They're nowhere near the top if you relate it to size though (and also next to none of it is electrified, which is a pretty good indicator of it being mostly old - after all, rail is what even allowrd the country to be built).
I object to electrification being used to judge a country's railway age and quality. A lot of countries transition into electric trains over a century ago especially in Europe and surprisingly the US. I could talk for hours about the US's history with electric trains and how short sided business practices combined with the government's attempt to sorta nationalize the rail industry crippled it's electrification progress. Not to get too far off topic though there's only three metrics you can really grade the quality and age of a nation's rail infrastructure with. That is size, volume, and average speed. In my opinion though avarage speed is the best indicator for a country's railway age and quality because it gets rid of a lot of the problems other definitions bring up. For example both of the internationally recognized definitions for high speed rail uses a different speed depending if the line was new (155mph) or upgraded (125mph). This causes all sorts of issues because under those definitions Amtrak's northeast regional train counts as high speed rail as it runs on an upgraded line with a top speed of 125mph even though the northeast corridor has an average speed of 86mph.
But it was done, which is kind of the opposite of NIMBY. Also it's not a project that could go anywhere, except that no one wants it.
Closing Guantanamo was a NIMBY thing because, while everyone agrees it should happen, no one wanted the detainees in their backyard. (As ridiculous as that is.)
We didn't maintain administration of the canal for just over a century for no reason. We would have put that shit in the Rio Grande, if we could have. Unfortunately that river runs dry for several months a year.
Especially since that particular area of the world is some of the least developed.
Also: although planned over 2000 years ago, it wasn't really made by ancient Greeks. They gave up and made a road to transport ships on it instead of actually digging. Only in modern time did they actually finish the canal
They more or less put wheels on ships or rather loaded them on trailers and simply dragged them over land. Funny thing is that Thucydides (460 BC–395 BC) wrote about this, and described it as an ancient practice!
Better even. They made the movable pool quite long. So while the horses dragged the pool the ships could still sail in it. That way the horses didn't need to drag the pool the whole way!
You might need to account for an extra day or two to dig down low enough in the rocky mountains. Unless you're working with a friend and they brought their own shovel.
My first thought was if this was remotely possible on this scale, how many things would be disrupted and changed from the water movement alone. The Panama canal has to have locks because of the ocean differences, but no way would you have locks spanning a few hundred miles across. This thing would have tides back and forth.
Panama canal has to have locks because of the ocean differences
It's actually mostly due to the landscape of Panama, including the lake it uses to traverse and the mountains. The Pacific and Atlantic oceans don't different that much, maybe a few feet. And mostly due to tidal differences.
Just made the entire river underground! A big underground river spanning thousands of miles. It'd require a hell of a lot more work but it wouldn't disrupt things on the surface as much.
Assuming the river would be identical in depth and breadth to the Panama canal, if every man, woman, and child in the US picked up a shovel they would need to move 305 cubic feet of dirt each. So if we all just moved 1 cubic foot of dirt per day, we could pull this off in a year.
I wouldn't be so certain about that. Evaporation might be stronger similar to the mediterreanian sea. So water would flow from both sides into the channel.
But such a project probably disturbes weather patterns and ocean currents all together. Hence, I don't think we can be curtain until we've tried it. Now grab your shovel. FOR SCIENCE!
I would need a study on if this would negatively impact desert ecosystems or introduce invasive species, but otherwise it sounds pretty cool if we limit the size until it's about as big as the new Panama Canal expansions.
It's not like the number of communities measuring a hundred miles wide are many. Also, believe it or not, the USA has bridge building technology. Shocking, I know.
Luckily this entire swath of land is completely void of human and animal life and nobody will be emminent-domained out of their homes and livelihoods with little to no reward for doing so, and bridges are notoriously so much more permeable than plain flat land. I'm such a silly goose to not have thought of those things when I wrote that very serious comment about this very serious hypothetical 🥸
Would need Willy Wonka's chocolate factory to exist first for that to happen. After all, Snowpiercer is a sequel to The Great Glass Elevator. Charlie just changed his name.
Continents are not defined by tectonic plates, for example Eurasia is separated by an imaginary line. There is no universally agreed upon definition of what exactly earths continents are either.
Yes, but not for slavery this time, but for fresh water in the decades ahead of climate change. Those freshwater Great Lakes will be awfully attractive 100 years from now.
First I was excited thinking about South Canada and North Mexico, but unfortunately they screwed up the one opportunity in history to fix Oklahoma's awkward 'protrusion', so I can't with a clean conscience support and vote for this. Better luck next time.
A long stretch of hot, dry weather has left the Mississippi River so low that barge companies are reducing their loads just as Midwest farmers are preparing to harvest crops and send tons of corn and soybeans downriver to the Gulf of Mexico.
That's not climate change; that's just a precedented drought and media trying to cash on doomscrolling climate change. It's done the exact same thing almost every year. Rain has always been somewhat random.
I mean this is a pretty good visual representation of what they did when they built all the highways, just more spread out and the negative implications being mostly pushed off onto whoever didn't have enough political capital to resist them, i.e. minorities.
Americans will literally do anything except build trains
4 kms across the ocean:
now that we have this river across the whole country, we can finally introduce swimming cars!
You mean plastic bubbles?
or normal cars in bubble wrap... see we're already brainstorming like it's a Tesla project
Oh no
You can create this strait and then have a train which runs along it, like the train from Spirited Away
What if we made some sort of floating train?
You know that the United States has the largest railway in the world right? Like not even by a small amount too...
They're nowhere near the top if you relate it to size though (and also next to none of it is electrified, which is a pretty good indicator of it being mostly old - after all, rail is what even allowrd the country to be built).
But also it's a joke
I object to electrification being used to judge a country's railway age and quality. A lot of countries transition into electric trains over a century ago especially in Europe and surprisingly the US. I could talk for hours about the US's history with electric trains and how short sided business practices combined with the government's attempt to sorta nationalize the rail industry crippled it's electrification progress. Not to get too far off topic though there's only three metrics you can really grade the quality and age of a nation's rail infrastructure with. That is size, volume, and average speed. In my opinion though avarage speed is the best indicator for a country's railway age and quality because it gets rid of a lot of the problems other definitions bring up. For example both of the internationally recognized definitions for high speed rail uses a different speed depending if the line was new (155mph) or upgraded (125mph). This causes all sorts of issues because under those definitions Amtrak's northeast regional train counts as high speed rail as it runs on an upgraded line with a top speed of 125mph even though the northeast corridor has an average speed of 86mph.
Panama Canal is the biggest NIMBY project ever
Because it was built at the thinnest part of the content and used existing lakes?
Pretty sure Omaha would have loved an East\West canal across the continent.
Because it wasn't done for or with the approval of locals
But it was done, which is kind of the opposite of NIMBY. Also it's not a project that could go anywhere, except that no one wants it.
Closing Guantanamo was a NIMBY thing because, while everyone agrees it should happen, no one wanted the detainees in their backyard. (As ridiculous as that is.)
The Panama canal was a US NIMBY project I'd argue. Give us the canal but without impacting our territory.
We didn't maintain administration of the canal for just over a century for no reason. We would have put that shit in the Rio Grande, if we could have. Unfortunately that river runs dry for several months a year.
Especially since that particular area of the world is some of the least developed.
It connected several lakes in the narrowest part of the continent. Not ‘exactly that’ at all
If they could do it in ancient Greece then Americans can do it today for sure!
Stolen from ![email protected]
Also: although planned over 2000 years ago, it wasn't really made by ancient Greeks. They gave up and made a road to transport ships on it instead of actually digging. Only in modern time did they actually finish the canal
Wait... They had a movable pool that they rode the ships into and then horses dragged to the other waterway? That sounds awesome
They more or less put wheels on ships or rather loaded them on trailers and simply dragged them over land. Funny thing is that Thucydides (460 BC–395 BC) wrote about this, and described it as an ancient practice!
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/09/diolkos-ancient-trackway-that-carried.html?m=1
Better even. They made the movable pool quite long. So while the horses dragged the pool the ships could still sail in it. That way the horses didn't need to drag the pool the whole way!
I dont think so. Not in this case at least. They gave up digging in the hard rock and instead made a limestone road to drive them on dry surface.
This is the Corinth canal but before it was made the paved road for transporting ships was called Diolkos
I know. I was just expanding on the other persons joke (I assume he joked). :)
You are a good person for being this patient and sharing your knowledge.
Oh sorry. My bad
Anything is possible with enough nukes!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
I love the 1950s, the solution to any problem was just "idk, have you tried nuking it?"
Definitely. And just like today with ‘ai’
This might also make it really easy to hit the 2 degree climate target.
More like the -2 degree Celcius average World temperature target.
Can't just let them go to waste!
Florida kinda has this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okeechobee_Waterway
About 36 feet above sea level though. How are we gonna clear a waterway from coast to coast, though? C'mon, boffins, let's sort this out!
Locks and dams. Thousands of miles of locks and dams.
Nah, I vote canel tunnel!
SHOVEL!
"I get my kicks... on Canal 66."
You might need to account for an extra day or two to dig down low enough in the rocky mountains. Unless you're working with a friend and they brought their own shovel.
Just get some pickaxes and dig a tunnel
This would also allow for a super cool water park. I'm all for it.
My first thought was if this was remotely possible on this scale, how many things would be disrupted and changed from the water movement alone. The Panama canal has to have locks because of the ocean differences, but no way would you have locks spanning a few hundred miles across. This thing would have tides back and forth.
It's actually mostly due to the landscape of Panama, including the lake it uses to traverse and the mountains. The Pacific and Atlantic oceans don't different that much, maybe a few feet. And mostly due to tidal differences.
Oh, so it's like an escalator for ships up and down.
Yep.
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2FKT5K5/panama-canal-profile-structure-of-locks-logistics-and-transportation-of-international-container-cargo-ship-freight-shipping-nautical-vessel-concept-2FKT5K5.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_lift
Essentially yeah. Or a bunch of elevators up then down. Both descriptions work.
Plus literally chopping down a large stretch of both the Appalachians and the Sierra Nevada would be insane.
Or could just go over tbh
You ever take your boat off any sweet water ramps?
Just made the entire river underground! A big underground river spanning thousands of miles. It'd require a hell of a lot more work but it wouldn't disrupt things on the surface as much.
Imagine getting Ever Givened under Kansas.
My first thought too. This needs a Randall Monroe ‘What If?’ explanation.
There's a sea level canal in Greece, the Corinth canal. And it has pretty strong tidal currents.
I wonder if, hypothetically, we could use such currents for more efficient power generation compared to the current tidal power generation.
Goodbye, Kentucky
Actually, guys, maybe we should hear them out?
it could solve the water crisiseses
Dude all you need is 4 square meters and 2 water buckets
Infinite water glitch
Infinite food glitch
Would also solve some of the rising ocean levels too!
It annoys me that you're correct
I think I'd hate to live downsteam from where the Mississippi is bisected.
I wonder if that river would remain salty for its entire existence
Assuming the river would be identical in depth and breadth to the Panama canal, if every man, woman, and child in the US picked up a shovel they would need to move 305 cubic feet of dirt each. So if we all just moved 1 cubic foot of dirt per day, we could pull this off in a year.
Hey, you're a numbers guy right? What's to say we take all that extra dirt and make an island? Asking for a friend
Hawa-II, this needs to happen. Opening date is June 13, 2025.
Let's fucking goooo
That’s how the Soviet gulags built canals and railroads btw. Lots of deaths
Do it small scale first and turn Florida into an island.
Then push it away
The Caribbean has suffered enough
Then keep pushing it further into the Atlantic.
Until it crashes into England 🙏
Someone move Ireland south
No, not that far. Please stop in middle of the Atlantic. Or do you hope both sink?
That's gonna be the weirdest Atlantis origin story
I feel like there has to be an easier way to solve the homeless problem in San Francisco.
This will require more bridges, which creates more jobs. It's genius!
In which direction would it flow?
From the center to the borders, due to rain.
I wouldn't be so certain about that. Evaporation might be stronger similar to the mediterreanian sea. So water would flow from both sides into the channel.
But such a project probably disturbes weather patterns and ocean currents all together. Hence, I don't think we can be curtain until we've tried it. Now grab your shovel. FOR SCIENCE!
We need to be curtain!
LET US ALL BECOME CURTAINS
Woopsi
I mean 'Weepsi'
Maybe the water would follow the Moon's pull like a tide, so from the Atlantic to the Pacific?
It'd probably depend on the tide.
I don't trust anyone South of the Mistersippi river.
Literally described the Mississippi river.
If we could connect the Missouri to the Snake River we could do pretty much the same thing. There's a seaport in Idaho already
Technically, it's already done!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parting_of_the_Waters
Time to get dredging!
Except the map makes it look like a thousand times wider than the Mississippi.
A lot of the canals in the world (the majority I think, but please fact check that) were built in the 19th century. So yeah... with shovels.
With the low resolution I can't quite tell if I would suddenly live on the beach or underwater
Depends on if you can outrun a shovel.
From the people who brought you Sharknado: Shovelanche.
we need efficiency IV tho
Diamond should be enough, making that many beds to mine netherite seems excessive especially since the update
I would need a study on if this would negatively impact desert ecosystems or introduce invasive species, but otherwise it sounds pretty cool if we limit the size until it's about as big as the new Panama Canal expansions.
Nevermind any communities you'd separate or destroy by dropping a big ol' river through the middle of them
Americans don't mind building highways, so it is not a concern to them.
Higheys through communities are good, then waterways are good too
It's not like the number of communities measuring a hundred miles wide are many. Also, believe it or not, the USA has bridge building technology. Shocking, I know.
Luckily this entire swath of land is completely void of human and animal life and nobody will be emminent-domained out of their homes and livelihoods with little to no reward for doing so, and bridges are notoriously so much more permeable than plain flat land. I'm such a silly goose to not have thought of those things when I wrote that very serious comment about this very serious hypothetical 🥸
Do you lack reading comprehension? I said we should make it smaller than the image, idiot.
How is it that whenever I see somebody getting shitty on Lemmy, 90% of the time it's FiniteBanjo
I'm the most honest person you'll never meet.
Or, and hear me out, just build a fucking high speed railway
High speed railway and river/canal are not in the same ballpark.
No, they aren't. One is realistic, the other isn't. I'm not going to debate which is which.
That would cause the world to freeze, I saw that documentary "snowpiecer" they built a high speed rail and it froze the world.
Would need Willy Wonka's chocolate factory to exist first for that to happen. After all, Snowpiercer is a sequel to The Great Glass Elevator. Charlie just changed his name.
Stop trolling.
Says the guy seriously considering building a canal across the U.S. .
I wouldn't tell anyone they're a troll if I were you.
Most cost-effective would be to use the Photoshop eraser tool.
But a bit more south would be easier. Oh, wait.
I could get on board with a moat around Texas and Florida
Check out bdonvr’s comment about the Okeechobee Waterway. We could just cut Florida off following that line, then we could build a bigger moat around Texas with all the money will save by letting Florida go!
Grab a saw for the Florida part
Does the USA still own the Panama Canal? I remember there being some disputes about that.
Nope. We gave it to Panama in 1999
Bonus question: would this make a new continent?
No, it would not. There already are waterways splitting North America into multiple large pieces.
Nope, the continental plate would not be separated by a river flowing over top.
Continents are not defined by tectonic plates, for example Eurasia is separated by an imaginary line. There is no universally agreed upon definition of what exactly earths continents are either.
Then you'd need to dig really, really deep. Even deeper than where the Balrog lives.
as long as you don't do it greedily you should be fine
This is the United States we're talking about.
Would the north and south go to war again for control?
we're already on the edge of civil war over clumps of undifferentiated cells and pronouns. absolutely yes
Yes, but not for slavery this time, but for fresh water in the decades ahead of climate change. Those freshwater Great Lakes will be awfully attractive 100 years from now.
The south doesn’t believe in climate change so they won’t mind right, right?
We'd have to change all the names!
Canada's pants become Canada shorts and Canada socks
First I was excited thinking about South Canada and North Mexico, but unfortunately they screwed up the one opportunity in history to fix Oklahoma's awkward 'protrusion', so I can't with a clean conscience support and vote for this. Better luck next time.
The Mississippi already does that, but south-north instead of east-west.
Well... it did. And then climate change happened
Oh. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
That's not climate change; that's just a precedented drought and media trying to cash on doomscrolling climate change. It's done the exact same thing almost every year. Rain has always been somewhat random.
Less rainfall
Less accumulated upstate snowpack
Higher regional temperatures
More agricultural states draining off the Mississippi's reserve in order to maintain a steady growing season
Drier ground absorbing more of the remaining river water
What could any of this have to do with climate change?
I'm not arguing it doesn't make sense. I'm just stating the evidence shows the Mississippi isn't trending lower despite how you explain why it is.
That's a gnarly cliff in Colorado
All you need is time and a LOT of shovels........
Nope. Just MS paint and one brush.
Ke~~~~ky.
And if abandoned halfway we could just turn it into a park.
https://www.floridastateparks.org/learn/history-cross-florida-greenway
I like this idea. However, I have one small issue: this river appears to go directly through my house...
Just put some fresh sealant on your windows. Should hold.
Isn't that a good thing? Free river!
Why don't you just sell your house and move?
now I know more or less exactly where you live!
😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
Mostly for social reasons. We definitely have the technology and resources.
Now build a land bridge and connect this up with Panama
No one in the north wants Missouri. I'm south of them and I don't want them.
I'm in Missouri and can't find error in your logic.
Truth be told as long as I could move north of that line I would be okay with Missouri staying where it is.
Tbh, building a mountain and tearing it down again would be about as useful as half of existing jobs.
You eliminate San Francisco but leave Washington D.C. ?
Test
Your comment worked and is visible, if you were wondering.
Thanks, yeah i was seeing if it would even post
I mean this is a pretty good visual representation of what they did when they built all the highways, just more spread out and the negative implications being mostly pushed off onto whoever didn't have enough political capital to resist them, i.e. minorities.