Trump's Wall: total fantasyland says engineer

We might debate the merits, but this article should put to an end any illusion that we could actually build an impregnable border wall.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/an-engineer-explains-why-trumps-wall-is-so-implausible/

No doubt gturner has designed a sword wielding robot to cut the concrete, but I think the author's credentials are a bit stronger. The math is pretty clear.

I'm sure he could also explain why it's even more impossible for the US to build a concrete highway that's 36 feet wide and 2000 miles long.

He does -- just read the article if you want the answer to that question.

So if it's so technically and logistically impossible for the US to build a wall, how did the Soviets manage to build one? How did we manage to already build about 700 miles of it in just 3 years? How does Texas have concrete buildings and concrete roads when Texas is too hot to pour concrete? How do they get the concrete for buildings and roads when we have to build all new concrete plants to build the wall?

Obviously he assumes that Obama, Bernie, or Hillary are installing the project. They don't know how to use a shovel.

Meanwhile, back in the world of people who get things done, if we go with a 20 foot tall tilt-up concrete wall system, 2000 miles should cost about $3 to $4 billion to build.

Yes, you can get project cost estimates for building things that commercial contractors build all the time, in every city, in every style.

It wouldn't have to be "impregnable," which is clearly impossible in any case. It just has to present enough of an obstacle to reduce illegal border crossings, which it would do. Also serve the dual purpose of funneling crossings into predictable locations.

Of course building a wall only makes sense if we plan to actually fix the immigration situation. But for some reason a lot of people think the idea of the US controlling its own borders is racist. Even tho that's one of the defining attributes of a nation-state.

Yes, impregnable is too strong a word. I probably should have said impermeable. The 700 mile "wall" to which gturner refers above, is actually a chain link fence in most locations. That is not an example of an impermeable wall. However, it is certainly quite a bit easier to build something that fails than something that would actually work. Trump is probably more interested in the former anyway.

I think it could be done cheaper using steel plating as well as a number of earthenworks defenses. Say a steel wall, a tank trap sized ditch, with another steel wall. Or they could just use the type of border wall they already use at urban areas along the border.

The thing is people go over that wall all the time but usually only the young and fit.

East Germany had a pretty good wall. Didn't keep people from escaping, but it made it a lot harder for them. Of course part of that was a ridiculous amount of border guards.

That wall was also less than a hundred miles long, built in a location well serviced by industrial and transportation infrastructure.

The wall at the national border? Pretty sure that was longer than a hundred miles.

You're thinking of the Berlin Wall, which was built in Berlin because it was the weak point of the impregnable, 4,000 mile long Iron Curtain. The German component of that was the Inner German border, which itself was almost 900 miles long without including the Berlin Wall.

The national border was kept by guards, not walls, as you rightly point out. Of course, back then the US along with Western Germany decried it as barbaric and inhumane to keep people from where they wish to travel or live in such a way.

Trump's Secret Plan to secure the border actually consists of a human wall. He intends to round up every unemployed redneck and trigger-happy "rancher" and stand 'em arms' length apart facing Mexico. Maybe throw in an MRAP now and then to look scarier. This will solve the unemployment problem (at least among unemployed rednecks), and his promise of universal access to healthcare will have to become a reality, because those Good Ol' Boyz can't stand out in the sun too long without developing skin cancer.

It doesn't take all that much to make a secure border. Some steel mesh fencing and barbed wire and a clear zone. Very few people managed to cross to the West during the Cold War despite millions wanting to. The Korean DMZ is similar to what once spanned all the way from Greece to Finland, almost 4,000 miles. It was so impregnable that two East German families built a hot air balloon and floated over.

Oh Jesus Christ. I can't even begin to list the ways that is false. Why bother?

There's only 76 words, so I'm thinking your list would be about 150 bullet points?

Trump said he wanted a wall not a fence and fences are easily defeated.

So how many in East Germany made it across the long physical border during the Cold War, not counting border guards who defected? Maybe 200 a year?

You do understand the difference between a singular country bisected as the result of a catastrophic war and two independent nations with vastly different cultures and a severe illegal immigration problem, right?

In terms of the logistical problem of keeping people from one side crossing to the other? Or in terms of individuals seeking freedom and opportunity by doing just that?

Note, btw, that the US does not have a severe illegal immigration problem, but merely a severe fear of illegal immigration coupled with some extremely advantageous actual immigration.

I hope Hillary sticks with that argument during the general election campaign.

Also there were land mines. But the reason we saw it as barbaric was because it was keeping people behind the Iron Curtain, which I tend to agree with. It also helps to illustrate how inferior the Soviet system was, because when given the choice, people chose to head west, so they had to take away that choice and keep them in. Our problem is as Milton Friedman pointed out, we can have open immigration or a welfare state but not both. Of course even with open immigration, it's generally a good idea to keep track of who's coming in. Although, honestly, if the DoJ would more aggressively pursue the people and businesses that hire, and frankly take advantage of, illegal immigrants, that would be far more effective than building a fence and hiring more border guards to patrol it. I'm just pointing out that a wall, or rather a fence is entirely possible and it might even cut down on illegal border crossings if there were more guards to patrol it, and modern technology would probably even make it easier for them to do that. Of course that would cost an awful lot and people have to decide if it's really worth that cost, which will probably include human lives (as it already does). I doubt (or at least I'd hope) that nothing like land mines would ever be used, but things can already get tense on the border, so stepping things up like this might make it even worse.

Yes. Walls work. Fences work.

Gul is playing weasel word games by saying "impregnable" when nothing is impregnable.

Look at Europe and the refugee crisis. They are building walls and fences. It works. It's not perfect of course but it does cut way down on people just crossing whenever and wherever.

By the end of next month I expect most of the Balkan countries to be building walls because they do work and the flood Merkel has stupidly set off has been a disaster for the entire region. A complete and total disaster.

Sorry, but that is precisely false. We are hardly building any walls or fences because the few we do have fail terribly.

That's why we need to hire Trump. He gets things built, and they're great things. If walls and fences didn't work then nobody would bother staying in prison.

If fences and walls worked prisons wouldn't need guards.

The fence in Hungary seems to have reduced the flow through Hungary from 8000 to 10,000 a day to less than two dozen. How is that a failure?

It sounds like a success to me.