How long is it?
Why not longer?
Why no other country is as long?
How does that make Chileans incomprehensible?
A thread about Chile and its humongous length
🧵
Chile is as long as the US and Canada combined
Chile is as long as all of Europe!
It can stretch from Norway to Morocco
From London to Baghdad!
You can stack over a dozen European countries in Chile north to south
Of course, that means Chile has every possible climate
And of course, Chile is so long because of the Andes. Here's a map of elevation in South America
You can't easily pass these mountains, and the tiny sliver of land west of it is Chile
(map from @cstats1)
Of course, the mountains are due to the Nazca and tectonic plate hitting the South American one
Here's a superb image of a Chilean volcano (composite of many)
But why so long?
Why not longer?
You can get a sense of that by looking at a satellite map of this region.
From it, can you guess where Chileans live?
You can see it comparing the satellite map and the map of night lights
Chileans live in the middle of the country, in the northern part of the green stripe
What's happening?
(map from @researchremora )
Winds blow westward closer to the Equator and eastward farther south
The Andes stop all the water from the Atlantic closer to the Equator, and from the Pacific farther south
That's why both Brazil and Chile have rainforests
The Chilean one is a temperate rainforest—like in the Pacific Northwest in North America
So all southern Chile is green, but only the northern half of that is warm enough for comfortable living (and closer to other countries' centers of population). That's where most Chileans live
(maps from @PythonMaps and @researchremora)
What about the northern part then, the desert?
Since that area is so dry, it can't handle a lot of population
(These flowers from the Atacama Desert only bloom every few years, when rainfall is unusually high)
And since it's closer to the center of South America, it has neighbors...
Few locals + lots of neighbors➡️This area was contested for a long time after the Spanish Empire collapsed
This is a map of contested areas in South America, 1879
Peru & Bolivia went to war with Chile for that region, but they lost in the War of the Pacific
Why fight? Natural resources: guano and saltpeter
Back then, guano was the main fertilizer (and this area had most of the world's guano, thanks to the climate)
Saltpeter➡️gunpowder
So why is Chile so long, but not longer?
• Sliver between coast & Andes
• Far south: too cold for another country
• Far north: competing neighbors
• Natural border there: desert. Chile won the war to get the tip
That's also why most Chileans live in the middle of the country: too cold in the south, too hot and dry in the north
You can see that effect in a map of South American roads
Cold, heat, sea and mountains make Chile a country—an extremely isolated one
And that's also the main reason why Chileans are incomprehensible: So isolated from all other Spanish speakers!
Why is there no other country so long?
You need a north-south sandwich between sea and continent, far enough from the equator so as not to be densely populated
That means an oceanic plate subducting under a continental plate, which only happens in the...
"Chilean Empire"
Far from the equator, that just leaves:
• Pacific Northwest➡️Got conquered by the Eastern US before it could develop into a standalone country
• Japan: The mountain chain starts from deep under the sea➡️It's an archipelago rather than a continental sliver
So that's why Chile is the longest country in the world!
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Why did 🇮🇱Israel strike 🇮🇷Iran now, and not months or years ago or in the future?
A unique combination of a dozen factors converged to make the moment unique for 🇮🇱Israel: 🧵 1. No Hamas to its southwest 2. No Hezbollah to its north 3. No Assad threat to the northeast
4...
4. No more Syrian army to attack 🇮🇱Israel's planes: As the new forces of HTS took over Syria, Israel bombed all the existing Syrian military. No more fighter jets or surface-to-air missiles to threaten 🇮🇱Israel
5. Ability to fly over Syria to refuel
This is critical, because 🇮🇷Iran is ~600-1000 miles away from 🇮🇱Israel, so 1200-2000 miles round trip
The range of Israel’s stealth F35 is only about 1,350 mi
To operate inside 🇮🇷Iran, 🇮🇱Israel needed refueling over Syria
1. From Feb 2025 to Jun 2025, it increased its amount of enriched uranium by 50% 2. It now had 400kg of highly enriched uranium, enough for 9-10 bombs 3. This is 60% enriched uranium. Fuel only requires 5% enrichment.
4... 🧵
4. It's easy to go from 60% to 90% (weapons grade), it only takes weeks 5. The only country on Earth with such enriched uranium and without a bomb is 🇮🇷Iran 6. The IAEA (nuclear watchdog) found 3 secret nuclear sites
7. When 🇮🇷Iran didn't respond to this accusation, the IAEA censured it 8. 🇮🇷Iran responded to the censoring by saying it would open a 3rd enrichment site in a secret spot
Now that the 🇺🇸US has bombed 3 of 🇮🇷Iran's nuclear sites, where will the war go from here?
It depends on 🇮🇱Israel: 🧵
🇮🇷Iran never wanted the war, and its forces are being decimated. Its ability to send missiles to 🇮🇱Israel is being degraded every day. If it could sign a ceasefire while saving face, it would
Meanwhile, 🇮🇱Israel has kept striking Iran non stop. Its daily airstrikes didn't go down substantially in the first few days. Its ability to keep striking 🇮🇷Iran remains unabated
Can there be an invasion of Iran? Hardly. Two maps explain why, and also why Iran is the way it is today, whether its regime will fall, what other superpowers will do, and in general why Iran is the way it is today
The only truly exposed area is the southwestern corner of Khuzestan, which is a swamp
The biggest superpowers lie to the west, and there the very broad Zagros make it really hard to conquer Iran. The mountain range is tall and wide, making logistics similar to Afghanistan. Very hard.
Iraq learned it the hard way when it tried to attack there in 1980
Listening to the debate, it looks like 🇮🇱Israel & the 🇺🇸US intelligence community disagreed, but that's not really the case!
Both thought Iran was weeks to months away from being able to develop the bomb
So what's the disagreement?
Here are more facts:
• Tehran had just announced a 3rd enrichment site in an undisclosed place
• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had recently produced a report censoring Iran for the 1st time in 20y
• It accused Iran of 3 undisclosed nuclear sites
• It claimed Iran had enough enriched uranium for 9-10 nuclear bombs
• All the other countries in the world who have enriched uranium at the same level also have nuclear weapons. Iran is the only country that doesn't have these weapons yet enriches uranium as much
Nuclear is the best source of energy across nearly all the factors that matter. It's the safest, cleanest, densest, most sustainable, geopolitically stable, predictable, dispatchable, and can be cheap.
1. SAFEST
It kills 1000x less than coal
Living close to a nuclear power plant for one year gives you less radiation than eating a banana (graph is logarithmic)
2. CLEANEST
Accounting for all the lifecycle of all energies, it's the one that emits the least CO2