What's a megaproject you know is probably a bad idea, but would be sorely tempted to try if you were the leader of a wealthy country?
What's a megaproject you know is probably a bad idea, but would be sorely tempted to try if you were the leader of a wealthy country?
Pumping enormous state resources into breaking every record in the Guiness book of world records by such a large margin that they are forever out of reach for any non-state actors. Just draft 100 000 people to break the record for baking the world's biggest cinnamon bun. Pour all of our medical resources into surgically making some CEO 5 meters tall just so it is obvious that the record will never ever be broken again and they eventually have to stop publishing new editions.
When I was a kid I had the bright idea during a daydream that if I were to officially acquire Antarctica as territory, either as part of my current country or as a brand new country, I could make the claim that air pollution from other wealthy nations is causing me to lose territory (glaciers melting from climate change). Then, I can fight back against other countries for their inaction towards climate change.
Other idea, build massive communities under the ice and snow in Antarctica, utilizing primarily wind energy above the surface for electricity.
Trains. Everywhere.
I'm talking a dedicated line from your front door to every one of your friends.
And not just high speed trains either. Themed old timey steam engines for local transportation.
Vending machine economy.
Turn stores into giant vending machines. Turn restaurants into automats. Public vending machines with basic human things in them like toilet paper, instant coffee, OTC medicines, first aid, etc. We would create virtually indestructible vending machines and mechanisms. Vending machines and the products inside would use local branding. You would also have exclusive treats that reflect a local culture. Also, no currency to use them, just biometrics.
I'd build the world's first international spaceport. If it was USA, I'd build it up the side of the Hawaii volcano. The goal is to get it as high as possible, as close to equator as possible, to take advantage of earth's angular velocity. If possible, building in the Andes would be even better.
Startram gen 2 or bust. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarTram
Humanity has to cut the cost of space launches by 99% or more if we are ever going to advance to the next phase of history: Mining the asteroid belt for necessary minerals. All progress comes from raw materials in some capacity and the asteroid belt is a near unlimited source.
Cougar Domestication Project.
There are many problems with house cats, they're too small to cuddle, they can't take down fully grown deer, they're dangerous to local birds.
Mountain Lions solve all these problems, we just have to get them to tolerate human habitats and not eat children until we can have a population of semi-feral mountain lions that live with us the way house cats do.
In a slightly more reasonable answer: Antarctica colony. Put a big fucking climate control dome over it. Build some wind farms for cheap electricity. Build a giant statue of Lenin like the Colossus of Rhodes there too while you're at it. Establish socialism at the south pole where the imperialists aren't looking
make a bunch of those compact walkable linked micro-district cities i have designed in Workers & Resources
where everyone basically lives in a luxury resort designed to cater to their needs while they aren't at work
shit didn't read the bad idea part
make roko's basilisk and a time machine for the express purpose of bullying techbros for eternity.
After that? figure out how centralized of a metropolitan city can be made to make the smallest footprint yet densest population possible to see how that society would change when placed in such an environment.
Maybe figure out how to create seed space ships filled with bacteria'n'shit or whatever to possibly jump-start life on foreign planets, make them as resilient or whatever as possible to survive for immeasurable periods of time and attempt to seed life on all possible life-bearing planets. Definitely never will see any results from it and nobody will definitely will know if it's successful or not, but it seems like a neat thing to do.
maybe make a human machine immortality project that makes a gestalt entity out of all the people that hook up to it and let their noggins get uploaded to it before croaking and see if we can make a single super-entity that transcends the mortal form and possibly creating a new step in the evolution of humanity.
underground cities
Make Siberia more livable by building a shit ton of dams in the mountains, creating a vast amount of lakes. I don't know if this will actually do anything. But maybe a lake effect will change the Siberian Highs that causes massive cold weather patterns to hold in the area and it's surroundings? Was an idea to maybe make Vladivostok and the Russian Far East more like Seattle weather wise. More rain, more movement of air generally, lots of fresh water stocked up, maybe routed to central Asia. Idk what would actually happen but it'd be fun to see
About 5,000 years ago neolithic farmers committed an act of mass deforestation in the British Isles the likes of which this damned island has never recovered from.
As the ages passed, all each successive generation has done is further damage the ecosystem, and its biodiversity.
I'd try to undo some of that damage. By reforresting from shore to shit stained shore. Let new woods swallow the follies of the petty tyrants who turned rolling hills and green meadows to fetid slag heaps.
New city built all at once before the 5over1s and suburban sprawl get their hands on it. Get into the street car nerd, we're going to the missing middle.
Space Elevator
Commuter dirigibles.
Dyson sphere
A network of modernized aquaducts, superconducting energy backbone and high-speed rail corridors that are also parallel to nature preserve greenbelts.
The water, eletric, transit supergrid.
Halo
I would hire Dahir Insaat and they just build whatever crazy shit they come up with.
soil-melanin project: build massive reservoirs and genocide the desert
worldwide 2 child policy (with exceptions for indigenous peoples)
job rotations: everyone (including me) shovels some shit, basically all jobs are put into a 4-year rotation period since degrees and work experience are useless in reality (except for a few highly specialized STEM jobs)
NEOM, purely for the sake of amusement
Bring back the Age Of Sail. It's gonna take immense amounts of government funding, it'll cripple global shipping if it's successful, it will definitely cripple national shipping industries and every supply chain coming here all for
no benefit at allcool sea shanties, high employment (need about 200 people to off-load one ship and it'll take about a week) and cool ships. I wanna see a 6-masted fullrigger, I wanna see what crazy shit we can come up with.Either that or a persecution of all farmers that will make Stalin look like a lamb and rehabilitation of the soil, though that isn't a bad idea.
Fund the arts too much. A statue in every home.
Build a mountain. We don't have one, I want one.
Sink Lynetteholmen (an actual megaproject being undertaken right now that is so immensely stupid you would not believe me if I described it). Drown everyone involved in it's construction.
Dig a deep hole. Deeper than the soviet deep hole.
Bio-engineer a Kraken.
Make zebras a horse.
Teach rats how to use guns. Teach seagulls how to use guns. Have them wipe each other out, and then eat fries in peace.
Make guns, but for crabs.
Make France a real place.
Make Britain a fake place.
A chair for your pants.
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several dams on the east coast of the US at extremely obvious points to prevent flooding
it's a bad idea because New York City doesn't fucking deserve it and the entire climate-denial political class (which is the entire political class) would raise fascist hell to prevent their own fucking homes from being embraced by the sea
geo-engineering to reverse or ameliorate the heating of the earth's atmosphere
vacuum tube train
if it can work in OpenTTD it can work in real life, right?
pneumatic tube transportation like in futurama
I have this idea of a new transport technology. It’s basically a monorail except rather than share carriages with people you have your own like a car. The monorail can deliver you to your driveway with it branches. It sits > 10ft above ground allowing some of the old roads to be for bikes, children and redeveloped into green spaces. The monorail sits on posts that means it can be installed alongside existing roads whilst it takes off.
Cars/cabs will be computer controlled and self-driving, obviously unable to leave the rail, and can be summoned or shared as a family. Self-parking. Take you home drunk. Usable by teens independently. Powered by the rail they’re on. Technology wise each cab has an electric motorbike engine and is otherwise your own customisable swinging box. One day you could pack your shit into it then sleep inside and wake up on a far away beach for your holiday.
I would make Robot Jocks real
A cannon that shoots you to your destination and you land on a bouncy pad to break the fall. Of course, AI would be used to guide your trajectory so there's no room for human error
RODS FROM GOD BB!
nuclear war
bering strait high speed rail
I'm gonna get everyone to dress like the Jetsons so it at least looks like the future
Building Tatlin’s Tower to the precise dimensions originally envisioned.
As far as bad ideas go, while I sincerely hope this will happen I shudder in horror of the logistical nightmare it will probably be a High speed rail that connects Canada and the US.
This will form a bit of a Schengan Area deal with between Canada and the US, the sun belt and Texas will form one similar with Mexico to build a high speed rail system there but I'm going to focus on Canada and the Northern states for now. Half of Canada's population is in a small strip of land between Windsor, ON and Quebec City, QC. Similarly, so many people live in New England, New York State, and the Mid-Atlantic states. Labor wins by allowing the working class in poorer suburban and rural areas more access to jobs and capital wins by having a larger pool of applicants to choose from, something they already have but at least the working class can more realistically have more jobs to choose from too. You could live in Buffalo but work and hang out in Toronto or Boston if you're in a different city that's close enough, or live in Montreal but visit New York on weekends.
Most realistically, I would make Windsor, Detroit, Niagara Falls on both sides and Buffalo too a lot more walkable so when a high speed rail ends you get off and just go through border security to get to the rail in the other country and build two border cities in Quebec and Northern New York state respectively.
I really want the bearing straight bridge, even if it's not super practical.
We are so far behind the curve. I'd be nice to see us try even a few if the things the soviets had done. Big communal housing with shared kitchens and childcare all that.
I'd really hop on the bioengineering front and make bioluminescent trees in order to find a middle ground between light pollution and general pedestrian safety from drivers at night.
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Three Gorges Dam, but on every continent
Capture the lava output of Hawaii's hotspot plume so as to engineer how the Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount emerges. Probably a bad idea? No, it's certainly a bad idea.
In a post Antonov 225 world, the only answer is bringing the Sukhoi KR-860 to fruition for once and for all
Major cities tend to develop on prime agricultural land because that’s what supported a decent population so I’d build walkable mega cities planned in the Soviet style considering livability and access to amenities but I’d build them in areas of marginal land use.
Also mass reforestation. Mass use of renewables. Mass use of hydro. Also we going to build out nuclear power generation for baseload with designs that make super critical impossible and bury the waste in Nevada.
You know those test of high speed trains in vacuum tunnels, well it ain't crazy enough. We will also carry a high power electricity cables in those vacuum tunnels. It won't make maximum current those cables can vary higher but those cables can now carry higher voltages because of vacuum. Not too much higher because it won't be perfect vacuum
Terrawatt Fusion reactors.
Housing for everyone.
Beijing-Sydney-Dunedin High Speed Rail.
Build another Antonov an-225, and then build several more. Our country's flag carrier airline will only fly the Antonov an-225, this way there will be enough room that everyone can fly first class. Also awesome huge plane is reason enough on its own.
El sistema, the venezuelan music program, but for anime with no guidelines except all the outros are of me and my peoples dictatorship
Melt down every non-commercial motorized vehicle.
Orbiting, rotating skyhooks for space launch. Requires incredibly high precision to use and it's probably far too expensive to do it yet
Underwater high speed rail from the pacific coast to asia.
A pier to deliver aid to Gaza.
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but on steroids.