I’ve always been fascinated by geography. Perhaps because I’ve been listening to the Blueprint for Armageddon Hardcore History podcast by Dan Carlin, my fascination with geography has been rekindled.
I say “fascination” purposefully. I’ve never been one that’s obsessed over geography or loved to study it, but it’s always interested me how much I don’t know about it.
Prior to WW1, there were several less countries in Europe. In fact, in 1914, when WW1 started, Germany was a relatively new country itself, not even 50 years. Maybe I’m just a noob when it comes to world history and geography, but realizing that the American Civil War happened before Germany became a country is crazy to me. The area where Germany is, of course, has been occupied for far longer than the US, but the country itself is newer.
As I was looking at maps of countries and cities around the world, I became fascinated by this tendency humans have to congregate in one place. The US has a relatively small percentage of the world population. Less than 5% (of 327 million of 6.85 Billion in the world). Because of this, much of the country is spread out into farmlands and people don’t have to have neighbors if they don’t want to.
To compare, the second-most densely populated state in America is Rhode Island at 1,022 people per sq mi. The entire state being only 1,212 sq miles.
Now let’s take Bangladesh. Bangladesh density is 3,020 people per sq mi at 55,598 sq mi total.
That means that you would have to take Rhode Island, add three times as many people, then expand it by like 50, and that’s Bangladesh.
There’s not a big purpose behind all of this information, it’s simply just fascinating to me how some places of the world are literally almost wall to wall people. What a crazy life and a crazy world we live in.