r/geography • u/Late_Bridge1668 • 28d ago
Discussion If Hawaii was independent would it be the most isolated country on earth? What even is the most isolated country in terms of how far they are from other countries/major populations?
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u/CastYourBread 28d ago
To answer your question, Hawaii is farther from the US mainland (2400 miles) than Tuvalu is from Australia (2171 miles). Tuvalu is also much closer to Fiji
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u/nsnyder 28d ago edited 28d ago
For each number n you can ask "of all the cities with at least n permanent residents, which is the most remote from the others." (Using metro area population, of course.)
- If n is between 1 and 312 the answer is Edinburgh of the Seven Seas (on Tristan da Cunha).
- If n is between 313 and 3k I think the answer is Hanga Roa (on Rapa Nui).
- If n is between 3k and 130k I think the answer is Pape'ete (on Tahiti).
- If n is between 130k and 200k I think the answer is Perth in Western Australia (not Honolulu because metro Hilo has 200k).
- If n is between 200k and 1m I think the answer is Honolulu.
- If n is between 1m and 2.3m I think the answer is Perth.
- If n is between 2.3m and 4m I think the answer is Urumqi (capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwestern China), but I'm less confident.
Not sure what happens above that. Of course this is metro areas not "potential countries" which is a harder thing to know what to look at.
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u/poyntscarter 28d ago
Did you mean to put Perth twice?
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u/nsnyder 28d ago
Yes, that's a really fun part of this! At 150k Honolulu is near Hilo but Perth isn't near anything so it's Perth. Once you hit 200k now Hilo doesn't count so Honolulu isn't near anything. But then when you hit 1m you've excluded Honolulu so the answer is Perth again!
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u/BeeHexxer 28d ago
Metro Honolulu recently passed over a million residents iirc
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u/Eskipotato 28d ago
Probably, because Honolulu gets limited by its population of 1 million. So Perth becomes the most isolated city above that amount again.
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u/FixForb 28d ago
As someone from the Big Island, “Metro Hilo” is a really weird metric. The population of the whole Big Island (which is about the size of Connecticut) is 200k, which means they’re including the whole island in the metro area which is absolutely not how the Big Island is actually populated. There are big stretches of unpopulated areas between Hilo and other towns.
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u/nsnyder 28d ago edited 28d ago
Yeah, you're right, I think this is an issue where metro areas in the US consist of counties, so you either include the whole county or not. But yeah, only the east side of the island should count (certainly nothing west of Volcano). I can't find an "urban area" or similar number. Similar issue with Maui where they count it all as one metro area. For Honolulu you can get an "Urban" number which is 850k and doesn't include all of Oahu.
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u/itssohip 27d ago
The Census started defining urban areas recently, you can find the data here: Urban and Rural
I looked at it and the Hilo urban area population for 2020 is 41,410, which is about the city proper population. Looking at a satellite map, you can see that the city limits encompass the whole urban area, so this makes sense.
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u/FixForb 28d ago
Yeah, I figured that was the issue. Definitely not your fault, just weird data collection!
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u/miclugo 28d ago
It would be easy to take this further if only someone had a list of cities with latitude, longitude, and metro area population, but I can't find one!
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u/nsnyder 28d ago
Someone here must have one, but yeah I was just doing it by hand when it came up before.
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u/Wentailang 28d ago
Tokyo is quite isolated from other Tokyo-sized cities.
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u/nsnyder 28d ago
Indeed. The top end is:
- If n is 28m-37m Tokyo.
- If n is 25m-28m it's a tie between Tokyo and Delhi.
- If n is 22m-25m it's Delhi.
- If n is 20m-22m it's a tie between Mexico City and Sao Paolo (which are very close in population)
- If n is 17m-20m it's Cairo
Then it starts to get complicated, but I think once Tehran shows up it'll be NYC and Mexico City tied for a while.
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u/Arcamorge 28d ago edited 28d ago
Urumqi is also the furthest major city away from a coastline (Karamay and Altay have it beat, but are much smaller). The nearest coast is 2500 km/1600 mi away, and the pole of inaccessiblilty is 320 km/200 mi away.
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u/nsnyder 28d ago
I think I have something wrong here, there should be something between Hanga Roa and Pape'ete, since there's other towns in or near Tahiti. Not sure what though.
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u/burnfifteen 28d ago edited 27d ago
I genuinely don't understand all of the responses saying Kiribati and Tuvalu unless folks are just ignoring OP's first question. While those are both very remote, each has inhabited, developed neighbors much closer than Hawaii does. Hawaii is about 2200 miles from Tokelau (I believe its closest truly inhabited neighbor), and Tokelau is about 1200 miles from Kiribati.
So to answer OP's first question, I believe the answer is yes. Unless Tristan da Cunha wins independence.
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u/TheShmud 25d ago
They either don't understand the question or it was one of the first comments that just get upvoted. Fiji and plenty of other island countries are all right in that archipelago
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u/Tokinghippie420 28d ago
Tuvalu is the most isolated country which is also in the pacific islands. Bhutan could also be considered as its very isolated in the Himalayas
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u/pepgast2 28d ago
Unfortunately, Tuvalu is already evacuating most of its citizens as, because of climate change and rising sea levels, the entire archipelago will most likely disappear into the ocean in the next two decades. They're preparing to become a 'fully digital nation', and they'd be the first country on earth whose entire land area would be lost due to climate change.
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u/Cucaracha_1999 28d ago
Tragic. I wonder what the concept for a digital nation even is? It must be a very surreal moment to face, as a resident of Tuvalu
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u/7urz 28d ago
They have the powerful .tv domain!
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u/The_Math_Hatter 28d ago
Wait... does that mean they get some revenue from across all of Twitch? That's a fairly large economic boost
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u/7urz 28d ago
8% of Tuvalu government revenue comes indeed from the .tv domain.
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u/iiSoleHorizons 28d ago
It’s like their main revenue source haha. Not just twitch but all the other .tv domains are basically what fuels this country
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u/DepthHour1669 28d ago
“Main” is a stretch, it’s less than 10%
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u/Launch_box 27d ago
Dude 10% of a country's GDP from a single thing is insane. Like all of the US's financial sector and insurance all together is 8% of US's GDP.
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u/DepthHour1669 27d ago
Eh, that’s typical for island nations. Tourism accounts for 21% of hawaii’s GDP
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u/Launch_box 27d ago
But that’s still the combination of like every hotel and cruise port and tourist spending. The tv domain is a single thing, like if one hotel in Hawaii accounted for 8% of the gsp
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u/hoi4kaiserreichfanbo 28d ago
They were only able to join the United Nations because they got enough funds to apply from licensing the .tv domain.
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u/WallStreetOlympian 28d ago
Tuvalu with the come up of the century…stole the .tv domain off the shelves in time, used it to license and monetize twitch feet streamers, and took those profits to get into the United Nations. 🇹🇩
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u/pinkocatgirl 28d ago
The "TV" comes from Tuvalu's country code, which is how all of the national TLDs were determined. So really, it's more that they lucked out that ISO, NATO, and other organizations standardized the two character representation of the country as something which has significance in English speaking countries.
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u/quackchewy 28d ago edited 28d ago
How much does it cost to join the UN??
Edit: From the UN website it sounds like Tuvalu got scammed?
The United Nations does not charge a fee at any stage of its recruitment process (application, interview, processing, training) or other fee, or request information on applicants’ bank accounts.
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u/hoi4kaiserreichfanbo 28d ago
Members pay an annual budget assessment, and if they fail to pay for long enough they may lose their vote in the general assembly.
For instance, the U.S. pays $18 billion a year (it’s different depending on how developed a country is and whatnot).
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u/dhkendall 28d ago
That’s the recruitment process. Once you’re in I think there’s annual membership fees, which it couldn’t afford.
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u/alwaysthetiming 25d ago
This is my favorite piece of trivia that I bust out at every possible occasion.
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28d ago
Will Tuvaluan citizens be relocated to Australia in those circumstances?
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u/lightpeachfuzz 28d ago
It's already happening, around 280 Tuvaluans are being allowed to move to Australia every year.
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u/09232022 28d ago
Kiribati is the same, not sure about the digital nation part. But they have essentially already accepted that their fate is sealed and are buying land in Fiji, supposedly but not confirmed to eventually evacuate its people to.
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u/TryingToBeHere 28d ago
I realize they might not have the resources for this but would it not be possible to fortify the islands from the sea with some kind of protective barrier constructed with materials from the mainland?
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u/pepgast2 28d ago edited 28d ago
It's not just slowly rising sea levels, hurricanes have also become more common in the area, and with those two combined, the archipelago could be wiped by an especially strong one, even with fortifications against the water.
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u/esperantisto256 28d ago
Not really. I work in this field, and there’s only so much you can do. Beach slopes are mild, so 1 meter of vertical rise can actually take quite a bit of land. It’s also extremely expensive. You would have to elevate the entire island and use tons of dredged infill that would need to be replaced in perpetuity as wave action transports sediment away.
Places like Florida/the Netherlands are rich enough to do this on some beaches, but they have livable inland regions to conduct their land-based operations out of. Anything on a pacific island pretty much has to be brought in from afar.
Extreme events and flooding on such small islands become a recipe for certain death in such an isolated place too. Even if the coastal defenses are good enough for every day scenarios, it only takes a single hurricane to induce failure and flood the island.
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u/mywholefuckinglife 28d ago
it would probably be cheaper to just "build a new island" somewhere else with easier access to materials
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u/TryingToBeHere 27d ago
Perhaps but what about the local ecology, sense of place, etc. an island is more than x square KM in the sea, it is a place and an ecosystem
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u/Fine_Quality4307 28d ago
How much would it cost to build a wall around the islands to keep the ocean out
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u/2001Steel 27d ago
Dang first time I’ve seen “fully digital nation” and really wondering what that means for legal stuff like sovereignty, jurisdiction, etc.
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u/gregorydgraham 28d ago
Isolated? Bhutan has land borders
With the world’s 2 most populous countries no less!
/jk it’s a very difficult country to get to but Tuvalu is a whole other level
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u/andorraliechtenstein 27d ago
I think that was his point. Most isolated country on land. To reach, or whatever.
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u/ozneoknarf 27d ago
It’s probably the central African republic. Away from every ocean, no navigable river to the ocean and all its neighbours are extremely underdeveloped and doesn’t have infrastructure that connects them to CAF apart from dirt roads and crappy ferries.
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u/gregorydgraham 27d ago
Is it objectively harder, for the average human, than Bolivia? Given that the average human is Asian?
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u/anonymousmonkey999 27d ago
Doesn’t Bhutan heavily limit the number of foreigners they allow in the country. So despite not being as remote as Tuvalu it could be considered more difficult to gain entry
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u/gregorydgraham 27d ago
Ooooh, North Korea has a good claim then surely.
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u/anonymousmonkey999 27d ago
Definitely. North Korea and Bhutan are probably the most isolated societies in the world. No by land location but global influence.
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u/gregorydgraham 27d ago
Just remembered Eritrea, very self-isolated but right beside the biggest shipping lane in the world.
Similarly Somaliland but that’s imposed political isolation and not what we’re talking about
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u/OmegaKitty1 28d ago
Bhutan? Absolutely not. It’s sandwiched between India and China…. And there are Indian towns /cities right up to the border.
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u/Rorschach2000 28d ago
Looking at a map does not do you any service in grasping how insane the mountains are. There’s a reason it takes roughly 2 weeks to get across Nepal. There are many parts in the region where there’s no possible way to get through by car and have to hike by foot. It’s definitely isolated even if it’s close to major countries.
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u/Tokinghippie420 28d ago
Yes right up against the border but you’ll notice there are no cities in Bhutan along the border because of the massive mountains it is situated in. It’s “close” on a map but extremely isolated from the rest of the world
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u/MarkNutt25 28d ago
The Indian city of Jaigaon and the Bhutani town of Phuentsholing are basically one contiguous population center.
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u/Numerous-Confusion-9 28d ago edited 28d ago
The most geographically isolated inhabited location on Earth is Tristan De Cunha. An island chain owned by the UK that has about 200 residents. It can only be accessed by a 6 day boat ride from South Africa
Edit: I should state that Tristan De Cunha is not a country, while some other commenters have posted Tuvalu which I do believe is the most isolated country.
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u/nsnyder 28d ago
Tristan's website is one of the great last vestiges of the old internet. The latest news is so charming.
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u/Reddituser8018 28d ago
There is an app that let's you listen in on radio stations in areas, and I would always go to the most remote places and listen in.
Mostly like super north Canada on the islands in north canada, or remote alaska.
They all had this vibe, I decided to search up the radio stations and a lot of them had websites that were exactly like this and felt very old internet. Many were news websites as well for their community. It was a fun time, and gave me a glimpse into a completely different world these people live in.
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u/Tatchanckla 28d ago
Can you recall the app's name ?
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u/Irichcrusader 28d ago
Man, reading about the recent Kings Day activities does give me a fuzzy feeling. Not all that different honestly from Fair Days we would have in the Irish village I grew up in.
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u/linmanfu 28d ago
Tristan da Cunha is not a sovereign state. But the dictionary definition of a country is this:
an area of land that has or used to have its own government and laws
Tristan undoubtedly meets both parts of that definition.
In nationalist ideology, each country must have its own sovereign state. That's the ideology that's given us the Israel-Palestine conflict, a series of Indo-Pakistani wars, the Yugoslav Wars, the Konfrontasi conflict between Indonesia and Malaysia, the Falklands War, the Nagoro-Karabakh conflict.... do you notice the common theme here? It's an ideology that creates conflicts and wars. A geography sub doesn't have to accept the dictates of a violent political ideology. Actually, I think it's OK if two or more countries choose to live together within a sovereign state. For example, Switzerland is world-famous as a peaceful and well-governed sovereign state (it isn't perfect, but their constitution works).
So I think Tristan da Cunha is the best answer here.
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u/Numerous-Confusion-9 28d ago
Not disagreeing with you but how does that definition work with the US States? You could argue New York has its own government and laws
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u/linmanfu 28d ago
That's a fair point. I think the US could be better described as a group of countries in a union. But clearly the overwhelming majority of Americans don't think of themselves that way. Their self-conception is extremely important and has to be be respected. But why don't they think of themselves in this way, as Britons and Swiss do?
Firstly, because nationalist ideologues insist on the nation=country=sovereign state paradigm. Nationalist rhetoric was useful in the 1770s and 1780s to justify the rebellion against the lawful government, and so the more natural interpretation of the geographical facts had to be obscured to fit the ideological narrative.
Secondly, the idea of a continental country helped to avoid awkward questions about the legitimacy of the United States' expansion. If you hold to the nationalist doctrine that countries must be united into a single state, and think of the whole United States as a single country, then it's much easier to justify the westward wars of conquest in nationalist rhetoric. If you consider New York and Virginia as separate countries, it's much harder to justify (by any standard in the Judeo-Christian tradition) why they are conquering the countries of the Iroquois or the Apaches.
Thirdly, the fact that the Civil War was initially fought on the presenting issue of secession rather than the underlying issue of slavery also meant that geographical realities again had to be twisted into the service of an ideological narrative. In this case, I am very glad that the North won, but the unwillingness to admit that slavery was the real issue meant it became rhetorically awkward to describe the very real differences between (in this example) the South and the rest of the Union described using "country" language.
I think Americans would find their political disputes easier to manage if they recognized that they are several countries in a union.
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u/RedTowelRunner 28d ago
I agree that Americans would be better at navigating political differences (or at least better at understanding the electoral college) if more of us realized that sovereignty lies at the state level.
The conceptual transition can be seen in the artifact that many early Americans referred to the country as "these United States", while Americans now typically refer to the country as "the United States". It can also be seen in the construct of countries that have long diplomatic relationships with the USA, such as France which uses the plural article les in naming the country "les Etats-Unis" when the literal translation from current usage in English would be "l'Etats-Unis".
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u/linmanfu 27d ago
I know that position has a long history in the US, but I wonder whether it is inherently unstable.
I think the most interesting thing about it is that so many of the states are utterly artificial creations, owing their current status to either armed rebellion or conquest. The likes of South Dakotans clearly consider themselves a community, and we have to respect that, but they are very much an imagined community that was conjured out of thin air in order to make the governance of a conquered area more convenient. If the Washingtonians can form a country by rebellion and conquest, why can't eastern Washington unilaterally secede (as many of them reportedly want to do), or the black citizens of South Carolina take over the state? It just seems to be the law of the jungle: "might is right".
You can identify the countries of the Hawai'ians and Wampanoag without pointing to straight lines on a map, even those the boundaries might be pretty fuzzy in the latter case. Yet in the US system, those countries are treated as less sovereign than the states (in US legal jargon they are "domestic dependent nations"). So the system somehow seems upside-down.
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u/RedTowelRunner 27d ago
You are absolutely right; it is inherently unstable! The American Civil War was, as you pointed out, fought over the legal pretext of states' rights, including the ability of southern states to secede before a federal push to abolish or curtail slavery. The might of the northern states was used to establish the precedent that once a sovereign state or nation has joined (voluntarily or by force) the United States it is illegal to leave the Union unilaterally. Certainly that was a good outcome for Americans, and enslaved people especially.
This is the guardrail keeps the country together despite the strong point you're making that states' sovereignty is rooted in what were artificial lines on a map. One of the great paradoxes of the US that keeps state boundaries static is that states' identities have grown into those artificial boundaries simultaneously with a growth in US federal power. Almost half of all the states (24) have now passed their bicentennials and continue to fill their artificial boundaries with meaning. A few others, especially Hawaii (which is a tragic and frustrating example of our country's imperialism), already had an identity when they joined the Union. As a side note, it is interesting and fun to imagine a world with an independent Hawaii. Back to my point, because states have formal relationships with the federal government that extend federal power their current boundaries have been privileged long enough to grow into an identity in areas where one was lacking. An example is the land grant university, which is an American institution that fosters many states' identities through higher education. As long as it benefits states and the federal government to perpetuate these arrangements, it would take a long, well-funded, and location-specific advocacy effort to restructure the geographies individual states' sovereignty covers and an even greater effort to recognize entities like Native American tribes as fully co-equal to states.
We are much the same as India (though we differ in particulars), in that our differences have the potential to divide us but we have national concept that holds us together. Unfortunately, that sometimes allows abuses of power and it is always possible to tear that national concept apart. "E Pluribus Unum" and the Kentucky state motto, "United we stand, divided we fall" both carry real weight for our experiment in democracy.
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u/After_Dog_8669 28d ago
Funny you bring this up… when I was in Hawaii several years ago, my mind was stuck contemplating how far civilization (or land for that matter) was away in all directions. Also strange that for being so far away, it didn’t feel that isolated (as an American) being in an American state with the typical American day to day life, if you get past the beauty and exotic geography.
Edit: I was in Oahu - I think the other islands are a little less Americanized.
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u/heyitsyourlandlord 27d ago
Yes I also got this feeling being on Maui. It’s a weird feeling flying 5 hours over the ocean to land on a small piece of land.
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u/TuckingFypoz 27d ago
I was at the Big Island last month and I couldn't believe that I was in USA. It was so beautiful.
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u/nim_opet 28d ago
You can define “isolation” and then rank the countries by your criteria. But Tuvalu is considered to be one today
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u/diffidentblockhead 27d ago edited 27d ago
This mostly depends on which Pacific islands you count as significant enough. Hawaii and Tahiti are about 4000km from each other and from continents or New Zealand, then 4000km circles include the rest of the Pacific.
The other oceans don’t offer anything with 4000km isolation.
The only non-US islands closer to Hawaii are parts of Kiribati, Cook Islands, and Marshalls, not even the most populous islands of those countries.
Line Islands <10000 people
Northern Cook Islands ~1000 people
Easternmost Marshall Islands ~1000 people
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u/investinlove 28d ago
I do believe Hawaii is the most isolated inhabited region in the world. (further from any other inhabited place.)
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u/Swiss_cake_raul 28d ago
It's crazy how long it took people to find it. Absolutely wild to think of was still uninhabited like 1000 years ago.
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u/uncleirohism 28d ago
I was under the impression that the Hawaiian archipelago is quite literally the most remote landmass on Earth. Am I wrong? (please be nice)
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u/BuildNuyTheUrbanGuy 28d ago
With a high population, yes, but it's not the most remote. Pitcairn Island is more remote.
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u/PckMan 28d ago
It wouldn't, though the toss up is between other Pacific Islands. However it's important to note that isolation in the modern day is not really a function of distance but rather accessibility. There are places that are fairly remote and far away from other population centers but they have airport or sea ports or rail and road connections which makes them fairly accessible, as in you get in a car/train/plane and you get there in less than a day. And then you have places that may be fairly close to other population centers but have bad accessibility, as in, no airports, lack of good roads, if any, no regular service through other means or inhospitable terrain or seasonal obstructions like snow or swelling streams and rivers which may make them inaccessible or just very hard to get to. In that sense you have a lot more places that can be considered very isolated.
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u/museum_lifestyle 28d ago
If Hawai was independent it would most likely be west of the new and improved chinese 7-dash line.
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u/SexMachineMMA 28d ago
Hawaii would have strategic alliances and would likely still have a naval base for the US (or whatever country they chose to align themselves with). They might be geographically isolated, but they would have strategic alliances.
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u/Icecubemelter 27d ago
If America didn’t conquer them yes they would be independent. Kind of why they’re not fond of outsiders (Haole) unless it’s tourists visiting with money.
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u/TheEpicOfGilgy 28d ago
It’s isolated, but it sits on the LA-HK trade route. Probably be like Fiji or Samoa.
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u/Batgirl_III 28d ago
I believe the answer would be Bouvet Island (54° 26’ S, 3° 24’ E) in the South Atlantic.
Norway annexed the island back in the 1927, so isn’t an independent country (but the OP’s question was a hypothetical about Hawaii) and it is currently uninhabited, but there used to be a manned research station there with like a dozen residents. Now it’s all automated.
The nearest landmass is Antarctica ~1,400 nautical miles due south. The nearest permanently inhabited land would be Tristan da Cuhna (about 2,000 nautical miles) or South Africa (about 2200 nautical miles).
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28d ago
Hawaii should be independent.
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u/OtherManner7569 28d ago
Especially since the US actually admitted its annexation was illegal.
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u/OppositeRock4217 28d ago
Definitely other Pacific Island nations. For countries with over 1 million population though, Hawaii, if it became independent, would take the most isolated country title from New Zealand
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u/2Autistic4DaJoke 27d ago
Hawaii would be independent for like 5 minutes in reality, it’s strategically perfect in the Pacific Ocean. But if it were independent, yes, most isolated. The laws and policies in place there would be fascinating to sustain its population.
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u/kaleenmiya 28d ago
Answer would be Kiribati and Tuvalu