Thanks so much to all the Thames Barrier team: it was an incredible privilege to be able to film there. And thanks also to the production and drone teams: the Barrier is next to London City Airport, so there's a lot of paperwork and approvals required to fly there!
Thanks for doing all the paperwork and complicated back and forth which enables you to bring us these fascinating videos from random interesting places!
I love the protection systems where the question of "what if they're overwhelmed" is entirely overshadowed by "we'll have bigger problems at that point"
Its like earthquakes here in California. Hospitals are built to not fall in a quake, and anything big enough to shake them off their beams would have already leveled everything else into unrecognizable rubble.
I like this kind of projects, because funding conversations goes like this: "but that's too expensive" - government "it'll be more if it fails" - engineers after that no conversations on this topic were heard ever again.
If it was a private company the argument would end with "that's not my problem by them". Just like in Brazil the Vale company operated under state ownership for almost 56 years, after privatized they had at least a dozen "accidents" in 25 years, some VERY catastrophic.
@Mike-lx9qnthe government is evil because it’s ran by people… people who have almost unlimited power and resources to sway people that they aren’t doing anything shady. Seriously, with the thousands of examples of the government doing unethical things, how do you still give them the benefit of the doubt?
Beefy over engineered infrastructure is always my favourite, particularly when it's for public use or protection. There is this immense sense of pride or satisfaction in knowing that there are all these redundancies and backups and that it's okay if one piece fails. Having that flexibility and 'breating room' as you put it is exceptionally cool and a great reason why critical infrastructure should not necessarily be the best value for it's minimum function, but rather should be cost effective for the protection and extra utility you could get out of it.
This applies to most planes, there is an astounding amount of redundancy and systems in place for the passengers safety, there's a reason they cost half a billion dollars each. Always amazed me how they are made and what is behind the scenes.
I'm curious to know about C&C redundancy. How many control rooms do they have? What happens if they all fail --- can engineers raise the barrier manually given physical access? Is there any automation to raise the barriers in the event that the control rooms are offline and the barrier itself physically inaccessible?
Let me tell you, as a German living near the Ahrtal which suffered massive floods in summer of 2021, buildings will not only be unusable for weeks. It will take months to years to rebuild everything. In December, I drove through the nearby area again and it still looks like a warzone. And it was just a river just shy of 20m in width. I do not want to imagine what happens if the river Thames goes over its banks. It's a good thing that these barriers are maintained well and looked after.
German compatriot, I remember watching a documentary years ago that reported a super-flood before the barrier was built in the course of the Thames, and London was only spared because the levees on the river banks downstream broke in a way you see in Reports of the Mississippi, the father of all rivers, would see where expanses of the order of half Germany are submerged.
Astounding. As a water engineering student, I've heard a lot about "this or that should be built so that it can contain a flood of that magnitude", but never "this needs to contain absolutely any and all floods ever". We design fallible structures because, in most cases, it looks like the smarter choice (to avoid overspending on public infrastructure because apparently we don't have the money to get protection for anytime past the next 50 years or so), but I had yet to run into the problem of how to design something that just cannot, will not, fail.
this is why it makes me sick that the UK still pays india billions every year in froeign aid yet india has a space programme ! british money for british people only !
@@girlsdrinkfeck That's peanuts compared to if it were going into *China* - helping the Indians along is a good thing :) Look at what's going on in Aus - the Liberals here sold our land and jobs to china - they let ccp engineers run our mine-sites and civil structures! I'd rather give $5billion to India's space programme, than give it to the catholic church as the libs just did...
Another thing that will make you appreciate the scale is that each of those 61-metre main gates mentioned is the same width as the main span of Tower Bridge - one of the design briefs was that anything that can fit through Tower Bridge must be able to fit through the barrier.
As a Civil Engineer here in the States and a visitor to London a few years back, this is absolutely the correct amount of planning that goes into a project of this magnitude. Thanks, Tom, for your incredible coverage as always, and this is why I love this channel. 🙏🏼
ToyKeeper Absolutely disagree with you on that. On the contrary, the Internet’s infrastructure is designed to be incredibly resilient, almost to the point of being indestructible. It is designed to survive the nuclear strikes of a WWIII after all. When there is a problem, the Internet will route around it. Sure, there are single points of failure in a number of places, but nowhere that would mean any larger part of the internet (and I mean region to country level) would be completely knocked out.
This reminds me of a post-apocalypse series I once read set in London. Apparently the author didn’t know that the Thames would’ve flooded London without the floodgates being operated for multiple years. We’re unaware of so much infrastructure that keeps us alive.
It's might be called "the flood" Immediate edit: it's just called "Flood", it is a movie about a flood ravaging through Britain and it stopped when the characters closed the thames barrier.
That could make such an interesting story about the workers trying to keep them operational during a zombie apocalypse so that survivors in the city could have a chance to escape!
I love "crucial engineering". The people behind it have to go totally overboard with all the failsafes so that in no way can it ever stop working. "Ah yes just in case our backup generator breaks down, install a backup backup generator. You know, just to be safe."
And I bet Japan wishes it hadn’t skipped building the full protection systems of Fukushima (the backup generators were within water reach instead of on the roof and the tsunami barrier was reduced dramatically in size)
And you'll often find each backup is of a different type and model, so that if there's some manufacturing fault (like a specific part fails after 10 years), it doesn't break in all the backups at the same time as well. Having each backup be different in some way or another means hopefully any faults will only affect one backup at a time.
@@catprog Yes. Just designing protection against the largest tidal wave ever seen there would be foolish - they already knew a wave that big could happen. So they designed the protective wall to shrug off a tidal wave twice as big as the largest one ever seen. A lot of people in the English speaking world don't appreciate how completely beyond normal disasters the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami was.
there's very often an unforeseen common point of failure. I know of a place that had 4 generators. All was fine until a chimney fire that served all 4 prevented them from running.
@@EightBall There's no business profits reason to ignore things like that here, it is probable the Titanic sank because of a fire which was ignored while docked because they decided to risk it and not care due to money. But even then it was a business that built it anyway, with the minimum they could get away spending - if it was a similar example there would have been another several failsafes on top costing vast amounts more money to the point it could never have been built. In reality the Titanic almost couldn't be sunk, and would have survived a direct hit rather than trying to turn and would have survived the side hit without the fire - profits, money, and private business is what really got it.
@@wyterabitt2149 Profits, money and private business got you your I-phone matey! And your flight to Spain. And your car and central heated lifestyle. Public money got us the GPO, Mark Drakeford, NCB, and a 6 month wait for a phone connection.
@@andyharpist2938 The other way around matey. Public money funded the invention of internet, touchscreens and radios that make up your iPhone. Private business got us Juicero. And it makes total sense - revolutionary inventions require more risk, investment and collaboration than a private actor can afford.
@@SamSitar Most cultures actually overbuilt things historically, however going through various bands of time happened, when cultures would try to cut corners. In modern times though, things are engineered to have a set lifespan, or maximum load, or number of cycles it can survive, and everything about the design is made to be just enough to fulfill that goal. It ensures an efficient use of resources, but it does mean that almost everything in our modern world is semi-disposable- A trend I'm not happy about, but I understand why it's good for design and the market.
This would be a project I would be *proud* to be a part of. Something that is actually made well, and made to survive any contingency. Incredible work engineers.
which is why the modern trend of cutting corners and under engineering because of short sighted political decisions is bad. When you cut things to the bone it creates both immediate and long term problems.
"...That would probably be fairly career-limiting(!)" I'd like to complement both the engineer for that marvelous example of British understatement and whoever did the closed caption for not being able to resist the exclamation point.
The captioners consistently use (!) to indicate understatements like that and I love it! The captions on Tom Scott videos are always impeccable and it feels really supportive.
@@Numantino312 good question... I've no idea as I'm not british haha. It seems like a good way to show understatement though and I believe heavy understatement itself is considered Very British 😛 Where I'm from we do aggressively informal sarcasm instead, which might be even harder to caption!
@@andyharpist2938 Well, none that we currently have in play, at least. With enough material, expertise, and labor hours, humanity could deploy a network of laser-based detection/targeting satellites to give us as advanced warning as possible of an incoming asteroid. And that targeting information could then be used to guide fields of motorized mirrors into reflecting a concentrated beam of sunlight with a dynamic focal point at the incoming asteroid, burning away much of its mass before it hits atmosphere. Of course, the expense would be hard for any government to justify to their people, considering how unlikely the odds are of such an event happening.
6:53 "If t his was anything else, you could say the redundancy was over-specified, that requirements like this were ridiculous, *but with so much at stake,* the Thames Barrier is a marvel of not just engineering, but of *how you have to build when something cannot be allowed to fail.* And *that* is how the infrastructure keeping our world together should be built.
I would put a redundant barrier using another means of operations in front or behind it just for redundancy. Doesn’t look redundant to e.g. a plane impact yet, and there might be other modes of failure that haven’t been discovered yet.
@@Keneo1 I would be more afraid of a terrorist attack than a plane. Just stuff a cargo ship full with military grade explosives and let it detonate while passing throguh the gate.
Not necessarily. Its okay to build plenty of stuff with a decently long lifespan and just replace it. Sometimes technology in a certain area of infastructure can develop quite a lot and its better to replace the old thing with something new. Rather than make it irreplaceable. Especially if the tech ends up being so old that current day engineers need a specially focused education just to understand it.
@@erikziak1249 Blowing it up has little value unless you time it during a debilitating flood. Also, I'm no expert, but I think the coast guard would be against allowing cargo ships filled with military grade explosives into London.
I suspect that there were many in both the political and engineering communities who, during the budgeting and planning in the 1970's were saying: "You guys are NUTS! This thing is grossly over designed! Irresponsible waste of precious resources! Call in the value engineering experts.. I'll bet they can show you how to take 30% out of this overbuilt project!" But somebody stood firm. And that person's courage and wisdom-plus clearly excellent maintenance-is why this magnificent engineering achievement is going to last 40 years beyond its "best if used before" date.
Tom Scott - "I am almost out of interesting things in England to talk about" also Tom Scott - " heres a fascinating engineering megastructure in London you have never heard of" your channel is amazing
"If the ENTIRE British national power grid fails, it has three separate diesel generators, any one of which could operate the entire thing" My gosh that's a lot of redundancy. I love it.
At that point you have to wonder why they didn’t just built it so it closes automatically if power is lost (i.e. just through gravity or springs or something).
I live in Nigeria. I love Tom so much. His passion for the mundane or the more overlooked story is just so peculiar to him and is just the exact type of thing I’ve been into since I was a kid. From Lagos with love, Thanks Tom
When the barrier was being built, there was deep concern that flood water pushed back down the Thames would be forced up the many rivers and streams that run into the river and flood the areas around where the tributaries joined. Obviously the river banks were raised to fix this issue. One village on the River Darent in Kent, became obsessed by the possibility that push back would flood them and wanted the river banks raised by 10ft, from the Thames to the village. The village, Eynsford, had been flooded in 1968 by a rush of water coming down the valley. It took some persuading to get the local councillors to understand that being 200ft higher than the Thames meant they were very, very safe.
@@andrewjones575 Nothing to do with the Thames Barrier. Rivers flood. Breaking news. Is flooding on the Trent, Derwent etc. the fault of the Thames Barrier also?
@@andrewjones575 That's a truth with modifications. The Abingdon/Culham/Sutton courtney area flooded every year when I was a kid, as it's done for thousands of years - that's why the thames valley is one giant gravel pit.
@@andrewjones575 The Thames barrier doesn't contribute to upstream flooding - it holds water back from going upstream, it doesn't prevent downstream flow (I mean, it probably could, but isn't used for that). The problem is a reflected surge going back downstream and causing flooding of other rivers that empty into the Thames estuary.
I get the feeling Tom walks through a city, sees a door in a building somewhere, down an alley and just thinks. "I'm going to find out what is in there." Then spends the next week in the local library researching it.
The growth of the London skyline in the last 25 years has been incredible. I remember when One Canada Square and the BT Tower were the only skyscrapers in London. Maybe a couple others.
To paraphrase Gene Kranz: The designers just calmly laid out all the possible modes of operation for the Thames Barrier, and failure was not one of them.
I wonder how well that works for contingencies like terrorism attacks. The whole system should have triple redundancy and redundant sites under full military control. :)
As an oceanographer this video brings tears to my eyes because of how beautifully that barrier was planned, to give some perspective on why: in the city I was born in México (Ensenada, Baja California) our pier was constructed in 1960 and its breakwater was designed with a height based on calculations of the biggest wave recorded in the last 5 years when in fact at least you should consider 25 years because in this region we experiment huge storms every 20-25 years and there were enough records in California (which was part of Baja California and México until 1840 or so), but since all federal decisions are taken in the country's capital, which doesn't have a sea near it well, engineers who have never seen the sea took the decision that only 5 years was ok... 4-5 years after it was finished the pier was flooded as well as the city by huge waves. In the 1980s it happened again so the breakwater was increased in height BUT again they failed to account for the highest waves and only took an average of the past 15 years. In the 1990s it was flooded again and its height was again increased AGAIN only taking into consideration 15 years and only an average... three years ago (aprox) it was not only flooded again but the waves were so big that they launched huge rocks the size of a car to the pier, rocks that are used as part of the structure of the breakwater... not to mention that they never accounted for litoral transport and the holes between the rocks of the structure were filled with sand and waves just behaved as it was a sandy beach hahahaha damn :(
I lived in Darwin NT Australia in 1974 and read a report that discussed the complete absence of cyclone protection in buildings. Only three months later I spent four hours clinging to a bare roof as debris swept passed me at over 100 mph. I have the glass in my wrist to this day. I have spent my life being deeply cynical about authorities. No injections and no gene therapy for me.
@@andyharpist2938 Bit of a leap from civil engineering projects dependent on the whims of local authorities to gene therapy where the results are peer reviewed and can be replicated by anyone anywhere in the world with sufficient skill. You're confusing scientific research with infrastructure policy. Personally, I don't trust computer scientists. I don't believe computers exist...
I like hearing about prevention. "What does this make? It makes twelve-figure losses not happen." On a smaller scale, people tend to cut corners on maintenance, I'm glad that at least on this scale it is taken seriously.
I once heard a lecture by a public health manager who described her job thusly: "I am the head of a largely invisible organization in the business of creating abstract non-events."
Honestly, I wish the media / communication people would frame it that way. We should all be striving for a boring world, without wars, disasters, crime, etc...
@@agilemind6241 Let the unfortunate death of 1 person be regarded as much of a tragedy as a single plane crashing. A world where a single accidental death is considered a tragedy is a world worth striving for
Considering there are still remnants of concrete structures the Romans used for ports. If nothing major happens I'd guess a couple of thousand years maybe?
@@bobbysreview Well, honestly, if there wasn't any staff left anymore, I think at that point it wouldn't really matter. Flood damage to an empty, presumably ravaged city, is kinda a moot point.
"Here's something that could be a serious problem. I will now proceed to should that it is being dealt with, how it is being dealt with, and some of the people that are dealing with it. There. Wasn't that nice?"
I think you should have mentioned Tom shows the people dealing with it are serious people. The "we have various modes of operation, because we may not have time to fix/troubleshoot" and "we can do it in various ways to be gentle to the river" *Chef's* *kiss*
This reminds me of Practical Engineering's video on bridges where Grady explains that anyone can build a bridge but only an engineer can build one that just barely stands. It was about not wasting money by making things overly strong. It is interesting to see the opposite of that problem where you need to be super super strong.
4:19 you can see what he is talking about on sailboat in dry dock around and on the propeller too, it's often two grey-ish piece of metal that are very corroded, for those interested...
Meanwhile this year Britain is short of natural gas for heating because we no longer stockpile it. "Cost efficiencies" and privatisation. Additional supplies have had to be bought in at great cost at the (relative) last minute.
@@jimcrelm9478 Sometimes I wonder where the world would be if we hadn't had chernobyl. If we didn't get so scared of nuclear power and instead kept using it and by now maybe had 50-60% of our power for that. Wouldn't have as many energy shortages and we would have put more research into improving reactor efficiency and safety and maybe developed thorium reactors. We would be 20 years further behind on climate change and be able to do something about it.
@@jimcrelm9478 Improperly applied "efficiency" sinks things so often... let's cut costs, definitely won't lead to a spectacular disaster in 30 years, no sir.
".. how you have to build when something cannot be allowed to fail." Meanwhile, Texas setting up their electrical grid: "We don't really get winter here, right?"
That system was scarily close to escaping catastrophe. a frequency drop of less than a second was all that it took to take out their grid. (If I recall correctly)
I'm glad somebody built infrastructure with multiple redundancy and localized power and control in mind. In the 21st century that's starting to seem like rare genius.
As an engineer who works in infrastructure I can promise you that it still happens everywhere, its just the public only notices when something fails and not that 1000s of projects that don't
i actually giggled when i heard, "the plant has 3 backup generators. any of which could run the entire system." i am a HUGE stickler for efficiency and redundancy. this is a level of redundancy that makes me blush.
Such great engineering and design. The huge margin of safety and the fact that multiple unrelated systems would all need to fail at the same time for something to go wrong is awesome.
@@walterwhite4969 if the gate is nuked than the city would be obliterated, back to the statement, if thames barrier fell, there is much bigger problem going on
The UK has mostly demonstrated lately, that it cuts corners in every department, refuses to deal with the consequences of cutting corners, and then there the good old blaming someone else when something fails.
I painted the insides of the barriers a couple of years ago. I had full access to the barriers and the tunnels. Every morning we would have a tool box talk and it would take about 20 to walk from the North side to the South Side in the tunnels under the Thames. I really did love that job, happy days...
If you want an even bigger version of something like this: the Oosterscheldekering and Maeslantkering in the Netherlands are exactly that. Built in the same overkill way and keeping massive amounts of water out. I would imagine these teams talk to each other and share knowledge as well
As opposed to the pump system in new orleans, which was built in the 1800s and runs on an ancient 25 hertz electrical system powered by six aging turbines, one of which broke in 2005 and was never repaired, another was decommissioned because replacement parts couldn't be manufactured any longer. In 2021 all of the remaining four failed before a hurricane, and everything was running on a backup of diesel motors with frequency converters and a backup 60 hz turbine jury-rigged to output 20% of it's power at 25 hz.
This is a really interesting concept of engineering I'd like to learn more of - over-engineering/creating large margins of error/redundancy to almost the point of paranoia. Are there some other similar examples to the Thames that you could take a look at/have taken a look at?
Almost any modern aircraft. They look so complicated to the lay person not because there is a lot there (although there are a lot of systems!) but because all the systems have at least 2 (usually 3 redundancy backups). By law, most systems need copies running at a time (e.g. altimeter/ airspeed etc.), so having 4 copies mean 2 can fail, when the liklihood of even one failing is low. Humans can't fly modern aircraft on their own - no manual override for the entire aircraft! Some of the systems do have manual mode of course. So the electronics and backup system cannot fail. To do so means it falls out of the sky.
Data Centers are built to different tier levels. A tier 3 data center is like this, alternate power sources batteries and gens, Everything is double+ redundant.
"This is a really interesting concept of engineering I'd like to learn more of - over-engineering/creating large margins of error/redundancy to almost the point of paranoia." look like similar level of redundancy as used in aviation (3 to 4)
I used to live near the barrier (on the South of the river) and I remember going to an educational event at it that told us the history of the barrier, and how it worked. One of the truly great engineering marvels that just functions, keeping millions of people safe, and very few people know or care about it. Thanks for the video, Tom!
It's London though, we tend to "care" less about the engineering marvel that makes our life easy everyday as long as its working fine. London sewage system, a marvel of Victorian era construction still chugging along (with some upgrade) compared few other newer system and we hardly care.
Tom, we have the old river control structure over here in Louisiana. It is a relatively small barrier that keeps the Mississippi River from flowing into a new course which would severely disrupt River trade in the United States. It almost did fail in the 90s or 80s (I forgot off the top of my head.). So yes, props to proper British engineering and come to Louisiana if you want to learn more about the Old River control structure or the Bonnet Caree spillway.
@@leofielding6786 it is north of Baton Rouge on the Mississippi River so it is really not affected by hurricanes. The control structure is affected by spring floods.
Near failure 1973. It would be apocalyptic. 60% of US grain exports would stop. 4 of the country's top 15 ports would go dry. $600M of economic loss every day. Not to mention oil/gas pipelines across the Atchafalaya that would be torn out.
Thanks for the shout out for "proper British engineering." I'm very proud to be British as we created the modern world we live in. I love British engineering, as everything's over engineered 👍🏻 OVER engineering something is the best type of engineering. It's just a shame the rest of the doesn't see it that way 🤨
I can definitely appreciate this video. There have been times where I have been mocked as the Old School Old Timer or Grandpa Worrywart for my insistence on redundancy and fail-safe thinking. However, there have been several instances where my stubbornness has ended up saving the day when that "one-chance-in-a-thousand" occurrence happened.
Anytime you get mocked for that, I'd suggest bringing up the Windscale fire. The project lead, John Cockcroft, insisted on installing filters that were seen as unnecessary and wasteful... and when disaster struck, those filters trapped 95% of the radioactive dust, preventing a substantial part of the UK from becoming a nuclear wasteland. Worrywart building saves lives.
One chance in a thousand is an event that is almost certain to occur. One chance is a quadrillion events are occurring every second somewhere in the universe. So such a high chance as one in a thousand is a sure thing.
@@pauld6967 While I do enjoy Python and I agree that if you are feeling down then that is good advice - it is terrible advice for governments or those building infrastructure. They need to be the exact opposite and expect the worst and plan for it.
The engineers behind this should be applauded as national heroes. It's very easy to take shortcuts here and there to lower spending and time on such massive projects and make your plan look good. But those guys build in additional safety measures which as so good in fact that they nearly doubled the estimated life span of the barrier. Incredible foresight and planning.
"They didn't cut corners then" I felt that, a local bridge that was opened in 1900 was built so solid that it held 115 years, until 2016, way longer then planned, where it got replaced by a completely new bridge that was so "cut down" during planning that they used 500 tons less steel than needed, which obviously caused massive problems while building it. And I think no one expects that new "French designer bridge" to hold anywhwere near as long as the old one, even with repairs.
It’s the same reason we lost ships in the Falklands War. The destroyers had been so nickel & dimed they didn’t have defence systems that could actually deal with Exocets and low-flying fast attack aircraft at the same time.
I heard that this was because in the past, engineering wasn't as precise as it is now, so everything was over-engineered to make sure it could hold, now, with more precision, they can build something to last exactly only 50 years
@@Ranstone Not sure about the UK, but where I live around the seventies. The oil crisis completely changed our perspective on building more than needed.
@@pleasant_asymmetry True, that's also a big part of that. I don't have the exact numbers but one positive side effect of that was that the bridge could hold more then double the weight it was originally planned & built for because they added such large amounts of error-margins, which came in very handy with newer trains/traffic.
I get the feeling that the most common reasons for catastrophic failures often involve both systemic issues and human error. I'd be interested to more hear about the decision making elements as well as the engineering
It’s cool how much electrical physics work for fluid dynamics. That reflective wave being akin to transmission wave impedance mismatch where a reflecting standing wave will generate for power not transferred properly to load
Tom: I would be grateful for suggestions, by now I covered all the obvious ones. Also Tom: Today I am going to cover this massive bit of infrastructure in the middle of London. :-)
Watched a 7 minute and 28 seconds video, from Tom Scott and spent the next two and a half hours trawling through information on The Thames Barrier; engineering of flood defences, worldwide -The Dutch are amazing! - and have enjoyed all 2 hours, 37 minutes and 28 seconds of it! Time for actual food, as opposed to food for thought. My tummy is rumbling.
Me, a Dutch person: *quickly googles the Thames Barrier* In the wikipedia listing stating whom it was built by: Hollandsche Beton Maatschappij "you're goddamn right"
I wish you do a same thing in our country. I just don't know what will be the public opinion because in Philippines, anything can be criticized for the littlest reason.
Nothing like a new Tom Scott video to start the week of right. That drone shot at 0:30 is great! (all the drone shots in this video are but this one especially)
This is an incredible civil engineering work, an amazing part of London's infrastructure. Thanks, Tom, for taking us deep into its works. Thanks to the Environment Agency.
I've done some "cannot be allowed to fail" engineering on the software side (a dead man's handle on a remote trading platform, FWIW). It's funny the things you get paranoid about in extreme situations. Things like DNS are suddenly suspect and out to get you; you never know if you'll need to reach out to a remote server at just the wrong moment. We used an automated deployment tool to hard-code a handful of IP addresses in each server's config.
@@vasiovasio it was a mapping in /etc/hosts, which meant for the handful of servers we needed this for we could statically allocate specific IP addresses and configure everything from Puppet. It worked really well, and all the questions around caching of DNS, time-to-live, etc, just disappeared.
The care that would need to go into the planning of this makes me envious. I wish I could get even a fraction of that in my day job as a business analyst.
This is what happens when engineers get financial freedom to go overboard. We always want to overkill, but a part of "normal" engineering is to bring it home, as cheap as possible while still living up to all the needs. When the needs are "no matter what you design, it MAY not fail, here is a bottomless bag of money, go crazy!" then this is what you get. Love it.
I love both how similar and how different this is, compared to the Deltaworks (especially the Oosterscheldekering). They have mostly the same function, the same idea of redundancy, and were both build because of the Watersnoodramp (1953 North Sea flood), but they are completely different in design. The Oosterscheldekering features plates which are moved vertically down with hydraulic power, which has the advantage that they can be closed using only gravity when needed, and the hydraulics can not only pull but also push to dig the plates into the ground if they feel the plates need yet more power because of a coming superflood. Meanwhile this has rotating parts organised in a completely different way. I wonder which one is better, although that is of course an ambiguous question. I do know that more recent Dutch designs also using rotating parts, so that might give an indication, but it may also just depend on the width of whatever water you are closing.
I was certainly wondering about that during the video, why they didn't have a purely gravity based mechanism to close the gates in the event of a power failure.
@@virtualcircuit Ah right, since it rotates down it trades the height restriction for a (much less significant) depth restriction. That seems like good reason.
I remember being on HMS Ocean prior to the London Olympics in 2012. One of the Tugs made an error and we were barely inches from hitting the barrier. The only time I heard the brace command as we expected to hit the barrier.
What about the human element? Many an impregnable castle existed in ancient times, and many great walls were built. They weren't breached by siege engines, catapualts or armies, but by bribing those inside to open the gates. I'd like to know about the security features that prevent someone unauthorised from controlling it and putting it to nefarious use?
There aren't many people apart from terrorists who would try to flood London. Too many countries and people stand to lose too much. The security inside the barrier is like Fort Knox if that's what you're wondering
Always nice to see such an incredible safety structure, great engineering for its time. Here in NL we've got loads of waterways that need protecting, some of them are like this, others also function as a motorway/highway bridge, they can be incredible to travel on. Any such dual purpose water blocking structures over in the UK? Would be nice to see!
I have been in the documentation center of the Thames Barrier. And found out it was us, the Dutch who designed it. We have similar barriers here, like the Oosterschelde keering in the south west of our country. It was constructed in the 1980's and uses vertical gates.
It's well known that if you want to control massive amounts of water, you get the Dutch to do it - they've been doing it for centuries longer than anyone else!
Ah, classic British overkill of redundancy! 3 back up generators where each one can do the job! Not sure if there is a video in it for Tom, but this was the economic problem with the British AGCR Nuclear reactors - they were about 3 times as expensive as alternate designs if I recall correctly so most people went with alternatives, even though the AGCR design was safer. There is maybe an interesting question about what can and should be considered affordable, especially when it comes to state spending
Very true, I feel there in a perfect corruption-free system one could actually calculate it out: cost now vs lifespan vs cost later to replace/repair considering inflations & economic growth....
What I most remember of January 1976 working on the Thames Barrier as a commercial diver for Shiers Diving Contracts was the fact that it was a working river with cranes, vessels and Thames Watermen on their boats.
The Thames Barrier, and other flood control measure Mega Projects have always fascinated me. Tom, you are truly going places when a super major national thing like the Barrier are covered in your videos. I am super happy for your success in this and can't wait for more. On another note I am eagerly awaiting the next series of Citation Needed.
I was at Gloucester building college when they where building these , we had a day visiting the barriers to see how they where built . We where allowed inside one of them when they where bottoming it out with a 15tonne 360 , it looked like a toy in a cathedral. Amazing
One of your best quality videos yet I reckon, great job Tom. Also as others have said, Steve the engineering manager was fantastic and did a great job of explaining. Love it.
6:18 Great shot of a gate at low tide to see the U/W portion. Just an incredible number of considerations. Really fascinating since I did not even know this was a thing. I cannot believe how many interesting places/systems you find.
Thanks so much to all the Thames Barrier team: it was an incredible privilege to be able to film there. And thanks also to the production and drone teams: the Barrier is next to London City Airport, so there's a lot of paperwork and approvals required to fly there!
And thank you for a great video as always!
GREAT VIDEO
Thanks for doing all the paperwork and complicated back and forth which enables you to bring us these fascinating videos from random interesting places!
Thanks indeed!
Drone paperwork was worth it! It didn't all come together for me until I saw the gates closing in the final sped-up shot.
I love the protection systems where the question of "what if they're overwhelmed" is entirely overshadowed by "we'll have bigger problems at that point"
It's scarily logical
The water would be going around the barrier just as easily as over it at that point.
@@4TheRecord Precisely. If it failed, the city was already underwater from other sources than just the inrush from the Thames.
The same energy as asking the bomb defusal guy "how are you so calm when defusing bombs?"
"Either I get it right, or it's not my problem anymore"
Its like earthquakes here in California. Hospitals are built to not fall in a quake, and anything big enough to shake them off their beams would have already leveled everything else into unrecognizable rubble.
It would be great to make a series about this topic: systems that are not allowed to fail.
Awesome idea
Would be very interesting!
Normally I would say “power grids”, but Texas screwed us over yet again with that one.
Would love a series like this!!!
...which failed.
The amount of waterway-control systems in parts of northern Europe that are essential to a city's survival is mind-boggling.
I uploaded my face reveal.
And to think, it's all controlled by a single Raspberry Pi CM4 😀
We like to beat nature into submission.
That’s why ocean level rising is so dangerous
@@Arkantos117 we have to, or many people would die
I like this kind of projects, because funding conversations goes like this:
"but that's too expensive" - government
"it'll be more if it fails" - engineers
after that no conversations on this topic were heard ever again.
If it was a private company the argument would end with "that's not my problem by them".
Just like in Brazil the Vale company operated under state ownership for almost 56 years, after privatized they had at least a dozen "accidents" in 25 years, some VERY catastrophic.
As the saying goes, "If you think safety is expensive, try an accident"!
@@douglhorvath that’s wrong
climate change:
@Mike-lx9qnthe government is evil because it’s ran by people… people who have almost unlimited power and resources to sway people that they aren’t doing anything shady. Seriously, with the thousands of examples of the government doing unethical things, how do you still give them the benefit of the doubt?
That engineer could have his own TH-cam channel. He’s so easy to understand and engaging, I see why Tom gave him so much airtime
🙌
I'd subscribe
Yes, and his folksy charm belies a very deep technical understanding of the subject.
I've never seen anyone describe water physics in such a smooth and casually understandable manner. Very pleasant to listen to
Fck... I wanted to retweet this. I am mixing up genres of social media. It's late night. I better go to sleep.
I love how this channel brings attention to super interesting things that would never reach the average TH-cam users otherwise
Well said!
Dude I love your videos!
i agree! 1000% correct
Exactly! Thanks to this, I have now learned there's a river called Thames.
Yee
Beefy over engineered infrastructure is always my favourite, particularly when it's for public use or protection. There is this immense sense of pride or satisfaction in knowing that there are all these redundancies and backups and that it's okay if one piece fails. Having that flexibility and 'breating room' as you put it is exceptionally cool and a great reason why critical infrastructure should not necessarily be the best value for it's minimum function, but rather should be cost effective for the protection and extra utility you could get out of it.
Well said :))
This applies to most planes, there is an astounding amount of redundancy and systems in place for the passengers safety, there's a reason they cost half a billion dollars each.
Always amazed me how they are made and what is behind the scenes.
this is 10000% true
I'm curious to know about C&C redundancy. How many control rooms do they have? What happens if they all fail --- can engineers raise the barrier manually given physical access? Is there any automation to raise the barriers in the event that the control rooms are offline and the barrier itself physically inaccessible?
Yesss
Let me tell you, as a German living near the Ahrtal which suffered massive floods in summer of 2021, buildings will not only be unusable for weeks. It will take months to years to rebuild everything. In December, I drove through the nearby area again and it still looks like a warzone. And it was just a river just shy of 20m in width. I do not want to imagine what happens if the river Thames goes over its banks. It's a good thing that these barriers are maintained well and looked after.
I hope you and your loved ones are allright, love from lower saxony :)
Stolberg sieht auch noch aus wie Kriegsgebiet... Echt schlimm das
There are no banks, tidal walls both sides of the river were also built 20 miles all the way down to the estuary.
@@jamesmorris3123 those walls are the banks...
German compatriot,
I remember watching a documentary years ago that reported a super-flood before the barrier was built in the course of the Thames, and London was only spared because the levees on the river banks downstream broke in a way you see in Reports of the Mississippi, the father of all rivers, would see where expanses of the order of half Germany are submerged.
Astounding. As a water engineering student, I've heard a lot about "this or that should be built so that it can contain a flood of that magnitude", but never "this needs to contain absolutely any and all floods ever". We design fallible structures because, in most cases, it looks like the smarter choice (to avoid overspending on public infrastructure because apparently we don't have the money to get protection for anytime past the next 50 years or so), but I had yet to run into the problem of how to design something that just cannot, will not, fail.
this is why it makes me sick that the UK still pays india billions every year in froeign aid yet india has a space programme ! british money for british people only !
@@girlsdrinkfeck hahahha then how about Indian jewels out of the queens crown and back in the hands of India, then?
This was built at a good time. Now, it would be shipped off and cost billions more and take longer to build.
@@girlsdrinkfeck That's peanuts compared to if it were going into *China* - helping the Indians along is a good thing :)
Look at what's going on in Aus - the Liberals here sold our land and jobs to china - they let ccp engineers run our mine-sites and civil structures!
I'd rather give $5billion to India's space programme, than give it to the catholic church as the libs just did...
@@girlsdrinkfeck we probably should have thought of that before enslaving and colonising them
Those panning shots are so beautiful. Especially that first shot, really gives you a sense of scale for these massive constructs.
Right?? that was amazing
Another thing that will make you appreciate the scale is that each of those 61-metre main gates mentioned is the same width as the main span of Tower Bridge - one of the design briefs was that anything that can fit through Tower Bridge must be able to fit through the barrier.
As a Civil Engineer here in the States and a visitor to London a few years back, this is absolutely the correct amount of planning that goes into a project of this magnitude. Thanks, Tom, for your incredible coverage as always, and this is why I love this channel. 🙏🏼
Visit the Delta Works in the Netherlands!
If only the rest of our societal infrastructure was built this way! In particular, internet infrastructure is embarrassingly fragile. :(
could use a few more redundancies
ToyKeeper Absolutely disagree with you on that. On the contrary, the Internet’s infrastructure is designed to be incredibly resilient, almost to the point of being indestructible. It is designed to survive the nuclear strikes of a WWIII after all. When there is a problem, the Internet will route around it. Sure, there are single points of failure in a number of places, but nowhere that would mean any larger part of the internet (and I mean region to country level) would be completely knocked out.
Are there any similar structures in the USA currently or any planned/under construction ?
This reminds me of a post-apocalypse series I once read set in London. Apparently the author didn’t know that the Thames would’ve flooded London without the floodgates being operated for multiple years. We’re unaware of so much infrastructure that keeps us alive.
To be fair to the author, it was probably still working fine on its own on automatic controls and independent power.
It's might be called "the flood"
Immediate edit: it's just called "Flood", it is a movie about a flood ravaging through Britain and it stopped when the characters closed the thames barrier.
City next to me flooded water reached the roof from the gate failing
That could make such an interesting story about the workers trying to keep them operational during a zombie apocalypse so that survivors in the city could have a chance to escape!
London wouldn't flood unless it was hit by a particularly bad storm. The city survived for thousands of years before this barrier was built.
I love "crucial engineering". The people behind it have to go totally overboard with all the failsafes so that in no way can it ever stop working.
"Ah yes just in case our backup generator breaks down, install a backup backup generator. You know, just to be safe."
And I bet Japan wishes it hadn’t skipped building the full protection systems of Fukushima (the backup generators were within water reach instead of on the roof and the tsunami barrier was reduced dramatically in size)
And you'll often find each backup is of a different type and model, so that if there's some manufacturing fault (like a specific part fails after 10 years), it doesn't break in all the backups at the same time as well. Having each backup be different in some way or another means hopefully any faults will only affect one backup at a time.
@@goldenhate6649 From what I heard the barrier was high enough to stop the tsunami. The ground underneath however subsided and the wall was now lower.
@@catprog Yes. Just designing protection against the largest tidal wave ever seen there would be foolish - they already knew a wave that big could happen. So they designed the protective wall to shrug off a tidal wave twice as big as the largest one ever seen. A lot of people in the English speaking world don't appreciate how completely beyond normal disasters the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami was.
there's very often an unforeseen common point of failure. I know of a place that had 4 generators. All was fine until a chimney fire that served all 4 prevented them from running.
"This mechanism will never ever fail. And even if it does, it won't."
"We believe the boat is unsinkable.” By the time the White Star Line Vice President spoke those words the Titanic was at the bottom of the ocean...
@@EightBall There's no business profits reason to ignore things like that here, it is probable the Titanic sank because of a fire which was ignored while docked because they decided to risk it and not care due to money.
But even then it was a business that built it anyway, with the minimum they could get away spending - if it was a similar example there would have been another several failsafes on top costing vast amounts more money to the point it could never have been built.
In reality the Titanic almost couldn't be sunk, and would have survived a direct hit rather than trying to turn and would have survived the side hit without the fire - profits, money, and private business is what really got it.
@@wyterabitt2149 Profits, money and private business got you your I-phone matey! And your flight to Spain. And your car and central heated lifestyle. Public money got us the GPO, Mark Drakeford, NCB, and a 6 month wait for a phone connection.
@@andyharpist2938 The other way around matey. Public money funded the invention of internet, touchscreens and radios that make up your iPhone. Private business got us Juicero. And it makes total sense - revolutionary inventions require more risk, investment and collaboration than a private actor can afford.
@@EightBall But it was a ship, not a boat.
Getting "The city must survive" vibes for those redundancy and plan for ship impacts
nice how they british over build like that.
@@SamSitar Most cultures actually overbuilt things historically, however going through various bands of time happened, when cultures would try to cut corners.
In modern times though, things are engineered to have a set lifespan, or maximum load, or number of cycles it can survive, and everything about the design is made to be just enough to fulfill that goal. It ensures an efficient use of resources, but it does mean that almost everything in our modern world is semi-disposable- A trend I'm not happy about, but I understand why it's good for design and the market.
@@weeveferrelaine6973 Um AcTuAlLy
@@celestialceilagor3802 ?
@@shiftoff9936 someone said something smart and oppinionated and the answering person doesn't like thinking.
This would be a project I would be *proud* to be a part of. Something that is actually made well, and made to survive any contingency. Incredible work engineers.
So many dams and building?...
One single left hand can make it fail in a day
"They didn't cut corners then and that's given us breathing space now"
Applies to a lot of aspects in life really
As does the opposite: Places where corners are cut in the past gives problems now!
which is why the modern trend of cutting corners and under engineering because of short sighted political decisions is bad.
When you cut things to the bone it creates both immediate and long term problems.
@@mytimetravellingdog financial*
Ftfy
Really makes you worry about all the cost-cutting and corner-cutting seen nowadays in practically everything, doesn't it?
@@mikehunt3420 It's both political and financial (often politically financial)
Fantastically important projects and systems like this are what inspired me to pursue engineering professionally. Fascinating stuff!
Yay BlueJay! I love your vids, it has filled the Sam O Nella hole in my heart!
Its also one of the most popular degrees for future terrorists too.
Hi BlueJay! Will you do engineering videos as well as history as well then?
How did you feel when you learned 99% of an engineer's job is not to make something last but rather to make it barely stand in order to cut costs?
@@roboticbrain2027 that's just a pessimistic view. How would you feel to needlessly waste resources on something when they can be utilised elsewhere?
"...That would probably be fairly career-limiting(!)" I'd like to complement both the engineer for that marvelous example of British understatement and whoever did the closed caption for not being able to resist the exclamation point.
human reources: "recently, there have been some concerns about your on-the-job performance; please sign your action plan"
The captioners consistently use (!) to indicate understatements like that and I love it! The captions on Tom Scott videos are always impeccable and it feels really supportive.
@@larksie is the (!) a british thing?
@@Numantino312 good question... I've no idea as I'm not british haha. It seems like a good way to show understatement though and I believe heavy understatement itself is considered Very British 😛 Where I'm from we do aggressively informal sarcasm instead, which might be even harder to caption!
@@Numantino312 Yes.
0:32 this is a quality shot Tom - really insane at the level of cinematics available to be able to do this these days.
I absolutely love these types of CANNOT fail systems and I think they really show what humanity is truly capable of.
When humans work to solve a problem we solve it
IF you liked that sort of thing, go look at China.
@@antediluvianatheist5262 ah the tofu dreg engineering 🤣
Key word is "when"
Should be "if" because more people rather hurting eachother in this current age
The main lesson of the Thames Barrier is this: When you're working against nature, there's no such thing as "over-engineered."
Ummmmm and the asteroid belt, Lunay?
@@andyharpist2938 Does the asteroid belt exist outside of nature?
@@CarlGorn my point was that at any moment we could all be wiped out by cosmic nature and no amount of engineering would work against that
@@andyharpist2938 Well, none that we currently have in play, at least. With enough material, expertise, and labor hours, humanity could deploy a network of laser-based detection/targeting satellites to give us as advanced warning as possible of an incoming asteroid. And that targeting information could then be used to guide fields of motorized mirrors into reflecting a concentrated beam of sunlight with a dynamic focal point at the incoming asteroid, burning away much of its mass before it hits atmosphere.
Of course, the expense would be hard for any government to justify to their people, considering how unlikely the odds are of such an event happening.
@@CarlGorn I see. Sort of like converting one big rock into a trillion house-sized missiles
6:53 "If t his was anything else, you could say the redundancy was over-specified, that requirements like this were ridiculous, *but with so much at stake,* the Thames Barrier is a marvel of not just engineering, but of *how you have to build when something cannot be allowed to fail.*
And *that* is how the infrastructure keeping our world together should be built.
And that is something you might not have known
I would put a redundant barrier using another means of operations in front or behind it just for redundancy.
Doesn’t look redundant to e.g. a plane impact yet, and there might be other modes of failure that haven’t been discovered yet.
@@Keneo1 I would be more afraid of a terrorist attack than a plane. Just stuff a cargo ship full with military grade explosives and let it detonate while passing throguh the gate.
Not necessarily. Its okay to build plenty of stuff with a decently long lifespan and just replace it. Sometimes technology in a certain area of infastructure can develop quite a lot and its better to replace the old thing with something new. Rather than make it irreplaceable. Especially if the tech ends up being so old that current day engineers need a specially focused education just to understand it.
@@erikziak1249 Blowing it up has little value unless you time it during a debilitating flood. Also, I'm no expert, but I think the coast guard would be against allowing cargo ships filled with military grade explosives into London.
I suspect that there were many in both the political and engineering communities who, during the budgeting and planning in the 1970's were saying: "You guys are NUTS! This thing is grossly over designed! Irresponsible waste of precious resources! Call in the value engineering experts.. I'll bet they can show you how to take 30% out of this overbuilt project!" But somebody stood firm. And that person's courage and wisdom-plus clearly excellent maintenance-is why this magnificent engineering achievement is going to last 40 years beyond its "best if used before" date.
Those were the days when a PLAN was made by people with a real brain, not an artificial one.😏
This was a really high quality video Tom. Great job.
yh
Hi cubfan
Yo Cub! Didn't expect to see you here good sir.
cub always found in the best places
Oh hey cub!
Tom Scott - "I am almost out of interesting things in England to talk about"
also Tom Scott - " heres a fascinating engineering megastructure in London you have never heard of"
your channel is amazing
KERBIN
My grandfather was on the committee of people that design it, cool to see that all these years later, his work is still working, rip!
I am always in awe of Civil Engineers, especially those that design things that absolutely must not fail.
My bottom is sore.
@@user-zp7sf8dh3z okay
Never forget that there is only 2mm of aluminium between you and death on an airplane.
@@andyharpist2938 yes let's add more weight to a craft that needs to stay airborne
@@user-zp7sf8dh3z seems legit
"If the ENTIRE British national power grid fails, it has three separate diesel generators, any one of which could operate the entire thing"
My gosh that's a lot of redundancy. I love it.
It's one of the great feats of British engineering which, because it *works* is never really spoken about.
And if the 3 generators also fail, this warehouse of hamsters on wheels is set in motion...
@@LazyMcCrazy Or a hand crank XD
@@LazyMcCrazy Nah they got that giant water battery then.
At that point you have to wonder why they didn’t just built it so it closes automatically if power is lost (i.e. just through gravity or springs or something).
I live in Nigeria. I love Tom so much. His passion for the mundane or the more overlooked story is just so peculiar to him and is just the exact type of thing I’ve been into since I was a kid.
From Lagos with love, Thanks Tom
how many princes you have there ? I got at least few mails from them xD
@@Menelutorex what a small minded, borderline racially insensitive response to someone simply sharing his gratitude - pleb.
@@Menelutorex 😐😐😐
I worked on the barrier as a site engineer in 1977 & 1978…….this video brought back some happy memories!
Did you work with the Armfield engineers ???
When the barrier was being built, there was deep concern that flood water pushed back down the Thames would be forced up the many rivers and streams that run into the river and flood the areas around where the tributaries joined. Obviously the river banks were raised to fix this issue. One village on the River Darent in Kent, became obsessed by the possibility that push back would flood them and wanted the river banks raised by 10ft, from the Thames to the village. The village, Eynsford, had been flooded in 1968 by a rush of water coming down the valley. It took some persuading to get the local councillors to understand that being 200ft higher than the Thames meant they were very, very safe.
Since the Thames Barrier was put in, the Thames has burst its banks in Surrey, Berkshire & Oxfordshire.
@@andrewjones575 Nothing to do with the Thames Barrier. Rivers flood. Breaking news. Is flooding on the Trent, Derwent etc. the fault of the Thames Barrier also?
@@andrewjones575 That's a truth with modifications.
The Abingdon/Culham/Sutton courtney area flooded every year when I was a kid, as it's done for thousands of years - that's why the thames valley is one giant gravel pit.
@@andrewjones575 The Thames barrier doesn't contribute to upstream flooding - it holds water back from going upstream, it doesn't prevent downstream flow (I mean, it probably could, but isn't used for that). The problem is a reflected surge going back downstream and causing flooding of other rivers that empty into the Thames estuary.
@@XpOzgamingx I didn't mean to imply that. What I mean is that the upstream flooding is still as frequent.
I get the feeling Tom walks through a city, sees a door in a building somewhere, down an alley and just thinks. "I'm going to find out what is in there." Then spends the next week in the local library researching it.
I think you’re probably spot on!
You're likely right- and London in particular has a lot of winding alleys, funky doorways and forgotten tunnels, so plenty more content to come.
And/or talking to people who own or know about that door
maybe so but the thames barrier is quite large and hard to miss anywhere east of the O2
@@nevreiha Tell that to "The Sand Kite"
Steve, the guy from the Environment Agency, did such a great job here of explaining how the barrier works. Really engaging presenting style from him!
The growth of the London skyline in the last 25 years has been incredible. I remember when One Canada Square and the BT Tower were the only skyscrapers in London. Maybe a couple others.
To paraphrase Gene Kranz: The designers just calmly laid out all the possible modes of operation for the Thames Barrier, and failure was not one of them.
Although they hadn't really fleshed out the 'Lifeboat' mode.
I wonder how well that works for contingencies like terrorism attacks. The whole system should have triple redundancy and redundant sites under full military control. :)
for real dude. entirely right dude
To quote Ed Harris: Failure is not an option.
@@Jump-n-smash My guess is they left a lot of things out in the video
Steve explained that so clearly and perfectly... Great engineering communication
Yes. I was struck by that too.
“The PM was in his wellies in the House of Commons, we say that’s fairly career limiting” true British understatement
Steve was excellent in this video. He was so engaging and knowledgeable without the information going over the heads of non-engineers.
As an oceanographer this video brings tears to my eyes because of how beautifully that barrier was planned, to give some perspective on why: in the city I was born in México (Ensenada, Baja California) our pier was constructed in 1960 and its breakwater was designed with a height based on calculations of the biggest wave recorded in the last 5 years when in fact at least you should consider 25 years because in this region we experiment huge storms every 20-25 years and there were enough records in California (which was part of Baja California and México until 1840 or so), but since all federal decisions are taken in the country's capital, which doesn't have a sea near it well, engineers who have never seen the sea took the decision that only 5 years was ok... 4-5 years after it was finished the pier was flooded as well as the city by huge waves. In the 1980s it happened again so the breakwater was increased in height BUT again they failed to account for the highest waves and only took an average of the past 15 years. In the 1990s it was flooded again and its height was again increased AGAIN only taking into consideration 15 years and only an average... three years ago (aprox) it was not only flooded again but the waves were so big that they launched huge rocks the size of a car to the pier, rocks that are used as part of the structure of the breakwater... not to mention that they never accounted for litoral transport and the holes between the rocks of the structure were filled with sand and waves just behaved as it was a sandy beach hahahaha damn :(
in the netherlands we make stuff to withstand the biggest storms that happen once every 10000 years
I lived in Darwin NT Australia in 1974 and read a report that discussed the complete absence of cyclone protection in buildings. Only three months later I spent four hours clinging to a bare roof as debris swept passed me at over 100 mph. I have the glass in my wrist to this day. I have spent my life being deeply cynical about authorities. No injections and no gene therapy for me.
@@andyharpist2938 Bit of a leap from civil engineering projects dependent on the whims of local authorities to gene therapy where the results are peer reviewed and can be replicated by anyone anywhere in the world with sufficient skill. You're confusing scientific research with infrastructure policy. Personally, I don't trust computer scientists. I don't believe computers exist...
@@garysheppard4028 Peer reviewed in Wuhan?
@@andyharpist2938 Nothing if not predictable I guess...
Nothing better than a Tom Scott video to help you keep procrastinating!
You reminded me that I had an exam 🥱🥱🥱🥱😶😶😶
aah sweet sweet procrastinating by watching some facts that im never gonna remember
I uploaded my face reveal.
You aren't allowed to attack me like that
Talking about not being allowed to fail...
I like hearing about prevention. "What does this make? It makes twelve-figure losses not happen." On a smaller scale, people tend to cut corners on maintenance, I'm glad that at least on this scale it is taken seriously.
you have to when the entire British economy is fully reliant on it
I once heard a lecture by a public health manager who described her job thusly: "I am the head of a largely invisible organization in the business of creating abstract non-events."
Honestly, I wish the media / communication people would frame it that way. We should all be striving for a boring world, without wars, disasters, crime, etc...
99% of society's infrastructure relies on things that are completely invisible.
@@agilemind6241 Let the unfortunate death of 1 person be regarded as much of a tragedy as a single plane crashing. A world where a single accidental death is considered a tragedy is a world worth striving for
In an apocalyptic setting, I always wondered how long these structures would last without human intervention.
Considering there are still remnants of concrete structures the Romans used for ports. If nothing major happens I'd guess a couple of thousand years maybe?
@@matthewmac5787 i think they mean if the structures weren’t run by staff what would happen as a result as it’s clearly reliant on staff to operate
@@bobbysreview Well, honestly, if there wasn't any staff left anymore, I think at that point it wouldn't really matter. Flood damage to an empty, presumably ravaged city, is kinda a moot point.
@@KrK007 London used to be a swamp. It will just become a swamp again
@@waterzap99 Ok ''Swamp Thing''.
Proud to say vital replacement equipment is still provided by an original British manufacturer (me!), some 45 years after the original order.
I think you mean its made in china and assembled there. Nothing is actually made anywhere but china.
Good job mate
cool
Fabricated in your own shed next to a pigeon coup I take it?
Sshhh, dont let the secret out bruh, gonna outsource yourself
This may be my favorite kind of Tom Scott video. “Here’s a serious problem, and here are the people and systems that have got it covered.”
"Here's something that could be a serious problem. I will now proceed to should that it is being dealt with, how it is being dealt with, and some of the people that are dealing with it.
There. Wasn't that nice?"
I think you should have mentioned Tom shows the people dealing with it are serious people. The "we have various modes of operation, because we may not have time to fix/troubleshoot" and "we can do it in various ways to be gentle to the river" *Chef's* *kiss*
This reminds me of Practical Engineering's video on bridges where Grady explains that anyone can build a bridge but only an engineer can build one that just barely stands. It was about not wasting money by making things overly strong. It is interesting to see the opposite of that problem where you need to be super super strong.
4:19 you can see what he is talking about on sailboat in dry dock around and on the propeller too, it's often two grey-ish piece of metal that are very corroded, for those interested...
My Grandad was one of the engineers who built it. He always was one for doing a job properly.
o7
Meanwhile this year Britain is short of natural gas for heating because we no longer stockpile it. "Cost efficiencies" and privatisation. Additional supplies have had to be bought in at great cost at the (relative) last minute.
@@jimcrelm9478 Sometimes I wonder where the world would be if we hadn't had chernobyl. If we didn't get so scared of nuclear power and instead kept using it and by now maybe had 50-60% of our power for that. Wouldn't have as many energy shortages and we would have put more research into improving reactor efficiency and safety and maybe developed thorium reactors. We would be 20 years further behind on climate change and be able to do something about it.
My dad too!
@@jimcrelm9478 Improperly applied "efficiency" sinks things so often... let's cut costs, definitely won't lead to a spectacular disaster in 30 years, no sir.
".. how you have to build when something cannot be allowed to fail."
Meanwhile, Texas setting up their electrical grid: "We don't really get winter here, right?"
At least it can deal with summer heat! >.>
Haha
That system was scarily close to escaping catastrophe. a frequency drop of less than a second was all that it took to take out their grid. (If I recall correctly)
Meanwhile California: Largest economy in America has regularly scheduled loadshedding!
Why they made it entirely independent of the rest of the country's grid is beyond me. Americans...
I'm glad somebody built infrastructure with multiple redundancy and localized power and control in mind. In the 21st century that's starting to seem like rare genius.
It was built in 1984, so this century doesn't really come into it...
@@adaddinsane Started in '74 and finished in '84
As an engineer who works in infrastructure I can promise you that it still happens everywhere, its just the public only notices when something fails and not that 1000s of projects that don't
i actually giggled when i heard, "the plant has 3 backup generators. any of which could run the entire system." i am a HUGE stickler for efficiency and redundancy. this is a level of redundancy that makes me blush.
Such great engineering and design. The huge margin of safety and the fact that multiple unrelated systems would all need to fail at the same time for something to go wrong is awesome.
And those system backups would also need to fail
When something cannot be allowed to fail. Wow, it's chilling to think about just how important those barriers are.
nuke the gates
@@walterwhite4969 if the gate is nuked than the city would be obliterated, back to the statement, if thames barrier fell, there is much bigger problem going on
@@walterwhite4969 ngl, if you could nuke just the gates I'd be impressed
The UK has mostly demonstrated lately, that it cuts corners in every department, refuses to deal with the consequences of cutting corners, and then there the good old blaming someone else when something fails.
@@Manu-Official that's not our fault though, it's probably Scotlands fault.
I love how Tom always able to introduce something completely out of my world yet still make it fascinating to watch.
I painted the insides of the barriers a couple of years ago. I had full access to the barriers and the tunnels. Every morning we would have a tool box talk and it would take about 20 to walk from the North side to the South Side in the tunnels under the Thames. I really did love that job, happy days...
If you want an even bigger version of something like this: the Oosterscheldekering and Maeslantkering in the Netherlands are exactly that. Built in the same overkill way and keeping massive amounts of water out. I would imagine these teams talk to each other and share knowledge as well
As opposed to the pump system in new orleans, which was built in the 1800s and runs on an ancient 25 hertz electrical system powered by six aging turbines, one of which broke in 2005 and was never repaired, another was decommissioned because replacement parts couldn't be manufactured any longer. In 2021 all of the remaining four failed before a hurricane, and everything was running on a backup of diesel motors with frequency converters and a backup 60 hz turbine jury-rigged to output 20% of it's power at 25 hz.
Dutch company helped to build this too (BAM group)
@@bartbatenburg Isn't there a simularly designed system somewhere in the Netherlands?
@@someonespotatohmm9513 Well, all systems are similar in some way, but I couldn't find one with rotating doors.
@@someonespotatohmm9513 there is a 'Stuw' in Hagestein, Driel and Amerongen that work on the same principle.
I would love to see an entire series diving in depth about this engineering feat!
Maybe Real Engineering can tackle that one
@@wiebemartens1030 Good idea.
No point in diving really. The Thames is too dirty to see anything.
@@MrShikaga Funny how the Thames river is considered to be one of the most cleanest in the world, I guess the bar is set very low...
@@bathwater3196 is it though? Always dirty when I've been to london
This is a really interesting concept of engineering I'd like to learn more of - over-engineering/creating large margins of error/redundancy to almost the point of paranoia. Are there some other similar examples to the Thames that you could take a look at/have taken a look at?
Almost any modern aircraft. They look so complicated to the lay person not because there is a lot there (although there are a lot of systems!) but because all the systems have at least 2 (usually 3 redundancy backups). By law, most systems need copies running at a time (e.g. altimeter/ airspeed etc.), so having 4 copies mean 2 can fail, when the liklihood of even one failing is low. Humans can't fly modern aircraft on their own - no manual override for the entire aircraft! Some of the systems do have manual mode of course. So the electronics and backup system cannot fail. To do so means it falls out of the sky.
@Ben Bauer yes! And also any space craft, or submarine.
Nuclear power plants
Data Centers are built to different tier levels. A tier 3 data center is like this, alternate power sources batteries and gens, Everything is double+ redundant.
"This is a really interesting concept of engineering I'd like to learn more of - over-engineering/creating large margins of error/redundancy to almost the point of paranoia." look like similar level of redundancy as used in aviation (3 to 4)
That reveal shot from the drone at the beginning was spectacular. The quality of Tom's videos never fails to impress me.
I used to live near the barrier (on the South of the river) and I remember going to an educational event at it that told us the history of the barrier, and how it worked.
One of the truly great engineering marvels that just functions, keeping millions of people safe, and very few people know or care about it.
Thanks for the video, Tom!
It's London though, we tend to "care" less about the engineering marvel that makes our life easy everyday as long as its working fine.
London sewage system, a marvel of Victorian era construction still chugging along (with some upgrade) compared few other newer system and we hardly care.
Tom, we have the old river control structure over here in Louisiana. It is a relatively small barrier that keeps the Mississippi River from flowing into a new course which would severely disrupt River trade in the United States. It almost did fail in the 90s or 80s (I forgot off the top of my head.). So yes, props to proper British engineering and come to Louisiana if you want to learn more about the Old River control structure or the Bonnet Caree spillway.
Did it hold when Katrina hit? Or is it farther upriver?
@@leofielding6786 it is north of Baton Rouge on the Mississippi River so it is really not affected by hurricanes. The control structure is affected by spring floods.
Near failure 1973. It would be apocalyptic. 60% of US grain exports would stop. 4 of the country's top 15 ports would go dry. $600M of economic loss every day. Not to mention oil/gas pipelines across the Atchafalaya that would be torn out.
Thanks for the shout out for "proper British engineering." I'm very proud to be British as we created the modern world we live in. I love British engineering, as everything's over engineered 👍🏻
OVER engineering something is the best type of engineering. It's just a shame the rest of the doesn't see it that way 🤨
I can definitely appreciate this video.
There have been times where I have been mocked as the Old School Old Timer or Grandpa Worrywart for my insistence on redundancy and fail-safe thinking.
However, there have been several instances where my stubbornness has ended up saving the day when that "one-chance-in-a-thousand" occurrence happened.
Anytime you get mocked for that, I'd suggest bringing up the Windscale fire. The project lead, John Cockcroft, insisted on installing filters that were seen as unnecessary and wasteful... and when disaster struck, those filters trapped 95% of the radioactive dust, preventing a substantial part of the UK from becoming a nuclear wasteland.
Worrywart building saves lives.
@@jakual339 Ironically, I just now found a TH-cam video on Windscale and marked it as a Watch Later.
Serendipity :-)
One chance in a thousand is an event that is almost certain to occur.
One chance is a quadrillion events are occurring every second somewhere in the universe. So such a high chance as one in a thousand is a sure thing.
@@VestigialHead Which i s why we should do as Monty Python taught us and always look on the bright side of life. :-)
@@pauld6967 While I do enjoy Python and I agree that if you are feeling down then that is good advice - it is terrible advice for governments or those building infrastructure. They need to be the exact opposite and expect the worst and plan for it.
The engineers behind this should be applauded as national heroes. It's very easy to take shortcuts here and there to lower spending and time on such massive projects and make your plan look good. But those guys build in additional safety measures which as so good in fact that they nearly doubled the estimated life span of the barrier. Incredible foresight and planning.
"They didn't cut corners then"
I felt that, a local bridge that was opened in 1900 was built so solid that it held 115 years, until 2016, way longer then planned, where it got replaced by a completely new bridge that was so "cut down" during planning that they used 500 tons less steel than needed, which obviously caused massive problems while building it.
And I think no one expects that new "French designer bridge" to hold anywhwere near as long as the old one, even with repairs.
When did engineering go from "Efficiency and minimalism" to "Good enough, not my future problem"? :\
It’s the same reason we lost ships in the Falklands War. The destroyers had been so nickel & dimed they didn’t have defence systems that could actually deal with Exocets and low-flying fast attack aircraft at the same time.
I heard that this was because in the past, engineering wasn't as precise as it is now, so everything was over-engineered to make sure it could hold, now, with more precision, they can build something to last exactly only 50 years
@@Ranstone Not sure about the UK, but where I live around the seventies. The oil crisis completely changed our perspective on building more than needed.
@@pleasant_asymmetry True, that's also a big part of that.
I don't have the exact numbers but one positive side effect of that was that the bridge could hold more then double the weight it was originally planned & built for because they added such large amounts of error-margins, which came in very handy with newer trains/traffic.
I get the feeling that the most common reasons for catastrophic failures often involve both systemic issues and human error. I'd be interested to more hear about the decision making elements as well as the engineering
Green B
tom scott is like having a science teacher as an adult but a thoroughly enjoyable one that isnt trying too hard
It’s cool how much electrical physics work for fluid dynamics.
That reflective wave being akin to transmission wave impedance mismatch where a reflecting standing wave will generate for power not transferred properly to load
Tom: I would be grateful for suggestions, by now I covered all the obvious ones.
Also Tom: Today I am going to cover this massive bit of infrastructure in the middle of London.
:-)
Watched a 7 minute and 28 seconds video, from Tom Scott and spent the next two and a half hours trawling through information on The Thames Barrier; engineering of flood defences, worldwide -The Dutch are amazing! - and have enjoyed all 2 hours, 37 minutes and 28 seconds of it!
Time for actual food, as opposed to food for thought. My tummy is rumbling.
Me, a Dutch person: *quickly googles the Thames Barrier*
In the wikipedia listing stating whom it was built by:
Hollandsche Beton Maatschappij
"you're goddamn right"
I wish you do a same thing in our country. I just don't know what will be the public opinion because in Philippines, anything can be criticized for the littlest reason.
Me, an English person: If you need proper flood protection speak to the Dutch! If you guys can't do it right, no one can!
not by themselves though as you read: Costain, Tarmac Construction, Cleveland Bridge & Engineering
😆
It you want flood protection, ask a country that is for a large part, lower than sea level!
This video just appeared randomly on my recommendations. I don't even know anything of engineering, still stayed for the whole video.
Hell I'm not even British. I didn't know this existed.
My favorite piece of design ever.
They didn't need to make it look good - but they did.
Nothing like a new Tom Scott video to start the week of right.
That drone shot at 0:30 is great! (all the drone shots in this video are but this one especially)
This is an incredible civil engineering work, an amazing part of London's infrastructure. Thanks, Tom, for taking us deep into its works. Thanks to the Environment Agency.
"And if a meteorite came down and destroyed the barrier, a second, even stronger barrier, is set to rise out of the ocean automatically"
"And, in the rare case in which that does not work, a large superheating grid will proceed to evaporate the remaining river water."
Tom always explains topics we didn’t know existed.
I uploaded my face reveal.
Tom is practically showing us the best way to consume information
If you’re from the UK or especially London you know about the Thames barrier lmao it’s really famous
I've done some "cannot be allowed to fail" engineering on the software side (a dead man's handle on a remote trading platform, FWIW). It's funny the things you get paranoid about in extreme situations.
Things like DNS are suddenly suspect and out to get you; you never know if you'll need to reach out to a remote server at just the wrong moment. We used an automated deployment tool to hard-code a handful of IP addresses in each server's config.
This is actually a very smart idea, to not trust the DNS uptime and instead use pure IPs!
@@vasiovasio it was a mapping in /etc/hosts, which meant for the handful of servers we needed this for we could statically allocate specific IP addresses and configure everything from Puppet.
It worked really well, and all the questions around caching of DNS, time-to-live, etc, just disappeared.
“That would be career-limiting.”
I love British humor
Understatement is our thing.
Always informative, always a pleasure to watch.
The care that would need to go into the planning of this makes me envious. I wish I could get even a fraction of that in my day job as a business analyst.
This is what happens when engineers get financial freedom to go overboard.
We always want to overkill, but a part of "normal" engineering is to bring it home, as cheap as possible while still living up to all the needs.
When the needs are "no matter what you design, it MAY not fail, here is a bottomless bag of money, go crazy!" then this is what you get.
Love it.
@@limbridk For once, it's not 'Here is the budget, what can we get?' It's 'This is what we need. We'll get you what you need.'
As an ex- business analyst, I hear your pain!
I love both how similar and how different this is, compared to the Deltaworks (especially the Oosterscheldekering).
They have mostly the same function, the same idea of redundancy, and were both build because of the Watersnoodramp (1953 North Sea flood), but they are completely different in design.
The Oosterscheldekering features plates which are moved vertically down with hydraulic power, which has the advantage that they can be closed using only gravity when needed, and the hydraulics can not only pull but also push to dig the plates into the ground if they feel the plates need yet more power because of a coming superflood.
Meanwhile this has rotating parts organised in a completely different way. I wonder which one is better, although that is of course an ambiguous question. I do know that more recent Dutch designs also using rotating parts, so that might give an indication, but it may also just depend on the width of whatever water you are closing.
I was certainly wondering about that during the video, why they didn't have a purely gravity based mechanism to close the gates in the event of a power failure.
I believe the main advantage of the rotating design is that it doesn't introduce a height restriction.
@@virtualcircuit Ah right, since it rotates down it trades the height restriction for a (much less significant) depth restriction. That seems like good reason.
I remember being on HMS Ocean prior to the London Olympics in 2012. One of the Tugs made an error and we were barely inches from hitting the barrier. The only time I heard the brace command as we expected to hit the barrier.
What about the human element? Many an impregnable castle existed in ancient times, and many great walls were built. They weren't breached by siege engines, catapualts or armies, but by bribing those inside to open the gates. I'd like to know about the security features that prevent someone unauthorised from controlling it and putting it to nefarious use?
There aren't many people apart from terrorists who would try to flood London. Too many countries and people stand to lose too much. The security inside the barrier is like Fort Knox if that's what you're wondering
Damn your right if a terrorist opens this at high tide hundreds of thousands will die
@@Phantom-bh5ru You're not your
Always nice to see such an incredible safety structure, great engineering for its time. Here in NL we've got loads of waterways that need protecting, some of them are like this, others also function as a motorway/highway bridge, they can be incredible to travel on. Any such dual purpose water blocking structures over in the UK? Would be nice to see!
This is, as always with Tom's videos, surprisingly more interesting than what could be expected from such a topic
“They didn’t cut corners then, and that’s given us breathing room now” god I wish we got to hear that phrase more often
I love seeing these huge projects and all their redundancies. Very awesome stuff!
I have been in the documentation center of the Thames Barrier. And found out it was us, the Dutch who designed it. We have similar barriers here, like the Oosterschelde keering in the south west of our country. It was constructed in the 1980's and uses vertical gates.
It's well known that if you want to control massive amounts of water, you get the Dutch to do it - they've been doing it for centuries longer than anyone else!
It was a British company who designed it, a Dutch company played a part in it's actual construction along with 2 British construction companies.
Goed bezig. The Dutch are the best at building dams, best in the world
makes sense! the dutch are experts at controlling weather 😅
If a structure has anything to do with water, the dutch are most likely involved. We rock
Ah, classic British overkill of redundancy! 3 back up generators where each one can do the job! Not sure if there is a video in it for Tom, but this was the economic problem with the British AGCR Nuclear reactors - they were about 3 times as expensive as alternate designs if I recall correctly so most people went with alternatives, even though the AGCR design was safer. There is maybe an interesting question about what can and should be considered affordable, especially when it comes to state spending
Yes, whatabout our 3-pin mains plugs...? Overkill or safe?
@@palestalemale1779 for the Darwin awards winners in America, definitely overkill.
Very true, I feel there in a perfect corruption-free system one could actually calculate it out: cost now vs lifespan vs cost later to replace/repair considering inflations & economic growth....
What I most remember of January 1976 working on the Thames Barrier as a commercial diver for Shiers Diving Contracts was the fact that it was a working river with cranes, vessels and Thames Watermen on their boats.
Wait you helped build it?
"It must still protect london" that feelt powerfull, sounded like something straight out of a super cool movie
That's probably the most hardcore redudancy in any system I've ever seen. Brilliant engineering!
As someone who lives by the river, my sincere gratitude to everyone involved with the Thames barrier
The Thames Barrier, and other flood control measure Mega Projects have always fascinated me. Tom, you are truly going places when a super major national thing like the Barrier are covered in your videos. I am super happy for your success in this and can't wait for more. On another note I am eagerly awaiting the next series of Citation Needed.
I was at Gloucester building college when they where building these , we had a day visiting the barriers to see how they where built . We where allowed inside one of them when they where bottoming it out with a 15tonne 360 , it looked like a toy in a cathedral. Amazing
One of your best quality videos yet I reckon, great job Tom. Also as others have said, Steve the engineering manager was fantastic and did a great job of explaining. Love it.
6:18 Great shot of a gate at low tide to see the U/W portion. Just an incredible number of considerations. Really fascinating since I did not even know this was a thing. I cannot believe how many interesting places/systems you find.
I've never had a topic of one of Tom's videos come up in regular conversation, but if it does then I'm very ready for it.
Ha! You need to get better friends! Or keep spamming them with links to Tom Scott videos - that's what I do.
I didn't know this existed 30 minutes ago. Thanks algorithm,, and thank you for the quality content