(Gunshot)
(scary music)
Hello Internet! Welcome to Game Theory,
and the middle of Battle Royale Week.
In case you missed the first of these special episodes,
a few days ago I covered mathematical evidence against the media's claim that games,
Like Fortnite And Pubg, cause players to become more "Violent".
And later this week I'll be looking deeper at whether
these games helped your overall social skills.
But today, I am gonna examine a much more PRESSING ISSUE.
The Meteor that's about to strike Tilted Towers,
TOMORROW!!!
Turning this iconic area of the game-
map into nothing more than rubble.
I'm not here to theorize (Yes you are Mat) about its existence or when and where its gonna land.
I think everyone who has been following that situation has a pretty good handle on that one already.
Nope, I'm here today to explore
"How much destruction a meteor of that size,
traveling that fast, should cause?"
Is this flying hunk of rock spelling "armageddon" for the Fortnite map
as we know it?
Is Tilted Towers the only thing thats going to be affected, or should players expect to see the map become one giant crater?
A bit of Space Science, Chemistry, and Physics
have the answer. And i gotta say, this is
And i gotta say, this is-
a conclusion that I was not expecting.
Now to make sure we're  all on the same page, over the past month, Fortnite
players have noticed that an "unusual" object has appeared in the sky
First, it was small and barely distinguishable from the surrounding stars
 
but each day this unidentified flying object has grown Larger and Larger
causing an onslaught of speculation with the all but
confirmed theory being that this thing is a meteor thats
growing larger as it travels closer and closer to the Fortnite Island.
And if we're being specific right now,
this thing would technically be classified as a "Comet" as evidence by its blue color and distinctive tail
when it officially enters the Fortnite planet's atmosphere though,
THAT'S when it switches over and becomes classified as a "Meteor"
FUN FACTS! Anyway, over the past few weeks, telescopes have begun
to appear at various locations aroud the map
including Fatal Fields and Pleasant Park.
And thats right! All of these telescopes point directly at the
Comet!
Additionally over the past couple weeks, players have reported that their controllers
vibrate at random times in seemingly random sequences
However, these vibrations are far from random, happening at very
specific locations in the map,
at very specific times. The vibrations
actually seem to be hidden messages written in
Morse code!
When translated, that message reads: "SOSD5418"
the letters SOS are pretty obvious here, right? They're the typical call when you're in need of
They're the typical call when you're in need of help.
FUNFACT: most people assume that SOS stands for
'Save Our Souls' or 'Save Our Ship' but actually
it doesn't stand for anything.
It's just kind of a remnant from the earliest days of morse code when ships
needed to send out a distress call. The letters were actually meaningless.
There ya go. Anyway the SOS part of this message is easy,
we all know that. The next part of the message D5
Most likely corespondents to a location on the fortnight map.
On the game map "D5" is the location of "Tilted Towers"
And lastly the final three digits correspond to
the day "418". "April 18th."
The 18th of April is when season three of Fortnite is slated to end.
So, in short, between the added telescopes and
in game mores code I am confident that Tilted Towers
will become some new location, Something along the lines of
"Cavernous Crater"
The developers at Epic Games are planning on
altering the map of Fortnite in the easiest way that they know how,
chucking a giant space rock at its most popular
and most devisive location during the transition between
seasons of the game. In one massive active god
Epic Games is about to kill two birds with one meteor
all while creating a whole lot of hipe in the process.
But, like I said, this is a theory that most Fortniters know already.
What I want to explore is how
"DEADLY!" this meteor is going to be. It seems like a pretty
massive move to remove a few buildings from
one grid on the map and I've watched enough space
movies to know that big meteors in the sky tend to
yield big changes...
To humanity's survival on a planet.
So could there be a bigger change in store than just Tilted Towers destruction?
Lets see if you should spend your last hours of the season
Rocket Riding your way to safety or preaching that the
Or preaching that "The End Is Near!"
The Game Theorists
predicting fictional apocalypses since 2013.
First, I want to determine the mass of the meteor.
Real Life Comets and meteors have varying densities based on the types of
rocks that their made from.
Ranging from "2 Grams per Cubic Centimeter"
All the way to
"8 grams per cubic centimeter."
So examining the characteristics of the meteor in fortnite should help us find that density
Now you might be thinking that it would be
"IMPOSSIBLE!!"
to determine what this fictional video game comet would be made out of
but then you would just be underestimating our research powers.
Comets and meteors have tails because their particles are ionized
when exposed to solar wind. And wouldn't you know it but the color
on the tail corresponds to the material that the object is made from.
Red corresponds to nitrogen,
Yellow corresponds to iron,
and Blue corresponds to magnesium.
In Fortnite, the meteor very
clearly has a blue tail.
Indicating that it's chemical composition is magnesium based and as such
we can use research to find that magnesium based asteroids
have a density of 3.32 grams per cubic centimeter
From there, all we need is "Volume"
And courtesy of our all time
favorite equation D=M/V
Or in this case M=D*V
Mass=Density*Volume we'll be able to figure out our mass.
We'll be able to figure out our mass
So, onward to volume. Now some data minors have gone through the games code and found
a 3D model that strongly resembles a comet.
could this be what the comet will look like after the collision?
We can't know for sure but even if we were 100% confident
it doesn't help us out to much since there's nothing to give us a sense of scale here.
Because we have nothing to measure this against,
it could be from "5 centimeters to 5 kilometers" wide.
But luckily a Reddit user reported seeing
this 3D model located in the game.By exploiting the new replay functionality user
By exploiting the new "Replay" functionality
User: "Darksmudgey" was able to look under Tilted Towers
And found the very same model located there.
Not only does that seem to confirm that this is in fact
the meteor post-crash because the towers are included in the image
we now have ourselves a reliable
reference of scale to base the size of this thing off of.
Last video I was able to calculate
the size of each square in game
to be 330 meters long
Using the measurements of this grounded battle bus.
Applying this same scale to the model of the crashed meteor it measures out to be just over
"20" meters long, "12" meters high, and "4.8" meters wide.
Just to give you some context 20 meters long is
"20" meters long is about as long as a bowling ally
And "12" meters high is about as tall as a telephone pole.
Using the formula to calculate the volume of an ellipsoid
(shown above)
The volume is calculated out to be:
"603" cubic meters
Which we can now plug back into mass.
a 603 Million Cubic Centimeter Meter
x the 3.32 grams per cubic centimeter density of a magnesium based asteroid
gives us a rock with mass slightly over
"200,000 kilograms".
And when I say it like that "200,00 kilograms"
That sounds like a lot but when it comes to the size of space rocks it's actually not that heavy.
It's only about as heavy as a:
Jumbo Jet or just under as heavy as the statue of liberty.
Or Just under as heavy as the Statue of Liberty
But even still that is a 200 metric ton of space rock
heading straight for the most popular location in the entire game!
so now that we know the size and mass of the comet,
lets actually find out it's speed.
Since the meteor appears to be getting closer every day if  we find the distance to it on each day
If we find the distance to it on each day,
we can actually find the speed
By dividing the distance that the comet has-
traveled by the time. In astronomy scientists will use
In Astronomy,
Scientists will us a technique called:
"Parallax" where they use angles calculated
at various points around the globe to find the distance from you and the object
however this just isn't possible in Fortnite
because the angle doesn't change based on where your located on the map.
I'm sure the programmers never intended anyone give the angle of the comet a second thought.
But I dear viewers,
I AM THAT SECOND THOUGHT!
The other strategy here is to find the angular radius of the comet.
Then use trigonometry to find the distance
And unbelievably we can do this:
Using the games in-game compass
Similar to what we did in Mario Odyssey,
I found out the meteor began with an angular radius of 0.184°
and ten days later,
It had an angular radius of 0.8°
and yeah to eliminate all possible
variables these calculations were taken at the
exact same location on the map at the exact same time of day
So the only difference here is the size of the meteor.
Lastly to find the distance to that meteor we need to know the
width of that meteor as it's flying through space I mean sure
we just calculated the width of the meteor when it was in the ground,
but obviously this isn't the same size of the meteor when it's up
flying in the sky. A substantial portion of meteors just break
off as they enter the atmosphere in a process
called fragmentation. although the exact amount
of fragmentation depends on variables such as velocity
surface area and density of the atmosphere meteors generally
experience a fragmentation rate of
about 50-60% this means upon entire into
the atmosphere a meteor like this would lose 50-60% of it's mass
so if the mass of the meteor in the ground is 200 metric tonnes
then it would be expected to have a mass of about four
metric tonnes while it's travailing through space and with all the revers of all the
volume calculations we just did a similarly proportioned
ellipsoid prior to falling through the atmosphere would
average out to about 25 meters long
and with that number we have every variable that we need to calculate
the distance using a tangent function which you might remember
as the TOA of SOH CAH TOA tangen equals
opposite of adjacent we find that the
meteor is going to be 15.5 kilometers away
on day one and 3.5 kilometers away
on the tenth day. It took that meteor 10 days or
864,000 seconds to move 12,000 meters
calculating a velocity of .013
meters per second and if I had said it this way
.013 meters per second!
you would assume that, that meant it was really fast but I said it this
way which should lead you to believe that, that is extreamly
slow and it is. But to let you know
how slow this thing is to put it in perspective a
sloth 'one of the slowest animals on the planet'
has a top speed of
.08 meters per second that sloth
is almost 6 times faster
then the fortnight meteor. By the way
with the speed of .013 meters per second and a distance
of 3.5 kilometers away from the planet
the meteor is still should have hit around April 13th anyways
that's beside the point here's the big question.
with speeds that slow and a size as large as it is.
Is this meteor actually still dangerous?
Kinetic energy is calculated using
the formula 0.5xMASSxVELOCITY
with a mass of 200 tons and a speed of
0.013mps kinetic energy calculates
out to be 19 joules
19 joules is the energy of an average person
jumping. Believe it or not but the meteor
is simply travailing to slow to actually pose
any threat to the fortnight map and that's no exaggeration.
using an online calculator from Purdue University.
A 20 meter long meteor
with a density of 3.32 grams per cubic centimeter travaling at the speed of 0.013 meters per second
would create a crater of only 1.6 meters wide
and only 30 centimeters deep. that is the equivalent of
dropping a pickup truck from like a few dozen feet up.
I mean sure there might be a few cracks in the pavement
but no actual damage would take place. This meteor based
on all of it's scientifically confirmed stats would practicly
bounce off tilted towers the most
inconvenience that this thing would cause
would just be that there is now a giant space bolder in the middle of the battle field.
So all things being said what's going to happen
on 4/18? Maybe Epic Games is just messing with all the players
and none of the evidence means anything. Most likely
players are going to log into the game and find out the sight formerly known as tilted towers
became ground-zero for this massive meteor strike
and that'll be it. The rest of the map will just be 100% intact.
But if the meteor came according to the
science it would land in the middle of tilted towers
and literally not cause any damage what so ever.
Talk about a kick in the ass-orted
BUT HEY THAT'S JUST A THEORY
A GAME THEORY!
thanks for watching
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Man I've got to say between this and the Majora's Moon space rocks and games
are a lot less threatening then they make them out to be.
It says a lot when Mario Odyssey's moon is the most dangerous of the bunch.
Anyways if you want to catch up with any of our Fortnite
theories they are on the screen right now...click 'em,
if you dare!
Although, why wouldn't you click 'em?
They're actually a lot of fun.
