What If the Earth Was Cut in Half?

WHAT IF

2/16/2024

How long would life on Earth be able to survive?

Transcript

00:00 The Earth is under attack.

00:07 And rather than just completely obliterating us,

00:10 our attackers have decided to simply

00:13 cut our planet in half.

00:15 Is this an act of mercy,

00:17 or the planetary equivalent

00:19 of a slow and painful death?

00:21 Once the cutting begins,

00:23 the devastating effects would be felt

00:25 all over the world.

00:27 Which parts of the globe would be safest?

00:31 How long would life on Earth be able to survive?

00:34 And what would allow our planet

00:37 to regenerate itself naturally?

00:40 This is WHAT IF,

00:41 and here's what would happen

00:43 if the Earth was cut in half.

00:46 Ripping Earth in half

00:48 might not mean instantaneous death

00:50 for everyone on the planet.

00:52 Instead, some people might be able to survive

00:54 for a short while,

00:55 if they happen to be in the right place

00:57 at the right time.

00:59 But as the planet rapidly crumbles around them,

01:01 and our social systems fall,

01:03 it wouldn't be long

01:04 before mass hysteria sets in.

01:07 How long would it be

01:08 before the remaining humans

01:10 start to turn on each other?

01:13 It might start as just a bright light in the sky,

01:16 something that you could quickly shrug off.

01:18 But then,

01:19 as the ground beneath you

01:20 starts to shake violently,

01:22 and the light keeps getting brighter,

01:24 you'd know that

01:25 something is seriously wrong.

01:30 As the Earth is methodically sliced in half,

01:32 its mantle and core

01:34 would be exposed to the vacuum of space,

01:36 causing massive earthquakes

01:38 that would be felt everywhere on the planet.

01:40 At this point,

01:41 the death toll would already be in the millions.

01:44 You've seen the kind of destruction

01:46 that one powerful earthquake can cause.

01:49 Now, imagine a bunch of them

01:50 taking place at the exact same time.

01:53 Those who are the furthest from the split

01:55 would have the best chance

01:56 of surviving the longest,

01:58 at least from the initial earthquakes.

02:00 Amidst all this chaos,

02:02 people would be turning to their phones

02:04 and social media for answers,

02:05 but there would be none to be found.

02:08 Frantic calls and texts would be attempted,

02:10 but very few, if any, would make it through.

02:13 Because at this stage,

02:14 almost all of the planet's human inhabitants,

02:17 7.5 billion people,

02:19 would be without electricity.

02:21 Power grids would fail

02:22 as power stations sank into the ground.

02:24 No power, no social media.

02:27 With their survival on the line,

02:28 people would start looking out only for themselves.

02:32 In larger urban centers,

02:33 being trampled would become a serious possibility,

02:36 as everyone scrambled for cover

02:37 from falling buildings.

02:39 At this point,

02:40 Earth could start to split

02:41 along the tectonic plates on both halves,

02:44 with a barrage of natural and human-made materials

02:47 being cast off into space.

02:52 The slice would have also cut through Earth's atmosphere,

02:56 exposing the planet's surface to the vacuum of space,

02:58 and resulting in even more natural disasters

03:01 for anyone lucky enough to survive

03:03 past the first couple of days.

03:05 At this stage,

03:06 the Earth might try and use gravity

03:08 to help put a bandage on itself,

03:10 as the two halves begin to get pulled back

03:13 towards one another.

03:14 You'd think that this reunion would be good news

03:17 for any remaining survivors,

03:18 but things would just get worse.

03:21 For a while,

03:22 you'd be dodging the enormous chunks of matter

03:24 that would be shooting back and forth

03:26 between the two halves.

03:28 And then eventually,

03:29 you'd experience astronomical heat levels,

03:31 as the Earth becomes nothing more than

03:33 two spinning orbs of molten rock.

03:36 So yeah,

03:37 your chances of survival aren't looking great.

03:40 In fact,

03:41 the whole human race would almost certainly

03:43 be eliminated by this point.

03:45 The two rocks that we used to call Earth

03:48 would continue circling each other

03:49 for hundreds of thousands of years,

03:51 until they'd finally collide

03:53 to form a new, much smaller Earth.

03:56 Over the years, it would cool down,

03:58 microscopic life would appear,

04:00 and eventually,

04:01 like hundreds of millions of years later,

04:04 that life could theoretically

04:06 evolve into some new version of the human species.

04:11 Maybe one day,

04:12 the new inheritors of the Earth

04:14 would find a relic of our civilization

04:16 that would kickstart their understanding

04:18 of the history of the planet.

04:20 But that's a topic for another WHAT IF.

04:23 [music]

What If the Earth Was Cut in Half?

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