Ever since humans started an agrarian society some 12,000 years ago, there were
only about less than 2,500 inhabitants on this Earth. As human began to spread
out across the world, his population began a slow increase in arithmetical
progression until just after the industrial revolution in 1840 it went up to
over a billion.
Today in 2022 it is 7.9 billion – almost 8000,000,000.
This is almost an exponential rise. It shall reach soon, and we shall use 8
billion for easier calculation
But first, let's have a look how much space Earth has to
accommodate an increasing number of humans teeming on its surface. In order to
do this, we need to look at how much land is suitable for living. Next, we need
to know how much cross-sectional area does a human body occupy, measured at its
broadest around his upper body – around both his arms across the body.
We also need to know the total surface areas of his
dwelling place, the size of his average house, and let's say also the car he
has shared by 4 members of his family. These are just only examples how much
space each person occupies along with his properties to help us visualize.
In real situation this varies significantly and we shall
explain that later.
Let's begin with some
simple calculation
Total Surface of Earth:
Total surface area of Earth is about 509 600 000 square km
(197 000 000 square miles). The oceans and seas occupy 71 % of the surface area
leaving 29 % or 147,784,000 sq. km (57,100,000 sq. miles) as land.
1 square km = 0.386102 square mile)
Out of this, 33% are deserts and about 24% are mountains. Total unavailable land is,
84,236880 square km. This leaves us only 147784000 - 84,236880 = 63547120
square km. suitable for living.
How Much Space Does A Human Body Occupy?
The circumference (C) of upper body around both arms is 45
inch = 1.143 meter
In order to find the largest area of body occupied by the
body, we need to find the radius (R) first by changing the oval (egg-shaped)
measurement of the upper body around our arms into a circle, and apply the
formula:
C = 2 pi r
R = C/ 2pi
= 0.182 metre
Once the radius is known, the area (A) occupied by the body
is = pi x r^2
= 0.104 sq. metre
(1 inch = 0.0254 metre)
(1,000,000 square metre = 1 sq. km)
(I foot = 0.3048 metre)
(1 square km = 0.386102 square mile)
Flood of Humans and Their Properties:
The world population is currently approaching 8 billion
(8,000 million) people. This means 832 million sq. metres (832 sq. km) or
0.0013 % of habitable space has been occupied by humans squatting here, let
alone all their “fantastic” bricks, cement, concrete, and steel structures
parked here and there
An average house is 80 ' x 20 ' (149 square metres), and an
average car has a length and width of 14.7 feet and 5.8 feet (7.9 sq.
metre).
Normally, some houses are very crowded with 8 or 10 people
staying, others just a single person, while others have no house to stay except
in the streets. So, it is difficult to figure out what would be the density of
people in each house? But let us average out 4 people staying in a house –
father and mother with two children out to be 2000 million (2 billion)
houses occupying 298,000 sq. km of space for houses, and 15800 sq. km for
cars = 313800 sq. km,
let alone other concrete structures like shops, shopping malls, office blocks,
roads, bridges and other infrastructures. Houses and cars alone would have
occupied 313800 / 63547120 x
100 = 0.5 % of land space suitable for living.
More Realistic:
Of course, what we are discussing here is a hypothetical
scenario just for academic interest. In reality there are so many unpredictable
variables as we do not have the actual data that can only be obtained by
demography and population studies. Variables such as, not all will stay in a
single house with his family of two children. Many families may have over ten
or more people – father, mother, children, grandchildren, grandparents, uncles
and aunties, nieces and nephews all crowded together under the same roof as
nucleated families. Some wealthy individuals may selfishly have 10 or more
houses and a fleet of 20 to 30 cars for each person in a family. Others may
stay in apartments, flats and condominiums that can hold a few hundred
residents under the same roof, others may be homeless, and many may have much larger houses with swimming pools, large sprawling gardens, estates and orchards, huge farms than just an example we give here of a standard size house of 149 square metre and an average car 7.9 square metre. Some houses are far apart from each other, others crowded in rows and rows
Then we also have many in poorer crowded countries like India where many have no car,
and even if they have, a car is for 4 in a family. Whatever we have all take up spaces, albeit a tiny bit indivdually, but significiantly collectively.
Then again, population increase or decrease depends on numerous factors such such affordability, educational levels, socio-economic factors, birth
control programmes...religious beliefs, cultural systems...etc
Many are born and die at various ages
from numerous causes…accidents, disease, suicides, sudden death, natural disasters..etc. All these affect population growth. Still, it is growing despite deaths with new generations replacing older ones.
There is no way with all these variables, can we use
straightforward mathematical calculations to derive data on how the population
shall grow and how human activities here and there scattered everywhere on the
surface of earth are going to take up space.
Just be aware we are only giving examples The only way we can tell is to do
actual field studies on anthropology, demography, human behaviour, migration
patterns, sociology and such a like. Then we need to consider birth and death
rates in various countries, some will have more, some less depending on the
country such as China, India, United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan,
Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, and Mexico having some of the highest numbers of
people, while places like Vatican City, Nauru, Tuvalu, Palau, San Marino,
Liechtenstein, Monaco, Saint Kitts and Nevis having the lowest.
Still, despite these variables, we can predict what it will
be like by just looking at the nett result of all these human activities from data collected from actual population studies where we
can clearly see there is a rising trend in global population such as here:
https://reliefweb.int/report/world/world-population-prospects-2022-summary-
results#:~:text=The%20world's%20population%20is%20projected,and%2010.4%20billion%20in%202100.
Or here:
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
Food and Nutrition in Deficit:
Currently FAO and other studies shows we are really short of
food and nutrition, the only ingredient we need to stay alive besides air and
water:
https://reliefweb.int/report/world/fao-statistical-yearbook-2021-world-food-and-agriculture#:~:text=Not%20only%20that%2C%20but%20agriculture,9.4%20billion%20tonnes%20in%202019.
https://www.fao.org/sustainability/news/detail/en/c/1274219/#:~:text=Global%20trends,and%20pastures)%20for%20grazing%20livestock.
A study claims that only about 38 percent of the land on
Earth is used for food production. The rest is either unsuitable for
cultivation because of soil, climate topography, or urban development, or it's
forest land.
https://www.sciencealert.com/not-enough-land-earth-support-diet-usda-recommends-guidelines-environment-ecosystem-health
Other studies show land usage, crop production and natural
resource use:
https://www.fao.org/3/y4252e/y4252e06.htm
Other Adverse Effects:
Although food security is our main pirority, we also need to consider other ill-effects of over population
such as over consumption of natural and un-renewable resources such as oil and
gas, other fossil fuels like coal all which are depleting inversely to our popolution growth.
Although
food availability, its supply and food security is our main worry to feed an
increasing population growth rate, destruction of the environment and ecosystem,
let alone other ill-effects such carbon dioxide emission, greenhouse effects,
climate change, shortage of clean water and pollution into the environment. We
can go on and on discussing all these issues into chapters after chapters, and
these are real issues we may not be able to control
What we are trying to drive home here is, it is not just an increase in human population, but a far, far more increase in all those unnecessary concrete non-biodegradable structures human build here and there a after he was born, when food is the only requirement he needs to remain in existence. The human body does not occupy much space, but it is all those huge and massive concrete structures he constructs and park them them here and there. All these occupy a lot of space meant essentially for growing food as our only crucial requirement.
Our socio-economic demands for food, clothes, employment,
health care, transport among other endless needs is going to be critically
strained to breaking point with uncontrolled rising human population. Yet all
our human activities are only limited on a “Pale Blue Dot” called Earth
lost among some 300 sextillion (3 x 10 23)
other worlds according to a 2010 estimate, but probably 10 26 (100
trillion, trillion - 1 followed by 26 zeros) in my own estimate at a forum
discussion in 2019. Yet our existence here is so fleeting and transient like a
vapour appearing only for a short while before vanishing away.
Futhermore, every human since birth till death buys and stores all kinds of unnecessary things in life, using them only once or twice before hanging them up somewhere in the house to collect dust or throws them outside. in fact 99.999 % of everything we buy we use only once, twice or just three times before hanging them up somewhere in the house or throw them into the enviroment till we die. All these unnecessary additions in life occupy space
Desipte our awareness on these issues, the world population continues to rise alarmingly since the
1950’s The highest global
population growth rates, with increases of over 1.8% per year,
occurred between 1955 and 1975 – peaking at 2.1% between 1965 and 1970. It went
up from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.9 billion in 2020.
If this trend continues, I think in order for us to be
comfortable with each other in such a crowded situation, is to have at least 30
metres of space shared between each human. Even that we need 225 square metres
(2.25 x 10^ - 4 sq. km) for
every person on Earth spaced out evenly. This means there shall be:
63547120 square
km / 2.25 x 10^ - 4 sq. km = 2.8 x 10^11 or 280 billion people
teeming here on the surface of this limited Earth just to move around 30 metres
apart, shared between two persons without any more land to grow any food?
That’s just too bad and fatal for everyone without any food
Thomas Malthus Essay:
See this article on Thomas Malthus Essay, food supply and
overpopulation, famine, plagues and pestilence, rise of humans, human growth like cancer cells,
an evolutionary threat… etc:
https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/search?q=like+cancer+cells
Let us now visualize under extreme conditions if the
population growth continues to explode unchecked from current data, at least a
hypothetical scenario when a day should come when humans would only have
standing rooms, shoulder to shoulder as the broadest area in a human body.
To answer this, a minimum of 25 sampling measurements from a
child to a full-grown adult male with various sizes and body frames was taken,
and the statistical mean (not average) cross-sectional area of a human body was
calculated out to be 0.104 sq. metre (1.04 x 10^ -7 square km). This was already mentioned above in the beginning under "How Much Space Does A Human Body Occupy?".
Extreme Population:
Suppose we have a situation where every square cm of the
habitable land is used up just to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with each other at
the expense of even land for food needed to feed an explosive rise in
population, then we will have:
63,547,120 square
km of habitable standing room / 1.04 ^ -7 sq. km of a human body = 6 x !0^ 14,
or 600 trillion people standing side-by-side with no space to move a single cm,
let alone just to lie down.
Supply and Demand: Population Stability:
Of course, I don’t think we will ever reach that stage
where we will not even have standing room, let alone any room to bury the dead.
Even the dead needs space to be buried, unless they are cremated. The spaces
needed by the dead is slightly less than the living. Still, new burial grounds
need to be found and expended after each one or two generations.
The population growth may continue to rise infinitely till
such a time when food supply, gas and oil are running out and can no longer
support any further growth. In such an event the population may flatten off and
stabilize where supply of food and natural resources just meet. But even such a
scenario may not last long when all supply of food, oil, gas, power and perhaps
even clean water completely run out. In such a situation the population will
dip sharply till the entire human civilization is wiped out.
This is a natural phenomenon we observe in microbiology
where initially when a bacterium is inoculated in a nutrient culture plate just
like when the first human was implanted on this earth, nothing happens. There
is a lag phrase where there was no growth. Then after being incubated over a
period of time, we see a sudden exponential phrase of logarithmic growth.
During this bacterial growth phase, the number of new cells appearing
is proportional to the population as we saw since the time agriculture and food
supply began 10,000 years ago till we see an exponential rise in the current human
population at near 8 billion.
We can expect this trend to continue for a number of decades
more, before the population plateau off and stabilizes itself just like we observe
bacterial growth in a confine space of a culture plate like on the limited
space on earth.
See this article:
A Lesson in Bacteriology and Cancer Biology under:
https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/search?q=purpose+of+life
Then as food supply is being depleted with consumption of
essential items and pollution increasing, this results in the accumulation of
toxic wastes into the environment. It shall be death to all the remaining human
population. Life would be extremely stressful and intolerable by then, and I
believe many will self-destruct themselves with suicides bringing the
population further down. This is what we also saw by observing the growth of
bacteria cultured on a Petri dish as much as we are introduced here by a
Creator and observe what we do here on Earth.
When Shall it Be?
When shall that be, I am not sure as it also depends not just on depletion of food and famine, gas, oil, power, water supply just mentioned above, but also on wars, civil conflicts, and killing due to poltical, economic and social disorders because of depletion of human needs, disease and pandemic and other plagues and pestilence to cut us
down like cancer cells creeping on the surface of this Earth such as revealed
to us about periodical famine, war, plagues and pestilence to befall on Earth
in this verse:
“And I looked, and behold, a pale horse: and his name that sat
on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them
over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and
with death, and with the beasts of the earth”
(Revelation 6:8).
Also here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7598223/
To summarize, we are the worst animals ever created on
Earth. No other animal ever created do they same thing as we do here on Earth –
building concrete engineering structures to park here and there, acquire
properties everywhere, place our material investments to occupy every square km
of this limited Earth from the way we breed, produce, consume, congest, destroy
the environment, and use up all the natural resources.
Scientists and zoologists classify humans as animals. We
belong to the Kingdom of Animalia as a multicellular organisms with
cells with a nucleus, with cell membranes, in the Phylum as a Chordata,
an animal with a spinal cord, in the Class Mammalia, a warm-blooded
chordates that bear live young; females have mammary glands that secrete milk
to nourish young in the Order as Primates, and as a mammal with collar
bone; eyes face forward; grasping hands with fingers; two types of teeth
(incisors and molars) in the Family – Hominidae, and as Primates with upright
posture, large brain, stereoscopic vision, flat face, different use of hands
and feet. In other words we are not angels, gods or spiritual beings, but just like all other animals with head, body and limbs
But we are entirely different from all other animals because none of the other animals fight to destroy themselves and the environment unnecessary, and yet they fly and creep everywhere and are fed free of charge
without needing to pay for food or anything else. Only humans build non-biodegradable concrete structures everywhere on land meant for agriculture and food production as our only requirements. Birds uses natural biodegradable twigs, leaves and small branches to build their houses and nests, so do beavers use the same to build dams across streams.
(Luke 12:27-40, Matthew 6:26-34)
We are truly very unique