Imagining the Gaza Invasion in Major U.S. Cities Through Maps

When Israel invaded the Gaza Strip last week, its tanks and troops went marching into a minuscule territory crammed with roughly 1.8 million people. For the sake of context, what would that glut of humanity look like if transplanted to the urban landscape of America?

That's the question explored in this series of visualizations by Chris Walker, a data artist who made that crazy map of migration patterns among U.S. states. "There's one important thing to understand about Gaza: its tiny size and high population make it a densely populated area," says Walker, who's head of data visualization for the news site Mic. "That means a rocket fired into a Gazan neighborhood is likely to cause scores of civilian casualties." (The latest death toll was nearly 700 Palestinians, 35 Israelis.)