Chaos overtakes the streets and news spreads like wildfire.
Sea levels have suddenly risen
500 meters and giant waves are headed your way.
Where could you hide to survive this catastrophe?
Would your city be destroyed?
And what would it take to trigger a disaster of
such epic proportions?
This is what if, and here's what would happen if
sea levels suddenly rose
500 meters? There's no shortage of data flooding the Internet
regarding rising sea levels.
Global warming has been progressively melting our ice sheets and
glaciers.
Over the past 100 years,
sea levels have increased by about
24 centimeters. But for all of the oceans to rise
500 meters, you'd need a lot more ice than our
planet has to offer.
Which leads to another big question.
Just how much ice would it take to flood Earth?
Let's be clear, Earth does have a lot of ice.
But even if all of it suddenly melted overnight,
it would only cause a rise of about 70 meters.
Now this would send all coastal cities underwater,
forcing over 3 billion people to leave their homes and
head for higher ground.
But that would be just a soggy walk in the
park compared to the disastrous aftermath.
If our planet had seven times more ice and all
of it suddenly melted,
now you'd be looking at a towering half kilometer rise
in sea levels.
And devastating is anything but an understatement.
Would it be enough to submerge all of the land
on Earth?
Well, luckily, no. The average elevation of land above sea
level is about
840 meters, so there would still be some ground left
for you to move to.
I mean, that is, unless you wanted to move to
Australia,
that continent would now be almost
200 meters underwater. Europe could face a similar fate,
with many of its countries sitting way below the 500
meter mark.
Places like Denmark and the Netherlands would be completely submerged,
while Spain and France might keep their highest peaks above
the water.
the United States and Canada wouldn't be ideal places for
survival either.
Most of North America would now be the ocean floor,
so where could you find safety among the chaos?
Well, try Africa. This continent usually sits at about
600 meters above sea level,
so some big patches of it would stand a chance
to remain dry.
If you want an even better chance at survival,
you'd go to Chile or Afghanistan.
These countries have some of the highest elevations on the
planet,
so they'd likely suffer the least.
But your absolute best bet at a better post apocalyptic
life?
Well look to China. Yeah,
not only does China have higher elevations,
it would also become the largest and most powerful nation
on earth,
but you might be short on time to get there.
Billions of people would perish as coastal floods swallow entire
cities and countries.
Even if the few survivors somehow managed to reach higher
ground,
the disaster wouldn't end there.
Most farmland across the globe would be destroyed.
It would either be submerged or contaminated by salt water,
making it impossible to grow food.
The remaining land would belong to mountain peaks where the
soil would likely be infertile
and there wouldn't be too many trees for you to
build a house or start a fire.
And you would need 4 walls to protect you from
bad weather
since it would all be out of whack.
That's because this newly diluted ocean water would cause some
ocean currents to stop
by just taking the Gulf Stream out of the global
climate equation.
Temperatures would plummet and maybe even trigger a mini Ice
Age.
You'd barely find any food to eat.
Almost all the land animals would drown.
Then fish. Well, marine life wouldn't be so lucky either.
They're used to living in a higher salt concentration,
so when the glaciers melt and dilute the salt water
with fresh water,
all the fish would bloat and die.
It's all scary stuff. But
what about humans? Well, our own water reservoirs would mostly
be wiped out.
That's because the ocean water would infiltrate groundwater reserves and
pollute nearby freshwater,
turning drinking water undrinkable. Yeah,
put on your thinking cap,
because you'd have to find some clever ways to recycle
water to drink.
And with that, the Big Blue sphere we call home
would truly become almost exclusively blue and
barely our home at all.
Yeah, so maybe you shouldn't play with ice.
Or better yet, you could make sure none of this
ever happens by trying to refreeze the Arctic.
Yeah, but that's the story
for another What if?