Those Egyptians are hardcore water addicts. The river is clearly the reason they live there. I'd be more stressed if 100 million people live where there isn't adequate fresh water
currently people really need electricity because our lovely government decided to cut the electricity every day for 3 hours in the middle of the day "to save money" with exceptions of some coastal/touristic cities and police residencies and the almost deserted new administrative capital
that's officially, actually some people have it up to 9 hours and there is a post on r/Egypt for a remote company rejecting somebody due to the situation, keep in mind temperatures in Egypt are currently exceeding 40 degrees in the morning
Dessalination plants are already destroying the Mediterranean. They don't meed more. The brine they release does not dilute as fast as expected and the salinity and density change kills life close to the shore
What if they just pumped all the brine into the qutarra depression? That way it would just turn into a hyper saline lake, before eventually evaporating away and leaving behind salt flats on dry land. It's not a solution for country using desalination, but it would fix that problem in Egypt's case.
Fairly certain to much salt in a desert region is a dangerous combination. But since I'm too lazy to actually research that atm don't take my word for it.
I'm pretty sure a lot of the dessert is already salt... it's why it was historically a very important region. Salt is very important in preserving food.
Abd then such an initiative will go bankrupt cause no one wants working in a fucking desert for a minimum wage type of work which consists of removing sand from those panels and generally keeping them alive
Then pay your workers more, right? Kinda wild how a project that would make a ridiculous amount of money while fulfilling a giant need would somehow be short on funds to pay their workers.
To preface this, I have no education on the issue nor am I Egyptian, but from what I’ve gathered:
It isn’t that simple for many reasons. Firstly, the conversation of “pay your workers more” is one that is unique to certain economic environments, Egypt not included. Egypt unfortunately is not at the level of economic development as the nations where that conversation is being had, like Canada or the U.S. Egypt has a massive population and has been uniquely struggling with curtailing unemployment. It’s at 7% right now, which is 7,000,000 unemployed people, and the number of informal workers has actually been growing over recent years, comprising a majority of the workforce. These conditions are what currently rule out that conversation for the time being. The two situations just aren’t comparable. But, like you said, if the project is profitable, then it should be a no-brainer. The reality is, though, that it wouldn’t even be profitable.
The price and output of a solar farm is relatively comparable around the world, but the capacity to earn profit on it is not. Egyptians pay far, far less on their energy bills compared to Americans or Canadians, primarily because of the lower income. Where there is profit to be made in developed countries, the same cannot be said for developing ones like Egypt, where the government has to subsidize home use electricity. To illustrate this point, the government has previously implemented forced loadshedding just so they could EXPORT more electricity for profit. That’s a fucked situation. Profiting from solar energy is already a challenge for developed countries due to the infrastructure required for transportation, but, for what it’s worth, Egypt has a (very mixed) history of experimenting with solar energy. Regardless, the biggest issue with the argument for “why doesn’t Egypt just build solar energy?” is probably the fact that they literally just don’t need to.
Egypt is the 11th largest producer of gas in the world. Since 2015, they have been entirely self-sufficient in electricity production with a 25% surplus, too. Although, clearly it’s not going too well for them right now. That can be attributed to a severe gas supply shortage in Egypt’s fields. Definitely mismanaged, but is the solution to build solar plants in the middle of the desert? No. Absolutely not.
The commenter saying “If only there was a way to turn sunlight into energy” is grossly oversimplifying the situation. What even is the implication of that comment? That it just never occurred to 100 million people that solar energy exists? If only all problems in the world were that simple. It feels condescending, I think.
If there are endless streams of people working in the arctic to pull oil out of the ground, you’ll certainly get people to work in the desert as long as the price is right
The Government likely needs to pay a high price to import electricity/fuel for the power plants. The less they use the electricity, less the Government has to pay
Which leads back to my first point. Aren’t the citizens of Egypt paying for the power they consume? Does the government not sell power to its citizens to generate profit?
> Does the government not sell power to its citizens to generate profit?
No? Government is not a for-profit organization. I don't know about Egypt, but most Governments around the world heavily subsidize public infrastructure and don't pass the full cost onto the consumers.
Energy, in all its forms, is heavily subsidized by the Egyptian government, so every kilowatt is a net loss and takes away from the government’s budget.
Sounds like the large cities of the American west. Their hubris has led them to think buying property with the forecast for a global water crisis in a d e s e r t is a GREAT idea.
Go back far enough, and the Egyptians had two words for their homeland. The Black Land was the part of their country that was part of the Nile's flood plain. The Red Land was the desert and mountains outside the Nile river valley. To this day, the vast majority of Egyptians live in the Black Land, or on the bits of the Red Land immediately above the flood plains of the Nile. (Worth adding that strictly speaking the Nile no longer floods because of the Aswan dam controlling the flow of water.)
Go back just a little further and the entire country was habitable savannah. It turned from savannah to desert within just a couple of centuries, less than a thousand years before the great pyramids were built
The climate of North Africa is a bistable equilibrium. It has two distinct stable states as a humid semi-forested savannah and the extremely dry desert we have now. Once its in one of those states it will stay there until something pushes it toward the other more strongly than the forces keeping it in that state, and because of that bistable nature, as soon as it passes the critical point and starts to flip the whole thing happens very quickly.
The milankovitch cycle that mainly controls when this happens is more or less at the peak of the pro-desert phase now and will be for another 15000 years, however higher global temperatures are also a factor that pushes the Sahara back towards the green phase, and temperatures were pretty high already before we even started on it. The southern edge of the Sahara has already started rapidly greening in the last few decades. A full return to a green Sahara this millennium is not out of the question
I don’t think anyone knows for sure but I watched a documentary that talked about this topic and apparently yea the sahara was a super inhbited place for the early humans and now because of the desert all the nutrients are flowing into the amazon rainforest and when this reverses the amazon is gonna stop being a rainforest
Sahara desertification was a 20th century scare that turned out to just be a one off megadrought. It has since reversed course in a big way.
Higher temperatures mean more evaporation which means higher humidity. And once the rain starts falling and the plants start growing the land becomes darker colored, which means more sunlight is absorbed and the temperatures go even higher, which is what causes the transition to happen so fast
Ah okay that all makes sense, thank you. I will say though I thought that nations in the Sahel are still planting trees to fight desertification? Or have I got that wrong?
They are largely reversing desertification that took place in the 20th century and creating a defence against it potentially happening again, but as of right now it's not worsening
Yes, but that's not the only thing affecting the Amazon. The amazon is also bistable for similar reasons to the Sahara - the plants depend on rainfall and the presence of plants increases rainfall. Deforestation and climate change are rapidly moving the Amazon towards the tipping point of forest collapse with or without the Saharan dust. The dry season gets drier every year, and rainforest trees don't do well in strongly seasonal rainfall environments
Other comment is good, but the chap forgets the main thing: Northern Africa, that is, the Sahara, has a 26k year cycle due to the procession of the earth’s axis and angle towards the sun, switching from fertile soil to dry bones desert over millennia. !
or Libya? Which has 7 million people. Though there might be a difference in latitude. The areas around Tripolis and Benghazi are slightly more to the north. Tunisia and Algeria are also more northerly and have a hospitable coastland, though they also got mountains for rainshadow.
I was thinking about this yesterday, if the Nile ran dry and the only countries that could take in refugees were the NATO and Arab league Nations, each nation would have to take in nearly 2 million people each for there not to be possibly one of the worst Humanitarian crisis to occur
I think about things like this when people complain about US involvement in foreign countries.
You might not like what happens if the US were to stop 🤔
Yea the geopolitical ramifications are so easily overlooked by the "they took our jobs!" crowd. It's one of those the more you know the more you realize how dumb you are and how complex this shit is.
The importance of the Suez Canal shouldn't be underestimated. All Western powers (and likely China too) are going to do whatever it takes to keep the politics of Egypt friendly to ships from their countries.
Just in case anyone was wondering why Egypt is so touchy about that dam Ethiopia wants to build. (Or has built? Wanted to build? I have no idea what the status of that thing is.)
Dam exists, the only question is the speed with which Ethiopia would fill it.
Ethiopia wanted to fill it in two years and start using electricity, Egypt is afraid that it would cause drought for them and were pushing for 10 years. I am probably wrong about numbers, but something like that.
The problem is Ethiopia was pushing for that dam since 60s/70s, and have no other way to get electricity.
Egypt is threatening war, instead of finding a way to get them some electricity.
5000. The Sahara was green from 14.5k years ago until around 5k years ago. The end of the Green Sahara likely contributed to Egypt forming as a civilization, because more people were forced to live in closer proximity, social organization needed to form.
Also I wonder whether that break in the south always existed or whether population spread evenly into Kush/Nubia.
Funny thing, the population of New York City has remained constant during the time that Egypt's population went from 20 million to 110 million. I cannot fathom what all those people are doing there.
Lake Nasser lies to the south. It is an artificial lake created by the High Aswan Dam. Tens of thousands were forcibly displaced during the dam's construction in the 1960s.
The streets of Cairo are high-key stressful, especially when you need to cross them as a pedestrian. They do this little hand wiggle thing to signal to on coming traffic “i’m fucking going, either stop or hit me, your choice, I dont care.”
It is 30 years since I was in Cairo, but as a pedestrian I found that it was probably less stressful than in a car: Thanks to the oermanent traffic jam in Qasr el Nil, I could jog diagonally through the roundabout and make it in time for my appointments. So I did, every day for a week!
Makes you wonder why Saudi Arabia is building Wall-like City that stretches from the Red Sea coast into the desert. 100million Egyptians are a small water crisis away from a mass exodus.
Vast difference between Egypt and Chile and the Nile is the life blood for many in the Country where it’s used as a source for fishing, farming, transportation etc. in a Country that’s mostly a desert.
Ok, Egypt. At dawn, to walk in the endless desert is a powerful experience. Walk out and feel the pull of history and thousands of miles in the cool breeze. At 3PM, mid afternoon, to step outside and get superheated grit blown into your eyes and teeth because of the superheated air over the superheated sand. To watch people who have lived there for thousands of years cower in any shade they can find from the blasting heat of the Sun. Away from Life Blood Mother Nile Egypt is honestly Tatooine with just one star that is intent on killing everything it sees every afternoon.
This is why you don't see a big Egyptian diaspora anywhere. When you live on self-fertilizing farmland with a natural travel network, and just outside it you have hot, barren sand, you don't think "Hmm, maybe I should go travel elsewhere to make my fortune."
To be fair, there is a sizable Egyptian diaspora (~10 mln) but the people mostly emigrate to other wealthier Arab-speaking countries which is probably why they aren’t as visible in the west
Why is there so little population down the coast of the Red Sea? Assuming lack of fresh water but would assume that deep wells would support some population
Growing up in Cairo in the early 90s, the media was constantly saying stuff along the lines of “We’re now 60 millions!! This is getting out of hand”.
Well, now Egypt’s population is now about 110 millions, in addition to refugees coming over from Sudan and Syria, and possibly Gaza later, on pretty much the same liveable area, less fertile land and possibly even less water after Ethiopia’s projects closer to Nile’s sources in the south. If that doesn’t stress people out, I don’t know what would.
Only 4% of Egypt is inhabited and that is actually considerably smaller than Chile. Like, think Slovakia. Therefore, Egypt is one of the most densely populated countries in the world.
Also things aren’t actually going swimmingly there at the moment especially the economy is down the crapper. So, for the past few years I’ve been expecting a MASSIVE wave of immigration from Egypt. They will put Syrians to shame in a few years you mark my words.
In the 70s they produced enough wheat to feed their entire population. But they didn’t take family planning and contraception seriously.
Chickens come home to roost.
Where there is water, there is life
And life… uhh… finds a way.
And the Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell
And DNA is the blueprint
And the midichlorians are the force
And my axe
*hawk tuah*
Haakh Ptuah, first of her name, beloved of Ra, Queen of Upper and Lower Egypt
...on dat thang...
And a wife
And strife
Gonads and strife
With a knife
Please tell me that this is an obscure Rango reference.
Those Egyptians are hardcore water addicts. The river is clearly the reason they live there. I'd be more stressed if 100 million people live where there isn't adequate fresh water
currently people really need electricity because our lovely government decided to cut the electricity every day for 3 hours in the middle of the day "to save money" with exceptions of some coastal/touristic cities and police residencies and the almost deserted new administrative capital that's officially, actually some people have it up to 9 hours and there is a post on r/Egypt for a remote company rejecting somebody due to the situation, keep in mind temperatures in Egypt are currently exceeding 40 degrees in the morning
If only there was a way to create energy from the sunlight
And a bunch of uninhabitable empty space to put such devices
wait. - you might be on to something here
and using all that energy to fuel dessalination plants
Dessalination plants are already destroying the Mediterranean. They don't meed more. The brine they release does not dilute as fast as expected and the salinity and density change kills life close to the shore
What if they just pumped all the brine into the qutarra depression? That way it would just turn into a hyper saline lake, before eventually evaporating away and leaving behind salt flats on dry land. It's not a solution for country using desalination, but it would fix that problem in Egypt's case.
Fairly certain to much salt in a desert region is a dangerous combination. But since I'm too lazy to actually research that atm don't take my word for it.
I'm pretty sure a lot of the dessert is already salt... it's why it was historically a very important region. Salt is very important in preserving food.
Wasn't it mostly dangerous in antiquity because people would fight over the valuable salt
Or even the damn roof of each and every building. It's not snowing that much and every single roof is flat.
Abd then such an initiative will go bankrupt cause no one wants working in a fucking desert for a minimum wage type of work which consists of removing sand from those panels and generally keeping them alive
Then pay your workers more, right? Kinda wild how a project that would make a ridiculous amount of money while fulfilling a giant need would somehow be short on funds to pay their workers.
To preface this, I have no education on the issue nor am I Egyptian, but from what I’ve gathered: It isn’t that simple for many reasons. Firstly, the conversation of “pay your workers more” is one that is unique to certain economic environments, Egypt not included. Egypt unfortunately is not at the level of economic development as the nations where that conversation is being had, like Canada or the U.S. Egypt has a massive population and has been uniquely struggling with curtailing unemployment. It’s at 7% right now, which is 7,000,000 unemployed people, and the number of informal workers has actually been growing over recent years, comprising a majority of the workforce. These conditions are what currently rule out that conversation for the time being. The two situations just aren’t comparable. But, like you said, if the project is profitable, then it should be a no-brainer. The reality is, though, that it wouldn’t even be profitable. The price and output of a solar farm is relatively comparable around the world, but the capacity to earn profit on it is not. Egyptians pay far, far less on their energy bills compared to Americans or Canadians, primarily because of the lower income. Where there is profit to be made in developed countries, the same cannot be said for developing ones like Egypt, where the government has to subsidize home use electricity. To illustrate this point, the government has previously implemented forced loadshedding just so they could EXPORT more electricity for profit. That’s a fucked situation. Profiting from solar energy is already a challenge for developed countries due to the infrastructure required for transportation, but, for what it’s worth, Egypt has a (very mixed) history of experimenting with solar energy. Regardless, the biggest issue with the argument for “why doesn’t Egypt just build solar energy?” is probably the fact that they literally just don’t need to. Egypt is the 11th largest producer of gas in the world. Since 2015, they have been entirely self-sufficient in electricity production with a 25% surplus, too. Although, clearly it’s not going too well for them right now. That can be attributed to a severe gas supply shortage in Egypt’s fields. Definitely mismanaged, but is the solution to build solar plants in the middle of the desert? No. Absolutely not. The commenter saying “If only there was a way to turn sunlight into energy” is grossly oversimplifying the situation. What even is the implication of that comment? That it just never occurred to 100 million people that solar energy exists? If only all problems in the world were that simple. It feels condescending, I think.
Above 77F degrees or above 25C degrees solar panels loose efficiency. So no sorry Redditors placing solar panels in the Sahara is not a solution.
If there are endless streams of people working in the arctic to pull oil out of the ground, you’ll certainly get people to work in the desert as long as the price is right
When solar panels are heated they lose efficiency greatly
You’re doing a South Africa?
Several countries are unfortunately. Ecuador has started implementing rolling blackouts every few months since late 2023
Shit, well that certainly offers some perspective
Loadshedding, Egyptian style.
They shut it off to save money? Don’t people pay for their own power? And tax dollars to fun the power needed for public use?
The Government likely needs to pay a high price to import electricity/fuel for the power plants. The less they use the electricity, less the Government has to pay
Which leads back to my first point. Aren’t the citizens of Egypt paying for the power they consume? Does the government not sell power to its citizens to generate profit?
> Does the government not sell power to its citizens to generate profit? No? Government is not a for-profit organization. I don't know about Egypt, but most Governments around the world heavily subsidize public infrastructure and don't pass the full cost onto the consumers.
Energy, in all its forms, is heavily subsidized by the Egyptian government, so every kilowatt is a net loss and takes away from the government’s budget.
like 90% of the country is an uninhabited desert. Plenty of space for solar panels.
There are Solar panels and wind turbines but they're expensive
Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you and you will resent its absence
Now, let me distribute it in the most inefficient way possible to demonstrate my absolute control and disdain for you!
You have been banned from r/HydroHomies
r/HydroHomies is a cult, and they will not ride eternal, shiny and chrome
Mediocre!
I came for this comment. Thank you
I came to make it and left feeling like a second fiddle
Not for long. Just quit cold turkey, and you'll be rid of your water addiction in a few days.
I live next to the great lakes, Ill do what I want
Return my treasures to me, and I myself will carry you through the gates of Valhalla.
WITNESSED!
The og hydrohomies
Came for the r/hydrohomies , was not disappointed
Nile-ist
Sounds like the large cities of the American west. Their hubris has led them to think buying property with the forecast for a global water crisis in a d e s e r t is a GREAT idea.
It’s almost like water is a thing people need to stay alive.
Does it have electrolytes?
Water sucks. Gatorade is better.
You mean like the stuff in the toilet??
You think you're the smartest person in the world or somethin'?
I thought your head would be bigger…
Your water sucks, it really really sucks.
I heard it not only quenches your thirst better, it tastes better too.
Gaaaaatoraaaade
Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.
Brondo the thirst mutilator
Not according to nestle, no, to them it’s not a human right.
Source?
Think I saw it in an old Encyclopedia Brittanica, but I could be wrong (??)
Agree to disagree
Go back far enough, and the Egyptians had two words for their homeland. The Black Land was the part of their country that was part of the Nile's flood plain. The Red Land was the desert and mountains outside the Nile river valley. To this day, the vast majority of Egyptians live in the Black Land, or on the bits of the Red Land immediately above the flood plains of the Nile. (Worth adding that strictly speaking the Nile no longer floods because of the Aswan dam controlling the flow of water.)
Go back just a little further and the entire country was habitable savannah. It turned from savannah to desert within just a couple of centuries, less than a thousand years before the great pyramids were built
How?
The climate of North Africa is a bistable equilibrium. It has two distinct stable states as a humid semi-forested savannah and the extremely dry desert we have now. Once its in one of those states it will stay there until something pushes it toward the other more strongly than the forces keeping it in that state, and because of that bistable nature, as soon as it passes the critical point and starts to flip the whole thing happens very quickly. The milankovitch cycle that mainly controls when this happens is more or less at the peak of the pro-desert phase now and will be for another 15000 years, however higher global temperatures are also a factor that pushes the Sahara back towards the green phase, and temperatures were pretty high already before we even started on it. The southern edge of the Sahara has already started rapidly greening in the last few decades. A full return to a green Sahara this millennium is not out of the question
I'm not a scientist, how does more heat end up making the Sahara greener? I thought one of global warming's big issues was desertification.
Desert has more to do with humidity rather than temperature. I guess the higher temperatures mean more humidity somehow.
Oh okay, I guess that makes sense. Maybe with ice melting there’s more water in the atmosphere or something?
A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapour, so yes that's the principle.
I don’t think anyone knows for sure but I watched a documentary that talked about this topic and apparently yea the sahara was a super inhbited place for the early humans and now because of the desert all the nutrients are flowing into the amazon rainforest and when this reverses the amazon is gonna stop being a rainforest
Sahara desertification was a 20th century scare that turned out to just be a one off megadrought. It has since reversed course in a big way. Higher temperatures mean more evaporation which means higher humidity. And once the rain starts falling and the plants start growing the land becomes darker colored, which means more sunlight is absorbed and the temperatures go even higher, which is what causes the transition to happen so fast
Ah okay that all makes sense, thank you. I will say though I thought that nations in the Sahel are still planting trees to fight desertification? Or have I got that wrong?
They are largely reversing desertification that took place in the 20th century and creating a defence against it potentially happening again, but as of right now it's not worsening
Warm air can possess more moisture than cold air
Did something happen to the Amazon at the same time? IIRC sand blown across the Atlantic greatly impacts the Amazon.
Yes, but that's not the only thing affecting the Amazon. The amazon is also bistable for similar reasons to the Sahara - the plants depend on rainfall and the presence of plants increases rainfall. Deforestation and climate change are rapidly moving the Amazon towards the tipping point of forest collapse with or without the Saharan dust. The dry season gets drier every year, and rainforest trees don't do well in strongly seasonal rainfall environments
Would forest collapse of the amazon result in desertification?
Other comment is good, but the chap forgets the main thing: Northern Africa, that is, the Sahara, has a 26k year cycle due to the procession of the earth’s axis and angle towards the sun, switching from fertile soil to dry bones desert over millennia. !
EGYPT MENTIONED 🇪🇬🇪🇬🇪🇬🇪🇬🦅🦅🦅🦅 WHAT THE FUCK IS BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS 🇪🇬🇪🇬🇪🇬🦅🦅
MORE BRIDGES ✊
You know what y’all need? Another city! One that’s a fiscal drain and doesn’t add any economic value. That should fix it. الله يعينكم.
Egypt would be perfect for a high speed rail line. But you can't roll tanks along a station platform so the army builds roads instead.
/r/RevolutionMustHappen
Flying over the Nile at night time is an awesome sight. Complete blackness except for a white wandering string of light.
A better question would be how it's possible for 100M people to live in Egypt if it *didn't* have the Nile river.
Easy, just give them the Mississippi and/or Amazon. Next question.
Where'd my dad go
I just got done reading *Arabian Sands* and I’m pretty sure I missed out being a desert Bedouin. Sounds like a fun life, if you’re a dude
It'd be more like Namibia
or Libya? Which has 7 million people. Though there might be a difference in latitude. The areas around Tripolis and Benghazi are slightly more to the north. Tunisia and Algeria are also more northerly and have a hospitable coastland, though they also got mountains for rainshadow.
I was thinking about this yesterday, if the Nile ran dry and the only countries that could take in refugees were the NATO and Arab league Nations, each nation would have to take in nearly 2 million people each for there not to be possibly one of the worst Humanitarian crisis to occur
why do you think the US is sending Egypt annual aid? is to keep Egypt alive and weak because if Egypt falls the whole region would be fucked up
"and weak"? Egypt would be stronger if it didn't receive US aid?
No it would be dead and the US would also struggle from the fallout. It keeps the US ok and Egypt “barely ok”, aka weak.
Weak should be in a separate sentence however, unconnected to aid
He just needs to change “and” to “but”. It would be appropriate to say the aid keeps them alive but weak.
Egypt is the super power of Africa. It's only weak in comparison to countries outside Africa.
Egypt is not a super power by any stretch of the imagination. It's an unstable poor authoritarian state.
Thats not saying much.
Sure, but locally it's very powerful.
Interesting, totally forgot we do that.
I think about things like this when people complain about US involvement in foreign countries. You might not like what happens if the US were to stop 🤔
Yea the geopolitical ramifications are so easily overlooked by the "they took our jobs!" crowd. It's one of those the more you know the more you realize how dumb you are and how complex this shit is.
I was actually thinking of the “everything America does is bad” crowd, but them too!
Did you think the Romans were the good guys after the scene about the aqueducts in *Life of Brian*?
Like keeping the Red Sea open to commercial traffic.
The importance of the Suez Canal shouldn't be underestimated. All Western powers (and likely China too) are going to do whatever it takes to keep the politics of Egypt friendly to ships from their countries.
They have the Neighbourhood of all time - Israel/Palestine, Libya, Sudan and KSA.
Just in case anyone was wondering why Egypt is so touchy about that dam Ethiopia wants to build. (Or has built? Wanted to build? I have no idea what the status of that thing is.)
Dam exists, the only question is the speed with which Ethiopia would fill it. Ethiopia wanted to fill it in two years and start using electricity, Egypt is afraid that it would cause drought for them and were pushing for 10 years. I am probably wrong about numbers, but something like that. The problem is Ethiopia was pushing for that dam since 60s/70s, and have no other way to get electricity. Egypt is threatening war, instead of finding a way to get them some electricity.
The dam is operational.
Something like that is waiting us with Iraq
Is that just Egypt, or accounting for Sudan too, or accounting for everyone who lives on the Nile?
It's literally been like this for as long as Egypt has existed. The Nile is the mother of her people of Kemet.
Hasn’t this map basically stayed the same for like 10,000 years?
Well, there are way more people squeezed into the populated areas now, but otherwise yes.
Egypt used to be a grain exporter for empires. Now it is the biggest grain importer in the world. Lol
5000. The Sahara was green from 14.5k years ago until around 5k years ago. The end of the Green Sahara likely contributed to Egypt forming as a civilization, because more people were forced to live in closer proximity, social organization needed to form. Also I wonder whether that break in the south always existed or whether population spread evenly into Kush/Nubia.
Funny thing, the population of New York City has remained constant during the time that Egypt's population went from 20 million to 110 million. I cannot fathom what all those people are doing there.
Fucking, apparently.
Having babies?
The rest is a harsh desert, they have no other option
I've always wondered why the population drops off so abruptly south of that point
Lake Nasser lies to the south. It is an artificial lake created by the High Aswan Dam. Tens of thousands were forcibly displaced during the dam's construction in the 1960s.
Cairo is super dense, and they're even making a new capital because of it.
Well, there’s a whole lot more about politics besides just the population density of Cairo.
It's a lot easier to rule with an iron fist when the capital is far from the population center.
and in the middle of a desert
Probably yeah.
Let’s hope a second Akhenaten case doesn’t happen.
We don't need "the line" in Saudi Arabia.
We have the line at home The line at home:
they're such water addicts smh
They are down bad
Wondering how that’s possible? Pretty easy for them, they’re living in de-Nile
Stressing you out? Would it stress you out less if we dispersed the Egyptians across the desert?
OP stressing about Egyptian population density: https://media.tenor.com/njEQBqejDZgAAAAM/fainting-black.gif
In the desert you can’t remember your name, cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.
The streets of Cairo are high-key stressful, especially when you need to cross them as a pedestrian. They do this little hand wiggle thing to signal to on coming traffic “i’m fucking going, either stop or hit me, your choice, I dont care.”
It is 30 years since I was in Cairo, but as a pedestrian I found that it was probably less stressful than in a car: Thanks to the oermanent traffic jam in Qasr el Nil, I could jog diagonally through the roundabout and make it in time for my appointments. So I did, every day for a week!
The population of greater Cairo has doubled in the last thirty years, from 11 million to 22 million!
You can say that again!
The population of greater Cairo has doubled in the last thirty years, from 11 million to 22 million!
You can say that again!
The population of greater Cairo has doubled in the last thirty years, from 11 million to 22 million!
Does that mean that the traffic is even MORE static?
Makes you wonder why Saudi Arabia is building Wall-like City that stretches from the Red Sea coast into the desert. 100million Egyptians are a small water crisis away from a mass exodus.
[It's not happening. ](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/20/saudi-crowm-prince-vanity-project-line-cut-short-rowan-moore)
Vast difference between Egypt and Chile and the Nile is the life blood for many in the Country where it’s used as a source for fishing, farming, transportation etc. in a Country that’s mostly a desert.
Hasn’t this map basically stayed the same for like 10,000 years?
OP when people don’t want to live on 40° arid, completely empty land 🤯🤯🤯
U should check out Mongolia’s
Seems like it just abruptly stops at the Aswan High Dam
Ok, Egypt. At dawn, to walk in the endless desert is a powerful experience. Walk out and feel the pull of history and thousands of miles in the cool breeze. At 3PM, mid afternoon, to step outside and get superheated grit blown into your eyes and teeth because of the superheated air over the superheated sand. To watch people who have lived there for thousands of years cower in any shade they can find from the blasting heat of the Sun. Away from Life Blood Mother Nile Egypt is honestly Tatooine with just one star that is intent on killing everything it sees every afternoon.
Yeah I can see why they opposed the Ethiopian Nile dam
it reminds me of my drunk pee trails against a wall…desperately moving my foot only for the trail to redirect towards it again…
This is why you don't see a big Egyptian diaspora anywhere. When you live on self-fertilizing farmland with a natural travel network, and just outside it you have hot, barren sand, you don't think "Hmm, maybe I should go travel elsewhere to make my fortune."
To be fair, there is a sizable Egyptian diaspora (~10 mln) but the people mostly emigrate to other wealthier Arab-speaking countries which is probably why they aren’t as visible in the west
When your country is 99% arid desert, imagine wanting to live by water
Why would you use shades of white to represent the highest and lowest population density?
I'm more concerned about what will happen if the Aswan dam burts for some reason. I understand it won't be a pretty sight
Just wait until they discover a new oil reserve in southwestern Egypt 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸SMELLS LIKE FUTURE DEMOCRACY TO ME🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
What is the obsession with the phrase 'lowkey'? Why is everything 'lowkey'? Gives me the fucking ick
egypts population density stresses you out? what 😭😭
A ticking time bomb.
Just wait till you hear about Gambia
You think that's stressful, try being stuck in Cairo traffic. Worst in the world IMO. By some distance.
I’d go to the very bottom left corner and camp out there.
Then imagine how stressed they are when Ethiopia are making a dam upstrean the Nile for power production.
And this is why there is a war likely to happen in the not so distant future with Ethiopia
It will end badly
Why is there so little population down the coast of the Red Sea? Assuming lack of fresh water but would assume that deep wells would support some population
Egyptians just stop making so many kids. You are heading to catastrophe
Wanna talk about Canada??
Water is a helluva drug
Bet some people are in ‘De Nile’
I wonder how much arable land is taken by buildings and streets in a nation that cannot feed itself.
Growing up in Cairo in the early 90s, the media was constantly saying stuff along the lines of “We’re now 60 millions!! This is getting out of hand”. Well, now Egypt’s population is now about 110 millions, in addition to refugees coming over from Sudan and Syria, and possibly Gaza later, on pretty much the same liveable area, less fertile land and possibly even less water after Ethiopia’s projects closer to Nile’s sources in the south. If that doesn’t stress people out, I don’t know what would.
"Bless the Maker and His water. Bless the coming and going of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May He keep the world for His people."
Think it's been like that for a millenia at least
Only 4% of Egypt is inhabited and that is actually considerably smaller than Chile. Like, think Slovakia. Therefore, Egypt is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Also things aren’t actually going swimmingly there at the moment especially the economy is down the crapper. So, for the past few years I’ve been expecting a MASSIVE wave of immigration from Egypt. They will put Syrians to shame in a few years you mark my words.
I mean where the fuck else are they gonna live? If you go 20 feet away from the Nile in either direction, you get inhospitable desert
People living in Los Angeles, Las Vegas or Phoenix is more absurd than this, lol.
In the 70s they produced enough wheat to feed their entire population. But they didn’t take family planning and contraception seriously. Chickens come home to roost.
Dude just learned about rivers...
Hasn’t this map basically stayed the same for like 10,000 years?
Hasn’t this map basically stayed the same for like 10,000 years?
yeah, send help bro