Countries with the WORST natural geography on Earth

the one mountain range that made Chile so thin is the same that avoided like 2345 wars with Argentina; the Atacama desert has the copper mines that push the economy, and the looooong coast to the Pacific besides its fisheries make Chile a node/hub for trade with east asia. Also all of this kept migration under control unril they invented airplanes

11:00 I'd like to point out that we don't call "Typhoons" or "Hurricanes" in and around Indian ocean, but rather "Cyclones"

as an Uzbek, i can say that Uzbekistan’s climate is pretty good, high temperature doesn’t really affect for people bcuz we’re far from oceans and humidity. Also we have two seasons of harvest bcuz of sunny days (300/365) that’s why our fruit and vegetables are mouth watering 😄

As an Indonesian myself, I'm also surprised at how my country survive for so long despite having a lot of islands and some separatist movements

I'm from Bangladesh and yes Bangladesh have a very bad geography. I live in the north-eastern part (Sylhet District). Heavy rain is very common here. Only this year two major flood occurred. One of which was biggest flood in 122 years of history. While we were being washed by rain and flood, people from the west part of Bangladesh were praying for rain.

One country you missed out was Bolivia - landlocked, at altitude, relatively poor, with generally poor soils, and with two distinct halves of the population who do not get on well together, the Spanish-descended urban-dwellers and the Incan-descended rural-dwellers.

Surprised Bolivia, Belarus, Niger, CAR, Laos and south Sudan are not on the list. All of them really struggle to do a thing because of how isolated and difficult their geography makes it for them

I think most of the countries mentioned here arent actually the most disadvantaged, the key features of a good geography are a hard exterior, a soft interior, strategic depth and a large core population which can exert force on outer territories many of the countries mentioned here have two or more of these. i.e. indonesias geography is definitely not ideal but the fact it is an archipelago makes it very difficult to invade and the economic and demographic dominance of the fertile and highly populous island of java mean that Jakarta has been able to retain control of most of Indonesia, a country the size of Europe with relative ease despite the obvious difficulties involved. Chile also doesn't deserve to be on this list, it is bounded by deserts and ocean and mountains on all sides and in the centre sits a large albeit thin fetile plain which is culturally homogenous, earthquakes be damned, no one is easily invading Chile at least for the time being.

I think you should consider the same criteria to all countries - risk of natural disasters - risk of war - access to natural resources (water, oil) - climate - ease of farming - access to sea - communication/distance to other countries - natural beauty

Nepal has very friendly relationship with India so much so that both country is visa free for tourist from both countries and trade between both is free .

"Nepal is being held hostage by India". India & Nepal has brilliant relation. Open borders, culturally very similar & a lot more.

As a Chilean, Geography is one of the most interesting topics about my own country, together with history. The Andes and the ocean have proved incredible at defending the country, the south once was a hub of trade as it was the sole way to go from europe to the pacific, short of crossing three oceans, and the north brought primary resource riches such as saltpeter, and currently copper and lithium. Gives us plenty of access to the largest ocean and the andes has granted us said protection, but also isolation which, while a double edged sword, also helped create the country as we know it

Passing the Bolivia-Chile border to go to the Chilean coast is really interesting. The frontier seats 4.200 meters above sea level, and it takes a two hour drive from Sajama National park that’s literally beside the frontier to get to the Chilean coast.

Probably Bangladesh, though the sea rise situation in Maldives is also quite grim. I went to undergrad with a woman from the Maldives and she shared with me that the government bought a lot of land in Australia to relocate the population there when the country goes underwater. It’s apocalyptic.

7:23 I'd just like to say that France has never invaded Poland. It has only invaded the foreign powers which were occupying Poland's territory in the 19th Century. In fact - France actually helped our nation this way by establishing the Duchy of Warsaw (which unfortunately didn't last for long).

It seems like the Maldives have a time limit to their country, Bangladesh doesn't look good either, and Uzbekistan is in bad shape. Thanks for this thought provoking video!

Is Russia and Chile really more disadvantaged than say, Burkina Faso, Bolivia or Niger? This looks like a very arbitrary list to me.

India and Nepal are friends...theres some friction but that as neighbours is expected but friendship remains strong.

An impressively depressing list. I'm going to suggest that any number of very small countries in the Pacific are candidates for most disadvantaged. Some are too low-lying to survive even a smallish rise in sea level (like the Maldives). At least one, Nauru, is facing the end of its sole natural commodity (guano) that is tradable for needed imports. Some of these tiny countries are really too small to sustain an existence as an independent nation--lack of area, lack of population, lack of infrastructure. They were easily taken over by colonial powers, and some got independence mostly because the cost of subsidizing them and/or maintaining a government there became detrimental to the colonial power, so just cutting them loose became desirable--this being also good politically (I'm being cynical here). Would also add Haiti: not enough arable land, severe environmental damage from overpopulation, prone to both severe earthquakes and hurricanes. As the population grows and the environment becomes more degraded, things can only get worse.

Chile reminds me a lot of Norway, at least in terms of physical geography. Both countries are extremely long and narrow, and very mountainous. Both also have very long coastlines.