Simulation shows what 100 billion dollars in cash looks like as people say it's 'hard to comprehend'
$100,000,000,000. That's a lot of zeroes to get your head around, and it's even harder to comprehend when you see it laid out before you.
No, unfortunately this isn't me offering to show you 100 billion dollars - I wouldn't be sat here writing this if I had that amount of cash to hand.
Instead, the visual comes from a simulation that emerged on social media showing what $100 billion would look like if it was stacked in $100 bills.
And in case you didn’t know, since a billion is such a big number, it takes quite a few stacks to reach the grand total.
Advert
The video was originally shared on Instagram by the RED SIDE YouTube page, and starts off with a focus on a couple of smaller (although still sizeable) figures - $100 and $10,000.
The first can be represented by just one note, while the second is made up of a small stack.
It's then that we cut to the billions, and things really to ramp up.
The simulation just keeps going as the stacks of money go on, with the occasional human thrown in for context of just how big the piles are.
All in all, the 100 billion dollars seems to take up the size of a multiple-storey building, dwarfing a truck positioned against the pile as a size reference.
Many Reddit users also admitted they were surprised they couldn’t accurately predict the size of the large figure.
“Humans naturally have a hard time comprehending the actual difference between a million, a billion, and a trillion,” one user wrote.
Another added: “This is a cool video. I sometimes tell people that a billion dollars in 100 dollar bills would weigh 22,000 lbs but this I think says even more. People can't comprehend numbers that big,” another added.
“So...Jeff Bezos' stack of cash is bigger than my apartment...ok....cool. Cool cool cool,” joked one user.
Other users pointed out that the background begins to change as the viewer is seen larger sums of money, going from a bright green grassland area to a destroyed and derelict city.
“Was I the only one who noticed it started out in a peaceful grassy field and ended in a post apocalyptic wasteland?” one person commented.
“When corporate greed leads to our planet's destruction, this is what the post apocalypse will actually look like,” added another.
“My compliments on the choice of the background. Nothing shows better the trail of destruction that is left behind while collecting extreme wealth."
Topics: Money, Reddit, Social Media, Technology
Emily Brown