Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vocalbam here with another classic episode from our previous host,
Speaker 1: Christian Sager. The topic is a particularly tangly one. How
Speaker 1: long would it take to walk around the world? Hey
Speaker 1: brain stuff, this is Christian Sagar. Have you ever wondered
Speaker 1: how long it would take you to walk around the world? Well,
Speaker 1: here's the facts. There are a lot of ways to
Speaker 1: answer this question. The simplest way to think about it, though,
Speaker 1: begins with the circumference of the Earth being twenty four thousand,
Speaker 1: nine and one miles at the equator, or seventy four kilometers. Obviously,
Speaker 1: not everybody walks at the same speed, and the same
Speaker 1: person doesn't even walk at the same speed all the time.
Speaker 1: But let's assume that a reasonable figure for average adult
Speaker 1: human walking speed is through three point one miles per hour,
Speaker 1: or about five kilometers per hour. Given these numbers, if
Speaker 1: you were able to walk in a straight line around
Speaker 1: the Earth at the equator, never stopping, maintaining a constant
Speaker 1: speed of three point one miles per hour, it would
Speaker 1: take you about eight thousand, thirty two point six hours
Speaker 1: to do it. That works out to be about three
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty four three thirty five days. It's not
Speaker 1: too bad, You've got the entire planet in less than
Speaker 1: a year. But of course, nobody could actually walk without
Speaker 1: stopping for three thirty five days. So let's say you
Speaker 1: just stop long enough to lie down on the ground
Speaker 1: wherever you are and sleep for eight hours a night.
Speaker 1: Then you hop right back up and you resume your walk.
Speaker 1: Then it would take you about five hundred and two days.
Speaker 1: You know. An interesting side note here. According to the
Speaker 1: Guinness Book of World Records, the fastest growing species of
Speaker 1: bamboo can grow up to ninety one centimeters or thirty
Speaker 1: five inches per day. In the time it took you
Speaker 1: to make your five and two day trip around the world,
Speaker 1: this bamboo could grow seventeen thousand, five hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: inches or a thousand, four hundred and sixty four ft in.
Speaker 1: That is going to be some long bamboo. Of course,
Speaker 1: if the bamboo itself wanted to take over the world
Speaker 1: by growing all the way around the circumference of the Earth,
Speaker 1: thus gaining a literal stranglehold on the planet at a
Speaker 1: rate of thirty five inches per day, it would take
Speaker 1: more than forty five million days, So okay, we've got
Speaker 1: a headstart compared to bamboo, I guess. But of course,
Speaker 1: you can't just walk continuously or in a straight line
Speaker 1: all the way around the world unless you know you're
Speaker 1: some kind of holy figure who has mastered the whole
Speaker 1: walking on water thing. There are some oceans in the way,
Speaker 1: so really you can only walk all the way around
Speaker 1: the world in an approximate kind of sense, for example,
Speaker 1: by starting at the tip of South America, heading north
Speaker 1: to Alaska, crossing somewhere over to Russia, and then traveling
Speaker 1: as far on foot as you can to some westernmost
Speaker 1: destination in Europe or Africa. Or you could fly to
Speaker 1: each continent individually and walk across them one at a time.
Speaker 1: No matter what route you pick, you'll have to go
Speaker 1: around mountains, dense forests, killer deserts, bodies of water, and
Speaker 1: other obstacles. Typically, it makes more sense to follow roads
Speaker 1: than to try to cut straight through the wilderness. Plus
Speaker 1: you have to stop to rest and sleep and eat.
Speaker 1: So how long does it take once all of that
Speaker 1: is factored in. Well, there are actually quite a few
Speaker 1: people who have done it in one form or another.
Speaker 1: Between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty three, a Romanian geographer
Speaker 1: named Dumitrue Dan completed a fairly exhaustive around the world walk.
Speaker 1: He traveled across every continent except Antarctica, and would walk
Speaker 1: back and forth across the decks of ships during the
Speaker 1: necessary ocean crossings. When he started in nineteen ten, Dan
Speaker 1: had three human companions and a dog with him. All
Speaker 1: three of his human companions died during the journey. One
Speaker 1: fell while traversing a mountainous region in China, one overdosed
Speaker 1: on opium in India, and one died of some medical
Speaker 1: condition affecting his legs in Florida. The journey took thirteen years,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't just trying to go all the way
Speaker 1: around the planet once. This trip had the four globe
Speaker 1: trotters going back and forth across several continents to really
Speaker 1: cover pretty much all of the world. Plus there was
Speaker 1: a major delay of the trip unrelated to the journey itself,
Speaker 1: caused by the outbreak of World War One in In
Speaker 1: other words, if not for World War One, Dan could
Speaker 1: have completed the journey much sooner. Then. On June twent
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, another man named Dave Kunst set out from Washsaka,
Speaker 1: Minnesota to walk around the world. He took along his
Speaker 1: brother On and a mule named Willie. Make it yep,
Speaker 1: that's that's the mule's name. Dave and John were shot
Speaker 1: by bandits in Afghanistan. John was killed, Dave was only injured.
Speaker 1: The journey from Wassaka and back again took him four years,
Speaker 1: three months and sixteen days, but that includes delays such
Speaker 1: as the four month period of medical recuperation Dave had
Speaker 1: after he was shot in Afghanistan, and one more. The
Speaker 1: British globe trotter Fiona Campbell received fame in the nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties after she completed a round the World walk in
Speaker 1: several stages over the course of about eleven years. So
Speaker 1: if there were a perfect highway going straight around the
Speaker 1: equator and you never got attacked by bandits or injured
Speaker 1: or sick or detained it a border and had to
Speaker 1: quit because of exhaustion, and you really only stopped to sleep, well, well,
Speaker 1: we'll assume that there's someone driving along next to you,
Speaker 1: constantly supplying you with water and feeding you with cheeseburgers
Speaker 1: to make up for all the calories you're burning. And
Speaker 1: we're also going to assume that when you have to
Speaker 1: go to the bathroom, you just you know, you go.
Speaker 1: It would take a little more than five hundred days,
Speaker 1: but if you look at people who actually try to
Speaker 1: do it for real, it tends to take many years
Speaker 1: and is very often interrupted. Today's episode was written by
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick and produced by Tyler Clang. The Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. To hear
Speaker 1: more from Joe, you can tune into either of his
Speaker 1: two podcasts, Invention and Stuff to Blow your Mind. And
Speaker 1: for more on this and lots of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: our home Planet Has to Works dot com plus for
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