Wuss.
Wouldn’t a mid sized nuke ( 3-10 megatons) take out about any dam in existence?
They had to put a bunch of pipes with cool water all through the dam to get rid of all the heat from the curing.
Surprised nobody mentioned the movie Force 10 from Navarone , a world war 2 movie where US commandos blow up a dam from within using a pretty small amount of explosives. Never thought that was realistic.
Earthquake fault line movement could do it (is there one there?). It could even be upstream to divert much more water into the river to overwhelm the dam continuously, or dry it out to the point that it worthless. Yes the structure would still be there, but it would now be the Hoover Wall instead.
Perhaps a change in water chemistry cold start weakening the concrete, or some new organism that will dissolve concrete. or a significant meteor strike.
The Hoover dam is a arch pressing against the canyon sides, so not so dependent on the footing.
I toured the dam several years ago. Several things impressed me.
- It’s tall, really tall.
- It’s thick at the bottom, really thick.
- It leaks inside. They have channels to handle the leakage.
The Colorado river runs through California’s Imperial Valley linking the dam to the Sea of Cortez.
Much of Imperial Valley it is below sea level. The last time there was a flood in that area, the Salton Sea was created. (interesting tidbit - there’s a train at the bottom of the Salton Sea.) If the dam failed, I’d expect the river to rise, the Salton Sea to become the 8th great sea, and Imperial county to offer lots and lots of new ocean front acreage.
You have to think of it this way: The Hoover Dam is not a *wall *of concrete. It is a mountain of concrete! It is as thick at the bottom as it is tall. If you had unfettered access to it and a team of engineers you could probably cause it to fail, but it will still take many, **many **strategically placed high explosive charges. Many of them would have to be inserted into holes bored deep into the structure itself.
If you’re thinking brute force terrorist attack, forget it. Not possible, short of detonating a 1 to 3 KT tactical nuke on it. You could fly a hundred airliners into it (à la 9/11) and it would barely scratch it. Be like trying to destroy Gibraltar by shooting empty beer cans at it.
In the Glen Canyon article referenced above (post #9, I think) - they were worried about a tunnel forming under the dam. That would basically form a fire hose, and erode away the dirt and rock at the base.
The dam itself might not collapse - but the water would drain away at an increasing rate as the hole enlarged.
It’s in between the 2, it is not a gravity dam, meaning it is not held in place by only by it’s own weight as a mountain is, and is dependent on it’s arch structure which acts as a wall.
When it was built, they didn’t have the sorts of analytic tools they have now, so they used a higher factor of safety in designs. As others have noted, it’s super over built.
What time frame do you want it destroyed in? Lots and lots of explosive is probably what you’d want.
The documentaries on building Hoover Dam seem to replay somewhere on TV every 2 weeks, so some of us know more about it than we really want to know. During the construction, an alternative path for the river was built, and later destroyed. Wouldn’t it be simpler to reopen the bypass than to destroy the dam?
The OP hasn’t returned. My guess is that the Department of Homeland Security picked him up and he’s on his way to Guantanamo Bay.
According to Wikipedia and a book about the construction of the dam, (that I bought while I was there) the bypass tunnels that were used during the construction phase weren’t destroyed per se, the tunnels were sealed at the upstream end and again about half way thru with massive concrete plugs. The remaining halves of the tunnels are part of the existing spillway diversion system.