For those of you laying awake in bed at night worrying that guys with guns might break into your home to herd literally everyone into the State of Delaware, and then actually join them there, this is an extremely important question! So, let's deal with it.
First, how many people are there?
Well, those babies keep poppin' out. The world population keeps going up, up, up ...
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
I'll round the number off upwards to 7.33 billion, to keep this article relevant for a few weeks. That's seven billion 330 million (7,330,000,000) people.
Next, how big is the State of Delaware?
That turns out to be an extremely difficult question to answer.
Google itself will tell you that Delaware is 2,489 square miles in size. Wikipedia's estimate of the total area is about one-quarter of a square mile less.
But, that number is shrinking every year. Why? Global warming is now increasing ocean depth about 1/32 of an inch per year, at our latitude. That translates out to a surprising loss of land each year, for the State of Delaware.
Delaware has a "mean elevation" (an "average elevation" above sea level) of 60 feet. Since the entire east coast of Delaware is on tidal water -- the Atlantic Ocean and Delaware Bay -- we can assume with relative statistical accuracy that Delaware slopes upward from the east coast westward to the western boundary, which is 120 feet above sea level (since 60 feet is an average, right?). Since the state is 96 miles long, and since 2489 square miles / 96 miles long = 25.93 miles wide, we'll use that as the base of our average slope running from Delaware's coast inland to the Western Boundary. 25.93 miles = 136,910 feet. If we do a rise-over-the-run slope calculation -- remember Algebra, which your teacher said would save your life someday? -- we get 1 / 1,141. So, for every 1/32d of an inch UP the ocean depth increases each year, the water comes IN 1,141 1/32d's of an inch, or rough 44 inches. Let's say the length of the coast is exactly equal to the State's length. (Coves and estuaries make the coast effectively much, much longer, but I'd blow a cork if I tried to calculate the "true" coastline of Delaware, taking those things into account.) So, let's say we have a rectangle 96 miles long and 44 inches wide. That's how much land Delaware loses each year to global warming -- at least! 96 miles x 5280 feet / mile x 12 inches = 6,082,560 inches in length. If we multiply that by 44 inches of rectangular width, we get 267,632,640 square inches of land lost every year to global warming. That comes out to 1,858,560 square feet. If we divide that by 27,878,400 square feet per square mile, we discover that Delaware is losing about .0666666666666666666666666 square miles per year to global warming. Hey, man, that's like, uh, a really eschatological number, man! It scares me!
Back to "reality" ...
So, how accurate that number describing Delaware's total area is depends on how old it is. It's going down about 7% of a square mile each year. (Actually, way more, because of the true-length-of-coastline business, above.)
Presumably, none of our guests to Delaware -- all of mankind, remember -- wants to stand in a lake (although to tell the truth they might be the lucky ones in our hypothetical). So, we have to back Delaware's 540.18 square miles of water out of the equation. That leaves 1,948.82 square miles of standing space in Delaware.
Now, literally speaking, that changes more-or-less constantly -- with the tide! As the tide comes IN, the number of square miles SHRINKS! As the tide goes OUT, the number of square miles GROWS, right? Also, local and not-so-local storm surges -- special tides generated by low pressure weather systems which generate sometimes pretty visible mountains of water in the oceans, bays and estuaries -- vastly affect tides, and therefore the number of square miles of Delaware unencumbered by the seas.
Since knowing what's happening in the tide department is just too complex to guess at, we'll just assume that guests standing on Delaware's coasts will be standing midway down the beaches between the high point and low points of the tides, and that they don 't mind getting their footsies wet when the tide comes in, and that that achieves 1,948.82 square miles of area.
There's another calculation problem -- ups and downs in the terrain.
It is said that if one got an enormous clothes iron and used it to flatten-out mountainous Colorado, it would have more surface area than any other state of the Union.
Perhaps so.
Well, Delaware would also get slightly larger, if ironed-out. In other words, 1,948.82 square miles is actually a "projection" -- the area you would see from space, looking down, which doesn't account for additional area from Delaware's relatively few hills.
We'll ignore that factor, also, and assume that 1,948.82 square miles is perfectly flat.
There's one last problem to consider.
If you look on any good map of the Delaware Bay, you will see that the boundary of all of Newcastle County, Delaware runs clear across the Delaware River over to the coast of New Jersey. I used to think that there were only two points where the Army Corps of Engineers dumped dredge spoil dredged off the bottom of the Delaware to make way for larger ships, onto the coast of new Jersey, so that, because they were on the Delaware side of the border, they were actually additions to the territory of Delaware, though the new acreage is attached to New Jersey, not Delaware. In fact, it turns out that Google Maps portrays almost the entire coast of New Jersey along the Delaware River up to the latitude of northernmost Delaware, where the famous Twelve Mile Circle crosses the Delaware River into New Jersey, as belonging to Delaware, apparently due to alluvial accretions over the centuries, implicitly pre-empting the Rule of Alluvial Accretions (which says that alluvial accretions increase the riparian lands of the abutting owner). Though, technically, doing this is probably correct, since Interstate Compacts (one of which created the Delaware/New Jersey border) are generally viewed as being above state law (which would include the common law Rule of Alluvial Accretions) but inferior to federal law, God knows what the United States Supreme Court would say, since we all know that NOTHING binds the United States Supreme Court, right? (In reality, they're autocratic kings, right?)
In any event, that's another variable we will ignore, because it's just too complex. Delaware refuses to cross the river and police it, anyway (with the consequence, according to one urban legend, that for years the Mafia buried their victims in Finn's Point, the largest tract of Delaware land on the Jersey side of the Delaware, so that neither state would bother looking there for grizzly evidence.) (And here's a good argument, this time for Pennsville Township Municipal Court: Suppose a really old geezer who has trouble holding his water goes for a walk on the banks of the Delaware in Pennsville Township between Finns Point and the Delaware Memorial Bridge -- the famous "Twin Bridges." He walks out onto the spit of land at the end of Ferry Road, drops his pants, and pees in broad daylight, in view of all of the neighbors. Technically, he perpetrated that heinous act 100% in the State of Delaware [unless he aimed east, not west]. Is he prosecutable in Pennsville Township Municipal Court? Do Pennsville Township Police have to extradite him to New Jersey to process him in to the system?)
At any rate, back to "reality" and the main problem, again: Fitting the entire world's population in Delaware: Can it be done?
From here on end, it's a simple fraction: 7,330,000,000 people / 1,948.82 square miles = roughly 3,761,250 people per square mile. Since each square mile has 27,878,400 square feet, each person would have 27,878,400 / 3,761,250 square feet, or 7.41 square feet, to dwell in.
That seems doable -- so long as nobody lays down, and that old geezer from Pennsville Township doesn't cause problems.
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