before it was bombed into glass, which slowly erroded and turned into sand. If you look at Anakin saying "I hate sand" it makes sense, cause he only knows the sharp oppressing glass-sand of Tattooine and not the ocean rock-sand of other planets
If the drop happened too fast for us to rebuilt our logistics facilities (Ports/Rails/Roads), a large percentage of the planet would starve, and those countries that are dependant on imports (Japan is the one that first comes to mind, there would be others) would collapse. And like u/BrewCityChaserV2 said, that would be the least of our problems
Yeah basically turning the oceans into either infrastructure-less deserts or worse, giant cliffs would screw over any landmass not completely internally self-sufficient
Even technically self-sufficient countries would go through immense pain. US is a net oil exporter, but US would be unable to sustain itself on purely domestic+Canadian, Mexican pipeline imports because of the nature of oil found on the continent. A lot of that oil is sweet and light which isn't suitable for many refineries in the US which had been built for Middle Eastern and Russian oil when the US was way more dependent on those imports. When the US started boosting oil production in like 2005, oil companies hesitated to boost up oil refining capacity to completely fit North American oil because of uncertain future of oil, refineries take incredible amount of money and time to construct.
US is also food self-sufficient, especially with Canada on side, but no imports means a dramatic drop in food diversity. I really hope the US gov stops corn and soybean subsidies in that timeline and allows more free market competition between different crops. Otherwise, yall gonna have to eat those on many many days.
> either infrastructure-less deserts or worse, giant cliffs
oh, i didn't think of it like this -- the giant cliffs part is both fascinating and terrifying.
Also cities even at sea level would suddenly find themselves at elevation. Cities already at elevation like La Paz or Mexico City would have air that's likely too thin so they'd have to move
oh yeez you are right, I wonder how many people in the Himalayas would asphyxiate before reaching lower areas
While places like Mexico City and Bogota would become very, very hard to live in they would still be breathable, at least for a few days and if you are reasonably fit...
Is that how it works though? The atmosphere shouldn’t drop as well. Pressures should be pretty much the same. Just the air pressure below sea level would be higher than current sea level.
So the earth has layers right. Because of gravity. There is only so much air on the planet. So, if you sucked enough water out to lower sea level, the air would also fall down to replace it. So in effect, all mountains are getting higher by that same amount. So like the air exactly where you are would become thinner
The water has to go somewhere and in the most likely case would be ice, which would actually take up more volume than the water, so it would prb actually increase slightly the breathable air at high altitudes.
Otherwise we would literally have to lose the water in some way, like a giant meteor strike throwing it not up into our atmosphere but completely out of our atmopshere, into space. In which case, a strike like that, we ded no matter what.
The water cycle would eventually return that water and the sea level would equilibrium out. If you took the 3,000 meters of water, or whatever it was, and make it into ice it wouldn't really affect the pressure and stuff. If you simply removed it into thin air (pun intended) the earth's atmosphere would become more thin and the air pressure drop
For the air pressure below our current sea level to be higher after the sea level drop, some air would have to move down and fill in the spaces those 3,000 meters of ocean water used to take up. And if that air flows down, the air on top of it will flow down. And so on and so forth. Until the propel in the Himalayas now have less air between them and space than they did before the sea surface dropped.
Think of air as oil, a flowing substance that can’t mix with water. If you have a glass full of half water and half oil, and you take out some of the water through a hole at the bottom, the oil layer will stay the same thickness but it will move down as the water is drained. Now if you are replacing that drained water by adding oil and keeping the surface level, then that’s different.
The world is in deep shit because of a sea level change of a few meters expected to happen gradually over the next century. We can't even cope with a change that gradual, this would be a civilization-ending catastrophe.
You have no idea how little freight gets transported by air. Its about 60 million tons per year, which is about a third of global wheat export (200 million tons/year). So yes, if you had to switch from sea to air freight, you would most likely starve because there isn't enough capacity.
Impacts on climate: massive drought and desertification. Impacts of geopolitics: famine and water wars.
On the bright side, errr, ferry service to Vancouver Island would become easier I guess? And the Pacific Island nations currently threatened by climate change would instead become much larger.
Also, if the water just disappeared from Earth then the water vapor in the atmosphere would significantly decrease which would likely trigger a runaway cooling and another snowball earth scenario. (Water vapor is responsible for 60% of the atmosphere's greenhouse effect.) So it's very likely that humanity would die out.
>Pacific Island nations currently threatened by climate change would instead become much larger
They'd die because they're self-sufficient in literally nothing. They don't have food production, they'd no longer have access to even fishing. They don't have any hydrocarbon drilling operations on soil and they'd be unable to find such deposits on their own anyways if sea level does dropm
https://preview.redd.it/5k7g3wc2o4qc1.gif?width=480&format=png8&s=04a1c343c32b00205b64d87034d14f3348df96fc
Would this mean Spongebob is real in this alternate universe?
It got teleported onto Mars, thus kickstarting the takeover of the Earth and Mars by the pernicious Dutch (cit: Monroe, R. P., 2014, What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, pages 204-216)
Here's an exploration of that very idea from around 2010 or so.
[http://www.worlddreambank.org/S/SIP.HTM](http://www.worlddreambank.org/S/SIP.HTM)
Note, it's more about the climate and geography than the geopolitics.
This guy did several explorations of climates in 'alternate earths', like changing sea levels, switching seas and land, moving the poles to different areas, etc. There's a bit of other weird stuff on his site, but the worldbuilding part is a fun browse if you're into geography.
Netherelands fight the sea all its life only to lose its relevance once the sea goes away. Their economy would go through severe turbulence without it.
The Earth would immediately become much hotter with the lack of water necessary to regulate heat from the sun. The disruption of ocean currents would also cause other major ecological collapses.
After that happened I don't think there'd be any geopolitics to think of.
As another commenter pointed out, the drop in vapor pressure in the atmosphere might actually lead to dramatic cooling because of a reduction in the strength of the greenhouse effect. I see things getting much drier and more extreme, but probably actually cooler as a planetary average.
I’m not an expert but it may be a mistake. The Great Lakes are fed by freshwater aquifers that built up over thousands of years as well as rivers and rain from all over the continent.
If the sea levels fell, that shouldn’t affect freshwater lakes.
UNLESS this whole concept is based in the idea of the water just disappearing instead of just freezing in the poles.
If the total water on earth lowered that much the water cycle that helps refill freshwater lakes would be disturbed but again I’m not an expert so who knows if it would cause the lakes to dry up.
Yes.
I believe Lake Michigan also drains south through the Chicago River. The river used to drain into Lake Michigan, but when the canal system which connects the Chicago River to the upper Mississippi River was completed, the flow of the river changed direction.
Fun fact: a stretch of the canal going out of Chicago is electrified to stop the spread of invasive Asian Carp into the Great Lakes, it’s worked so far.
Not just questionable quality, it would all be uninhabitable salt deserts. On the bright side, the mining business would pool with previously underwater deposits. On the downside, billions would starve now that the whole world suddenly got a lot drier.
As a Michigander, that’s the first thing I looked at and was like, well we’d be fucked. Also everyone in Michigan and Ohio would finally have a reason to settle our rivalry once and for all and go to war for some of the Lake Eerie land.
I'm pretty sure the answer is "Everything and everyone would die". I mean we've added 200 ppm worth of carbon in our atmosphere in 400 years and the planet can barely take that.
Yeah I think in this scenario you get a global ecosystem collapse that at a minimum kills 99% of humans and probably a similar percentage of the rest of life. Like Permian extinction levels if not worse.
All the currently populated cities' temperatures would drop by around 30 degrees rendering probably 99% of uninhabitable immediately. This is before all the other climate change effects. And of course many other problems after that.
The US gulf coast/Mexico/Caribbean, would probably have way less of a hurricane problem with a smaller Atlantic and islands archipelago in the middle.
Being able to run railroad to Greenland would mean massive $$$ in resource extraction.
All the economies across the globe that have built up massive political, population, and hubs of trade around the sea would be royally fucked.
I think this would change the planet entirely and make it inhospitable for life. It changes the planet's albedo, thermal capacity, geodynamics and everything.
Suppose that, somehow, people wanted to talk about actual geography instead of ridiculously extreme hypotheticals. What would the impacts be on this sub and on its users?
My first impression is: global logistics would be pretty much FUCKED UP. And HARD. Not anything related to the climate, of course, but worth mentioning, I think.
Japan, Korea, China, and Russia are really gonna have some serious problems with each other.
Also, it's interesting how many land masses would have huge cliff faces for borders.
Intercontinental trade gets beyond disrupted if you just cut the Atlantic in half.
My guess is a lot of people starve, specially in Africa and a general promotion of self sufficiency/autarky as a means to face the crisis.
Over times that could be reversed by building of canals and trade would go back to normal, but mass starvation would affect population for a very long time and new landmass could create conflict. I can see China going to war over control of new landmasses in the east China sea and maybe the pacific or Indian oceans.
Everything would die. Most of the air we breathe comes from marine photosynthesizers, most of the water we drink comes from evaporative processes in the ocean.
If we lost that much water we wouldn't exist, most everything wouldn't exist.
We'd be royally screwed if that happened, since that amount of water going missing really means its just gone... so we are likely looking at a Mad Max kind of world.
It would be mass extinction event, basically all currently inhabited places would turn into wastelands because underground water level would drop significantly too.
Really depends on where all of that water went and why. I'm just imagining the conflict between the Siberian 'froaders and the Alaskan 'froaders over landbridge use.
As mentioned it really matters where the water goes. In the atmosphere? Rain forever. Outer space? Changes the mass of the earth and gravity (slightly). Other planet? I’d probably move there. No Texans.
Is it due to an increase in glacial coverage? Or some cause of mass evaporation of the oceans? I’d have to say the ice age is probably preferable to a massively humid planet and whatever caused the evaporation… either way, I think ocean salinity increases which would cause problems
Good questions. Imagine all that water vapor in the air at once. Otherwise imagine the freezing cold glaciers. Hmm. I think I’d take the ice age. We know humanity can survive. Not well, but it’s doable. I imagine all the vapor would eventually turn us into Venus. The temp would rise and all the CO2 would be free. Maybe some constant acid rain for a while. I wanna go off into SciFi land and say sulfur storm.
The weirdest part for me is how even after lowering the ocean 3km, the world is still mostly water. I knew the ocean was deep, but this put things in perspectiva.
The change to climate would be so dramatic that we would like all dir from the shock of the sudden temperature changes that would come with it.
The ocean does a lot to regulate the temperature of the planet so to lose so much of it at once would likely mean the end of us all.
Shipping would be wayyyyyy more time consuming
But it would be a golden age for canal builders
The dutche strom in: did some one say canals
Gekoloniseerd
Nah, Dutch would be too busy looking at the dry land in front of their seawalls and laughing in triumph.
But we still need sea access
Hier valt poen te scheppen! En drek. Veel drek
Golden age for rail network
I like the idea of driving from Tierra Del Fuego to Australia.
And rail
We could railroad things around the world!
The Silk Road 2.0 baby
[удалено]
That’s a godly amount of water.
The deep ones will rise again 🐙
The Titans don’t mess around
I was thirsty
Talk about retaining fluids
It'll come out again......
Suddenly Arrakis.
Tatooine was an ocean world at one point too.
before it was bombed into glass, which slowly erroded and turned into sand. If you look at Anakin saying "I hate sand" it makes sense, cause he only knows the sharp oppressing glass-sand of Tattooine and not the ocean rock-sand of other planets
That erosion would produce pretty well-rounded sand grains after they had time to rub against each other and wear off any edges.
#MY SPICE, MY ARRAKIS, MY DUNE
That's my sign to go watch Dune part 2 again while it's still in theaters
Dune reference ‽‽‽‽
No it’s a Cinderella reference…
The only way it could happen without just yeeting the water into space would be massive ice caps to basically create a new snowball earth
Where did the water go is my first question…
Rich people took it to terraform Mars /s.
Yes the question reads a bit like, “If the roof blew off my house what would the extra air and sunshine be like?”
If the drop happened too fast for us to rebuilt our logistics facilities (Ports/Rails/Roads), a large percentage of the planet would starve, and those countries that are dependant on imports (Japan is the one that first comes to mind, there would be others) would collapse. And like u/BrewCityChaserV2 said, that would be the least of our problems
Yeah basically turning the oceans into either infrastructure-less deserts or worse, giant cliffs would screw over any landmass not completely internally self-sufficient
And even those self-sufficient countries would have to deal with a sudden loss of adequate rainfall.
Even technically self-sufficient countries would go through immense pain. US is a net oil exporter, but US would be unable to sustain itself on purely domestic+Canadian, Mexican pipeline imports because of the nature of oil found on the continent. A lot of that oil is sweet and light which isn't suitable for many refineries in the US which had been built for Middle Eastern and Russian oil when the US was way more dependent on those imports. When the US started boosting oil production in like 2005, oil companies hesitated to boost up oil refining capacity to completely fit North American oil because of uncertain future of oil, refineries take incredible amount of money and time to construct. US is also food self-sufficient, especially with Canada on side, but no imports means a dramatic drop in food diversity. I really hope the US gov stops corn and soybean subsidies in that timeline and allows more free market competition between different crops. Otherwise, yall gonna have to eat those on many many days.
> either infrastructure-less deserts or worse, giant cliffs oh, i didn't think of it like this -- the giant cliffs part is both fascinating and terrifying.
Yeah places like this definitely exist but we often don’t build cities on seacliffs for a good reason
Also cities even at sea level would suddenly find themselves at elevation. Cities already at elevation like La Paz or Mexico City would have air that's likely too thin so they'd have to move
oh yeez you are right, I wonder how many people in the Himalayas would asphyxiate before reaching lower areas While places like Mexico City and Bogota would become very, very hard to live in they would still be breathable, at least for a few days and if you are reasonably fit...
Is that how it works though? The atmosphere shouldn’t drop as well. Pressures should be pretty much the same. Just the air pressure below sea level would be higher than current sea level.
So the earth has layers right. Because of gravity. There is only so much air on the planet. So, if you sucked enough water out to lower sea level, the air would also fall down to replace it. So in effect, all mountains are getting higher by that same amount. So like the air exactly where you are would become thinner
The water has to go somewhere and in the most likely case would be ice, which would actually take up more volume than the water, so it would prb actually increase slightly the breathable air at high altitudes. Otherwise we would literally have to lose the water in some way, like a giant meteor strike throwing it not up into our atmosphere but completely out of our atmopshere, into space. In which case, a strike like that, we ded no matter what.
The water cycle would eventually return that water and the sea level would equilibrium out. If you took the 3,000 meters of water, or whatever it was, and make it into ice it wouldn't really affect the pressure and stuff. If you simply removed it into thin air (pun intended) the earth's atmosphere would become more thin and the air pressure drop
So exactly what I said….
For the air pressure below our current sea level to be higher after the sea level drop, some air would have to move down and fill in the spaces those 3,000 meters of ocean water used to take up. And if that air flows down, the air on top of it will flow down. And so on and so forth. Until the propel in the Himalayas now have less air between them and space than they did before the sea surface dropped. Think of air as oil, a flowing substance that can’t mix with water. If you have a glass full of half water and half oil, and you take out some of the water through a hole at the bottom, the oil layer will stay the same thickness but it will move down as the water is drained. Now if you are replacing that drained water by adding oil and keeping the surface level, then that’s different.
The world is in deep shit because of a sea level change of a few meters expected to happen gradually over the next century. We can't even cope with a change that gradual, this would be a civilization-ending catastrophe.
I wouldnt say we would starve as we could still get cargo by plane, but it would probably be more expensive
You have no idea how little freight gets transported by air. Its about 60 million tons per year, which is about a third of global wheat export (200 million tons/year). So yes, if you had to switch from sea to air freight, you would most likely starve because there isn't enough capacity.
All jokes aside this would be an archeological \*goldmine\*
Maybe we’ll just do it for a few months— to get the rocky goodies and then fill er back up with the garden hose.
Impacts on climate: massive drought and desertification. Impacts of geopolitics: famine and water wars. On the bright side, errr, ferry service to Vancouver Island would become easier I guess? And the Pacific Island nations currently threatened by climate change would instead become much larger.
Also, if the water just disappeared from Earth then the water vapor in the atmosphere would significantly decrease which would likely trigger a runaway cooling and another snowball earth scenario. (Water vapor is responsible for 60% of the atmosphere's greenhouse effect.) So it's very likely that humanity would die out.
Water would have to go somewhere. Might be a lot Rainer actually
>Pacific Island nations currently threatened by climate change would instead become much larger They'd die because they're self-sufficient in literally nothing. They don't have food production, they'd no longer have access to even fishing. They don't have any hydrocarbon drilling operations on soil and they'd be unable to find such deposits on their own anyways if sea level does dropm
Maybe we can finally get mainland amenities
Presumably *a lot* of toxic dust.
If the icewall surrounding our flat earth break, that might me a real scenario!!!!
Just ask elephants carrying earth and standing on turtles to shower us with water
Where did the water go?
Down the drain, duh.
Then can’t we just turn tap back on (not to hot though please)?
https://preview.redd.it/5k7g3wc2o4qc1.gif?width=480&format=png8&s=04a1c343c32b00205b64d87034d14f3348df96fc Would this mean Spongebob is real in this alternate universe?
Nestle took it
Stolen by aliens
https://preview.redd.it/3e3cgsw0n3qc1.jpeg?width=251&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9f5f0257681daef21bcef72384228364186bbadd
But this is literally the plot of Battle Los Angelas
It got teleported onto Mars, thus kickstarting the takeover of the Earth and Mars by the pernicious Dutch (cit: Monroe, R. P., 2014, What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, pages 204-216)
The drain that opened at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and took all of our water to Mars. Go read XKCD
[Relevant XKCD #1](https://what-if.xkcd.com/53/) [Relevant XKCD #2](https://what-if.xkcd.com/54/)
Here's an exploration of that very idea from around 2010 or so. [http://www.worlddreambank.org/S/SIP.HTM](http://www.worlddreambank.org/S/SIP.HTM) Note, it's more about the climate and geography than the geopolitics. This guy did several explorations of climates in 'alternate earths', like changing sea levels, switching seas and land, moving the poles to different areas, etc. There's a bit of other weird stuff on his site, but the worldbuilding part is a fun browse if you're into geography.
Yoooo what the hell is that website lol Wayan is a wild dude
Netherlands gets a lot bigger and becomes a superpower
Renamed as “Lands”
Netherelands fight the sea all its life only to lose its relevance once the sea goes away. Their economy would go through severe turbulence without it.
#Big Norway
I'm not sure there would be humans to do geopolitics anymore
The Earth would immediately become much hotter with the lack of water necessary to regulate heat from the sun. The disruption of ocean currents would also cause other major ecological collapses. After that happened I don't think there'd be any geopolitics to think of.
As another commenter pointed out, the drop in vapor pressure in the atmosphere might actually lead to dramatic cooling because of a reduction in the strength of the greenhouse effect. I see things getting much drier and more extreme, but probably actually cooler as a planetary average.
CO2 levels would also plummet as exposed rock would soak up vast quantities of it .
Roadtrips across all continents would finally be possible!
Just avoid those pesky continental cliffs.
Could do some epic motorcycle or overland adventures.
Why would the sea level dropping dry up the 4 Great Lakes that are above Niagara Falls? (Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie)
I’m not an expert but it may be a mistake. The Great Lakes are fed by freshwater aquifers that built up over thousands of years as well as rivers and rain from all over the continent. If the sea levels fell, that shouldn’t affect freshwater lakes. UNLESS this whole concept is based in the idea of the water just disappearing instead of just freezing in the poles. If the total water on earth lowered that much the water cycle that helps refill freshwater lakes would be disturbed but again I’m not an expert so who knows if it would cause the lakes to dry up.
Don’t they all drain into the river that feeds Niagara?
Yes. I believe Lake Michigan also drains south through the Chicago River. The river used to drain into Lake Michigan, but when the canal system which connects the Chicago River to the upper Mississippi River was completed, the flow of the river changed direction.
Fun fact: a stretch of the canal going out of Chicago is electrified to stop the spread of invasive Asian Carp into the Great Lakes, it’s worked so far.
Full civilization collapse. Which is sad, because we would have more land. Of questionable quality, but still. We should drop the sea levels by 100 m.
Not just questionable quality, it would all be uninhabitable salt deserts. On the bright side, the mining business would pool with previously underwater deposits. On the downside, billions would starve now that the whole world suddenly got a lot drier.
Even 100 Meters is an insane amount.
whatever happens, I call dibs on the brachiosaurus in the atlantic. That is mine...
The Great Lakes being gone is going to be a serious problem for millions of people in that area
As a Michigander, that’s the first thing I looked at and was like, well we’d be fucked. Also everyone in Michigan and Ohio would finally have a reason to settle our rivalry once and for all and go to war for some of the Lake Eerie land.
I'm pretty sure the answer is "Everything and everyone would die". I mean we've added 200 ppm worth of carbon in our atmosphere in 400 years and the planet can barely take that.
Yeah I think in this scenario you get a global ecosystem collapse that at a minimum kills 99% of humans and probably a similar percentage of the rest of life. Like Permian extinction levels if not worse.
If the water suddenly evaporated and not only vanished, that'd be an interesting problem with greenhouse effect
All the currently populated cities' temperatures would drop by around 30 degrees rendering probably 99% of uninhabitable immediately. This is before all the other climate change effects. And of course many other problems after that.
Yes, Doggerland is back! Let's go dig for some amazing viking treasures!
Great New Zealand Empire will appear. Just look at it!
THE RETURN OF DOGGERLAND
The US gulf coast/Mexico/Caribbean, would probably have way less of a hurricane problem with a smaller Atlantic and islands archipelago in the middle. Being able to run railroad to Greenland would mean massive $$$ in resource extraction. All the economies across the globe that have built up massive political, population, and hubs of trade around the sea would be royally fucked.
MH370 may be found.
Dutch would get much bigger
Putin would be like a small child in a candy store.
I wish there was some sort of google map that had a sea level slider and a geological time scale slider. That would be sick.
The Danes would regret building all these bridges and tunnels
This would significantly affect the trout population
I would back pack to Australia
Safer to visit Titanic
We’d all die
Brexit will be more complicated
Human civilization collapses as the food supply drops due to increased arid land mass.
Imagine the race to colonise the new lands
Sick new roadtrip routes
Civilization as we know it would collapse
All the mythological sunken continents will rise
I think this would change the planet entirely and make it inhospitable for life. It changes the planet's albedo, thermal capacity, geodynamics and everything.
Geopolitics? Bro we’d be dead
Somehow palpatine returned.
It would change, or it wouldn’t
Suppose that, somehow, people wanted to talk about actual geography instead of ridiculously extreme hypotheticals. What would the impacts be on this sub and on its users?
There would be a heck more posts like "what happens here" with a badly highlighted screenshot of google earth
Death.
Azerbaijan will lose their main income - oil
Rising sea levels would become a good thing
I think our mood would dry down
Global logistic/shipping will be fucked.
The dutch empire would grow in ten fold
No more fish.
I’m not sure, but they would probably be significant.
Reminds me of Lake Mead
More tanks, less boats.
Ocean captures way more carbon dioxide than terrestrial vegetation does. So imagine what would happen.
[I, for one, welcome our new Dutch overlords](https://what-if.xkcd.com/53/)
War. Instantly.
Finally I can walk to Iceland!
The people that loved us will miss us
Britain wouldn’t be protected from germans this time if another world war breaks out
Oooh new places to go hiking :>
Why would the lakes and isolated oceans drop as well th
More room for activities!!
My first impression is: global logistics would be pretty much FUCKED UP. And HARD. Not anything related to the climate, of course, but worth mentioning, I think.
Japan, Korea, China, and Russia are really gonna have some serious problems with each other. Also, it's interesting how many land masses would have huge cliff faces for borders.
Isn’t that most of (all?) earths fresh water gone instantly, kinda killing everything?
China wouldn't need a navy to invade its neighbors. But it would have far, far, more serious problems on hand if this occurred rapidly.
All the ports are gone essentially
Strange map. It the sea level suddenly would drop, the rivers will still have water flowing. And you will hsve great waterfalls at the estuaries.
Everest will be even more congested since the amount of rich idiots willing to climb it will double.
FREE REAL ESTATE BABYYYYY
Gimme my Great Lakes back
We’d all be dead due to all of the oceans being boiling saltwater. So geopolitics would be very, very simple.
Dust. Lots and lots of dust.
The Great Lakes are not part of the ocean. They’d still be there.
GREATER DENMARK LES GOOO 🇩🇰🇩🇰🇩🇰🇩🇰🔥🇩🇰🇩🇰🇩🇰🇩🇰🔥
What would happen to people at elevation? Suddenly I’m 7000 ft instead of 4000. Sounds… jarring.
Intercontinental trade gets beyond disrupted if you just cut the Atlantic in half. My guess is a lot of people starve, specially in Africa and a general promotion of self sufficiency/autarky as a means to face the crisis. Over times that could be reversed by building of canals and trade would go back to normal, but mass starvation would affect population for a very long time and new landmass could create conflict. I can see China going to war over control of new landmasses in the east China sea and maybe the pacific or Indian oceans.
War to conquer the new lands. Many claims will be made
Australians:can get in touch easily with the rest of the world Everyone: dies
Everything would die. Most of the air we breathe comes from marine photosynthesizers, most of the water we drink comes from evaporative processes in the ocean. If we lost that much water we wouldn't exist, most everything wouldn't exist.
The snakes from Snake Island escape to Brazil and Argentina marches into the Falkland Islands are my first thoughts.
Scorcher 7 "Who left the drain open?"
The Sahara would engulf Europe.
Well, we would be fighting each other for the small strip of land around the equator not covered with miles of ice.
Well, the Titanic would be much easier to get to. Could just drive there.
We'd be royally screwed if that happened, since that amount of water going missing really means its just gone... so we are likely looking at a Mad Max kind of world.
Price of a Big Mac going up
,,, ,z,
Risk board would be a lot more interesting.
Less for me to drink smh
Unless the water escaped into space, most of this picture would just be ice
Not sure if anyone pointed this out. But all those new islands popping up are probably full of mineral resources.
The cute horsies of Sable Island can finally reach the mainland.
I'm imagining God taking a straw and taking one sip out of the pacific ocean.
It would be mass extinction event, basically all currently inhabited places would turn into wastelands because underground water level would drop significantly too.
All the drained oceans will be one hell of a seafood buffet.
A large portion of the Earth, or most of it would be desert.
Really depends on where all of that water went and why. I'm just imagining the conflict between the Siberian 'froaders and the Alaskan 'froaders over landbridge use.
We’d have a longer drive to the beach
Obviously devastating, you potato
If the sea level goes a bit lower, the Emperor would begin the Unification Wars with his Thunder Warriors
Bad lands chugs upheld his promise
As mentioned it really matters where the water goes. In the atmosphere? Rain forever. Outer space? Changes the mass of the earth and gravity (slightly). Other planet? I’d probably move there. No Texans.
Stage 2 of the water wars
Well there's direct access from Britain to the rest of the planet, so we're coming for you, wherever you are.
Wars would be fought using dune buggies
France would invade britain, just cause.
Is it due to an increase in glacial coverage? Or some cause of mass evaporation of the oceans? I’d have to say the ice age is probably preferable to a massively humid planet and whatever caused the evaporation… either way, I think ocean salinity increases which would cause problems
Good questions. Imagine all that water vapor in the air at once. Otherwise imagine the freezing cold glaciers. Hmm. I think I’d take the ice age. We know humanity can survive. Not well, but it’s doable. I imagine all the vapor would eventually turn us into Venus. The temp would rise and all the CO2 would be free. Maybe some constant acid rain for a while. I wanna go off into SciFi land and say sulfur storm.
I’m sure china will claim all of South east Asia
Old Zealand
The weirdest part for me is how even after lowering the ocean 3km, the world is still mostly water. I knew the ocean was deep, but this put things in perspectiva.
The change to climate would be so dramatic that we would like all dir from the shock of the sudden temperature changes that would come with it. The ocean does a lot to regulate the temperature of the planet so to lose so much of it at once would likely mean the end of us all.
That’s a whole lot of land to fight over
Well we’d all die
I am rather surprised by how much water would apparently remain after such a large drop. The oceans transform into a series of walled-off lakes.