Billions to go

I read two interesting things today. Both are related.

The first thing was that half the people who were ever born on the earth were alive at this point in time. (or at least in 2002 when this article was written). Do read it, it’s got some interesting stats. In such a discussion, you can go ahead and say, ‘the number of people alive today in India is more than the number of people that have died on Earth, from the beginning of life itself.’

The other thing, written by Scott Adams sometime last week, is that in the next 100 years with the most conservative estimates, 10 billion people will die. That’s the 6 billion that are alive today, and about 4 more billion who won’t survive within those 100 years. Isn’t that a staggering number? It took me a good few minutes (and this) to understand the scope of it.

Now for some interesting things that can be done knowing the future. If the average height of each of them is say 5′ 6″, and we start stacking them one on the others shoulders and could find a way to balance the rigid bodies, within 100 years we can make more than 35 ladders to the moon. (want explanation?) [ I understand since the earth is revolving it’ll make the job a little tough, but if we do it from either the north pole or the south pole things might get easier for us).

That way, we can probably start dumping the next set of dead bodies on moon instead of burying them here on earth.