Imagine an ultimate road trip
across the globe.
On a highway along the equator.
Wait, there is no highway along the equator.
Yet.
How about we build one?
There are about 64 million km (40 million mi)
of all kinds of roads around the globe.
But no single highway network
that can take you from New York
directly to Cape Town.
The hypothetical freeway
that we're about to build
would easily take you from Colombia
all the way to Indonesia.
Combine that with some of the existing road systems,
and you might just be able to drive
But that would be a very expensive
engineering achievement.
Because a big part of this highway
would have to be constructed underwater.
On average, it takes about five to ten years
to build a highway.
But we wouldn't be building just any highway.
We're aiming for a 40,000 km (25,000 mi) long,
two-lane equatorial road.
To construct it in about the same
time frame as a normal highway,
we'd need to be working on
different parts of it, all at the same time.
Our globe-spanning highway would require
about 8 million skilled workers,
and some $9.2 trillion to build.
Yeah, those are some whopping numbers to consider.
I'd say it's pretty cool.
The equator cuts through 13 countries,
and three oceans.
Let's say, you start in South America, in Ecuador,
and travel east through Colombia to Brazil.
You'd be enjoying a humid tropical climate,
and very high temperatures.
Make sure your car's air conditioning is working
before your leave for the trip.
You'd be passing over mountains,
and the Amazon river.
And if you decided to go for a refreshing swim,
remember that the Amazon's full of blood-thirsty piranhas
waiting to eat you in a matter of minutes.
Just joking, piranhas are actually
calm scavengers,
so you can go for a swim,
at your own risk.
Your Amazonian adventures would just be the beginning.
You would soon reach the Atlantic coast of Brazil,
and you'd be about to enter the first underwater stretch,
the Great Atlantic Tunnel.
And the view here is
rather dull.
Finally, there's land.
After days of travel,
you would make it to Africa.
You'd be driving through the savannas,
swamps and dense rainforest
of Gabon and Congo,
and into the deserts of Kenya and Somalia.
On your way, you might see elephants,
gorillas, buffalos and leopards.
And that would make the long trip
through the tunnel kind of worth it.
But then, you run out of land.
And you enter another underwater tunnel.
This time, it's the Great Indian Tunnel.
I see land, again.
It's Indonesia, with its 17,000 islands
scattered around the equator.
You'd be driving through a series of short tunnels
to cross from one island to another.
And every time you got back on land,
the scenery would be majestic.
Volcanic landscapes,
rice fields, tropical rainforests.
I bet you could use a day at the beach
after such a long drive.
Okay, it's time to move on to the next tunnel,
the Great Pacific Tunnel.
Is it just me, or is this one
like three times longer?
Ah, no, this is the longest
underwater stretch of the entire trip.
And by the end of it,
you'd have a little bonus in the form of
the last exciting spot of the highway,
the Galapagos Islands.
A showcase of evolution,
where the most unusual forms of life
are thriving in the wild.
A feast for the eyes after that long drive.
Then, you would drive a little further,
through one last short underwater tunnel,
and end up right where you started, in Ecuador.
Congratulations, you made a road trip around the globe.
Traveling at 100 km/h (62 mph), you'd spend
Twelve of those days, you'd be stuck
inside a tunnel under the ocean.
With some breaks for the night,
rest, and some time to enjoy the sights,
the entire travel time would add up
to at least two months.
Hope you can afford such a long vacation.
But as much fun as this idea sounds,
it would be an enormous hit on the planet.
The construction of the highway itself
would disrupt ecosystems both on land and in the ocean.
On top of that, during this epic trip,
your car would emit almost twice as much carbon dioxide
as the average car does in a year.
Looks like we'll never see a highway like that
running along the equator.
Maybe we could start building flying cars
that would require a different type of highway altogether.
But that's a story for another WHAT IF.