How Many People Would Have To Die?

[Nope]

The angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the vintage of the earth, and he threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God. And the wine press was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the wine press, as high as a horse's bridle, for a distance of about two hundred miles. (NRSV 14:18-20

This is from Revelation. How many people would have to die for there to be so much blood?

[TheRealJoeFish]

Let's do a "napkin calculation." This can get us in the right range, give or take an order of magnitude.

Each human has, what, 6 liters or so of blood? Let's say this is 1 cubic foot (guessing based on the size of 2-liter and gallon bottles).

Let's say the flow of blood is like a stream (that is, bound on the edges), because if we just have a 200-mile-wide ocean of blood, we're all screwed (see, e.g., Blood Ocean, starring Dethklok). We'll call a horse's bridle 4 feet off the ground, and we'll say our stream is as high as it is deep. A weird stream, but, mysterious ways, right? We're just trying to simplify the calculations.

So, 1 foot of stream is going to be 4 feet wide and 4 feet high, meaning 16 cubic feet of blood. That's 16 people. Since there are 5,280 feet in a mile, we get about 84,000 people for one mile of stream (assuming everyone's completely exsanguinated, which seems very difficult to accomplish). 200 miles of stream equals, well... 16.4 million people, a little under the population of the Netherlands. This is, of course, for a tiny, odd, square-shaped stream.

If we figure the flow is more natural - that is, maybe, 4 feet high in the middle and 20 feet wide, tapering off to the edges, well, that multiplies things by 2.5, putting us up around 41 million. That's, roughly, Ukraine.

[One Above All]

The average human has "only" 5 liters of blood. Still, great calculations. I was just going to say "all of them".

[vorlon13]

I'd think if anyone has a press capable of total exsanguination, it would be God.

It's not like he would be stuck with the Chinese knockoff brand at WalMart . . . .

[Nope]

Let's do a "napkin calculation." This can get us in the right range, give or take an order of magnitude.

Each human has, what, 6 liters or so of blood? Let's say this is 1 cubic foot (guessing based on the size of 2-liter and gallon bottles).

Let's say the flow of blood is like a stream (that is, bound on the edges), because if we just have a 200-mile-wide ocean of blood, we're all screwed (see, e.g., Blood Ocean, starring Dethklok).  We'll call a horse's bridle 4 feet off the ground, and we'll say our stream is as high as it is deep. A weird stream, but, mysterious ways, right? We're just trying to simplify the calculations.

So, 1 foot of stream is going to be 4 feet wide and 4 feet high, meaning 16 cubic feet of blood. That's 16 people.  Since there are 5,280 feet in a mile, we get about 84,000 people for one mile of stream (assuming everyone's completely exsanguinated, which seems very difficult to accomplish). 200 miles of stream equals, well... 16.4 million people, a little under the population of the Netherlands.  This is, of course, for a tiny, odd, square-shaped stream.

If we figure the flow is more natural - that is, maybe, 4 feet high in the middle and 20 feet wide, tapering off to the edges, well, that multiplies things by 2.5, putting us up around 41 million.  That's, roughly, Ukraine.

. 41 million. Damn. 



Some of my Christian friends get very giddy over the idea that Jesus will return. When I ask them about the suffering that Jesus' return is supposed to cause their answer is basically, as long as they are among the winners, to hell with the losers


 For a so called peaceful religion, Christianity really likes images with blood and suffering.

---

I'd think if anyone has a press capable of total exsanguination, it would be God.

It's not like he would be stuck with the Chinese knockoff brand at WalMart . . . .

Yes, he wouldn't want the press to break half way through the process.  He has got to go with the angel made blood press. Afterwards, Jesus can turn all that blood into wine and they can party.

I am imagining a meme with a picture of angels building the ultimate press for god but I don't know what the caption would be.

[JuliaL]

Each human has, what, 6 liters or so of blood? Let's say this is 1 cubic foot (guessing based on the size of 2-liter and gallon bottles).

Better guess-

6 liter =  0.212 ft^3

I think you have to multiply the number of people by about 5.
Say, 200 million?

Edited for further absurdity:
http://everything2.com/title/Tigris

In contrast, at the city of Amara, the Tigris is only 600 feet wide and the depth varies anywhere between 6 ½ to 13 feet. It is also at Amara where the marshlands drain off a lot of the river and it narrows to a width of only 200 or so feet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigris

Discharge

for Baghdad
 - average
1,014 m3/s (35,809 cu ft/s)

So, using the Tigris as the example of river width, say 450ft,  going from zero ft to 4 ft back to zero ft or an area of 4x300=1200 ft^2 and 200mi long for a volume of 3.6*10^10 liters representing 6 billion people.
Flowing at 20 mi/hr.
One heck of a wine press to keep this going.
At least there'd still be a billion people left.

[TheRealJoeFish]

Each human has, what, 6 liters or so of blood? Let's say this is 1 cubic foot (guessing based on the size of 2-liter and gallon bottles).

Better guess-

6 liter =  0.212 ft^3

I think you have to multiply the number of people by about 5.
Say, 200 million?

Ooh, yeah, I was a little off there.

Of course, the point of the calculation is to give an idea of whether we're looking at god exterminating a town, a country, a continent, a planet, or a galaxy.  The upshot is that it's at least in the large country range, and as we keep refining our inputs, god keep needing a bigger and bigger country to squeeze the blood out of.

[vorlon13]

Um . . .


uh . . . .



(paraphrasing James T. Kirk)



What does God need with a wine press ?

[robvalue]

Ooh yeah, they just didn't think this stuff through did they.

[TheRealJoeFish]

Wait... I just thought of something...

When Revelation was written, there were about 180 million humans alive, but the amount of blood described calls for between 200 million and 6 billion humans.

IRREFUTABLE PROOF OF DIVINE FOREKNOWLEDGE.