What If You Could Visit Everyone Alive in 24 Hours? | Unveiled

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What If You Visited Everyone Alive in 24 Hours?</h4>

Imagine you had the power to travel anywhere on Earth in an instant. You’d be able to witness breathtaking landscapes, walk through every town or city in existence, explore all the hidden wonders of the world, and experience every single culture and community on the planet. It would make you the ultimate globetrotter, free to roam wherever you pleased, at will. But, of course, around Christmas time, there is one legendary figure who does all of that and more.

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; what if you visited everyone alive in twenty-four hours?

Everyone knows the incredible tales of Santa Claus, aka Saint Nick, Kris Kringle, Papa Noel, Grandfather Frost or Father Christmas. There are variations on the theme, but in general it’s said that Santa miraculously visits every home on Earth in a single night - usually on Christmas Eve. Now, clearly there is only one Santa, so we’ll leave the wholesale, manic global delivery of presents everywhere to the big man. But, what if instead of dropping off gifts specifically, you embarked on a journey simply to meet every living person within 24 hours? What if you channeled the spirit of Santa, but into another, separate exhilarating adventure that goes way beyond the holiday season.

To start, there are some key and pretty mind-bending facts to set the scene. In November 2022, the estimated world population ticked past eight billion people for the first time ever. Today, we’re all one of a truly massive and widespread species. So, although it’s physically impossible, picture yourself standing in a room with all of the people on Earth, each representing a unique story, perspective, life and timeline. And now imagine connecting with every individual in that room. You could spend many, many lifetimes completing that task.

But, in today’s hypothetical, everyone isn’t gathered inside one single room - unless the room is Earth itself - and you don’t have countless lifetimes to mingle in. Rather you have only one day, a measly 24 hours. In real time, that gives you approximately one one-hundred-thousandth of a second per person. This actually means that you would have considerably less than the blink of an eye in the company of every one you met, for so long as time passed at the usual rate. Even the most charismatic of people would struggle to make an impression in such a brief window. Meanwhile, how far would you have to travel? The circumference of Earth is almost 25,000 miles… meaning that whilst visiting everyone alive for your one one-hundred-thousandth of a second meet-and-greet, you’d also need to be traveling at more than 1,000 miles per hour all the time. Except, not even that would be anywhere near enough, because obviously not everyone lives along the same circumferential line. In reality, we’re all scattered across the entirety of Earth, with the surface of our planet commanding a total area of just less than 200 million square miles. You’re gonna need one helluva sat-nav to complete that trip.

Clearly, we’re going to have to bend the rules a little bit here. To have any hope of reaching our mission goal, we’ll need to equip ourselves with the power to control time to a limitless and epic degree. Imagine you have the capability to pause time whenever you need to. Now, while you still have literally millions of miles to travel, you can at least extend your one one-hundred-thousandth of a second into something much more substantial. Into whole moments, hours, or even days. Many of the logistical challenges vanish, and the seemingly impossible moves to within reach. The world becomes your playground, and you - frozen in time - have forever to enjoy it. So long as your pausing of time also allows you to pause your own aging… but let’s just imagine that it does.

Under these new conditions, how would your journey play out? What would you Learn? And how would you end up feeling?

Certainly you would quickly transcend to become the most informed, knowledgeable, and experienced being around. You’d become someone that’s almost laden with wisdom, after even just a tiny fraction of your overall trip. Estimates vary, but it’s said that the average person (i.e., one who can’t control time, live forever, or endlessly travel millions of miles) will meet somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 people during their lifetime. But even at the top end of those figures, that means that ordinarily you will only get to meet about 0.00125 percent of the global population. Even the most well connected people on Earth only ever connect with a tiny, tiny amount of everyone there is. Meanwhile, and to shorten our possibilities even further, we have what’s known as Dunbar’s Number. Created by the British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, this is an estimated limit to the number of stable, significant and meaningful relationships any one person can even handle. There is some debate around the final figure, but it generally comes out at just 150. Or just 0.000001 percent of everyone alive.

If you were in this hypothetical scenario, then, you would have the opportunity to learn and experience drastically more than anyone else ever could. You’d undoubtedly gain a new, never-before-seen appreciation for the richness of human existence. You’d encounter every single language that’s currently spoken or written. You’d see the inner workings of every single culture. You’d have a level of understanding about every single tradition, not just the few that any one person ever usually becomes aware of. Your own incredible life would morph into something of a tapestry, documenting (or at least influenced by) everything that humankind has to offer. This journey would shatter stereotypes, prejudice and preconceptions. It would remove all the real-world difficulties of borders, politics, fighting and war. Throughout your trip, you would learn about the struggles and triumphs that shape every individual story.

There would be some trade-offs, however. Embarking on such an audacious adventure would also guarantee you worldwide fame - for better or worse. Visit everyone alive in 24 hours and you will become a global sensation. You’d more than break the internet, you’d kinda be the internet… indiscriminately connecting literally everyone under the same shared experience of having met you. Everyone would know your face, your voice. You’d be the subject of the most shared hashtag of all time. You’d be more than a generational figure; you’d be a species phenomenon. If this were you then how would you feel about that? Let us know in the comments how you’d cope with such an incomparably high public profile. And with such immeasurably massive amounts of influence and responsibility.

Until such time as we can pause time, then clearly this is one hypothetical that won’t come to pass in the real world. Not unless we manage to tap into the magic of Santa Claus and use it for ourselves. But, as a thought experiment, it does serve to highlight just how limited our worldview always is… even when we believe that it isn’t. Again, even the most socially connected of people will only ever meet far, far less than one percent of all the people alive. And, with the global population set to continually rise, that percentage is only going to get smaller and smaller in the future.

Nevertheless, if it were possible, then this would be the ultimate journey to make. The shared moments, the diverse stories, and the collective human experience that you’d encounter would surely change you forever - instilling within you a profound sense of what it really means to be human. And if you actually did manage it all within just a day in real time… then perhaps your next question would be; why stop there? Having met everybody once, wouldn’t you want to do it all again? And again? It might even turn out that you’d become an ever-present in their lives, just as they would be in yours. The person that everybody knows. The friend that everyone remembers.

What would happen next? Well, that’s a question for another video. But finally, and if nothing else, we can all now see precisely what Santa Claus has waiting for them every single year. True, we never really get to meet Santa, but even so… those reindeer have every right to be seriously tired! Because that’s what would happen if you could visit everyone alive in twenty-four hours.