Practice English Speaking&Listening with: What If Everybody Lived In the Same Building? (Part 2)

This is a video by Real Life Lore.

Brought to you by Audible. Agoraphobia is

defined as the fear of open spaces

public transit, shopping malls or simply

being outside of your home. But is the

fear really realistic, and is it actually

possible to live an entire life

completely indoors? And weirdly, if the

entire human species suffer from this

phobia that could we all theoretically

live inside of one gigantic building and

not ever have to leave our homes or at

least never have to leave the comfort of

the building?

The answer is yes but let's first take a

look at some real-world concepts before

venturing into the detailed insanity of

all living, eating, sleeping and breathing

in the same building.

Perhaps the most realistic proposal of

fitting an entire city's worth of people

inside of the same building is the

Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid, which is

planned to be built in the bay of Tokyo

in Japan. When finished the pyramid is

expected to be 14 times taller than the

Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt at just

over two kilometers tall, and will be

capable of supporting a population of 1

million people who will live inside of it

that means that the building could

support the entire population of the US

state of Montana, or house the population

of entire large cities like San Jose

California or Cologne, Germany. The

building would have eight square

kilometers of floor space when finished

which is four times larger than the

actual country of Monaco and even larger

than the UK territory of Gibraltar.

However, a building this massive cannot

actually be built with current

construction technology. Construction is

anticipated to begin in the year 2030 and

the building is projected to be

completed by the year 2110 which is

ludicrous if you think about it. That is

93 years from now if you're watching

this video in 2017 which means that most

of us will probably not be alive by the

time of this building is finished being

built.

Think of all the history that could possibly

happen within ninety-three years and

this building still may not even be

finished after all of that. It's not

completely unprecedented however, this

cathedral in the city of York first

started being built in a year 1220

imagine being the first person who lay

down the first brick to begin building

this cathedral. He would have spent his

entire lifetime working on the project

and so would have his son, and his son,

and his son,

and his son (Lucky he didn't have a daughter) and so on until 252 years

later the cathedral was finally finished

being built. Nine generations would have

passed from the time that the first

person began working on it. It would have

been like if your relative from 1765 had

begun building something and you today

right now just finished it

you probably can't even think of any

relatives that you may have even had

back then and that probably would have

been even more severe in the Middle Ages.

A distant relative would have begun

building a building and their name would

have been long forgotten but you

centuries later would be still working

on and completing what they had

originally started anyway. It's very

strange to think about, but let's move back to

the mega pyramid building in the

distant future of 2110. Power is

generated by solar panels on the

building's trusses. Transportation is

provided by massive accelerating

walkways, elevators and personal rapid

transit tubes with automated shuttlepods

that zip from one part of the building to

another. The building is full of homes,

offices, restaurants, stores and is a

fully functioning city of 1 million

people who live entirely indoors.

Nobody would have to really ever leave,

but 1 million people isn't all of us, so

let's envision something like this but

on a much larger scale. First off, let's

envision where would be the most

strategic location on Earth to place a

building that could house all 7.478

billion of us.

My answer is probably Brazil and

specifically right here. The reasoning

for this is largely because of water

since twelve percent of all the Earth's

surface freshwater is located in Brazil

and the second largest dam in the world

is located nearby.

I'll get more into the reasoning later

so let's assume that we've moved

everybody's houses and homes as they are

together into one place. Everybody on

earth gets to keep their current size

living space,

so what would this look like all together?

For reference the average U.S. house

built in 2013 was 241 square meters in

size. According to the UN however

thirteen percent of the world's

population lives in five square meters or

less of living space. 28 percent have

between five and nine square meters of

space, 24 percent have between 10 and 14

square meters, 18 percent have between 15

and 19 square meters and only eighteen

percent of the world's population within

20 meters or greater size houses.

So American houses are certainly not the

global norms and averaging out all of

these numbers gives us a building

living with 90,000,860 square kilometers

of living space in a two-dimensional

view about the size of Jordan in the

Middle East that was all just one floor

but if we constructed the building to be

as high as the current tallest

residential building in the world at 414

meters or 101 stories high,

then the living space of everybody on Earth

would take up an area of around 900

square kilometers on the surface, a

little less than the size of the Faroe

Islands in Denmark. As for food, after a

lot of research it appears that sweet

potatoes are the most calorie intensive

crop that you can grow. If we utilized

efficient farming techniques and made

use of vertical farms with artificial

sunlight, we can construct a 1 cubic

kilometer building that would be

dedicated solely to producing sweet

potatoes for our population. Each cubic

kilometer mega-farm could produce

enough sweet potatoes to feed over 27

million people of 1500 calorie per day

diet. So if we also built 275 of the

buildings connected to the main living

space then we could feed the entire human

race inside a steady diet of pure sweet

potatoes. Since humans need to drink 2

liters of water to survive each day and

the nearby dam has a reservoir of 29

cubic kilometers, we could have enough

drinking water nearby to last us for

over 4,000 years. Of course some of the

water would be used for other purposes

like agriculture but it would still be

enough to last for centuries using all

of our needs inside the mega building if

we kept maximum efficiency and assume

that nothing goes wrong.

Finally we need space for other things

besides just living. In New York City

about 75% of the zoning ordinances are

for residential property while the

remaining twenty-five percent is for

commercial, manufacturing, transportation

or park space. If we kept that same ratio

in our mega building, then we would add

an additional 225 square kilometers worth of

the building space on the Earth's

surface that will stand as high as the

residential portion. Altogether our mega

building that could house all of humanity in

the same living space that they live in

today complete with all water needs, a

diet of pure sweet potatoes, stores, parks

and transportation would take up an area

of 1339 square kilometers on the Earth's

surface, still just a little smaller than

the Faroe Islands in Denmark. The parts

devoted to water storage and agriculture

would be one kilometer high and the rest

of the building would be 414 meters high.

In terms of power, the nearby dam would

provide a lot of it, but

probably wouldn't be enough to power

the entire building. It is estimated that

a solar panel array the size of Spain

could provide enough power for the

entire world's energy needs.

So a grouping of solar panels of this

size nearby the building would provide

way more than enough since humanity would

be using much less energy all

concentrated together.

Transportation will be just like in the

Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid, handled by

thousands of elevators, walkways and

automated shuttlepods moving in tunnels

inside the building.

Life wouldn't exactly be very nice on a

diet of sweet potatoes and never being

able to leave the building, but in a

catastrophic event like a nuclear war,

global warming or a meteorite impact

that could cause living conditions on

the outside to become lethal, then

something similar to this may become

necessary. The political situation inside

would certainly be messy to say the least.

There would probably be a wealthier

section with more living space and a

poorer section with less living space.

It may take centuries and generations to

build it and most people would certainly

not want to live this lifestyle, but

still... It is technically possible that we

could all live in the same amount of

space that we do now in an area no

larger than these islands in the

Atlantic Ocean. This video has been

brought to you in part by Audible, which

is home to an unmatched number of

audiobooks and spoken audio products. You

can get a completely free 30-day trial

by going to audible.com/reallifelore.

And if you think it's fun

imagining what an entire civilization

would look like inside of one building,

then why not listen to The World Inside

by Robert Silverberg. This book fully

explores an entire universe and story

set inside of a building much like what

you just listen about and goes into far

more detail than I ever could in just an

eight minute long video. I use Audible to

listen to audio books while I'm driving,

stuck in traffic, working or just for fun.

It's a new year so why not start off by

listening to some of the greatest books

ever written while driving to work or to

school. You can get any book for free

when you start your 30-day free trial so

if you find something that interests you

besides the book that I suggested then

that's completely fine for you to

download as well. You can listen straight

off of your phone or tablet so if you'd

like to get started please go to

audible.com/reallifelore. Thanks for

watching this video don't forget to

leave a comment if you'd like to discuss

any aspect of this video and don't

forget to subscribe to my channel if you

enjoyed what you just watched and we'll see

you around next time.

(eerie music)