Film Theory: Luke SHOULDN'T Destroy The Death Star (Star Wars)

if you thought your reserved D box seats to the 3d IMAX showing of star wars the force awakens cost an arm and a leg huh you ain't seen nothing yet hello Internet welcome to film theory where today hold on to your fitted Jedi leggings aka your jeggings ah duh because we're talking about the economics of building the Death Star and before you wander away thinking that this is just gonna be a bunch of math for the next 15 minutes well there's gonna be some math but that math will totally be worth it because by the end of the episode you're gonna learn that there's a force in the galaxy far more dangerous than the dark side and that forces market force and in the context of that force the Jedi are far more destructive than the Sith ever release here viously get ready to never look at this scene the same way again it seems like the logical place to start is to figure out how much the Death Star actually costs to make I mean this is one massive ship right so before we go making any big revelations about Star Wars we have to get down to nuts and bolts literally according to Wikipedia the whole of the Death Star is made out of substance known as quod an iam steel according to the information we have all the outside parts of the Death Star are made from this steel alloy which is supposed to be a super strong Armour and while it may be tough it's not like it's impenetrable or anything since all the generations of TIE fighters we see in the original trilogy we're also made out of this alloy we also see that it can be blown up pretty much like any other regular ship so it's a special steel but since there's not a lot of information on it and it looks and functions a lot like normal metal in our calculations we're going to just treat it like a regular steel owl fortunately for us some economic students and fellow Star Wars Ian's at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania actually calculated how much steel it takes to build the Death Star as with any fictional device that you're trying to bring into the real world you're gonna face some limitations and as a result make some assumptions for them they compared the Death Star to what would basically be a battleship but instead of floating on water it floats into space this is pretty rational since they both need to be protected from all kinds of weaponry both have to be airtight and they're both weapon platforms that need to be totally self-contained either in the vacuum of space or in the middle of the ocean next they took the dimension the Deathstar which according to the Star Wars encyclopedia and the online wiki's is a hundred and forty kilometers in diameter or about 87 miles across just to give you some context that's 125th the size of the moon next they scaled everything up from a modern warship to the size of the Death Star and found that you would need 1.0 8 times 10 to the 15th tons of steel to construct as in 1.0 8 x 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 and sometimes this happens with our theories right where the numbers just get so ridiculously big for us to even know what they mean so let's put this in perspective comparing that number to the steel on earth it actually doesn't look that crazy based on the amount of iron in the planet earth iron alloy makes steel by the way just so you know you could actually produce 2 million death star shells out of it granted the earth would literally be mined dry completely gone and the core would be gutted but it seems like producing just one measly Death Star wouldn't be such a big deal that is until you look at how long it actually takes to turn the raw iron into steel at the current rate earth produces steel it would take our planet more than 800,000 years just to get enough for the Death Star that's not even counting all the other components and parts that you need for such a massive Space Station how long does it take to produce enough steel to build your everyday warship for the ocean less than an hour ok so this is gonna be a big project but it doesn't stop there knowing how much steel it takes is all well and good but you can't just mine a gajillion tons of Steel for free that much steel is gonna need some serious cash here's where the numbers get really crazy our friends at lehigh kept researching the stats of the Death Star and we're able to calculate that at the price of steel in 2012 one point zero eight times 10 to the 15th tons of steel would cost you about eight hundred and fifty-two quadrillion dollar compare that to the gross world product for 2014 that's how much money was produced by the entire world economy of every country in a year the gross world product in 2014 was 77 trillion sixty-eight billion seven hundred sixty-eight million dollars that means the price for just the steel on the Death Star would be almost 11 thousand times all the money made in the world in a single year and I want to make sure that we're really clear here that this isn't just some huge number I'm waving out in front of you this cost of the Death Star has actually been verified in writing by our own US government good job guys these are the sorts of things that you should be wasting your time on a couple years ago a petition for the US government circulated to build a real Death Star under the assumption that it would help us bolster our national defense and obviously fend off the Rebel Alliance sorry I just love that this was a real thing that happened it got so many signatures that the White House officially responded to it with a huge letter even though they ultimately declined the request to build a gigantic Death Ray in space they did use data to back up their decision they also pointed out that blowing up planets isn't a good idea but offered an alternative solution if the government wasn't gonna fund it you could always ask for private funding through NASA's Commercial Crew and cargo program office otherwise known as c-3po I kid you not the world is run by a bunch of nerds it is glorious so yes confirmed by the US government this is seriously what it would cost to build a Death Star and we're just talking about the basic model remember you also need a lot more than steel to keep this thing going you need tons of quarters for cruise you need all the internal life-support systems onboard computers laser engines huge plasma containment cells the steel is just the beginning again making the best comparison we can between the Death Star and a regular warship we can make a rough calculation for how much the rest of the components would cost our friends over at Lehigh use the USS Gerald Ford which costs seventeen point five billion dollars including our DS if we extrapolate that out to the Death Star the total cost for the first Death Star would be as high as 193 quintillion dollars so that's how much the Death Star would cost in our earth dollars today and that seems like a lot right and it is for a single planet remember we're only looking at it from Earth's respective the Deathstar was built using an entire galaxies worth of resources where there are thousands of inhabited planets and trillions of people cores and alone has over one trillion inhabitants when you look at it that way and also that it took about 20 years to build it's actually not that bad but while the cost of building the Death Star isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of the galaxy the cost of destroying the Death Star is something else entirely when the first Death Star was being built almost everyone in the galaxy was pretty much just going about their own business like we said building the space station doesn't really affect them all that much it's a government project just like building a bridge but when good old Luke Skywalker comes along and uses the force that's when the real problems for the galaxy start I'm not talking about planets blowing up although yeah sorry about that older I'm talking about everyone's worst nightmare a recession before you laugh this off a recession across an entire galaxy is no cakewalk the biggest issue here is that terrorist attacks hurt the economy and bad and destroying the Death Star would be labeled as the largest ever act of galactic terrorism oh yeah it's easy to forget amidst the cool laser swords and fun space battles that the rebels are exactly that rebels sure the government may be controlled by an evil Sith Lord but it's a stable system and even then the majority of the populace don't even realize that Vader and Palpatine are all that bad to them Luke Han Leia and all the rest are extremists trying to overthrow the government and just successfully blew up the largest military base in history and that is good compare the Death Star attack to something we know here the 9/11 attacks following 9/11 two of the world's most important stock indexes the Dow Jones in the S&P 500 dropped overnight by 14 percent and 12 percent respectively and then stayed there no you don't have to know what those are it's a topic for another day what you do need to know is that sudden double-digit drops like this result in economic crashes as consumers become nervous and spend less money which in turn results in less income for companies companies are then forced to make layoffs and the resulting higher unemployment means even less spending lower productivity for everyone companies and individuals alike the economy struggles to recover destroying the Death Star would cause this kind of collapse except instead of being on a national scale this would literally ripple across thousands of other planets the other big problem in the destruction of the Death Star is the murder of major political and military figures this might seem like a good thing because yeah we got the bad guys especially with the second Death Star you're talking about killing Emperor Palpatine but history shows that killing off major world leaders doesn't exactly stimulate the economy this is comparable to April 23rd 2013 when The Associated Press made a mistake of tweeting that the White House had been hit by a terrorist attack and that President Obama has been injured of course the tweet was wrong but in the four minutes it took before they got it retracted the stock market dropped by one in four minutes there's no question that the immediate impact of Luke destroying the Death Star would be to send the Galactic economy reeling the Galactic Trade Federation would take a huge hit slowing down all the major galactic trade routes and causing serious resource or without brought resource shortages and causing serious resource shortages I cannot say that I cannot say that for that that is really hard to say resource shortages causing serious resource shortages as remote planets see their imports take a big hit high I did it and things only get worse from there remember the rebels destroy two Death Star's and when Palpatine dies in Death Star to his absence would lead to a temporary collapse of the entire political system without any sort of central structure or leader this collapse would also mean that the Empire would have defaulted on all of its debt to the planets that might not seem like a big deal but it means that basically the Empire can't pay anyone back for anything including the Death Star's all those resources and money used to make this thing to use a phrase from South Park and it's gone these are the most expensive military projects in history not to mention the Empire has been financing a war against the rebels for years one might call it a war on terror and now none of it can be paid for all the industries related to military and arms manufacturing would collapse and many other industries would follow suit as a result so what does all this mean well first of all it means that destroying the Death Star is a lot more complicated than the good guys won in fact it's pretty reasonable to think that destroying the Death Star and Emperor Palpatine wouldn't lead back to a prosperous democratic republic where everyone gets flowers and medals it would actually lead to a deep recession and a massive power grab for lots of individual factions rushed to try to fill the void left by the Emperor and take control of the galaxy meanwhile door Denari citizens the galaxy would suffer for years to come cut off from all supplies and resources from other planets stuffing their credits into their mattresses and waiting out the recession caused by the Jedi destroying the Death Star would actually have the exact opposite effect that Luke and the Jedi think it will Economist's they are not and that's the point here ultimately there's a big difference between a political revolution and a violent revolution we think of Emperor Palpatine as being this really destructive guy but his revolution from Old Republic to Empire was much smoother and safer economically than the rebels hostile takeover sure Palpatine used manipulation and coercion to get power and eventually bumped off a few Jedi but he pretty much left the Galactic population alone in the process everyone else was able to live their lives without too much problem again sorry Alderaan bummer for you the armed and violent coup that the Rebel Alliance performs is much more sudden and ultimately more disruptive to more people really if the Rebel Alliance truly wanted to bring peace to the galaxy a better way of life for everyone to reform their Republic they will have needed to take a page from the dark side and work a little magic behind the scenes rather than destroying not just the Death Star but the whole galaxy's way of life so what the force awakens takes place 30 years after the original trilogy oh no everyone there should be an utter economic devastation that's the true story of the force awakens but hey that's just a theory a film theory and cut and if you can't get enough Star Wars find out even more hidden truths about the dark side and light side of the force by clicking here to watch my friends over at Screen Rant they just did a theory exploring how George Lucas made the force to parallel the eastern yin and yang symbol finding clues as to how the new trilogy story will unfold based on this balance of dark and light it's a really cool analysis kinda wish I'd thought of it myself actually or if your kind of Star Wars doubt for the time being click here to learn how to do the Kamehameha wave from Dragonball surprisingly there is a real-world explanation for what you're seeing here still no explanation though for how napped Yamcha is that guy man useless just useless and finally make sure that you subscribe because we have theories on Batman Superman and Full Metal Alchemist on the way

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 7,839,710

Rating: 4.865387 out of 5

Keywords: star wars, star wars: the force awakens, star wars: a new hope, star wars: return of the jedi, star wars episode VII, star wars episode 7, jedi, luke skywalker, death star, darth vader, star wars empire, emperor palpatine, film theory, film theorists, the film theorists, matpat, matthew patrick, matthewpatrick13, star wars movie

Id: s4Y3dlTDAxw

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/GrinningManiac]

I'm not so sure there's any proof or reason to think a pan galactic fascist super government whose member planets seem to consist of majority of backwater worlds operating on a barter systems would operate under the same national debt and loan default rules that modern economies do.

The Emperor is like space wizard Hitler, and any historian can tell you Hitler was a really shitty economist (no he did not save Germany's economy why does everyone keep circulating that myth. The man was at his least evil still incredibly incompetent fiscally and militarily)

[u/Yurei2]

Thing about the Galactic Empire... It encompassed an entire galaxy. You know, a collection of hundreds of billions of stars and trillions upon trillions of worlds.

What MatPat failed to realize in that episode, is that space is big. Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.

The Galactic Empire was so vast that it's corporate sector ALONE occupied 30,000 star systems. It had 25,034 years of infrastructure in existence to support it. Taxes on that sector alone were "The Empire would collect a yearly stipend of 3% of the total gross product, 9% of all material, and 20% of all strategic rare elements from the Corperate Sector." This is in addition to all other taxes, and excludes taxes collected on worker's wages and droid owners.

Yes, the Death Star consumed multiple planets worth of resources. Yes it costs an unfathomable amount of cash to make (at least in the minds of we who can't even unify our planet into one government primitive culture's way of thinking.) My point is, the Galactic Empire's economy can treat the loss of the Death Star with the same 'meh' you would treat realizing that someone shaved a few millimeters of copper off the edge of one penny in your bank account.

Oh no. The economies of a few dozen worlds crashed. How tragic. This is the same as a few random amazonian tribal villages dying off to us. It's irrelevant, makes no impact, and we don't care. We literally have millions of worlds that are still working fine.

[u/Lord_Iggy]

Palpatine caused a ruinous pan-Galactic war in order to get to power, he's not particularly better than the Rebel Alliance in that sense. Also, he's worrying about the economy alone, and not the fact that the villains in the story can destroy planets as a show of force. It seems a little shortsighted. I know that there can be lots of serious negative repercussions of economic failure, but I'd question whether they outweigh the downsides of imperial rule.

[u/nanonan]

yeah, because what Star Wars needs is more complicated plots about economy and trade.

[u/J-of-CO]

"We can't liberate Europe, imagine the economic impact of removing the Fascists from power!"