# Megadeath: Breaching the Aswan Dam **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 2, 2009, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709 "2009-04-02T14:16:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/61 "2011-06-09T01:17:28Z")
> [@paperbackwriter](#): > > In short, while the idea of bombing the dam is within the marches of possibility, it is a far way from the realms of the reasonable or feasible. Well yeah. It would be idiotic to try it or even consider it. I would put it at the outside edge of feasibility. And assuming it was necessary to blow up this damn dam (also at the outside edge of something), I can’t imagine the circumstances that would leave this as the only option to try. Seems like a waste not to drop those MOPs on something though 😃 ---
**Author:** ![TurboNuke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f19dbf/32.png) [@TurboNuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TurboNuke)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/62 "2011-06-09T04:12:50Z")
Couldn’t you bomb the sluiceways? ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/63 "2011-06-09T11:57:48Z")
Even if breaching the dam does require a nuke, that’s not necessarily a deal-killer. Isreal is known to have nuclear weapons. And beside, if you’re going to plan an act of genocide against the Egyptian people, why be squeamish about what weapon you need to acomplish it? ---
**Author:** ![St.Urho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8e7dd6/32.png) [@St.Urho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/St.Urho)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/64 "2011-06-09T22:32:44Z")
> [@Stormcrow](#): > > And here I am, reading the thread title and thinking, “that’s a weird name for an album…” Nice to know I wasn’t the only one. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/65 "2011-06-09T22:48:20Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Originally Posted by Markxxx > > Does Sudan, Ethiopia and the other nations downstream reoppose Egypts efforts to rebuild the dam? > > Those countries are _upstream_. The Nile, unlike most rivers, runs north. Exactly and they signed agreements for Egypt to get most of the Niles water. They want to divert it for their own use. Egypt contends those nations get plenty of water already and they don’t need it. The countries south of Egypt were British controlled and Ethiopia so they didn’t have much say. Now decades later any attempt to build a dam would meet stiff resistance by them. ---
**Author:** ![suzannacamile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/97f17d/32.png) [@suzannacamile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suzannacamile)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/66 "2012-12-19T03:17:21Z")
Please, does anyone know who were the original engineers of the Aswan Dam? Could the blueprints be in IDF files? Any engineers or risk managers in the brotherhood? ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/67 "2012-12-19T03:31:21Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > Even if breaching the dam does require a nuke, that’s not necessarily a deal-killer. Isreal is known to have nuclear weapons. And beside, if you’re going to plan an act of genocide against the Egyptian people, why be squeamish about what weapon you need to acomplish it? Important Nitpick: “An act of genocide” only if the Israelis have made it their military goal to kill every single Egyptian, everywhere. Otherwise a ghastly, ghastly loss of life. ---
**Author:** ![FuzzyOgre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@FuzzyOgre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FuzzyOgre)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/68 "2012-12-19T04:57:39Z")
You people are the worst damn dambusters I have ever met. First, you dont need to bust the dam, you just need to make the poor Egyptians flee into the desert. If they are afraid to come back within hours, the gambit worked. The Egyptian disaster infrastructure would be overwhelmed. Once everyone is panicked and in an endless traffic jam, you cant just turn them around in short order. You just need to get the stampede started. Second, you don’t break a shallow sloped dam like that with explosives. I’ll share my childhood experience of getting melt water to flow down icy streets in the spring. A regular Canadian working in denial, as it were. This is childs play, you’ll see. I was too small to chip the ice deep enough in places. So I had to change my tactics. You dont attack the obstruction, you attack the water. Using bomb shaped shovels, you cause a series of waves to spill over the brim. You can cause a hell of a flood right there, and the populace downstream flees. For me that softened the ice, and I could chip at it then. It would cause capillary action which would draw water through the ice weakening it. In terms of a dam, its basically going to start melting, and each subsequent wave will shear layers off the top of the dam. You can ramp it up with a resonant technique too. At about age 10, I figured out that I could drag myself towards the front of the bath tub with my feet. The water and I changed places. Once there, I quickly pushed myself back, much quicker than the water liked to move. Once more to the front, and back again, and et voila, a 2 foot wave piled up the wall. You can do that with bombs. Get some sloppy wave action happening, and then amplify it with timed bombings. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/69 "2012-12-19T05:19:24Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Important Nitpick: > “An act of genocide” only if the Israelis have made it their military goal to kill every single Egyptian, everywhere. Otherwise a ghastly, ghastly loss of life. Nitpicking the nitpick: is that formally in the definition? I thought if, like, the Ruritanians invaded and killed 98% of the Graustarkians, that would be accounted as “genocidal.” It isn’t necessary to kill every single living one of them, just so many as to annihilate their functioning culture, society, and institutions. Otherwise, a lot of events commonly called “genocidal” wouldn’t really be, because a handful of people survived by hiding in caves, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/70 "2012-12-19T06:18:35Z")
> [@suzannacamile](#): > > Please, does anyone know who were the original engineers of the Aswan Dam? Could the blueprints be in IDF files? Any engineers or risk managers in the brotherhood? [http://lmgtfy.com/?q=original+engineers+of+the+Aswan+Dam](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=original+engineers+of+the+Aswan+Dam) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/71 "2012-12-19T14:53:58Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Nitpicking the nitpick: is that formally in the definition? I thought if, like, the Ruritanians invaded and killed 98% of the Graustarkians, that would be accounted as “genocidal.” It isn’t necessary to kill every single living one of them, just so many as to annihilate their functioning culture, society, and institutions. Otherwise, a lot of events commonly called “genocidal” wouldn’t really be, because a handful of people survived by hiding in caves, etc. No. Per the UN genocide convention (formally, the Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide), genocide is: > [@](#): > > …any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole **or in part** , a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. [my bolding] Or, from the OED: > [@](#): > > the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/72 "2012-12-19T15:01:42Z")
If we started dropping bombs back in 2009 we might have breached that thing already. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/73 "2012-12-19T16:03:03Z")
> [@gazpacho](#): > > There is no way at all that you could get a meaning full percentage of people out of Cairo in 2 hours. I would be amazed if you could get 5% out in a weeks time. Most of Cairo at basic ground level is massive, massive buildings. It seems from one visit I made to Egypt, the Caireans(?) build 8-story aparments as an amateur endeavor, side by side, for miles in every direction, with the option to add floors later. Unlike Hurricane Sandy or the Indian Ocean tsunami, it would not be a flat-front wave or a storm pounding fragile wooden structures - but more likely a steadily rising flood followed by a dropping water level; because (a) the wave will spread out over 200 miles and (b) the time mentioned above to breach the massive dam structure and (c) any spillover into the desert upstream. (I assume Fayyum would create an interesting diversion) Even in the countryside there are a lot of 2 to 3 story buildings - concrete seems to be the national sport. Most residents would have the 2 hours (or 8 hours) to haul everything they could up from the first floor. (I find this on Google Images - [Egypt (Cairo)](http://www.schefferj.ps.hu/Egypt_Cairo2.htm) ) The only people who live in 1 or 2 floor buildings might be the inhabitants of the City of the Dead (squatters in cemetary structures) but IIRC that’s at least 50 to 100 feet above river level and several miles away, and the elevated highway and hils are right next door. The biggest damage would be things like automobiles; presumably they’d have a major traffic jam as the people who drove up the hills first would just stop on the road instead of making room for following traffic. In a dirt-poor country, their autos are the biggest investment of wealth for most people. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/74 "2012-12-19T16:28:19Z")
> [@Stormcrow](#): > > And here I am, reading the thread title and thinking, “that’s a weird name for an album…” Yeah, my first thought was “I didn’t know they were still together.” Second thought was “They misspelled “Megadeth””. Third thought was “Weird album name.” ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/75 "2012-12-19T16:59:32Z")
The band was on hiatus for a while because Dave Mustaine suffered a serious arm injury. Then Dave Ellofson left the band for a while because of a licensing/rights dispute. However, Dave Mustaine found Jesus and [sort of lost his mind](http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/dave-mustaine-on-political-comments-i-learned-a-valuable-lesson-20121105) in the interim. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/76 "2012-12-19T20:58:15Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > No. Per the UN genocide convention (formally, the Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide), genocide is . . . Huh? The bolded phrase “or in part” seems to support my argument. Wiping out 95% of a large ethnically distinct populace would be genocide. Why the initial “No,” since the quote supports me? (For my part, I’m surprised that the definition goes on to include non-lethal methods such as forced migrations. It makes sense, it just wasn’t something I would have thought of if I’d been defining the word.) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2012, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/77 "2012-12-19T22:46:57Z")
Yeah, the “no” was in response to your question, “is that formally the definition”. I was agreeing with you. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/78 "2012-12-20T00:10:04Z")
Sorry; unclear at my end. Anyway…thank you for posting the formal definition! I love it when people do that, as it pretty much ends the debate. (My inner jackass wants to ask how little “in part” can be… If I shoot Joe the Ruritanian…) ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/79 "2012-12-20T03:22:24Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > …the Caireans(?)… Cairenes, in English. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709/80 "2012-12-20T04:22:13Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > You also have to assume the majority of Egypt lives in the north, which is more than 200 miles from Lake Nasser. Even if the water wave swept in at 100 MPH, which is not impossible but probably on the high end of things, the majority of Egypt would have more than 2 hours to evacuate. Two hours isn’t much time at all for a mass evacuation. It takes time to get the message out, then you have everyone getting in each others way and so forth. Whenever I hear the subject of fast mass evacuations comes up I consistently see the verdict of “forget it, it can’t be done”. > [@bump](#): > > Yeah, my first thought was “I didn’t know they were still together.” Second thought was “They misspelled “Megadeth””. Third thought was “Weird album name.” Me too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/megadeath-breaching-the-aswan-dam/491709.md?page=5)