We've seen the buffest of them all…
But sometimes technique can go farther than brawn.
So let's talk about martial arts.
In games and media we've seen hundreds of takes on these defensive techniques.
From the antics of Jackie Chan to the out of control planet-busting power levels of
Dragon Ball Z, the art has taken on many forms.
In fact, the power possessed by some of these individuals is truly frightening.
None, perhaps, as imposing as the pink, pudgy, child-like monster that is Kirby.
What, you were expecting Majin Buu?
Kirby has shown time and time again his great resourcefulness and strength while defending
the denizens of Dreamland.
With his token copy ability to take on the skills and magic properties of his foes, he
is truly one formidable puff.
When I was younger I was simply obsessed with the Kirby universe.
I would replay the games over and over again with my brothers as it was certainly a treat
to do so.
It felt so magical, and I sorta felt like Kirby was the underdog of the Nintendo character
roster.
A lot of people simply judged the series for its child-like appeal, which I always found
pretty disheartening.
He's just a circular pink blob!
He's weak!
He has to steal in order to do anything!
The thing is, Kirby is way stronger than he lets on to be.
Throughout the games he can be seen breaking through rocks, punching metal clad knights,
and a whole lot of other noteworthy acts.
His powers are truly out of this world, but if there is one moment that I was truly blown
away by Kirby's power, it was in Kirby Super Star.
One of his many adventures in this game pits him in a contest of strength.
His foe?
A stack of innocent bricks.
Now you'd be forgiven, considering his bouncy nature, for thinking Kirby was a lightweight.
I mean, surely this tiny pink marshmallow can't pack THAT much of a punch, right?
You'd be quickly proven wrong in 'Megaton Punch' when, upon a perfect execution, Kirby not
only splits the bricks beneath his feet but the very planet of Popstar itself…
Which is absolutely incredible.
To sunder a world, just how much power does our pint sized hero possess?
Is it even possible to split a planet in two like that?
We're gonna need to put our hardcore thinking caps on for this one, so buckle up folks.
First and foremost, let's look at what we see in game.
A perfect execution of the Megaton Punch mini game splits the planet in two and gives us
a number of 201 MT.
Now MT is a unit of measurement which stands for Megatons.
Megatons are essentially a measurement of energy that is comparable to one thousand
kilograms of TNT.
If for some reason you're unfamiliar with TNT, it's a chemical compound that is typically
used in construction, mining, and the military.
According to wikipedia and conversion calculators, the amount of energy released from 1000 kilograms
of TNT is 4.184 gigajoules - with a gigajoule being 10 to the 9th power in Joules.
Going down the rabbit hole even further, a Watt is one joule of energy per second.
To help visualize this, the lightbulbs in your house may have a range of watts written
on them.
A 65 watt light bulb means it consumes 65 watts in a time span of an hour: So 3600 seconds
in an hour, at 65 watts per hour, would mean you'd have 234,000 joules of energy being
consumed from that light in an hour of time.
So if we divide a Megaton by this amount of joules, that means you'd need 17,880.32
light bulbs running for an hour straight to equal this amount of energy.
But a bomb's impact energy is released in a timespan that's less than a second…
So think about condensing all that down into a single moment.
A single moment where Kirby strikes the ground.
But even then, we're only talking about one megaton still.
Kirby's punch clocked in 201 MT's total - or two hundred and one times what we just
calculated.
To put things into perspective, the biggest bomb mankind has ever made was the Tsar Bomba
- and that was only comparable to 50 megatons of TNT.
I use the word "only" very loosely here, because that bomb was hella big, with the
initial burst being 8 kilometers in diameter.
The mushroom cloud reached heights of 95 km and its base expanded to 40 km wide according
to an online publication by Russian Today International.
That fire ball would have looked like Frieza destroying the planet, but in the grand scale
of the size of our world, it was still quite small.
With a force of four times that amount focused in one area, we essentially have what Kirby
and friends were capable of punching.
But even with an impact of 201 MT, the planet would surely not crack in two.
According to recent discoveries showcased by BBC, it is claimed that Asteroids have
delivered forces upon earth equal to several billion nuclear bombs going off at once.
This of course wiped out the atmosphere, and changed the entire world…
But it didn't split our planet.
Some people may argue that Popstar is smaller than Earth, and that this is why this force
may have done this…
But I disagree.
While most people unfamiliar with the series probably think Super Smash Bros' sizes are
accurate, they are extremely off.
Kirby, and majority of the characters associated with him, are less than a foot tall.
Kirby is only eight inches to be precise.
In Kirby 64 we can see a glimpse of what may be a post-apocalyptic Earth in the form of
Shiver Star.
Shiver Star literally looks like a frozen earth…
I mean, those are the same continents and everything.
If we cycle back to Popstar, they appear to be comparable in size.
So that means if Popstar was split in two… the reading of 201 megatons isn't correct
at all.
Even if Popstar was flat, it simply wouldn't be enough force.
But all of this is an issue in itself.
The thing about Kirby's punch is that it behaves incorrectly.
A focused punch of that magnitude on the ground, assuming one's fist wouldn't get obliterated
or incinerated by the output, wouldn't just travel directly in a straight line until it
reached the other side of the planet.
It wouldn't stick to one direction like that.
The impact would reach out in all directions, and this entire arena we are standing in would
be completely destroyed.
Everyone nearby would be dead, this stadium would seemingly vanish, and the planet wouldn't
be split in two.
We would be left with a hefty crater though!
And if you squint really hard you can probably see Yamcha at the bottom.
Now this is me just being super nitpicky, but since we're already overthinking game
stuff I'm just gonna toss it out there.
This hairline crack we see on Popstar should technically be tens of miles wide if it is
visible from space.
So even if for some reason this planet was capable of cracking like a poreceline vase,
that would still mean that everything in this arena district would have collapsed into this
fault line or was launched miles away.
Kirby and his friends wouldn't be able to split the planet in two even if they had the
power to do so, because the strike itself wouldn't split the ground, but rather pulverize
it.
The impact, if scaled accordingly to the crack, would kick up so much debris into the atmosphere
that Popstar would probably end up looking like Shiverstar pretty soon.
And speaking of Shiverstar…
Actually, we're going to have to wait for another video for that one.
All in all - Kirby's punch doesn't add up, and if it did, there would be no more
Dreamland to save.
Plus gravity would probably pull the planet back together again if the force wasn't
enough to scatter the two halves.
One Punch Man better watch out though, because he's got some competition.
But now that I've dumped that on all of you, I'd of course love to hear your thoughts.
How powerful do you think Kirby really is?
Buff enough to crush your scouter?
Buff enough to handle this?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
And with that…
Thanks for tuning in for this sucker punch of a video!
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I appreciate the support, and I have lots of cool stuff coming your way.
Anyways, thanks for watching guys and gals, and until my next video - cheers!
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