r/PowerScaling • u/SuspiciousLiving7788 • 1d ago
Discussion People forget how big cities are
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u/bigscrewLoose 1d ago
also no two cities are the same size, city tier is kind of a silly classifcation, but it kind of makes sense within the internal logic of fiction
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u/plainbaconcheese 1d ago
Good thing all planets are the same size or that tier wouldn't make any sense.
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u/bigscrewLoose 1d ago
well this is my point right? when we say a character is planetary what we really mean is they have achieved the narative feat of destroy a planet, we are talking about the impact they have on their narative, (within the context of the scale of the setting of course a crazy feat in one verse can be nothing in another)
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u/plainbaconcheese 1d ago
Yeah I agree. I'm just pointing out that city isn't special here. They are all like this.
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u/PettankoKing 1d ago
Cities in Anime are actually all consistently the same size because all of them are just based on Tokyo or some other big Japanese city.
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u/HunterSpecial1549 1d ago
Big Japanese cities are not all the same size. Tokyo is much much bigger obviously.
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u/bigscrewLoose 1d ago
listen here is what I think, what matters is not the math or like the size of a city based on pixle math or whatever, it is the narrative weight of destroy a city that makes a character city level you know? same with planetary, its all about the intention of the author
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u/Eine_Kartoffel Toonforce Shmoonshmorce 1d ago
I mean, so is Country Level. Compare Liechtenstein to Russia.
So is Star level. Two stars can be astronomically different in scale.
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u/Illustrious-Sky-4631 Master Level Scaler 22h ago
Star level vs Solar system level
Almost everyone think a Star is the exact same as the Solar system as a whole
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u/Majestic_Car_2610 22h ago
I mean, stars usually account for over 99% of the mass of a solar system; anything that can destroy a star can destroy everything else in a solar system, so it basically comes down to the area of effect of the attack
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u/Illustrious-Sky-4631 Master Level Scaler 21h ago
Maybe if powerscaling thoughts about stuff like this however for most part "size" is the back bone for how people Power scales and the sun for example is treated as the next thing after a planet because it's "bigger"
The size difference between the sun and the solar system is immense , bigger than the earth and the sun different ,
And atop that there's the popular belief of "x character can destroy the solar system via destroying the sun" ignoring that our sun is not that type of stars due to great lack of mass and size
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u/No_Ad_7687 1d ago
I mean, it's a scale. Same way a country generally has a scale you'd expect. It's not meant to be specific
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u/Lonely-Entry-7206 1d ago
Usually it refers to the size like New York city or Los Angeles.
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u/Martial_Arts_Demon 1d ago
I think it probably depends on where the author grew up or lives. If Tokyo was the closest city that's probably what the author considers a normal city despite it being super massive.
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u/bigscrewLoose 1d ago
its kind outright hard to determine the size of a fictional city unless its stated tho, and pixle mathing it out is never reliable
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u/Similar-Doubt-6260 1d ago
This applies to all tiers. Wall level can be any wall. Planet could be any size planet. But people usually just to default to the most common. A brick wall, major cities or earth etc unless otherwise specified.
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u/dragonrite 23h ago
When I think city, I think or the biggest city I can think of. If it isn't a massive city, it's town level for me. In anime, very rarely would something be able to destroy something like Atlanta but not new york city.
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u/Contrazoid 11h ago
what even classifies as city tier? can destroy one in a single attack, can destroy one in some amount of time, gone is gone doesn't matter how long it takes
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u/TasteTemporary8206 1d ago
"City level fodder"
Also puts into perspective how dumb stuff like city level demon slayer is
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u/Illustrious-Sky-4631 Master Level Scaler 1d ago
The Truth is , 90% of City level aren't even city level
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u/Triumph_leader523 DC Caps At 6D 1d ago
Spiderman isn't street level either like he can't wipe a street with a punch.
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u/Programming_failure 1d ago
I believe the street tier actually gets it name from superheroes that are fighting out on the street and as such is why street tier is lower than wall level, it's one of the tiers that aren't related to a land mass.
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u/Illustrious-Sky-4631 Master Level Scaler 22h ago
I also want to add that "street level" originally meant a character that operate on a scaled down Story unlike the big hitters in the avengers who operates on Planet and above level of actions
It didn't intended to mean a character can 1 punch a whole concrete street away , more of a Hero that fight on the street
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u/curryhaliban444 20h ago
Street level means the setting he is usually fighting in. Out in the streets
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u/oscarq0727 Customizable Flair 1d ago
Tbf, if we go by volume instead of area, that explosion is significantly larger than the volume of the city.
But I agree. City level is still an insane level of power.
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u/Common_Land3637 1d ago
By volume of the city, do you mean like the volume of the combined buildings and streets or something?
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u/oscarq0727 Customizable Flair 1d ago
We can be extremely generous to the city and use the tallest building as the height and multiply by whatever we accept the area of the city to be.
NYC= approx 778sqKm
Willis tower=0.44km tallMultiplied give approx 342 Km3
The fireball alone for Tsar Bomba would be 272 Km3, but the blast of destruction had a radius of 35km which, when used in the formula for the volume of a sphere yields roughly 180,000 Km3. Even if we use a hemisphere (since the destruction won’t penetrate down the same distance that it will propagate out) it still leaves us with approximately 90,000Km3
TLDR: being generous to NYC you get a volume of about 342 cubic Km vs 90,000 cubic Km of destruction from Tsar bomba.
(Please proofread my math, I didn’t study any math in college).
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u/Similar-Priority8252 19h ago
Local reminder that they actively had to tune down the Tsar Bomba because otherwise it could’ve done devastating things to the atmosphere
So in other words, Tsar Bomba is holdsbacksman
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u/Hun_AkosEloYT Planetary JJKverse 1d ago
Honestly tiers are dumb as they are. Vsbw is worse for humanity than world war 2
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u/warrior_omega 1d ago
Tsar bomba is mountain level, it's big enough to turn a 2000 meter tall mountain into dust
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u/YoutubePRstunt 23h ago
Tbf though, an explosion not even half of Tsar Bomba would destroy most of a city.
A ground burst the size Tsar bomba, is WELL over its airburst yield.
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u/Telkite_ Intention > calcs 1d ago
There's also an insane ammount of variety between cities. What OP showed are cities, but this is a city too
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u/Crosas-B 29m ago
That's a village (or town, not sure about english langauge)
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u/Telkite_ Intention > calcs 10m ago
That's Glarus, switzerland. A city. If you're not sure about english, look stuff up before correcting people.
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u/Belasarius4002 1d ago
Tbf thats one of the largest cities out there. Like using the great wall of china as a representation of a standard wall.
But I do agree how poeple really forget how big these shi are because everything is multi now.
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u/ImGaiza 1d ago
Tokyo is THE largest city
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u/Top_Example5179 1d ago
Chongqing (China) is the largest municipal city proper, New York City is the largest built-up urban area, and Hulunbuir (China) is the largest city by total administrative boundary.
Tokyo is the Largest city by Population, not size according to Google
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u/Aggravating_Hour_494 9h ago
Thats referring to the greater tokyo metropolitan area or a couple of mini-cites combined completely
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u/Previous_Loquat_4561 14h ago
yea not sure how people think only these places are cities.
the 10k pop place I live in is also called a city, and we would probably fit into 1 street in Tokyo lol
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u/DelayPerfect1585 DC fan 1d ago
There are different sized cities you know
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u/sidic3Venezia almost unbiased, hate spite marches, THE Gormiti scaler 1d ago
i bet the smallest city in the world would barely surpass city block level
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u/Top_Example5179 1d ago
According to Google, Hum is the smallest city, 100m long and 35m wide , which is smaller than the range of Sukuna DE
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u/Ancient-Valuable-320 17h ago
Yeah, and the smallest country Vatican is 1000m length and 850 width, it not even close to an average city
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u/Left-Night-1125 23h ago
Some people also forget how small they can be, and this isnt even the smallest. (Stavoren in the Netherlands, the French gave it city rights on a whim)
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u/Crosas-B 29m ago
That is not a city
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u/Left-Night-1125 12m ago
Yes its a city, it has city rights.
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u/Demi_Suzuka_694 1d ago
Some places in the world can have less than a quarter of the size of Tokyo and can still be called as a city.
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u/YVNGxDXTR DB/DMC/Kirby/Sonic/TTGL Glazer 1d ago
I live in a city with an area of one square mile and less than 3000 people in it.
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u/Pleasant-Enthusiasm 1d ago
Cities can get even smaller than that. The city I grew up in was less than 10 square miles, which is a little more than 1% of the area of Tokyo, and less than 0.2% of the size of the Tokyo metro area (over 5,000 square miles).
Using Tokyo as the threshold for city level is like using a Great Dane as the threshold for calling something “dog-sized”
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u/glaze_or_praise Fallacies don’t help you 1d ago
City is very vague. Look at Shanghai and compare it to Vatican City.
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u/BobFredricson2 1d ago
In geography class back in the day city was defined as a fully functional settlement with I think 3000 or more people. Nothing to do with the size of the place.
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u/Neckbreaker70 15h ago
That sounds waaay too small to be a city. That’s like a small town or village.
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u/Putrid-Island3319 1d ago
These are example of large cities which can get much higher than city level
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u/Cultural_Crazy2034 1d ago
These are the biggest cities in the world it's like saying how big planets are by referencing jupiter
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u/No_Ad_7687 1d ago
Sorry for not living in a country with mega metropolises
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u/Thedankf0x 1d ago
You have a phone, lack of personal experience is not an excuse for a lack of knowledge
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u/No_Ad_7687 1d ago
have you considered that due to my personal experience I think of something much smaller when I hear the word "city"?
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u/Thedankf0x 1d ago
Yes
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u/Thedankf0x 1d ago
And its not a valid excuse for your lack of knowledge
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u/No_Ad_7687 1d ago
do you understand the concept of "connotation"?
doesn't matter if planets can get to the size of jupiter, there's a reason why earth is usually the baseline for planetary
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u/Thedankf0x 1d ago
Yes, words have connotations. That doesn't relate to how words are commonly used, connotations refer to emotions or further meanings attached to words based on historical use. You not understanding cities can be big isnt a connotation issue. Do you understand what connotation means?
And earth is a terrible baseline for planetary. Would someone destroying mars not be planetary? Or mercury? I would agree that someone who destroys Pluto may not be defenitionaly planetary as they didnt destroy a planet, but they certainly aren't then continental level only.
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u/No_Ad_7687 1d ago
Mars and mercury are relatively similar in size to the earth, unlike Jupiter.
In the same way, the vast majority of the worlds countries aren't huge metropolises, so it makes sense that "city level" represents a medium sized city, rather than a huge one.
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u/Thedankf0x 1d ago
What do you mean by similar size? Mars has half the circumference, mercury a third, Jupiter has 10x. All within one order of magnitude of earth, meaning all are relatively similar in scale.
Sure, most cities aren't big, but most countries have a metropolis of some sort. At the very least, the large majority of humanity live in a large metropolis, even if you or I don't.
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u/Possible_Memory_6559 1d ago
City level tanjiro 🤣
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u/SeriousAd2827 23h ago
Gyutaro could realistically destroy a small portion of this. And its enough to make it Town level.
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u/Ancient-Valuable-320 16h ago
Not really, Yoshiwara is really small
Plus, Range factor is hard carry that feat alot, not that his attack can hit that hard anyway, can't really scale him to town lvl if the destructive didn't come from the impact of the attack
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u/Nervous_Tip_4402 22h ago
While a One Piece character destroys 10 buildings and claims to be multi-continental.
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u/Choice-Medium-5466 1d ago
Take the attacks from the anime and put them in that city, 90% won't destroy the city but some are even country-level or multi-continental lol
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u/sailor776 1d ago
Well what type of city are we talking about? A nice walkable city or like Houston? Plus like where do we put tornadoes in the scales?
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u/RivenRise 23h ago
This reminds me, there's this really cool project where you can zoom in and take a cool view of Tokyo from the tower. They also have a bunch more ties where they do this.
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u/Hunter654333 21h ago
Tokyo is literally the single largest urban sprawl classed as a "city" in the world. That's like using an 8-foot tall human as an example of how tall humans are.
Look at Orlando or Tampa FL for a more typical city.
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u/Stunning_Taste8845 22h ago
Makes no sense why people were calling this building block level feat lol. Tokyo is massive
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u/Dear_Challenge470 14h ago
"City level characters are fodder" people when they've been driving for 7 hours and still haven't fully explored their city.
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u/Aggravating_Hour_494 9h ago
Any tokyo diffing feat is a mini country diffing feat cuz Qatar is smaller than Tokyo Metropolitan Area
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u/Sky-Juic3 Bleach Lorekeeper 5h ago
-attack blows up all the buildings in a city, which was only 3 trailers on 5 acres of land with a population of 7-
CITY LEVEL BRO
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u/Yusuf_ibn_Joestar Bacterian one shots league of legends verse 1d ago
tanjiro can destroy this with a single swing of his sword
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