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Welcome to the land that no country wants: Bir Tawil (2016)
- walrus01 5y agoI would suggest to people that want to colonize mars that we try a self-sustaining colony at Bir Tawil first. Of course it would need a sufficient budget, in USD or EUR per year, and cooperation from the adjacent governments for over-land transport of supplies and construction materials. Not for the purpose of trying to claim it as a sovereign state (silly idea), but as a proof of concept on the volume of material/logistics involved and to stress-test the technology for self sustaining colony infrastructure. Note that I am not saying we shouldn't also attempt a mars colony, but rather that running a pilot project/proof of concept at Bir Tawil or some similarly harsh environment would be a minuscule cost compared to the actual thing, and may prove very instructive. It has the advantage of: standard earth atmospheric pressure and air you can breathe can go outside without a spacesuit magnetosphere for radiation protection ability to extract some drinkable water from the air, even if very arid, if you have sufficient amounts of electricity relatively easy to transport dozens of tons of cargo to, likely using something like military-type 6x6 5 ton trucks access to earth based telecommunications systems (geostationary satellites, iridium, inmarsat, etc) photovoltaic systems can be installed that don't need to be hardened for vacuum
- cortesoft 5y agoWhy not just do it in the Nevada desert? You can set any restrictions you want on how many resources you can bring or how you can transport them.
- walrus01 5y agothat as well, though some of the most bleak and desolate places like dry lakebeds are already occupied by things like area 51/groom lake.
- geocrasher 5y agoYou underestimate how vast the Nevada outback is, and how desolate it is.
- heyitsguay 5y agoThis is getting further off topic from the article but your post reminded me of a random idea I had along the same lines - if one of these billionaires who wants to colonize Mars wants to take a practice run, they should build a city in Antarctica. Not just a little scientific outpost like we have now, but a full small-city-sized settlement away from the shores that people can actually live in year-round enjoyably without being insanely depressed or repressed. Seems like a tall order, but still way simpler than doing the same on Mars.
- na85 5y ago>they should build a city in Antarctica. Not a single billionaire alive today can be trusted to safeguard the delicate ecosystem there.
- ehvatum 5y agoYou’re telling me Larry Ellison is a threat to slow-moving glaciers?
- walrus01 5y agoIt does seem like it would be much less costly, as measured in hundreds of millions of US dollars, to build a fleet of something equivalent to Russian's heavy nuclear powered icebreaker fleet, than to colonize mars. Just as one essential link in the supply chain and infrastructure if you wanted to sustain a newly founded coastal city somewhere in Antarctica.
- _8j50 5y agoI disagree. Antartica is best suited to simulate the climate, hostile environment and logistical challenges. Especially the unexplored parts.
- walrus01 5y agoAntarctica is a great idea as well. I am not sure what the political challenges would be if somebody with a sufficiently absurd amount of money to throw at the project actually attempted it. The antarctic treaty is supposed to prohibit nation states from claiming pieces of it as sovereign territory, but those negotiations from the 1950s/1960s didn't really envision modern billionaires doing such things independently. Whether somebody would have the early stages of their construction project shut down by a flown-in team of military forces from some major nation states (US, Russia, UK) is another question. Or simply blockaded and shut down at places like the ports in Chile, Argentina, Tasmania, mainland Austrlia, New Zealand, South Africa.
- _8j50 5y agoI mean, if the ISS can happen I am sure it can be worked out.
- walrus01 5y agoI suppose that one could consider a place like McMurdo as a proof of concept of such already, since its necessary annual inputs of cargo and life-support supplies (food, etc) are extremely well documented at a granular level in terms of the purchasing and procurement process and cargo manifests.
- spaetzleesser 5y agothe ISS is not self sustaining and you can resupply quickly. For Mars you need to be able to survive for years before some kind of rescue is possible.
- throwaway2048 5y agoI'm not sure why it needs to be done by billionaires independent of nation states, the trip to mars sure won't be.
- thematrixturtle 5y agoUnfortunately all those advantages also mean that the experiment would be less than useful for simulating a Mars colony. There have been many attempts at self-sustaining/closed ecosystems over the years, with a distinctly mixed track record. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/mars-simulation-hi-seas-nasa-hawaii/553532/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/mars-sim... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500
- walrus01 5y agoto really attempt a simulation at it you'd need to build something along the same general concept as biosphere-2 (but much bigger, with more supplies, more redundancy, higher budget etc) and then put it at the very far end of an extremely difficult and arduous logistics chain for periodic resupply.
- bagels 5y agoWinter in Antarctica is getting closer.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- michaelcampbell 5y agoI think the point of the experiment would not be to see if you CAN give it a go on Mars, but rather an early indication that you can't. ("If you can't do it here, you can't do it there.")
- tdeck 5y agoThe only thing this would demonstrate is that the nicest place to live on Mars is a hundred times shittier than the worst place on Earth.
- SonnyTark 5y agoBefore Mars is a viable colonization destination, we need to build a good size habitat that's fully or almost fully self-dependent in one of our many oceans that make up most of this planet. If the purpose really is to attempt to escape extinction events I'd rather live down where food and water are plentiful and within arms reach than any celestial object. Additionally, international waters are by definition not owned or controlled by any government and are accessible by anyone with a boat. Technically, this is more than possible with current tech at less cost than sending a rover to Mars (probably), but no one wants to do it because it's not land you can plant a flag into and "claim" as yours.
- bruce511 5y agoBuilding under the sea at any kind of scale falls down quickly as soon as you compare it to say building it on land. In other words, from cost, to sustainability, to environment, to trade, to defence, to literally whatever criterion you want, living on land is better than living under the sea. And alas it would not really increase survivability of ELEs. (inside mountains is likely better for that.) The only reason to colonise Mars is to mitigate an ELE, and its a pretty poor mitigation at that - Mars is more likely to experience an ELE than we are, all it takes is a bit of machinery to fail. Which begs the question of course, why do we care? If an ELE happens, then it happens. Bummer.
- rklaehn 5y agoCompletely independently of a mars colony, this would be an interesting experiment. You might want to start with just building a very large east/west solar installation to create a large shaded area, then some water extraction systems and high intensity greenhouses. And obviously give the whole place very good internet connection. It would not have to be fully closed, like biosphere 2. Many things you don't have to worry about, like CO2 from concrete accumulating. You can even have a bit of water loss. But the problem is this: if you are successful and create some thriving city there, one of the neighbouring countries will suddenly discover some long lost claim to the land and annex it.
- rklaehn 5y agoA better idea might be to take a place that is very inhospitable but already has a sizeable human presence, like the site of the EELT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope . This region is politically stable. It has to be for the extremely large investment of the EELT. Then take a few square kilometers of desert in the vicinity and try to build a self sustaining city there for the EELT employees. Maybe it can grow into a tourist attraction. You would have to be extremely careful not to create light pollution though.
- petre 5y ago> cooperation from the adjacent governments This is fairly impossible with two nations currently in a border dispute. Antarctica is a better place for that because there are no nations at war, no bandits, no geostationary satellites. It's quite a bit like Mars only with more water and an atmosphere.
- toss1 5y agoIndeed! Although I'd frame Bir Tawil as a good steppingstone. Anyone interested in Mars colonization should first also setup a prototype Mars base in the interior of Antarctica. It has the same advantages as Bir Tawil, and it's still much warmer than Mars. If you can't succeed at Bir Tawil, you can't expect to succeed at Antarctica, and if you can't succeed in Antarctica, you can't expect to last on Mars.
- sgjohnson 5y agoThe headline is actually misleading. It's just that neither Egypt nor Sudan can claim it without giving up the claim to Hala'ib Triangle. And Bir Tawil is just a worthless desert, but Hala'ib Triangle is mostly fertile land with a sizeable shoreline, so why would anyone pick the worthless desert over it instead?
- wombatmobile 5y ago> Bir Tawil is just a worthless desert To you perhaps, but outside of your imagination? “members of the Ababda and Bisharin tribe … carry goods, graze crops and make camp within the sands.”
- mojomark 5y ago> And Bir Tawil is just a worthless desert - good military outpost - possible mineral rights?
- magikaram 5y agoPotential U.S. claim if oil is found.
- shepherdjerred 5y agoThis isn’t constructive to the conversation
- schimmy_changa 5y ago"Mostly fertile land"?? I don't think either are worthless (I love deserts for their own sake), but to describe that triangle as fertile is ... not very close to accurate!
- dane-pgp 5y ago> without giving up the claim to Hala'ib Triangle. Well, strictly speaking, either country could decide to claim both areas, it's just they believe that by doing so they would be lessening their chances of their claim over the preferred area succeeding. So it might be more accurate to say "without weakening their claim" instead.
- 616c 5y agoAs someone who hangs out in the surrounding countries from time to time: this is a pretty good case where "because you can doesn't mean you should." Like, this is some crazy idiocy and you should know what you're in for with the relatively painless bureaucracy. Some diplomatic spat or tragedy and they will ignore whatever they signed onto with Heaton. But hey, if I were Heaton's daughter I turn my princess status into a college admissions essay,
- rendall 5y agoYou spend time in Egypt and Sudan? What do you do there?
- erik_seaberg 5y agoI’m more drawn in than I expected. Something about this reminds me of Stephenson’s writing: > The senior officer concluded, perceptively, that, whatever we were attempting to do, we were far too incompetent to do it properly, or to cause too much trouble along the way.
- truetraveller 5y agoMust admit, that's good writing. I almost felt like I was on the trip myself!
- hazza_n_dazza 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil
- weberer 5y ago>Its terra nullius status results from a discrepancy between the straight political boundary between Egypt and Sudan established in 1899, and the irregular administrative boundary established in 1902. Egypt asserts the political boundary, and Sudan asserts the administrative boundary, with the result that the Hala'ib Triangle is claimed by both and Bir Tawil by neither. Ah, so that explains it.
- xwdv 5y agoIf this land truly belongs to no country does that mean you could legally kill people here? Imagination runs wild.
- dane-pgp 5y agoSome countries claim jurisdiction over actions carried out by their citizens abroad, so you might find yourself in legal trouble when you returned home. Also, even if no country claims jurisdiction over events that occur there, that doesn't mean there are no consequences for your actions, precisely because it wouldn't be illegal for the locals to kill you in revenge.
- xwdv 5y agoSo I guess one should first become a stateless citizen.
- supermatt 5y agoNo, by definition you couldn't "legally" do anything, as there would be no law.
- dane-pgp 5y agoI'm not sure if that's a helpful way of looking at things. Something is legal (for a person) if it is not explicitly illegal. So if there is no law against having a bath on Wednesdays in New York, then we say you can "legally" do so. In a territory where there is no government and no laws whatsoever, it is equally legal to have a bath on Wednesdays, so you would be "legally" bathing there too. You're right, though, that in normal circumstances when we talk about things being "legal" we mean "with respect to a specific (non-null) jurisdiction". I think that's because places without jurisdictions are so rare that we don't usually think of this degenerate case. Perhaps there needs to be some special term like "vacuously legal", or "anarchically legal", to distinguish it from the more common type of legality.
- Muromec 5y ago
- rejor121 5y agoWell, that was an interesting read. I just think deserts are awesome.
- petre 5y agoAbout claiming land with the cunning use of flags: https://youtu.be/hYeFcSq7Mxg https://youtu.be/hYeFcSq7Mxg
- Simon_O_Rourke 5y agoWhy not just get the UN to declare Jersey City as terra nullis, and let whoever from the Orkney Islands to Swaziland take over administration?
- bjourne 5y agoThe land either belongs to Egypt or to Sudan. Suppose I buy a bike from you. The bike is faulty so I declare the transaction null and void and demand my money back. You refuse to reverse the transaction. Who owns the bike? You claim I own the bike and I claim you own it. Who the owner actually is won't be settled before a court process. Bir Tawil is the same. Thus third parties claiming Bir Tawil is nonsense. It's like a random person claiming the bike is theirs since neither I nor who I bought it from wants it. This is different from stuff that legitimately has no owner, like a flower in a forest. Unless the forest is private property, the flower has no owner until it is picked. As can be imagined, very few things actually has no owner.
- meitham 5y agoExactly. There are people who never set a foot on that region claiming the land from the comfort of their sofa, such as the owner of this site http://bir-tawil.com/ http://bir-tawil.com/
- probably_wrong 5y agoOut of all joke domains I've seen, this one is probably the laziest. They got a standard city template, changed the title... and that's it. They didn't even replace the lorem ipsum. 1/5 stars, would not recommend.
- Mordisquitos 5y agoThe bike analogy breaks down when a random person comes and surreptitiously takes the bike away from you while you and the seller are arguing. The taker makes no claim of ownership, they just take the bike and use it, as it is in a good enough condition for them. Who then has the motivation to stop the ostensible theft: you or the seller? The seller doesn't care, but you do. Without possession of the bike you cannot hope to return it in exchange for the money. By contrast, say that a third party somehow manages to make use of Bir Tawil, without having any effect on the surrounding land, without posing as a security threat, and without making any actual claim. Which country is most motivated to intervene in principle: Sudan or Egypt?
- helsinkiandrew 5y agoThis 2:13 minute youtube video, is far more succinct and informative about why no country wants Bir Tawil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5iJSXaVvao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5iJSXaVvao