The World, RIP

Jesse Walker | September 17, 2009

Like so many other bizarre Dubai projects, The World -- a plan to create an archipelago of artificial islands shaped like the land masses of Earth -- has come to an end:

it has become the world's most expensive shipping hazard, guarded by private security in fast boats and ringed by warning buoys to keep the curious away....Mile after mile of breakwater built from boulders brought hundreds of miles by ship has been laid, but inside its man-made lagoon, work has completely stopped.

The expected map of the world of 300 islands is instead a disjointed and desolate collection of sandy blots -- a monumental folly just out of sight of Dubai's shore....

"The World has been cancelled. It doesn't even look like the world. Basically there is one island that is maintained that is said to be owned by the Sheikh [Dubai's ruler] and the rest looks like a pile of muck," said one local property agent.

Officially, the project hasn't been permanently stopped. Unofficially, it's further evidence for my suspicion that the builders' blueprints of the early-21st-century United Arab Emirates are best regarded as a regional subgenre of science fiction.

On a related note, I recommend the Daily Mail's aquatic-gothic report on "the ghost fleet of the recession," a near-abandoned flotilla near Singapore. An excerpt:

Here, on a sleepy stretch of shoreline at the far end of Asia, is surely the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history. Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined; their tonnage is far greater. Container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers - all should be steaming fully laden between China, Britain, Europe and the US, stocking camera shops, PC Worlds and Argos depots ahead of the retail pandemonium of 2009. But their water has been stolen.

It is so far off the beaten track that nobody ever really comes close, which is why these ships are here. The world's ship owners and government economists would prefer you not to see this symbol of the depths of the plague still crippling the world's economies.

So they have been quietly retired to this equatorial backwater, to be maintained only by a handful of bored sailors. The skeleton crews are left alone to fend off the ever-present threats of piracy and collisions in the congested waters as the hulls gather rust and seaweed at what should be their busiest time of year.

Local fisherman Ah Wat, 42, who for more than 20 years has made a living fishing for prawns from his home in Sungai Rengit, says: 'Before, there was nothing out there - just sea. Then the big ships just suddenly came one day, and every day there are more of them.

'Some of them stay for a few weeks and then go away. But most of them just stay. You used to look Christmas from here straight over to Indonesia and see nothing but a few passing boats. Now you can no longer see the horizon.'

Bonus links: B. Traven's The Death Ship and Val Lewton's The Ghost Ship.

Comments

James J. B.|9.17.09 @ 5:17PM|#

Do I hear the next Bailout!!!!!

Woo-HOOO B*tches - This project is too big to fail. Please someone in congress help!!!!!

Anonymous|9.17.09 @ 5:18PM|#

That's depressing.

|9.17.09 @ 5:22PM|#

looks like a pile of muck," said one local property agent.

Racist.

Timmy G|9.17.09 @ 5:25PM|#

Tell those ships to fire up their engines, the recovery has already begun!

Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum|9.17.09 @ 5:27PM|#

These islands bore me.

I know, let's build a bridge of human bodies!

tarran|9.17.09 @ 5:38PM|#

It's not even an original idea:

A similar archipelago appeared in Niven's Ringworld, except that it was 1:1 scale.

|9.17.09 @ 5:48PM|#

Lets steal them and turn it into a floating libertarian sea colony.

zoltan|9.17.09 @ 5:56PM|#

1. Larry Niven sucks at writing, but has fun ideas about space and the future.

2. This reminds me of "the Raft" in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Anyone? Anyone?

|9.17.09 @ 5:57PM|#

Maybe they'll all start drifting around the pacific like a giant raft, carrying refus from Asia to California every five years.

|9.17.09 @ 6:06PM|#

Maybe they'll all start drifting around the pacific like a giant raft, carrying refus from Asia to California every five years.

Lash them all together into a giant flotilla,
circle the pacific with the ocean currents, and every time they hit a continent some country will give them a little "push" back out to sea.

Cabeza de Vaca|9.17.09 @ 6:16PM|#

Dubai is just another case of government hubris. If governments could plan economies the USSR would still be around.

Paul|9.17.09 @ 6:17PM|#

2. This reminds me of "the Raft" in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Anyone? Anyone?

I guess if the Raft became largely uninhabited... then... maybe.

highnumber|9.17.09 @ 6:23PM|#

You used to look Christmas from here straight over to Indonesia and see nothing but a few passing boats.

Juh? Out of control spellcheck? or does Christmas has some meaning that I don't understand? or just that poor syntax?

|9.17.09 @ 6:57PM|#

I hate everyone who went to Dubai and raved about how amazing it was without spending 5 seconds thinking about the repressive, ludicrous hell-hole they were in. No one is more deserving of schadenfreude.

My spleen is now vented.

pilight|9.17.09 @ 6:59PM|#

...and I feel fine

ed|9.17.09 @ 7:00PM|#

And they wanted to be our latex salesmen.

Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum|9.17.09 @ 7:26PM|#

I hate everyone who went to Dubai and raved about how amazing it was without spending 5 seconds thinking about the repressive, ludicrous hell-hole they were in. No one is more deserving of schadenfreude.

Silence, dog!

Fist of Etiquette|9.17.09 @ 7:57PM|#

Push them all together and call it the Isle of Pangaea. Or bury them all in the sea and call it Noah's Vista.

Marketing!

$|9.17.09 @ 8:09PM|#

refus

Racist.

|9.17.09 @ 8:14PM|#

It doesn't even look like the world. Basically there is one island that is maintained that is said to be owned by the Sheikh [Dubai's ruler] and the rest looks like a pile of muck,

Well to be fair, most of the world looks like a pile of muck too. So it's not a completely bad representation.

|9.17.09 @ 10:09PM|#

I was just in Abu Dhabi and Dubai this spring. Dubai did seem awfully quiet on the weekend trip we made there. Lots of projects at minimal capacity. Ironically, Abu Dhabi (and the UAE federal government) ended up bailing them out after years of playing second fiddle. Funnily enough, the very thing that kept Abu Dhabi behind Dubai was the thing that ended up providing for the bailout and the much less-affected building boom in the capital - reliance on oil revenue.

Many projects are still continuing in Abu Dhabi, but definitely at a slower pace. Things have all but stopped completely in Dubai.

|9.17.09 @ 10:26PM|#

I bet Kevin Costner, or Dennis Hopper, is salivating over the cheap set availability for a Waterworld sequel . . .

|9.17.09 @ 10:38PM|#

This reminds me of "the Raft" in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Anyone? Anyone?

I'm anyone!

JB|9.17.09 @ 11:35PM|#

Ah, What?

|9.18.09 @ 10:01AM|#

Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little Abu Dahbi. This may be lost on non geezers.

|9.18.09 @ 10:41AM|#

This reminds me of "the Raft" in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Anyone? Anyone?

All it needs is an aircraft carrier and someone to cable it together and cut the anchor cables. Aren't their pirates in that part of the world?

jtuf|9.18.09 @ 11:11AM|#

I would like to see the seasteaders buy the ghost ships.

|9.18.09 @ 12:23PM|#

Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little Abu Dahbi. This may be lost on non geezers.

Whew! Still a non-geezer.

|9.21.09 @ 4:02PM|#

Major kudos for referencing "The Ghost Ship," a forgotten gem of sinister cinema.