The Diomede Islands
Monday, 1st May 2006 by
These are the Diomede Islands, two islands only 3km apart but one is in Russia, the other in the USA. These islands are right in the middle of the Bering Straights and the international dateline runs right in between them. Therefore, you can stand on the eastern island in Alaska and look into "tomorrow" in Russia, pretty trippy.
The Diomede Islands are often mentioned as likely intermediate stops for some kind of bridge or tunnel spanning the Bering Straits, which would be one big and expensive bridge!
Thanks: Adrian & Gut
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ah.. i got a question in Trivial Pursuit recently – “which communist country is closest to the USA?”. i answered cuba – i figure it’s close enough to swim! very old version – and the Soviet Union was the answer – this must be why.
Michael Palin started and ended his “Full Circle” adventure here.
The Wikipedia page on the islands is worth a look.
Last month, a British explorer, Karl Bushby, and his companion walked across the Bering Strait as part of his attempt to walk around the world. Unfortunately they were detained by the Russians for not “landing” at a proper customs point, and now the future of the expedition is in doubt. http://goliath.mail2web.com/
A big, expensive, and altogether completely unnecessary bridge indeed! Who on earth drives up there?! I’m pretty sure no big roads exist in that area, and anyway, wouldn’t any cars or trucks freeze if they attempted it during eight of the twelve months of the year?
Speaking of large, superflous, and wasteful bridges in Alaska, did you know that last fall, the two Alaska Senators in the US Congress tried to get a bridge built from this town: View Placemark …to the island just south of it? 8,900 people live in Ketchikan and 50 people live on the other island. Americans, you guys may know it as the “Bridge to Nowhere.” Apparently plans haven’t been fully killed even yet.
The main reason they wanted the bridge is that their airport is on the other side of the water.
I’ve read about that proposed bridge before, but I’m not sure where. Ketchikan International Airport is on the island, and they want it linked to the town.
Still, they’re going to try to channel $223 million of federal funds to the project, which I neglected to mention before, and that’s just wasteful.
There are no roads within hundreds of miles of the Bering Sea on the Alaska side, so any Alaska-Siberia bridge via the Diomedes would require an enormous amount of access-road construction. I rather doubt there are many roads on the Siberian side either.
I heard that there are a handful of Russian soldiers stationed on the Eastern Russian Island. Anyone out there that knows more about this?
What military instalations, past or present, have / had been established on either islands, and what did the respective gov’t’s claim to be their necessity?
I was a part of the 143rd AC&W squadron of Air National Guard men who helped build and operate the RADAR site at Wales Alaska during the cold war. The weather there is intolerable. The wind blows the very dirt off of the mountain leaving what looks like a Dinsours back with only boulders showing. It blows a hundred miles an hour anytime of the year. No man in his right mind would build a road across the Bering Straights. No man in his right mind would try to navigate the road if it WERE built. Trucks would be blown right into the straights. NOT ON YOU LIFE WOULD I DRIVE THAT ROAD. And, I have driven for sixteen years in Alaska as a cop and Federal Marshal at Kotsabue. Regards, Gerald Crisman (Read’TWO AND A HALF MISSIONS, MAX’)
haha, I’m a local from little diomede, i think i was just a baby when micheal palin started his circle, we’ve got pictures of him in a walrus “skin boat”. I lived there most of my life and i couldnt imagine living anywhere else, you see and live at the edge of another part of the world thats a day ahead, the weather there isnt always ” blowing” , summer and spring are the nicest. Our ways of getting in and out of there is with a helicopter, and boats during the summer, we make an ice run way when the ice freezes over between the two island. Yeah, it’s pretty extreme,
Travis, please email me at [email protected]. I hope to visit Little Diomede this summer and would like to chat with you. Be sure to put the s in webmails.
A bridge across the Diomedes Islands to Siberia would: 1. Also building a nice unterrupted highway from the USA to Moscow. It could also carry a pipeline alongside operning the vast Siberian oil fields (centuries of world supply there), allowing the US to tell the mideastern camel jocks and Chavez to stuff it. 2. Be vastly cheaper than Ted Kennedy’s “Big Dig”, which was merely a diversion of huge amounts of taxpayer money to his Mafia buddies for no good reason. 3. Open a land trade route to yhe entire Orient for North America.
Vehicles are commonly dtiven many hundreds of miles further north than the latitude of the Diomedes Islands. Vehicles can be safely and (reasonably) comfortably operated down to 80 below aero Farenheit (I did it for years in Fairbanks). Snow and ice cease to be slick below 35 below or so, and get a granular sandy surface. To be slick, a thin layer of melt water (from the pressure of boots, tires, etc.) must form on ice; this does not happen in extreme cold.
Hi – Mainly a message for travis above……. I would love to be in touch with a local in The Diomedes with a view to visit the island and learn about culture etc. Regardless what some say, I think it sounds like a lovely place to visit. I hope you get in touch.
Message for Travis above. Hey I’m on the boat that just passed you this afternoon. Wish I had seen your post on this site before. Maybe we could have waved to each other and looked at one another through the binos. Maybe on the way back down. If you see this message: offshorebiologist at yah00
I think they should build the bridge. I would go across it to Russia. If the wind only blows around 100 miles per hour, I can get my corvette up to 130 easily. So I could outrun the wind with no problem!
Live Long and Prosper
Travis, I am intrigued, how do you get Internet access out there?
Ernie gave some very good reasons for building a bridge over the Bering Strait.
Michael Palin started but not ended (because of bad weather conditions) his “Full Circle” adventure here
Bearing strait bridge would cost too much. What? Put it into perspective. From Wikipedia ” Discovery Channel’s Extreme Engineering estimates the cost of a highway, double track rail and pipelines, at $105 billion.” Ok that’s an engineers estimate and they are always wrong so we need a contingency. Lets say X5 = $525 billion. US government bailouts in 2008 = +/- 1369 billion. Real useless spending is the cold war. Center for Defense Information / U.S. Military Spending, 1945-1996 “Total cost of the Cold War (1948-1991) in 1996 dollars = $13.1 Trillion. Soviet Union cold war cost lets say = US cost. US + USSR cold war cost = $26.2 trillion = 26,200 billion. Build the bridge, spend the money, stimulate the US and Russian economies. As for oil at Gull Island or which way the oil would flow US to Russia or the other way around send the seismographic information, I have an retired expert who has interpreted the data in Iraq, Bahrain, Malaysia, North Sea etc., and who knows the relative costs of developing oil fields or pools as you know call them. Enough of this bull you either know what you are talking about or not. I at least know any argument can be fabricated and substantiated out of ignorance of the unknowing. Stop this internet sewage, your creating too much co2. Yes my punctuation and spelling suck,
Hello Travis: I was standing on top of Mt. Constitution at Wales in 1950 as the RADAR site was being built. I was the FIRST Airforce man, in uniform, to EVER be in Wales Alaska. It was an education to be there. I have a book called: ‘NAIVE IN THE BUSH’ coming out this summer, all about your world…. No, I am too old now to go back, but I wish you well. Jerry Crisman
Travis, Very recently when I was browsing google maps, I came to know about your islands. Its just awesome. Only 2.5 miles separating Russia and USA and 21hrs time zone difference. You can actually peep into tomorrow of Big diomede!!
Well I am from India,I am interested in knowing about ur people, food, culture bla bla bla.. Please email me at [email protected]. I wish I could come there and talk with you, may be some time in life. India is too far too.. I wish you well
Sriram.
Travis: Also think of the fact that there is no road leading up to Wales Alaska. Hundreds of miles of God forsaken land to build this road would put the Alaskan highway to be a baby in retrospect. NO government would be fool enough to build such a thousand mile road to the bridge and then,,, for what? We can ship all the oil in the frozen world by boat. Nuts to the bridge.