How Much Would Call of Duty Cost in Real Life?

Hey, Vsauce, I'm Jake and whether you like Call of Duty or not, the fact is, it's incredibly popular. The latest game in the series, Black Ops 2, has over 916 million hours played, which is a little more than 104,000 years. 83,000 people die every minute in the game which would mean that, in 6 days, there would be no one left in the world. In total, there are over 106 billion deaths in Black Ops 2, which is equivalent to 98% of humans who have ever existed. But, out of the 916 million hours of game play, what if just one was real? As in real people, real weapons, and real costs. Since parts of the game take place in the future with equipment that doesn't exist, we will stick to items that are used today in combat. Like the most heavily used assault rifle in the US Armed forces, the M4 Carbine, which costs $673.47 a piece, and the 5.56mm round it uses (M855) at $.26 a cartridge Then, the cost of basic training for a soldier which is around $50,000. Now, let's start small with the ammunition. The US Army used 1.5 billion rounds of small arms ammo for all of 2006. In Call of Duty, an average 88,000,000 shots are fired an hour, so you'd hit 1.5 billion before the end of the day. But, in terms of cost, those 88 million rounds would be $22,800,000. Their weight alone is about the same as the Eiffel Tower...on top of another Eiffel Tower. Then, let's say you get a killstreak and call in some cruise missiles. The Tomahawk Missile is one of the most commonly used, and the tactical version costs $1.45 million per shot- not to mention that you need something to launch it, like a $2 billion submarine, or a $4.5 billion destroyer. But, lets make it simple and use the 20,209 people playing Black Ops 2 on Steam right now as our Army sample size. How much would it cost to get them battle ready and equipped for a one-hour long fight? Well at $50,000 per soldier for training, plus around $17,400 to equip a soldier with a weapon, body armor and necessary gear- with those two factors alone, we are looking at at least $1,362,086,600 for one hour of war, which, compared to the $300 million the United States spends a day on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, is pretty incredible. Currently, in Black Ops 2 there have been over 1.9 trillion shots fired and, if they were all at the standard weight of one 5.56mm round, it would weigh about 362 billion kg, or 6% the weight of Earth. Now, how would we actually fund an hour of warfare that costs $1,362,000,000 dollars? If you take the 22.9 million copies of the game sold worldwide, with each unit at the retail price of $60, it would equal $1,374,000,000 which would be enough to pay for one hour of real life Call of Duty, and give you $14 million leftover to buy almost 10 Tactical Tomahawk missiles. But, when buying games like Call of Duty, are we actually giving money to gun manufacturers? My friend Mike Rugnetta on the PBS Idea Channel made a great video discussing just that. Be sure to check it out, and, as always, thanks for watching.