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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   4391 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 19, 2024

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What would you do with three hundred acres of desert?

I'm thinking about buying a lot of land because:

  1. It seems like a good investment. Extremely cheap ($100k) and in an area which might plausibly see good growth.
  2. I eventually want a "homeland" for my family, a place where we don't have to worry so much about land costs or neighbors, and can live close to each other. Ideally there would eventually be a business or two in the area (even if just farms) to support people who don't have remote jobs, but the point is to have a place to retreat to when life gets tough, and maybe a place to move to once you have kids.

I'm not all that wealthy though, so it doesn't make sense to get started with it right away unless I can make the land productive in the meantime.

A few ideas:

  • Rehab center
  • Farm
  • Fish/shrimp farm
  • Solar farm

None exciting enough to pull the trigger, though I'm researching solar farm subsidies and shrimp farm economics just in case.

EDIT: It's this parcel for those who are curious. I'm pretty much for sure not buying land for another few years but it's fun to think about in the meantime (and possibly prepare/plan).

I'll probably do a larger writeup on this at some point, but the dream would be to buy an enormous, fairly productive piece of land such as this one and then pretty much turn it into a colony for my friends and family. Alaska has its own major problems of course, but in the long run I'm trying to make enough money to get myself and those I care about out of the culture war entirely.

I would probably try some harebrained geoengineering scheme to enhance rainfall by renting a plane to seed clouds over the area or create permanent bodies of water by digging canals or planting trees. In some regions near the coast or major rivers this might even have some chance of success. Building some ancient Persian ice houses might be another interesting project, and I could probably come up with a few more if I re-read Dune.

Ideal geoengineeting is willing a mountain into existence to impede clouds, combined with digging vast canals to form inland seas. This is however just idle thought on my part following inane discussions on 'what can we use shitloads of nukes for if not war ', a proper geophysicist may have other ideas to contribute after they cease hyperventilating.

I had a similar reaction to learning about Project Plowshare. Doesn’t seem like they tried creating mountains, sadly.

Is it even remotely feasible to target cloud seeding to a 300-acre plot of land, or economically feasible to seed a large enough area to ensure rainfall on that plot?

I think you'd be a lot better off building a big plastic dome to keep moisture in and trucking in water tanks every so often.

Like, a big 'house' for your 'greens' or something? What could we call this?

You need ambient water vapor for cloud seeding to work to begin with. without that you're just shooting silver in the air. Cloud seeding works in coastal deserts where the lack of mountains lets humid air freely pass without condensing, I don't think inland deserts enjoy similar humidity

Wow, those ice houses are awesome. I think you could genuinely have some good success building one and turning it into an airBnB. Regardless it would be a ton of fun to build.

Building ice is easy, why it's not used already? What about building codes? Small ice houses would require large per unit costs, and large would be potentially illegal. ... I happen to live in a place where avergage yearly temp is +2C and nobody is doing that

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