Comments on: Nature Creates a River

Nature Creates a River

brain_drain — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 10:56:42 -0800

While God was fooling around with his celestial SimCity control panel, he accidentally built a river right through the middle of a road. [NOT THEIST]

By: es_de_bah

es_de_bah — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 10:59:50 -0800

hehe good for nature.

By: cerebus19

cerebus19 — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:00:55 -0800

Neat pictures. Is there some context to these available? Where did this happen? What caused it?

By: tepidmonkey

tepidmonkey — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:01:05 -0800

...SimCity control panel So we all really are living in the matrix?

By: dhartung

dhartung — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:01:36 -0800

Accidentally, you say. Hmmm.

By: dirtdirt

dirtdirt — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:01:54 -0800

Roads:72,998,765,122 Rivers:1

By: phaedon

phaedon — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:04:56 -0800

F-U-N-D-F-U-N-D-F-U-N-D-F-U-N-D

By: brain_drain

brain_drain — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:05:54 -0800

cerebus19, I had the same questions and dug around before posting this, but I didn't find anything. Others may have better luck (or better research skills).

By: The Bridge on the River Kai Ryssdal

The Bridge on the River Kai Ryssdal — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:05:58 -0800

Where/when/what the heck was that? I like that until the river makes it all the way across the road, though, that park which is obviously the next stop on the thing's course is still open.

By: otolith

otolith — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:06:10 -0800

Come now dirtdirt, give the rivers a little more credit.

By: Big_B

Big_B — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:08:03 -0800

Urban superimposed stream systems. Sweet.

By: Big_B

Big_B — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:09:08 -0800

As to what caused it - I'd be willing to bet there was originally a stream channel there that was filled to make the road.

By: cerebus19

cerebus19 — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:09:57 -0800

I'll never watch "A River Runs Through It" the same way again.

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:11:05 -0800

"Accidentally"? Hah.

By: SansPoint

SansPoint — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:19:04 -0800

porntipsguzzardo

By: takeyourmedicine

takeyourmedicine — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:25:25 -0800

SimCity = Click. It is rather ironic that a game that is now including climate awareness into the package forced me to leave my SNES on for days on end, allowing the city to tick over and make me millions.

By: zzazazz

zzazazz — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:26:31 -0800

Reminds me of when I pee on an ant hill.

By: LionIndex

LionIndex — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:29:24 -0800

Come now dirtdirt, give the rivers a little more credit. Indeed. The Salton Sea was the result of a total rout of Team Roads by the Colorado River. It's completely manmade, although inadvertantly.

By: ALongDecember

ALongDecember — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:30:57 -0800

Made me think of the "crane rescuing a car" photos. Last one is fake. takeyourmedicine, do you remember strategy guides saying "Leave your SNES on overnight, but be sure to bulldoze your airport so no planes crash." Which is insane, but it worked.

By: chococat

chococat — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:35:54 -0800

This was in in Toronto last year, I remember seeing it on the news. I can't remember exactly where...it was in the 'burbs somewhere. And I think it was already a river, it just became a bigger one.

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:38:20 -0800

Those photographs are framed to be a bit deceptive. You can't see far enough to the right and left. What I would guess is that there was already a culvert there, but a storm resulted in enough extra water flow that it began to go around outside the culvert, and thus to erode the soil under the roadbed. Eventually it eroded the road away entirely. If so, it's not that they didn't know it was there when they built the road, but rather that they underestimated how much water it might carry during a big storm.

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:40:40 -0800

Water doesn't obey your "rules." It goes where it wants to. Like me, babe.

By: chococat

chococat — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:42:05 -0800

Okay, it was Finch Avenue in North York, (Greater Toronto Area) and it was the Black Creek that flooded. Here's a forum post about it.

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:44:13 -0800

While I was failing to turn up what chococat just nailed, I found this academic's page on hydrodynamic, including engineering failures. Whee!

By: inqb8tr

inqb8tr — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:44:23 -0800

porntipsguzzardo This takes me back to elementary school computer class. Boy, I sure did love to hear those citizens cheer when the tax rate was lowered to 1% or sometimes even zero! I could just picture their beaming little faces all crying that garbled unanimous "YAHAYYYY!" With the infinite amount of funds accrued from that amazing code, I would build a whole slew of exciting stadiums, parks, schools and some of those really incredible ARCO buildings you could choose from. My cities were vast, proud and beautiful. It was a simple time, when the alpacas and dromedaries roamed free and the people basked in the glory of my anti-Dullsvillian policies. Then I would unleash the monster.

By: George_Spiggott

George_Spiggott — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:45:56 -0800

This is one of the several reasons I hate people who swipe and repurpose other people's content for page views and ad serving. Not just that it's a greasy act of thievin' but it destroys context; the people who do this are generally ignorant f*cks who can't write a coherent sentence in any language and are just out to make a buck off the web. It'd be nice to know when and where this was. This was worth looking at but all the same I wouldn't object if mattamyntex deleted these on principle.

By: Paid In Full

Paid In Full — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:14:27 -0800

It was also the same massive afternoon thunderstorm/holy hailstorm that caused an Air France jet to slide off the runway at the airport, then catch on fire. No serious injuries at either location.

By: beetsuits

beetsuits — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:18:51 -0800

Mark Twain said, of the Mississippi, "Ten thousand river commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, 'Go here,' or 'Go there,' and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over and laugh at."

By: quin

quin — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:21:24 -0800

It's this sort of thing that makes me realize that once humans are gone, most of the infrastructure that we leave behind will last no time at all.

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:30:23 -0800

dirtdirt, if you ever want to go Rivers v. Roads in a no-holds-barred cage match, I'll take Rivers every time. Power of water crushes all. River meander, and then once they've meandered enough they will cut through their own meanders to make a shorter channel. If a town, for example, is built on a jut of land surrounded by a meander, then it's only a matter of time before the river cuts its meander and goes through the town. (It might be a matter of a long time, as human lifetimes are concerned.) Rivers build deltas, and again, they eventually cut through them to make a shorter channel to the sea (or whatever their outlet basin is). The Mississippi has done this before, and has been trying to do it again (by jumping channels in the Atchafalaya) for a long time, and we've only been able to slow it down. It will eventually jump. (A nice look at this in lay terms is The Control of Nature by John McPhee.) You can't stop floods, try as we might. We can only make rational policies to mitigate the damage from them. You can't stop mudslides; again recognizing that they will happen and adjusting our policies accordingly is the only course that makes sense. Roads and other paving have actually made flooding worse in the US, because the water that would normally be absorbed by the ground runs off into sewer and other channels, leading to more water in main river systems. Also, from the wiki link about these photos: they just built it over again?!

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:30:50 -0800

"Nature bats last."

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:38:06 -0800

And cortex: that link is great.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:14:16 -0800

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. The kill us and ruin or lovely roads for their sport.

By: longdaysjourney

longdaysjourney — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:26:15 -0800

It's this sort of thing that makes me realize that once humans are gone, most of the infrastructure that we leave behind will last no time at all. Your House Without You/New York Without Us. For some reason, I love post-apocalyptic stuff like this. Can hardly wait for "I Am Legend" next month.

By: kowalski

kowalski — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:46:32 -0800

This was pretty amazing to watch when it happened. Myself and a friend were looking at an apartment to rent in the building these photos were taken from. We watched this happen from our new balcony. The photos actually miss out on the most sublime part of the situation, when the creek was literally rushing over the as-yet uncollapsed roadway. They also give you no sense of how incredibly long this took to repair. Among all our civilization's onrushing crises, our infrastructure debt shouldn't be underestimated. Maintaining our built environments through the next quarter century is going to be a significant challenge, worsened significantly by the costs of the oil peak and climate change.

By: kuujjuarapik

kuujjuarapik — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:47:14 -0800

While God was fooling around with his celestial SimEarth control panel, he accidentally zapped the hominids and they made sure that they got plastic everywhere.

By: nzero

nzero — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:50:17 -0800

The second video in that Your House Without You link blended oddly well, in a moderately disturbing way, with the Gong song (Magick Mother Invocation) that I had on in the background.

By: Phanx

Phanx — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:24:45 -0800

So the collapse of a small road in Canada shows that water is invincible, huh? Aral Sea? Lake Chad? Or if they're too obscure, the Netherlands? Come on, guys. Water? pwned, dude!!11!!1

By: sudasana

sudasana — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:40:56 -0800

Google map link for the location, hardly a trace to be seen of the flood. Back when I went to nearby York University, I enjoyed walking in this area.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:48:15 -0800

Yeah right, like this was natural. It's Al Qaeda, OPEN YOUR EYES MAN!

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:16:04 -0800

kowalski - how long did it take, from creek-running-over-land to total collapse? A matter of hours or days or what?

By: oneirodynia

oneirodynia — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:16:52 -0800

Some years ago the Dutch government concluded that it could not forever go on strengthening and raising its dykes - and the Dutch water authority is warning that the sea level could rise by three- and-a-half feet this century. Who's PWNED now? (actually a coool article about new floating houses in the Netherlands.)

By: Chuckles

Chuckles — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:27:51 -0800

Needs TorontoFilter tag. I remember lots of media coverage of this at the time, but none of it illustrated the cause/effect as clearly as these pics. I also remember Finch being closed for months (wiki says 3-4 months).

By: George_Spiggott

George_Spiggott — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:50:35 -0800

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period,' just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

-- Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:00:04 -0800

When rivers start taking over like that, the logical thing to do is just give up and let the rivers become your roads. That's what Vienna did anyway. Well, alright. The logical thing to do is MOVE. But failing that, let the rivers have their way. I've read that Vienna is continuing to lose to its own waterways, and attempts to minimize the damage by creating this elaborate underwater system of adaptable blockades to protect the city from the nearby ocean will cost a lot of money and ultimately just barely postpone the inevitable - it's not wise to fool mother nature. Efforts to revitalize and preserve New Orleans will eventually lead to similar defeat. Levies that protect a city which continues to sink as sea levels continue to rise means its inhabitants are living in a bowl. "I had an argument this morning with my Rice Krispies!" - George Carlin

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:24:01 -0800

Vienna, or Venice? Vienna's pretty far from the ocean.

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:51:17 -0800

[NOT VENIST]

By: Flashman

Flashman — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:59:08 -0800

Nature abhors a culvert