8mo ago

What America really needs

178 comments

Americans will literally do anything except build trains
- 4 kms across the ocean:
- now that we have this river across the whole country, we can finally introduce swimming cars!
  
  You mean plastic bubbles?
- You can create this strait and then have a train which runs along it, like the train from Spirited Away
  
  What if we made some sort of floating train?
- You know that the United States has the largest railway in the world right? Like not even by a small amount too...
  
  They're nowhere near the top if you relate it to size though (and also next to none of it is electrified, which is a pretty good indicator of it being mostly old - after all, rail is what even allowrd the country to be built).
  But also it's a joke

Well, the Panama Canal is exactly that, built mostly that way.
- Panama Canal is the biggest NIMBY project ever
  
  Because it was built at the thinnest part of the content and used existing lakes?
  Pretty sure Omaha would have loved an East\West canal across the continent.
- It connected several lakes in the narrowest part of the continent. Not ‘exactly that’ at all

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

Stolen from !topview@lemmy.world
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
- Wait... They had a movable pool that they rode the ships into and then horses dragged to the other waterway? That sounds awesome
  
  They more or less put wheels on ships or rather loaded them on trailers and simply dragged them over land. Funny thing is that Thucydides (460 BC–395 BC) wrote about this, and described it as an ancient practice!
  https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/09/diolkos-ancient-trackway-that-carried.html?m=1
  
  Better even. They made the movable pool quite long. So while the horses dragged the pool the ships could still sail in it. That way the horses didn't need to drag the pool the whole way!
  
  if anything i think this is more impressive than digging a stupid canal

Anything is possible with enough nukes!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
- I love the 1950s, the solution to any problem was just "idk, have you tried nuking it?"
  
  Definitely. And just like today with ‘ai’
- This might also make it really easy to hit the 2 degree climate target.
  
  More like the -2 degree Celcius average World temperature target.
- Can't just let them go to waste!

Florida kinda has this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okeechobee_Waterway
- About 36 feet above sea level though. How are we gonna clear a waterway from coast to coast, though? C'mon, boffins, let's sort this out!
  
  Locks and dams. Thousands of miles of locks and dams.
  
  SHOVEL!

"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.
- Just get some pickaxes and dig a tunnel
  
  This would also allow for a super cool water park. I'm all for it.

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.
- Panama canal has to have locks because of the ocean differences
  It's actually mostly due to the landscape of Panama, including the lake it uses to traverse and the mountains. The Pacific and Atlantic oceans don't different that much, maybe a few feet. And mostly due to tidal differences.
  
  Oh, so it's like an escalator for ships up and down.
- Plus literally chopping down a large stretch of both the Appalachians and the Sierra Nevada would be insane.
  
  Or could just go over tbh
  
  Just made the entire river underground! A big underground river spanning thousands of miles. It'd require a hell of a lot more work but it wouldn't disrupt things on the surface as much.
- My first thought too. This needs a Randall Monroe ‘What If?’ explanation.
- There's a sea level canal in Greece, the Corinth canal. And it has pretty strong tidal currents.
  I wonder if, hypothetically, we could use such currents for more efficient power generation compared to the current tidal power generation.

Goodbye, Kentucky
- Actually, guys, maybe we should hear them out?
  
  ...northern kentucky still northern kentucking, looks viable...

it could solve the water crisiseses
- Dude all you need is 4 square meters and 2 water buckets
- Infinite water glitch
  
  Infinite food glitch
- Would also solve some of the rising ocean levels too!
  
  It annoys me that you're correct
- I think I'd hate to live downsteam from where the Mississippi is bisected.
- I wonder if that river would remain salty for its entire existence

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.
- Hey, you're a numbers guy right? What's to say we take all that extra dirt and make an island? Asking for a friend
  
  Hawa-II, this needs to happen. Opening date is June 13, 2025.
- Let's fucking goooo
- That’s how the Soviet gulags built canals and railroads btw. Lots of deaths

Do it small scale first and turn Florida into an island.
- Then push it away
  
  The Caribbean has suffered enough

This will require more bridges, which creates more jobs. It's genius!

I feel like there has to be an easier way to solve the homeless problem in San Francisco.

In which direction would it flow?
- From the center to the borders, due to rain.
  
  I wouldn't be so certain about that. Evaporation might be stronger similar to the mediterreanian sea. So water would flow from both sides into the channel.
  But such a project probably disturbes weather patterns and ocean currents all together. Hence, I don't think we can be curtain until we've tried it. Now grab your shovel. FOR SCIENCE!
- It'd probably depend on the tide.

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

Literally described the Mississippi river.
- If we could connect the Missouri to the Snake River we could do pretty much the same thing. There's a seaport in Idaho already
  
  Technically, it's already done!
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parting_of_the_Waters
- Except the map makes it look like a thousand times wider than the Mississippi.

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
- Depends on if you can outrun a shovel.
  
  From the people who brought you Sharknado: Shovelanche.

we need efficiency IV tho
- Diamond should be enough, making that many beds to mine netherite seems excessive especially since the update
- Creeper farm for gunpowder
  Dig a bunch if sand
  Craft TNT
  Place two blocks of TNT spaced out by 5 blocks
  Light first TNT with the flint thingy
  Run along side it for the experience
  Bring buckets and cobblestone for inevitable underground lakes of water and lava 8 .Collect all the cool things you uncovered
  Ask gf/bf to come look at your accomplishment (optional)

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.
- Nevermind any communities you'd separate or destroy by dropping a big ol' river through the middle of them
  
  Americans don't mind building highways, so it is not a concern to them.
  
  Higheys through communities are good, then waterways are good too
  
  It's not like the number of communities measuring a hundred miles wide are many. Also, believe it or not, the USA has bridge building technology. Shocking, I know.

But a bit more south would be easier. Oh, wait.
- I could get on board with a moat around Texas and Florida
  
  Check out bdonvr’s comment about the Okeechobee Waterway. We could just cut Florida off following that line, then we could build a bigger moat around Texas with all the money will save by letting Florida go!
  
  Grab a saw for the Florida part
- Does the USA still own the Panama Canal? I remember there being some disputes about that.
  
  Nope. We gave it to Panama in 1999

Bonus question: would this make a new continent?
- No, it would not. There already are waterways splitting North America into multiple large pieces.
- Nope, the continental plate would not be separated by a river flowing over top.
  
  Continents are not defined by tectonic plates, for example Eurasia is separated by an imaginary line. There is no universally agreed upon definition of what exactly earths continents are either.
- Then you'd need to dig really, really deep. Even deeper than where the Balrog lives.
  
  as long as you don't do it greedily you should be fine
- Would the north and south go to war again for control?
  
  we're already on the edge of civil war over clumps of undifferentiated cells and pronouns. absolutely yes
  
  Yes, but not for slavery this time, but for fresh water in the decades ahead of climate change. Those freshwater Great Lakes will be awfully attractive 100 years from now.
  
  We'd have to change all the names!
  Canada's pants become Canada shorts and Canada socks

The Mississippi already does that, but south-north instead of east-west.
- Well... it did. And then climate change happened
  A long stretch of hot, dry weather has left the Mississippi River so low that barge companies are reducing their loads just as Midwest farmers are preparing to harvest crops and send tons of corn and soybeans downriver to the Gulf of Mexico.
  
  Oh. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
  
  That's not climate change; that's just a precedented drought and media trying to cash on doomscrolling climate change. It's done the exact same thing almost every year. Rain has always been somewhat random.

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

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.

That's a gnarly cliff in Colorado

All you need is time and a LOT of shovels........
- Nope. Just MS paint and one brush.

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

Ke~~~~ky.

- Mostly for social reasons. We definitely have the technology and resources.

I like this idea. However, I have one small issue: this river appears to go directly through my house...
- Just put some fresh sealant on your windows. Should hold.
- Isn't that a good thing? Free river!
- Why don't you just sell your house and move?
- now I know more or less exactly where you live!
  
  😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

Now build a land bridge and connect this up with Panama

No one in the north wants Missouri. I'm south of them and I don't want them.
- I'm in Missouri and can't find error in your logic.
  
  Truth be told as long as I could move north of that line I would be okay with Missouri staying where it is.

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.

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.

Test
- Your comment worked and is visible, if you were wondering.
  
  Thanks, yeah i was seeing if it would even post

178 comments