User blog comment:VonGlusenburg/Atlantropa/@comment-32656-20130309084852

No state would ever consider that idea.

American failure to build the bomb would not mean the Nazis win, or the USSR takes over Europe. For that matter, the bomb still would get invented, sooner than later, and the Americans would be the ones to do it, realistically.

The Aral Sea was what amounted to a giant accident. And the only massive project they looked into, the reversal of several Siberian rivers, was not taken all that seriously.