WEBVTT - How Long Would It Take To Walk Around The World? 0:00:02.040 --> 0:00:08.559 Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff, 0:00:08.560 --> 0:00:11.440 this is Christian Sega. Have you ever wondered how long 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:13.880 it would take you to walk around the world, Well, 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:16.680 here's the facts. There are a lot of ways to 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:20.079 answer this question. The simplest way to think about it, though, 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:25.919 begins with the circumference of the Earth being twenty four thousand, 0:00:26.360 --> 0:00:33.400 nine and one miles at the equator, or seventy kilometers. Obviously, 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:36.720 not everybody walks at the same speed, and the same 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:40.200 person doesn't even walk at the same speed all the time. 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:44.440 But let's assume that a reasonable figure for average adult 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:48.720 human walking speed is three point one miles per hour, 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:53.279 or about five kilometers per hour. Given these numbers, if 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:55.960 you were able to walk in a straight line around 0:00:56.040 --> 0:01:00.560 the Earth at the equator, never stopping, maintaining a constant 0:01:00.600 --> 0:01:03.760 speed a three point one miles per hour, it would 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:08.640 take you about eight thousand, thirty two point six hours 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:11.840 to do it. That works out to be about three 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:14.720 hundred and thirty four three hundred and thirty five days. 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:17.680 It's not too bad. You got the entire planet in 0:01:17.760 --> 0:01:20.640 less than a year. But of course, nobody could actually 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:24.080 walk without stopping for three d thirty five days. So 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:27.679 let's say you just stop long enough to lie down 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:30.120 on the ground wherever you are and sleep for eight 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:32.319 hours a night. Then you hop right back up and 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:35.279 you resume your walk. Then it would take you about 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:39.400 five hundred and two days. Now an interesting side note here. 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:43.039 According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the fastest 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:47.880 growing species of bamboo can grow up to nine centimeters 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:50.600 or thirty five inches per day. In the time it 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.280 took you to make your five hundred two day trip 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:57.080 around the world, this bamboo could grow seventeen thousand, five 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:00.360 hundred and seventy inches or a thousand, four hundred and 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:02.840 sixty four feet, And that is going to be some 0:02:03.000 --> 0:02:06.480 long bamboo. Of course, if the bamboo itself wanted to 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:08.760 take over the world by growing all the way around 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:12.000 the circumference of the Earth, thus gaining a literal stranglehold 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:15.000 on the planet at a rate of thirty five per day, 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:19.919 it would take more than forty five million days. So, okay, 0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:23.680 we've got a headstart compared to bamboo, I guess. But 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:26.640 of course, you can't just walk continuously or in a 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:29.880 straight line all the way around the world unless you 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:31.760 know you're some kind of holy figure who has mastered 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:35.040 the whole walking on water thing. There are some oceans 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:38.080 in the way, so really you can only walk all 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:41.200 the way around the world in an approximate kind of sense, 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:44.000 for example, by starting at the tip of South America, 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:47.600 heading north to Alaska, crossing somewhere over to Russia, and 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:50.200 then traveling as far on foot as you can to 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:55.480 some westernmost destination in Europe or Africa. Or you could 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:59.440 fly to each continent individually and walk across them one 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:02.079 at a time. Time. No matter what route you pick, 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:06.760 you'll have to go around mountains, dense forests, killer deserts, 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:11.440 bodies of water, and other obstacles. Typically, it makes more 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:14.240 sense to follow roads than to try to cut straight 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:17.200 through the wilderness. Plus you have to stop to rest 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:20.760 and sleep and eat. So how long does it take 0:03:20.919 --> 0:03:24.400 once all of that is factored in. Well, there are 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:26.720 actually quite a few people who have done it in 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:30.680 one form or another. Between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty three, 0:03:31.080 --> 0:03:36.200 a Romanian geographer named dumitrue Dan completed a fairly exhaustive 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:41.760 around the world walk. He traveled across every continent except Antarctica, 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.600 and would walk back and forth across the decks of 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:48.960 ships during the necessary ocean crossings. When he started in 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:53.280 nineteen ten, Dan had three human companions and a dog 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:57.080 with him. All three of his human companions died during 0:03:57.080 --> 0:04:00.800 the journey. One fell while traversing a mountainous region in China, 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:04.880 one overdosed on opium in India, and one died of 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:09.160 some medical condition affecting his legs in Florida. The journey 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:12.640 took thirteen years, but it wasn't just trying to go 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:15.480 all the way around the planet once. This trip had 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:19.440 the four globe trotters going back and forth across several 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:22.840 continents to really cover pretty much all of the world. 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:26.280 Plus there was a major delay of the trip unrelated 0:04:26.320 --> 0:04:29.120 to the journey itself, caused by the outbreak of World 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:31.520 War One in In other words, if not for World 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:35.600 War One, Dan could have completed the journey much sooner. Then. 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:40.039 On June twent nineteen seventy, another man named Dave Kunst 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:44.480 set out from Washsaka, Minnesota to walk around the world. 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:48.640 He took along his brother John and a mule named 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:52.960 Willie make it yep, that's that's the mule's name. Dave 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.599 and John were shot by bandits in Afghanistan, John was killed, 0:04:57.040 --> 0:05:00.440 Dave was only injured. The journey from Wassaca and back 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:04.320 again took him four years, three months and sixteen days, 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:07.800 but that includes delays such as the four month period 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:10.960 of medical recuperation Dave had after he was shot in 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:16.080 Afghanistan and one more. The British globe trotter Fiona Campbell, 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:19.960 received fame in the nineteen nineties after she completed a 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:23.960 round the World walk in several stages over the course 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:27.799 of about eleven years. So if there were a perfect 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:31.200 highway going straight around the equator and you never got 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:34.960 attacked by bandits or injured or sick or detained it 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:37.880 a border and had to quit because of exhaustion, and 0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:41.200 you really only stopped to sleep, well, well, we'll assume 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:43.960 that there's someone driving along next to you constantly supplying 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:45.960 you with water and feeding you with cheeseburgers to make 0:05:46.040 --> 0:05:48.400 up for all the calories you're burning. And we're also 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:50.000 going to assume that when you have to go to 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:52.479 the bathroom, you just you know, you you go. It 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:57.440 would take a little more than five hundred days. But 0:05:57.960 --> 0:05:59.760 if you look at people who actually try to do 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:02.719 it for real, it tends to take many years and 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:11.880 is very often interrupted. Check out the brainstuff channel on YouTube, 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:14.160 and for more on this and thousands of other topics, 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:29.520 visit how stuff works dot com.