How long would life on Earth be able to survive?
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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]