Are 2012's Arks feasible?

Would Arks save us?

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for the film 2012.

This weekend has seen Roland Emmerich's disaster epic 2012 smash box office records worldwide with mankind attempting to survive 'the apocalypse'. Without meaning to ruin the film for anyone, mankind's salvation lies in a fleet of Arks constructed high in the Himalayas, financed by the G8 and the private sector. Not just that, but with the Chinese government's knack for ignoring human rights and workers' lunch breaks, the seven Arks and their mountain top hanger are all built within three years - but is this anywhere near possible?

Now a lot of this is going to be purely speculative. It is not really known how much it would cost to build a mountain top lair, equipped with a fleet of hi-tech super-Arks and state of the art technology, but if your average Bond villain can do it, the eight most wealthy countries in the world can... apparently.

According to the film, 'seats' on these seven Arks cost ONE BILLION EUROS each. I believe it was mentioned that the Arks have the capacity to save 400,000 people so straight away you have 400,000,000,000,000 euros or, if my calculations are correct, USD$598,240,914,605,134 - and that's from the private sector alone.

So if we say, hypothetically, that this represents two-thirds of the total money put into the project with the G8 contributing the rest, this equates to a total figure of;

USD$897,361,371,907,702 - that's $897 trillion more or less... however, I recently read that the world GNP is $44 trillion, so someone's been printing a lot of money

Firstly, apart from the atrocity that is flogging tickets to save the world's elite, the fact that the world's governments come together to build these Arks says something in itself. Sure, they choose to save themselves and their rich buddies, but I was more astounded by the fact that China, the US, Russia and the richest European countries were getting along and not trying to 'one up' each other or screw each other over.

But then I guess the US could not have done it alone. America has nowhere near the resources, man power or location to build a secret fleet of Arks. However China does...

Breaking it down

The 'Ark hanger' is built under the guise of a dam in the Himalayas and when revealed, looks to be the most advanced hanger/dam in the world. Currently, the largest dam in the world is the Three Gorges Dam in, ironically, China and that alone has cost $39 billion and decades to plan and built.

In the film, the Chinese get The Ark project done in three years.

Of course, this is Hollywood so corners will no doubt have been cut.

Of course, whilst saving yourselves, you also have to get humanity's priceless artifacts on board such as The Statue of David, The Mona Lisa and the works of Picasso. The film also shows that mankind opts to save a large portion of the world's animals, so on top of all the food needed to feed 400,000 people, you also have to cater for the world's biggest zoo.

That'll cost.

San Diego Zoo, one of the biggest in the world, spends $1 million a year feeding the 7,000 animals whilst $150 million is needed to maintain and care for the animals.

Then you have the materials needed to build this fleet...and here is where Hollywood bends the rules.

Building the Arks

Essentially, you have a hanger up in the Himalayas. How do you get all the building materials up there? You'll need billions of tonnes of steel! Not just for the hanger, but for the ships. Is there even that much steel in the world? Plus, you'll need more than steel - if these Arks are going to be bashing up against the likes of Everest whilst riding the world's biggest waves, they are going to need to be plated with the likes of titanium to survive. And titanium isn't cheap... $100 per pound.

These Arks are the size of aircraft carriers... or bigger. Currently planned for development are the US's Gerald R. Ford aircraft carriers. These behemoths weigh 101,600 metric tons and are 1,092 ft long. If we use these as a guide, and I'm sure these things are nowhere near as big as the Arks, you'd need billions to armour these monsters. The cost of a Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is approximately $9 billion.

There are no doubt other things that would all add up to the cost, such as R&D, labour costs (quite cheap in China no doubt) and food costs, but essentially, the Ark project would be the most expensive project in the world and only in Hollywood would such a feat be kept secret for over three years.

So pure Hollywood hokum? An ingenious idea for the future? Or do you believe these Arks already exist, anchored inside Area 51 for the day when the apocalypse strikes?

You may find it interesting to learn that Norway already has an Ark of sorts - a "doomsday" seed bank that holds seeds from most of the world's crop varieties and their botanical wild relatives. The blast-proof 'ark' has had seeds provided from around the world and is designed to prevent the diversity of agricultural crops from becoming extinct "as a result of accident, mismanagement, equipment failure, war or natural disaster, or due to a regional or global catastrophe."

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China's Three Gorges Dam | The Importance of US waterways | Road trains

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