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Comment by derf_ | Hacker News Reader

The continental US is 8.08 million km^2 [0], while Europe is 10.18 million km^2 [1], almost 26% larger. Even adding the non-contiguous regions does not make the US bigger (still just 9.83 million km^2) [2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contiguous_United_States

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

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Subtract out Russia from this calculation and “Europe” is 75% the size of the US. When people talk about “Europe” and Europeans not understanding how big the US is they are not talking about Eastern Europe/Russia, they’re talking about Portugal to Poland, maybe to Ukraine. Sometimes they’re not even thinking of the Nordic countries which also have a lot of land.

This of course invites the counter argument that the US coastal areas are just as dense and small feeling as Central Europe.

For another comparison, the state of Australia I live in has 3x the land area of Texas, a current population of 2.9 million that largely live in the one concentrated urban area, farms and cattle stations large than those in the US, and had people walk out of the desert than had never met or heard of non indigenous people until that point in time in the mid 1980s.

I grew up in one of the more remote corners when the state population was less than 800 thousand and the local population within a few hours drive was barely a thousand or more..

Western Australia, a unique place that is part Texas, part Alaska, part Silicon Valley and part something of Europe.

It should be a country of its own, and might as well could be with the most isolated capital city in the world, but the Austealian Federal govt keep fucking it up, despite it being the real cash cow of the country.

I've always found it interesting that Canada and California have a similar population, although I haven't looked those up in a couple of years.

Canada has a couple more km^2.

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