Scenario: this island is cut off from the rest of humanity (magic, war, space alien zoo, etc)
Which island is in the best position to maintain its civilization? Industry? Technology?
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North Sentinel Island
Great Britain
Was gonna say Australia too
Is it self sufficient? From what I understand they’re pretty reliant on imports for a lot of things, including agriculture
Define island. Contiinents are just big islands.
a piece of land surrounded by water.
The first definition.
I guess that means continents are islands.
Does that mean now that we have the Panama canal that North and South America are separate islands?
The canal’s above sea level, isn’t it? Wouldn’t that just make it a river that goes over the continental divide?
Island of Utopia.
Outstanding reference. Meanwhile, the rest of us are still on islands where people argue about whether helping each other is economically feasible.
North Sentinel Island.
Not only would they just continue living as before, they wouldn’t even realize something had changed.
I guess you win this game.
Yea, they basically already self isolate sooo it’d just be another Tuesday for them lmao
England
1 - England is not an island, you mean Great Britain.
2 - Almost half the food eaten in the UK has been imported from overseas.
3 - A large proportion (it’s difficult to get exact figures and it fluctuates) of energy is imported from abroad in the forms of oil and gas.
Great Britain, and the wider UK, has not been self sufficient for ~600 years relying on colonialism and a maritime empire to meet its needs and trade since it collapsed. If it had to rely on resources available within the island it would collapse in days.
Ireland isn’t bad from a basic survival perspective - massive food surplus and plenty of water - but if we wanted to maintain current living standards, I think we would fall down on power as it stands currently. Plenty of natural wind and tidal power resources that are underutilised.
Just make sure those pesky British stay out of your potatoes
It was our grain that they were taking. The potatoes were attacked by fungus.
I’d say we’d need to make a bunch of biofuels to fill the immediate shortfall to keep tractors moving but as you say we’ve plenty of really good quality land, water, wind. Lots of chemical and medical processing capability once we have the raw ingredients for medicines etc.
Main medium term issue would be mineral and metal mining and processing as we’re short on that but yeah overall think we’d be basically fine.
Australia easily
The secret to being a successful island is a greater landmass than most countries on Earth.
‘Stralia
Straya^
Eurasia
Ah yes. This island earth.
What’s the smallest section of earth you would think could thrive in this scenario?
This Island - Very difficult for an invading military to find you. Just don’t forget to press the numbers… or else…
Saving this thread to my “just in case” list.
I think Iceland is a strong choice. It has power and rare earth resources
How much grain imports, how much petrol for fishing boats?
They could probably use some of that thermal energy to power lighting that would grow some veggies and other low-resource plants. Although they probably aren’t set up for that today.
ETA: Turns out they are set up to use thermal energy to generate their own food, which actually makes a lot of sense given how resourceful they are as a people.
https://gastrogays.com/fridheimar-iceland/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varmaland
Cba adding more but they are rather good at it
Gastro gays? Sounds wild
Or just a fancy way to say canibal?
In such scenarios, distance is probably an advantage so I would go with Hawaii if it is an option. There’s good diving too.
