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Despite having such a small land mass, Bangladesh is 3rd in rice production and 7th in Potato production. That probably gives you an idea. Extremely fertile land that can support large population centers.
Bangladesh has 1.72 the population density of Taiwan.
Bangladesh has 2.25 the population density of South Korea.
Population density is still insane, but not unfathomably so.
Meanwhile Russia is mostly dry and cold. Like Australia and Canada, Russia has lots of areas that aren't really suitable for large scale human habitats. Such countries don't have as much feasible space to build more large cities as their vast land areas suggest.
Canada does have lots of good space. We just also have lots of space in the north that's not great for development, and we probably could if we wanted to, but there's really no reason to at present. It's prohibitively expensive to get goods up there, and we don't yet have much for infrastructure up there.
Unfortunately, many of our larger cities were built on prime farm land, so as the cities expand we're eating up that high value land. We need to start going up, not out, but everyone wants their little patch of grass to waste fuel mowing.
I was in Montreal a few decades ago and was amazed by the underground mall/street system they have. I suggest in Canada building down, not up. Use light pipes to augment interior lighting and the stable subterranean climate to save TONS of operating costs.
If Russia had the same population density as Bangladesh it would have a population of just over 22.7 billion people.
Edit: Billion with a b, I'm a dumb.
Also the size isn't well represented here. The most common projection that we use in our maps shows Greenland being about the same size as Australia. In reality Australia is 4x larger. Because you're projecting a spherical map onto a flat 2D surface, stuff as you get further north or south of the equator gets more and more stretched out while stuff towards the middle gets more compressed.
Granted Russia is still phenomenally larger in land mass.
That's bullshit, it's poorer countries that have high fertility rate. Are you seriously trying to say Bangladesh has a better job market than South Korea or Germany?
Much of Russia isn't tundra, the non tundra, habitable zones would still make it one of the largest countries in the world (larger than the EU for one) and Russia today is an agricultural powerhouse that exports shitload of calories (but in unprocessed form which is why the dollar amount of food exports is low).
It's just this agricultural productivity required modern farming techniques to exploit properly. Ukraine and parts of western Russia for example, after the Mongol invasions till like 1800s was essentially the wild west of Europe (literally called "wild fields" at the time). It would need a lot pain, investment and terraforming to transform the region to the agricultural powerhouse it is today and by that time (around 1960, 1970), Russians had become educated (and more importantly, their *women* had become educated), their women had joined the workforce in huge numbers (earlier than the US in fact) sexual education had become much better, family planning knowledge spread. All things which limit population growth.
Bangladesh by contrast was a region that was much easier to cultivate, especially rice which is calorie dense per acre, so they had a chance to grow to a much bigger size before the modern era. And the modern era arrived much more slowly for Bangladesh than for Russia since you know, colonization prevented serious investment in education. So they had much longer to spend in the "high birthrate, low deathrate" part of the demographic transition with medical advances before now entering the "low birthrate, low deathrate" phase.
https://preview.redd.it/grajkq1um98d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ab02d5e3ad771f341f91c82d25666a2b60b2e6d7
Birth rate in Bangladesh already in demographic transition.
Huge reason why Putin wants Ukraine right now is productive soil. Ukraine is supplying African countries with grains produce. Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria have access to the best fields for wheat production in all of Europe.
Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine much more than Bulgaria
https://preview.redd.it/vgt44vm70a8d1.jpeg?width=2067&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3e85f0644fd5251d5cd7b87aa5cbf3766ef7e52e
Yes, most of Russia’s land mass is occupied by penguins. I’ve read that they have even more penguins than northern Manitoba and Nunavut combined! I can’t find a link to the article, though.
I thought it was pretty clear that it was a joke. There are no penguins in Manitoba.
Now, Tansi Nitotemak, on the other hand. I’ve seen photographs, but they’re always low quality/blurry and the subject is typically quite far away and obscured by the bush.
There are no penguins in the northern hemisphere full stop. Them shits are all down here on the southern coastlines of New Zealand Australia, South America, South Africa and of course they pretty much own Antarctica
The US ain’t that empty. You ain’t seen empty till you’ve driven through interior Australia. Or presumably interior Canada or Russia. As I understand it, you can’t drive through interior Greenland
There are signs on I-35 warning you to fill up with gas before continuing because the next station is over 200 miles away or something like that.
I realize Australia has longer distances than this, but it's still pretty impressive.
The last indigenous people in Australia to be contacted by [European settlers was in 1984](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pintupi_Nine). It’s not just that Australia has low population density. It’s that great swaths of it are empty. Same as Russia and Greenland.
Kansas isn't empty compared to really empty places in Australia or Russia.
My province in northern Sweden is about half the size of either Wyoming or Kansas, but *one seventh* of the population of Wyoming, or *one thirtythird* of Kansas.
A population of 87,744 people over an area of 42,356 sq mi (109,702 km²), for a density of 2.1/sq mi (0.80/km²)
vs. Kansas 2,937,000 people over an area of 81,759 sq mi (211,754 km²), for a density of 34.9/sq mi (13.5/km2)
Five out of six Australian states have a lower population density than Kansas, where the least densely populated one is Western Australia, which has about the same population of Kansas but is *12 times larger*.
Chukotka in Russia is about 3 times larger than Kansas, with a total population of 47,490.
Yakutia in Russia is 14 times larger than Kansas, but with a total population just under a million vs. Kansas' just under 3 million.
Up until recently California actually had more people than all of Canada, but that hasn't been true for a few years now with Canada's recent population boom and California's declining population.
[Australia](https://i.imgur.com/PrKtYWI.jpeg) and [China](https://i.imgur.com/uOt3DiL.jpeg) (given it's huge population) also have pretty interesting distributions.
I knew about Australia but hadn’t seen the distribution of China before. That’s really cool. And honestly, the US is the same way – mostly centered around the major sea ports. I bet most countries with ocean borders are like this.
Canada is like 75% uninhabitable. 1% cities and 24% farm land. Only Ukraine and Russia make more grains than us. Or they used it. War might've changed that
That and it doesn't help that their main war strategies consist of throwing bodies to catch bullets in hopes that one of their soldiers might be able to return fire.
For anyone wondering, 62% of Bangladesh is aerable (where you can cultivate crops) as compared to 7% of Russia.
While that still leaves you with a massive difference, since 0.9% of a russia is equivalent to a bangladesh, one has to also consider that Bangladesh has some of the most fertile lands in the entire world. So historically, it was growing more crops more easily than anywhere else.
To get a sense of how fertile and rich in resources the land is, you can consider this: in the 1600s, an estimated ~11% of the world's total GDP was coming from Bengal region^1 (which includes present day Bangladesh, and the states of West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Bihar in India), which had a total land area less than present day France.
^1 Based on Maddison's estimates of global GDP
I mean, when there was mass crop failure or man made famines, the number of people affected would also be large simply because the number of people supported by (and therefore dependent on) the local crop was large.
Tell that to Winston Churchill, a guy revered as a hero, while being as bad if not worse as the most terrible figure in history (you know who)
It was a man made famine.
Famines are often political. They are about a lack of access to food rather than an absolute lack of food being produced. Another example of this would be in Ireland when food was still being exported during the famine.
Oh man,
Start with all the wars over its history.
The tens of millions dead in the WW1-civil war period.
Then the tens of millions murdered by the Bolsheviks/communists.
Before that…. The war of 1812, Crimean war, Turkish wars, Russo Japanese war,
Then after the collapse in 1991, a few millions deaths of despair
It’s a crazy amount of death that Russia has experienced
Russia lost about 3.5 million total in WW1 and 7-12 million in their civil war between 1914-1922. Russia lost 27 million in WW2 between 1941-45. That’s nearly double the deaths in half the time. It effectively wiped out about half the generation of people that were fighting age during WW2. If you look at a population graph of ages, there’s an “echo” of that population loss every 25 years due to roughly 20million males being killed in WW2.
Not saying those other calamities didn’t have an effect. They definitely did. I’m saying that WW2 had so many deaths so short a time that it still noticeably affects generational birth rates.
No other country has specialized in “huge portions of our population dying in a relatively short time” quite like the Russians.
Edit to add: and they’re sort of at it again right now
Bangladesh has also been through such events. Famine in 1770 and 1943 (both man made, by the way), then a bloody war and partition in early 1970s.
1943 famine was also related to the second world war, with the British diverting resources entirely out of the region for their war efforts.
And of course, not to mention British occupation till 1947.
The region of today's Bangladesh was the richest province in the Mughal Empire. Note that the Mughal Empire was the second richest state only after China in the 17-18th century.
You could also add to that that Russia is no where near its “carrying capacity”, and has far lower population than it might have had because of WW2 and other conflicts.
This map uses the common Mercator Projection. There are tons of other projection methods, many of which aim to more acurately reflect the real size of each territory. There are websites (too lazy to research rn) where you can play with the projection)
Yeah, I know. I actually thought the difference would be smaller, but after playing around with one of those sites you mention, I found the difference is actually 115x, pretty huge.
It is impossible to accurately reflect both the true relative sizes and the overall shapes of the countries and a flat map there's a trade-off. Mercator projection keep the shapes pretty close to reality by keeping every angle identical. The other maps that try to keep the relative areas correct often deform the shapes of northern and southern countries a lot.
The only map that could accurately represent the shape and sizes of every country is a globe.
South Asia is so populated because there's so much farmland that's basically perfect with no winter and it's also naturally beautiful. Russia has a lotta farmland. But horrible winters. And most of the country is uninhabitable.
I was about to post, that if thats the case then why isnt south europe so populated. Then I realized, all of south europe is 75%+ Mountains. How the hell did europe thrive above the east?!
Southern europe actually thrived hundreds of years ago.
Ever heard of the roman empire?
Northern europe began to thrive after Constantinople was conquered by the turks and roman scholars fled to western europe.
The book Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond attempts to answer the question, there are multiple factors including geography, types of crops, available animals for domestication. One reason put forth is that the geography of Western Europe encouraged the formation of smaller states which were more competitive with each other, leading to a constant need to innovation. By contrast, other places in the world were more congenial to large, stable empires that face little pressure from outside to innovate. This is just one reason, there is a decent summary on Wikipedia, although Diamond's entire thesis is not without its detractors. Another interesting factors is the Eurasia is essentially an east-west landmass, so people could expand and conquer whilst remaining at the same latitude, meaning they could grow the same crops and tend the same animals as they went along.
Its because they make a lot of babies and with the modern medicines and health measures, thanks to the west. All the 10 children a couple have survive which wasn't the case until few decades ago
Now highlight the amount of Russia that's inhabitable, won't be as big as the entire country. Then look at how much land each Russian owns vs how much land each Bangladeshi person owns.
To bring it more domestic, NYC has a population of almost 8 million. Dallas Texas on the other hand has under 7 million. There cramming a bunch more people vertically in NYC while people in Dallas have more space and actually have yards.
>NYC has a population of almost 8 million
Or more dramatically, there are over 8m people in New York City and just over 580k people in the entire state of Wyoming.
The tallest building in New York City is almost 1,800 feet high and the tallest building in Wyoming is right about 150 feet high.
Here you go. Russia is about 115 times bigger than Bangladesh. Bangladesh is approximately 148,460 sq km, while Russia is approximately 17,098,242 sq km, making Russia 11,417% larger than Bangladesh. Meanwhile, the population of Bangladesh is \~165.7 million people (23.6 million fewer people live in Russia). We have positioned the outline of Bangladesh near the middle of Russia.
https://preview.redd.it/ew1vshtt4a8d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=79cbef3f07734c32cdc786691620794c2edf4fcb
[Source: here](https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/russia/bangladesh)
There are so many God damn people that live in that area of the world. It's fucking crazy. From China to around Pakistan, from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean, damn near half the world's population lives there.
I've visited Indonesia, and being in an island gives me anxiety. Being on an island with that many people, that trip was just an extended panic attack.
I honestly don't know how people how live there. I've visited those places, and they're beautiful don't get me wrong, but there's just so many fucking people.
I have no idea how they do it. I mean, more than any place, to me personally, Tokyo was fucking insane. India and China are big so its an overwhelming congestion. But Tokyo, I don't think I'll ever experience anything like that again.
All I really remember from visiting like 13 countries in that part of Asia is the amount of people. Coming from America where everybody has space, visiting Asia is like visiting a different world
Are you really comparing country size with the distorted version of the world map?
Its projection gives a false sense of actual country size.
Look at russia with corrected size:
https://preview.redd.it/kli0530ir98d1.png?width=1070&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d99b5c7cd04f87ce63053670bae453e46085a26e
Part of the problem is the Mercator projection, which wildly exaggerates the size of countries near the poles (like Russia).
[https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/is1k77/size\_of\_russia\_compared\_to\_africa/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/is1k77/size_of_russia_compared_to_africa/)
My geography is a bit rusty but if I'm not wrong the India/Bangladesh zone is climatically paradisiac with occasional hellish storm scenarios
So in a similar way that china is populous because of rice their agriculture is particularly efficient?
Also low automation/industrialization having countries have consistently higher birth rates to compensate for higher child mortality and generate wealth for familiar nucleus through child labor
I once saw a report on low cost clothing manufactured in Bangladesh. Huge buildings with hundreds of staplers and/or balers operated by minors with around 2 amputees a week + some of those buildings collapse because of the summed vibrations of the machines since it's a multiple store building and very packed
Because is about 70% of Russian territory are unsuitable for life and about 90% of remaining are hard to live. There only 2-3 cities that can be compared to normal europian cities, other cities is more like african shitholes but with snow.
Btw I live in shithole like that.
More of Russian territory would be suitable for life, if money and resources were actually being used to develop that land. Unfortunately Russian government isn't interested in developing Russia, they would rather try to steal from their neighbors.
Side dosent matter, like Canada most of its citizens live an hours drive to the US border, not because the like the US it's because the weather further North can be miserably cold in winter.
Russia has very low population density on majority of it's territory. Approximately 60% of the entire territory has under 10 people per square kilometer.
East of Ural, Russia is mostly cold wasteland that was always sparsly populated. IIRC 120 million of those 140-something lives in the European part of Russia. It is why it was so "easy" to colonize it -- not much resistance. In Russian times the land there was only used to exploit natural resources and hide military projects. And life is unsustainable without the government supplying you via air.
Much like Australia and Canada, much of Russia is completely uninhabitable because of its climate, geography or remoteness.
There's no great mystery there.
*anything is possible* with no code enforcement and zero sanitation! Come to a land of zero effective institutions and maximal human density! *Bangladesh*, its like the state doesn't even exist but you can't leave
The main reasoning behind high population in countries like Bangladesh, India Pakistan is because of the extremely fertile lands that can support that much population and it has been like that for as long as humanity existed. Maps like these won't compare the fertile/habitable land of Bangladesh vs Fertile/Habitable Land of Russia.
Please research your topics before coming up with some BS reasoning. Even if Sanitation wasn't a problem, these countries would still be very populated. You can't have that in a lot of Nothern countries where most of the land is tundra.
I had a roommate from Bangladesh. Basically you don't want to go there. They're packed like fish, human flesh everywhere. If you don't want to be touched then Bangladesh is your worst nightmare
Tldr: people in this area of the world have no cultural resistance to the general concept of contraception or preventing pregnancy. Also bad comparison since 3/4 of Russia is uninhabitable
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Despite having such a small land mass, Bangladesh is 3rd in rice production and 7th in Potato production. That probably gives you an idea. Extremely fertile land that can support large population centers.
Bangladesh has 1.72 the population density of Taiwan. Bangladesh has 2.25 the population density of South Korea. Population density is still insane, but not unfathomably so.
Twice the density of South Korea is quite boggling to the mind.
Much of South Korea is unused hilly terrain.
Yeah it looks awesome from an airplane because there’s just patches of forested mountain all through out Seoul
Meanwhile Russia is mostly dry and cold. Like Australia and Canada, Russia has lots of areas that aren't really suitable for large scale human habitats. Such countries don't have as much feasible space to build more large cities as their vast land areas suggest.
80% of space in russia is risky farming zone. And maybe 5-10% is actually good for farming
Canada does have lots of good space. We just also have lots of space in the north that's not great for development, and we probably could if we wanted to, but there's really no reason to at present. It's prohibitively expensive to get goods up there, and we don't yet have much for infrastructure up there. Unfortunately, many of our larger cities were built on prime farm land, so as the cities expand we're eating up that high value land. We need to start going up, not out, but everyone wants their little patch of grass to waste fuel mowing.
I was in Montreal a few decades ago and was amazed by the underground mall/street system they have. I suggest in Canada building down, not up. Use light pipes to augment interior lighting and the stable subterranean climate to save TONS of operating costs.
Montreal does have an amazing underground. Down would be good too, but it's tough to sell to investors because upfront costs are considerably higher.
If Russia had the same population density as Bangladesh it would have a population of just over 22.7 billion people. Edit: Billion with a b, I'm a dumb.
It would be 22.7 billion
Of which \~97% frozen.
Holy crap
Also the size isn't well represented here. The most common projection that we use in our maps shows Greenland being about the same size as Australia. In reality Australia is 4x larger. Because you're projecting a spherical map onto a flat 2D surface, stuff as you get further north or south of the equator gets more and more stretched out while stuff towards the middle gets more compressed. Granted Russia is still phenomenally larger in land mass.
Most of their exports are clothing tho.
Because obviously they eat all that rice and potato themselves.
They keep the food for their massive population
Extremely fertile people, too apparently.
Bangladesh has a birth rate of 1,9 per woman. This is below replacement level and not particularily high.
not really, when food is cheap people have kids it's really that simple
When education is bad that happens too.
When job is bad, less salary, food and fuel, tax and housing is bad f,orces women to work too, so less population too.
That's bullshit, it's poorer countries that have high fertility rate. Are you seriously trying to say Bangladesh has a better job market than South Korea or Germany?
Damn
Dang, Sid Meier’s Civilization was right all along
Tropics vs tundra
Tropic Tundra I loved that movie
Suck my unit
What do *you* mean you people?
Much of Russia isn't tundra, the non tundra, habitable zones would still make it one of the largest countries in the world (larger than the EU for one) and Russia today is an agricultural powerhouse that exports shitload of calories (but in unprocessed form which is why the dollar amount of food exports is low). It's just this agricultural productivity required modern farming techniques to exploit properly. Ukraine and parts of western Russia for example, after the Mongol invasions till like 1800s was essentially the wild west of Europe (literally called "wild fields" at the time). It would need a lot pain, investment and terraforming to transform the region to the agricultural powerhouse it is today and by that time (around 1960, 1970), Russians had become educated (and more importantly, their *women* had become educated), their women had joined the workforce in huge numbers (earlier than the US in fact) sexual education had become much better, family planning knowledge spread. All things which limit population growth. Bangladesh by contrast was a region that was much easier to cultivate, especially rice which is calorie dense per acre, so they had a chance to grow to a much bigger size before the modern era. And the modern era arrived much more slowly for Bangladesh than for Russia since you know, colonization prevented serious investment in education. So they had much longer to spend in the "high birthrate, low deathrate" part of the demographic transition with medical advances before now entering the "low birthrate, low deathrate" phase.
https://preview.redd.it/grajkq1um98d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ab02d5e3ad771f341f91c82d25666a2b60b2e6d7 Birth rate in Bangladesh already in demographic transition.
It's wild how it takes only a single generation to go from almost 7 children per woman (on average!!!) to less than 2.
Yup, my dad has ten siblings and my mom has three siblings. But, most of my cousins and I have one sibling. I'll probably only have one kid or none.
A telling sign for economic development is a decreasing birth rate
Are you saying that as a country gets more developed, birth rate declines?
Huge reason why Putin wants Ukraine right now is productive soil. Ukraine is supplying African countries with grains produce. Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria have access to the best fields for wheat production in all of Europe.
Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine much more than Bulgaria https://preview.redd.it/vgt44vm70a8d1.jpeg?width=2067&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3e85f0644fd5251d5cd7b87aa5cbf3766ef7e52e
That’s *part* of it
The word you're looking for is taiga.
Yes, most of Russia’s land mass is occupied by penguins. I’ve read that they have even more penguins than northern Manitoba and Nunavut combined! I can’t find a link to the article, though.
I hope you are joking.
I thought it was pretty clear that it was a joke. There are no penguins in Manitoba. Now, Tansi Nitotemak, on the other hand. I’ve seen photographs, but they’re always low quality/blurry and the subject is typically quite far away and obscured by the bush.
There are no penguins in the northern hemisphere full stop. Them shits are all down here on the southern coastlines of New Zealand Australia, South America, South Africa and of course they pretty much own Antarctica
Almost true. Galápagos Penguin occurs in the northern hemisphere. But there's no penguins in the cold parts of the north.
Some of them pop up in some part of Spain iirc
> There are no penguins in the northern hemisphere full stop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galapagos_penguin
‘It is the only penguin found north of the equator.[4]’ Okay, there’s always an exception
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Just like Canada
And Australia
And Greenland
And US
And my axe?
And my horse!
And your mum?
and my balls!
The US ain’t that empty. You ain’t seen empty till you’ve driven through interior Australia. Or presumably interior Canada or Russia. As I understand it, you can’t drive through interior Greenland
[AREA WISE population density per square km in US](https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2010/geo/population-density-county-2010.html)
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There are signs on I-35 warning you to fill up with gas before continuing because the next station is over 200 miles away or something like that. I realize Australia has longer distances than this, but it's still pretty impressive.
The last indigenous people in Australia to be contacted by [European settlers was in 1984](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pintupi_Nine). It’s not just that Australia has low population density. It’s that great swaths of it are empty. Same as Russia and Greenland.
Kansas isn't empty compared to really empty places in Australia or Russia. My province in northern Sweden is about half the size of either Wyoming or Kansas, but *one seventh* of the population of Wyoming, or *one thirtythird* of Kansas. A population of 87,744 people over an area of 42,356 sq mi (109,702 km²), for a density of 2.1/sq mi (0.80/km²) vs. Kansas 2,937,000 people over an area of 81,759 sq mi (211,754 km²), for a density of 34.9/sq mi (13.5/km2) Five out of six Australian states have a lower population density than Kansas, where the least densely populated one is Western Australia, which has about the same population of Kansas but is *12 times larger*. Chukotka in Russia is about 3 times larger than Kansas, with a total population of 47,490. Yakutia in Russia is 14 times larger than Kansas, but with a total population just under a million vs. Kansas' just under 3 million.
I always liked that statistic that 90% of Canadians live South of Seattle. It really puts the whole country into perspective.
Country is 40’ish million. Toronto makes up around 8 of that. *my numbers could be out of date.
California is about a million shy of the entire canadian population with 39m
Up until recently California actually had more people than all of Canada, but that hasn't been true for a few years now with Canada's recent population boom and California's declining population.
Yeah Cali fucking expensive to live in even if you get a really nice job.
over 60% live below the 49th parallel The 90% number is for within 100 miles of the border
[Australia](https://i.imgur.com/PrKtYWI.jpeg) and [China](https://i.imgur.com/uOt3DiL.jpeg) (given it's huge population) also have pretty interesting distributions.
There is a line that can be drawn which bisects China by land mass and the population by 1 to 9.
I knew about Australia but hadn’t seen the distribution of China before. That’s really cool. And honestly, the US is the same way – mostly centered around the major sea ports. I bet most countries with ocean borders are like this.
Canada is like 75% uninhabitable. 1% cities and 24% farm land. Only Ukraine and Russia make more grains than us. Or they used it. War might've changed that
Sask gang checking in
War, war never changes
I'm a lumberjack and that's ok
I sleep all night, I work all day
Russia has a province called Sakha, it's home to the Yakuts. The land area is the size of the Republic of India, but it is home to 995k people.
And only 171 thousand deer :(
Russia is still far bigger and larger than Bangladesh and any other country for that matter anyways, Mercator projection or not.
[Yes](https://i.redd.it/52ald7t81ub71.jpg)
Bangladesh is about a third of the size of Finland, which has... 5.5 million people.
Yes obviously.
also in the usual mercator map projections, russia is near a pole, (not people from poland) and that makes it look far bigger than it is on the globe
Yup
That and it doesn't help that their main war strategies consist of throwing bodies to catch bullets in hopes that one of their soldiers might be able to return fire.
But it always worked before !
For anyone wondering, 62% of Bangladesh is aerable (where you can cultivate crops) as compared to 7% of Russia. While that still leaves you with a massive difference, since 0.9% of a russia is equivalent to a bangladesh, one has to also consider that Bangladesh has some of the most fertile lands in the entire world. So historically, it was growing more crops more easily than anywhere else. To get a sense of how fertile and rich in resources the land is, you can consider this: in the 1600s, an estimated ~11% of the world's total GDP was coming from Bengal region^1 (which includes present day Bangladesh, and the states of West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Bihar in India), which had a total land area less than present day France. ^1 Based on Maddison's estimates of global GDP
Excellent breakdown. I’d also add that the losses in WW2 also had a huge impact in lessening Russia’s population that still affects it today.
I wonder how that stacks up against the deaths due to the various famines in Bengal
Weird to hear this from the most fertile region...
I mean, when there was mass crop failure or man made famines, the number of people affected would also be large simply because the number of people supported by (and therefore dependent on) the local crop was large.
The famines were mostly man made because the colonial British Empire diverting resources, leaving little for the local population.
Sounds like the same shit they did with Ireland
Tell that to Winston Churchill, a guy revered as a hero, while being as bad if not worse as the most terrible figure in history (you know who) It was a man made famine.
Famines are often political. They are about a lack of access to food rather than an absolute lack of food being produced. Another example of this would be in Ireland when food was still being exported during the famine.
Don’t forget the floods.. So many floods..
Oh man, Start with all the wars over its history. The tens of millions dead in the WW1-civil war period. Then the tens of millions murdered by the Bolsheviks/communists. Before that…. The war of 1812, Crimean war, Turkish wars, Russo Japanese war, Then after the collapse in 1991, a few millions deaths of despair It’s a crazy amount of death that Russia has experienced
Russia lost about 3.5 million total in WW1 and 7-12 million in their civil war between 1914-1922. Russia lost 27 million in WW2 between 1941-45. That’s nearly double the deaths in half the time. It effectively wiped out about half the generation of people that were fighting age during WW2. If you look at a population graph of ages, there’s an “echo” of that population loss every 25 years due to roughly 20million males being killed in WW2. Not saying those other calamities didn’t have an effect. They definitely did. I’m saying that WW2 had so many deaths so short a time that it still noticeably affects generational birth rates.
No other country has specialized in “huge portions of our population dying in a relatively short time” quite like the Russians. Edit to add: and they’re sort of at it again right now
Bangladesh has also been through such events. Famine in 1770 and 1943 (both man made, by the way), then a bloody war and partition in early 1970s. 1943 famine was also related to the second world war, with the British diverting resources entirely out of the region for their war efforts. And of course, not to mention British occupation till 1947.
Yeah Fuck Winston Churchill
The region of today's Bangladesh was the richest province in the Mughal Empire. Note that the Mughal Empire was the second richest state only after China in the 17-18th century.
You could also add to that that Russia is no where near its “carrying capacity”, and has far lower population than it might have had because of WW2 and other conflicts.
Yeah it can easily support like x4 its current population food-wise.
More food = more pop, Civilization teaches this, lol
WTF happend?
The 2D map also greatly exaggerates the size of the northern countries and shrinks the equatorial countries.
This is true. While Bangladesh is still small compared to Russia, it's not as tiny as this map makes it look.
This map uses the common Mercator Projection. There are tons of other projection methods, many of which aim to more acurately reflect the real size of each territory. There are websites (too lazy to research rn) where you can play with the projection)
Yeah, I know. I actually thought the difference would be smaller, but after playing around with one of those sites you mention, I found the difference is actually 115x, pretty huge.
It is impossible to accurately reflect both the true relative sizes and the overall shapes of the countries and a flat map there's a trade-off. Mercator projection keep the shapes pretty close to reality by keeping every angle identical. The other maps that try to keep the relative areas correct often deform the shapes of northern and southern countries a lot. The only map that could accurately represent the shape and sizes of every country is a globe.
I think there is a sub for this information because everyone knows it but still you people comment on posts like this Edit: r/WeKnowAboutMercator
South Asia is so populated because there's so much farmland that's basically perfect with no winter and it's also naturally beautiful. Russia has a lotta farmland. But horrible winters. And most of the country is uninhabitable.
I was about to post, that if thats the case then why isnt south europe so populated. Then I realized, all of south europe is 75%+ Mountains. How the hell did europe thrive above the east?!
Colonisation, industrial revolution, machine building, weapons.
More like industrial revolution -> weapons -> colonization. But also development of medicine and science, etc.
Southern europe actually thrived hundreds of years ago. Ever heard of the roman empire? Northern europe began to thrive after Constantinople was conquered by the turks and roman scholars fled to western europe.
Hundreds or even thousands
The book Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond attempts to answer the question, there are multiple factors including geography, types of crops, available animals for domestication. One reason put forth is that the geography of Western Europe encouraged the formation of smaller states which were more competitive with each other, leading to a constant need to innovation. By contrast, other places in the world were more congenial to large, stable empires that face little pressure from outside to innovate. This is just one reason, there is a decent summary on Wikipedia, although Diamond's entire thesis is not without its detractors. Another interesting factors is the Eurasia is essentially an east-west landmass, so people could expand and conquer whilst remaining at the same latitude, meaning they could grow the same crops and tend the same animals as they went along.
Its because they make a lot of babies and with the modern medicines and health measures, thanks to the west. All the 10 children a couple have survive which wasn't the case until few decades ago
Bangladesh is the most populous country in the world to have never won an Olympic medal
We'd win so many if there was a medal for religious extremism and child marriage. Which explains the population.
Bro, people have different priorities here, peopel try to survive. We do not have any framework in palce to help us achieve that.
Yeah... We live in hell.... Let's bring more baby here.
The Indonesian island of Java also has a greater population than all of Russia.
Now highlight the amount of Russia that's inhabitable, won't be as big as the entire country. Then look at how much land each Russian owns vs how much land each Bangladeshi person owns. To bring it more domestic, NYC has a population of almost 8 million. Dallas Texas on the other hand has under 7 million. There cramming a bunch more people vertically in NYC while people in Dallas have more space and actually have yards.
>NYC has a population of almost 8 million Or more dramatically, there are over 8m people in New York City and just over 580k people in the entire state of Wyoming. The tallest building in New York City is almost 1,800 feet high and the tallest building in Wyoming is right about 150 feet high.
Wyoming sounds awesome for someone like me
I just learned fewer people live in cold places. Thank you.
show the map without Mercator projection, remove all territories with uninhabitable conditions and this wouldn't be so mind-blowing
Here you go. Russia is about 115 times bigger than Bangladesh. Bangladesh is approximately 148,460 sq km, while Russia is approximately 17,098,242 sq km, making Russia 11,417% larger than Bangladesh. Meanwhile, the population of Bangladesh is \~165.7 million people (23.6 million fewer people live in Russia). We have positioned the outline of Bangladesh near the middle of Russia. https://preview.redd.it/ew1vshtt4a8d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=79cbef3f07734c32cdc786691620794c2edf4fcb [Source: here](https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/russia/bangladesh)
If you remove "...and ..." clause this reads like a chatgpt prompt
A LOT of Russian land is empty af tbf.
It's really just 115 times larger, the map's projection is not true to scale.
P*tin is doing his best to make Russia unattractive for future migration to the north. Place enough though...
There are so many God damn people that live in that area of the world. It's fucking crazy. From China to around Pakistan, from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean, damn near half the world's population lives there. I've visited Indonesia, and being in an island gives me anxiety. Being on an island with that many people, that trip was just an extended panic attack. I honestly don't know how people how live there. I've visited those places, and they're beautiful don't get me wrong, but there's just so many fucking people. I have no idea how they do it. I mean, more than any place, to me personally, Tokyo was fucking insane. India and China are big so its an overwhelming congestion. But Tokyo, I don't think I'll ever experience anything like that again. All I really remember from visiting like 13 countries in that part of Asia is the amount of people. Coming from America where everybody has space, visiting Asia is like visiting a different world
Bangladesh has no concept of personal space
overpopulated AF
Are you really comparing country size with the distorted version of the world map? Its projection gives a false sense of actual country size. Look at russia with corrected size: https://preview.redd.it/kli0530ir98d1.png?width=1070&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d99b5c7cd04f87ce63053670bae453e46085a26e
Still absolutely huge compared to Bangladesh
Ok I'm super surprised about Greenland
Part of the problem is the Mercator projection, which wildly exaggerates the size of countries near the poles (like Russia). [https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/is1k77/size\_of\_russia\_compared\_to\_africa/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/is1k77/size_of_russia_compared_to_africa/)
Russia's population and life expectancy keeps getting smaller. I wonder why.
My geography is a bit rusty but if I'm not wrong the India/Bangladesh zone is climatically paradisiac with occasional hellish storm scenarios So in a similar way that china is populous because of rice their agriculture is particularly efficient? Also low automation/industrialization having countries have consistently higher birth rates to compensate for higher child mortality and generate wealth for familiar nucleus through child labor I once saw a report on low cost clothing manufactured in Bangladesh. Huge buildings with hundreds of staplers and/or balers operated by minors with around 2 amputees a week + some of those buildings collapse because of the summed vibrations of the machines since it's a multiple store building and very packed
So many people, so little to show for it.
Well, most of that land in top is fucking freezing.
Don't use mercator map for comparing country size, baby.
Let’s hope Bangladesh doesn’t start wanting to invade places
Because is about 70% of Russian territory are unsuitable for life and about 90% of remaining are hard to live. There only 2-3 cities that can be compared to normal europian cities, other cities is more like african shitholes but with snow. Btw I live in shithole like that.
More of Russian territory would be suitable for life, if money and resources were actually being used to develop that land. Unfortunately Russian government isn't interested in developing Russia, they would rather try to steal from their neighbors.
You should travel out from your shithole more often then because there are more decent cities than 3
At least they’re warmer
Not so fun fact. Most of Bangladesh will be come uninhabitable in next 100 years.
Don't have the cold killing of the weak.
What's so hard to understand?
Side dosent matter, like Canada most of its citizens live an hours drive to the US border, not because the like the US it's because the weather further North can be miserably cold in winter.
Russia is mostly empty taiga and tundra. There aren't really a lot of people outside of the small area in the far west.
That's nothing. The continent of Australia has only 26 million people....
Lack of access to contraception, that's why
The dimensions here are greatly in favour of Russia, the actual dimension of it is a lot smaller, since you know.. the Earth is not a flat rectangle
Russia has been pop dunking hard, probably wants to get thw scaraping the barrel achievment.
Russia has very low population density on majority of it's territory. Approximately 60% of the entire territory has under 10 people per square kilometer.
East of Ural, Russia is mostly cold wasteland that was always sparsly populated. IIRC 120 million of those 140-something lives in the European part of Russia. It is why it was so "easy" to colonize it -- not much resistance. In Russian times the land there was only used to exploit natural resources and hide military projects. And life is unsustainable without the government supplying you via air.
And guess, which country's government thinks that it don't have enough land and it should be taken from neighbours?
BANGLADESH MENTIONED 🇧🇩🥳
BANG-ladesh
Much like Australia and Canada, much of Russia is completely uninhabitable because of its climate, geography or remoteness. There's no great mystery there.
Invade
Fucking around and having a lot of rice
Tokyo's metropolitan area has 37M people Canada's population is 38M
Send Bangladeshis to Russia and you problem would be solved 😎
Not interesting as fuck, just shows the people who don't know shit.
Lesson on habitable land in order for OP.
No condoms and no taxes to pay...
It's one of the reasons why Putin is invading and kidnapping children. Like a lot of us, it has a declining population and workforce
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Because most of it is frozen solid for half the year lmao
Just a few more years and it should be nicely thawed out
It's a tundra, difficult to grow food there, and generally a wasteland
Because it's mostly Siberia, which is largely a barren wasteland with few resources to live on.
Siberia is a name of region. Tundra is the word you're looking for.
Siberia and mountains. Even Siberian mountains in some areas.
*anything is possible* with no code enforcement and zero sanitation! Come to a land of zero effective institutions and maximal human density! *Bangladesh*, its like the state doesn't even exist but you can't leave
The main reasoning behind high population in countries like Bangladesh, India Pakistan is because of the extremely fertile lands that can support that much population and it has been like that for as long as humanity existed. Maps like these won't compare the fertile/habitable land of Bangladesh vs Fertile/Habitable Land of Russia. Please research your topics before coming up with some BS reasoning. Even if Sanitation wasn't a problem, these countries would still be very populated. You can't have that in a lot of Nothern countries where most of the land is tundra.
EAT.SLEEP.PRAY.FUCK.REPEAT
I had a roommate from Bangladesh. Basically you don't want to go there. They're packed like fish, human flesh everywhere. If you don't want to be touched then Bangladesh is your worst nightmare
You don't wanna know the half of what they be doing over there in Bangladesh
I mean Russia probably has a significantly smaller population now. But also most of Russia is on the west coast. The rest is tundra
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They don't like to bang in Russia.
It s possible because some people can live like cockroaches
Tldr: people in this area of the world have no cultural resistance to the general concept of contraception or preventing pregnancy. Also bad comparison since 3/4 of Russia is uninhabitable
Bangladesh has a larger population than any country from europe