Spruce Pine sits about an hour northeast of Asheville, Mitchell County, and is home to the world’s biggest known source of ultra-pure quartz—often referred to as “high-purity quartz,” or HPQ. This material is used for manufacturing crucibles, on which global semiconductor production relies, as well as to make components within semiconductors themselves. Semiconductors are the fundamental building blocks of modern IT.
Viral social media posts have claimed that due to the flooding, global production of semiconductors could halt. This doomsday scenario is unlikely, but experts are gravely concerned about the impact the flooding could have on the tech industry and the economic ramifications of prolonged supply chain pressures caused by the shutdown of the site. “The key thing will not be just the floods, as bad as they are,” says Chris Hackney, a researcher in human geography at Newcastle University in the UK.