Australia's full of things that will bite you, sting you or just downright eat you.

Come to New Zealand instead. You can always pop across the ditch for the weekend whenever you want.

I've never been to either, but I was under the impression that in both Australia and NZ, there were lots of critters willing to bite/sting you without notice.

I know that a lot of countries on earth have nasty little things lurking around, but is it really that much more dangerous in Australia than in NZ then?

Yep they're quite different. In NZ we have some supremely ugly insects (http://www.themarysue.com/record-breaking-giant-weta/) but they are harmless to humans. No snakes, crocodiles or anything like that. You can walk barefoot in the outdoors with impunity.

Perhaps you could get taken by a shark if you were very unlucky.

Wow. That's definitely news to me. It's really cool, especially considering how close Australia is (compared to everything else at least).

Uhmm...definitely need to go visit some day.

Australia has more than its fair share of poisonous snakes. http://lifeinthefastlane.com/when-doug-met-struan/ is an excerpt from Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams. Douglas discusses poisonous snakes with Struan Sutherland.

> So the world's most liveable city is Melbourne, Australia

Do you mean the city with crappy weather, unaffordable real estate, collapsed roads, and a job market based on selling overpriced coffees to hipsters?

To be fair, out of the 'big two' cities in AUS, Melbourne probably has the more affordable and promising real estate market.

As soon as you fix your internet connection :)

Australia relies implicitly on US security guarantees. Given Trump's previous pronouncements about allies paying their own way, at best, there is a good chance that Australia is going to have to budget more to protect its vast territory.

At worst, if Trump were to move to a more isolationist stance and upend the world order, there are some very populous countries to the north that might get hungry.

It's going to be very difficult to find a place to escape the consequences of what happened today.

Bullshit. It's not the 1930s any more. Australia and Japan are on good terms and China's not interested in taking over Australia.

Calm down, WWIII hasn't begun yet and i don't see any reason why Indonesia will attack Australia now.

Who is going to attack Australia? What military threats do they face?

For Bay area VCs and tech startups which are looking for a highly liveable city a bit closer than Australia, Vancouver ranked a close third (after Melbourne and Vienna) in the Economist's ratings, and is just a 2h15m flight away from San Francisco.

If anyone is interested in relocating, I'd be happy to help in any way I can (realizing of course that I'm not an immigration lawyer).

I find it interesting that most of the people I see on e.g. Facebook talking about moving to Canada are, in fact, not eligible to do so. (At least without a job offer in hand from a Canadian company to sponsor you.)

(Canada's a lovely country, I wonder if their immigration policies help keep it that way?)

Many people aren't eligible to immigrate to Canada permanently right now, but there's nothing to say that you can't enter Canada temporarily now and then permanently later. If you pack your bags, drive up to the border, and say "after the election I'm not sure I want to live in the USA so I'd like to spend a few months exploring Canada to see if it's somewhere I could move to some day", I'm sure you'll be welcomed with open arms.

Unfortunately you have large spiders that like to hide in sunvisors and drop onto unsuspecting drivers. :(

Serious question: any tips on going through with this? I don't think I can stand to stay in the US any longer.

What is it you can't stand? Nothing concrete has happened yet. Maybe this doesn't apply to you but it's interesting to see how a number of celebrities with massive resources (from my point of view) which effectively enable them to insulate themselves from almost any changes which a new government might introduce, have promised to flee the country.

Fuck this shit. White supremacism has just been validated on a national scale. The markets are tanking and the value of the US dollar will drop. People like Giuliani, Christie, and Duke will have the reins; everything good Obama did will be overturned, and the Supreme Court will turn red. Even nuclear war will no longer be off the table.

My country is collapsing around me. I want out before shit gets a whole lot worse — while that's still an option. Somewhere where the US dollar has less influence and where fallout has less of a chance to reach. (And also with good coffee and beer.)

Lets just wait at least 12 hours before we declare that the country collapsing.

Don't get me wrong, I think a Trump presidency is horrific, but I think its slightly too early to see what that would actually mean.

But actually, come to Australia. It's a wonderful country.

Having listened to a bunch of WWII podcasts recently, it struck me how the people who fled Germany once the Nazis came into power — ridiculed as they were by their friends and relatives! — were the most likely to weather that horrible conflict.

Maybe it's a stretch — or maybe not — but in the end it's just branch prediction. Australia sounds nice.

Australia would be great except every damn bug in the country can kill you. I'm completely terrified of Australia. See a beautiful spider? Want a closer look? Nope. You're dead.

Seriously. Even our McDonalds is several classes above the greasy, cheap muck they sell in the USA.

Can confirm. A rite of passage for students in Adelaide is to drive to the big Mcdonalds on the nw outskirts of Melbourne, and then turn around and drive home again.