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