Comment Re:physisst speak outside his expertise (Score 1) 501
looks foolish. News at 11.
Bingo!
Among the many problems with this proposal -h is notion of the wall's construction is preposterous. This is very similar to the world's highest concrete arch dams - which require solid rock foundations. A 2000 km structure 300 meters high would have to be built as an earth dam. One plus of this is that don't need billions of tons of concrete, just lots and lots of dirt and rocks, a minus is that the base is ~4 times the width of height so this structure is a kilometer plus thick. The proposal then is essentially to build a continent spanning mountain range.
Using the Tehri Dam in India as a model (260 m tall, 575 m long, cost $1 billion) the cost per kilometer would be on the order of $3 billion per kilometer, or $6 trillion dollars total. The total number of people in the tornado belt is about 70 million, so the cost is roughly $100,000 per person in round numbers. Meanwhile an F5 tornado shelter can be bought for $3000. So at a small fraction of this cost (and environmental impact) every building in the tornado belt could have a shelter able to withstand even the most intense tornados.
The original paper also asserts that this would save money over time by reducing property damage. Annual tornado damage runs $400 million, so it would take 15,000 years for this "savings" to occur, assuming the interest on the investment is zero.