How the Netherlands Conquered the Sea: The Delta Works Story

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Japan isn't the only country taming the elements. There's an incredible mega project in the Netherlands, the [music] Delta Works. The Dutch face a more constant threat, the North Sea itself, pushing relentlessly against the land.

[00:00:13]They've had to deal with the water for so long that nearly a third of their country sits below sea level, and millions of people live where the sea would happily pour in if nature got an opening.

[00:00:25]In 1953, [music] a massive North Sea storm surge drowned nearly 1,836 people [music] and took huge tracts of farmland and towns. And that gave birth to the Delta Works, [music] a chain of gigantic dams, storm surge barriers,