How to Throw a Party for 7 Billion People

It's Friday: Let's throw a party for the world's entire population (about 7 billion people). We've made the Facebook invite but spent so much time trying to make it funny (what should the picture be? A cat wearing a party hat? Charlie Sheen?) that we forgot to add a location. How much space will we need to throw a rager for 7 billion of our closest friends? National Geographic crunched the numbers and found a couple of choice locales. We thought we'd add our own math for some other necessities in order to make this party way better than stupid Becky Miller's 15th birthday which we weren't invited to (and, like, seven dudes got handinskis there).

National Geographic figures that each person needs about six square feet to dance, which would require a space of about 1,500 square miles for everyone to embarrass themselves. They suggest Rhode Island or French Polynesia as two places that would be the perfect size.

We've got the venue, what else do we need?

Beer!
There are about 165 12-ounce beers in a keg. No one's driving home, so let's say everyone has four beers. (If a couple million people don't drink, our old frat buddy Fartin' Ben will totally make up for them.) That means we're going to need 169,696,970 kegs. And don't say that because we've graduated from college we should do some fancy shit like Smithwick's. We're not playing Beirut with Smithwick's.

Smokes!
You probably insist you won't smoke at the party, but once you've got a little buzz goin' from those four beers, you're going to want a cig or two. If everyone smokes two cigarettes, we're going to need 700,000,000 packs. Hold on a second, some pretentious assholes showed up and started to roll their own. Make that 699,999,998 packs.

Condoms!
3,500,000,000. And our guests should bring some, too. Hey-yo!!!

Cocktail Weenies!
Lets do 100,000,000,000. People really scarf those fuckers down.

Tunes!
1 copy of Jock Jams Volume 3 on compact disc is all we'll need. Hit it!

7 Billion: World Party [National Geographic]

[ngreene@villagevoice.com / @nickgreene]