Meanwhile…
Being unable to roam the world due to lockdown, some people, most of whom were probably nerdy loners in the first place—albeit geniuses—have decided to recreate the world indoors on a one to one scale, via Minecraft.
What the hell is Minecraft, I can hear some of you shriek (probably anyone over the age of 13). It is a video game, I answer, where players can build anything their imagination can come up with, using blocks of a variety of materials provided. If you want to find out more, or even learn how to do it, YouTube is full of (FREE!!) videos. There is a small drawback, in that the infant instructors have such boring voices and deliveries that they are guaranteed to send you to sleep in five minutes flat. Trust me, I know. But I have nevertheless seen with my very eyes children of 7 or 8 build the most amazing, if hideous, constructions of every sort: towers, castles, spaceships. Middle Earth. Dragons, and sheep. You get my drift. It is actually very clever and quite educational.
Back to the point: one of these gamers, known as PippenFTS, has started the Build The Earth Project, using data from Google Earth to generate the terrain on a 1:1 scale. He has called on other players to join him in constructing all man-made structures in every city, town and village across the world.
The response was astounding: more than 130,000 people have come together online to build a life-size recreation of the earth.
For his part, PippenFTS is kicking off by recreating his home city of Seattle, virtual brick by virtual brick, on the Minecraft map.
The idea is for each Minecraft player to start their own Planet Earth map, pick a city or territory, and work on creating it on a 1:1 scale as true to reality as possible. When the building of all the areas is completed, they will be patched together with map editors to combine everyone’s work into a single Earth.
“Literally a week into the quarantine and we’ve already replaced the outside world,” one supporter noted.
In order to build the Earth to scale, PippenFTS first had to overcome some limitations within the game – most significantly, the inability to build more than 256 blocks high. By using a mod called Cubic Chunks, he was able to bypass the game’s vertical height limit and recreate geological wonders like Mount Everest and the Grand Canyon at their full scale.
“All human made structures – all of our cities, our towers, cathedrals, railroads, museums, theatres, parks and skyscrapers – all of it is built and completed in one map that represents our innate human desire to create, to achieve, to persevere in a single visitable and explorable Minecraft world,” he said.
“This would be the world to end all worlds: the single most greatest collective achievement in Minecraft, and I want to see it done in my lifetime. So I’m starting the first brick.”
Builder evilpauwse, a New York college student who is a moderator in the project, said that people are constantly asking why? Why rebuild the Earth within Minecraft?
“To that I say, ‘why not,’” he said. “Something of this scale has never been done before, and is ready for anyone who wants to take on the challenge of doing it.”
The project’s biggest roadblock is organization: with so many volunteers, it’s hard to keep builders focused and working together. Therefore various committees and systems are being set up. But all the builders love the challenge of capturing the earth in this moment in time, in all its glory.
Here’s a short video for anyone interested. Maybe some of you would even like to join in?
Letters from Athens 