this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 137 points 6 months ago (15 children)

Obviously this is a terrible idea, but I'm gonna answer it seriously for the sake of dunking on it.

  1. The amount of work. I mean, just astronomical. That's 1,650 miles of longitude this dude is talking about filling in; the largest earth-moving project ever was the Panama Canal, and it's only about 50 miles long. Plus, by comparison, it's essentially a one-dimensional line! This looks like it's probably in the ballpark of 500-ish miles from the current shore to the new shore, and two-ish miles from the surface to the floor.

  2. Where would we get the land from? It's not like there's a pile just sitting around. I guess we could dredge the Pacific and truck it across to pour into the Atlantic? Take down the Appalachians and the Rockies? Bring down an asteroid into the ocean? None of that would be enough. In fact, nothing I can think of that we have access to could even come close to providing enough dirt (remember, we need 1,650 x 500 x 2 cubic miles of it!), even if we could manage to do it without destroying ecosystems or killing billions of people.

  3. The people who have spent a lot of money buying homes and businesses on the current Eastern seaboard of the United States would probably have something to say about this plan. (Something loud and something very angry.) Besides, it would completely upend the shipping industry, the fishing industry, the tourism industry, and more. This would legitimately destroy multiple national economies, and that's before you even take into account the ecological disaster.

  4. Sea level rise is already a major problem. So displacing a bunch of water in favor of dirt probably isn't going to help that too terribly much.

  5. ...why? A lot of America is sitting unused or underused. If you were to clump all of the US's land use into discrete blocks, it would look like this: Image The area labeled "LAND?" on the ocean in the OP map is, give or take, the size of the current amount of land owned by the 100 largest landowning families, private family timberland, golf, and fallow land (meaning land used for nothing). This means that the area that the person in question is asking about is already essentially or literally being used for nothing at all. Before we start undertaking an ecologically-disastrous and fundamentally impossible project, we'd probably figure out ways to use that other land.

But there's more. The land that is being used is almost entirely being underused. For instance, take the "Cow pasture/range" section of the map; cattle account, by far, for the highest land use of any land use in the country. But the 28.2 million cows in America only need about an acre of land each; meaning that the 124.7 million acres of land they roam is about five times bigger than what they actually need. Most of the other production uses for land in the US (along with rural housing) are similarly sprawling because they can be; land is comparatively cheap, so there's no real reason to consolidate. If that changes, land prices will rise, and the people and companies holding on to underused land will discover that it makes financial sense to sell and reconfigure their businesses to make more efficient use of the land.

So calm down, Lex Luthor. The problem isn't that resources are actually scarce. It's that people at the top have a financial interest in underusing their holdings so that they can keep prices artificially high.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago

Very elaborate and snarky answer. Love it

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (2 children)

But the 28.2 million cows in America only need about an acre of land each; meaning that the 124.7 million acres of land they roam is about five times bigger than what they actually need.

Wouldn't we want cattle using at least a bit more land than they strictly need? Overgrazing was one of the contributing factors to the Dust Bowl.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Ooh cool map for visualizing land-use in the US, ty 4 sharing!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Fallow land is used land. It's land that's not currently used but its non-usage only happens its efficiency when actually used. It's like sleeping, but for land, so it's not free to use

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[–] [email protected] 81 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Dutch be like “amateurs”

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

The Dutch won't get awards for the design of the coastline.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 6 months ago

Team Magma is at it again.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 6 months ago (11 children)

There's an episode of Star Trek TNG where the crew is briefly back on earth and capt Picard is enticed by the idea of taking a job where they do exactly this. They work on lifting a tectonic plate from the ocean floor to create a new continent.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I have a vague memory of that and I have a feeling it would be a massive ecological catastrophe.

Then again, Earth had already gone through a nuclear war, so whatever.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago

I mean, two nuclear bombs were used in war and a bunch in testing, unless I'm forgetting something. I feel like tectonic activity could definitely be much worse than that, judging by the early earth environment.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Just like the Simpsons or XKCD, there's always a relevant Star Trek episode. It's unfortunate none of my friends have watched any.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago

Are those really friends?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Where do we ship the Clockwork Orange eyelid clamps?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

S4E2. After the Borg incident Picard visits his brother and childhood home. Brief discussions of alternate life and career.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 6 months ago (7 children)

Carefully timed explosives placed in the middle of the moon causing it to split in half, one half going away from Earth and the other half going right into the Atlantic coast. Problem solved.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago

There was a book about that. It did indeed result in a new continent in the Atlantic. Then all the people Europe colonized rise up and kill all the Europeans and take over that continent, the end.

I enjoyed it.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61273333-the-hopkins-manuscript

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

I dunno, why do you guys keep asking me?

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The netherlands entered the chat

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

G E K O L O N I S E E R D

Or is that not allowed over here😅

[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The REAL problem is that it might throw off the balance of power in the Senate.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

That and we're currently using the Appalachians for something.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Reminds me of that Atlantropa plan. The idea was to drain most of the Mediterranean sea to create new land between Europe and Africa. Some German guy came up with it in the 1920s and spent like 20 years trying to convince people it's a great idea and totally doable. Unfortunately everyone was busy with other stuff back then...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Honestly it was a crazy plan but it probably could have been accomplished. It would have been a fuck ton of work and had immeasurable externalities.

Here is a bathymetric map of the straits of Gibraltar if anyone wants to to have a try

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Where would we get the land to fill it in? EASY! We'll just pull up our old plan to blow up the moon and use the chunks to make more America!

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There is a German novel where something like this happens over night for no reason. It's called "Miami Punk" and worth a read but I'm afraid there are no translations. It's written by an anthropologist and he investigates the question how people would react, including people out of work, conspiracy theories, scientists, ...

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago

It's totally doable, you guys! Have you ever seen the amount of sand in the deserts? Just pour it all down on that water, it will totally work! Trust me, brah!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (1 children)

As if America needs to be any bigger

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

We're not the biggest yet. We just need to annex Canada and Mexico.....

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago

No one's using the north half of Canada, let's dig it up and do it!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

Why bother filling it with land when you can just find some crusty old map with some dashes on it as evidence that it belongs to you

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

A guy tried that in, I think, 2006. Superman just threw his new landmass out into space.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You don't even need to ride the bus and potentially endanger those children. You could even watch a simple 3 minute video from Tom Scott, explaining how people found out it's a bad idea to drain large bodies of water.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

Guy got baited into lecturing on a shitpost. Absolutely genius.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

Don't we already do that?

Bostons "Back Bay" was literally a bay, not that long ago b

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I wouldn't call creating some artificial islands with sand is 'literally' doubling the size of a continent into the ocean.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Scrap filling it with dirt.

Make a framework to allow mangroves to grow on the surface and act like a giant, natural, floating platform. Like that dude who made his own island base (multiple times because weather keeps destroying it).

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Or better, just remove land from America so everyone sinks. :)

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