Why does Russia have the best maps of Britain?
3,388,679
Published 2021-01-11
Huge thanks to John Davies and Alexander J Kent, authors of 'The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World'. You can view images of Soviet maps and purchase reprints at redatlasbook.com/
BUY MAP MEN MUGS, T-SHIRTS, POSTERS ETC...
www.mapmenmerch.com/
SEE NEW EPISODES EARLY, AND BEHIND-THE-SCENES EXTRAS...
www.patreon.com/jayforeman
Written, presented and edited by
JAY FOREMAN www.twitter.com/jayforeman
MARK COOPER-JONES www.twitter.com/markcooperjones
Director/DOP
JADE NAGI www.twitter.com/jade_nagi
All Comments (21)
-
Support Map Men by signing up for a FREE trial of Skillshare Premium. (The more people sign up, the more they pay us. But more importantly, Skillshare is genuinely really good and I genuinely recommend it!) Thank you thank you thank you please! :) skl.sh/mapmen01211
-
There was only 1 “men” in the intro we’ve descended into chaos
-
I am from Latvia. My classmates and I visited an old Soviet bunker once. There was a huge map we could look at but were forbidden to photograph...and there I found my tiny county home marked there in better detail than the land deed I have
-
"Today the conflict between East and West is now at satisfactory levels" is not a quote that has aged well lol
-
Вы угадали, в данный момент я сижу в вашем компьютере и составляю карту материнской платы....
-
Vlad: ‘’I’m a Russian Spy.’’ Natalia: ‘’Oooh that sounds bad ass, field?’’ Vlad: ‘’yeah fields, roads, buildings, we draw everything really.’’
-
I think my brain had a spasm when there was only one “men” and it actually made musical sense for once.
-
In Russia, cold War military maps are still widely used for tourism/alpine climbing. And although most of them are 50 years old, they are incredibly accurate, and you can navigate by them without any problems
-
"The baddies, or as we in britain call them, the goodies"
-
It's wrong having the single 'men' at the end of the intro.
-
As an actual Russian cartographer, I can say that most of the map making was military founded so they had put all the info they could find. For example distance between trees, that was mentioned, goes with average height and width, which is used for determining whether tanks could easily go through it.
-
I worked in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007, in a job that required having some grasp of Afghan geography. The most useful maps I managed to get hold of were Russian topographic maps (a few digitised sheets of which, I still have on this laptop, along with a cyrillic / english table)
-
I remember when I did geography at uni, we had a Russian exchange student and she mentioned that unlike most of the world, in Russia, geography was considered as important if not more than your standard STEM subjects like maths, physics, chemistry, etc.
-
seeing the polish phonetic map of the UK reminds me of a map of Poland in my old GCSE Geography textbook where half the towns had spelling mistakes I guess the score is 1:1?
-
The Soviet maps warmly recommends the 123-metre spire of Salisbury.
-
when he said his polish got better already and then said polish sounding gibberish i lmaoed so hard
-
Actually, figuring out the average distance between trees could be figured out by simply walking through the forest in question. Measure the length of your stride, then just count the number of steps between trees. Anybody who sees you would just see someone taking a stroll.
-
I'm not sure SONAR works in space
-
Fun video. Well done!
-
The maps of the USSR are amazing! I've hiked multiple times in Urals and Siberia, and every time I used topographic maps produced by the Red Army HQ (aka Genshtab maps). Over the years they've became a de-facto standard for Russian hikers
