This is a video by Real Life Lore.
Brought to you by Audible. Agoraphobia is
defined as the fear of open spaces
public transit, shopping malls or simply
being outside of your home. But is the
fear really realistic, and is it actually
possible to live an entire life
completely indoors? And weirdly, if the
entire human species suffer from this
phobia that could we all theoretically
live inside of one gigantic building and
not ever have to leave our homes or at
least never have to leave the comfort of
the building?
The answer is yes but let's first take a
look at some real-world concepts before
venturing into the detailed insanity of
all living, eating, sleeping and breathing
in the same building.
Perhaps the most realistic proposal of
fitting an entire city's worth of people
inside of the same building is the
Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid, which is
planned to be built in the bay of Tokyo
in Japan. When finished the pyramid is
expected to be 14 times taller than the
Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt at just
over two kilometers tall, and will be
capable of supporting a population of 1
million people who will live inside of it
that means that the building could
support the entire population of the US
state of Montana, or house the population
of entire large cities like San Jose
California or Cologne, Germany. The
building would have eight square
kilometers of floor space when finished
which is four times larger than the
actual country of Monaco and even larger
than the UK territory of Gibraltar.
However, a building this massive cannot
actually be built with current
construction technology. Construction is
anticipated to begin in the year 2030 and
the building is projected to be
completed by the year 2110 which is
ludicrous if you think about it. That is
93 years from now if you're watching
this video in 2017 which means that most
of us will probably not be alive by the
time of this building is finished being
built.
Think of all the history that could possibly
happen within ninety-three years and
this building still may not even be
finished after all of that. It's not
completely unprecedented however, this
cathedral in the city of York first
started being built in a year 1220
imagine being the first person who lay
down the first brick to begin building
this cathedral. He would have spent his
entire lifetime working on the project
and so would have his son, and his son,
and his son,
and his son (Lucky he didn't have a daughter) and so on until 252 years
later the cathedral was finally finished
being built. Nine generations would have
passed from the time that the first
person began working on it. It would have
been like if your relative from 1765 had
begun building something and you today
right now just finished it
you probably can't even think of any
relatives that you may have even had
back then and that probably would have
been even more severe in the Middle Ages.
A distant relative would have begun
building a building and their name would
have been long forgotten but you
centuries later would be still working
on and completing what they had
originally started anyway. It's very
strange to think about, but let's move back to
the mega pyramid building in the
distant future of 2110. Power is
generated by solar panels on the
building's trusses. Transportation is
provided by massive accelerating
walkways, elevators and personal rapid
transit tubes with automated shuttlepods
that zip from one part of the building to
another. The building is full of homes,
offices, restaurants, stores and is a
fully functioning city of 1 million
people who live entirely indoors.
Nobody would have to really ever leave,
but 1 million people isn't all of us, so
let's envision something like this but
on a much larger scale. First off, let's
envision where would be the most
strategic location on Earth to place a
building that could house all 7.478
billion of us.
My answer is probably Brazil and
specifically right here. The reasoning
for this is largely because of water
since twelve percent of all the Earth's
surface freshwater is located in Brazil
and the second largest dam in the world
is located nearby.
I'll get more into the reasoning later
so let's assume that we've moved
everybody's houses and homes as they are
together into one place. Everybody on
earth gets to keep their current size
living space,
so what would this look like all together?
For reference the average U.S. house
built in 2013 was 241 square meters in
size. According to the UN however
thirteen percent of the world's
population lives in five square meters or
less of living space. 28 percent have
between five and nine square meters of
space, 24 percent have between 10 and 14
square meters, 18 percent have between 15
and 19 square meters and only eighteen
percent of the world's population within
20 meters or greater size houses.
So American houses are certainly not the
global norms and averaging out all of
these numbers gives us a building
living with 90,000,860 square kilometers
of living space in a two-dimensional
view about the size of Jordan in the
Middle East that was all just one floor
but if we constructed the building to be
as high as the current tallest
residential building in the world at 414
meters or 101 stories high,
then the living space of everybody on Earth
would take up an area of around 900
square kilometers on the surface, a
little less than the size of the Faroe
Islands in Denmark. As for food, after a
lot of research it appears that sweet
potatoes are the most calorie intensive
crop that you can grow. If we utilized
efficient farming techniques and made
use of vertical farms with artificial
sunlight, we can construct a 1 cubic
kilometer building that would be
dedicated solely to producing sweet
potatoes for our population. Each cubic
kilometer mega-farm could produce
enough sweet potatoes to feed over 27
million people of 1500 calorie per day
diet. So if we also built 275 of the
buildings connected to the main living
space then we could feed the entire human
race inside a steady diet of pure sweet
potatoes. Since humans need to drink 2
liters of water to survive each day and
the nearby dam has a reservoir of 29
cubic kilometers, we could have enough
drinking water nearby to last us for
over 4,000 years. Of course some of the
water would be used for other purposes
like agriculture but it would still be
enough to last for centuries using all
of our needs inside the mega building if
we kept maximum efficiency and assume
that nothing goes wrong.
Finally we need space for other things
besides just living. In New York City
about 75% of the zoning ordinances are
for residential property while the
remaining twenty-five percent is for
commercial, manufacturing, transportation
or park space. If we kept that same ratio
in our mega building, then we would add
an additional 225 square kilometers worth of
the building space on the Earth's
surface that will stand as high as the
residential portion. Altogether our mega
building that could house all of humanity in
the same living space that they live in
today complete with all water needs, a
diet of pure sweet potatoes, stores, parks
and transportation would take up an area
of 1339 square kilometers on the Earth's
surface, still just a little smaller than
the Faroe Islands in Denmark. The parts
devoted to water storage and agriculture
would be one kilometer high and the rest
of the building would be 414 meters high.
In terms of power, the nearby dam would
provide a lot of it, but
probably wouldn't be enough to power
the entire building. It is estimated that
a solar panel array the size of Spain
could provide enough power for the
entire world's energy needs.
So a grouping of solar panels of this
size nearby the building would provide
way more than enough since humanity would
be using much less energy all
concentrated together.
Transportation will be just like in the
Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid, handled by
thousands of elevators, walkways and
automated shuttlepods moving in tunnels
inside the building.
Life wouldn't exactly be very nice on a
diet of sweet potatoes and never being
able to leave the building, but in a
catastrophic event like a nuclear war,
global warming or a meteorite impact
that could cause living conditions on
the outside to become lethal, then
something similar to this may become
necessary. The political situation inside
would certainly be messy to say the least.
There would probably be a wealthier
section with more living space and a
poorer section with less living space.
It may take centuries and generations to
build it and most people would certainly
not want to live this lifestyle, but
still... It is technically possible that we
could all live in the same amount of
space that we do now in an area no
larger than these islands in the
Atlantic Ocean. This video has been
brought to you in part by Audible, which
is home to an unmatched number of
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And if you think it's fun
imagining what an entire civilization
would look like inside of one building,
then why not listen to The World Inside
by Robert Silverberg. This book fully
explores an entire universe and story
set inside of a building much like what
you just listen about and goes into far
more detail than I ever could in just an
eight minute long video. I use Audible to
listen to audio books while I'm driving,
stuck in traffic, working or just for fun.
It's a new year so why not start off by
listening to some of the greatest books
ever written while driving to work or to
school. You can get any book for free
when you start your 30-day free trial so
if you find something that interests you
besides the book that I suggested then
that's completely fine for you to
download as well. You can listen straight
off of your phone or tablet so if you'd
like to get started please go to
audible.com/reallifelore. Thanks for
watching this video don't forget to
leave a comment if you'd like to discuss
any aspect of this video and don't
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enjoyed what you just watched and we'll see
you around next time.
(eerie music)