The answers often seem beyond our grasp, but a recent viral video attempts to solve one such puzzle. How long would it take everyone on the planet to fill the Grand Canyon with pee?
Probably not a burning question — if it is, please consult a urologist — but certainly an odd one. The video was tweeted by the account Zack D. Films, which appears to delight its 215,000 followers with possibly AI-animated takes on a variety of odd subjects. Other recent videos include "Could Bomb Blow Up A Hurricane?" and "A Mother Fights A Mountain Lion." The Grand Canyon pee video has 54,000 likes and viewed 19 million times.
Filling The Grand Canyon With Pee 😳 pic.twitter.com/qa6uszOBq1
— Zack D. Films (@zackdfilms1) March 12, 2025
"If everyone on Earth peed into the Grand Canyon, you might think it would fill up in less than a day," the video begins as animated men and women — the latter squatting but capable of impressive aim — uncork into our country's greatest natural wonder. You may not have been thinking about this subject at all, but the video wants you to know you'd also be wrong!
The Grand Canyon can hold about 1.2 quadrillion gallons of liquid — that's 1,200,000,000,000,000 gallons — while the average person pees about half a gallon a day, the video continues. What follows is simple math: 8 billion people times half a gallon equals four billion gallons of urine.
"At that rate, it would take over 800,000 years of constant peeing to fill it up," the video concludes.
Hold on a minute. We at Phoenix New Times hold ourselves to the highest editorial standards, and it is our mission to not let even the best of Grand Canyon pee videos go un-fact-checked.
The Grand Canyon isn't a bowl; water flows through it at between 12,000 and 15,000 cubic feet per second. During a flood, that flow can increase to 300,000 cubic feet per second. "Imagine 300,000 basketballs, each about the size of a cubic foot, barreling past you each second!" the Grand Canyon's website says. At this point, we'd love to imagine that instead.
Then there's erosion. According to National Geographic, geologists estimate that erosion deepens the Grand Canyon by one foot every 200 years. Over 800,000 years, that's 4,000 feet deeper. How would a constant flood of pee affect that process? Could the world's urinators keep up with the rate of erosion and the flow of liquid through the canyon? We seem to have poked some holes in this very serious premise!
Seems like the collective bladders of humanity might need more than 800,000 years to get the job done. But never fear: When it comes to the mission of pissing all over the Grand Canyon, Donald Trump is working hard to speed things up.
