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16 October 2005
When looking around for information on incredibly large numbers I came across an interesting site... [MI]
This site sells bidis, a sort of hand rolled cigarette and claims:
• More than 700 Trillion BEEDIES or BIRI are smoked annually
• Indians smoke more than one trillion bidis every year.
• An experienced worker can roll 2,000 a day.
India has about 1 billion people in it. If every man, woman and child, smoke 1 trillion a year That’s 1000 smokes per person a year, or 2.7 a day. It takes 1 person 1 day to make 2000 bidis. So if they smoke 2.7 billion a day it would take 1.3 million workers rolling 2000 a day just to meet demand in their own country.
But it gets weirder. The world demand is 700 trillion a year. If he population of the earth is 7 billion people everyone would have to smoke 100 thousand a year or 1.9 trillion per day. So if the world smokes 1.9 trillion a day it would take 1 billion people rolling 2000 a day to keep up with the demand of everyone on the planet smoking their 274 daily bidis.