The Suez Canal: The Desert Ditch Ferrying 1 Billion Tons of Goods Every Year (When It's Not Blocked)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.พ. 2025
- Simon's newest channel, XPLRD, offers absolutely fascinating documentary profiles on a wide range of important topics: / @simonstestchannel
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Simon is the only person I know that has 8 Channels and is active on all of them basically. that takes dedication
RIP Highlight History
The hardest working man on TH-cam.
Count again. Simon has ten active channels when I am typing this in early June 2021.
@@stacyrussell460 wait 10 👀
He and his team do a great job writing content that's interesting and timely. Keep it up Simon and team!
Do a mega project on Simon Whistlers youtube enterprise.
It should be a business blaze!
At this point, it could really be a Top Tenz, Biographics, Business Blaze, and (at the very least) a SideProjects video too...
.....allegedly.
He's already well on his way to global media domination 😆
@@saltypupanglesey its at least a small media Empire at this point
Lmao
Am I the only one that expected him to say "AM I RIGHT PETER?!" after talking about a statue of a woman holding a torch
AM I RIGHT PETER? WOMAN HOLDING TORCHES?! HA!
Yes you are???
@@way2crazie620 Your vicinity is a Blaze free zone
@@way2crazie620 Check out his channel Business Blaze :) it's a lot more casual and "AM I RIGHT, PETER?!" is a running joke there in reference to some guy with hilariously/horribly sexist viewpoints some decades back. I believe the episode that originated in is one about old advertisements that aged badly
"How are we going to finish this?"
"Just throw death and suffering at it until it's done!"
Turns out death and suffering is not profitable. Let's build some giant mechanical shovels and invest personal Capital into the canal. Wallah it's done!
America looks over, Welcome To The Future!
Damn egypt really loves throwing casualties at something until it works
@@maybenorthern Slavery: Gets shit done.
@@ascensionindustries9631 How many times have they used slaves on big projects?
Voila. It’s voila. It’s French , you absolute muppet.
1:50 - Chapter 1 - Ancient history
3:05 - Chapter 2 - Planning & building
5:40 - Chapter 3 - Inauguration & early stages
7:55 - Chapter 4 - Global impact & financial problems
9:00 - Chapter 5 - Suez crisis
11:05 - Chapter 6 - An 8 year wait
12:30 - Chapter 7 - The new suez canal
14:15 - Chapter 8 - The future of the canal
Pre-1900, if you don't need a mass grave, is it really a megaproject?
The past was indeed the worst...
I'd heard of the canal back when I was a kid in school but never really thought much about it other than its place on the globe.
Then I went to see Lawrence of Arabia and that scene towards the end of the flick when all seemed lost, the blast of a ship's horn goes off and there... the mast of a ship cruising through the canal!
Remember going trough it several times on Navy ships while I was in the Marines, always a tense moment.
You can't stop there!!
Why did it cause tension on a naval vessel?
Excellent!
Simon a nice Megaproject would be the German Nucleur plan when they planned to use heavy water to build atomic bombs in WW2.
What’s heavy water?
It's water that has become contaminated with radiation due to being used in a nuclear power plant.
@@p.l.g3190 err, no. The hydrogen in normal water has only a single proton in its core (and an electron in the shell). there are isotopes of hydrogen with an additional neutron (deuterium) or two neutrons (trtium), both are radioactive. This doesn't nessecarily have anything to do with nuclear power plants as such. The contaminated water there may contain any sort of radioactive trace elements. Heavy water ist used in the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.
Eh, the German nuclear program never really got very far and was severely underfunded and understaffed because they had so many other things they wanted to build and they were kind of losing the war at the same time. They had ideas but little to show for it. Doesn't really sound like a megaproject to me...
@@cihuacoatl thank you for correcting me! I appreciate it, and I learned something new.
Hey Simon and crew- the B-29 Superfortress cost an estimated $3 Billion (to the Manhattan Project’s $2 Billion) as the most expensive project of all WWII. It’s service lifetime was short but the general systems and platform lasted for over a decade and sort of rolled into what would become the B-52 program, a platform which will likely fly for nearly 100 years.
A weak little statue holding a torch?!
Am i right peter?!
Good ol' Bartholdi!
I always wonder what the environmental impact was of suddenly letting Mediterranean species flow into the Indian Ocean and vice versa. Must have been a lot of invasive species, in an era when humans didn't have much concept of that or any good way to monitor it under the sea.
I hadn’t thought of that but now you have mentioned it thought I would look it up. There is a lot of scientific studies done on this, enough to have a Wikipedia page on the topic complete with multiple references for those wanting to know more en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lessepsian_migration.
@@jessicascoullar3737 Oh, thank you for this reply! I'm reading the article right now.
Good video. Btw, the base of the statue that was planned for Port Said still exists. The citizens of Port Said are still waiting for the statue lol
the business blaze smirk came out for a second, but Simon contained himself.
The explanation of future use in regards to cargo (oil) is appreciated.
Thanks
I'm knew to your channel and I have been watching for about 2 weeks now and I have to say that I absolutely love your effin channel!! I have been watching the "Real Engineering" channel for a long time but you bring something to your channel the other one doesnt. Your awesome personality. Every episode at some point I'm laughing my ass off and in my opinion there's nothing better then learning and laughing at the same time! Now I'm not knocking Real Engineering at all I love that channel too, but he explains stuff in a much more engineering/nerdy way and I also very much enjoy that but this is now my new favorite channel. Military,Space and Submarine engineering are my absolute favorite and there is plenty of that on this channel. Thank you Simon for doing this and being such a hilarious and kick a$$ dude! p.s.. arw you going to do a video on the space shuttles?
$465,000 per transit! Bloody hell! I never had any notion it was THAT expensive to use it.
I'm alright thanks I'll go around!
I suppise if you are moving large amounts of cargo, it is still more economical than going around Africa. Safer too.
The toll is by weight. Just for the heck of it, I calculated the smallest amount that would be reasonable and it came out to $84 for a first time transit for a 10 ton vessel with a 2 meter draft. Basically a medium sailboat.
Great show. The context is some of your best (I never thought about the alternate routes)
A good idea for a mega project would be the Arctic Convoy’s during WW2.. they were pretty horrifying, especially PQ17.
Good video, can you do something about Italy turning from right hand drive to left hand drive vehicles please
I love your honesty about British history. I can't believe it costed only 0.1% of our modern annual global military expenditure!
The lesson to take away from ancient construction projects is that you don't need that much technology to build incredible things. All you need is an infinite number of human workers and a total disregard for their lives.
Or maybe time? A lot of workers and time.
Time went so fast that we just forgot that a damn container ship blocked it
My son sails through the sewer 4+ times a year. He's an engineer on a cargo ship.
Ed Norton, eat your heart out.
(Think of the ‘50s TV show, The Honeymooners, not the actor)
@Pronto depends on the ballast needed.
That cheerful music playing in the background to the B.E.F. is priceless
Another CHANNEL?!?! Simon is a Mad man, I tell ya. A MAD MAN!
The idea of ships sailing from East Asia to Northern Europe via Russia's Arctic coast is quite remarkable.
I'm imagining my children telling their children 'when my Pop was your age, the Arctic Ocean had a year-round ice cap.'
Great overview of canal history. I loved Simon's sarcasm about the more controversial aspects.
Have a few German Mega Projects Ideas:
1. The "Elbphilharmonie" ist a big opera house built in the Hamburg old Harbour ontop of antique buildings which aren't allowed to be altered.
2. The Big Upgrade to the Munich subway network currently, with digging of a second main track, to ease the pressure on the old and overused central tunnel. That one is actually the most used two-way rail track in the world. Also the whole Munich "S-Bahn" drives more track km a year than the whole German long distance Network.
3. Maybe in a Megaprojects Video we can finally get behind the million of delays to the new Berlin Airport, which finally opened last year. The Year no-one could fly due to covid :D
Just a few Ideas that i thought could be interesting.
Stuttgart 21 is interesting too 😉
@@Kapitan_Michał_Głuś he already made a video about that
Or the holocaust
@@ItsLofty101 wtf is wrong with you, that is no megaproject that deserves a video, Germany has achieved many things unrelated to war and I think that gets underrepresented so far.
@@gollum8977 I was joking.....
Another excellent video! Thank you
Really loving your videos. Great in the background while I work...though somewhat difficult, having to look up every 20 seconds for an extra nugget of brilliant info.
Here's a suggestion....You've done plenty of stuff on skyscrapers, but what about current [lesser known projects[] and future ones in the pipeline?
Oh, that's a nice touch 12:37
They dug convenient little cross-canals for ship captains who suddenly realise they've left the oven on at home.
Simon you constantly blow my mine with the exhaustive detail of your subjects and the great way you present it. I don't know how you crank out so many great topics week after week. Keep it up dude!
I love all of your videos. I'm a history nerd like you.
Very interesting and informative thank you.
All this talk of digging makes me want to play Minecraft.
I haven’t played in years, but I say go for it
Diggy diggy hole
1.17 just released (as of 8th June 2021). Go for it.
@@randomotter6346 I'm not sure if the new ores are coming in the first half of 1.17
In valheim one of my mates built a canal, and our global trade was also benefited.
Simon Whistler: Narrator of the Internet
Here I was thinking that the qualifier "when it's not blocked" in the video's title was just a tongue-in-cheek reference to then-current events - and then, Simon goes on to list multiple other blockages of the Suez Canal, some of which lasted for longer (about four years longer, in one case) than EVERSTUCK 1 (EVERSTUCK 2 was, of course, the one that blocked the Chesapeake Bay).
hey me again, video on the Appalachian Trail, probably a better fit for Geographics
I thought there was one ...
Jolly good, Mr. Whistler!
Not only did it change transport and travel, but The Canal changed many people's fortunes and, many country's economies.
Great job as the general in Sweet Tooth on Netflix. Can’t wait to see what role you play next.
The megaproject we've all been waiting for! Excellent work Simon. Can you do a video on the Hong Kong Airport next?
Whenever I come back to these channels he's spawned yet another one XD Thanks for all the great content!
Excellent video
The Panama Canal and Suez Canal still control most of the trade in the world 🌎 🌍
If you haven't done it already, a video on the Space Needle would be interesting.
As long as you leave the drug needles in the Seattle center out of it.
Still waiting for a video on getting up in the morning, which most times IS a mega project, at least until the nectar of gods, the manna from heaven, that life elixir we all know as coffee (or tea) kicks in! 😉
MegaProject: Panama? SideProject: Suez Crisis? Great article.
I hope Simon just keeps growing his beard out, it pretty fun to guess the timeline of a video release based on how long it is
No way could people build that with hand tools. Must have been aliens :P
The canal itself was doable by humans, but alien help was needed to clear away the pyramid that appeared in the middle of it.
As usual, sardonic and informative. Excellent.
I want to hear more about the"intercontinental" railroad completed in the US 6 months earlier and referred to at 8:03.
I believe he meant the transcontinental railroad. Funny, in googling to confirm that I learned that apparently Obama once misspoke exactly the same thing, calling it intercontinental by accident lol
The more you know
Since we talk about a megaproject in Egypt, and I'm Egyptian. Here is some megaproject suggestions concerning Egypt: Benban Solar Park, Aswan High Dam, Bar Lev Line and Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
Egypt seems to excel with megaprojects, for the past 5000 years or so. You folks invented them.
@@billolsen4360 the last mega project he mentioned isn't really an "Egyptian" project far from it its against the regional supremacy of egypt
@@AMR_k400 Actually the last 2 was made to undermine Egypt.
Great Video as always , but small correction the new canal or expansion costs 30 billion Egyptian pounds about 4.2 billion dollars not 30 billion dollars .
Awesome lesson
Didn't Simon already do an episode on this? Or am I crazy?
Edit: The geographics episode was what I was thinking of
So, yes.
Oooooh do the Corinth Canal next!
I love that you were too late for the first blockage, but just in time for the most recent one.
I wonder how many archaeological sites they came across digging it and just ignored them.
At least one I would think
Have the Apollo missions / space race had a video? If not a good idea.
Its possibly a sideprojects video, but how about the Mallard / Flying Scotsman as pushing steam powered engines to the limits for the time just before WWII? With all the Railfans / Steamers on youtube it'll surely get you a decent amount of views Simon my bro!
Yooo simon back with another cool video
This was a pretty simple project actually.
The Erie Canal, 362 miles, was completed in 1825. And, it had locks...
I just saw an ad for Blaze Pizza and thought for a second Simon started a new business, lol
Oil prices at an all time low. I wish fuel prices would reflect that.
This made me think, I'd like to see a biographics on Ferdinand de Lesseps. He had a very interesting life and was involved at various degrees in many very famous projects, including both the Suez and Panama Canals. I've gotten a number of glimpses of his life in videos like this one, but never gotten a coherent view of his whole life, I think that would be very interesting.
Simon looks like Dwight from the game Dead By Daylight 😭😭
Nicely done. Thatch you
Very interesting topic.
Great content mon ami
Container ships going via the Artic in any numbers is most unlikely due to the cold soak cargo gets. Grain in containers is likely to get wet from condensation. Potentially, containers will be crushed by the extra tension on stays holding them in place, or due to stays deforming due to cold shrinkage taking then past their tension point. We care mainly looking at bulk cargos like oil, gas, minerals. Bulk grains are unlikely due to condensation spoiling cargo.
A good idea for a Megaprojects would be the Danube-Black Sea Canal, a project with a dark history of its own.
1 - they should make it deeper so large ships can get through
2 - they should make a 2nd cannel so having two way traffic 24/7
so reducing time of waiting
they make enough money to do this and we would not have the problems we have just suffered if the canal was fit for purpose
I liked the shade you're throwing at them for it being blocked.
can u do a video on DMIC mega project...ur videos are really fun to watch...
Awesome thanks
You snear at the idea that Britian ojected to the use of slaves, but they were probably the first and most active of anti slavery countries in Europe around that time with the Royal Navy blocking slave traders and freeing their slaves, many of which ended up joining the Royal Navy.
Thank you
SUGGESTION: Ilyushin IL-2
- Amazing WWII ground-attack "flying tank" and spiritual predecessor to the A-10 Warthog
- The single most produced military aircraft in aviation history
- Some WWII-era Wehrmacht nicknames for it: "meat grinder", "butcher", "black death", "slaughterer", "concrete bird"
- What Stalin had to say about it: "Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats."
You forgot the part of the Suez where you have to throw stupid amounts of cartons of cigarettes and sometimes liquor at the pilots and agents before they'll bring you through the canal. Otherwise you'll just sit at one of the entrances, waiting.
Exploitation is lubrication when no one's looking....or everyone is involved.
Sounds like quid pro quo...what’s wrong with that?
In some form or another....that how the world operates. Nobody quids without a beneficial pro quo in return. That would just make you a terrible businessman.
As we’re in Egypt- do a Megaproject video on the new Egypt capital city.
….in 10-15 years time
Please make a video just saying works like - empire, superpower and hour” I love how you say it 😂
i never realised Lady Liberty was originally meant for Egypt
England: "Forced labour is good for business."
Egypt: "I'm going to do a forced labour."
England: "Don't you dare, -that'll undercut my profits- that's inhumane!"
Same sort of blind hypocrisy (mostly in the states) that claims that the US was an anomaly in slavery.
@@embracethesuck1041 The US certainly was not an anomaly in having slavery, though held onto slaves for longer than Europe, even if many colonies were not granted such emancipation, especially those of France, Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands (well aware that both Belgium and the Netherlands had rather fluid governance for a long time). The story of slabery is incomplete though, as it continues today, was always aided by fellow Africans when it came to African slavery, and the Islamic world is given a free pass, it seems, as is modern India.
@@embracethesuck1041 In 1860, slavery was a fact in every nation in the world. A few countries in Europe had banned it in the home country but it continued in their colonies, sometimes into the early 20th century in fact if not in name. To the best of my knowledge, every culture in history practiced slavery in one form or another at various times. It's easy for us to say "they should have known it was wrong" but the practice had existed all over the world for as long as there were records. Even the Bible didn't condemn the practice of slavery, only the mistreatment of slaves. It's a good thing that slavery is legally gone and I certainly hope we all now understand it as a gross violation of human rights, but the people who think it was some sort of American aberration are woefully ignorant of history. The U.S. is seen as "dealing with a legacy of slavery" more than -- for example -- Britain because for the most part, British slaves were in the colonies and when they were freed they were left there to fend for themselves sparing the home country the difficulty of dealing with them. Just look at what's going on in former British colonies where people were enslaved; if anything, most of them are worse off than we are.
From house slaves to worker slaves, the countries may change but the suffering is rarely any different.
Which was kind of funny if you think about it. The machines were much more efficient, so not only was forced labor entirely unnecessary, but also the British inadvertently helped Egypt to hurt the railroad faster.
I like the clause in the title -- "when It's not blocked". :))
Itaipu dam!! Makena video of the itaipu dam in south America
Great video as always!
I have a suggestion for a video, the Snowy River Hydro-Electric scheme in Australia, it was nation-building, brought a lot of immigrants and culture to Australia, and is still ongoing to this day.
We just did that one actually! Check our video from two weeks ago.
@@megaprojects9649 You put out so many good videos that I missed that one! You're too good!
@@megaprojects9649 maybe for one of your other channels you could do a video on the Tasman Bridge disaster, I know that there aren't any decent videos on that, not many people outside of Tasmania where I live know about that one.
@@megaprojects9649 We also have a hydro electric system as big or bigger than snowy in Tasmania, look up Eric Reece AKA "Electric Eric".
@@megaprojects9649 In fact the Tasmanian Hydro electric scheme has double the capacity of Snowy!
Would you consider a video on the Midi canal connecting the Mediterranean and the Atlantic? At the time it was built, in the 17th century, it was a Megaproject.
Camp Century / Project Iceworm, Greenland!!!
Project Iceworm/Camp Century, Greenland!
it is and remains one of the greatest accomplishment
That shirt is on point.
Thank U
The next project Egypt needs to work on is a giant Suez Canal plunger to keep it unclogged.
15:20, "Oil prices are hitting record lows?" I don't know when this video's script was written, but fuel prices have skyrocketed by ~60% in most of the eastern US since the start of 2021. I remember seeing $1.70s/gallon prices not long ago, and now it's up to $2.70s/gallon.
If only demand stayed at global shut down levels. That and USA oil fields have reduced production to inflate prices.
Capitalism
@@andrewday3206, not so much regular capitalism, more like crony globalist corporatism. In 2019, before covid, the prices were low before demand plummeted. Demand has absolutely nothing to do with it. They're not just doing it for profits, because competition usually keeps that in check.
It didn't start until Obama was president last time, and Biden was president this time. It's political maneuvering to push people towards unsustainable electric vehicles... which won't be so at least until solid-state battery technology matures.
You know how many gas stations there are now? Every interstate exit has multiple "large" stations (by comparison). That's with 5-min fill-up times. You would need a minimum of 6 times as many charging stations (for only 30-min of charge) as current gas station numbers... and that gets you less than full charge on a vehicle that already has a 25% shorter range... meaning you would need significantly more than 6x the charge stations (maybe as many as 15x as many).
@@games1004
Electric vehicles are for far more sustainable than fossil fuel! Under President Obama the United States had the largest increase in natural gas and crude oil production of any president in United States history. We didn’t have the biggest push ever for fossil fuel production to push people into electric vehicles. The facts do not support that hypothesis
@@games1004
This is from the Energy Information Administration. It is part of the department of energy. President Trump saw a decrease in fossil fuel production his first and last year. Your hypothesis doesn’t support those facts either. The truth is electric is far more sustainable and electric is far cleaner. Yes batteries need to mature more, but they also can be recycled. Car batteries once done in vehicles can still be used in land applications for another 30 years This is to store intermittent renewable sources and for grid stabilization.
www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=M
@@games1004
President Trump tried to force us to buy electricity from old inefficient and unprofitable coal powered power plants. The guise of this was declaring these old dirty plants as part of national security. We literally were going to be forced by President Trump to buy our electricity from inefficient dirty unprofitable coal plants under the guise of a national security risk if we didn’t. That is the ultimate in back room deals and crony capitalism
Can you do one on Yokosuka
Speaking of shipping delays... you should tackle the US west coast container ship backup....
No link to your best episode? Best job ever #businessblaze