What if you drained the oceans?

[trappedslider]

damnit ted you let The Netherlands take over the world.

 

[Zardnaar]

Warhammer 40k. Ecological collapse.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

To answer the question-

At first, you'd get a LOT of sushi.

Then? You'd get no sushi.

 

[Kaodi]

Seems crazy to me that after the water level has dropped 2,000 metres that the continents look more or less the same. Surely that cannot be right?

 

[Umbran]

Seems crazy to me that after the water level has dropped 2,000 metres that the continents look more or less the same. Surely that cannot be right?

Sure it can. You can think of most continents a plateaus - they have steep sides.

Most of the continents are surrounded by a shallow continental shelf. For the first 200m or so of depth, you reveal that shelf.

But after that, there's a pretty steep drop off to the depths, where if you lose more ocean you don't reveal more land - and what you do reveal is pretty steep, like a mountainside.

 

[Zardnaar]

Sure it can. You can think of most continents a plateaus - they have steep sides.

Most of the continents are surrounded by a shallow continental shelf. For the first 200m or so of depth, you reveal that shelf.

But after that, there's a pretty steep drop off to the depths, where if you lose more ocean you don't reveal more land - and what you do reveal is pretty steep, like a mountainside.

View attachment 367986

Yup my country gets 10 times bigger and creates a new continent.

 

[Kaodi]

That kind of seems like an underdeveloped physical feature of a world that could have been used in Dune but maybe was not: a drained world with mountains that were entire continents. I wonder what effects that would have on settlement and stratification. If the bathyal zone were the new shoreline, would most people live in cliffside cities there, or would most people live high up inland? Which would be rich, and which poor?

 

[Umbran]

That kind of seems like an underdeveloped physical feature of a world that could have been used in Dune but maybe was not: a drained world with mountains that were entire continents. I wonder what effects that would have on settlement and stratification. If the bathyal zone were the new shoreline, would most people live in cliffside cities there, or would most people live high up inland? Which would be rich, and which poor?

Dune? Arrakis has no natural precipitation, and no surface bodies of water. There is no surface shoreline, bathyl zone or otherwise.

The natives of Arrakis live wherever the bedrock is close to the surface, so the sandworms can't eat their settlements.

 

[Kaodi]

Dune? Arrakis has no natural precipitation, and no surface bodies of water. There is no surface shoreline, bathyl zone or otherwise.

The natives of Arrakis live wherever the bedrock is close to the surface, so the sandworms can't eat their settlements.

Is not half the premise of Dune that Arrakis was once covered in water (and will be again) ?

 

[Zardnaar]

Is not half the premise of Dune that Arrakis was once covered in water (and will be again) ?

The waters underground.