What if Chile Was Waaaaaay Longer??

this video was made possible by curiosity stream when you sign up for an annual subscription you'll also get access to nebula my own streaming site co-founded with dozens of other educational creators chile is pretty obviously a long country from north to south the country extends for 4 270 kilometers which is even longer than the distance of new york city to san francisco despite that enormous length though chile is way less thick with an average width east to west of only kilometers about the same distance from new york city to hartford connecticut so just for the simple sake of being goofy what would chile end up looking like today if it was well longer like way longer if chile was more ambitious historically and didn't stop with just taking over bolivia's coastline but ended up taking over the entire pacific coastline of the americas stretching up all the way into modern-day alaska what would chile end up looking like today or rather what would chile look like today if for some reason she was just given all of this land and became known as longer chile for starters there is some historical precedent here ever since gaining independence from spain all the way back over 200 years ago in 1810 chile has been long and she has sought to become longer in 1879 chile went to war with both bolivia and peru in order to extend her length further north along the pacific she defeated both of them and as a result she won land from both which not only made her shape longer but transformed bolivia into a landlocked country which is something that bolivia has been salty about ever since to this day sad salty little landlocked bolivia maintains a navy with thousands of personnel for the sole hope of one day regaining her coastline from chile historically chile's coastal ambitions ended there but if they didn't here's what the country would look like if it kept on going all the way up to alaska first off length chile's new length in a straight line from the southernmost point on the drake passage to the northernmost on the arctic ocean in alaska would be 15 738 kilometers which means that if you were looking sideways at a globe longer chile would stretch across 39 of the earth's entire circumference naturally santiago would remain longer chile's capital city but it would no longer be chile's largest city here's where all of the top 10 largest metros in the longest country on earth would be with santiago itself falling down to only third place behind los angeles and lima with dozens of large wealthy and powerful cities like anchorage vancouver seattle san francisco los angeles san diego and guadalajara longer chile would have an estimated population of just over 150 million people and a nominal gdp of 3.945 trillion us dollars making it the third largest world economy just barely ahead of germany and remaining well beneath japan now here's the fun stuff with the domination of the entire pacific coastline in the americas longer chile would end up controlling both a very strategic and very unstrategic area on the bright side longer chile would end up controlling some of the world's most important trade outposts with control of panama would come control over the panama canal and all of the trade benefits that come with that the port of cologne on the atlantic is the busiest port in latin america and the caribbean while the port of balboa on the pacific side is a little more than half as busy if combined into a single entity the port of los angeles and the port of long beach is the busiest cargo port anywhere outside of asia and by far the largest anywhere in the americas combined with the other large pacific ports of manzanillo in mexico oakland seattle and vancouver longer chile would have one of the world's greatest trading empires all of the maritime trade flowing between the americas and asia would have to either flow through the territory of longer chile first or go through the long route around south america because that route would be a lot more expensive longer chile could take advantage of her positions across the pacific and dominate trade between asia and the western hemisphere on top of that anchorage airport is the world's fifth busiest airport for cargo while los angeles airport is the world's third busiest for passenger traffic further enhancing longer chile's position as a trade juggernaut financially geographically and logistically longer chile would seemingly be in a tremendous position and unlike other empires i've made up in the past longer chile's linear shape does offer it some unique advantages for example you'd only need to build a single line of logistics and transportation across the entire country in order to connect everything together and luckily most of the infrastructure for that is already in place there's existing roads along the coast that connect punta arenas in chile with kali and colombia and with yaviza panama all the way up to vancouver canada the only two gaps in the system that would need to be filled are in the dense rainforest between kali and yaviza and across the barren tundra from vancouver to anchorage if longer chile ever came into conflict with one of her neighbors over access to the pacific these would be the primary weak points to consider and conflict would almost certainly happen historically chile was capable of taking over bolivia's coastline because well what the hell is bolivia going to do about it with their salty landlocked navy but taking over the pacific coastline from countries like the united states the world's foremost military power is quite another thing despite the loss of valuable population and economic centers on the west coast the united states would still remain absurdly more powerful than longer chile she would still have nearly twice the population base and would still control not only the entire gulf and atlantic coasts but would still maintain important pacific possessions as well like hawaii and guam along with important naval bases in japan and south korea america would still be very capable of launching a two-front naval assault on longer chile with a vastly more powerful navy which is only the beginning of my explanation for how longer chile would be completely unsustainable an enemy naval force seizing the narrow ismus of panama would effectively cut the entire country in half and also block longer chilean fleets from being able to quickly access the caribbean while longer chile is well very long she is not particularly wide and lacks any semblance of strategic depth take the area around the los angeles metro for example the distance from the core population and economic engine that is la from the united states would be so short that the vastly more powerful american military could quickly move in from the border and immediately threaten or seize it or alternatively move to cut it off from the rest of the country with quick and short pincer strikes to the north or the south thus denying any resupplies getting into the city from land any hostile power could do this to longer chile at any point across her border all it takes to completely divide the entire country in half and disrupt the entire flow of supplies up and down is a quick advance from any point to the ocean and with a population of only 150 million to defend a front line stretching over 15 000 kilometers it would be impossible to sufficiently defend everywhere against everyone utilizing the gaps in longer chile's road network an attack in north america would mean that the only method of getting reinforcements there would be to either resupply them by sea or to march them through the extremely difficult terrain of the darien gap that would certainly bring about high and costly attrition rates and with american naval presence in the pacific still dominant coming out of major bases like pearl harbor in hawaii it would still be immensely difficult for longer chile to resupply north america by sea as well despite them controlling literally the entire pacific coast her core areas that would contribute the most to gdp like los angeles san francisco seattle or vancouver would all be able to quickly be captured back by the americans and canadians in this scenario which is why longer chile would likely just not be able to last very long on her own she would need to find some strong allies that would be willing to help her but with an inevitable war of reconquest from the united states looming with plenty of other regional countries eagerly willing to assist them it's not really certain that anybody would really be willing to help chile would have greatly overextended themselves by transforming into longer chile and for that they would almost certainly fall and be cut down to size not all of the land located inside of longer chile would be useful or productive obviously not even 100 miles away from the bustling downtown of san diego lies the forgotten about salt and sea and the multiple scattered ghost towns that dot her shores a few weeks ago i went to visit these ghost towns for a documentary that i'm producing on them that will be the first episode of a new series on ghost towns that i'll be releasing exclusively on nebula now i'm sure by now you've probably already heard all about curiosity stream the documentary streaming service that has thousands of videos on geography history engineering and tons of other things but thanks to curiosity stream when you sign up for them you'll also get access to nebula the streaming service made by educational creators like me where we can publish our original thoughtful content without having to worry about getting demonetized or underpromoted by the awful youtube algorithm that rarely supports us by signing up for curiosity stream and nebula you are directly empowering me and dozens of other educational creators you probably know to make cool exclusive content that we might not get the chance to make otherwise content like all of my own real-life lore videos that go up at least 24 hours early before they do on youtube and all without any ads or sponsorships and exclusive content like my feature-length documentary series ghost towns or money a game show hosted by tom scott and featuring a bunch of my creator friends in a series of psychological experiments that test their willingness to work together best of all though curiosity stream is offering nebulous subscribers 26 off just for you in other words that's two fantastic streaming services for less than 15 dollars a year so go ahead and sign up using the link in the description or by going to curiositystream.com real life lore watch cool content and support creators by watching stuff we've made just for you everyone wins and as always thank you for watching

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 1,811,752

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know, chile, what if chile was longer, longer chile, chile but longer, long chile, why is chile so long, recreated countries, made up countries

Id: gT-t0REoj-8

Length: 10min 40sec (640 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020