r/Retconned • u/ByteInferno • 28d ago

My Geography-Based Mandela Effects, latest version

These are my personal geography-based Mandela Effects (latest version), the reason why I believe I'm on a different planet:

  • Hudson Bay wasn't as big or was just at the coast.
  • The Gulf of California didn't exist.
  • There was a polar land mass.
  • The Pacific Islands in general were much smaller and located further apart. (Now you could travel from Asia over the Pacific Islands to Australia in a boat or whatever -- in the world where I came from, you couldn't) When I first saw this, I knew for certain I was on a different planet.
  • North America was smaller and had a regular shape.
  • Greenland wasn't located near North America at all, it was in the ocean between North America and England, and it was rotated horizontally. Also, it was a lot smaller.
  • Tasmania wasn't an island, and Hobart was on the Australian land mass.
  • New Zealand was much closer to Australia.
  • Africa had a Northeastern Region with Ethopia in it, in the area where the Arabian Peninsula now is.
  • The Arabian Peninsula was much smaller.
  • The African continent was located further South, thus Europe was larger. The tip of South Africa wasn't far from Antarctica.
  • India was located further West, I think, and it was bigger.
  • Pakistan was located Northeast of India.
  • Antarctica was at least twice as large.
  • France and Spain had better shaped coastlines.
  • Brittany was located in the furthest Northwest of France.
  • Bay of Biscay didn't exist. It was called "Coast of Biscay".
  • Portugal was on the East coast of Spain.
  • The Basque inoffical region was along the West coasts of Southern France and Spain.
  • England was further out to the sea and rotated upright.
  • Ireland was much smaller.
  • Greece wasn't half sunk. It was a solid piece of land. The islands were all located in the Mediterranean Sea.
  • Turkey might have been a lot smaller. More like Greece. (I'm not entirely sure about this)
  • Russia was much smaller.
  • South America was further West.
  • Brazil was smaller and it wasn't a federation.
  • Middle America (what's between North and South America) was a lot smaller.
  • September 25 update: Until now, I never really noticed how big the Eurasian continent is -- it's definitely almost (or even more than) twice the size North to South (especially in the East) than in my original world. Also, until today, in this world it seemed smaller before (I might have drifted further). Actually, pretty useful, since overpopulation isn't that big of an issue in this world (all three have 8 billion inhabitants).
  • October 3 update: China was a lot smaller.
  • October 9 update: In this version of Earth, you can rotate the globe such that it shows only water with a few tiny islands (including Hawaii). In the version I came from, that wasn't possible, and you always saw chunks of at least one continent.

There's probably much more that I forgot to mention. I'll add more as I remember them.

Errata:

  • The bullet point about Brittany previously stated that I thought it was located in the furthest Northeast of France. This was a typo. I actually meant to write "Northwest". I corrected that.
24 Upvotes

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u/AutoModerator 8d ago

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u/Human1228 17d ago

I have only noticed one of these, in my experience. The west coast of the usa led into south america. It didnt start more east like it appears to now. I was a pretty good student and have traveled the us quite a bit. When i noticed this map change it really shook me.

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u/AutoModerator 19d ago

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u/loonygecko Moderator 22d ago

Ah yes, I agree with you on most of it other than some stuff I don't remember either way. Sounds like you come from a similar reality. I am pretty sure part of it is the earth is just way smaller so less ocean and the land masses are more scrunched together. I used to look at a globe earth image and could see north and south america all at once on one side of the earth with a ton of water around them but now you can't because they wrap around the earth curvature too much. I am not sure if Russia actually got larger or it's more like other areas like Europe have shrunk a lot so Russia looks larger in comparison. Also just an FYI, Europe is generally considered to be a different continent than Asia here, I think that had to get split to maintain the 7 continents thing. Without Arctica as a continent, they had to scrape up another continent someplace.

Glad to see some on your list I rarely or never see others mentioned, like how Greece is a jillion weird islands now looking like someone spilled parmesan (formerly parmesean) cheese on the ocean. And Crete got huge! If you watch, locations along the coast are forming into protected water ways with barrier islands surrounding them. Sometimes similar is happening with Japan, they are they barrier islands for that region (and Japan used to be down by China). Also look at the giant strings of islands coming up like what is come off the edge of very inflated Alaska. Tons of islands are showing up and growing, Sicily, Corsica, etc are huge now. Also there's been massive magic upgrades to ports and water systems along coasts, the main port in San Diego is maybe 3 times better than before and now much deeper having 'always' been deep enough for huge cruise ships now. (lies LOL!)

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u/ByteInferno 22d ago

I can't make heads and tails of the size numbers of this Earth. Circumference is 40,000 km, and diameter is 12,000 km. In my original world, was it 36,000 km diameter or circumference? Must have been circumference, but then that one would have been smaller. Mars was half the diameter of Earth. Same here. So, is this Earth smaller or larger than the one I came from? I have no idea. It does appear smaller, but perhaps that's only because the land masses are so large.

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u/loonygecko Moderator 20d ago

Oops, my timeline had Mars closest in size to earth in size, here it is Venus. Also Venus has a hard shell you can land on here and they did land on it way back, I think it was the 60s. So we had diff outer spaces it seems (ug sounds so weird to have to say!!). Plus I had only 1 manned moon landing in my timeline. Also had Arctica and the moon only came out at night, that one really bends my brain.

Sadly I am not a numbers person so I don't remember them easily. But what we are seeing is time is faster and the day is shorter in subjective time. Even so called normies and young people comment on that a lot now. Could be argument for smaller earth yielding faster spin. And in most places, drive time to most places is shorter, even though time is faster, which means distance must be a lot shorter. Which would indicate even land is shrinking. The one exception is Russia, some Russians reported longer drive times in some locations, so they are shrinking less or something. Also we see that there's a lot less ocean compared to land so either land is getting bigger or ocean is getting smaller. Since the other things point to things shrinking, imma voting on oceans getting smaller.

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u/ByteInferno 8d ago

It really messes with my mind sometimes that time passes so much more quickly here: Somebody here measured it and said it's 50% faster than before. Makes sense to me.

Since the Eurasian continent has become much, MUCH larger than it used to be, and has become insanely huge, and thus Russia and China have become larger, it makes perfect sense that Russians experience longer driving times (compared to their previous version of Earth if it was similar to mine).

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u/loonygecko Moderator 1d ago

Yep, that is what I was thinking, time is 50% approx faster IME too judging by "one mississippi' so it should take them twice as long to get somewhere if the distance was the same. If time is sped up by 50% but the distance is halved, then drive time should stay the same. THose peopel did not report 50% longer drive times so that could mean Russia also is shrinking but not as fast as the rest of the world. The end result is Russia would comparatively look bigger on the map than other parts of the world as the situation progressed.

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u/ByteInferno 22d ago

I added the latest (today's update) to my post, about the size of the Eurasian continent. I made a screenshot of Google Earth, just for posterity:

Doesn't Eurasia look REALLY big (now)?

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u/greenjaden 24d ago

For me, Sicily was much further away from Italy than it appears now.

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u/Ok-Cellist-3102 27d ago

look at the mediterranean sea! i remember Corsica and Sardinia were way smaller than they are now and sat just off the north west coast of Italy, Ibiza was east of Mallorca and they sat roughly where Sardinia is

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u/tide_left_behind 9d ago edited 9d ago

What strikes me as surprising looking at the Mediterranean to check what you're talking about is how far east Cyprus is! I would have guessed it was much closer to where Crete actually is. As it is, it's more like an island off the coast of the Levant rather than Europe.

I'm not about to label this a Mandela effect though, as it's not like I ever was enough of a geography nerd to really care much about where the islands were in the Mediterranean. I can't ever recall learning in world history about any event that happened in Cyprus, and the only connection with Crete is that some ancient civilization that preceded classical Greece, I think it was the Minoans, at least partially lived there. The only association I even have with Cyprus other than the simple fact that it was an island in the Mediterranean was that a random girl I met in college told me that she was originally from Cyprus, and that most people she told that to didn't even know it existed.

So given that they both start with C and have Greek-ish names, it's understandable that my mind would have kind of lumped them together. I still would have guessed that Crete was west of Cyprus, just not THAT much west. Like, I could easily have imagined them being closer to each other than either was to the mainland.

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u/loonygecko Moderator 22d ago

Yep, those used to be so tiny that often would not label their name on regular maps, can't easily name every little speck.

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u/Caldaris__ 27d ago

South America just looks wrong now.

There definitely was a North Pole land mass. It was way smaller than Antarctica but it was there.

When I was really into Lord of the Rings I wanted to know where they filmed as it looked amazing. I looked up NZ and learned it was somewhere between the UK and the Netherlands. I could've read the map wrong but it was on Google. That's just my experience. Just a small bit of land surrounded by water. Some remember it in the left side of Australia too and others more North to the right.

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u/gracefulwing 27d ago

just Zealand is a place in the Netherlands

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u/ByteInferno 27d ago

Very interesting, I didn't hear about the NZ one before (NZ between the UK and the Netherlands). Did you notice any other changes from your previous timeline?

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u/Caldaris__ 27d ago

As far as geography not myself just what others have mentioned in comments. Like the part where Alaska and Russia meet are supposedly slightly different. The shape of the land looks unusual. I remember it being fairly simple. I could almost draw it.

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u/oldworldnewlife 28d ago

You absolutely are. If we don't like it here we have to change our entire lifestyle to shift somewhere else.

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u/ByteInferno 27d ago edited 27d ago

It really depends on what other YOUs are available. I happened to have a version of me that underwent almost exactly the same experience. But I did have to change over years to bridge over that final gap. My hobbies are slightly different now, I have an additional permanent injury, and so on. I did all of this unconsciously, and only now I'm aware of what actually happened. That ME that was previously here obviously either was replaced, died, shifted elsewhere or whatever. And myself, I might have died in that other version of Earth. So, it's a bit like quantum immortality. BTW, I *did* wish as a kid to live forever, but I'm not sure if I'll actually achieve it in some way.

(anyone remember the song "Forever Young" by Alphaville?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHRvDo8rUoQ

)

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u/Free-While-2994 28d ago

My understanding of geography as a kid resonates with this list. But is it an old map scale issue that's been updated with real time gps or actual changes?

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u/loonygecko Moderator 22d ago

Mercator maps have been used since before I was born, no idea how that could be the issue when Mercator has been the standard. Also there's no maps that shove things drastically from west to east like what happened with south america. Besides that, about 10 years ago when the ME was first getting well known, many of us bought globes and started using Google earth and many geo changes continued in the last 10 years tracked in real time using globes.

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u/ByteInferno 28d ago

As I said, I believe I'm on an alternate version of Earth entirely. It has nothing to do with maps. All the maps I looked at show this world, not the world I was born into.

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