The plate
Presentation renders; photographs follow with the first printing.
Distance Decay
Russia — depth as doctrine, distance as the oldest ally
No payment now. A reservation holds your place in the first printing. Pricing is published on this page at opening — the list simply hears first. Once the press opens, plates print to order and dispatch in 2–3 working days.
The pattern
Russia spans eleven time zones, and that span is a weapon. Napoleon took Moscow and lost the war; the Wehrmacht saw the Kremlin’s towers and froze where it stood. Every invader has beaten the army sooner than the distance — supply lines decay with every mile, and Russia has always been willing to trade space for time. The plate holds the whole landmass in one frame so the doctrine is visible: the country simply does not end. And yet the gradient flattens a little each decade — missiles, drones and sabotage cross in minutes what armies crossed in months.
This pattern also governs
- Afghanistan — the graveyard of empires is really a graveyard of supply lines
- The United States — two oceans of moat — power projection without fear of invasion
- Australia — the tyranny of distance as national character
- The Pacific war — island by island — every mile of ocean a tax on the attacker
The living map
Every printed plate carries a small engraved code in the colophon corner. Scan it and the plate opens as a living map — the story, the interactive atlas, the daily challenge — at cartogram.earth/p/distance-decay. Prefer a clean margin? Reserve with the no-mark option and the code ships on the colophon card instead. See the place in the atlas →
Shipping & returns
Printed to order at fine-art plants in the US and EU. Prints ship flat or in a rigid, double-walled tube; framed plates ship boxed with corner protection. Dispatch is 2–3 working days from the press opening. A plate damaged in transit is reprinted free, from a photo — no return postage, no argument. Exact shipping rates are published with launch pricing.
The edition
The Pattern Index is an open edition, printed to order. A cased Portfolio Edition of 250 — all fourteen plates, numbered, with a fifteenth key plate — follows the singles.
