twenty map comparisons that will make you say what the literal fuck

The Mercator projection, the most commonly used world map projection, significantly distorts land masses near the poles, making Europe, Russia, and North America appear much larger than they are relative to areas near the equator. Mexico for instance comfortably spans across Europe in terms of size, but I am sure you didn’t know it.

Not that I did know it myself until this morning.

These common misperceptions impact our lives much more than we think, positively or negatively depending on the situation or side you’re on. Think about geopolitics, which is in direct correlation with how the common person perceives the world. And think about Indonesia (not because I am half from there): its true size and strategic importance are often underappreciated because it stretches into a seemingly thin chain of islands when in reality it's a massive archipelagic nation spanning a distance similar to the United States coast to coast.

So here we go.

twenty map comparisons that will make you say what the literal fuck (european perspective)

1. The Scandinavian region seems huge, and Sweden in particular seems quite thick. Put next to Italy it’s not that big deal anymore.

   

2. Mexico is huge, literally from Ireland to Istanbul.

   

3. Indonesia is massive, and unfortunately I am not able to show all the Cyprus-size islands it has. Sumatra alone (first island on the left) is 60% bigger than Italy. It spans from Portugal to well into Iran. To get from Singapore (slightly top-right of Sumatra) to Bali, you’re pretty much flying from Porto to Crete.

   

4. Brazil is massive, its size is pretty comparable to China’s (and they too share some difficult territory to use: the Amazonian area and the Gobi Desert/Himalaya). I wonder how long it will take them to become an economic powerhouse.

   

5. The US is big and quite common knowledge that its size is comparable to Europe. But if you move the US to Northern Africa, you realize how the US is small compared to it. Or reversed, how Sahara alone is the size of the US.

   

6. Even re-proportioned, Canada is still size majestic, spanning from Portugal to Turkmenistan.

   

   Yet, it only covers half of Northern Africa. I will not stress this enough, Northern Africa is huge.

   

7. Just to make my point stronger it takes 4 Northern African countries (Mali, Algeria, Niger, Libya) to have an area 57% bigger (!) then the EU.

   

8. You’re likely familiar with this industrial region which includes Guangzhou, Shenzen, Macao, and Hong Kong (the Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region). It includes some more cities, for example Foshan, which you never heard of, but it’s literally this and has 9.5 million people (Madrid has 6.9):

   

   Anyway, this is how Cyprus, the Netherlands, and Malta compare to it. Pretty insane.

   

9. I had no idea Japan was so long, almost from the Canary Islands (if you include some minor Japanese islands) to almost Berlin.

   

10. When people think about the United Arab Emirates they think about city-states, with not much size involved. Its size is comparable to Belgium + the Netherlands in reality.

    

11. I am not even commenting on this one cause Greenland's perception is a joke (and don’t let me start with its name).

    

12. Do you remember Tasmanian Devil from Looney Tunes? The small Tasmanian island is no small at all, it’s bigger than Switzerland.

    

13. Chile: how do you even manage a country shaped like this? And don’t be fooled by “well it’s thin”. Its thickness is comparable and at times larger than Italy’s - that’s actually wide in real-life practicality once you need to build real infrastructure.

    

14. Let’s give some geographical dimension to Vietnam and finally some context when reading about its infamous war.

    

15. New Zealand is slightly larger than Italy, but has only 5m people (vs 59m)

    

16. Going back to Africa, this is Sudan. How often in Europe have you heard about Sudan?

    

17. Who knew Taiwan was pretty much the size of Albania? Can you imagine a World War 3 because of this tiny region? Trick question, actually yes: there is obviously much more behind every geopolitics situation than the relative size. In fact, European nations primarily caused World Wars 1 and 2 and as we saw, they are not that big.

    

18. When people ask me why I don’t like London I often say “it’s too big”. I am gonna show this picture instead hereafter.

    

19. Can you guess what country this is?

    

     

    South Korea.

20. Bangladesh, twice the size of Ireland, has 173m people (Ireland has 5m).

    

I forgot my original point: crazy right?