The most sleeping people

[Jim of Seattle]

I was just now lying here wondering about what time of day is the largest percentage of the human race awake, and I decided it is probably about 7 AM Pacific time, because then it is the middle of the night over the Pacific Ocean. In order to figure out when the most people are asleep would require me to know where the most populous time zones are which I don’t know.

Then I started to wonder at what instant in all of human history was the largest percentage of humans awake at the same moment. My only guess would be it would be something like when some giant cataclysmic event occurred like Krakatoa or something.

And then at first I assumed that there would be no way to figure out when in the history the largest percentage of the human race was asleep at the same time. But upon further thought, it dawned on me that I can be pretty sure exactly when the largest percentage of the human race was asleep at the same time.

It was the moment that the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1944. That happened in the morning in Japan, which means it was the middle of the night Across most of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Here is my logic why I came to that conclusion:

Given the enormous population on the Earth, you have to assume that for any given minute, roughly the exact same number of people are asleep every day. (For example, at 2:32 PM Pacific time, maybe 29.051% of people are sleeping.) And if you charted it day after day, it would probably be very predictable. So what could cause a change in the percentage of sleeping people? One thing that occurs to me is if a whole lot of people who are awake all die at the same moment. The bomb was just such a moment, and in fact was probably the single moment in history when the most number of awake people died, therefore causing a spike in the percentage of people who are asleep in the rest of the world. Morbid I know, but sort of interesting.

That’s all I wanted to say.

[AJOwens]

I am never asleep at the same time.