If you thought your reserved D-box seats
to the 3D IMAX showing of The Force Awakens cost an arm and a leg,
ha! You ain't seen nothing yet.
[TITLE MUSIC]
Hello internet!
welcome to film theory
where Today, hold onto your fitted Jedi leggings,
a.k.a. your "Jeggings"...
...because we're talking about the economics of building the Death Star.
And before you wander away,
thinking this is going to be a bunch of math for the next fifteen minutes,
well, there's going to be some math,
but that math will totally be worth it,
because by the end of the episode,
you're going to learn that there's a Force in the galaxy far more dangerous than the Dark Side.
And that Force is market force.
In the context of that Force, the Jedi are far more destructive than the Sith ever will be
seriously!
Get ready to never look at this scene...
...the same way again.
It seems logical place to start is to figuring out how much the Death Star costs to make.
I mean, this is one massive ship, right?
So before we making any big revelations about Star Wars,
we have to get down to nuts and bolts. Literally.
According to Wookiepedia,
the hull of the Death Star is made of Quadanium steel.
According to the information that we have,
all the outside parts of the Death Star are made from this steel alloy,
which is supposed to be a super-strong armor.
And while it may be tough, it's not like it's impenetrable or anything
since all the generations of TIE fighters that we see in the original trilogy
were also made out of this alloy.
We also see that it can be blown up pretty much like any other regular ship.
So it's a special steel, but as there's not much information on it,
and it looks and functions a lot like normal metal,
in our calculations we'll treat it like a regular steel alloy.
Fortunately for us,
some Economics students and fellow Star Warsians at Lehigh University, PA
actually calculated how much steel it takes to build the Death Star.
As with any fictional device that you're trying to bring into the real world,
you're going to face some limitations.
And as a result, make some assumptions.
For them, they compared the Death Star to what would basically be a battleship,
but instead of floating on water, it floats in space.
This is pretty rational,
since they both need to be protected from all kinds of weaponry,
both have to be airtight,
and they're both weapon platforms that need to be totally self-contained,
either in the vacuum of space or in the middle of the ocean.
Next, they took the dimensions of the Death Star,
which, according to the Star Wars Encyclopedia and online wikis,
is 140 kilometers in diameter, or about 87 miles across.
Just to give you some context, that's 1/25th the size of the Moon.
Next, they scaled everything up from a modern warship to the size of the Death Star,
and found that you would need 1.08x10 to the fifteenth tons of steel to construct,
as in 1.08 x 1,000,000,000,000,000.
Sometimes this happens with our theories,
where the numbers get so ridiculously big for us to even know what they mean,
so let's put this in perspective.
Comparing that number to the steel on Earth,
it actually doesn't look that crazy.
Based on the amount of iron in the planet Earth,
iron alloy makes steel, by the way, just so you know,
you could actually produce two million Death Star shells out of it.
Granted, the Earth would literally be mined dry,
completely gone, and the core would be gutted,
but it seems like producing one measly Death Star wouldn't be such a big deal,
until you how long it takes to turn the raw iron into steel.
At the current rate Earth produces steel,
it would take our planet more than 800,000 years just to get enough for the Death Star.
Not counting all the other parts you need for such a massive space station.
How long does it take to produce enough steel to build you everyday warship for the ocean?
Less than an hour.
Ok, so this is going to be a big project.
But it doesn't stop there.
Knowing how much steel it takes is all well and good,
but you can't just mine a gajillion tons of steel for free.
That much steel will need some serious cash.
Here's where the numbers get really crazy:
Our friends at Lehigh kept researching the Death Star stats,
and were able to calculate that at the price of steel in 2012,
1.08x10 to the fifteenth tons of steel would cost you about 852 quadrillion dollars.
Compare that to the Gross World Product for 2014.
That's how much money was produced by the entire world economy in a year.
The gross world product in 2014 was $77,868,768,000,000.
that means the price for just the steel on the death star would be almost 11,000 times all the money made in the world in a single year
and I want to make sure we're really clear here,
that this isn't just some huge number I'm waving out in front of you,
this cost of the Death Star has actually been verified in writing by the US Government.
Good job guys,
these are the sorts of things you should be wasting your time on.
A couple of years ago,
a petition for the US Government circulated to build a real Death Star,
under the assumption that it would bolster our national defense.
And obviously fend off the Rebel Alliance.
[LAUGHING] Sorry, I just love that this was a real thing that happened.
It got so many signatures,
the White House officially responded with a huge letter.
Even though they declined the request to build a gigantic death ray in space,
they did use data to back up their decision.
They also pointed out that blowing up planets isn't a good idea,
but offered an alternative solution:
If the government wasn't going to fund it,
you could always ask for private funding from NASA's "C3PO" department,
I kid you not.
The world is run by a bunch of nerds. It is glorious.
Confirmed by the US Government, this is what it would cost to build a Death Star.
And we're just talking about the basic model,
remember, you need a lot more than steel to keep this thing going,
you need tons of quarters for crews, all the internal life-support systems,
on-board computers, laser engines, huge plasma containment cells,
the steel is just the beginning.
Again, making the best comparison we can, between the Death Star and a regular warship,
we can make a rough calculation for how much the rest would cost.
Our friends at Lehigh used USS Gerald Ford,
which cost $17.5 billion, including R&D.
If we extrapolate that to the Death Star,
the total cost for the first Death Star would be as high as $193 quintillion.
So that's how much the Death Star would cost in our Earth Dollars today,
and that seems like a lot, right?
And it is, for a single planet.
Remember, we're only looking at it from Earth's perspective.
The Death Star was built using an entire galaxy's worth of resources,
with thousands of inhabited planets and trillions of people.
Coruscant alone has over one trillion inhabitants.
When you look at it that way, and that it took about twenty years to build,
It's actually not that bad.
But while the building cost isn't such a big deal in the grand scheme of the galaxy,
the cost of destroying the Death Star is something else entirely.
When the first Death Star was being built,
almost everyone in the galaxy was going about their own business.
Like we said, building a space station hardly affects them.
It's a government project, just like building a bridge.
But when good old Luke comes along and "uses the Force",
that's when the real problems for the galaxy start.
I'm not talking about planets blowing up,
although, yeah, sorry about that Alderaan,
[SAD TUBA]
I'm talking about everyone's worst nightmare: a recession.
[HORRIFIED ORCHESTRA]
And before you laugh this off,
a recession across an entire galaxy is no cakewalk.
The biggest issue here is that terrorism hurts the economy, and bad.
Destroying the Death Star would be the largest-ever galactic terrorist act.
Oh yeah, it's easy to forget,
amidst the cool laser swords and fun space battles,
that the Rebels are exactly that, Rebels.
Sure, the government may be controlled by an evil Sith Lord,
but it's a stable system.
And even then, the majority don't realise that the Sith are that bad.
To them, the Rebels are trying to overthrow the government,
and just successfully blew up the largest military base in history.
And that isn't good.
Compare the Death Star attack to something we know here: 9/11.
Following 9/11, two of the world's most important stock indexes,
the Dow Jones and the S&P 500,
dropped overnight by 14% and 12% respectively, and then stayed there.
Now, you don't have to know what those are,
it's a topic for another day,
what you do need to know is that sudden drops like this result in economic crashes.
As consumers become nervous and spend less money,
which in turn results in less income for companies.
Companies are then forced to make lay-offs,
and the resulting higher unemployment means even less spending.
Lower productivity for everyone, companies and individuals alike.
The economy struggles to recover.
Destroying the Death Star would cause this kind of collapse,
except instead of being on a national scale,
this would literally ripple across thousands of other planets.
The other big problem is the murder of major political and military figures.
This might seem like a good thing, Because "yeah! We got the bad guys",
especially with the second Death Star, you're talking about killing Emperor Palpatine,
but history shows that killing major leaders won't stimulate the economy.
This is comparable to April 23rd, 2013,
when the Associated Press tweeted that the White House had been attacked,
and that President Obama had been injured.
Of course, the tweet was wrong,
but in the four minutes it took before they got it retracted,
the stock market dropped by 1%. In four minutes.
There's no question that the Death Star's destruction would be to send the galactic economy reeling,
the Galactic Trade Federation would take a huge hit,
slowing down all the major galactic trade routes, and causing serious resoursh shortages.
...and causing serious resoursch shertages? I cannot say that. That is really hard to say.
Resource shortages.
Causing serious resource shortages, as remote planets' imports take a big hit.
Oh, I did it! And things only get worse from there,
remember, the Rebels destroyed two Death Stars!
Emperor Palpatine dies in Death Star II, that would lead to a collapse of the political system.
Without any sort of central structure or leader,
the Empire would have defaulted on all its debt to the planets.
that may not seem like a big deal, but it means the Empire can't pay anyone back,
including for the Death Stars.
All those resources and money used to make this thing, to quote South Park:
SOUTH PARK CHARACTER- And it's gone.
These are the most expensive military projects in history.
Not to mention financing a war against the Rebels for years-
-one might call it a war on terror-
-and now, none of it can be paid for.
All the industries related to military manufacture would collapse.
And many other industries would follow suit as a result.
So what does all this mean?
It means that destroying the Death Star is a lot more complicated than:
"The good guys won!". In fact,
it's pretty reasonable to think that it wouldn't lead to a prosperous, democratic Republic,
where everyone gets flowers and medals,
it would actually lead to a deep recession, and a massive power grab,
where lots of individual factions rush to take control of the galaxy.
Meanwhile, the ordinary citizens of the galaxy would suffer for years to come,
cut off from all supplies and resources from other planets,
stuffing their credits into their mattresses, waiting out the recession caused by the Jedi.
Destroying the Death Star would in fact have the exact opposite effect that they think:
Economists, they are not.
That's the point here.
Ultimately, there's a big difference between a political and a violent revolution.
We think of Emperor Palpatine as being this really destructive guy,
but his revolution from Old Republic to Empire was much smoother and safer than the Rebels'.
Sure, Palpatine used manipulation and coercion to get power,
and eventually bumped off a few Jedi-
-but he pretty much left the galactic population alone.
Everyone else was able to live their lives without too many problems.
Again, sorry, Alderaan. Bummer for you.
The armed and violent coup that the Rebels perform is much more sudden,
and ultimately more destructive to more people.
Really, if the Rebel Alliance truly wanted to bring peace to the galaxy,
a better way of living life for everyone,
to reform their Republic they need to take a page from the Dark Side,
and work a little magic behind the scenes,
rather than just destroying not just the Death Star,
but the whole galaxy's way of life.
So what, The Force Awakens takes place thirty years after the original trilogy?
Ha! Nah... Everyone should be in economic devastation.
That's the true story of The Force Awakens.
But hey, that's just a theory!
A Film Theory!
And cut!