Chapter 13 Chapter 6 Source of Happiness = Source of Evil

On the occasion of welcoming the new year and saying goodbye to the old one in 1995, it was undoubtedly the most memorable and painful for the Japanese Kobe people who have been living in the honey jar.It was the sweet dream time when every family hadn’t recovered from the joy of the New Year. Suddenly, the sky fell and the ground fell, and the buildings fell and the houses collapsed. More than 5,000 people were alive and dying. Nearly 300,000 people who were living a prosperous life yesterday suddenly lost their homes. loved ones... Although the Kobe-Hyogo earthquake occurred in the eastern island country, it really made the whole world tremble, especially the Chinese people who live next door.

Human beings fear the earth more than earthquakes in today's view.The earthquake came suddenly and fiercely, making people unable to fight against it. China is an earthquake-prone country. The largest number of deaths caused by earthquakes in ancient and modern times is in China. The earthquake on January 23, 1556 killed more than 830,000 people. The 1976 Tangshan earthquake killed about 240,000 people. Neither the Tokyo earthquake of 1923 nor the Mexico earthquake of 1985 nor the Soviet Armenia earthquake of 1988 exceeded these records. "Talk and turn pale" - a common problem in countries all over the world.

Scientists have made arduous efforts for this.From China's Zhang Heng who created the seismograph more than a thousand years ago to today's Massim Earthquake Experiment Center in Columbia, the experts have tried their best, but the results have always been minimal.In the 20th century, a Greek engineer who had been working as a monitor on the site of the Arelos River Reservoir for a long time found strangely that whenever the sun set and the night fell, when he drank a few sips of brandy and lay down on the bed, he would feel the whole earth. It was trembling slightly, and rumbled from time to time, sometimes so violently that it could throw him off the bed.But every time he left the reservoir on weekends and returned to his home more than 100 kilometers away to rest, he was safe and sound.He told this strange phenomenon to a friend, Mr. B, who is engaged in earthquake research. Mr. B didn't say a word, followed him to the reservoir and slept on the same bed.The ground rumbled and trembled again at night. "Earthquake! It's an earthquake!" Mr. B exclaimed and jumped off the bed, taking out the seismograph.Yes, a magnitude 4.2 earthquake is happening here!It didn't matter the surprise, Mr. B picked up the instrument, got into the car and drove home.But as soon as he got home, the seismic wave on his monitoring and control instrument disappeared again.When he returned to the reservoir again, the seismic wave appeared like a ghost again.Weird thing! In order to find out the mystery, Mr. B simply lived on the reservoir.He slept in the same room as the engineer, one recorded the shock waves, and the other recorded the storage of the reservoir.Three months later, the two discovered strangely that the shock wave in the reservoir area was just proportional to the water stored in the reservoir.The higher the water level on the dam, the higher the magnitude of the earthquake.By the time the Marathon Reservoir on the Arelos River reached its peak in 1938, a magnitude 5 earthquake struck the area where the reservoir was located, destroying homes and killing people.

Reservoir induced earthquake!Earthquakes sometimes originate from reservoirs!This discovery quickly attracted attention all over the world and was demonstrated.The Kariba Reservoir in Zambia, the Kerimasta Reservoir in Greece, the Udfoda Reservoir in Algeria, the Lake Mead Reservoir in the United States, and the Nundengenke Reservoir in the Soviet Union have all experienced major earthquakes induced by reservoirs of magnitude 6 or above.Among them, the most serious loss is the Koyna Reservoir in India.25,000 people died in this earthquake, and a large number of houses and buildings in the city of Koyna collapsed.

The water of a river is locked by a "giant dragon" - the purpose of people building reservoirs is to get rid of drought and win more production and living capacity.From plains to mountains, from rural areas to cities, there are reservoirs almost wherever there are people living: the denser the population, the bigger the reservoir.Forty years after the liberation of China, reservoirs are scattered across the land of China like stars in the sky.At present, there are more than 2,000 large and medium-sized reservoirs with a water storage capacity of 100 million to 100 billion cubic meters.Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou... Almost every modern big city has one or several large reservoirs.This just means that the establishment of a reservoir plays two kinds of results of happiness and disaster to human beings.It is not only the source of happiness for human existence, but also the source of evil that sends us to death.

The balanced nature inherent in the wonders of nature can also be annoying at times. In the summer of 1958, in order to ease the water consumption in Guangzhou, my country's tens of thousands of water conservancy troops built a modern large-scale reservoir on the Xinjiang River in Heyuan County. In 1959, a 105-meter-high concrete dam was built, and the Xinfeng River, which had been turbulent for thousands of years, was suddenly stopped.After the water was stored, the earthquake occurred immediately.The people around the reservoir area sometimes felt that the underground toss caused unrest for people and animals. In 1960, the Xinfengjiang Reservoir with a storage capacity of 11.5 billion cubic meters was filled with water for the first time. Telegrams of good news and urgent telegrams were sent to the office of Premier Zhou Enlai in Zhongnanhai, Beijing, almost at the same time.

Zhou Enlai went to Xinfeng River to observe the dam and the earthquake.At that time, the staff of the General Office of the Central Committee were very puzzled by Zhou Enlai's trip, and felt that it was unnecessary for the dignified Prime Minister to go in person when a reservoir was in emergency.But Zhou Enlai knew that an earthquake induced by a large reservoir is a terrible thing in itself, and once the earthquake causes the dam of the reservoir to burst, the consequences will be even more terrible.At that time, the Miyun, Ming Tombs, Luanhe, Baiyangdian and other large reservoirs in the Beijing-Tianjin area were being built, and Zhou Enlai thought further than others...

In the early morning of March 19, 1962, a destructive earthquake of magnitude 6.1 occurred one kilometer downstream of the dam of the Xinfengjiang Reservoir.The depth of the epicenter was only 5 kilometers, and the intensity of the epicenter was as high as 8 degrees!Since the day when the reservoir was impounded, there have been more than 350,000 recorded earthquakes, an average of 13,000 per year, which is equivalent to inducing 35 earthquakes per day.Of course, except for a few destructive earthquakes, they are all weak earthquakes.But among the hundreds of billions of earthquakes induced by thousands of reservoirs, who can guarantee that there will be no major earthquakes and tragedies like the Koyna Reservoir in India?

Scientists' investigations have proved that there are basically two prerequisites for reservoir-induced earthquakes: one is that the reservoir contains water and loads, which generate static pressure and pore fluid pressure in the reservoir, leading to deformation of the rock mass, thereby reducing the effective stress and shear resistance of the fault. Intensity, the limit balance of the rock mass is destroyed, and finally shifts to generate earthquakes.Another reason is that the reservoir itself is built in a complex geological structure with weak and permeable underground rocks, especially when the reservoir is located in the limestone, sandstone, shale and schist zones where fault joints develop, water seeps into the rock mass, making the rock mass Produce physical and chemical effects, thereby inducing earthquakes.

Earthquakes are often closely related to the water storage process and capacity of the reservoir. Almost all large and super-large reservoirs may cause large-scale earthquakes, and the earthquakes in this kind of reservoirs are frequent and shallow, and the earthquake lasts for a long time and lasts for several years. Or for decades. Human beings need water to survive, and clean water needs reservoirs to store it, and reservoirs induce earthquakes, and humans are afraid of earthquakes!If you are afraid of an earthquake, you should destroy the reservoir: if you destroy the reservoir, you will have no water to drink, and if you have no water to drink, human beings will lose their lives... Survival—this is the destiny God has arranged for human beings.If you want to survive, you must progress; if you want to progress, you need revolution; revolution produces new objects; new objects finally lead to the destruction of life!

At this time, I suddenly remembered a story about lantana.Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean is an island of bamboo shoots. The residents of the island always like to decorate their homes beautifully.For this reason, someone introduced a lovely ornamental plant from Mexico - lantana flower. The delicate and charming lantana flowers are also known as "Qibianhua", "Five-Colored Plum" and "Hydrangea".Lantana, which blooms in four seasons, has small flowers densely clustered on the branches, and the corolla has red, yellow, and white colors. After flowering, the flower color will change, which is too beautiful to behold. Along with lantana, pheasants and robins were brought to Hawaii.People did not expect that in the new "residence", the "outsider" Lantana and the pheasant formed good partners.Lantana's purple-black berries became a delicacy for pheasants and bluebirds, which flew around the island and scattered the seeds they had eaten in all directions. Lantana multiplied everywhere and quickly took over the entire island.At the same time, all the green pastures on the island began to suffer: lantana, which cattle and sheep do not like to eat, gradually pushed the grass out of the pastures, and the ranchers suffered unprecedented economic losses as a result.They were so annoyed that they introduced dozens of insect species from overseas to deal with lantana specifically.Among them, 8 kinds of insects grind their teeth and bulge their ribs, and eat big things. They have achieved outstanding results, stopped the spread of lantana, and achieved brilliant success in controlling weeds with insects. However, it was soon discovered that after the introduction of lantana, a kind of armyworm that had caused great harm to the pastures and sugarcane gardens here somehow decreased: after the lantana was "sieged", the armyworm flourished again; The number of partridges also increased, and the number of armyworms decreased, and vice versa. Finally, someone suggested to bring in lantana again.But the ranchers who have suffered so much from the reduction in production do not agree... There is a living dialectic in an interesting story: the ecology of nature can never lose its focus! Earthquakes are induced by reservoirs, and reservoirs benefit human beings. This bitter and sweet melon is really not good for people to eat or not to eat.But one thing seems to be certain, when we build large-scale reservoirs, we should keep up with the anti-earthquake measures.In fact, earthquakes induced by reservoirs are very regular and predictable. The problem is that human beings must respect laws and act according to objective laws in all activities! The only way out is here. Finding such a way out is often extremely difficult. The Three Gorges Project on the Yangtze River can almost be considered an unprecedented example in this regard. On April 3, 1992, the atmosphere in the solemn Great Hall of the People was particularly dignified, because at this time, the final decision was made on the debate between Li Hongzhang and Liang Qichao’s proposal of “Rich China must rule the Yangtze River” and Premier Li Peng’s finalization of a total investment of 200 billion yuan. This is the moment when the reservoir project to build the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River will be launched for a whole century.Voting result: 1967 votes in favor, 177 votes against, 664 abstentions. This is the result of a vote that has never been held at the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China.With so many "opposition" and "abstention" votes, people may not know its real "insider story".Well, I can clearly tell you here: the fundamental opinion of almost all the "against" and "abstain" votes is that the construction of such a huge reservoir may cause by-products—disasters. "Building a world-class super-large reservoir to buffer the flood defense capability of the Yangtze River Basin is a great thing that the ancestors of the people in the area hope for, but have you ever thought about it? According to the natural law, the longer the flood period, the more intense the flood will come , but the currently designed elevation of the Three Gorges is 180 meters, and when a catastrophic flood is issued, it will be discharged through the embankment and hit the downstream, and the flood discharge benefit of the project is equal to zero! In view of this, I firmly disagree with the launch of the Three Gorges Project!" It's an old man.But no ordinary old man.He is Chen Mingshao, the vice president of Beijing University of Technology and a famous water conservancy expert. The old man told a story to those who were in favor of launching the Three Gorges Project: "I am 75 years old this year. There was a sports meeting for the elderly held in Beijing. Among the athletes was the deputy mayor, Zhang Baifa. Everyone knew him. He was a steelworker, and he was very strong. He thought that pulling power was his thing, but the result was I won the championship, Zhang Baifa said to me very dissatisfied: "Why did you take the championship away, old man?" Will I win the championship?" I said that I studied mechanics, and I knew how many times the impact force is stronger than the static force. I used the instantaneous impact, and Zhang Baifa used the static force, so of course the suspension lost. The same is true for floods. Once the large water discharges through the dam, it will turn the relatively static flood into an impactful flood. Sometimes the force is stronger than an earthquake. Once this happens, the downstream will suffer even greater Damn it!" It is said that as soon as Chen Mingshao's words came out, there was an explosion at the meeting of the "National People's Congress" and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Someone brought a lot of materials that could prove the 100 benefits of the Sanyao project, and came to the old man through connections.Chen Mingshao said bluntly: "If the two issues I raised are resolved, I will support it!" "Which two questions?" "One is the earthquake induced by the reservoir, and the other is the Three Gorges landslide." Everything is good, but these two issues have not been studied well. "How can I do that?" the old man was annoyed. "What is the most feared thing for human beings today? In addition to the great war, it is a big earthquake. Numerous facts have proved that many earthquakes are caused by reservoirs. The larger the reservoir, the higher the magnitude of the induced earthquake. Once the Three Gorges Reservoir is completed, there will be more than 20 billion The water pressure of cubic meters is on the crustal plate below the reservoir, and the entire Sanbai Reservoir area is located in the seismically active area. In case of an earthquake, the tide from the 180-meter-high dam will pour down the downstream, and the two sides of the Yangtze River will How many farmlands, cities, and populations have been wiped out! God, if these same issues are not considered, what kind of projects are there to avoid?" The old man said: "There is another serious problem, which is the landslides in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. The upper reaches of the Yangtze River are high mountains and are located in the area where large faults are frequently active. In the Jinsha River alone, there are more than 1,200 landslides and collapses on both sides. One landslide , collapse, is a major earthquake above magnitude 6. The impoundment of the Three Gorges will definitely cause serious erosion of the fractured rock mass on both sides of the bank, and the result of the erosion will inevitably lead to large-scale landslides and collapses. Not to mention the Xintan landslide in the 21 years of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty that broke the Dajiang River After 80 years of sailing, the central government was extremely anxious about the half-year disaster caused by the Jipa landslide on the Yangtze River in Sichuan in July 1982. In 1963, a landslide of 240 million cubic meters occurred in the Vaion Reservoir in Italy. The waves stirred up 250 meters, and the flood destroyed all the facilities of the power station and several towns under the dam, and thousands of people died. Compared with Vayon, the natural danger of the Yangtze River is like a sky and a ground. The Three Gorges Reservoir is so big that Italy This reservoir cannot be compared at all. Once a large-scale landslide bursts after the Three Gorges Reservoir is impounded, the consequences can be imagined. Some people say it is so easy for the high dam, but I am trembling about this issue. If the city is destroyed, the shipping will also be cut off, and there will be a big mess! This is not a matter of one person, it is a matter of the entire country and the entire nation!" Mr. Chen Mingshao's words really shocked those who raised their hands. They found another authority—Hou Xueyu, a well-known academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences both at home and abroad. Hou Lao’s first sentence was very exciting and straightforward: “I am the first person who refused to sign the report submitted to the central review from the beginning to the end.” Then, Hou Lao pointed out that we have never thought about the decision-making of water conservancy projects. Unforeseen floods and disasters that dams can bring, let alone the impact of water conservancy projects on the ecological environment and resources of the reservoir area itself and the entire river basin.The Three Gorges Project is the largest project in the country. After it is built, it will change the ecology of the entire Yangtze River and lose its balance.The already extremely serious mudslides along the Yangtze River, coupled with the induced earthquakes that can easily be caused by the construction of high dams, and the thousands of huge landslides and collapses on both sides of the river will become even more dangerous.One day when the Yangtze River is angry, so many immortal landscapes, precious groundwater resources, and millions of lives may all be lost, which is much more dangerous than the current single flood.In short, "It is not safe to start the Three Gorges Project in a hurry before the water and soil in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River are stabilized!" Although the old experts Chen Mingshao and Hou Xueyu knew that they were powerless to resist the final decision-making power of the Three Gorges Project, which must be launched under the huge pressure of the modern economy, their opinions echoed in the voting hall of the Great Hall of the People.They are all masters. Tomorrow is an unknown, and the unknown is often scary.Especially natural and man-made disasters - because in the face of them, we become powerless.