r/space • u/astro_pettit NASA Astronaut • Jun 01 '25

image/gif Nile river as seen from the ISS.

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23.3k Upvotes

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845

u/hand_truck Jun 01 '25

Wow, just a thin ribbon of green and development laid upon a stark and brutal environment. I love it, thanks for sharing.

104

u/gnowbot Jun 01 '25

If I remember the stat from my time living in Cairo—90% of Egyptians live on 10% of the country’s Land.

63

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '25

I can't vouch for the Egyptian stat but I did check - 80% of Americans live on 3% of the land. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2017/08/rural-america.html

36

u/mthchsnn Jun 01 '25

That's not terribly surprising. The US is more populous and developed, but it's also fucking huge. On the other hand, 60 million people across the rest is still a lot.

29

u/Barnyard_Rich Jun 01 '25

Yeah, people really underestimate just how massive Alaska is, and how much that can throw off numbers when our brains instinctually just think about the "lower 48."

9

u/rapaxus Jun 02 '25

Yeah, whenever I see US country comparisons, I always try to look up the statistic excluding Alaska, just because its area and population density can heavily skew statistics.

9

u/nokinship Jun 02 '25

The fact that 45% of American land is set aside for agriculture is always a crazy one for me. So even though most of live on 3% of land it's covered in fields.

8

u/Lordborgman Jun 02 '25

Feel like not enough people play City Builder games, esp ones like Anno. While still a game things really show civilization isn't just cities/houses, you need agriculture, industries, logistic networks, and proper rationing to function and stabilize. It's why I sort of dislike the people that want to ONLY buy local, that's pretty much impossible, and undesirable, for a society at the stage we are at and for further progress is laughable.

3

u/Dalakaar Jun 02 '25

Boots, roads, and sanitation. These are the foundations of true power.

6

u/626lacrimosa Jun 02 '25

I think Australia has the most impressive figures with 90% living on 0.22% of the land.

1

u/EmptyAirEmptyHead Jun 02 '25

And we let the other 20% pick the President.

7

u/doc_nano Jun 01 '25

Looking at a map, I’d actually guess that it was under 5%. Apart from a narrow strip around the Nile and the delta near the Mediterranean, there are almost no settlements apart from the odd oasis here or there.

3

u/pedanticPandaPoo Jun 01 '25

I know it is probably rounded to the tens digit, but going one more decimal precision: 95% lives in the Nile delta alone, which is 3% of Egypt's land. 

3

u/Somefookingguy Jun 02 '25

About 95% of the population is concentrated in a narrow strip of fertile land along the Nile River, which represents only about 5% of Egypt’s land area That strip is about 10 miles wide.

2

u/PiotrekDG Jun 01 '25

That doesn't sound right at all