Why a Single Little Spot Makes Driving Across "America" Impossible

this video was made possible by tab for a cause raise money for charity with every tap you open by signing up using the link in the description North America and South America are widely considered to be completely separate continents but they are technically connected by land to one another across the narrow isthmus of panama which has led some people to consider the Americas together as a single giant continent for thousands of years now people have been walking across the Isthmus of Panama between the two halves of America but contrary to what you might think if you live in the US or Canada today and you type in directions to Buenos Aires in Google Maps you'll just end up getting an error message in fact you'll get an error message if you type in directions to anywhere in South America because it's currently impossible to actually drive there despite it being actually connected by land the only way that North Americans and South Americans can visit one another currently is by air or by sea and the reason why that's the case is all because of this tiny little piece of land here called the Darien Gap allow me to explain why Europe Africa and Asia are similar to the Americas and that they're each considered separate continents despite them all being connected with one another by land however you can actually drive between all three of these continents and that's been possible for a long time while it's never been possible in the Americas there are 22 sovereign nations that exist in the Americas that are all connected with one another by land so in the early 20th century a movement began forming to build a system of highways that would connect all 22 of these nations together for the first time and allow people and goods to be driven across them over a period of decades that system of highways was constructed and became known as the pan-american highway but like an annoying computer update it's been stuck in 99% completion for decades now in its 99% complete form today the highway starts at the furthest northern point in Alaska Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean and stretches all the way down through 14 countries with branches extending out across both continents before arriving at woohoo aiya the southernmost major city in South America the 1% of the highway that isn't finished though is probably at the most critical possible point here on the border between Panama and Colombia the highway stretches all the way from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska and abruptly ends here at U visa Panama while on the other side it stretches all the way from via Argentina and stretches all the way up before ending here at turbo Colombia the so-called darién gap in between a visa and turbo is only 100 kilometres wide as the crow flies and as a result there are no roads that connect Panama with Colombia which means that it's currently also impossible to drive between North America and South America you'd think that building a highway across just 100 kilometers of land would be fairly easy though so why hasn't this happened well it's mostly because this 100 kilometer stretch of land isn't it aureus ly difficult to develop anything on for starters the entire gap is covered with incredibly thick rain forests jungles swamps and mountains which are all incredibly detrimental to road construction and transportation in order for me to put into perspective how massively difficult this terrain actually is to traverse across allow me to tell you about the first people who successfully managed to drive through the gap entirely over land they used a CJ Jeep Wrangler in 1985 to travel 201 kilometres across the jungle and it took them seven hundred and forty-one days to get across to the other side meaning that on average they were only capable of driving 270 meters per day through the jungle there's also loads of terrible tropical diseases here that make working through the jungle a nightmare for construction workers consider the construction of the Panama Canal a little over a century ago in the same general vicinity of the Darien Gap 28,000 workers died here in Panama constructing the canal due to tropical diseases and over 12,000 more workers died back in the 1850s and 60s constructing the canals precursor the Panama railway building anything through here is inherently dangerous difficult and immensely expensive because of the region's terribly rugged geography but that's not entirely the only reason wire road hasn't ever been built here expensive road have been built across even harsher environments before but here on the Panama Colombia border there's a lot of political resistance to building a road that connects the two countries as well for starters on this point foot-and-mouth disease is still a common ailment among cattle in South America but it's been completely eradicated in Central and North America ever since the 1950s there's a lot of evidence to suggest that the absence of any roads or paths across the darién gap has prevented infected South American cows from moving and spreading the disease into North America so a lot of cattle ranchers and farmers in the various countries up here are pretty opposed to building the road further there is massive resistance amongst several indigenous peoples that live in the area of the Darien Gap who believe that a highway built through their lands will disrupt or even ruin their way of life but the biggest problem that any potential highway here faces is the massive local environmental damage that it will cause to a delicate ecosystem the Darien Gap is a pristine and almost untouched wildlife area at present-day and the construction of a massive intercontinental highway right through the middle of it will obviously disrupt that a highway did technically go into construction once in 1971 and then again in 1992 but it was killed both times by damming environmental damage reports however there have been some ideas peddled around the would mitigate this one idea is to simply extend the already existing pan-american highway from u-visa in Panama out to the Caribbean coast through the less delicate ecosystems and establish a ferry link with a row network over in Colombia another idea is to simply build giant bridges across the portions of the Darien Gap that are considered to be the most delicate either way building a regular highway through the whole gap would not only be environmentally destructive and dangerous for workers but it would also be dangerous for people driving through even after it's completed because the whole area is a hotbed for drug traffickers and insurgent groups in 2013 a Swedish backpacker walking through the gap was kidnapped by FARC revolutionaries and executed on the basis that he was a foreign spy in 2003 three journalists operating in the gap were kidnapped by far-right revolutionaries so kidnappings and killings like these are relatively common occurrences inside of the darién gap owing to how remote and difficult it is to actually get inside there and driving through on a highway would likely remain a perilous journey for all of these reasons it's highly likely that the Darien Gap will remain a gap in the pan-american highway system for quite some time and there's not much that you can probably ever do to change that however there are other problems out there in the world that you can help fix without even really having to do anything at all in other words you could be generating free money for charities and causes of your choice right now by doing basically nothing if you go and check out tab for a cause this browser extension displays a few small ads each time you open a new tab and then they donate the money generated from that to a non profit of your choice it's seriously that simple and to prove they're legit their website is completely open-source and they publish quarterly financial reports showing exactly where all the money goes so far they've raised almost 1 million dollars for good causes and right now they're running a series of campaigns for nonprofits combating the effects of the ongoing Cova 19 pandemic so you can join me and start making the world just a little bit better by simply installing the browser extension in less than 30 seconds at tab gladly die o slash real-life lore or by clicking the link down in the description and as always thank you for watching

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 2,323,169

Rating: 4.8811932 out of 5

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, darien gap, driving across america, driving to south america, driving to south america from usa

Id: LYR9DaDSMUE

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/LJ_Wanderer]

You should also look up the Expedition of the Americas https://youtu.be/Y0mJ4HXMHvQ