Ballparkin’: to the tunnels from the sea

The Story, up to now

A poorly-reported story from the current Israel-Hamas conflict is the IDF’s plan to fill the Hamas tunnel network in Gaza with seawater. Most of the published stories are short on fact and long on whiny pessimism, partly due to journalistic anti-Semitism and partly due to the widespread critical thinking impairment among journalists, tracing back to their inadequate (or non-existent) mathematics education.

The Big Question

So I asked myself: It sounds like there are a lot of tunnels; is it reasonable to think that flooding them is a practical tactic? Or is this some goofy pipe dream? Let’s do the math arithmetic (math is a bit more abstract).

Some Ballpark Estimates

Reliable (?) sources suggest there are some 300 miles of tunnels beneath Gaza, or about 483 kilometers worth (real engineers do metric, especially in that part of the world). Photos of captured tunnels suggest that the cross-section of a tunnel might be plausibly estimated as 2 square meters (1 meter wide, 2 meters high), giving a ballpark estimate of the tunnel network volume of approximately 966,000 cubic meters. That’s a lot. 

Is it feasible to pump that much sea water in a reasonable amount of time? Well, yes. High volume pumps, especially designed for sea water, are commercially available for use for ocean-going tankers and freighters. High volume pumps have capacities of 1000 to 2000 cubic meters per hour. So a low-end estimate for filling the tunnels is about 40 days, a high-end estimate is about 3 weeks. And that’s with just one pump. Reports are that the IDF has deployed at least 7. 

Critiques

Thumbsuckers in corporate media claim Israel is “up against the clock.” I’m no so sure; it appears to me that the fabulous new Gaza subterranean seawater grotto spas could be up and running by years end. The other claim is that the flooding won’t be complete, since some of the tunnels are protected by chambers with heavy, blast-proof doors that would keep the water out. Said doors will also keep Hamas-holes in, and make resupply problematical.

Disclaimer

All of this is off-the-top-of-my head conjecture, based on simple arithmetic and research. I have no, zero, zip inside information, and no current association with any intelligence organization in the world. But I can do calculations and ask questions, which appears to be more than most working journalists can to these days.