If You Dumped Every Human Into The Grand Canyon, This Is What It Would Look Like

[okaawhatever]

There are a lot of people on Earth--7.2 billion, in fact. Ever wondered what it would look like if you took all of us and piled us up on the floor of the Grand Canyon?

OK, maybe that's not something you've wondered about. But the folks at the YouTube series Vsauce haven't just wondered about that theoretical pile of humanity. With the help of Canadian designer Eesmyal Santos-Brault, they've managed to show us--and the result is equal parts creepy and amazing.


?3

This is part of a really cool video called How Many Things Are There?

[lame54]

1. Where should those things go?...

[oldandhappy]

2. Who dreams these things up??!!

Very interesting perspective.

[NightWatcher]

3. what lucky duck gets the Porta Potty contract on that job?

[quinnox]

4. lol. Imagine the smell of that pile

[AngryAmish]

5. In the Hills, The Cities.

[nomorenomore08]

56. Yes! That was a really original horror story. Barker's 'Books of Blood' Vol. 1-3 are quite good

but unfortunately I lost my copy.

[AngryAmish]

60. free online

It holds up. Would be a great movie but the gay thing would turn Hollywood off.

[nomorenomore08]

65. Thanks for the heads-up. And unfortunately, I think you're right about the potential film version -

that probably is a big reason why, out of all Barker's stories, that one has never reached the screen. Though society certainly has evolved in the last 30 years (in some respects anyway) so the gay aspect may not be such a problem forever.

[Hekate]

6. Too many now to just Stand on Zanzibar elbow to elbow. nt

[yawnmaster]

7. That pile looks to be 3 or 4 miles high and about the same width...

Now that is a lot of cubic feet. Not too surprising that all humans could fit in that...
but when we are piled to we clump like magnetic particles??? because that's what it looks like in the image. They obviously aren't individual people.
Also, I don't think we would be stable in a pile. Those on the bottom would be essentially liquefied by the weight of those above...but then the Colorado river would take care of that, I suppose.

[okaawhatever]

9. The video is pretty interesting. They quantify things like "thoughts" and do a good explanation

of how big the Universe is.

[yawnmaster]

39. I, too, found it interesting. I'm looking forward to putting the information to use some day. eom

[Jenoch]

32. It is impossible to estimate the size of that pile.

There is no reference point. That graphic is worthless without actually showing, you know, the Grand Canyon.

[yawnmaster]

37. It is not impossible as I just did it!! I cannot do the impossible...

or can I? are you saying I can? thank you, if so, but I really can't do the impossible.
So estimating the size of the pile must have been possible.

My secret?
The grand canyon IS shown in the picture. That would be the cracks in the ground and the pile is about 3 or so times taller than the rim shown. And the GC rim is about a mile up from the river.

[Jenoch]

46. You are correct I guess.

The layers of the sediment are visible, but I still did not care for the graphic.

I would like to see the perspective from the Grand Canyon Skywalk.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canyon_Skywalk

[okaawhatever]

41. If you watch the first twenty seconds of the video they do a zoom in that shows the entire grand

canyon before it stops where the picture shows. it puts things in better perspective. They also tell you we can't fill the grand canyon.

[LisaLynne]

8. Um, ok, I think I laughed a little too hard at that.

[John1956PA]

10. "Everyone on Earth would fit in a cubic mile" - See link

Years ago, I read an article like this one:

Everyone on Earth would fit in a cubic mile

Really. You could put the entire population of the Earth in a space one mile wide, one mile deep, and one mile high (one cubic mile). We'd all fit in one small corner of the Grand Canyon, which would take about 2500 cubic miles of dirt (or people) to fill.

More at http://wow-really.blogspot.com/2006/10/high-density-housing.html

[okaawhatever]

12. I read that if everyone lived as condensed as they do in Manhattan the world's population could

fit in the state of Texas. I thought that was surprising.

[A HERETIC I AM]

17. I did the math once using 6 Billion people.....

vs the land area of Texas - excluding lakes and rivers, of course.

Each of 6 billion would have about 1300 square feet to themselves, if I remember the math.


And not another soul on the rest of the planet.

[okaawhatever]

20. Was that everyone living in a one story? Just curious. nt

[A HERETIC I AM]

26. Yup

I just went to Wikipedia, found the land area of Texas in square miles, solved for total square feet and divided by six billion.

[okaawhatever]

28. Cool. Thx. nt

[Jenoch]

33. Lakes in Texas?

They have only a couple of lakes, the rest are man-made reservoirs and ponds.

[A HERETIC I AM]

48. Yes.

A large reservoir is a lake. So is a small one, for that matter.

It has been a while since I did the math, but a google search turns up plenty of examples of others doing this with a 7.1 billion figure.

The fact is, you could fit every single human on the planet inside Texas with each having the space of a small, one bedroom apartment.

[Jenoch]

50. I don't disagree with the calculation about fitting people in Texas,

just the part of actual lakes in Texas. There may be rwsivoirs and ponds, but they still ain't real lakes.

[Liberal_in_LA]

11. weird

[hfojvt]

13. John Brunner had us all

Standing on Zanzibar.

Although by now we would doubtless be about 100 miles away.

[lapfog_1]

57. no, not quite

if every person on earth stood next to each other and we gave them 4 sq feet per person...

7,200,000,000 x 4 = 28800000000 sq ft.

That's about 1,033 sq miles.

Zanzibar total area = 1020 sq miles.

so, we could all right now... Stand on Zanzibar.

And all the other things that Brunner wrote about are coming true... "Shockwave Rider", "The Sheep Look Up", etc

Not only did he dream of the Internet in 1975... and yeah, I know, the Arpanet already existed... I was writing code for the first generation routers / translators (IMPs)... but he was thinking of "worms" (our virus) and hacking and all sorts of things that we now live with.

[hfojvt]

59. hmm, well Brunner ended his book

with people standing knee deep in the ocean (I thought) and that was in 1973.

He only has people with 2 square feet rather than 4. And has Zanzibar with only 620 square miles.

I believe he is correct since wiki gives the total area as 1,020 but that includes "numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja (the main island, referred to informally as Zanzibar), and Pemba."

He was just talking about Unguja.

But 1x2 is a pretty small square. My own shoulders are about 19-20 inches across and my feet are 11 inches long - and I am a fairly small guy. 1x2 would have us standing basically shoulder to shoulder and heel to toe.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

14. That's really lousy work.

No one bothered to use a spackle tool to fill in all those fissures. You've got to spread the stuff sround and make sure the entire hole is covered. Then paint.

[krispos42]

15. XKCD had a "What If?" post a while back...

...asking the question "what would happen if you had a mole of moles?"

The answer was pretty gross. Either you had the entire earth covered with moles to a height of 50 miles, or a second, slightly larger moon made entirely of meat and fur.

http://what-if.xkcd.com/4/

I sort of imaging the bottom of this pile would look like that.

[scarletwoman]

16. I'm disappointed. Why would they be piled up in a cone like that?

I'd much rather see them spread out in an even layer along the bottom of the canyon. How far would it stretch? How many bodies deep would it be? How far up the Canyon walls would the layer go?

I visited the Grand Canyon a little over two years ago, and the incredible scale of the place is very much impressed in my memory.

As a cook, that image just makes me want to grab a spatula to smooth it out into a proper filling.

[A HERETIC I AM]

18. LOL

Make a people fondant, eh?

I'm somewhat mechanically and engineering inclined so I want to know what a dam would look like!

[scarletwoman]

22. Well, you know, I didn't START it.

But I've rolled many a burrito in my day, and one thing I know is that you want your filling spread out fairly evenly.

[okaawhatever]

19. While I won't comment on your desire to spatulize (new word) all of humanity, I will tell you that

the first 20 seconds of the video gives a better image of how small the pile really is relative to the Grand Canyon. I think if anything, they would fit in a single layer at the bottom, but probably wouldn't even make a full second layer. You have to watch the video.

[scarletwoman]

23. Sorry, can't watch video, still on dial-up out here in the boonies.

But I thank you for this: "I think if anything, they would fit in a single layer at the bottom, but probably wouldn't even make a full second layer."

For me, that would be a more meaningful image.

Oh, and, love the word "spatulize".

[giftedgirl77]

27. On an unrelated subject..

I couldn't figure out why ppl were putting dialup warnings in their headers, thanks for inadvertently educating me.

[scarletwoman]

29. Heh! Yeah, there are still some of us doing it old school. (nt)

[Jenoch]

35. I agree.

That pile of humans looks like a pile of human feces in the business end of an outhouse.

It makes me want to take a stick and knock it down before it tickles my arse.

[scarletwoman]

38. No shit! (so to speak)

Oh, and the "knock it down before it tickles my arse" thing? I totally relate, having no indoor plumbing.

I keep a length of rebar beside my outhouse for just such a task throughout the winter months, when the frozen stalagmite of shit threatens to reach higher than the drop point.

[yawnmaster]

42. I've never had the extended experience, but over the winter can't you randomly...

center (or off center) yourself to keep the stack from growing so tall?

[scarletwoman]

44. Well, the hole is only so large - like, you don't want it so big you could fall in, ya know.

So, the best you can do is sidle over maybe a little over an inch at most one way or the other. In any case, for knocking-over purposes, tall and narrow makes it easier.

[Jenoch]

43. Hah! I wonder how many DUers CAN relate?

Fortunately for me I am referring to our no running water, no electricity cabin in northern Minnesota.

May I ask in what region of our country it is where you seem to enjoy those late night visits to the place with no name?

[scarletwoman]

45. We're in the same state! I'm in northern Pine County, in east central MN.

I have electricity though, just no plumbing.

[Jenoch]

53. You might be near the Nemadgi State Forest.

Several years ago we were looking for hunting/recreational property. We looked all over. The parts of Pine County we looked at just did not seem right. Plus one of our brothers would be travelling from western Minnesota. 

We ended up with a tar paper shack with a couple hundred acres in Cass County. While we have no electricity and no lake, we do have a lot of fun. We have enlarged and made our tar-paper shack into a cabin without running water or electricity. That keeps out the women-folk, not that that was our intention.

[calimary]

61. My first thought was - "for such a relatively 'small' pile, it's astounding how much damage we do."

[Jefferson23]

21. A gigantic conehead, that's us. n/t

[hunter]

24. Don't give little Anthony ideas...

tvworthwatching.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_a_Good_Life_%28The_Twilight_Zone%29

[MannyGoldstein]

51. What would everyone look like...

in the corn field?

[Takket]

25. and knowing my luck, even with all those people, my hand would STILL

probably wind up on Karl Rove's rear end.

[madinmaryland]

30. Soylent Green??

[okaawhatever]

40. Someone will totally photoshop a bulldozer in that pic. lolz. nt

[yurbud]

63. I wish I had time!

[pipi_k]

31. Having nothing to do

For a few hours, I counted them up


Three of them are missing

[Generic Brad]

34. Why wouldn't we spread out?

You can't fill up the Grand Canyon with just one big old pile. Spread those bodes out and then we'll see if we fill the damned thing up.

[okaawhatever]

47. They tell you in the video that we couldn't come close to filling it up. I know a lot of people

can't watch the video but for those who can the first 20 seconds shows the pile relative to the entire grand canyon and the pile is actually pretty small.

[Blaukraut]

36. I wouldn't want to be at the bottom of that pile n/t

[jberryhill]

49. No, it wouldn't.

If "every human" includes myself, then it would look nothing like that, since I would be in the pile.

Unless you mean "every human other than myself".

But I'd like to see some proof so, okay everybody, get going!

[KT2000]

52. E.O. Wilson just said

that if you weigh all the ants in the world and all the humans in the world, they would be about equal.

[BlueStreak]

54. I'd settle for just piling up all the lobbyists, hedge fund operators, banksters and insider traders

[undeterred]

55. And all elected Republicans.

[defacto7]

58. I have this compelling urge

to get out a bottle of Malathion. The earth would thank us in this one case.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

62. Hey, who's kicking me? nt

[okaawhatever]

64. LOL nt