When it comes to science, human beings have questions... many questions. Most of them don't stand out for their technical value, but we would love to know the answer anyway, and that's the job of the What if? channel by xkcd on YouTube. This time, it's the turn of a true classic: What would happen if all humans jumped at the same time? The exercise also mentions the possibility of gathering those people in one place to concentrate the effect... and that's the key.
This has sparked the curiosity of five-year-olds, and crossed the minds of adults in the shower in a moment of spontaneous insight: What would be the consequences of gathering all of humanity in one place and making them jump at the same time? Obviously, that task is impossible (agreeing is not our specialty), but let's imagine for a moment that all humans are magically transported to an area similar to the state of Rhode Island (almost 2,700 square kilometers of land)... and they jump. The rest is told in this video from xkcd's What If? on YouTube.
All of humanity jumps in one place. What happens?
If we focus exclusively on the jump... nothing. Assuming an average of 6 billion people with jumping ability (the video mentions 12 billion feet), and about 80 kilograms per human, that gives us about 500 billion kilograms, a number negligible compared to the 6 x 10^24 kilograms of mass we calculate for Earth. The surface would sink less than an atom, even if we accept an average jump of 50 centimeters. Now, the amount of energy transferred is notable (about two trillion joules), but it disperses over a very large surface, and there are no records beyond the movement of the needle on some seismographs. On the other hand, the noise of six billion people jumping is impressive, and lasts several seconds.
The real chaos begins afterward, with billions of humans concentrated in one place. Everyone takes out their mobile devices, and networks fail immediately. The rest of the world also begins to collapse, with machines left unattended, kitchens catching fire, and planes crashing. People want to go home, but that creates another problem: Even running at 500 percent capacity for 100 years, the local airport would barely manage to move 1 percent of the humans present there. Not even adding nearby airports and the train system is enough.
People board container ships, but without food or drink, the journey is a guaranteed death. More than a million cars in Rhode Island are hijacked, creating the biggest traffic jam in history. The human mass begins to spread to other states. Everyone is hungry and thirsty, stores are looted in record time, health and sanitation become science fiction. Within a few weeks, Rhode Island becomes a cemetery, with billions of corpses. Civilization collapses, entering a 'Mad Max stage'.
But Earth's orbit and rotation remain intact. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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