I don't see why we need this, there's already a dotted line there on the Risk board.

More seriously though..  Once you connect the two landmasses, then what?

It's not like either Alaska OR Kamchatka have extensive highway & rail systems that can be easily connected to carry traffic between the two for year-round commerce.  The landfalls would be in some of the most remote, undeveloped, and climatically forbidding regions of the two continents (very much unlike the Chunnel, which connects two very well developed and populous nations, naturally reinforcing close commercial ties between the two national capitals.

We don't even have rail connecting our major cities.  How can anyone think a tunnel to Siberia is a good idea?  You could use the same $65bn to build a complete high speed rail network in California, Oregon, and Washington, with change left over, and that would be far more valuable.

A man sits contemplating the rugged coastline in Alaska when he sees an ornate bottle wash ashore.  When he opens it, an enormous genie billows out and says, "your wish is my command!".

The man tells to the genie to build a tunnel between Alaska and Siberia.  The genie shrugs and says, "no can do...the political and technical risks are too great.  Ask for something else".

The man then says he wants to be able to understand women.  To which the genie replies, "will this be just rail, or do you want a 2nd deck for cars?"

ba-doom

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

I'm not convinced that this is necessary, but from a symbolic standpoint I think it's a great idea.  The more we see the world as being directly linked together, the better.  Still, there seem to be a lot of technical difficulties - for example, will it be economically feasible to keep the rail lines clear during the winter months?  Since shipping is already so cheap, will the increased speed outweigh the added cost enough to actually make this worthwhile?  I think the biggest potential comes out of the oil pipelines - and I see it as more of an environmental good than a bad.  Sure, pipeline spills happen, but they're easier to deal with than tanker spills, and pipelines are also (theoretically, at least) easier to monitor than tankers.  For example, one of the biggest problems with tankers isn't unintentional leaks, but rather intentional dumping that comes when tankers flush out their tanks.  This practice has been theoretically banned, but this has been very difficult to enforce, since a tanker can just go out to sea and do it when nobody's looking.

If the estimates say $65 billion, you can guarantee that it would really cost closer to 1T.

As a comparison -- the Big Dig was proposed at 2.8B and eventually cost close to 15B.

The chunnel was estimated to cost around 12b (usd) and wound up closer 20b and here this is key -- still operates at a loss.

Now we can jawbone all day about how interconnecting the world is a great idea, but at the end of all that talk, you still need valid economic reasons to do the project. This is a pipe dream that just got too much publicity on a slow news day.

Memory is a strange bell, jubilee and knell.

It has to happen sometime, so why not now?

Tipping Sacred Cows