A Giant Anti-Hurricane Wall Around the Gulf of Mexico Would Pay For Itself
Author: Nick
Category: Money
Topics: environment, insurance, technology
As Gulf Coast residents prepare to do battle with yet another tropical menace, a few questions may come to mind. For instance, why in this era of polio vaccines and internet pizza delivery have we not found a way to prevent hurricanes? I mean, they’re just large masses of condensed water vapor with some snazzy visual and sound effects.
Well, it’s not like science hasn’t tried. According to the Wikipedia article on the subject, artificial attempts to dissipate hurricanes have included everything from dropping a tarp across the ocean to block evaporation to blowing the things to hell with nukes. Unfortunately, as hurricanes are made by God when He is really really angry, nothing that man has constructed can stand up to them.
Until now.
Instead of attempting to destroy or dissipate a hurricane, we should instead try to block or redirect them to locations nobody cares about. The simplest way to accomplish such a task would be to build a giant wall in the path of the hurricane.
Now I know what you’re thinking: What is Nick smoking today, and where can I get some? But I assure you that I’ve put a lot of thought into this, and I think an Anti-Hurricane Wall could help prevent trillions of dollars in property damage, not to mention countless lost lives.
The best place to start testing an Anti-Hurricane wall would likely be the Gulf of Mexico as it’s home to vital oil refineries and lots of people dumb enough to live below sea level. Here’s how an Anti-Hurricane Wall would work in the Gulf:
- Build a giant wall between Florida and Mexico. The wall would have holes near the bottom to allow sea traffic and dolphins to travel through it freely.
- The wall would be made of tough anti-hurricane materials such as plywood and bungee cords.
- When a hurricane reaches the wall, it would run into the wall and would—much like a person or rambunctious kitten impacting a wall—fall down and start crying or something.
- Eventually the hurricane would give up and go home or at least to some other country that can’t afford an Anti-Hurricane Wall.
See, isn’t that simple? Of course, building an enormous Anti-Hurricane Wall the size of the Gulf of Mexico would present a few challenges:
- The wall would need to be about 500 miles long if built from, say, Key Largo, Florida to Cancun, Mexico.
- The wall would need to be about five miles high as that’s about how high the outer portions of a hurricane tend to reach. Sure, the eye of a hurricane can reach almost twice that height, but if the surrounding part of the storm can’t get by the wall, neither can the eye.
- Building a 2,500 square mile wall in the middle of the ocean could be quite expensive. Even if we used some 10% off coupons at Home Depot, it would likely cost around, oh, $100 billion for the 70 billion square feet of plywood and other materials needed to build this thing. But considering that Hurricane Katrina did over $80 billion in damage by itself, this thing could pay for itself in a couple of years.
- Insurance companies could probably be convinced to pay for some or most of the wall as they’d stand to save the most from blocking hurricanes from making landfall.
Of course, there are a few negative consequences to building the Great Wall of the Gulf of Mexico. For example, I don’t think Cuba would see much sunlight ever again, and they might not like that (especially since they’d be on the wrong side of the wall). Plus some people would argue that the only wall we should be building in that region is across the U.S. border with Mexico, though I would argue that hurricanes are at least a little more dangerous than illegal immigrants. Oh, and heaven forbid a hurricane managed to knock down the wall; the ensuing tidal wave would likely wipe out the entire Gulf Coast, but let’s not dwell on the negatives any longer.
Depending on the effectiveness of the Gulf Coast Anti-Hurricane Wall, I would later recommend constructing one off the U.S. East Coast since, well, that’s where I live and I think I deserve giant protective walls as much as any Texan or Louisianian. So start calling your senators and representatives today and ask for Anti-Hurricane Walls before it’s too late. Oh, and let them know that plywood’s on sale at Lowes this week: buy 5,000,000, get 5,000,000 free!
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24 Responses »
1.
Kyle
September 10th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Duck Tales was the best cartoon ever followed by Darkwing Duck.
2.
Bill
September 10th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
What are you smoking and where can I get it?
Brilliant! Quit being a negative Nancy. Who cares if the wall collapses. It’s not like ply wood and bungee chords would ever fall apart.
3.
Nick
September 10th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
@Kyle, Rescue Rangers was probably my favorite, though DuckTales was certainly close behind. And the DuckTales movie is far and away my favorite Disney movie; absolutely epic and brilliant. We watched all of Darkwing Duck again recently after watching most of TaleSpin and kinda put them both as tied for third.
4.
football news
September 10th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
nice art work. Ducktales is one of my favourite movie too , although its a classy one.
5.
Cheap Ps3
September 10th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Do you make the artwork yourself Nick?
6.
Nick
September 10th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
@Cheap Ps3, yes, I do. It takes every bit of artistic talent I have to pull these off too.
7.
hieyeglasses
September 11th, 2008 at 2:55 am
Haha, that “comic stip” is kinda weird, i like it!
8.
Cheap Ps3
September 11th, 2008 at 6:57 am
It must take you ages, just to publish one post! Nice work mate!
9.
Chris
September 11th, 2008 at 8:01 am
So were they saved from the rooftop?
10.
A1 Medical Supplies
September 11th, 2008 at 10:33 am
This is a brilliant idea. I could definitely get behind an anti-hurricane wall. Of course that is mostly because getting in front of it would expose me to hurricanes.
11.
Denver PC Repair Guy
September 11th, 2008 at 11:10 am
To make it ultra effective, you could probably also put some solar powered ceiling fans on the wall so it could blow it back to Africa. And maybe turn it on every now and again when it gets too hot in the Keys.
You just have to think “bigger”.
12.
Nick
September 11th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
@Chris, unfortunately, no. There was a stranger… out to find them. Possibly also some danger behind them.
13.
Kyle
September 11th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
I would put Rescue Rangers third behind TaleSpin if I had to rank them. But none of them can touch Vultron.
14.
Jerry
September 12th, 2008 at 5:07 am
What model of calculator are you using, which leads to the pinpoint precision of your calculations?
Also, please let us know which insurance companies support the WHEW (Wondrous Hurricane Exterminating Wall). They will immediately get all of my business.
Jerry
15.
Chris K.
September 12th, 2008 at 8:10 am
I am amazed at how well that wooden telephone pole can bend.
I guess I have to start putting a “K” after Chris since I’m not the only one posting…
16.
Lena Steuern
September 12th, 2008 at 8:29 am
I actually thought your idea was BRILLIANT… up until the point where you started listing negatives!
But… surely it´s worth some consideration? 
I say….. promote your idea.
Lena
17.
used car loan
September 13th, 2008 at 5:30 am
great post, a little hard to read with some of the weird characters that didn’t transfer well, but other then that I enjoyed the brief quotes form the interview.
18.
Gamesportal
September 14th, 2008 at 2:09 am
A wall like that - 500 miles long and 5 miles high, sure wouldn’t be great for property values.
19.
Jeff
September 17th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
You are a genius. I wonder if this is another of your posts that is going to turn into reality …
20.
Onewingedangel79
September 19th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Actually I always figured we DID have the tech for an Anti hurricnae wall. The wall would have to extend from florida to Mexico (screw Cuba, cigars arent that necessary) like you said. But instead og BUngee cords and plywood they could use negatively charged Ionized nitrogen and oxygen atoms. The base of the machine would be ionizers (thats what they would be called) and you would line 500 of them along the surface. 1 for every mile. And when a hurricane is a coming the shoot ionized atoms in the air 10 miles high. Only problem is this project costs about $100 trillion dollars.
21.
WebVeTy
September 25th, 2008 at 6:13 am
To make it ultra effective, you could probably also put some solar powered ceiling fans on the wall so it could blow it back to Africa. And maybe turn it on every now and again when it gets too hot in the Keys.
You just have to think “bigger”.
22.
Air Jordans
December 5th, 2008 at 3:39 am
You know how they create miniature biosperes in labs and in fact classrooms all over? Would it be cheaper to try the idea out on a smaller scale before dumping all that money into the ocean so to speak. Think of all the bridges to nowhere that ppl built and the space program - can we afford a hurricane wall that isn’t proven to work. It does sound like a great idea in theory though.
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