6 ms·

Water Conflict Chronology

glonq 5y ago
Why does this also include imaginary/fabled events ?
- NotSammyHagar 5y ago
  What, the bible isn't the literal truth, or do you doubt the Epics of Gilgamesh? They should have been in a different list. The other thing is notice how few events there were in the "dark ages", 500-1500 ad. Bet things were popping up but not known to westerners like me in those lands that eventually became part of modern China.
- blitzar 5y ago
  They left off the attempted coup d'état of Bolivia by the Quantum organisation to seize control of their water supply in the 22nd Bond Movie, Quantum of Solace (2008). Arguably this 'event' drew more public attention to the potential of Future Wars over Water than the rest of the list combined.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
I was hoping this would pop up. An example of why: > Two members of the right-wing "Order of the Rising Sun" are arrested in Chicago with 30-40 kg of typhoid cultures with which they allegedly planned to poison the water supply in Chicago, St. Louis, and other cities. Experts say the plan is unlikely to cause health problems due to water chlorination. Imagine planning a terrorist act, and never bothering to check whether it could work even in theory. I wonder how that conversation went. “Been hearing a lot about this typhoid stuff.” “I know a guy that can get some.” “Sweet, I just so happen to know how to get into the local water plant. Let’s drop it in and see what happens.” jail happens “What’re you in for?” “A plan that couldn’t cause harm even in theory, to further my political agenda.”
- aaron695 5y ago
  > Two members of the right-wing They were left wing. Killing a lot of random people through the water supply is a very left wing idea, you'll see the general idea often on HN with anti-population rants without a clear way forward. A lot of don't believe Bill Gates and his development reduces population. RISE hijacked a plane and ended up in Cuba. And they were looking at putting it into food stuff and had aerosol models. One of their ideas of putting typhoid in the water supply seems valid to me. If you put a drop of typhoid in a glass of tap water, I would have expected it to still be bad. Perhaps not, but direct injection into waterlines is easy. If the clusterfuck of bad reporting about them includes a bad analysis of typhoid and chlorined water lines, I wouldn't rule it out. Mental illness also played a part.
  - autoexec 5y ago
    I had a feeling it'd turn out this way considering this weird comment seems to be pushing conspiracy theories about bill gates, but I did feel compelled to check to see the order of the rising sun was a right-wing group or not. No surprise, they absolutely were right-wing. Neo-Nazis even. "dedicated to creating a new master race,"
nomoreplease 5y ago
With the water shortages around the world, can residential rain barrels provide a sufficient alternative? Is there a study for the number of barrels per person per climate?
- thechao 5y ago
  Rain is an intermittent resource. You need to size your capacity to some standard deviation above the mean to get to some confidence level you’re agreeable with. In Central Texas, where I’m at, 10k gallon of for a family of four is sufficient for a Western style life. That’s about 200 barrels — which is way bigger & more expensive than a single system.
  - nomoreplease 5y ago
    Right. I should clarify that I meant for eating & drinking (survival), not necessarily showering or gardening
    - thechao 5y ago
      Having gone down this path while sizing my water system ... it depends: (1) environment; (2) precisely what you mean by "survive"; and, (3) how healthy the water is. There's a lot of variation there. If you look at off-grid and deep-back-packing sort of sites, they'll give you a good idea. For me, it came to 500 gallons per person, for Central Texas, to "stay alive through the worst historical drought I know of". We don't have any natural place to get rid of sewage (we're on a solid limestone hill), so that really complicates things for us.
      - nomoreplease 5y ago
        Thank you for the insight
      - dredmorbius 5y ago
        Keep in mind that your storage requirements are also dependent on other supplementation. Ready.gov suggests one gallon (4 litres) per person per day (https://www.ready.gov/water https://www.ready.gov/water) It's helpful to look at actual empirical usage. Van Lifers often give their own usage statistics. This article gives a 6.15 gal/day (23 litre/day) figure: https://musingsonentropy.com/2014/10/07/motorhome-living-one-month-in-daily-water-consumption/ https://musingsonentropy.com/2014/10/07/motorhome-living-one... Household-level usage might be closer to 60 gal/day (225 litre/day) (1996 New Mexico water usage report, table of estimated usage). Keep in mind that individual usage varies, emergencies (heat, illness, freezing) may change patterns, and that there is discretionary and nondiscretionary usage. Don't undercount sanitation requirements -- regular bathing and flushing toilets will keep you healthy. It's possible to reduce those demands, but entirely eliminating them (unless methods are changed) is likely a bad idea.
dotcommand 5y ago
Taken from the top comment in another thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28233819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28233819
tony_cannistra 5y ago
This is cool. Some context I needed: > Items are included when there is violence (injuries or deaths) or threats of violence (including verbal threats, military maneuvers, and shows of force). We do not include instances of unintentional or incidental adverse impacts on populations or communities that occur associated with water management decisions, such as populations displaced by dam construction or impacts of extreme events such as flooding or droughts. (Based on this new definition, some previous entries were removed in May 2018.) http://www.worldwater.org/water-conflict/ http://www.worldwater.org/water-conflict/
quietthrow 5y ago
Couldn't help but look at the conflicts from a time period perspective. BC 27 500-600 1 0-500 1 1100-1200 1 1200-1300 1 1500-1600 2 1600-1700 4 1700-1800 2 1800-1900 14 1900-2000 184 2000-2000 21 2000-2100 667 Grand Total 925 Edited for structure Some personal observations: 1. Interestingly a sharp rise in 'events' since Industrial Age. 2. We also don't have much data on year before the Industrial Age. The world simply wasn't as connected (from a information availability perspective) so lots of events could have gone unnoticed unless the really really large ones. This dilutes observation #1. 3. Despite #2 its hard to ignore the more than tripling of events from 1900-2000 to 2000-2100 (and we are only 20 years in this century) ----- Some more data ---- Other 3 0.32% Europe 76 8.22% Americas 118 12.76% Africa 234 25.30% Asia 494 53.41% Grand Total 925 100.00% Makes me curious how strongly this correlates to the size of population on said continent.
- btbuildem 5y ago
  There's more and more of us, at an accelerating rate. Kind of makes sense that conflicts around the 2nd most life-sustaining substance would also escalate.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    There may also be the effect of surviving historical records. Lots of things from the more distant past wouldn't end up being recorded.
- pionar 5y ago
  The implication is that these are conflicts over water, but they're not. They're "conflicts" in that something happened that somehow involved water in the periphery. Very misleading list.
  - quietthrow 5y ago
    I disagree unless your comment is directed to the data provided by the OP. In that case I agree (only to a small degree) as factualness dilutes as one goes back in time also these are broad statements. As to my list that I posted above simply aggregates the data provided in the OP.
btbuildem 5y ago
Very cool, but why is one fictional fairy-tale story ("Moses parts the Red Sea") included among historical facts? Either keep the list factual, or include other notable fictions that illustrate the idea.
hume_annoyed 5y ago
"Whiskey is for fightin, water is for killin." - [a guy who owns water]

Why does this also include imaginary/fabled events ?

NotSammyHagar 5y ago
What, the bible isn't the literal truth, or do you doubt the Epics of Gilgamesh? They should have been in a different list. The other thing is notice how few events there were in the "dark ages", 500-1500 ad. Bet things were popping up but not known to westerners like me in those lands that eventually became part of modern China.
blitzar 5y ago
They left off the attempted coup d'état of Bolivia by the Quantum organisation to seize control of their water supply in the 22nd Bond Movie, Quantum of Solace (2008). Arguably this 'event' drew more public attention to the potential of Future Wars over Water than the rest of the list combined.

I was hoping this would pop up. An example of why: > Two members of the right-wing "Order of the Rising Sun" are arrested in Chicago with 30-40 kg of typhoid cultures with which they allegedly planned to poison the water supply in Chicago, St. Louis, and other cities. Experts say the plan is unlikely to cause health problems due to water chlorination. Imagine planning a terrorist act, and never bothering to check whether it could work even in theory. I wonder how that conversation went. “Been hearing a lot about this typhoid stuff.” “I know a guy that can get some.” “Sweet, I just so happen to know how to get into the local water plant. Let’s drop it in and see what happens.” jail happens “What’re you in for?” “A plan that couldn’t cause harm even in theory, to further my political agenda.”

aaron695 5y ago
> Two members of the right-wing They were left wing. Killing a lot of random people through the water supply is a very left wing idea, you'll see the general idea often on HN with anti-population rants without a clear way forward. A lot of don't believe Bill Gates and his development reduces population. RISE hijacked a plane and ended up in Cuba. And they were looking at putting it into food stuff and had aerosol models. One of their ideas of putting typhoid in the water supply seems valid to me. If you put a drop of typhoid in a glass of tap water, I would have expected it to still be bad. Perhaps not, but direct injection into waterlines is easy. If the clusterfuck of bad reporting about them includes a bad analysis of typhoid and chlorined water lines, I wouldn't rule it out. Mental illness also played a part.
- autoexec 5y ago
  I had a feeling it'd turn out this way considering this weird comment seems to be pushing conspiracy theories about bill gates, but I did feel compelled to check to see the order of the rising sun was a right-wing group or not. No surprise, they absolutely were right-wing. Neo-Nazis even. "dedicated to creating a new master race,"

nomoreplease 5y ago

With the water shortages around the world, can residential rain barrels provide a sufficient alternative? Is there a study for the number of barrels per person per climate?

thechao 5y ago
Rain is an intermittent resource. You need to size your capacity to some standard deviation above the mean to get to some confidence level you’re agreeable with. In Central Texas, where I’m at, 10k gallon of for a family of four is sufficient for a Western style life. That’s about 200 barrels — which is way bigger & more expensive than a single system.
- nomoreplease 5y ago
  Right. I should clarify that I meant for eating & drinking (survival), not necessarily showering or gardening
  - thechao 5y ago
    Having gone down this path while sizing my water system ... it depends: (1) environment; (2) precisely what you mean by "survive"; and, (3) how healthy the water is. There's a lot of variation there. If you look at off-grid and deep-back-packing sort of sites, they'll give you a good idea. For me, it came to 500 gallons per person, for Central Texas, to "stay alive through the worst historical drought I know of". We don't have any natural place to get rid of sewage (we're on a solid limestone hill), so that really complicates things for us.
    - nomoreplease 5y ago
      Thank you for the insight
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Keep in mind that your storage requirements are also dependent on other supplementation. Ready.gov suggests one gallon (4 litres) per person per day (https://www.ready.gov/water https://www.ready.gov/water) It's helpful to look at actual empirical usage. Van Lifers often give their own usage statistics. This article gives a 6.15 gal/day (23 litre/day) figure: https://musingsonentropy.com/2014/10/07/motorhome-living-one-month-in-daily-water-consumption/ https://musingsonentropy.com/2014/10/07/motorhome-living-one... Household-level usage might be closer to 60 gal/day (225 litre/day) (1996 New Mexico water usage report, table of estimated usage). Keep in mind that individual usage varies, emergencies (heat, illness, freezing) may change patterns, and that there is discretionary and nondiscretionary usage. Don't undercount sanitation requirements -- regular bathing and flushing toilets will keep you healthy. It's possible to reduce those demands, but entirely eliminating them (unless methods are changed) is likely a bad idea.

dotcommand 5y ago

Taken from the top comment in another thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28233819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28233819

tony_cannistra 5y ago

This is cool. Some context I needed: > Items are included when there is violence (injuries or deaths) or threats of violence (including verbal threats, military maneuvers, and shows of force). We do not include instances of unintentional or incidental adverse impacts on populations or communities that occur associated with water management decisions, such as populations displaced by dam construction or impacts of extreme events such as flooding or droughts. (Based on this new definition, some previous entries were removed in May 2018.) http://www.worldwater.org/water-conflict/ http://www.worldwater.org/water-conflict/

quietthrow 5y ago

Couldn't help but look at the conflicts from a time period perspective. BC 27 500-600 1 0-500 1 1100-1200 1 1200-1300 1 1500-1600 2 1600-1700 4 1700-1800 2 1800-1900 14 1900-2000 184 2000-2000 21 2000-2100 667 Grand Total 925 Edited for structure Some personal observations: 1. Interestingly a sharp rise in 'events' since Industrial Age. 2. We also don't have much data on year before the Industrial Age. The world simply wasn't as connected (from a information availability perspective) so lots of events could have gone unnoticed unless the really really large ones. This dilutes observation #1. 3. Despite #2 its hard to ignore the more than tripling of events from 1900-2000 to 2000-2100 (and we are only 20 years in this century) ----- Some more data ---- Other 3 0.32% Europe 76 8.22% Americas 118 12.76% Africa 234 25.30% Asia 494 53.41% Grand Total 925 100.00% Makes me curious how strongly this correlates to the size of population on said continent.

btbuildem 5y ago
There's more and more of us, at an accelerating rate. Kind of makes sense that conflicts around the 2nd most life-sustaining substance would also escalate.
- jhgb 5y ago
  There may also be the effect of surviving historical records. Lots of things from the more distant past wouldn't end up being recorded.
pionar 5y ago
The implication is that these are conflicts over water, but they're not. They're "conflicts" in that something happened that somehow involved water in the periphery. Very misleading list.
- quietthrow 5y ago
  I disagree unless your comment is directed to the data provided by the OP. In that case I agree (only to a small degree) as factualness dilutes as one goes back in time also these are broad statements. As to my list that I posted above simply aggregates the data provided in the OP.

btbuildem 5y ago

Very cool, but why is one fictional fairy-tale story ("Moses parts the Red Sea") included among historical facts? Either keep the list factual, or include other notable fictions that illustrate the idea.

hume_annoyed 5y ago

"Whiskey is for fightin, water is for killin." - [a guy who owns water]