Half the Netherlands Sits Below Sea Level — Here's What Holds It Up

A quarter of the Netherlands lies below sea level. In 1953, a storm surge broke the dikes and flooded the southwest of the country, killing more than 1,800 people. What the Dutch built next became one of the largest flood defense systems on Earth: the Delta Works. In this video: how the Dutch drained lakes with windmills, the night of the 1953 flood, the cargo boat that plugged a breaking dike and kept three million people dry, the 9-kilometer Eastern Scheldt barrier with its 18,000-ton pillars, and the Maeslant barrier, two floating steel gates longer than two football fields that a computer can close on its own. Chapters: 0:00 A country below the sea 0:32 Born in a river delta 1:51 Windmills and polders 2:38 The boy and the dike 3:06 The Zuiderzee and Zeeland 3:52 The storm of 1953 5:40 The rescue 6:21 The Two Brothers 7:18 The Delta Committee 8:20 Building the dams 9:08 Safety or nature? 10:15 Building the Eastern Scheldt barrier 12:10 The Maeslant barrier 14:05 Room for the River 14:45 The next storm Sources: Rijkswaterstaat: Maeslant Barrier; Eastern Scheldt Barrier Watersnoodmuseum: Eastern Scheldt Storm Surge Barrier; The 1953 flood Britannica: North Sea flood ASCE Civil Engineering magazine: Civil engineers create wonders of the world (Seven Wonders of the Modern World, 1994) DutchNews: Key facts about the great flood of 1953 Wikipedia: North Sea flood of 1953; Delta Works; Oosterscheldekering; Maeslantkering; Schielands Hoge Zeedijk Illustrations in this video are AI-generated artistic reconstructions, not historical photographs. Maps and diagrams are schematic. Figures are approximate.