So I have asked XKCD many times to answer my what if questions... but it's not happening, so I've decided to do the research myself, and find the answers myself. The first question on my mind is...
How long would it take to flatten Mount Everest to sea level using a shovel?
-Jason Thompson
The first problem with answering this question is deciding the volume of Mount Everest. Let's assume Mount Everest is more or less, cone like, and the base of the mountain is about 5 miles across. And from a base camp altitude of roughly 17,598 ft to a peak of roughly 29,029 ft, that gives us a height difference of about 11,431 ft. So calculating the volume is fairly straight forward, 1/3 * π * r2 * h, so we can say the volume from the base camp to peak is roughly 2.09*1012 ft3 of rock and dirt, and other mountain stuff. Since we're going to making it level with the sea we now have plenty of hole digging to do. The volume of the ground beneath Everest is roughly 9.633*1012 ft3. That leaves a total of 11.723*1012 ft3 of earth that needs to be moved.
When I was in high school I watched the movie Holes, and was so intrigued with the idea of digging a 5 ft deep hole, I went out, and spent 4 hours over a 2 day period digging a 6 ft deep hole, that was about 5 ft wide. Assuming Mount Everest is a mountain containing nothing but ideal digging dirt, and I have a conveyer belt that takes the dirt I put on it away to some faraway place, and there are no rocks larger than 1/2 a square foot, at a digging rate of 2 hours per day, 300 days a year (I need my holidays, and I'd take a break on Sundays), I've calculated the time it would take me to move Mount Everest at a quick 250.8 million years. According to this website, Mount Everest is only about 60 million years old. So it would take me 4 times its current age in order to completely remove it from its current home in Nepal.
But 2 hours a day is something I did for fun because I was intrigued. Let's say instead we sentence a single criminal to moving Mount Everest who works at the same rate per hour as me, but works longer days. We force this guy to work every day of the week, 12 hours a day, he get's 8 hours of sleep at night and can do whatever he wants (within his prison that provides him all the necessities of life) with the rest of his 4 hours a day. In these optimized conditions he would be able to work at a much quicker pace of moving all of Mount Everest and the ground below it down to sea level within 34.33 million years.
But using a single criminal is inefficient, what if we used all of the criminals today? There are approximately 9.2 million prisoners in the world. Let's get all of them to work, and we'll only use a couple of conveyer belts that take the dirt far away instead of 1 per person. That means realistically, only 5% of the prisoner population will be digging, and that's being generous, the rest are moving dirt. We'll replace people as necessary, but we'll keep the 9.2 million number for as long as they're working on Mount Everest. In this case, we can move Mount Everest in a much more reasonable 74.64 years, or 27243 days.
But using shovels are inefficient, what if we gave everyone who's digging a Caterpillar? With my shovel I move earth at a measly 471 ft3 per 4 hours. The Caterpillar I'm planning on giving to all those digging prisoners can move earth at a whopping 360 yd3 per hour. These Caterpillars are much larger than people with shovels, and we'll reduce the number of diggers down to only 1% of the prisoner population, everyone else is doing earth moving, not digging. At this rate we'll be done in as little 4.522 years, or 1650 days.
But using Caterpillars are inefficient, it is hypothesized that the Gulf of Mexico was actually created by a comet/asteroid some 66 million years ago, and that was what really ended the dinosaurs, and extinction events similar to that happen every 26 million years or so. So apparently we're due for another one of those any day now, and that would be able to remove Mount Everest for us fairly easily probably in a matter of minutes. Another problem comes in to play when we realize we would have to position either the Earth or the comet/asteroid so that Mount Everest would be decimated. But that's a topic for another discussion.
