What If A One Pasta Noodle Thick Coating Covered The Entire Earth Instantaneously

What If Large Amphibious Frogs Covered All Of The World

As the world's entire surface area becomes instantaneously coated with one noodle of angel hair pasta, a dynamic, and even catastrophic event would occur. In this scenario, any object touching the earth is covered with spaghetti one noodle thick. If there is an object on another object, then the higher altitude object is covered, for instance: A human standing on a sidewalk would be covered instead of the part of the sidewalk they are directly over. Surface water would count as the Earth's surface and would hence be covered in noodles. These noddles that appear are cooked, creating a slimy coating over the Earth and its inhabitants.

The mere surprise of such an event would cause some cars to suddenly stop, possibly inducing accidents with those behind them, while other cars might lose complete traction with the roadway. One major problem would be drivers of convertibles. Convertible drivers would have their face covered if their roof was open, limiting visibility to none, and possibly causing some serious accidents. Transportation services that are underground, like subways, would fare better in this situation, as not only would the travel be safer, but people would not be witnessing this crazy event. This ignorance and subsequent calmness would allow for little immediate interruption to the day to day function of these underground transportation systems.

Other transportation systems like trains, planes, and boats would face their own problems. Train tracks would be completely covered, as would any windows, limiting visibility and possibly creating a fatal ride. Planes would be alright in the air, because only things touching the Earth's surface would be covered, but landing in a field of spaghetti would be a whole other issue. Boats would be plowing through spaghetti noddles the moment it occurs, but these noodles would quickly sink into the depths of the water. This would let larger boats safely continue moving, but smaller boats could have engine problems if spaghetti gets into their engine. In general, transportation would come to a halt, not only due to dangerous conditions \, but also because of the lack of ability to clean up this vast supply of noodles.

One of the most interesting effects of this coating would be how nature responds. The entire Sahara desert would be covered in a layer of noodles. Wind speeds of the Sahara Desert can reach up to 50 meters/seconds, allowing for a spaghetti storm to occur (Source). The Sahara Desert's area is 9.2 million kilometers squared. In comparison, the average spaghetti noodle is 25.4 centimeters in length and 0.2794 centimeters in diameter (Source). This gives one spaghetti noodle a surface area of approximately 7.097 centimeters squared. Converting that to kilometer's squared gives one noodles area to be 7.097*10^-7 kilometer's squared. To cover the entire Sahara it would take approximately 1.3 *10^13 noddles. For every pound of pasta, there are approximately 1.4 pounds of water absorbed (Source). One pound of angel hair pasta takes approximately 1,136 noodles (source). This means that in addition to the sheer amount of pasta expelled onto the Sahara, (1.4*1.3*10^13)/(1,136)= 1.6*10^10 pounds of water is put into the desert environment. Looking at the even bigger picture, a lot of water is introduced into Earth's biosphere, enough that it could change rainfall patterns all around the world.

One other major environmental issue caused by this expelling of pasta would be felt strongly in arctic areas. Normally, the white snow of arctic areas reflects almost all of the incoming sunlight due to its high albedo. With the introduction of a layer of noodles though, no longer would the sun's rays be reflected so strongly. This would cause an increase of absorption of rays, leading to a warmer arctic area.

So much would happen if this event occurred, and despite its silliness, a lot of world changing, even possibly ending, events would follow it. I only tackled a little bit of the possibilities, but even these few ideas lead me onto tangents that were just noodles.