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seem pretty far away they're separated
by the biggest ocean on the planet and
the time difference between San
Francisco and Tokyo is 16 hours but
they're not really as far away as it may
seem at first as recently as 11,000
years ago the two continents were
actually connected by a landmass known
as Beringia at the time Europe Africa
Asia North America and South America
were all technically connected with one
another by land meaning that it was
possible to walk between any of them and
it's believed that's exactly what
happened at Beringia which the ancient
ancestors of modern-day Native Americans
used as a migration route from Asia into
the previously uninhabited Western
Hemisphere about fifteen thousand years
ago but the route didn't last forever
rising sea level swallowed up Beringia
about 11,000 years ago which severed the
connection between the old world and the
new a connection that was lost so badly
that it wouldn't be reconnected again
until nearly 10,000 years later when the
Norse and later the Spanish rediscovered
it along with the new societies that had
developed there in total isolation from
the rest of outside civilization the
flooding of Beringia all that time ago
created a new geographic feature that we
still live with today the Bering Straits
a shallow and sometimes narrow body of
water that serves as the boundary
between the two once connected
continents
despite this during winter in modern
times when the Strait freezes people
have journeyed across it with dog sleds
skis some even by foot and in 2008 a
team even drove across the Strait in a
modified Land Rover Defender some people
have even swam across the Strait during
the summer but could the continents
actually be connected again for everyday
people like you or me to travel across
even in our lifetimes with sea levels
continuing to rise around the planet
it's doubtful that nature will cause it
to happen any time soon but what if we
built something ourselves at
narrowest point the Bering Strait is
only 51 miles across
but geography has given a small blessing
two islands exist roughly in the middle
of the Strait called the die amides if
we built a bridge or a tunnel there
would only need to be two connections
roughly 25 miles long each and a third
smaller one connecting the islands the
depth of the water here is pretty
shallow too just 55 meters deep at the
deepest point which means that both
tunnels or bridges could be feasible
longer connections between two points
over an open ocean have already been
built like the recently completed Hong
Kong zhuhai and macao bridge that
extends 434 miles out over the sea the
length and the sea depth of a Bering
Strait connection do not pose
significant challenges to modern
construction so why hasn't it been built
yet the bridge would open up the
possibility for some truly outrageous
road trips after all you could drive
between Washington DC and Moscow or New
York City to Paris or on the very
extreme end of Miami to Cape Town but
would driving even be worth it if it was
built let's think about it right now for
example it's entirely possible for you
to drive from New York City to Fairbanks
Alaska it's a four thousand two hundred
and forty mile journey the Google
estimates will take you 71 hours of
non-stop driving to completes
realistically that's probably in reality
a week-long journey one way and
round-trip will put close to nine
thousand miles of wear and tear on to
your car nobody does that especially not
while you could just get a flight from
Alaska Airlines in Newark to Fairbanks
that only cost three hundred fifty seven
dollars roundtrip and only takes a
journey of nine hours and 40 minutes if
a bridge was built over the Bering
Strait that you could drive over the
chances are that basically nobody would
actually bother to drive across it and
it's not like you'd really be able to
even if you wanted to this is the real
and the biggest challenge to overcome
with building a Bering Strait bridge
it's literally in the
middle of nowhere this is what the
highway system in modern-day Alaska
looks like and as you can see no roads
connect the Bering Strait to the rest of
the states meaning that currently it's
impossible to tribe to the Bering Strait
in Alaska pretty much nobody lives
around the area of the streets the
biggest city is a town here called no
which doesn't even have 4,000 people
living in it
the gnomes census area the territory
immediately surrounding the Bering
Strait is roughly the same size as
Albania but only has nine and a half
thousand people living there there
simply hasn't ever been much of a demand
to build a highway out here so far in
the middle of nowhere and this creates
two problems for the Bering Strait
bridge in order for trains trucks and
cars to drive across the bridge or a
tunnel they need to you know actually be
able to reach the Strait and as for the
thousands of workers and the massive
amounts of supplies required to build
that bridge er tunnel they also need a
way to reach the Strait and since the
nearest major port is an anchorage on
the other side of the state the road
network would have to be built first
before the bridge for the supplies to be
able to get there at least 520 miles of
new highway or railroad would need to be
constructed just to connect Nome to
Fairbanks the northernmost point of the
existing Alaskan highway system and at
an estimated cost of five million
dollars per mile just building this part
would cost an eye-watering
2.6 billion dollars to finish in the
situation on the Russian side is even
worse the entire western side of the
strait belongs to the Chukotka
autonomous a crude an area that's
roughly the same size as turkey but home
to only 50,000 or so people there are
literally neighborhoods in New York City
with more people than this entire
massive province and as a consequence
the road situation here is pretty dire
there isn't a single existing railroad
in over two thousand miles in any
direction from the straights the nearest
major highway is the legendary m56
Kolyma Highway which isn't even paved
and it's still located 1,200 miles away
from the Strait also known as the road
Bonz the highway was built under Stalin
with gulag labor where untold numbers of
workers died while constructing it in
the wilderness and were simply buried
beneath it just to give you a picture of
how hard it is to build roads out here
when factored in with the Alaskan side
thousands of miles of new roads and
railroads would need to be constructed
to connect a hypothetical bridge to
anywhere notable in the outside world
where at the least to transport workers
and supplies to the bridge the Strait is
located just south of the Arctic Circle
meaning that the construction site will
have extremely dark and cold winters
with temperatures plummeting to negative
50 degrees Celsius
therefore it's likely that construction
would have to be restricted to just five
months of the year between May and
September for the safety of the
construction crew so who knows how many
years the project could end up taking
it's not really a technological
challenge to build a Bering Strait
bridge that is totally doable but it is
an extreme logistical challenge and
that's not so doable many studies have
been made to estimate how much a project
like this would cost a construct with
one estimate from the Discovery Channel
claiming a price tag of 105 billion
dollars or about five times the price of
the Channel Tunnel between England and
France and all for a bridge between
basically two uninhabited wilderness but
with an ever warming Arctic and with the
potential of building a pipeline across
the bridge they could transport untold
billions worth of gas and oil between
the continents the project could become
more lucrative in the future than it is
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