Why Anchorage is America's Most OP City

this video is made possible by curiosity stream and nebula watch another full-length companion video to this one in my ongoing modern conflict series that explains the entire history of the conflict between greece and turkey from the turkish invasion of cyprus to the brink of war in the mediterranean this year which you can access by signing up for the curiosity stream nebula bundle deal for less than twelve dollars a year at curiositystream.com real life floor in 1935 while speaking to the united states congress and just one year before his own death us general billy mitchell father of the us air force stated i believe that in the future whoever holds alaska will hold the world i think it is the most important strategic location in the entire world billy mitchell was a man who was decades and in some cases even centuries ahead of his own time because today nearly a century later after his statements to congress were made alaska is quickly becoming america's most valuable possession and her most strategically well-placed territory which is all pretty historically ironic because for most of human history alaska has been widely considered as almost completely worthless in 1867 alaska was still a colony of the russian empire but they agreed to sell it to america for just 7.2 million dollars which is still only a ridiculous 111 million dollars when adjusted for inflation today if that same deal were offered today elon musk could afford to buy alaska more than 2 000 times over that's pretty much how worthless the territory was valued at the time and even a century later when alaska became a fully fledged state in 1959 their population was still only a little more than 200 000 people and all in a state that is larger than texas california and montana all combined and then even today there's still only about 730 000 people who call the state home and 40 of them all just live in anchorage right here anchorage may have a population that's smaller than three different neighborhoods in new york city but regardless it's also become america's most strategically well-placed city and here are all of the many reasons why until the 20th century anchorage and alaska were located in a very far-flung and remote part of the world seemingly far away and isolated from the rest of civilization but all of that changed with the advent of aviation airplanes the cold war and the economic rise of asia throughout the mid and late 20th century the most efficient and direct way possible for a jet traveling from a european airport like paris to an east asian airport like tokyo would be to fly directly northeast across siberia the only problem during the cold war was that siberia was a part of the soviet union and the monolithic ussr was denying their entire airspace to most western-based airlines this created a significant geographic problem because the soviet union covered about 1 7th of all the land on the planet and was only slightly smaller than the entirety of north america western airlines were effectively blocked from flying over this continent-sized area in between europe and asia and so they had to develop another way to connect europe and east asia with flights the perfect solution turned out to be the airport at anchorage alaska you see while the most efficient route between europe and east asia was blocked the second most effective route was to fly from europe north above the pole skirt around the soviet airspace and then head south towards japan the only problem with this option was that no plane at the time had the range to do this long of a flight continuously on a single tank of fuel so a refueling stop had to be added somewhere and the only city of any significant size nearby to this whole route was of course anchorage and so this small city of only a quarter million people at the edge of america's final frontier came to be called the crossroads of the world seeing international air traffic that rivaled the likes of chicago and even los angeles there were flights coming in from places as diverse and far away as paris london amsterdam copenhagen hamburg new york sao paulo mumbai seoul and tokyo and the airport was suddenly making anchorage incredibly influential and wealthy but encourages geographic advantages in this situation were unique and politically motivated by external factors and they wouldn't last forever in 1989 with the cold war beginning to come to a close the soviets finally opened up their airspace to the west while at the same time longer range aircraft were being developed that could actually fly the entire distance between europe and asia in a single go the results were fantastic for the airline companies that can now dramatically save on costs by flying more efficiently across siberia but they were disastrous for little anchorage in alaska each round-trip flight that anchorage lost was equivalent to a quote 79 748 loss in fees taxes fueled duty-free shopping concessions and catering dues by 1991 japan airlines alone had decreased their 117 weekly round-trip flights to anchorage down to only four and eventually halted their service entirely followed shortly thereafter by lufthansa air france british airways and many others today there are only two direct international passenger flights from anchorage remaining and they're both only seasonal to frankfurt in germany and the petropovlovsk komchotsky in russia and yet despite that the anchorage airport still remains the third busiest airport in the entire united states because it isn't people who are moving through anchorage anymore it's cargo you see when flying bulky cargo on an airline you really only have two choices to make you can either carry more fuel and less cargo which increases your range but decreases per flight revenue or you can carry more cargo but less fuel which obviously reduces your range but increases per flight revenue and because of its geography anchorage airport is one of the few locations in the world where the latter option sacrificing fuel in order to carry more cargo actually works very effectively you see anchorage is located nearly precisely at the center between new york city and tokyo and this means that even further anchorage at nearly the top of the world is located within a relatively short nine and a half hour flight of about 90 of the entire developed world beneath it honolulu vancouver san francisco and la are each less than six hours away new york mexico city and tokyo are all less than seven beijing shanghai hong kong and seoul are all less than eight while london frankfurt and moscow are all less than nine the entirety of the us japan south korea and most of china and europe are all within reach of just a nine and a half hour flight no other major airport on the entire planet is within such close range of this many other major cities within the industrialized world and it's precisely because of this location why cargo carriers continue using anchorage as a stopover point to refuel because when they do planes can depart from airports across asia with heavily reduced fuel loads but with dramatically more cargo loads with reduced range they can't make it all the way over to north america in a continuous go so they stop over in anchorage first refuel and then continue on from there with their higher cargo loads to airports across the united states and canada by using this strategy air freight carriers can essentially have their cake and eat it too by connecting planes with higher loads of cargo from asia the world's largest manufacturing hub to anywhere in north america the world's largest consumer market this strategy enables many planes to carry an extra hundred thousand pounds of cargo than they otherwise would be capable of to the north american continent and extrapolate it out to one dollar in revenue per pound five flights a day six days a week and 52 weeks a year that's potentially more than 150 million dollars in added revenue for a carrier to make this is why in the years following the end of international passenger travel following the end of the cold war both fedex and ups opened up major international cargo shipping hubs in anchorage after the city's geographic potential was realized and this is all wives still today the anchorage airport is overall the fourth busiest airport in the entire world and the second busiest in the united states as measured by cargo traffic with nearly 500 wide body cargo plane landings every single week of the year on average and then sometimes it even becomes the absolute number one busiest airport in the world on the 25th of april 2020 as the koben 19 pandemic was first sweeping the world passenger air traffic across the world plummeted everywhere by more than 90 percent but at the same time that was all going on cargo air traffic wasn't anywhere nearly as hindered and most cargo flights were still allowed to operate as usual and thus on the 25th of april 2020 the anchorage airport saw more air traffic coming from cargo planes between asia and north america than any other airport in the world saw and was the busiest airport in the world for a single day and the importance of anchorage as an international cargo hub is only going to continue growing faster and faster throughout the 21st century as fate would have it the kova 19 pandemic proved to be yet another boon for anchorage's geostrategic location as the demand in the americas for supplies from asia increased many more cargo flights found their way to anchorage in order to satisfy it resulting in a massive 16 increase in cargo that was transported through the airport in 2020 as compared to 2019 and as asia continues to rise in economic prominence so too will anchorage's position but especially interesting for the future of anchorage is a country that's almost on the opposite side of the world india as india develops and grows more advanced and wealthier across the 21st century the demand for travel between india and america will only continue growing stronger and stronger and as it stands now there are several routes between the two that are not direct for example there currently aren't any direct flights between new delhi and los angeles or between mumbai and san francisco instead these routes use layover stops along the way in foreign countries like tokyo dubai doha or london and then continue on to la or san francisco from there in a bid to bring back passenger air travel to the airport anchorage has made proposals for these routes to establish one-stop layovers in anchorage in order to avoid connections in a foreign third-party country from having to be made time will ultimately tell when passengers will finally begin arriving in anchorage again but it's not just traditional transportation routes that are pushing alaska and anchorage to the forefront of global importance global climate change is arguably playing an even larger role of course our planet is getting warmer and while that's affecting the entire world in one way or another it's affecting the region around the arctic the most for pretty much the entirety of human history the arctic ocean in between eurasia and north america has been permanently covered by ice year-round which has always meant that navigation by ship across it has been basically impossible but the times are certainly changing already temperatures in the arctic have reached their highest levels in at least the past 4 000 years multiple reports from the intergovernmental panel on climate change and the u.s national climate assessment project that the arctic ocean will be almost entirely free of ice during the summers by the middle of this century less than 30 years from now while many others project it happening even earlier by the 2030s regardless of when it will eventually become a new geographic reality within all of our lifetimes that during the summer months between july and august the arctic will be a blue ocean and whenever it's like that alaska will skyrocket in global importance there are two key trade routes that flow across the arctic the northern sea route that runs along the northern edge of russia and the northwest passage which runs along the northern edge of canada and alaska right now both of these trade routes are hardly usable because they're still covered by ice for most of the year but as the ice continues to retreat more every year they will completely change the game of international shipping and irrevocably alter the way that our goods travel across the world right now if you want to ship something from the largest port in europe rotterdam to either vancouver or seattle the most efficient route will take your goods by ship across the atlantic through the panama canal and then up the pacific for a total length of 8 850 nautical miles however where the northwest passage to be utilized instead the distance would all of a sudden only become 6950 nautical miles a reduction of nearly 2 000 miles which will save days if not weeks in time and tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in money similarly when goods are shipped between rotterdam and yokohama japan today ships have to travel along a route through the strait of gibraltar the mediterranean the suez canal the red sea and then across the indian ocean through the strait of malacca and then up the pacific ocean for a total journey of 12 730 nautical miles but if the same ships simply utilize the northern sea route along russia their distance traveled would be dramatically reduced to only 5 750 miles cutting out more than 7 000 miles of distance and 19 days of travel time essentially by using either the northern sea route or the northwest passage cargo ships moving between the countries of europe and the east asian markets of china korea and japan would save around 20 days of travel time on average and save incredible amounts of money through the process and it's already happening too in 2013 a danish coal carrier became the first large sea freighter to successfully transit the northwest passage by sailing from vancouver to finland this route saved the ship 1 000 nautical miles over its more traditional route through the panama canal which resulted in fuel savings of approximately eighty thousand dollars and enabled them to transport fifteen thousand tons of additional cargo that they could sell by the middle of this century these routes will be catapulted from obscurity to become the most important trade routes in the world and they'll steal billions of dollars in trade revenue from the suez and panama canals as the links between north america europe and asia re-converge in the north and once again alaska's geographic position long considered worthless will be right at the epic center of it all both the northwest passage and northern sea route will have no other choice but to pass through the narrow bearing strait between alaska and russia meaning that alaska will effectively hand the united states control over one of the late 21st century's most significant maritime choke points that will rival even the strait of hormuz in the middle east because just like that strait the area around the bering strait is absolutely chock-full of valuable resources like oil and natural gas it's believed that within these basins across the arctic circle there may exist as much as 13 of all the world's remaining undiscovered oil along with 30 of all the world's natural gas and all within easy reach from the united states by way of alaska denmark and the european union by way of greenland along with canada norway and russia the possibility of all these rich and untapped resources here is leading to controversy and tensions and once again alaska will play the most critical role in america's overall defense strategy of the 21st century america already has dozens of bases scattered across the pacific ocean in hawaii guam japan south korea and more but like i mentioned earlier alaska is closer to most of america's rivals than anywhere else on the planet it only takes a few hours for missiles or planes to move between alaska on one side and moscow beijing or pyongyang over on the other but it goes both ways in the event that say north korea ever fires a nuclear missile at the u.s mainland the most efficient route that that missile will take will inevitably take it right nearby alaska which gives the us military an incredibly valuable opportunity to intercept it there first before it strikes a bigger city down in the mainland and because of that the u.s military has placed its largest ground-based anti-ballistic missile defense complex here at fort greeley in total there are nine u.s military bases across alaska but they're not the only bases america possesses that are adjacent to or within the arctic there's also a tenth base called thule over on the northwestern tip of greenland and america is far from the only country who has bases up here canada has about four the norwegians have one while the russians have at least 18 that are publicly known about which are more bases than every other country around the arctic combined when everything gets put together like this it begins to make more sense why the trump administration offered to purchase greenland from denmark back a few years ago because well if they did they would control territory on both sides of the northwest passage and leave canada in the middle you see america and canada have a bit of a disagreement over the status of the waters between the islands of canada's archipelago though the northwest passage has to pass through canada claims these waters to be internal canadian waters meaning that they can legally close them down to anyone they want at any time and for any reason which would basically give them a monopoly control over the northwest passage meanwhile the united states argues that these waters are part of an international strait which would mean that all ships from all countries would maintain the right of transit eroding canada's potential monopoly over what could become in just a few decades one of the most valuable and lucrative trade routes in the world right now with ice still covering most of the waters for most of the year this dispute isn't really a big concern for either america or canada but in the future it could have enormous geopolitical implications and bring the two allies of today directly into the conflicts of the future and that's all not even to mention russia's ambitions in the area already more than 20 of russia's entire gdp is generated by resource extraction from the arctic primarily in the form of natural gas and other hydrocarbons russia already produces more natural gas than any other country in the world from their arctic gas fields and through sprawling pipelines from there they use this gas to supply nearly the entirety of europe and greatly influence europe's policies in the process many european countries already receive the majority or nearly the majority of their entire gas supply from russia alone and as the ice and permafrost continues to melt away up in the north russia will acquire even more gas to continue increasing europe's dangerous dependency upon them more and more this is why russia believes the arctic will be their catalyst that'll propel them back onto the world stage once again as an influential global great power and it's why the russian military has been rapidly expanding their bases up here and reactivating decades-old defunct soviet installations the arctic is quickly heating up to become the late 21st century's greatest geopolitical showdown and the greatest source of new global wealth and as it stands right now there aren't that many large cities nearby that'll be capable of capitalizing on it if you draw out a 400-mile zone around the outer edge of the arctic circle then these are the only cities of any reasonable size close by and the largest of them by far are mermainsk in russia and anchorage in the united states however since anchorage is located closer to the bering strait choke point is within closer proximity of both the arctic and pacific oceans and is closer to more of the developed world like the us canada japan and south korea i believe that anchorage is the more strategic location of the two and will without a doubt become the world's most strategically well-positioned city of the century the conflict between nations brewing over the arctic is primarily a severe concern for the future but if you want to see a glimpse into how it all might play out you needn't look very far to see a modern day conflict over the exact same kinds of issues in the mediterranean sea between greece and turkey over here there have also been very recent discoveries of incredibly rich feels of natural gas and hydrocarbons there are conflicting maritime boundaries between multiple major powers while both the russians and americans are heavily influencing opposing sides a major war nearly erupted between both sides here over all of these issues just this year and in the event that it ever does fully blow up it'll without a doubt become the greatest and the most devastating war ever fought in europe since the second world war and the modern crisis here goes back centuries greece and turkey have fought four massive wars against one another leading into the 20th century they exchanged millions of people between them in one of history's most disastrous transfers of population the island of cyprus was invaded and forcefully partitioned between a turkish side and a greek side that remains to this day while the entire story is incredibly long complicated and controversial to tell full of countless tragedies and misunderstandings that have all culminated into why the world rests on a knife's edge here and why the world is what it is today without a doubt the modern wars and conflicts between greece and turkey are one of the most critical and fascinating conflicts of the entire 21st century to understand but unfortunately it's also at the same time not really acceptable for me to cover in any kind of detail on youtube due to their terms of service after nearly six years of making videos here on this site i really do know how making videos on youtube works and i know that any videos covering wars or conflicts especially ones that are going on right now are nearly impossible to have monetized which means that they'll be censored and unpromoted by youtube's algorithm and consequently you won't ever see them so once again i created yet another full-length companion video in my ongoing modern conflict series that's about the same length as this video with all of that controversial but fascinating information about the modern struggle between greece and turkey and uploaded it directly to nebula which as you've probably heard by now is home to tons of exclusive ad-free content like my entire modern conflict series with eight other additional full-length videos that you can go and watch right now covering topics like the soviet invasion of afghanistan the ongoing war between russia and ukraine the israel-palestine conflicts the 2020 armenia azerbaijan war the ongoing war between north and south korea and many others of course the reason why all of these videos are only on nebula is because the youtube algorithm actually punishes me and all other youtube creators forever trying anything new controversial or different but nebula is a different platform without an algorithm and without any ads it's just a platform about great and unique content made by great and independent educational creators with plenty of other projects from other creators you probably already know like whenever productions have as interesting real engineering tierzoo tom scott and so many others the best way to get access to nebula and all of this incredible content is definitely through the amazing curiosity stream nebula bundle deal and with its current holiday sales price it's a better deal than ever at less than 12 dollars a year to get full access to both sites and curiosity stream has some phenomenal stuff that you're definitely going to enjoy too like the year that rocked the world 1989 an epic 52-minute long feature documentary that'll take you through how all in a single year the soviet union began to collapse the berlin wall came crashing down iran's first supreme leader died and the chinese communist party cracked down on the protests at tiananmen square if you felt like my video didn't go deep enough into the fascinating story of the soviet union's breakup then this is definitely the video for you with multiple expert and eyewitness testimonies accompanied by insane amounts of rich and detailed historical footage i really can't recommend this documentary enough and i genuinely don't know about a better deal that exists in streaming you get two streaming sites both with content that you'll actually watch and all for less than 12 a year at the current holiday sales price but what's even more signing up will actually tremendously help countless educational creators beyond just real life lore so please make sure to do so by clicking this button that's here on screen right now which will take you directly to curiositystream.comreallifelore to sign up or by following the link that's down below in the description as always thank you so much for watching and happy holidays [Music] you

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 6,691,756

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, anchorage, alaska, best geography, OP geography

Id: UMNfagIz0hs

Length: 24min 34sec (1474 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 22 2021