What one trillion dollars looks like.

Heres a cool site I thought I'd share that puts one trillion dollars into perspective

www.pagetutor.com...

now just multiply that by about 11 and you got our national debt.

Another perspective

A million seconds is 13 days.
A billion seconds is 31 years.
A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

A million minutes ago was – 1 year, 329 days, 10 hours and 40 minute ago.
A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ.

A million hours ago was in 1885.
A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on earth.

Very interesting

Very interesting indeed.... Im suprized that they didnt do the comparison to what our natioal debt look s like.

holy cow! you know that really does put it into a good perspective. they should do it with all one dollar bills

they did do our debt:
www.pagetutor.com...

it's mentioned at the bottom on the link in the OP..

[edit on 14-5-2009 by adrenochrome]

reply to post by adrenochrome


Hah I heard the real debt was 99 trillion, which would make the size of the money stack go off the computer screen

wow, thats HUGE!!! i wonder if we really have the gold to back that up or how much money we have printed that cant really be backed and is just a worthless piece of paper

And yet another perspective:


To give you an idea how much money that is, consider this. If you started counting right now: 1,2,3,4,5,6.... and you counted one dollar every single second, 24/7, with no sleep... do you know how long it would take you to count one trillion dollars?

32,000 years!

I'm not making that up. It's just math. And that's to count only a single measly trillion. 100 trillion... that might take a little longer.

[edit on 14-5-2009 by Albertarocks... trying to make font bigger for numbers but can't get it done]

[edit on 14-5-2009 by Albertarocks]

Originally posted by BrainPower
wow, thats HUGE!!! i wonder if we really have the gold to back that up or how much money we have printed that cant really be backed and is just a worthless piece of paper

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha gold to back it up? hahahahahaa

Originally posted by Max_TO
Another perspective

A million seconds is 13 days.
A billion seconds is 31 years.
A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

A million minutes ago was – 1 year, 329 days, 10 hours and 40 minute ago.
A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ.

A million hours ago was in 1885.
A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on earth.

Just to clarify, a billion hours comes out to roughly 100,000 years or so (right?); Homo sapiens have lived for over 250,000 years. So your statement is incorrect.

Holy Cow! And to think I would have been happy with the stack you can put in a grocery bag!

Being a truck driver I wonder how that translates into loaded trailers ... (goes to do the math)

Ok, a standard 53' trailer can hold 24 double stacked pallets.
That's 48 pallets per trailer.
It would take 10,000 pallets just for 1 trillion dollars.
That equates to 208.333333 trailers.
So 11 trillion dollars would fill almost 910 standard 53' trailers!
That's 48,230 feet of trailers alone. That's 9.13 MILES.
Add tractors to the mix and you've got 65,520 feet. Which is almost 12.5 miles!



Edit to add the math!

[edit on 14-5-2009 by cnichols]

Originally posted by BrainPower
wow, thats HUGE!!! i wonder if we really have the gold to back that up or how much money we have printed that cant really be backed and is just a worthless piece of paper

Actually none of the money is backed by Gold.

What everyone has right now is paper.

History shows that money backed by nothing always collapses.

I also don't see the government paying that debt.

I'm 100% sure they won't.

[edit on 14-5-2009 by danielsil18]

reply to post by BrainPower


I thought the exact same thing Obsessive me, so I'm sitting here doodling and working out some numbers and I think I'm seeing single-stacked pallets, one dollar bills, that range for a little over 7 1/2 miles on EACH side of the square........ and that's if the pallets are stacked tight to each other. WOW.

Thanks OP... very interesting thread. All those bills. Might make nostalgic wallpaper in the not too distant future.

reply to post by danielsil18


It's not like Gold is special, and has some intrinsic value on it's own. It doesn't. It's just a rare metal that people associate with value.

The same could be said about fiat currencies (gold has been, and in some cases STILL IS a fiat currency -- just like paper money).

The only thing that gives the USD value is that it is accepted as legal tender by law. So if you sue me for crashing my car into the side of your house, and you are awarded 50,000$, I am only obligated to pay that in USD. Not gold, or some other rare metal.

One nice thing about paper money as opposed to Gold is that you can burn paper money for warmth in a post-apocalyptic nightmare world. Also, you could use it as wall paper or something, in the event of hyper inflation. :-p

reply to post by adrenochrome


Oh thanks I didn't even see that thats insane and thats just the debt we know know of.