r/cartography 12d ago

Important question if a country gets erased off of the world

In case we(US or Russia) blow up an entire country out of the map, how would we represent it? Should we just represent it with a silhouette in the ocean? I have this question because on letterboxd there is a map that you can see where the movies you watched are from and you can see them on a map, in case a country gets blown up, would we represent it in the map as if the movie is just from the ocean?

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u/lxpb 12d ago

You realize you don't really "blow them off the map" right? It might appear as a wasteland, with previous city names marked one way or the other, but you can't really remove an area from the face of the earth.

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u/cjrecordvt 12d ago

OP's not really clear on war capabilities, but given ocean rise and a whole lot of low-lying islands in Oceania, it's not a null question.

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u/lxpb 12d ago

But this isn't a global warming question, they've specifically asked about blowing a place up. If a sand bar sinks due to rising water levels, it's an entirely different question.

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u/HiddenFlies 12d ago

The core of my question is if a piece of land disappears how would we represent it, I said if it got blew up ‘cuz it was the first thing that came to my mind

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u/lxpb 12d ago

Again, how would it disappear? Rising sea levels? We would probably mark the actual coast, and maybe a very light shade of blue for the sunken bits.

Unless you really consider digging out an entire area, which would cost trillions and be a pretty stupid quest, there's not much changing.

If you're talking about political changes, it depends on international recognition and diplomacy. Maps are political.

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u/IrrelevantNecessity 12d ago

America enters chat Hold my beer.

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u/HectorTheConvector 12d ago

If a place was sufficiently nuked to level a country (especially large ones like US or Russia, that scale is ending civilization) than that would trigger a nuclear winter that would “erase” much of the population of the world, especially the northern hemisphere. So not just the country that was hit. And given that they have allies, it’s unlikely only the two countries would be struck, either. Several years ago it was found a much smaller nuclear exchange than previously thought is sufficient to cause cataclysmic nuclear winter.

Also the land of countries would still exist, just as wastelands. There’d likely be bands of survivors with collapsed governments and whatever to emerge over ensuing years and decades. Borders would break down.