What America really needs

Americans will literally do anything except build trains

Well, the Panama Canal is exactly that, built mostly that way.

If they could do it in ancient Greece then Americans can do it today for sure!

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

Anything is possible with enough nukes!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare

Florida kinda has this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okeechobee_Waterway

"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.

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.

Goodbye, Kentucky

it could solve the water crisiseses

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.

Do it small scale first and turn Florida into an island.

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?

I don't trust anyone South of the Mistersippi river.

Literally described the Mississippi river.

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

we need efficiency IV tho

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.

But a bit more south would be easier. Oh, wait.

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.

Most cost-effective would be to use the Photoshop eraser tool.

Bonus question: would this make a new continent?

All you need is time and a LOT of shovels........

That's a gnarly cliff in Colorado

Ke~~~~ky.

And if abandoned halfway we could just turn it into a park.

The Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway follows the path of the abandoned Cross Florida Barge Canal.

https://www.floridastateparks.org/learn/history-cross-florida-greenway

Now build a land bridge and connect this up with Panama

I like this idea. However, I have one small issue: this river appears to go directly through my house...

No one in the north wants Missouri. I'm south of them and I don't want them.

You eliminate San Francisco but leave Washington D.C. ?

Tbh, building a mountain and tearing it down again would be about as useful as half of existing jobs.

Test

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.