Topic: Something to think about when world-building...

[GrumpyOldFart]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443819404577635332556005436.html

[RandalThor]

What's funny, is that I used to tell my Marine buddies and family why I thought we "won" the cold war: Most of Russia is located well north of most of America (don't count Alaska please, so few people live there) that they had to spend so much effort just to feed their people, while we had such a "bread-basket". Sure there were other factors, but I contend that if one nation has to spend more energy just to survive, another - otherwise equal - nation will be able to advance faster in just about every way.

Neat article.

[jdale]

Jared Diamond spends quite a bit of time on how geography influenced history in his "Guns, Germs, and Steel". http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393317552/$%7B0%7D  Good read, plenty to think about. I think some of his other books touch on related topics but haven't read them all.

[GrumpyOldFart]

What's funny, is that I used to tell my Marine buddies and family why I thought we "won" the cold war: Most of Russia is located well north of most of America (don't count Alaska please, so few people live there) that they had to spend so much effort just to feed their people, while we had such a "bread-basket".

We have a prairie about the size of the Ukrainian steppes... but theirs is in the climate of the Canadian prairie, and ours is in the climate of France.

Sure there were other factors, but I contend that if one nation has to spend more energy just to survive, another - otherwise equal - nation will be able to advance faster in just about every way.

Such as how back in the day when the American prairie had a grand total of one "road"... a set of wagon ruts... across it, you could still take a barge from Pittsburgh to New Orleans to St. Paul to somewhere out in Nebraska. And the cost of all that "transportation infrastructure" was zero. The article suggests the same is not true of the steppes, completely aside from relative productivity due to latitude. The value of one's ability to produce abundant food varies with one's ability to actually get said food to where the hungry people are. In Russia's case, the Urals are in the way.