How Saudi Arabia is Building the Impossible World's First 1km Skyscraper

Japan's Tokaido Shinkansen already does Tokyo to Nagoya in 86 minutes. Japan is replacing it with a train that floats. Welcome to Megabuilt Files. In this documentary, we go inside the extreme engineering of the Chuo Shinkansen — Japan's $75 billion maglev line that levitates 10 centimeters above its guideway, travels at 500 km/h in commercial service, and runs 86 percent of its route through tunnels carved beneath the Southern Japanese Alps. This is not a speed upgrade. It is a national survival project. The existing Tokaido Shinkansen runs directly above the Nankai Trough subduction zone — a fault line that Japanese seismologists give a 70 to 80 percent probability of producing a magnitude 8 to 9 megathrust earthquake within the next 30 years. When that earthquake severs the surface line, 40 percent of Japan's entire GDP stops moving. The Chuo Shinkansen maglev is the backup — buried 1,400 meters inside a mountain range that the earthquake cannot reach. In this technical deep-dive, we analyze how engineers are driving three completely different tunneling methodologies through one continuous tunnel — TBM, NATM, and drill-and-blast — because the geology itself decides which method is permitted at any given meter. How 580,000 individual copper induction coils are being installed by hand with a positional tolerance of one millimeter over 50 meters. How superconducting magnets cooled to minus 269 degrees Celsius — colder than the surface of Pluto — keep a 200-ton passenger train floating ten centimeters off the ground at 500 km/h. And how one river, one governor, and one signature stopped the entire $75 billion project for four full years. 63 years of development. One construction worker killed. One world speed record. One scheduled opening in 2035 that is not guaranteed. Subscribe to Megabuild Files for the engineering that holds our world together. #ChuoShinkansen #JapanMaglev #Maglev #Shinkansen #JapanEngineering #500kmh #BulletTrain #MaglevTrain #EngineeringDocumentary #Megaprojects #JapanInfrastructure