I was talking with a woman from the Netherlands and somehow we ended up talking about how our countries treat stranded marine life. Of course the Netherlands have regular beaches where whales can get stranded, but the first thing that popped into my head were whales flopping over the sides of Netherlands' dams.
Actually, much of The Netherlands is not below sea level but roughly 'at' sea level and it would only flood during a high tide.
Maybe a good one for another comic: one of the reasons The Netherlands is below sea level in many places is that we pumped the water out of the ground to make the swamps, that was there originally in many places, dry. As a result, the ground compacted and The Netherlands got lower and lower over the centuries. Then we had to build higher dikes to keep the sea out. Self-inflicted in part...
Another thing we have done is pumped gas out of the North of the country (used to be the biggest gas reserve in the world) and as a result the ground is compacting there as well. That also results in earthquakes strong enough to damage buildings there.
@gctwnl Very interesting. I call myself a history nerd, but somehow I'd convinced myself that a lot of the Netherlands had been created recently, as all I knew about the Netherlands' geography was that it depended a whole lot on the integrity of dams and dikes. Shit, now that I'm writing it out it seems a whole lot more naïve than I thought it would..
@gctwnl There is another reason why Netherlands sinking: During The Ice Age, the mass of ice that lied on scandinavia, it shifted The Netherlands up. Now Nordic coutries growing in high, while Netherlands and parts of Belgium and Germany are sinking.
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I really love the fact that Denmark gave the whale his beer. He's such a softy :-)