WEBVTT - BrainStuff Classics: How Long Would It Take To Walk Around The World?

0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:07.120
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,

0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:10.840
<v Speaker 1>Lauren Vocalbam here with another classic episode from our previous host,

0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:15.200
<v Speaker 1>Christian Sager. The topic is a particularly tangly one. How

0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:21.480
<v Speaker 1>long would it take to walk around the world? Hey

0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:24.240
<v Speaker 1>brain stuff, this is Christian Sagar. Have you ever wondered

0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:27.360
<v Speaker 1>how long it would take you to walk around the world? Well,

0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:30.120
<v Speaker 1>here's the facts. There are a lot of ways to

0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:33.520
<v Speaker 1>answer this question. The simplest way to think about it, though,

0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:39.400
<v Speaker 1>begins with the circumference of the Earth being twenty four thousand,

0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:46.840
<v Speaker 1>nine and one miles at the equator, or seventy four kilometers. Obviously,

0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:50.200
<v Speaker 1>not everybody walks at the same speed, and the same

0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:53.640
<v Speaker 1>person doesn't even walk at the same speed all the time.

0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:57.920
<v Speaker 1>But let's assume that a reasonable figure for average adult

0:00:58.200 --> 0:01:02.200
<v Speaker 1>human walking speed is through three point one miles per hour,

0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:06.800
<v Speaker 1>or about five kilometers per hour. Given these numbers, if

0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:09.440
<v Speaker 1>you were able to walk in a straight line around

0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:14.040
<v Speaker 1>the Earth at the equator, never stopping, maintaining a constant

0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:17.160
<v Speaker 1>speed of three point one miles per hour, it would

0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:22.120
<v Speaker 1>take you about eight thousand, thirty two point six hours

0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:25.360
<v Speaker 1>to do it. That works out to be about three

0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:28.760
<v Speaker 1>hundred and thirty four three thirty five days. It's not

0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:31.560
<v Speaker 1>too bad, You've got the entire planet in less than

0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:34.840
<v Speaker 1>a year. But of course, nobody could actually walk without

0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:38.520
<v Speaker 1>stopping for three thirty five days. So let's say you

0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:41.679
<v Speaker 1>just stop long enough to lie down on the ground

0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:44.200
<v Speaker 1>wherever you are and sleep for eight hours a night.

0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:46.760
<v Speaker 1>Then you hop right back up and you resume your walk.

0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:50.600
<v Speaker 1>Then it would take you about five hundred and two days.

0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:53.760
<v Speaker 1>You know. An interesting side note here. According to the

0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:57.720
<v Speaker 1>Guinness Book of World Records, the fastest growing species of

0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:01.880
<v Speaker 1>bamboo can grow up to ninety one centimeters or thirty

0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:04.720
<v Speaker 1>five inches per day. In the time it took you

0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:07.480
<v Speaker 1>to make your five and two day trip around the world,

0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:11.440
<v Speaker 1>this bamboo could grow seventeen thousand, five hundred and seventy

0:02:11.520 --> 0:02:14.880
<v Speaker 1>inches or a thousand, four hundred and sixty four ft in.

0:02:14.919 --> 0:02:18.280
<v Speaker 1>That is going to be some long bamboo. Of course,

0:02:18.360 --> 0:02:20.840
<v Speaker 1>if the bamboo itself wanted to take over the world

0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:23.320
<v Speaker 1>by growing all the way around the circumference of the Earth,

0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:26.560
<v Speaker 1>thus gaining a literal stranglehold on the planet at a

0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:29.520
<v Speaker 1>rate of thirty five inches per day, it would take

0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:34.040
<v Speaker 1>more than forty five million days, So okay, we've got

0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:37.680
<v Speaker 1>a headstart compared to bamboo, I guess. But of course,

0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:40.840
<v Speaker 1>you can't just walk continuously or in a straight line

0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:43.639
<v Speaker 1>all the way around the world unless you know you're

0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:45.560
<v Speaker 1>some kind of holy figure who has mastered the whole

0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:49.000
<v Speaker 1>walking on water thing. There are some oceans in the way,

0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:52.239
<v Speaker 1>so really you can only walk all the way around

0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:55.280
<v Speaker 1>the world in an approximate kind of sense, for example,

0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:58.360
<v Speaker 1>by starting at the tip of South America, heading north

0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:02.119
<v Speaker 1>to Alaska, crossing somewhere over to Russia, and then traveling

0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:04.800
<v Speaker 1>as far on foot as you can to some westernmost

0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:09.360
<v Speaker 1>destination in Europe or Africa. Or you could fly to

0:03:09.440 --> 0:03:13.640
<v Speaker 1>each continent individually and walk across them one at a time.

0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:16.720
<v Speaker 1>No matter what route you pick, you'll have to go

0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:21.880
<v Speaker 1>around mountains, dense forests, killer deserts, bodies of water, and

0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:26.200
<v Speaker 1>other obstacles. Typically, it makes more sense to follow roads

0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:29.040
<v Speaker 1>than to try to cut straight through the wilderness. Plus

0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:32.000
<v Speaker 1>you have to stop to rest and sleep and eat.

0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:35.600
<v Speaker 1>So how long does it take once all of that

0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:39.040
<v Speaker 1>is factored in. Well, there are actually quite a few

0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:41.240
<v Speaker 1>people who have done it in one form or another.

0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:46.000
<v Speaker 1>Between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty three, a Romanian geographer

0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:51.320
<v Speaker 1>named Dumitrue Dan completed a fairly exhaustive around the world walk.

0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:56.200
<v Speaker 1>He traveled across every continent except Antarctica, and would walk

0:03:56.320 --> 0:03:59.320
<v Speaker 1>back and forth across the decks of ships during the

0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:04.080
<v Speaker 1>necessary ocean crossings. When he started in nineteen ten, Dan

0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:08.000
<v Speaker 1>had three human companions and a dog with him. All

0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:11.760
<v Speaker 1>three of his human companions died during the journey. One

0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:15.560
<v Speaker 1>fell while traversing a mountainous region in China, one overdosed

0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:19.000
<v Speaker 1>on opium in India, and one died of some medical

0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:24.320
<v Speaker 1>condition affecting his legs in Florida. The journey took thirteen years,

0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:26.720
<v Speaker 1>but it wasn't just trying to go all the way

0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:30.120
<v Speaker 1>around the planet once. This trip had the four globe

0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:34.279
<v Speaker 1>trotters going back and forth across several continents to really

0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:37.479
<v Speaker 1>cover pretty much all of the world. Plus there was

0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:40.800
<v Speaker 1>a major delay of the trip unrelated to the journey itself,

0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:43.600
<v Speaker 1>caused by the outbreak of World War One in In

0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:45.920
<v Speaker 1>other words, if not for World War One, Dan could

0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:50.120
<v Speaker 1>have completed the journey much sooner. Then. On June twent

0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:55.240
<v Speaker 1>nineteen seventy, another man named Dave Kunst set out from Washsaka,

0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:59.400
<v Speaker 1>Minnesota to walk around the world. He took along his

0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:03.839
<v Speaker 1>brother On and a mule named Willie. Make it yep,

0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.520
<v Speaker 1>that's that's the mule's name. Dave and John were shot

0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:11.880
<v Speaker 1>by bandits in Afghanistan. John was killed, Dave was only injured.

0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:15.520
<v Speaker 1>The journey from Wassaka and back again took him four years,

0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:20.000
<v Speaker 1>three months and sixteen days, but that includes delays such

0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:23.359
<v Speaker 1>as the four month period of medical recuperation Dave had

0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:26.880
<v Speaker 1>after he was shot in Afghanistan, and one more. The

0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:31.120
<v Speaker 1>British globe trotter Fiona Campbell received fame in the nineteen

0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:35.200
<v Speaker 1>nineties after she completed a round the World walk in

0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:39.640
<v Speaker 1>several stages over the course of about eleven years. So

0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:42.919
<v Speaker 1>if there were a perfect highway going straight around the

0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:46.840
<v Speaker 1>equator and you never got attacked by bandits or injured

0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:49.479
<v Speaker 1>or sick or detained it a border and had to

0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:54.000
<v Speaker 1>quit because of exhaustion, and you really only stopped to sleep, well, well,

0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:56.440
<v Speaker 1>we'll assume that there's someone driving along next to you,

0:05:56.520 --> 0:05:59.240
<v Speaker 1>constantly supplying you with water and feeding you with cheeseburgers

0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:01.360
<v Speaker 1>to make up for all the calories you're burning. And

0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:03.320
<v Speaker 1>we're also going to assume that when you have to

0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:05.400
<v Speaker 1>go to the bathroom, you just you know, you go.

0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:10.320
<v Speaker 1>It would take a little more than five hundred days,

0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:13.120
<v Speaker 1>but if you look at people who actually try to

0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:15.800
<v Speaker 1>do it for real, it tends to take many years

0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:23.160
<v Speaker 1>and is very often interrupted. Today's episode was written by

0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:26.000
<v Speaker 1>Joe McCormick and produced by Tyler Clang. The Brain Stuff

0:06:26.040 --> 0:06:28.400
<v Speaker 1>is production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. To hear

0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:30.640
<v Speaker 1>more from Joe, you can tune into either of his

0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:34.880
<v Speaker 1>two podcasts, Invention and Stuff to Blow your Mind. And

0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:36.719
<v Speaker 1>for more on this and lots of other topics, visit

0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.280
<v Speaker 1>our home Planet Has to Works dot com plus for

0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:41.360
<v Speaker 1>more podcasts For my Heart Radio, was it the I

0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:44.120
<v Speaker 1>Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to

0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:44.960
<v Speaker 1>your favorite shows.