# War Atlas

9 Hacker News commenters recommended War Atlas and 11 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it for showing the relative sizes of political entities and conflicts through history in an engaging way. Critics report browser crashes, inaccurate borders, and missing wars.

## Why people recommend it

- Fascinating, impressive visual resource (3 comments): "Amazing! I just wish there was a way to eliminate the text boxes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865872)) "the explosion of dots from the civil war is really something!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48866748)) "This is a fascinating resource." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865938))
- Shows history and relative political sizes (2 comments): "It does a really good job of showing the relative sizes of political entities throughout history" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48867105)) "I just did a really fast refresher on the history of (conflict in) Europe by scrolling through!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865899))

## What people warn about

- Crashes browsers, especially Firefox (6 comments): "reliably crashes my firefox on linux while consuming 55GB of memory" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48863899)) "my firefox on linux crashes immediately as well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48864284)) "I was so confused on why my computer froze." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48866986))
- Inaccurate borders and information (3 comments): "there are many inaccuracies particularly around borders" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48863968)) "Makes me question the validity of the information on this site" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865247)) "aren't close to anything in either source" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48871269))
- Missing some important wars (2 comments): "There are some very important wars missing. For example, I see nothing about Spain's Civil War (1936-1939)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48867408)) "since it's not part of any named war, you could easily miss it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865162))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Where the Romans Fought](https://hackerapproved.com/p/where-the-romans-fought-interactive-map.md): 11 recommend
- [Oldinsurancemaps.net](https://hackerapproved.com/p/oldinsurancemaps-net.md): 10 recommend
- [Itiner-e](https://hackerapproved.com/p/itiner-e.md): 9 recommend
- [Landnotes](https://hackerapproved.com/p/landnotes.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "War Atlas", https://hackerapproved.com/p/war-atlas/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).