Tuesday, December 05, 2006

All the world's population could fit in a Texas County


I was talking this morning with a friend at work and he mentioned some of the shrill prophets of overpopulation. What most people don't know is that the entire 6 billion members of this race we call human, could all fit in an average sized Texas county.
The math: Shackelford county is roughly 20 miles by 30 miles square so the area in square feet is
(20 miles * 5280 feet/mile) * (30 miles * 5280 feet/mile) = 16,727,040,000 feet^2, or almost 17 billion square feet. With 6 billion people on our lovely planet that works out to about 2.7 square/feet per person just in this one county. It would be crowded, but Texas has 253 counties to go.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It takes about 2/3 acre of decent farm land to feed a family of 4. That does not include the water they drink, or the cloths they wear, or the forest land need to supply them with a house. In others words, you are describing those people in Darfur - you know - the naked homeless starving ones.

Anonymous said...

ok anonymous. lets say you're right...then let's put the world's population in the usa, ok? no darfur there eh? so all the people would be in the usa and the rest of the world would be empty.....now where's the overpopulation eh....or maybe you think God didn't know what he was doing when he made the earth and told us to be fruitful and multiply. he didnt say "...but stop when you reach 6 billion...."
let's be really generous----lets give them canada as well...ok? the rest of the world would still be empty.....
show me this overpopulation if you know better than God.....
tom

Anonymous said...

6 billion people living in a 20 x 30 mile county ? Time for some new batteries for the calculator. That breaks down to 350+ people per square foot. 10 million per square mile.
It would make a Hong Kong marketplace look like an empty stadium.....

Unknown said...

thats all fine...so it wouldnt really work to have so many people in one place....OBVIOUSLY!! thats not the point...the point is that the world is NOT over populated.

Do some research and find who pushes that agenda and why....truth is stranger and in this case scarier than fiction.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
6 billion people living in a 20 x 30 mile county ? Time for some new batteries for the calculator. That breaks down to 350+ people per square foot. 10 million per square mile.


I think maybe it's time for YOU to go back to school. He is, in fact, right. Do the math instead of throwing out a knee-jerk, emotional, "free thinker" response.

Mitch Fincher said...

>6 billion people living in a 20 x 30 mile county ?
OK, here's my calculations:
20 miles * 30 miles = 600 square miles
600 square miles * (5,280 ft/mile)* (5,280 ft/mile) = 16,727,040,000 square feet
check out http://www.onlineconversion.com/area.htm

16,727,040,000 square feet / 6,000,000,000 people = 2.79 square feet / person

In excel:
=20*30*5280*5280/6000000000

(I double checked it on my slide rule.)

How did you get 350 people per square foot?