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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren Vocalbam here with another classic episode from our previous host,

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Speaker 1: Christian Sager. The topic is a particularly tangly one. How

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Speaker 1: long would it take to walk around the world? Hey

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Speaker 1: brain stuff, this is Christian Sagar. Have you ever wondered

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Speaker 1: how long it would take you to walk around the world? Well,

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Speaker 1: here's the facts. There are a lot of ways to

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Speaker 1: answer this question. The simplest way to think about it, though,

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Speaker 1: begins with the circumference of the Earth being twenty four thousand,

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Speaker 1: nine and one miles at the equator, or seventy four kilometers. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: not everybody walks at the same speed, and the same

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Speaker 1: person doesn't even walk at the same speed all the time.

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Speaker 1: But let's assume that a reasonable figure for average adult

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Speaker 1: human walking speed is through three point one miles per hour,

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Speaker 1: or about five kilometers per hour. Given these numbers, if

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Speaker 1: you were able to walk in a straight line around

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Speaker 1: the Earth at the equator, never stopping, maintaining a constant

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Speaker 1: speed of three point one miles per hour, it would

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Speaker 1: take you about eight thousand, thirty two point six hours

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Speaker 1: to do it. That works out to be about three

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Speaker 1: hundred and thirty four three thirty five days. It's not

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Speaker 1: too bad, You've got the entire planet in less than

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Speaker 1: a year. But of course, nobody could actually walk without

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Speaker 1: stopping for three thirty five days. So let's say you

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Speaker 1: just stop long enough to lie down on the ground

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Speaker 1: wherever you are and sleep for eight hours a night.

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Speaker 1: Then you hop right back up and you resume your walk.

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Speaker 1: Then it would take you about five hundred and two days.

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Speaker 1: You know. An interesting side note here. According to the

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Speaker 1: Guinness Book of World Records, the fastest growing species of

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Speaker 1: bamboo can grow up to ninety one centimeters or thirty

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Speaker 1: five inches per day. In the time it took you

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Speaker 1: to make your five and two day trip around the world,

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Speaker 1: this bamboo could grow seventeen thousand, five hundred and seventy

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Speaker 1: inches or a thousand, four hundred and sixty four ft in.

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Speaker 1: That is going to be some long bamboo. Of course,

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Speaker 1: if the bamboo itself wanted to take over the world

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Speaker 1: by growing all the way around the circumference of the Earth,

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Speaker 1: thus gaining a literal stranglehold on the planet at a

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Speaker 1: rate of thirty five inches per day, it would take

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Speaker 1: more than forty five million days, So okay, we've got

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Speaker 1: a headstart compared to bamboo, I guess. But of course,

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Speaker 1: you can't just walk continuously or in a straight line

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Speaker 1: all the way around the world unless you know you're

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Speaker 1: some kind of holy figure who has mastered the whole

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Speaker 1: walking on water thing. There are some oceans in the way,

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Speaker 1: so really you can only walk all the way around

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Speaker 1: the world in an approximate kind of sense, for example,

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Speaker 1: by starting at the tip of South America, heading north

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Speaker 1: to Alaska, crossing somewhere over to Russia, and then traveling

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Speaker 1: as far on foot as you can to some westernmost

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Speaker 1: destination in Europe or Africa. Or you could fly to

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Speaker 1: each continent individually and walk across them one at a time.

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Speaker 1: No matter what route you pick, you'll have to go

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Speaker 1: around mountains, dense forests, killer deserts, bodies of water, and

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Speaker 1: other obstacles. Typically, it makes more sense to follow roads

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Speaker 1: than to try to cut straight through the wilderness. Plus

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Speaker 1: you have to stop to rest and sleep and eat.

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Speaker 1: So how long does it take once all of that

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Speaker 1: is factored in. Well, there are actually quite a few

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Speaker 1: people who have done it in one form or another.

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Speaker 1: Between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty three, a Romanian geographer

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Speaker 1: named Dumitrue Dan completed a fairly exhaustive around the world walk.

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Speaker 1: He traveled across every continent except Antarctica, and would walk

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Speaker 1: back and forth across the decks of ships during the

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Speaker 1: necessary ocean crossings. When he started in nineteen ten, Dan

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Speaker 1: had three human companions and a dog with him. All

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Speaker 1: three of his human companions died during the journey. One

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Speaker 1: fell while traversing a mountainous region in China, one overdosed

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Speaker 1: on opium in India, and one died of some medical

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Speaker 1: condition affecting his legs in Florida. The journey took thirteen years,

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Speaker 1: but it wasn't just trying to go all the way

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Speaker 1: around the planet once. This trip had the four globe

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Speaker 1: trotters going back and forth across several continents to really

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Speaker 1: cover pretty much all of the world. Plus there was

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Speaker 1: a major delay of the trip unrelated to the journey itself,

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Speaker 1: caused by the outbreak of World War One in In

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Speaker 1: other words, if not for World War One, Dan could

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Speaker 1: have completed the journey much sooner. Then. On June twent

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, another man named Dave Kunst set out from Washsaka,

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Speaker 1: Minnesota to walk around the world. He took along his

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Speaker 1: brother On and a mule named Willie. Make it yep,

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Speaker 1: that's that's the mule's name. Dave and John were shot

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Speaker 1: by bandits in Afghanistan. John was killed, Dave was only injured.

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Speaker 1: The journey from Wassaka and back again took him four years,

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Speaker 1: three months and sixteen days, but that includes delays such

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Speaker 1: as the four month period of medical recuperation Dave had

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Speaker 1: after he was shot in Afghanistan, and one more. The

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Speaker 1: British globe trotter Fiona Campbell received fame in the nineteen

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Speaker 1: nineties after she completed a round the World walk in

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Speaker 1: several stages over the course of about eleven years. So

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Speaker 1: if there were a perfect highway going straight around the

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Speaker 1: equator and you never got attacked by bandits or injured

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Speaker 1: or sick or detained it a border and had to

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Speaker 1: quit because of exhaustion, and you really only stopped to sleep, well, well,

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Speaker 1: we'll assume that there's someone driving along next to you,

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Speaker 1: constantly supplying you with water and feeding you with cheeseburgers

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Speaker 1: to make up for all the calories you're burning. And

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Speaker 1: we're also going to assume that when you have to

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Speaker 1: go to the bathroom, you just you know, you go.

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Speaker 1: It would take a little more than five hundred days,

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Speaker 1: but if you look at people who actually try to

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Speaker 1: do it for real, it tends to take many years

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Speaker 1: and is very often interrupted. Today's episode was written by

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick and produced by Tyler Clang. The Brain Stuff

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Speaker 1: is production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. To hear

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Speaker 1: more from Joe, you can tune into either of his

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Speaker 1: two podcasts, Invention and Stuff to Blow your Mind. And

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Speaker 1: for more on this and lots of other topics, visit

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Speaker 1: our home Planet Has to Works dot com plus for

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