The Sahara Desert spans over nine million square kilometers, making it one of the most unforgiving regions on Earth and a formidable barrier to economic ties between much of Africa and the Mediterranean. It is massive, hot, and uncooperative. Evidence suggests that the Sahara follows a cycle that shifts it from desert to green paradise and back, but nature’s timescales don’t align with human desires. A radical solution? Essentially, detonate more than 200 nuclear bombs simultaneously to carve a canal and create an artificial sea.
A Green Sahara?
If we look at the available information, the idea isn’t so far-fetched. In fact, the desert-to-prairie cycle is estimated to last around 41,000 years, and we’d have to wait another 17,000 years for it to change on its own. But unless someone discovers the secret to eternal youth, a green Sahara is beyond our reach... or is it?
Consider what humanity has already achieved: we connected the Atlantic to the Pacific with the Panama Canal, and the Suez Canal continues to evolve despite historical difficulties—economic, political, social, and regional. So how viable is injecting some green into the Sahara ahead of schedule?
The Qattara Depression
A good starting point is creating an artificial sea, and the ideal location is the Qattara Depression. At 133 meters below sea level at its deepest point, with a minimal population (fewer than 400 people) and just 55 kilometers from the Mediterranean, the depression is a prime candidate for receiving water.
Flooding the Sahara isn’t a new idea (several arrows point to Jules Verne), but the Qattara project was analyzed by Dr. John Ball in 1927, who suggested leveraging the conditions and technical details to generate hydroelectricity. Almost 40 years later, the project’s main advocate was Friedrich Bassler, head of the water maintenance and engineering department at TU Darmstadt.
The numbers became more solid: 10 years to fill to the required level, 670 megawatts of power in the initial hydroelectric phase, 6,800 megawatts once completed, with evaporation and water intake balanced. The plan seemed to be progressing well, but...
...the cost of the canal (or tunnel) was exorbitant. Bassler concluded that a shortcut was needed: 213 wells along the canal, each equipped with a 1.5-megaton nuclear bomb. By detonating all 213 bombs simultaneously, the atomic fury would do the heavy lifting and create the canal.
However, the evacuation of 25,000 people, the risk of affecting the unstable tectonic plates in the Red Sea region, and the radioactive component brought an abrupt end to the project—though it never fully left the minds of some scientists. Today we have better technology, and creating the canal should be faster and cheaper...
