What does 100,000 people look like?

Big places, little faces..

Whenever I write, I try to use visuals..for some people, like myself, I can read something, but visuals help me to comprehend a subject better..

For instance, the concept of recycling used water bottles and their importance to the environment, I found these stats on a site called Eco Watch…

In the Los Angeles area alone, 10 metric tons of plastic fragments — like grocery bags, straws and soda bottles — are carried into the Pacific Ocean every day.

Over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century.

50 percent of the plastic we use, we use just once and throw away.

Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the earth four times.

We currently recover only five percent of the plastics we produce.

The average American throws away approximately 185 pounds of plastic per year…

I can read all the stats, but the one that pops out at me is this one..

Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the earth four times..

That is a pretty good visual, right?

So, I wanted to find out how big of a place it would take to put 100,000 adults in..actually 100,000 children..

And I thought, “STADIUMS”…. those are really big places..

So I tootle around wiki and I see all the stadiums that are listed in the US..I would of looked at the ones in Europe, well maybe I will still do that…

But the stadium I found was Ohio Stadium, also known as the Horseshoe…

Look at that! It’s HUGE…

According to wiki…

The stadium opened in 1922 as a replacement for Ohio Field and had a seating capacity of 66,210. In 1923, a cinder running track was added that was later upgraded to an all-weather track. Seating capacity gradually increased over the years and reached a total of 91,470 possible spectators in 1991. Beginning in 2000, the stadium was renovated and expanded in several phases, removing the track and adding additional seating, which raised the capacity to 101,568 by 2001 and to 102,329 in 2007. In 2014, additional seating was added in the end zone, raising the official capacity to 104,944. It is the largest stadium by capacity in the state of Ohio, the third largest football stadium in the United States, and the fourth largest non-racing stadium in the world. Ohio Stadium was added to the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service on March 22, 1974.[3]

It started out with a capacity of 66,210 and by 2014 the official capacity was 104,994…

Amazing..simply amazing…

Look at all those people..this is certainly a big place..

Why did I try to find a visual like this to tell my story?

According to various news outlets like Al Jazeera..

The UN special envoy for Syria has estimated that 400,000 people have been killed throughout the past five years of civil war, urging major and regional powers to help to salvage a crumbling ceasefire..

And some of those were children..

Looking at this chart may help one understand the horrors of war..but visualizing the amount of people, in the size of a stadium, really impacts one view of the war in Syria..

Over 400,000 people have died..

This stadium holds over 104,994 people..

One would need three of these stadiums to imagine the loss of life..

Big places…little faces

In a recent update, this little boy’s older brother died after being pulled from the rubble..

I believe he was only seven years of age…