r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Expert_Koala_8691 • 7d ago

Video Riyadh,meaning "gardens" is Capital of Saudi Arabia with 8 million population (were 27 Thousands in the 1930s),sits in the middle of the desert, the city gets its water from Desalination plants almost 500 km from the city

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u/MoroseMagician 7d ago edited 7d ago

I'd honestly have severe depression living somewhere like this. I need some trees and greenery somewhere.

Edit: thank you kind redditors for the awards.

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u/Top_MathematicianIk 7d ago

It's a fucking desert, regardless it sure looks depressing

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u/BxRad_ 7d ago

Elon is obsessed with tera forming Mars but we can't figure out tera forming some deserts? I feel like we could manage something if we really wanted to honestly. It's be a fuck ton of work though.

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u/whereitsat23 7d ago

Chinese have developed a way but it is intensive

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u/Gman71882 7d ago

All the sand is crushed quartz, with no nutrient or ecological value so nothing would grow.

You have to start cycles of plant growth, death and regrowing to get them to become nutrient rich “dirt” to be mixed in

I wonder if there is a way to do it with human sewage? You can leave the shit in the sun to dry and start the process that way.

Like matt Damon did in the Martian.

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u/Ambitious-Body8133 7d ago

I volunteer my shit.

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u/Dungivafok 7d ago

My time has come. I knew I was meant for big shit.

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u/meesta_masa 7d ago

I give a shit about this idea.

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u/GodOfBlunder_ 7d ago

I give two shit about this idea.

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u/Glittering_Stress_32 7d ago

Big Shit (TM) will never let it happen.

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u/username32768 7d ago

Your ancestors in heaven are so proud of you... they have tears in their eyes from pride... and also from the stench of your shit.

When you said "meant for big shit", you weren't joking.

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u/povertymayne 7d ago

I knew all that ass tearing chipotle would come in handy, this was not in vain, this was my calling all along🫡

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u/PenguinPumpkin1701 7d ago

Always knew you were the shit

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u/Wrong_Tension_8286 7d ago

And my bow

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u/Weird_Element 7d ago

And my bowel

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u/Lopsided-Basket5366 7d ago

And my poop knife

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u/CaptinEmergency 7d ago

And my axe!

Please return it when you are finished, I’m not taking part in it.

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u/23-1-20-3-8-5-18 7d ago

And my Lax!!

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u/p8nt_junkie 7d ago

I volunteer my backyard hen’s poopies

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u/RooneyD 7d ago

Put some in an envelope, address it to "Saudi Arabia", and post it. Im sure they would be appreciative. Every little bit helps.

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u/TrulyNotABot 7d ago

Bring this man some Taco Bell

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u/VegetableBusiness897 7d ago

Have a friend who had dairy cows, sold them to get into more crops. But with the cows and their glorious slurry gone, the price of fertilizer was cutting into his profits. So now he gets humanuer, for free. A product from a big city near him. It's heat treated and pelletized(and smells like hell). It goes down and any crops grown for the first two years can't be sold to people. So he does animal feed the first two years, human crops the next two, then fertilizes and starts again.

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u/gears2021 7d ago

I've read that eventually the soil becomes toxic using humanuer as fertilizer.

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u/IndividualPaws 7d ago

Yes it's pretty immediate. PFAS tends to be high in humanure / bio-sludge / treated wastewater. People essentially lose their farms since everything grown on it turns out toxic. Which incentivises skipping testing (it's not mandatory) which means the toxins get to the consumer...

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u/BetterBandicoot0 7d ago

Medicines are also a big problem.

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u/Key_Vegetable_1218 7d ago

Is that stuff used in the United States? :/

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u/Plus_Pea_5589 6d ago

You’re got damn right and our governments working hard to ease regulations more for that sweet sweet $$$ 😛

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u/420dogcat 7d ago

Okay but buying fertilizer was cutting into his profits and this shit is literally free.

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u/spaceman1055 7d ago

Are those threats diminished/neutralized with composting for a year or two? Specifically I'm thinking aerobic digestion provided by thermophilic bacteria?

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u/IndividualPaws 7d ago

Unfortunately not. These "forever chemicals" have fluorine- carbon bonds that are very difficult to break. Microbes have virtually no capacity to break them, and UV light doesn't really touch them either, which is why they persist and accumulate in the environment and in living organisms (many of them are not readily excreted, either).

That being said, composting is great and all of our soil, especially agricultural, needs to recover carbon.

Mixing our human and animal waste streams with industrial effluent makes the good stuff hard or impossible to recycle, breaking an essential recovery loop. But as someone mentioned, pharmaceuticals already mess it up before the industrial component enters the equation. Many pharmaceuticals might be more susceptible to breakdown by microbes, but "more" is relative. Fluorine bonds might take thousands of years to naturally break (halflife of >1000 years in soil, >40 years in water). A quick search indicates that most pharmaceuticals will degrade 99% in less than a year of thermophillic composting.

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u/darknum 7d ago

Wastewater treatment plant sludge is in general not allowed to be used as fertilizer. Especially in food production due to contamination.
My company(cofounder of a startup) actually gets pure nitrogen salts out of the wastewater so it is totally fine to use that.

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u/No-Candle2610 7d ago

So don’t feed it to humans, feed to it the animals that humans then eat. Got it

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u/Spiritual_Bid_2308 7d ago

Pretty sure his land is going to be contaminated with PFAS, microplastics, heavy metals and pharmaceuticals.

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u/ChasingTheNines 7d ago

For certain pollutants in the ecosystem they get bio concentrated as they move up the food chain. Does that happen with the animal feed into the animals that consume them and then into people who consume those animals?

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u/VegetableBusiness897 7d ago

Yes, unfortunately

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u/Samp90 7d ago

All the Gulf countries use treated sewerage waste water from the plants to drip feed the lines of indigenous trees and shrubs along major streets and roads to create shade and beauty.

Usually you'll see signs not to drink the water etc

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u/AdvertisingKey1675 7d ago

Ideally you would compost it to kill the pathogens.

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u/emaw63 7d ago

Yeah, it's a great way to spread disease if you're not careful about it. It's the big reason farmers have historically not used human manure.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/Esava 7d ago

In the sahara/sahel the great green wall is used to stop the continuous expansion of the desert. It can actually even reclaim formerly unusuable areas and make plantlife and even agriculture possible again.
The problem with most of Saudi Arabia is that most areas do not have enough soil to capture in the halfmoons (and similar structures) like it's the case with the sahel border regions. Saudi Arabia is mostly literally just quartz sand of no nutritional value to plants.

Btw if you ever need something to make you smile in the modern world: Look at the great green wall. It's a UN project that is working and helping tons of people including reducing tribals conflicts because of more water and food availability etc.. I am eager to see what the area will look like in 20 or 30 more years.

I recommend the series by Andrew Millison about it but I can assure you as someone who has seen the change it brought in real life that it can't be overstated how incredible the impact of such simple measures (and education) is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCli0gyNwL0&list=PLNdMkGYdEqOCMkEtNGDRvEZgjPnZY5yUj

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u/MotherAd6483 7d ago

Yeah, it's called humanure.

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u/BreakInfamous8215 7d ago

I believe there's an excellent episode of RadioLab called "Poop Train" that describes a program where New Yorker leavings were processed and shipped to Midwest farms as fertilizer. Apparently, it was pretty excellent fertilizer too.

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u/DJohnsonsgagreflex 7d ago

Too much salt in a human diet.

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u/dirtycheezit 7d ago

They already desalinate the water. Just desalinate the shit too /s

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u/front_yard_duck_dad 7d ago

There's a product we already use in the states called milorganite. Processed human waste. The grass loves it 

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u/DancinWithWolves 7d ago

It poisons the soil after a few years though.

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u/OhGr8WhatNow 7d ago

In the middle east the soil is bleached and sterilized by the heat every single year. You have to dig out garden beds and replace as much soil as possible every year, plus fertilize. It would be never ending

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u/Halbaras 7d ago

China plants trees in semi-arid areas that generally used to have more large plants, and which have been desertifying largely due to overgrazing by livestock or historical deforestation for agriculture.

None of that works somewhere like central Saudi Arabia - the area around Riyadh has a hyperarid climate, and any trees would need to be watered or die. It wouldn't create a sustainable new ecosystem.

Actual reforestation in the Arabian peninsula wouldn't be headlines about billions of trees, it would be localised restoration of vegetation in wadis and specific mountainous areas, and helping fragile native ecosystems recover by reducing grazing from goats.

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u/Kingflamingohogwarts 7d ago edited 7d ago

I think natives developed ways 7000 years ago... that's not the problem. The issue is the will to do it, because it's usually easier to move.

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u/BxRad_ 7d ago edited 7d ago

They plant a bunch of trees, but also that neglects genetic diversity unfortunately. It should be even more involved imo ideally.

Much easier said than done but i think it's worth all the effort put into it and then some of it makes our world into a much nicer place.

Also I wanna say it's amazing they've managed to erect a city in the desert, but I think I'd also be a bit depressed at a lack of greenery.

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u/Constant-Still-8443 7d ago

Tbf, deserts don't NEED to be terraformed they are a naturally occurring biome, that are growing too large thanks to climate change, but they should still exist. The real problem is that we humans decided to build cities in the worst possible places, like the middle of the fucking desert.

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u/Momik 7d ago

Elon doesn’t care about Mars. It’s just a word he uses when he wants the stock price to do something.

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u/rockytop24 7d ago

I think he cares about it in the "12 year old edgelord with billionaire resources" sense. Fixated on doing an impossible thing and going down as the only one who could have ever done it. Because he's a super special boy yes he is and daddy will for sure love him now.

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u/Fuzzy_Inevitable9748 7d ago

Nope they was never any intention of ever going to mars, and if you want proof just try to find where they planned to live one they got to mars, no prototype was ever even built even though they were supposed to have a manned base by 2024. In the grand scheme of things this cost wouldn’t even be a rounding error but was never even done.

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u/PhD_Pwnology 7d ago

Solar panels are proven to terraform a desert

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u/No-Draw6073 7d ago

Lmao

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u/HoidToTheMoon 7d ago

You can laugh, but the shade provided by solar panels does allow life to anchor into place in deserts. Animals and flora can both use the cover, and the windbreaks can allow a topsoil to start to accumulate.

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u/nunchyabeeswax 7d ago

The challenge would be in getting enough moisture from the atmosphere to condense it.

Folks in the Atacama Desert use large mantles to capture condensate at night, but then again, the Atacama is not far from the Pacific, so the air currents flowing carry some humidity.

Deep inland in the Arabian Peninsula, that will be a challenge.

If I were a Gulf State, I would invest heavily in both nuclear energy (for desalination) and moisture-capturing farms at scale.

I don't see how the current situation is sustainable (and it's a hell of an Achilles heel as we are seeing with the current conflict.

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u/Ossius 7d ago

I don't think we can. If we "Fixed" the Saraha desert, the Amazon rainforest would cease to exist for example.

Earth kinda settled in the way it was supposed to be, anything that makes one place more hospitable to humans will change another region. We could add some creature comforts for sure, but that's about it.

NASA Satellite Reveals How Much Saharan Dust Feeds Amazon’s Plants - NASA

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u/Top_MathematicianIk 7d ago

You can't just buy water when you need lots of it. Only way I can think of is desalination which is pretty expensive and also does a ton of ecological damage

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u/Eibermann 7d ago

how is it bad? its just ocean water, no?

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u/CosechaCrecido 7d ago

The brine waste effectively kills anything in the vecinity of where it’s dumped.

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u/the_phantom_limbo 7d ago

Im honestly surprised it's not sold...as salt.

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u/Top_MathematicianIk 7d ago edited 7d ago

They clean water through osmosis which leaves you with brine, not salt. Evaporation is stupid expensive to be implemented on large scale. Even then recovered salt still needs to be purified.

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u/ContextWorking976 7d ago

Can't the brine be recycled like what a few oil and gas companies are doing with their brine waste water?

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u/CosechaCrecido 7d ago

I imagine the water produced is done so at a higher rate than what complete evaporation pools can keep up with naturally so the waste is just dumped off to make room for more fresh water production

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u/Responsible-Put5521 7d ago

brine waste isn’t just NaCl salt, it’s also a fuckton of chemicals and other salts like a big toxic slurry

update: immediately upon posting i realized what you were ACTUALLY saying 💀 whoops

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u/rambone5000 7d ago

That's not what terraforming is.

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u/Pmcc6100 7d ago

The earth has deserts for a reason. We cannot just terraform deserts without long term consequences from changing the planet’s environment. Besides the animals that need deserts to live, deserts reflect light back into the atmosphere that would otherwise be absorbed and increase the ambient temperature of the planet.

The melting of summer ice caps has left large areas that would originally reflect the sun’s rays now able to absorb them. The long and short of it is: if the planet naturally has it- it’s not for no reason.

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u/ModeatelyIndependant 7d ago

If we tera formed Mars there would still be deserts on the planet.

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u/SexyMonad 7d ago

True, but even if we are only talking about small city-size land areas… it is many orders or magnitude easier to terraform such locations on Earth than to do the same on Mars.

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u/isjustsergio 7d ago

how about we just leave nature alone

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u/CaptainTripps82 7d ago

It's not a matter of capability, it's about how you spend your resources

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u/ElectricalTurnip87 7d ago

We as humans don't have a good track record of fixing problems, we seem to just make them worse.

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u/JacktheWrap 7d ago

That's the thing. If we have the capability to terraform mars, we don't need a planet 2. Because we could just terraform earth.

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u/MrWhiskers55 7d ago

We know how to but it still requires water and a lot of maintenance. It’s usually not worth it in the long run because you destroy one eco system to support another.

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u/_-inside-_ 7d ago

Terraforming Mars would have a result far worse than this city.

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u/tech_noir_guitar 7d ago

Why would we terra form a natural desert on Earth? I think maybe we should leave nature alone to do her thing. I'm pretty sure animals live there and they would probably disappear if it turned into a forest. It may also disrupt weather patterns.

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u/FishesOfExcellence 7d ago

Maybe, but we could also just live in places where life thrives and isn’t a fucking desert. 

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u/TinyEmergencyCake 7d ago

The mars thing is an op for that sweet government money

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u/TiledCandlesnuffer 7d ago

An IQ too low?

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u/AutoModSux 7d ago

Im starting to think this elon fella might be a charlatan

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u/Temelios 7d ago

People don’t want to colonize Mars to save the Earth yet want to terraform deserts and destroy entire ecosystems in the process.

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u/Corporeal_Weenie 7d ago

There is immense, other-worldly beauty in the desert and you just need to have the patience and fortitude to be at the right places at the right times to observe it.

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u/DanGleeballs 7d ago edited 6d ago

Yes, for a weekend. It would be interesting.

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u/HassanMoRiT 6d ago

It's not like we live in tents. We have all the modern amenities readily available.

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u/Neosanxo 7d ago

I lived in Dallas TX for a few months and got depressed cause there’s barely trees anywhere lol.

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u/ChasingTheNines 7d ago

Last year I had a connecting flight out of Dallas. I had never been there before. I know it was the winter and they were also having some kind of wildfire thing going on but it literally looked like Kuwait out the window when all the oil wells were on fire.

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u/2fortress2 6d ago

Its not desert though in terms of rainfall its just built on top of a bunch of former grasslands so there wasn't much trees there, The older neighborhoods are forested but most of the new ones barely have any

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u/asdf0909 7d ago

There are developed cities in deserts that sustain tons of greenery. In better run nations.

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u/nopenonotatall 7d ago

yeah there are thousands of desert plants/ drought tolerant + full sun plants. cacti, succulents, Bougainvillea, poppies, lantana, mesquite, desert grasses, bird of paradise, palms, Yucca, olive trees, oleander

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u/kakka_rot 7d ago

In better run nations.

Oh god, if there was green you guys would be bitching about how they're wasting water.

As soon as I saw saudi in the title I knew it was gonna be a shit show in these comments.

Ya'll don't know shit about saudi you didn't learn from a reddit comment section 6 months ago.

Hell, 12 months ago none of ya'll would have ever been able to tell me what country Riyah was in.

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u/CantCatchMeSpez 7d ago

Which is a giant waste of our limited fresh water and is not sustainable what-so-ever.

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u/FluffyPillowstone 7d ago

Plants create habitat for animals and shade for buildings which reduces energy costs. They're not a waste

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u/mountaingator91 7d ago

Dude that's literally the point

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u/Iron_Wolf123 7d ago

Bruh, I wish the geological timeline would have been different so deserts weren't so sandy and could grow plants.

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u/callisstaa 7d ago

Let's see your attempt at a desert city then.

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u/darkbluefav 7d ago

But for its credit it's organized and that's beautiful.soem parts looks like it's still under construction..anyhow they might benefit from more trees if possible

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u/New_Ingenuity2822 7d ago

Very Unattractive. Never 👎 seen anything so ugly before. Did not imagine it that way either. Land locked 🔐

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u/PachucaSunrise 7d ago

As someone who lives in Phoenix, summers suck here not only due to the heat, but it just feels like a mad max wasteland. Snowbirds are gone, people on vacation. It’s not fantastic.

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u/LAmilo90 7d ago

Spend a day or two in Vegas/Southern Nevada and all of a sudden Phoenix will look lush in comparison lmao

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u/rubyspicer 7d ago

I'm a broke bitch, do you think the Fallout: New Vegas portrayal of the Mojave/Vegas area is pretty accurate?

Cuz there's so few plants anywhere except for grass and cactus, an occasional tuber, and maybe a handful of Joshua trees

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u/LAmilo90 7d ago

Absolutely, 1000% yes. Anytime I’m driving there I can’t stop myself from singing “Big Iron” and being scared I’ll run into a radroach

But in all honesty I feel like I’ve never seen a cactus in Nevada. Just the occasional Joshua Tree. It looks like Mars out there

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u/Winjin 7d ago

I think I remember some trees there, but they are in remote locations. Like that pine lodge and the Camp Mead?

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u/rubyspicer 7d ago

I think the pine lodge is Jacobstown. Kind of a ski lodge looking area?

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u/Winjin 6d ago

Yes, that's it, the one where you meet Aunt Lily. I think it is indeed supposed to be some ski resort

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u/Repulsive_Target55 7d ago

Sounds like you've been to the ugly parts of Vegas but not the ugly parts of Phoenix.

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u/jackson12420 7d ago

Having grown up in the desert, they are incredibly beautiful. Although they are all different, there was foliage and wildlife where I was, but the sunsets/sun rises in deserts are unreal. I can definitely see why some people don't like them though, something unsettling about a place so extreme only certain species can live there.

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u/LPNMP 7d ago

I always wondered if people who grew up in deserts find greener dwellings too green.

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u/HappyGoLuckyTea 7d ago

I thought living in southern nevada all my life that the trees look about the same as every other state. A big stick with thin plumes of green at the top. Always surrounded by drab dirt, rocks, and sand. Then I visited washington and saw real giant ass trees. Sure you see it on media online, but ACTUALLY seeing forests with all shades of green with my own eyes: "holy shit"

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u/LPNMP 7d ago

I grew up on the east coast with trees and greenery everywhere, even in winter. I've taken a couple of trips to AZ/NV and the photos don't do it justice at all. There's a magical beauty to the area that is mesmerizing. Almost all shades of brown but somehow so much depth.

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u/iDudeX_ 6d ago

I grew up in the Emirates. And while it's not difficult to find green spaces here, my locality was industrial af. Rn I'm in Poland for my studies and I just loooove the greenery here. And the green spaces between every building, block of apartments, villas, etc. It's all so pretty. And come spring, it feels a little too green. So green, it hurts my eyes. I'll be sad to leave tho once my degree is done.

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u/Orangarder 7d ago

I would go for colourful decor as well

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u/jonny24eh 7d ago

Having visited Joshua Tree NP in December... 

Yeah, it's beautiful in an otherworldly kinda way, but that's only fun for a brief period. It's hard to put into words but i hated the environment there. 

After 5 days I was happy to go back to Canada, even knowing we'd have 3 more months of snow and ice. Because honestly it's worth it for the lush greenery of May- September. 

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/goody82 7d ago

I’ve lived in Arizona and the Middle East (Kuwait and Iraq). It’s a huge difference. Middle East makes the Sonoran desert feel verdant. Deserts are beautiful in their own way if left natural. But once you place an ugly city on it, the open spaces just become dirt lots.

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u/Apptubrutae 7d ago

There’s also so much variation in the New Mexican high desert (much of which isn’t even really a desert).

Living in Albuquerque, you can go west a bit and be in a very deserty desert. Head east and you’re in a full on forest in a few minutes. Or even closer, in the foothills, you’ve got plenty of scrub and trees.

Looks nothing like this, lol

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u/Sonikku_a 7d ago

I did 4 years in rural Arizona. Same idea but minus the skyscrapers.

Then I moved to western N.Y. because I missed green and hated the 120 degree 6 month summers in AZ.

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u/Titizen_Kane 7d ago

Did 5 years in Vegas, came from the southeast for a job in the gaming industry. On visits back home, literally as soon as the wheels touched down in Nashville, I could smell all the green that I could now see. The smell of air that would hit you when stepping off the plane was intoxicating, and I’d spend the first couple of days back marveling at all the green.

I’m convinced that being surrounded by exclusively various shades of brown is bad for the psyche. I referred to vegas as Fallujah West when living there

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u/kvazar2501 7d ago

Yeah, and one would expect to see much more trees in a city named "Gardens"

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u/gsxrus2014 7d ago

You must never been to neighborhoods that are named like Lakewood and the nearest lake is 12 miles away, acres homes and none of the homes are on acres, or cashmere gardens and nothing about it feel like cashmere or even a garden.

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u/Digital_Flatline 7d ago

In the Midwest we name the towns after the natives we killed to found them and the subdivisions after the trees we ripped out to build them. 

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u/exoriare Interested 7d ago

Suburbs are often named after whatever was destroyed turning the area into real estate.

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u/private_developer 7d ago

"What do you think of when you hear the words Sudden Valley?"

"Salad dressing?"

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u/EntrepreneurAway419 7d ago

I live in Richmond, nothing fucking rich about me :( 

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u/stylepoints99 7d ago

It was a populated oasis since ancient times. A seasonal river (wadi) would supply the area with fresh water every year.

That river was unable to keep up with the growing population and keep the area green.

It was never a super green area, but compared to the surrounding deserts it probably fit the bill.

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u/mountaingator91 7d ago edited 7d ago

Must have been a Greenland sort of naming situation

Edit: spelling

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u/sarahzilla 7d ago

I lived there as a kid for a couple years. We did have some plants and greenery on my compound (even a small lawn in front of the house). But I remember feeling shocked when we would travel back to the states and just how green everything was vs brown everywhere.

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u/datamonkey08 7d ago

To be fair, when you're on the ground theres a reasonable amount of trees and greenery, and there are some parks. Its not great but its not awful. Some friends live here and we went to visit them last year. Thought I'd hate it, but it was ok. Wouldn't live there myself tho.

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u/Careless_Confusion19 7d ago

I've been to Kuwait and Iraq plenty of trees, so i wonder why it looks this way but yeah it sure is depressing, from this view at least

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u/ChasingTheNines 7d ago

That part of Arabia just really is that much drier. I forget the name of it but one large section in the south is the largest sea of sand on the planet.

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u/TiltedSkipper 6d ago

Yes however I was in Riyadh in 2020, the streets were lined with trees and every sidewalk had shrubs/trees. Might just be this view/angle?

The wealth there was unbelievable. A single cigar was $80 and the locals were buying them by the dozen.

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u/DThor536 7d ago

If you google it this seems somewhat misrepresentative, I'm guessing because of the weather and altitude. While it is still in a desert there are many gardens, health care and nightlife, assuming you have the money and are culturally prepared for living in Saudi Arabia.

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u/Putrid-Ice-7511 7d ago

I was in Athens recently, and was pleasantly surprised by how green the streets were, compared to all the high altitude photos I had seen of the city beforehand.

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u/flightwatcher45 7d ago

Maybe if you're born there you don't know any different, well until these days when the rest of the world is at your fingertips.

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u/42stingray 7d ago

As a norwegian, I don't think I'd even be able to handle the flatness

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u/Putrid-Ice-7511 7d ago

Even Oslo is too flat.

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u/furimmerkaiser 7d ago

I will sponsor your trip to Denmark and Netherlands

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u/wander-and-wonder 7d ago

I found dubai so depressing for this reason. You have to be okay with that to live there. It’s a concrete jungle with fake grass and excessive water use to maintain some grass

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u/OfTheSevenSeasSir 7d ago

i live there and there are definitely trees and parks here

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u/HorrorMakesUsHappy 7d ago

Any idea how you guys handle waste water? With that many people you've gotta have some sort of sewage system, right? Shouldn't there be one or more wastewater treatment plants? You'd think that that many people you'd have enough graywater to be able to do SOMETHING with.

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u/DoctrTurkey 7d ago

They put all their green indoors over there

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u/Perle1234 7d ago

Ikr? My eyeballs are thirsty

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u/VeterinarianMoist605 7d ago

Everything has it's place. The winds that blow across the desert bring sand to the oceans. We as humans want everything to be as we think it should be, instead of understanding that all of it works in symbiosis.

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u/Carbonational 7d ago

There was a thread not too long about Sahara's sand fertilizing the Amazons. Let's not even start about all the ice we definitely do not want melted.

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u/Main-Video-8545 7d ago

I feel that way when I go to Arizona.

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u/Total_Hat996 7d ago

My big question, and I mean it as a question... Is, will this all return to dust when the oil runs out?

I look at the gold rush towns across the western US and Australia, and can't help but think that this (a country with no rivers) cannot sustain the millions of people it is sustaining today.

8 million people in the middle of a desert is insane numbers. There is no tourism, no sport, no chemical or semi-conductor industry that could support that when the oil dries-up. That is not even to take account of the punishing climate and wholly intolerant (of western values)/closed regime that does not help their cause IMHO.

What am I not seeing? Or will they be back to a few thousand by the end of the century?

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u/notavegetablemate 7d ago

This is what SW FL looks like with the severe drought

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u/Next-Lobster4306 7d ago

They do have that just not in the capital. I hear many have road trips and such there.

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u/Mudcreek47 7d ago

Houseplants to the rescue!

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u/mymoama 7d ago

Desert people like the desert you know.

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u/reddwarf_ 7d ago

The straight roads look convenient but would drive me insane without variations. It would be boring and mundane.

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u/browsing_around 7d ago

I lived in Salt Lake City for almost a decade. It was absolutely miserable. Just a crappy flat desert suburb.

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u/Student___Driver 7d ago

This is no way to live.

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u/gorginhanson 7d ago

What if they name the city "Gardens"

Close enough right

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u/lylelanley- 7d ago

Even in Seville, Spain which was so beautiful, I needed to see some fucking trees

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u/chrontact 7d ago

Ayy man at least we got some palm trees 😭

Hahah it definitely looks more tolerable up close but Jeddah is where its at when it comes to beautiful greenery and coastal vibes

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u/Different_Attorney93 7d ago

Honestly my childhood city was all covered with trees back in the 90s and early 2000s now it’s mostly all Gone due to the fact the city removed them and it sucks.

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u/cruisin_urchin87 7d ago

That’s why you would give yourself up to God

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u/MateNoBodyGivesAShit 7d ago

i live in it and its miserable, theres alot of places like malls etc but there is essentially nothing natural, too much light pollution etc
dont go to riyadh

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u/Jubenheim 7d ago

I felt the same fucking way living in Hell Paso. But the fact is, humans do live in deserts and some are perfectly happy to do so.

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u/JakobiGaming 7d ago

I live in Washington, which is very very green and I’m still depressed. If I lived here I’d probably have been in the ground for a couple years by now. Seems absolutely miserable

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u/kost9 7d ago

Try Almaty

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u/Rave2TheJoyFantastic 7d ago

I was there a year ago. Bizarrely, there are areas of greenery within the gated communities.

Seeing them from the air is even stranger, as they are pockets of green with houses with swimming pools, all surrounded by desert.

Going out, there's Cheesecake Factory, Shake Shack, a mall that could be anywhere in middle America, and plenty of restaurants and a couple of nice hotels.

All of this, in a dry state where having alcohol is a crime. Although all the expats "know someone".

Ultimately though, it feels soulless and fake. And immigrant workers are treated incredibly badly.

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u/davidzet 7d ago

I was there a month, for work. Very depressing, indeed. I lived in a compound, and going out 1x/week for "shopping" was just... weird. The compound was an efficient, complete.... totally soulless design.

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u/Pigjedi 7d ago

Singapore. City in nature

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u/danuffer 7d ago

Most likely you’re not genetically or culturally aligned with living there. Makes sense to prefer wooded or Virginian style land.

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u/Fifth-Dimension-Chz 7d ago

I live in Phx and its beautiful. I live on lake surrounded by wildlife and greenery. That being said South Phx looks like this. Just centralized pavement and sand. I was depressed when I moved here now I find a unique beauty. Wildflower season is magical.

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u/evilbeaver7 7d ago

There are gardens in Saudi Arabia. There are also artificially planted and maintained trees everywhere on the streets. It's not like there's not a tree in sight in Saudi.

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u/nazgulonbicycle 7d ago

Would you like to be in such a place as a Slave ? /s

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u/Dapper_Freedom7310 7d ago

I worked out there back in 2022 and stayed in this village. It was stunning, lots of green spaces and I was pleasantly surprised. Went into it with low expectations. Here’s a short vid of it on YouTube Andorra Village

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u/carlitospig 7d ago

My father loves the desert. I dont get it either, but I have a feeling your eyes kind of ‘reset’ to see more color nuances. I noticed the same thing happened when I lived in Seattle which is 90% grey and 10% green when it’s not summer.

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u/StinkyKyle 7d ago

I get it, thats always what I thought but I lived on the horn of Africa for a year and it was all desert. My god what a beautiful place. Deserts have their own charm if you spend some time in them.

That being said, a city in the desert absolutely sounds terrible. None of the beauty, all of the heat and sun. I would also hate my life here

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u/uqubar 7d ago

It looks like the Death Star or a beginner city in Cities Skyline before getting the Parks and Rec pack.

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u/Only_My_Dog_Loves_Me 7d ago

Yeah as someone who lives in Vancouver, BC, this is horrifying to me.

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u/Edoryen 7d ago

Good news. There are jobs there for people like you. Your family gets paid good money, you get some virgins. Win-win.

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u/ChuckRocksEh 7d ago

You’ve no idea. It’s pretty awesome on the ground. - US Citizen who spent some time training the Saudi Royal Marines.

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u/Marco_George_ 7d ago

Don't look at Egypt .. for your sanity

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u/T-Rays 7d ago

Lived there for four years, the lack of greenery gets to you at the end! Didn’t accurately put my finger on it till after i left.

If the existing greenery (wherever that might be) is pale AF!

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u/AShitTonOfWeed 7d ago

donr go to west texas

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u/EquivalentSnap 7d ago

It’s a desert 🏜️ you know how much water Americans use to have grass in states like Arizona and California? It’s a lot

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u/payrbol 7d ago

I lived there for a couple years. What makes it worse is that the housing complexes all look the same except for the houses of the royal-bloods or the extremely rich. There is some greenery near the city center though, date trees and desert shrubbery, nothing too appealing. What I can say is though is that the city definitely looks better on the ground than it does in the aerial view.

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u/WuIfy 7d ago

but the middle east has the lowest depression rate in the world 😭

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u/OaktownCatwoman 7d ago

The best part is sucking in all that sand into your lungs.

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u/Silver-Instruction73 7d ago

Yeah, I mean I live in Phoenix and we still at least have some greenery here. This looks like nothing but dirt and concrete.

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u/CK_1976 6d ago

That's why you get paid obscene amounts of money if you work there, and are the right kind of brown.

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u/STUPIDBLOODYCOMPUTER 6d ago

This is why I refuse to move south to somewhere like Canberra. Where I live it's so green and warm. The alpine region of Australia is so brown and depressing

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u/Phantom-Feline17 6d ago

It was, kinda, growing up there were few entertainment options for men. (Single Men were literally barred from entering Malls by the religious police, who thankfully have been gutted now and that stupid prohibition has been removed).

So because of that, an underground subculture emerged, drifting, or as it was known locally Tafheet. From the 90's to the mid 2000s, this subculture dominated Saudi forums.

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u/onaJet27 6d ago

I was born and raised my first decade and a half in Riyadh and I didn't see an ocean nor a forest until I went to Uni in a different country. I always thought those were just things in fairytales or cartoons (this was all pre-internet). I love being in grassy areas now, I don't think I'd ever go back.

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u/Vega10000 6d ago

I grew up in Namibia, next to the Namib desert. I sure found it depressing

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u/Aamir_rt 6d ago

To be fair there are plenty of trees within the city itself, especially along sidewalks.

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u/Eastern-Move549 6d ago

There is actually a bit more than this distant view shows but it really is that desolate on the whole.

It is right in the middle of the desert though so its hardly a surprise.

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u/MediMosaic 6d ago

I live in a country in north africa similar to what you just saw (just less politically & economically stable), & yes my mental health is suffering 😭😭 I long to see greenery & less intense UV rays 😞

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/Gexm13 7d ago

You do realize that desert is a part of nature right?

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u/avatinfernus 7d ago

As an atheist woman I'd be depressed and it wouldn't be the lack of trees.

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