SEEK: The size of The Belt of Humanity
Yes it is I, here to post more about SEEK (go read it)
Today, let’s talk about the size of the Belt of Humanity, specifically in Orion’s time. Kudos to Wildbow for really wanting us to understand that this place is fucking insane:
> “With a hundred and sixty million kilometers of shit that wants to destroy you off in that direction, and ninety million kilometers of similar shit in the other direction, and cold, empty space in every other direction?”
*
> “It’s really a two hundred and fifty million kilometers of this?”
>
> “Over that. We were estimating.”
*
> “If you want to include the thickness of it all… twelve to fifteen thousand kilometers, we figure.”
- 0.4.O HACK
So to recap: +250 million kilometers of ring circumference and 12-15000 kilometers of thickness
But what does big number really mean?
If placed in a straight line with Earth as a the starting point, The Belt is long enough to reach the Sun and double back to Earth!
At Earth’s orbit, The Belt makes up 27% of it by circumference alone!
In terms of thickness and depth, Earth is around 12000 kilometers, meaning that it can comfortably fit inside of the Belt with 3000 kilometers to spare!
This is enough room you to add an entire other layer of Earth’s crust (down to the core!) around the Earth!
If you detonated every nuclear bomb on Earth on top of this Ring, you would *at best* do damage to a couple hundred meters of material from the power/heat of the explosion.
The Asteroid that killed the dinosaurs? Ditto.
A random solar flare? It would likely mess with electronics big time, but the heat itself wouldn’t damage the structure and most would radiate out into the empty vastness of space.
Only a literal rogue planet hitting the Belt (assuming Earth size and traveling at its orbit speed) would do any meaningful damage (likely vaporizing the planet and biting out a chunk of the Belt), but the sheer length of the Belt - and the fact that we see it can morph planet sized objects in mere hours - means it wouldn’t be a big issue.
And of course, the special rooms built to hold planets inside of it!
And And! This is all Black Box and his friends estimating the size. They admit that the Belt is probably **bigger**