Crumbling Infrastructure in the Russian Taiga

Today’s video comes to you from the Rockburn Track in New Zealand.

Terrain as you see in this video, doesn’t exist in many places, as it takes the right mix of altitude and humidity to form. However, this is very similar to the dominant vegetation in Russia’s northern Taiga.

This terrain makes it extremely difficult to build any form of solid infrastructure. In Russia, they wait until the ground freezes solid, then dig down to the permafrost and fill the hole with sand, gravel, or whatever else they have. This forms dikes or berms on which they can build roads, lay pipes, or install any other key infrastructure.

In a post-Ukraine War Russia, will this infrastructure come back online quickly? All of this infrastructure is old and barely hanging on, and now that the West won’t be involved anymore, I wouldn’t count on any of this coming back online for a decade (+).