Most Countries Are Empty Of People, Here's Why 

*Is your country also mostly empty?*

Lol the final boss video, why nobody lives in red ultimate edition : The earth

Bro just ended real life lore's whole career in 11 minutes

Types of uninhabited places in Earth: - Freezing cold, desolate places. - Torrid, arid deserts. - Chernobyl.

"In Asia there are a few areas like this" - while half of the continent is red

General Knowledge brings the video to end all "Why is X empty" videos once and for all. Thank you for your service, General.

Why are there no population centers in inhospitable deserts or mountains? I wonder 🤔

Too dry, too cold, too rugged. Also most of the Arabian peninsula is completely empty of people or other living things. This map is probably based on census districts and the Riyadh district probably covers much of the peninsula thereby assigning people to sand dunes

As a Canadian I can confirm that Nunavut is very warm and welcoming trust me

The ocean isn’t red… There’s your existential crisis for the day. Ocean people rule the world.

The sad thing about big cities with large populations, is that they were often initially placed in the most fertile of lands. So that when those cities expanded over time, they moved more and more into the fertile lands and basically destroyed all the best farm lands.

General Knowledge explained in 11 minutes what RealLifeLore couldn't in 20 vids

Some of the areas in red are settled but you only need so many people to farm or extract other resources. If the industry is mining say, then a few thousand people can produce an extremely large amount of wealth.

the biggest surprise for me on that map is that the Arabian peninsula isn't as empty as I once thought.

The ultimate RealLifeLore video

Great concept for a video, I enjoyed this!

Whenever I look at population distribution maps, I can notice how densely populated the Asia Pacific region is, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Japan, and this video shows, there are very few empty places in this region of the world

Great video. Keep them going!

Mr Beat already made a short with a similar concept funnily enough. Just a general explanation for every one of those videos

I live in Alberta Canada and outside our cities and small towns. Its pretty empty. I can drive 30 mins from any major city here and be the only one for many square KMs.

Great video.! Congrats

The most interesting of these videos is when they’re about human history and not just the geography sucks

Me who lives in the red area in Canada: oh i guess im no one then

Awesome sharing

What If the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands were a part of Japan 🇯🇵

Mechanisation in the rural areas led to a lack of farming jobs. So young adults had to move into the cities to find work.

It also can be the scale used like 1km^2 is kinda big.

I live in the deserts of Arizona, cant wait for 100 degrees whether. Despite being in the red, Arizona doesn't experience any natural disasters compared to other US states.

I think you forgot one important reason. Infrastructure much of canada while cold is habitable but there is infrastructure for people to move in. Some places are easi to settle (like the american west) but other require huge commitment for people to be able to move there

Minecraft villagers: *Laughs in desert biome*

i live in the red

I’m in Uruguay right now and can confirm: besides the cities of Punta Del Leste and Montevideo, there’s no one here. The Pampas are vast and nearly depopulated.

Came here First, been waiting for your video

If anything, there's a shocking amount of areas that _aren't_ red. The planet is absolutely chock full of people to the point where it can barely handle it. Most of the empty areas are ecologically unproductive land (deserts, mountain peaks/plateaus or tundras), with precious few regions of lush true wilderness.

Your original logo intro was better than the new one Please bring it back

Very good. This is a big subject in Australia. One of the major factors is navigable rivers and coasts. If you exclude other variables there is a close match. You must include some rivers and canal systems that were navigable but have fallen into disuse. Climate is the biggest variable but if you look at maps from the 1930's you will notice areas like Florida and Louisiana were once empty but are now filling. The same is true for most north Queensland and tropical south east Asia. Air conditioning plays a major part. Invented in WW3 to cool army bases and supplies the technology made a major change to the maps. Highway technology also opened up the west of the USA. Canals filled with sea water running inland though desert housing is a technology that is opening up many coastal deserts: UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt. It will be moving out of the middle east soon. The key future technologies have been identified. 1. Air wells, these condense water from the air. They will work even in deep desert but they require reliable night time power. Ground loop heat pumps cooling desert housing is also deploying. 2. Shade design so that the buildings don't get direct sun at high noon and in the mid afternoon. Shaded gardens and parks. The Neom project is all about shade, a self shading project. Its a major part of the New Cities in Egypt. Solar powered air-conditioning on all vehicles and shaded parking. 3. Air cars and Cheap VTOL sky trucks are still science fiction but when they come they will open up many mountainous regions. That's an easy prediction. Europe, the Swiss, Austrians, Italians, and Norwegians haves many funicular railways and cable car systems in their mountains. These including cable car systems for containers and car lifters. The companies that make them have been trying to penetrate mountain countries in the Americas and Asia but often these projects fail because the regions are prone to corruption &/or war. 4. In the cold the key is inter connected urban buildings; tunnels and skyways. Indoor garden and recreational spaces. Weather proof air lock entries and car parking. Double and triple glazing and highways built for snow clearing. Auxiliary heating on any vehicles. In all cases there are working examples but the technologies are still not cheap enough.

Generally regions with climate and/or topography unsuitable for human habitation

The highlands of Scotland is an interesting case, the terrain would make transport difficult but not long ago it was full of villages where people farmed the land, but land owners saw more profit in herds of sheep so evicted the people.

The bulk of china’s population has always existed to the east of that line. Urbanization did bring rural people into the cities but the vast majority came from rural areas immediately near those cities. The western half of China has always been sparsely populated by comparison and actually since industrialization more of the Chinese population has shifted west relative to historical trends.

Missed transportation - The eastern US is more densely populated in part because the are natural transportation route (rivers) throughout that area, while in the west the are very few. Water transportation means I can cheeply get good coth in and out of a location - if I can't do that I am limited to only what I can grow myself, and if I grow more, I can't sell it, so that will limit population

Worth noting, the red part of Scandinavia is cold but not more than -40 so not too bad but that part is dark. No sun for one to two months! Darkness is sooo much worse than cold. The rest of Norway and Sweden at least get some daylight, even if the darkness still looms heavily over us.

One chapter title is "How Urbanization Led to Emptiness Elsewhere." I don't think that's accurate. Urbanization didn't de-populate the other areas; it just increased the population density in the cities and their relative share of the population. I would guess that most of the non-urban areas maintained their populations or even increased in population gradually, while the urban areas' population massively increased. For example the map comparison at 7:17 shows an increase in population in all locations, and no visible decreases, even in the less urban areas.

so what's up with the map in Saudi Arabia? it seems to indicate that the Rub' al Khali IS populated with >1 resident/km^2, which absolutely is not true, and that extends to much of the rest of Saudi Arabia (which is rather famously mostly empty being mostly desert)

cause mountains, cold, dry or a combination of those.

If Antarctica was put in there, if would be FULLY RED.

Lack of access to water and arable land would be two large reasons. Climate would be another. Let's see...

The US Canadian border is actually a good example of how politics has influenced population density. Alberta is 3x more densely populated than Montana even though they have similar geography, climates, demographics, etc. part of that reason is simply because southern Canada, along the border is where settlers expanded out into. Meanwhile Montana was never really along a popular route for settlers so didn’t receive many. North of Alberta is much harsher and so Canadians moved there. Meanwhile south of Montana is much more mild and so Americans didn’t move to Montana. If Montana had been Canadian is probably would’ve received more settlement and if Alberta was American it probably would’ve received less.

That is an excellent question. And the answer is: Only one way to find out.

The American state of Nevada is a great example of highly variable population density. Outside of the Las Vegas and Reno metro areas, there are no cities or towns greater than 100,000 in population. 90% of the land in Nevada is owned by the federal government; most of the state is indeed empty. It doesn't take long to reach a spot were you are the only person within eyesight all the way to the horizon.

When you live in place like Pangnirtung Nunavut you let none of your hunts go to any waste. Using oil for for a small fire. Bones for tools and furs to help against the tundra. Your also taught that animal have the just as strong as spirt as humans and they're not treated as lesser and to respect your hunt for helping feed your community. As a kid my mom told me the Aurora Borealis represents our ancestors dancing in the sky that have passed on to the afterlife. Very proud to come from a culture that used to have one of the smallest footprint of humans, by how they let nothing go to waste and would use snow as shelter, so they didnt have to destroy trees for shelters

I was surprised to see most of Portugal is nearly empty, but not Spain.

Thank you for the interesting video. I'd just like to add that 1. the red areas aren't empty, there are simply not human populations. These areas are full of life, even more than in cities where humans allow only themselves and certain animals in cages on dead concrete. and 2. it is NOT a "problem" that humans do not exist there, on the contrary. I was actually delighted to learn that in so vast landscapes there are no or only few people.

Because those areas are too cold, too dry, too mountainous or too hot and humid (you need the combination of heat and humidity). In some parts of Canada (mainly the southern parts of the Canadian shield in Quebec and Ontario, and there are probably similar areas in Scandinavia), there is simply no soil, because it was all scraped away by the glaciers. Forests aren't a problem because they can be cut down, and politics and borders are a minor issue. By the way, with climate change, some parts of the world that are presently habitable will become uninhabitable, mainly because if it is too hot and humid, perspiration is no longer effective at cooling people down.

The Continental divide i believe has an inside.

Try more of: which areas has been mostly nuclear BLASTED (reset)

That font needs to calm down

This sounds like an intense Realifelore video.

I guess india is only top 10 big countries by area to be entirely red free. We have put ppl on mountains and in desert as well. It just shows how flexible ppl are and how beautiful hospitable our land is.

A LOT of the land in North America that was red is the Great Plains, which is mostly agricultural.

People live where they are because they have a reason. If the area is agriculturally productive - it has the weather or at least good water sources it will be inhabited by a significant spread-out population. The sea is a source of food so coasts will frequently populated even without good agricultural land but still need basics. Cities can exist outside those area if they are a trade hub or have some important resource nearby. Europe is not empty because most of it supports agriculture. When we go east of Europethen climate becomes worse and from certain point agriculture can't be sustainable due to poor soils, low rain, cold and bad logistics. The major Siberian cities are mostly located where the trans-Siberia railway crosses major navigable rivers so they can serve as a resource extraction and processing hubs. Same with China from east to west - at a certain point it becomes a desert without many reasons to be there

HOWDY from a tiny town in the middle of the Amazon! Can confirm that everything is red here.

The interior of Greenland is entitely uninhabited, as is its northern and southeastern coast. Literally zero people.

This is a facts why people are choosing to live in. Based on topography, weather, landscape and business conditions

That means those places are unexplored

Is this video meant seriously? Anyone who paid attention for five minutes in Geography class already knows why those regions are sparsely populated.

2:40 Greenland melted and Australia became an archipelago

I live were it's about 2/3 per 2km but my house and land isn't that big haha

According to the thumbnail I'm nobody 😂

Protecting nature and wildlife

He just wiped out RLL's entire backlog in one sweep

As the mean population density of the whole planet is

Nobody is an absolute term and a bit strong. Reason for population distribution is pretty self explanatory unless you are under 5

10:00 heh, I live in Altenburg. Ja, heir only old people left.

That awkward moment when the author painted red the place YOU LIVE 😅

To save you 11 minutes: Inhospitable environment that makes it hard to develop any sort of infrastructure, and devoid of much natural resources.

TLDW; too cold, too hot, too mountainous, Too much jungle

Brother I LIVE in one of the red places

Water. Accessibility. A way to earn a living. Got it.

Madeira? North!

I evidently live in a red zone that you claim that nobody lives here. What am I, chopped liver. I live in Montana and we just passed a Million people in population.😊

The Ultimate Diss of RealLifeLore

"No People"

Desserts, cold climates and unproductive arrabke land.

me - a labradorian seeing this video "i guess im not people" :c

Hmmmm too cold an, too hot and lots of spiders

Because its eitger desert, tundra, jungle or rocky land not good for farming.

Nice

Europe have geographic advantage

1. Too cold 2. Too hot 3. Too dry 4. Too wet

and .Australia..way to many kangaroos, camels and rabbits..........and a whole bunch of weird insects, etc...people are great tho....love the accent

Empty Of People -a no !

Too hot, too cold or rainforests. Saved you 11mins

Real Life Lore: Why is most of Namibia empty? *Proceeds to make a 20 minute video about it* General Knowledge: A desert is not suitable for human habitation. Thanks, bye bye.

Collectivists want to live in collectivists. Most humans are collectivists. Simple as

Reason is not enough peoples

Bro you took all the real life lores content

I live in red!!

Wonder why Saudi Arabia is not that empty I mean it’s a desert!

I live in a red zone, and still there are people everywhere here! The world is overpopulated and no billionaire is going to change my opinion 😒

The planet SHOULD be mostly empty of humans. We are collectively an apex predator, of which very few can exist in any ecosystem relative to the biomass of the herbivores and plants etc.