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Most Countries Are Empty Of People, Here's Why
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Mar 31, 2025
Get NordVPN 2Y plan + 4 months free here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/knowledge It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! In this video I talk about areas of the world (in red) where nobody lives. If you're a fan of geography videos on YouTube, you've probably seen videos like this before. But in this video, I'm taking a different approach. Instead of delving into super specific examples, I'm zooming out to look at the bigger picture. From vast areas of Canada and the Amazon to parts of Africa and Asia, the world appears largely empty. However, when we examine the simple element of population density, the picture changes. Additional factors like natural conditions, economic development, and human-made borders all contribute to why some areas are sparsely populated. Join me as we explore why most of the world seems empty, establishing reasons and criteria that likely apply to all those other videos you watch too. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 00:58 Where Does "Nobody Live?" 02:15 The Human "Archipelago" 02:55 Why Some Areas Are Naturally Empty 03:46 NordVPN 05:14 Why Are Other Places Also "Empty"? 05:31 The Example Of China's Population Line 05:56 The USA's Population Divide Line 06:20 Portugal & Spain's Example 06:38 How Urbanization Led To Emptiness Elsewhere 07:37 Are We Moving Towards More Emptiness? 08:25 Population Density Worldwide 08:54 How Country Lines / Borders Result In Differences Too 10:22 Summary
View Video Transcript
0:00
If you're a fan of geography videos on YouTube, it's likely that at least a handful of your
0:04
favorite channels have done a video titled Why Nobody Lives in Red. So, here is another one
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Just kidding, well, sort of. The reality is, all of those videos cover interesting topics
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It's fascinating to discover why humans choose to live in some places but not in others
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even inside the same countries. In this video, I don't want to look at particular examples like all of those videos have already done
0:25
I instead want to zoom out and look at the situation as a whole, looking at the whole world
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Because the image on the thumbnail or any other of global population distribution shows
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us how a very vast portion of the world is empty, I believe it has to do with three things
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first natural conditions, then the evolution of the way societies and their respective economies
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work and three human made reasons. So let's find out why
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First we need to differentiate between two things, places where nobody lives and places
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where very few people live. In the map I used on the thumbnail we see the first one
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In the red areas we see places that have under one inhabitant per square kilometer so essentially
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places that are empty. Sure there might be one or two people living as hermits in the middle of it, but in general
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they are empty. They're pretty vast parts of the world, pretty much all of Canada, over half of the
1:24
United States, the Amazon forest in South America, as well as a good amount of Argentina
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and Chile. In Africa there's essentially only two areas, the Sahara Desert and then this area in the
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south which includes most of Angola, Namibia and South Africa where the Kalahari and Namib
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deserts exist. In Europe, Iceland is mostly empty, as is Northern Scandinavia and hilly regions of Italy, Portugal
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sets itself apart as being one of the most empty countries, I did a video on why that
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is a few weeks ago. In Asia there are few areas like this, only Siberia, the vast Asian steppes and their
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deserts and then specific smaller areas. While in Australia and New Zealand, most of the two countries are empty
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And when we look at it this way, it really looks as if such a gigantic amount of the
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world is empty, which is true, but if we invert the map and instead look at this one, called
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the human archipelago, which shows in green exactly the opposite of the previous map
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all the places where population density exceeds 1 person per square kilometer, it doesn't
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look as serious. Here, the non-inhabited land is removed and replaced by water, and suddenly the world
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doesn't look so empty anymore. The map is also more detailed and so the small specks of population in the middle of generally
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unpopulated areas are visible but only the big patches of empty lands are noticeable as
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being missing Canada the Sahara Desert Siberia Australia and New Zealand Other big empty places like the western USA the Amazon or Central Asia aren as noticeable here These most noticeable areas allow us to go into the first explanation for this situation
3:00
which is the most obvious. Huge parts of the planet just don't foster the conditions
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that allow human settlement on a large scale to be comfortable or even viable at all. These
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places may be too cold like most of Canada, Greenland or Siberia, they may be too hot
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like the Saharan Desert or the Australian interior or even too wet like the Amazon forest
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with its torrential rains. In addition to weather conditions, we must also factor in terrain
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Places like the Amazon itself that are filled with forest aren't easy to settle in
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At the same time, other super mountainous regions of the world are also difficult for
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people to live in, both because they're hard to get to but also difficult to build in
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extract resources from or even bring resources in from elsewhere. So with this we understand the basic reason of why some parts of the planet are just empty
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And even if you chose to visit one of these empty places across the world, you could still
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5:14
But that doesn't explain everything. And the first map, the one on the thumbnail, also shows areas that aren't as noticeable here
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such as much of the interior of China, the interior of Portugal, or the Western USA
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This other part of the problem is connected with population density, which itself has various causes
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In China's case, for instance, a famous map shows us the Hu population line where 94
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of Chinese people live to the east and only 6 live to the west even though the western side takes up over 50 of the country land Most of the reason here is precisely because the cities and their respective industrial and
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services jobs are concentrated there, and so people moved from the rural parts of the country
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to them in order to seek better lives. In the US, a similar line can be drawn, with over 80
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of the people living in the east side of the country, terrain and geography are mostly at
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play here, but other societal factors as well, namely the way in which the country was gradually
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settled by people of European descent, beginning colonization from the east and then moving inwards
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to the west. I also did a whole video about this, using US county sizes as a case study
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In Portugal, over 70% live on the coast, while the interior is empty. And while terrain, geography
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economics and history have to do with it, specific policies or lack of policies are important factors
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too. In the neighboring Spain, most of the country is empty with small islands of densely populated
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cities. And that last word, cities, is important to understand a key part of the issue here
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urbanization. If we had access to similar population density maps from 200 or 300 years
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ago, things would look vastly different. This is because at the time, the main economic sectors
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were different. Most countries focused on the primary sector with farming and resource extraction
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and this allowed for people to settle and live anywhere those resources were
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the density wasn't as concentrated. In 1800, less than 10% of the world's population lived in urban areas
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However, as time went on, the Industrial Revolution vastly expanded a second economic sector of resource transformation with factories
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which were mostly established in urban centers. Those urban centers grew more and more as the tertiary sector was also created of services
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and this last one continues to grow in modern times. Essentially, people move and live where the jobs are, and if the jobs become more concentrated
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in one area instead of spread around, due to their nature, so do the people
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Living patterns are becoming more and more polarized. It took just over two centuries from 1800 for the rural-urban divide to be balanced
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worldwide, and now the balance is rapidly sliding in favor of cities, where most economic
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opportunity is consolidated. By 2050, the United Nations projects that over two-thirds of the people on Earth will
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reside in urban areas. Now of course, two things should be taken into account here. One, as the
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number of people grow, so will the urban areas and so the empty space percentage of the world
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might not grow as a consequence of more population concentration. Second, as remote work becomes a
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trend, people can live anywhere they want and work their third sector jobs remotely
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which might contribute to less concentration. People needed to move for jobs until now
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If jobs can be done from anywhere, that need disappears. But still, putting aside the historical
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explanation of why population density is what it is today and also putting aside speculation of how that may or may not change in the near future the reality is this is how it is today Let take a look at this other map focused
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specifically on population density per square kilometer. It matches those that we saw before
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with the lighter areas being those where essentially nobody lives. It also shows us this
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set of very dark dots across the world, the aforementioned urban centers where people have
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grown to concentrate. And then we have to remember the additional factor that is added on top of
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of weather, terrain and economic reasons, country lines. This would maybe not be relevant if we were looking at a population density map of 10,000
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BC where people just lived wherever they lived but in modern times, these artificial lines
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we have drawn to separate countries and people of different ethnicities, beliefs, rulers
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regimes or just customs, matter. Those country lines, or I guess we can just call them what they are, borders, represent
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differences in customs and policies which may and I would argue necessarily do affect
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total population numbers and indirectly population density. China's old one child policy has led to a significant decrease in their population and
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so in 50 to 100 years this nobody lives here map might be emptier in China
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Very religious countries that are against contraceptive methods may have more people
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fighting the perception that nobody lives in them and forcing people to expand into less
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suitable areas because they just need the space. Countries with no incentives for childbearing may become older in age and find parts of
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their country eventually becoming empty, like Portugal, not to mention specific policies
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or customs that may influence population density directly. India, for instance, has most of the territory of Sikkim as military grounds where people
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aren't allowed to live and so the population density there is lower. The DMZ areas of North and South Korea can't be lived in and so a map might show that no
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people live there, but there is an objective human-caused reason why. So essentially that's why most of the world is seen as empty
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First, because some places are just not suitable to live in due to their natural conditions
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not providing or facilitating that which humans need to thrive or at least survive from a
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weather and terrain point of view. Second, because the economies of our societies have developed in such a way that population
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concentration takes place as a consequence of job concentration and the fact that people
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move to places where their lives can be better. And third, because the world isn't just a natural place and human-made borders exist
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different customs and beliefs contrast with each other and different policies are put
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in place by different government types and regimes which necessarily also have a consequence
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for this. Do you agree or do you think any of these factors is wrong
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Is there a missing element that I didn't mention which also causes part of the world
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to be empty? Let me know in the comments. Subscribe if you want to catch future videos and I will see you next time for more general
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