
The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Mapped the World - chippy
https://redatlasbook.com/
======
Stratoscope
Here's a Soviet map of the San Francisco Bay Area:

[https://i.imgur.com/BxDJC6f.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/BxDJC6f.jpg) (direct
link)

[https://imgur.com/a/FiEGm](https://imgur.com/a/FiEGm) (Imgur page in case the
above doesn't work)

The map appears to date from the early 1970s: Highway 280 is there but appears
to have Cañada Road routing from before the ridge freeway was finished. Or I
could be misreading that part of the map and it is from later, maybe the
1980s?

It's interesting how many inaccuracies there are. Living in Menlo Park, I
checked a few local landmarks. Palo Alto Airport is in the right place, but
where is San Carlos Airport? They seem to have moved it across the street from
Facebook!

And note the airport near where 280 and Highway 92 cross.

The map is also very hard to read. Look at Highway 101. Unlike 280, it's
mostly in white, but if you follow it through Redwood City just north of
Woodside Road (Highway 84), it looks like 101 is routed along Veterans
Boulevard - which was bypassed years before this map was made. If you look
again, there is a brown stretch that is close to the actual freeway alignment.

Then follow 280 down into Los Altos, where it changes from brown to white as
it approaches Cupertino and into San Jose. This bit of randomly swapping
freeway colors between brown and white seems to be a common theme.

Many of the local streets are recognizable but have a very approximate hand-
drawn look to them. I'll be curious to hear what anyone else notices in their
neighborhood.

This is easily the most interesting, and worst quality, map of the Bay Area
I've seen. I wonder why it has so many little things wrong, when they could
have simply sent a spy into any local gas station to buy an accurate, well
drawn, and easy to read road map?

~~~
rangibaby
> spy into any local gas station to buy an accurate, well drawn, and easy to
> read road map?

How do you know that it is accurate?

~~~
eru
At least it will be accurate where normal people usually drive--otherwise
those normal people would complain.

~~~
mikeash
Before GPS, it was mostly the topology that mattered to motorists, but the
military probably wanted accurate coordinates on everything.

~~~
eru
True! Of course topology includes getting the petrol station on the right side
of the road.

I even heard of some maps with a 'sliding scale' that eg has the city centre
larger. You can't even do that on a flat piece of paper without serious
distortions in your coordinates.

------
chippy
I remember a talk from a map librarian who said that the Soviets didn't just
copy western maps, as they often had more detail and unique elements that the
western maps didn't have. One thing, for example was the heights of bridges,
and widths of roads.

You might want to jump straight into the examples:
[https://redatlasbook.com/cityplans](https://redatlasbook.com/cityplans)

Flash is needed though...

~~~
Top19
Makes sense about the bridges and roads thing. You need to know that for
tanks. Even today in Germany you’ll see tiny bridges crossing a stream, a sign
right by that says “this bridge rated for 70,000 pounds” (so can hold multiple
tanks at once).

~~~
xorcist
Is that literally true? I would have expected Germans to rate their bridges in
tons, not pounds/pfund.

~~~
hoppelhase
I live in Germany and have never seen a sign using pounds, only tons.

~~~
avar
Read the German Wikipedia article on the subject which shows German signs in
short tons (non-metric unit):
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militärische_Lastenklasse](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militärische_Lastenklasse)

~~~
dom0
The class numbers only roughly correspond to weight, so you could just as well
consider them metric tons (1000 kg).

~~~
avar
You definitely can't consider them metric tons. If the bridge you're about to
cross has a maximum advertised load of 120 sh tn and you consider it safe to
drive your 120 m tn vehicle over the bridge on the basis of that you're going
to be putting a 132.3 m tn load on the bridge, or roughly 10% more than it's
rated for.

~~~
dom0
As I said above, these signs do _not_ show a literal maximum weight. They show
a _load class_.

~~~
avar
Right, I was overly simplifying. I meant to say a 120 sh ton MLC-calculated
weight, not a vehicle that's exactly 120 tons since as the article goes into
the class needs to take into account axle count etc.

What I don't understand is your claim that "you could just as well consider
them metric tons". These are short tons with caveats, i.e. the eventual number
depends on more than just the raw weight, but the raw weight is one aspect of
the calculation.

So if you were to make that calculation on the basis of metric instead of lbs
how aren't you going to introduce something like a 10% error in the MLC you
come up with?

------
gordeh
Wired did an article on this topic: [https://www.wired.com/2015/07/secret-
cold-war-maps/](https://www.wired.com/2015/07/secret-cold-war-maps/)

------
bastawhiz
> This is the never-before-told story of the world’s most comprehensive
> mapping endeavour

Is it? Arguably, the mapping efforts of Google and others have reached further
and collected more and more accurate data (street view, lidar, etc.).

~~~
baybal2
Check Amap, they have coloured 3d maps of all global cities with photo
textures.

[http://www.navibiz.com.cn/e/NewsFocus/nf-123-02.html](http://www.navibiz.com.cn/e/NewsFocus/nf-123-02.html)

~~~
eru
Interesting.

For what it's worth: Google Earth (and Google Maps) have 3d buildings and
vegetation etc now, too.

(But I wonder whether it's based on new data, or they just use machine
learning to guess the 3d shapes from the 2d data they already had.)

~~~
baybal2
in case of autonavi, their 3d maps are human modeled and textured just like a
giant 3d game

------
MichaelMoser123
However civilian maps were deliberately obfuscated in the Soviet Union.
[http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/03/world/soviet-aide-
admits-m...](http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/03/world/soviet-aide-admits-maps-
were-faked-for-50-years.html?mcubz=0)

------
CharlesDodgson
This site has some great links:
[https://sovietmaps.com/resources](https://sovietmaps.com/resources)

------
zobzu
Meanwhile, the SR71 made pictures

