Off The Map: A Global Atlas of Non-Existent Places: Unrecognized States, Disputed Lands & The Places We Cannot Go

A 24‑lecture audio expedition into the world’s cartographic glitches—unrecognized states, disputed borders, legal voids, and places you can’t enter. We move from café‑tile sovereignty in Baarle, where a front door decides your country, to the 2015 India–Bangladesh enclave exchange, and the 2022 line cut across Hans Island’s ravine; from Ceuta and Melilla’s fences and tax codes to the Danube where hydrology argues with history; from the Bir Tawil/Hala’ib paradox to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and America’s twin sacrifice zones, Picher and Centralia.

We make the atlas legible: thalweg versus cadastre, uti possidetis and boundary commissions, counter‑enclaves and neutral roads, patrol lines, CBMs, and maritime geodesy. Trace Fergana’s water politics from Golovnoi gates to the Andijan/Kempir‑Abad bargain; India’s Himalayan hinge from Siachen and Galwan to Sugauli; the pastoral circuits and patrol lines that keep the Ilemi Triangle ambiguous; and the nested Nahwa‑in‑Madha‑in‑UAE trick.

Markets and politics are treated as geography constraints. Learn to read sovereignty by ferries, fuel receipts, and power bills; to separate romantic claims from operational control; to test what‑ifs—who could claim Bir Tawil, what shifts if Sir Creek moves—and to map chokepoints beyond lines: customs regimes, water releases, patrol logistics, recognition cycles. Then follow the consequences—duty‑free ledgers and bunkering margins, quotas and visas, surveillance and tragedy on the fence. Rigorous, narrative‑driven, and built for the intellectually ambitious, this course is an operator’s guide to the law, logistics, and lived frictions of a planet whose map won’t sit still.

© 2025 Dr Nick Coman (Audiobook): 9798347940714

Release date

Audiobook: 8 October 2025