prplhze2000

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I don't know enough to speculate on the politics or social outcomes, but the fiscal ramifications, nationally and globally, would be intense.

The Mississippi with its tributaries is the longest navigable river in the world. It generates a huge amount of economic activity and it would be effectively unusable for international trade until the new mouth stabilizes and new infrastructure can be built. 12,000 ships go through the mouth of the Mississippi per year (compare to 14,000 at the Panama Canal).

I think one obvious result is that New Orleans and Baton Rouge become massively dependent on state and federal government assistance, their entire shipping industry would be destroyed, not to mention the physical damages of flooding. They become like 70s/80s Detroit, but even worse.

The profit of all the farms and factories along the river would be massively cut. Millions of people would lose jobs, business would shut down forever. The government could try to subsidize them until they can use the river for international shipping again, but that would be even more billions of USD on top of the billions spent on Baton Rouge and New Orleans, on top of the billions needed to repair what failed and build essentially a new city at the new river mouth.

Depending on the level of physical damage, Baton Rouge and New Orleans might even be abandoned. I wonder if the federal government would opt to pay people to permanently resettle elsewhere (like the new mouth of the Mississippi) rather than rebuild, because the main economic generator, the river, is gone and never coming back. Though, that would probably have immense social backlash and cost billions/trillions.

Then, the federal government would need to build new infrastructure at the new mouth of the Mississippi. This would cost billions/trillions as well. And would take years. The shipping industry of the US would be massively crippled for at least 7-10 years.

Hell, Minneapolis would probably see a terrible localized depression and be a similar position as the previous cities because they cant export internationally either. Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburg, St. Louis, Memphis, would all be impacted to some degree too. Shipping from the interior US to shoreline cities on the east coast, and vice versa would be halted or severely slowed. The interior US produces around 78% of the world supply of animal feed corn and soy bean, and I think around 10% of all wheat. Now all of that is stuck in the interior US, or has to go by rail (already overloaded), truck (expensive, already over capacity, and already have a driver shortage), or plane (very expensive, already over capacity, and already have a pilot shortage).

Honestly, this could be the start of a 20 year great depression in the US. It might even become a global depression due to impacts on the global shipping industry, and grain/corn/soy. Ships wouldn't feel safe going up or down the Mississippi until infrastructure and personnel are in place. Food prices would be impacted globally for years.

Now it might not be as bad as I make it out to be, because the Mississippi has been artificially connected to the Great Lakes system and the Atlantic via canals (although I don't know if this was the case in '73). But the amount of traffic that would now have to be redirected via these routes would be immense would cause huge backups, and it would increase shipping costs dramatically for the factories/farms on the Mississippi that usually go downstream to now have to go upstream, adding hundreds of miles to their journey. Not to mention, I don't know if those canals are large/deep enough for all the traffic that goes downstream, or if the products could survive the colder weather coming out of the Gulf of St Lawrence. Not to mention the cost of having to go through Canadian waters when they previously didn't have to!

TL;DR: Prices for gas, food, shipping, would all go up dramatically. Millions of people would lose jobs. Millions of farms and factories would have crops rotting in silos because they can't ship it. Two major cities would need to be rebuilt or abandoned with the people relocated, with many other US city's shipping economies hurting. Billions in infrastructure would need to be repaired along the Mississippi and billions/trillions in newly built infrastructure at the new mouth.

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I was on the structure in 1973. The whole massive thing was shaking. Water all around. Mr Simoneaux ( the USACE boss on the structure) would ask. “Have you ever heard of Murphy’s Law ? Fricking Murphy lives here. “

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