditional city could. They would fare even worse than the cities we've built on dredged "reclaimed" shorelines. Likewise they are vulnerable to rogue waves, should they be open water or shore impacting. You need to learn more about rogue waves if you think they only occur on open ocean. One sank the Edmund Fitzgerald on a Great Lake, for example, and rogue waves can absolutely hit shorelines.
I can promise you that after spending a good majority of my career working at Sea & most my life around boats, I can probably speak with greater authority on rogue waves or waves in general more than yourself.
The danger that rogue waves pose to ships is in general is the risk of a capsize or in truly bad cases, a pitch pole.
A rule of thumb being that any breaking wave higher than the beam of the vessel is enough to risk a capsize.
In reality for something like a floating city that will be extremely large, even compared to todays ships, the risk of capsize will be non existent.
These cities would be so large in relation to the waves that they would pose no risk of that kind, actually I would say the greatest risk would be to fatigue of such a large structure due to the constant bending and torsional forces over a long time. But I'm not designing it, and presumably they would build it somewhere sheltered.
Lake superior does not count as sheltered by the way, its classed as a 'lake' because its landlocked, but due to its size it might as well be a sea.
Again, tsunamis. A tsunami is dangerous when it hits the shore, go and look at videos & you can see various vessels at anchorage just off the coast being barely impacted by them, at sea they are not even noticeable, its only when the reach land that the wave builds to a dangerous height & breaks.
And I actually agreed with you that a floating city is a bad idea compared to living on land, harder to maintain, scant available resources, hard to build. They are a science fiction idea & even if built will still be reliant on land support.
I just disagreed with some of your reasoning.
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