Here’s the hilarious disaster London faces: it’s built on a floodplain that’s slowly sinking, while sea levels rise like they’re trying to win an Olympic high jump. A big storm surge from the North Sea can rush up the Thames faster than a tourist trying to get a selfie with Big Ben. Without the barrier, the Houses of Parliament would be a fish tank, and the Tube would double as a municipal swimming pool.
The barrier is the world’s second-largest movable flood defense, because why be second-best when you can be massive? It stretches 520 meters across the river—that’s longer than five football fields laid end to end, or roughly the length of a queue for a really disappointing kebab stand. It was finished in 1982, just in time to protect London from a combo of rising tides and the queen’s questionable 80s hairstyles.
