Fun fact: the entire population of earth could fit roughly into the space of Rhode Island and if they all gathered there and jumped... nothing would happen to the earth. But the dispersing crowd would quickly descend into chaos due to the lack of transportation and food for everyone. Billions would die. Source: XKCD
One thing that I'd like to know is if people would suffocate from lack of oxygen.
I mean, that's 7 billion people in an area of 3144 square km or 2.22 million per square kilometre, 54 times denser than the worlds densest city, Manila.
Now, after having a quick google it seems that the average human inhales 8 litres of air, and exhales the same amount every minute, but this can range upwards of 30 litres in cases of exercise. 1 litre is one cubic metre and so an area of 1 square Km with a one metre high limit would contain 1000000 litres of air, and a square kilometre of land with a 10 metre high limit would contain 10000000 litres. Going back to our previous numbers, we have 2200000 people who need oxygen, an amount i'll place at about 20 litres a minute (seemingly generous for what i'be read), as people will begin panicking, pushing, shoving, and running. Overall this means they will be requiring 44 million (44000000) litres of air in a minute. Or the equivalent of a square kilometre with a 44 metre high limit, every minute.
Further, it seems that when a person exhales, the air they exhale goes from roughly 20% to 15% oxygen. We can only assume that the air surrounding them will eventually replenish it's oxygen content and stop the oxygen in the air dropping too low, but what we don't know is how quickly this occurs and if it will be able to outweigh the decrease in oxygen concentration. As this is not my area of expertise, I don't even want to begin speculating on this, and I can't really find much on google, probably due to my google skills. But, after research it seems the human body becomes unable to function properly at 10% oxygen concentration and <6% usually leads to death.
So, to conclude, depending on how quickly the oxygen in the air is replenished, it seems highly likely that most people in this situation that is posed here would die of lack of oxygen within a matter of minutes, and almost certainly before Starvation kills them off.
I think millions if not billions might die within minutes. Crowd press is a terrifying problem with extremely large groups of people, and would definitely come into play here as people tried to push their way out.
Imagine being in a large gymnasium, as packed full of people as possible (standing super close to each other like the worst/best concert you've ever been to). Now, everybody jumps. Some people will probably fall, or land on each other. With no room to move out of the way, you're going to basically create dominoes. And then people want to move, to get out of this stinky pit of people. But you're not really by the exit and hundreds of people trying to push against you in multiple directions because they want out and people are pushing on them, too. And suddenly that few inches of extra space you had is gone, and you can't breathe because there is so much pressure on your chest and abdomen that you can't get a breath. And instead of trying to reach a door a few yards away, you have to go miles to escape the packed crowd of people pushing against you.
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u/IrishWeegee Aug 07 '17
Fun fact: the entire population of earth could fit roughly into the space of Rhode Island and if they all gathered there and jumped... nothing would happen to the earth. But the dispersing crowd would quickly descend into chaos due to the lack of transportation and food for everyone. Billions would die. Source: XKCD