this video is made possible by brilliant
learn complex subjects intuitively for
20% off by going to brilliant top org
slash real-life floor so imagine that
you're the captain of a boat with a lot
of expensive cargo but you're stuck in
LA and you need to get over to New York
you currently have two or maybe three
options of getting there you can a take
the very long and somewhat dangerous
route all the way down below South
America be take the also really long but
extra zany and cold route up through the
Canadian archipelago or see take the
shortcut across Panama through the
Panama Canal but depending on the size
of your ship this might not be an option
for you the Panama Canal is only so wide
and so deep so if your ship is too big
you won't be allowed to cross which
means that you still have to choose
between either option A or option B as
people have done for hundreds of years
now but what if there was another option
a choice D the flow of international
shipping and trade across the world is
for the most part determined by Earth's
geography and Earth's geography has
certain limitations for example there's
an entire continent that kind of blocks
the way between Europe and Asia and
there's two entire continents that
separate the Atlantic Ocean from the
Pacific Ocean boats don't really travel
through land so you normally don't have
any other choice but to travel around
all of this land in order to get to the
other side's but there's a few strategic
areas around the world where it's
theoretically possible to dig canals and
create shortcuts between two sides of
water some of these have already been
built like the keel canal that allows
transportation between the Baltic and
the North Sea without having a sale
around Denmark or the Suez Canal that
allows transportation between the
Mediterranean and red seas without
having to sail all the way around Africa
so in the Americas there are three
locations where canal shortcut between
the Atlantic and Pacific could
theoretically be built that map geeks
have been talking about for centuries
they are the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in
Mexico the narrow stretches of land in
Nicaragua on either side of the big lake
in the middle of the country and Panama
for hundreds of years all three of these
areas were used to transport supplies
overland from one ship in the Atlantic
to another ship in the Pacific but this
was still quite inefficient the land was
full of rainforest mosquitoes and
dangerous animals like
wires that made the logistics of
transporting supplies overland from one
ship to another pretty dangerous and
hard to do a canal will change
everything and the easiest one to build
was always going to be in Panama because
it's the narrowest piece of land out of
all of the three choices the Ted want to
pick isthmus is 200 kilometres between
the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific the
Nicaragua route is 153 kilometers across
land between the Caribbean Lake
Nicaragua and the Pacific while the
Panama route is only 80 kilometres long
and so the United States finished
constructing the Panama Canal in 1914
and it changed the way the trade flowed
forever afterwards allowing ships to
just hop over land instead of traveling
all the way around South America but
there was a bit of a problem that I
mentioned earlier the Panama Canal
wasn't built very wide so not all modern
ships can get through super big modern
container ships aren't fitting in a
canal that was built over a century ago
and so they all still have to take the
long route around South America if a
brand new canal could be built across
one of the other two potential canal
routes it could be built up to modern
standards with enough capacity for these
big cargo ships to actually travel
through this was the idea that came to
the Chinese construction company H K and
D in 2013 who entered into negotiations
with the Nicaraguan government to
construct a canal across the country
that year Nicaragua gave H K and D a
50-year concession to build the canal
and operate it with the potential to be
extended for another 50 years afterwards
if it was built this would have
effectively given China a century of
control over one of the most important
strategic locations in the world for
international trade later on in the
2020s growth and international trade is
expected to cause significant congestion
and delay issues in the Panama Canal so
in 2013 the Panama Canal was simply not
expected to be large enough to
accommodate that increased demand in
trade and shipping that would occur
later on through the 21st century so the
construction of another canal in the
area to handle the higher demand
appeared to be logical and HK indeed
could just smell the opportunity the
plan was rather straightforward H K and
D would begin by constructing opposite
ports on the Pacific
and Caribbean sides of Nicaragua that
could handle large container ships work
would then begin on the first short
portion of the canal between the Pacific
and Lake Nicaragua
a channel would be dug into the bottom
of the lake to allow larger cargo ships
to travel through it and then the second
portion of the canal would be built from
Lake Nicaragua out to the Caribbean
where after the two ports would be
adapted into international shipping
ports on either side
however there were so many ridiculous
problems associated with a project that
it's hard to even talk about all of them
in such a short video first of all the
cost of the project was estimated to be
around 40 billion dollars by HK and D
and H K and D never put forward a very
clear case for how exactly they plan to
come up with that much money and neither
did Nicaragua for that matter the
billionaire owner of HK & D lost eighty
percent of his net worth in the 2015
Chinese stock market crash just two
years after HK and D and Nicaragua came
to their agreement to actually build the
canal Nicaragua claimed that the project
would create a quarter of a million jobs
inside of the country and that it would
lead to Nicaragua becoming a first world
country while HK and D on the other hand
suggested that it would only create
around 50,000 jobs and that at least
half of those would just be workers
imported from China HK NV was further
given the authority to expropriate land
from Nicaraguan citizens around the
canal construction site which would have
led to the expulsion and relocation of
around 100,000 people in the country or
in other words about 1.5 percent of all
Nicaraguans needless to say that wasn't
exactly very popular with the 1.5
percent of the population that was
getting forcibly relocated and then
there's all of the potentially
catastrophic environmental issues Lake
Nicaragua is the largest source of fresh
water for all of Central America and
well introducing the lake to a canal
that's connected to the salty ocean
would be bad enough but imagine the
potential disaster that could happen if
an oil tanker moving through the canal
happened to have a spill in the middle
of the largest source of fresh water for
47 million people
400,000 hectares of rainforest were
going to be destroyed that included
habitats of at least 22 endangered
species not to even mention the
disruption caused in the migration
routes of countless other species many
people considered the Nicaragua canals
construction to be an environmental
catastrophe but the ultimate reasons for
why it failed were economic ones
not only did HK Andes billionaire owners
lose 80 percent of his net worth in a
single bad year of financial losses but
the Panama Canal initiated an expansion
project of their own that concluded in
2016 that doubles the canals capacity
for ships now all but the absolute
biggest of ships in the world can fit
through the Panama Canal which made the
prospect of blowing 40 billion bucks on
another canal a Nicaragua a much harder
pill to swallow
eventually HK and D entered into severe
financial difficulties themselves and in
2018 they shut down their home office in
China without leaving any address or
telephone number for anybody in e keurig
WA or anywhere else to contact them at
no construction on the canal ever began
as looking like at this rate it's
probably never actually gonna happen
unless some other crazy company comes
around with forty billion dollars to
blow on something that might not even
work out that well none of this was even
considering the fact that actually
digging and filling hundreds of miles of
canals through the rainforest with
tropical diseases like yellow fever and
malaria would be a massively difficult
project to complete even with the money
it's unbelievable to think about this
today putts around forty thousand
workers actually died over the course of
the construction of the Panama Canal due
to tropical diseases in the area can you
imagine even ten percent of those deaths
being acceptable to a modern
construction company it's absolutely
wild so insane costs would have to be
put into developing the area in
Nicaragua around the canal with modern
hospitals and trained medical staff in
addition to all the other necessary
construction and labor costs the project
is ultimately one of the most insane
construction projects ever proposed
during the 21st century it would have
changed the shape of the world forever
but in the end
least for now it seems like we just
don't really need it something that
everybody needs though is a better
understanding of math and science and
how they relate to our everyday lives
if you're bored stuck indoors all the
time right now like me it's a perfect
opportunity to do something productive
and keep yourself entertained next by
heading over to brilliance brilliance is
a math and science learning platform
that gives you new daily challenges
every day that are not only fun but that
also help teach you new concepts by
applying them and if you like that
challenge and you want to learn more you
can check out the course quizzes that go
into more detail it's the perfect way to
learn a little something new every day
without it ever feeling stressful or
overwhelming so to start trying out the
daily challenges and to learn more about
brilliance go ahead and click the link
down in the description or go to
brilliant org slash real life lor you
can sign up for free plus if you're one
of the first 200 is sign up at that link
you'll also get 20% off of a premium
subscription and you'll be supporting
real life floor at the same time and as
always thank you for watching
you
[Music]