How Geography Made The US Ridiculously OP

Select video clips courtesy of Getty Images

Select video clips courtesy of the AP Archive

Special thanks to MapTiler / OpenStreetMap Contributors and GEOlayers 3

Sources/Further Reading:

[jjohansen]

21:55 I remember someone once saying that, while the US has many great allies, their staunchest, most reliable allies are the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

[GET]

As a Canadian, I am incredibly thankful to border the USA. Despite its problems, I can't think of a better neighbour we could possibly have.

[ashkumar]

It makes total sense that any downfall of the United States would not come because of an external threat owning to its geographic, geological or geopolitical strengths, but instead because of its domestic weaknesses. The Roman Empire collapsed from within.

[CaptainOverLoad]

I have been to all 50 united states and over 6000 towns and cities and almost all of the nation parks. This country is crazy from a geography standpoint. It is absolutely amazing that we where able to cross that on foot, wagon and horse only a few centuries ago. It is very hard to believe.

[TheElizondo]

You could have also mentioned the easy access to vast deposits of coal, copper and iron in Appalachia and Great Lakes which allowed for the quick and early industrialization of the region. And that even the parts of the county without navigable rivers (i.e. the southwest) has a vast mineral wealth to make up for it.

[oriontigley]

To be fair, if you get an nearly an entire continent as your country, with only allies and oceans sorrounding you, your geography tends to be pretty OP

*Edit:* to all those saying Australia, I'm not counting it because it doesn't nearly have as much variety in biomes and natural resources. It's more one big island than a real continent. The Americas have every natural resource in one self contained landmass.

[JDMB]

I question if the civilisation start point in North America would still have inevitably turned into a global dominant super power (as you mentioned at the start of the video) if it were split into many countries like in Europe. I would argue that the geopolitical movement turning North America into the one nation is by far the greatest by a great piece of land.

[benjaminstiles]

I’ve not seen many of your videos, but so far I’ve never seen you take a side, or demonize one side of a conflict, you simply give us the facts, and I thank you so much for that!

[thegaming]

I work on the Mississippi River in Louisiana, they have a lot of traffic that comes through every day, it's just so remarkable to see so many ships and cargo moving along the big river.

[Yora]

The North Sea coast in the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark also has barrier islands similar to the US. Except that Long Island alone is three times larger than all the Frisian Islands combined.

[PlaneShaper]

Two things. 1) On the topic of agriculture: during the Cold War, after the development of imaging satellites, the USSR thought it was nigh impossible for a geographic place to have so much agriculture, as it was so unlike anywhere else in the world. They had a number of theories, but one that contributed to Soviet policies was that several farms and rural towns were deception, and were actually biological weapons research facilities. This caused the USSR to overspend on biological warfare research in order to outdo what they thought was a massive US advantage. When in reality, the Soviet bio-warfare program was quite a bit more advanced than the US's.

2) Even if a foreign military managed to land ground forces on US soil with millions of soldiers, the US has ~40% of the ~1 billion firearms in the world. ~70% of US adults have fired a gun, including more than half of those that have never even owned one. That's a bit beyond the geography topic of the video, but worth pointing out as an aside :p

[Joooooooooooosh]

Man I thought I loved America. This guy sounded thoroughly awestruck throughout this entire video.

[OmarTheDeadAziz]

i knew USA is amazingly diverse geography, & when i had small talk with a co-worker, i was like, "this country is massive", what i really meant was its got every climate, every geography, every everything, that other countries can dream of. what continents have, but not every countries have

[kennethwright]

"Rivers are basically free to use." Every civil engineer hearing this immediately starts to twitch in disbelief.

[kosakukawajiri]

Don't forget about Alaska and Hawaii's importance for military, resources, and research: both states are considerably well placed far from the lower 48, but are also either gigantic landmasses naturally defended by extreme cold and mountainous terrain with tons of coal and gold in Alaska, or is isolated from the rest of the world in the heart of the Pacific Ocean in volcanic islands making for a perfectly placed Naval harbor or space research labs in Hawaii.

[stuartpearce]

Voice over guy is competing in a word-stress competition.

[jeepmega]

We always talked about the importance of the Nile or the Danube in school, but we really should have been talking about the Mississippi this whole time.

[shibasurfing]

Incredible that people already have something to say about a 40 minute video 10 minutes after it was released

[MayorBrownn]

I’d say North America In general is geographically incredible. Canada has 20% of the world fresh water and is rich in valuable minerals.

[LangstonKinderhook]

My main takeaway is that America is America's only threat. Our downfall only comes from within