June 29, 2008: Bigger Europe

[xoxoxoBruce]

Modern Mechanix blog, has this map from September 1930.
It seems that during the period between the World Wars, humans were cock sure of their ability to control the Earth and Mother Nature. Otherwise, nobody in their right mind would even dream of a scheme this crazy.



Of course at the time, they didn't know that in a few years, Hitler would solve the population problem.

[zippyt]

But Bruce , that Messes up the preposed new world after the War


Sorry but it has to be big to show detail ,
Canada Pffft !! We haz ALL yer Bases !!!!

[xoxoxoBruce]

That was 1942. They had to wait 12 years to find out if they had more land to divvy or not.

[SPUCK]

Amazing

[sweetwater]

Dam!

[birdclaw]

I just don't think I would want to live in a place that is "land walled in with enormous dykes".

[xoxoxoBruce]

What are ya, homophobic?

[Sundae]

What I want to know is how that would have affect block voting in the Eurovision Song Contest.

[leorolim]

And the cost of millions of civilian casualties overcame the overpopulation problem

That huge drainage of the Northern Atlantic should have some nasty environmental and climatic effects.

[Undertoad]

Europe already faces a severe depopulation problem. It's written about today in a NY Times Magazine section article:

In the 1990s, European demographers began noticing a downward trend in population across the Continent and behind it a sharply falling birthrate. Non-number-crunchers largely ignored the information until a 2002 study by Italian, German and Spanish social scientists focused the data and gave policy makers across the European Union something to ponder. The figure of 2.1 is widely considered to be the "replacement rate" — the average number of births per woman that will maintain a country’s current population level. At various times in modern history — during war or famine — birthrates have fallen below the replacement rate, to "low" or "very low" levels. But Hans-Peter Kohler, José Antonio Ortega and Francesco Billari — the authors of the 2002 report — saw something new in the data. For the first time on record, birthrates in southern and Eastern Europe had dropped below 1.3. For the demographers, this number had a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country’s population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible to recover. Kohler and his colleagues invented an ominous new term for the phenomenon: "lowest-low fertility."

[Clodfobble]

Yabbut, that's what all the immigrants are for...

[Imigo Jones]

zippyt, I love that type of map. As it turned out, we all did better than merely ending up with "Quarantined Germany" and "Quarantined Japan." Even the immediate "Occupied" was a better result than "Quarantined," but I'm talking about modern Germany and Japan having done a pretty nice job of adapting to the "New World Moral Order" proclaimed on the 1942 map.

Bruce, as for the giant North Sea polder, won't this make it just impossible to control the movements of football hooligans? Otherwise, I like this confident part:

HUGE DAM TOWERS
90 FEET ABOVE THE
NORTH SEA TO FORM
ARTIFICIAL COASTLINE

I want to see the polar icecap expanding toward it when the next Ice Age comes along. Then there will international calls for increased greenhouse gases, and Illinois will become a "coal sheikdom," richer than Dubai for its huge reserves of dirty coal. And like in Dubai, somebody might put up bold, tall buildings in Illinois cities.