According to this page, the total area of dry land in Texas is 261,914 sq. mi.
Put 6.5 billion people on it, distributed more or less evenly, you get a population density of 24,817.31 people per square mile. According to this page, the population density in Manhattan as of the 2000 census was 69,873 people per sq. mi.
The overall population density of the Chicago metro area in 2000 was 12,747 people per sq. mi.
Speaking of which, I think it would be pretty easy to fit all the world’s population into New York City comfortably (initially.) You might even have enough space to walk around. Multiple levels of buildings are very handy.
Please don’t. Seriously.
Curse you ataraxy22!
[Shakes fist]
According to one source I read, the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong has a population density of 130,000 people per square kilometre. That gives a realistic - as in genuinely attainable - area of exactly 50,000 square kilometres for the world’s population. Or a square of ~223 km (~138 miles) each side. Full of lots of high-rise buildings.
Hmm. If that 50,000 square kilometres was two-thirds covered by ninety-storey apartment buildings (leaving gaps for rivers, parks, windows, air intakes and exhausts, lakes, power lines, factories, etc–walkways and trains and roads could thread their way through the mass in tubes), that might not be all that bad, actually.
You could put large-scale transport and factories in the basement; the offices, shops, and residences would be in the towers above.
Food supply, even more than water, would seem to be the critical limitation.
Makes me wonder how many people there would be in a planet-size city, like Trantor or Coruscant. And where would they get their resources from?
You know if Lynwood Slim is planning a party and I’m the ONLY ONE not invited…well, I think that sucks!
Christ, what an imagination I’ve got!
Christ, what an imagination I’ve got!
The statistic I heard (from a junior high science class film) was that there is enough gold in one cubic mile of ocean to make a person a billionaire and that there were enough cubic miles of ocean that everyone on Earth could have their own, and that everyone on Earth would fit into a single cubic mile (not comfortably, though).
I haven’t checked the math, and this was about 35 years ago, so maybe now we’d need two cubic miles - or Hal Briston’s Enormous Blender of Death [sup]TM[/sup], set on “Frappé”, of course. :eek:
P.J. O’Rourke had a very similar statement, I believe even using Tasmania. Think it was in “All the Trouble in the World”, I may see if I can find it once I’m done with Godfather II.
Automated farms, mines, factories, etc… with automated transport for all resources and automated factories making the finished products. 