On that topic, here's another one my buddy made of an area in the U.S. equal to the population of NYC:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/57xzkd/also_an_are...

(This is a popular topic on /r/mapporn)

Those images were generated using this website: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/10/popula...

Here is where I first saw this image: https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/8gyou7/really_give...

I feel like another jarring comparison could be made not just by centering the red area on a low-population region, but by choosing red counties by population (allow discarding some populated red counties) you would have an even larger red area.

It might break the visual simplicity of this map though.