Fangirling and Writer-Nerd Chaos

Do y’all ever think about how absolutely bananas Lake Baikal is? It’s the world’s largest lake by volume. It’s the world’s deepest lake. It’s the world’s oldest lake. It contains nearly a quarter of the planet’s surface freshwater. It’s a rift lake, caused by the earth’s crust literally coming apart at the seams. It would be deeper than the Mariana Trench except the bottom is covered in a sediment layer that is miles deep. There are trains that have sunk to the bottom because Russia tried to build a railroad over the ice. The entire lake surface freezes for half the year. The lake is a focal point of multiple indigenous cultures. The lake has its own species of seal, which is the only exclusively freshwater pinniped in the world. There are unique ice formations formed by convection from the depths of the lake. There are 330 inflowing rivers.

I dunno, Lake Baikal sure is a thing.

a truly unique and magnificent Feature on our planet, as singular and fascinating as Jupiter's Great Red Spot

in the words of farmboy, as you wish

the lake is quite cold, and as a result, these seals are very loaf

the babbeez are white poofs with lil eyebrowses

it is incredibly deep, and over a thousand species of plant and animal live ONLY there

Lake Baikal Seals' faces look way too much like grey aliens for my liking. Those eyes have SEEN shit in the depths.

Lake animal...

there are freshwater sponges and giant amphipods in the lake too

and the Lake Baikal oilfish, which is the deepest-living freshwater fish, and has a lot of similar adaptations to deep sea fishes

tiktok is a cesspool in many ways but then sometimes you see one that really hits

“Why didn’t we ever learn about this in scho—”

WE DID. We did learn about it. If you were playing MASH in the back row everyday that’s on you.

This is true for like, 95% of all the things they do that with. "We never learned about this bad thing the US did" fucker, we spent two days on that specific atrocity. You had a test on it.

[captions]

first speaker: -is not entirely your fault, because in the us school system we learn maps like with with alaska being down here, but geographically al-

second speaker: no. no we're not doing this. if you thought alaska was an island that is your fault. that is not the map's fault, that is not your teacher's fault, that is your fault. we are not excusing this. what? huh? huh? you're giving the europeans ammo agains- what do you mean?? [mocking the first speaker in a higher voice] "it's not- no it makes sense that you though alaska was an island" [regular voice] no it doesn't! no it doesn't, don't excuse that! no, it doesn't.

always blows my mind as a european when people talk about states like “yeah theres nothing in ohio/montana/wyoming/etc” because i look at a map like but. but theyre so big. every state could qualify as its own country what do you mean theres nothing there. and then i ask people from those states and theyre like “yeah theres nothing here” what do you mean theres nothing there!!!

What’s in the steppes of Russia, or the northern forests of Scandinavia? What’s in the Sahara desert?

id like us to sit here and identify some key differences between the sahara desert and ohio for a moment

as a former Ohio resident I think that the key difference is that the sahara probably has more jobs unrelated to meth

untapped meth market in the depths of the sahara desert

Do you ever think about Doggerland?

Like how fucked up is it that it’s just….. gone.

I tend to forget about it and then when I remember it again I’m like “Oh yeah! There’s like an entire country sized stretch of land that’s just fucking GONE.

well…. “gone”….

Things I have learned since making this post;

The running theory (I can’t remember if it was definitive proof or not but I try not to make concrete statements on history any more) is that what caused the sinking of Doggerland was not the slow heating up of the Earth leading to a gradual melting of ice and snow causing the rise of the ocean….

What flooded Doggerland was a massive fucking CHUNK of Norway FELL INTO THE OCEAN and it caused the largest tsunami we have physical evidence for on earth and it fucking flooded Doggerland IN ONE SINGULAR DAY with a rush of water so strong, large and powerful it literally had the force to rip people to shreds when it hit them

Doggerland on Wikipedia

I do think about Doggerland, fairly frequently! And I feel it’s important to point out that its disappearance absolutely was because of “the slow heating up of the Earth leading to a gradual melting of ice and snow causing the rise of the ocean”. By the time of the tsunami, the land area would already have been reduced to a handful of small islands.

In general, a true tsunami (caused by displaced water) is never going to permanently submerge an area of land, because the water displacement is temporary and it will return to where it came from (causing huge damage on the way, of course). However, with islands that were already barely above sea-level, it’s definitely possible that such a huge inundation just obliterated their topsoil and left them below water level.

It’s hard to say, though, because the end of the last Ice Age was a wild time for water moving around and getting into places it shouldn’t. In particular, as the glaciers melted you’d often get huge meltwater lakes forming behind dams of ice and rubble which might then burst, suddenly dumping nearly inconceivable amounts of water all over the downstream terrain. One of these bodies of water, Lake Agassiz in North America, was so huge that it covered multiple states, and it’s thought that it drained very suddenly into the Atlantic ocean about 8000 years ago (i.e. contemporary with the flooding of Doggerland), dumping so much water into the ocean that global sea levels rose 1-2m over the course of a couple of years.

And if you’re wondering - yes, it’s theorised that this event, or the combination of the others like it, was responsible for the flood myths that exist in so many cultures. Coastal and lowland settlements around the world would have found themselves in a period of time where the sea just kept rising - not overnight, but inexorably and seemingly without any end in sight. Many, many cultures would have retreated to higher ground, only to find a few months later that the water was once more lapping at their doors.  In some ways I find that even more profoundly terrifying than the idea of a wall of water sweeping everything away.

Has everyone seen xkcd Time?

You should probably see xkcd Time

http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/mobile/

That’s not the only case!

That region had tropical climate, even at the peak of the last glaciation. There could have been a thriving agricultural civilization in those bygone river valleys 10,000 years before it started all over again in the Near East, and we wouldn’t know.

Oh, dude, the amount of outburst floods that happened at the end of or during the Pleistocene is OBSCENE. The Altai Floods, which created giant ripple currents like sixty feet tall. The Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis, which could explain the lack of Paleolithic sites on Turkey’s northern coast because they all drowned. The Missoula Floods. The Missoula Floods. Floods with the height of skyscrapers that would hit you like a truck going down the highway. Floods that were 50x more river flow than the Amazon and happened in an area 38x smaller. Floods that happened SO often and were SO strong that they literally created the Channeled Scablands and is partially why the area isn’t very forested because all the topsoil got scrubbed away.

And don’t even get me started on the Zanclean Flood, because WOW

My plan to create a perfectly flat and level Kansas by moving 5,501 cubic miles of earth from west to east. It’s the ideal Kansas. Still some details to work out about rivers, roads, etc. Watch out for the 900-foot cliff bisecting Kansas City.

just had a flashback to me in 3rd grade absolutely blissed out just staring at this pic

tbh i don't really get why we divide the oceans into different oceans because they're all connected it's the same ocean

no metaphor here just pure confusion...is there a line where one ocean stops and another begins? or is it like a smooth gradient of percentages of one ocean shading into another ocean?

Yes, there is a line. There are confluences you can see and touch and they are NOT subtle in the slightest.

That's the Atlantic and the Caribbean on a particularly pronounced day.

This is the Indian and the Pacific. It's not always this obvious everywhere but the dividing lines are very much there.

Oceans have their own properties as far as temperature and salinity and unless something like a storm or a current forces them to mix they won't. Mostly this applies to vertical mixing and it gives you things like thermoclines and haloclines but water is wierd and won't mix horizontally either.

The ocean basins tend to have their own currents that go in a circle and define that ocean, and those patterns mix the water within that ocean. Like a washing machine.

The Caribbean has a little loop of its own that not on this map, but that current keeps that ocean pretty internally consistent. It's got clear warm water because of the shallow bowl of limestone sand it sits in. Where it meets the Atlantic with wildly different conditions the water is traveling in opposite directions, and it acts kind of like an oncoming lane of highway traffic. Species that have adapted to a narrow band of temperatures and salinities (most fish) can't cross, while species with a stronger homeostasis hang out there on purpose, (marine mammals, turtles, sharks). Plankton, that cannot control their horizontal movement in the water column, are held in their home territories by these barriers.

This is cool as fuck

theyer old enough that they used to connect 

@aroacedavestrider my dude i cannot in good faith accept these useless geography facts on account of them being iconic, actually

oh my god nothing in my imagination could’ve prepared me for market island.

or for this review on google maps:

im glad to know my horrible facts are making their rounds and im here with more horrible facts

- the most secluded inhabited island in the world is a place called tristan da cunha. its in the middle of the atlantic ocean at a whopping fucking 1500 miles away from the closest inhabited location (south africa). people just fucking live out there??

- the oldest lake in the world is (probably) lake zaysan in kazahstan. nobodys entirely certain yet but theres evidence that suggests that this is a 65 million year old body of water, meaning theres a lake that exists and can be looked at today that could have had dinosaurs drinking out of it at one point

-the lake immediately following that is confirmed to be at least 25 million years old and thats lake baikal in siberia russia. the bitch is on a continental fault that expands about 2cm per year and as of right now this lake is over a mile deep. the bottom however is FULL of sediment and the actual rift floor is NINE MILES DOWN. this monstrosity of a lake contains literally 20% of the earths nonfrozen fresh water, it has its own unique species of seal, and eventually in millions of years this thing is gonna be an ocean. lake baikal is a baby fucking ocean. its gonna split russias ass in two. i am 100% certain it is sentient

- there is not a single river in saudi arabia and that blows my mind for some reason

- theres whats now considered a lost “eighth continent” thats submerged in the south pacific ocean. the islands of new zealand are the highest peaks of the chunk of continental crust that we now call zealandia. its about half the size of australia and its also connected to other little archipelagos like new caledonia. we found it. old zealand

- the entrance to this fucking ancient bay lake in venezuela (lake maracaibo, over 20 million years old) is the most likely place to get struck by lightning in the world. it gets around 1.2 million lightning strikes per year 

- LAKE HILLIER AUSTRALIA FUCKIGN PINK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- and finally. more enclave border bullshit. i told yall about baarle hertog. now look at india and pakistan. i present to you the one and only third order enclave

this . this was a piece of india, surrounded by a piece of bangladesh, surrounded.. by a piece of india….. surrounded by bangladesh . it has since been ceded over to bangladesh but the fact that we allowed this to exist is incredible

anyway do with all that what you will. raise your hand if you can tell this is a fixation of mine

just had a flashback to me in 3rd grade absolutely blissed out just staring at this pic

I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!

(save the images to zoom in on the pics)

I needed this

don’t know why terror seems like the correct emotional reaction to this but it is

From someone who sails and reads a lot of books about the history of sailing? Terror is entirely the correct emotional reaction.

my stupidity and my intelligence are not mutually exclusive

i can finish a 10 page paper in 3 hours but i also thought portugal was in europe for a good portion of my adult life

wait

WHERE DID YOU THINK PORTUGAL WAS OP i’M DYING TO KNOW

south america…

….i thought it was an island..

what’s portugal?

My plan to create a perfectly flat and level Kansas by moving 5,501 cubic miles of earth from west to east. It’s the ideal Kansas. Still some details to work out about rivers, roads, etc. Watch out for the 900-foot cliff bisecting Kansas City.

this is honestly the best post on the entire fucking internet

this changes everything oh my god

do you understand why it trips me out that people can drive 45 minutes and be in aNOTHER COUNTRY? I drive for 45 minutes and im like

a city over 

I live in “Italy” and took a day trip to go to “Austria” and “Germany”

 #it is literally impossible to leave texas #you will be in texas #FOREVER

Chums, that’s sweet, and all, but Australia just ate Texas for breakfast. 

If you drive for 45 minutes in Australia you aren’t a city over, you’re just 45 minutes away from the city.

If you drive for 45 minutes in Australia you may not even leave the cattle station.

If you drive for 45 minutes in Canada you may not even leave your driveway.

If I drive 45 minutes in the us I’m just at another mcdonalds

If I drive for 45 minutes in Northern Ireland I’m 10 minutes into the sea.

I can’t drive.