I Analyzed Zootopia's Climate Wall. It's Absolute Hell.

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Zootopia's ecosystem isn't impossible.

[00:00:03]It's one that uses these visual monoliths of engineering and Zions beings that climate walls and just couldn't possibly work in our real world, right? Well, contrary to what you may think, Zootopia is an entirely possible city that would just aid fixes to be a functional utopia in all its insane glory. But if anything goes wrong, this place would become hell on Earth. This video is an investigation on the genius of these climate walls and districts where I figure out exactly how it would work and all the many problems that come with that. Let me explain.

[00:00:36]Now, to start this video, I want to lay out the biggest problems by each section or district. But first, we need to cover the overall problems of energy costs, which I'll do now. Energy-wise, the summertime will be way more expensive where the even cool areas are cool.

[00:00:49]While the Tundratown needs 35 gigawatts as it's frozen, well, heating the desert and rainforest would be around 23 gigawatts. Now, in wintertime, it's Sweltering, but it also gets way crazier where everything's warm with 38 gigawatts needed for heating versus just 16 gigawatts to keep the Tundratown nice and chill. So, across the entire city, Zootopia's moving around roughly 58 gigawatts of heat in the summer and a whole 74 in the winter. That is insane.

[00:01:15]It would require the power to have a whole country to just run the city. But the important thing to note here is this is not electricity. It's heat. And because the city would be creating all this heat from scratch, it would be using giant heat pumps that would move heat from somewhere else into the districts. It would actually be very efficient. So, when converting all that heat movement into real electricity use, the numbers drop by a lot. After heat pump efficiency, the climate system would actually only need about 12 gigawatts of electricity in summer and 19 gigawatts of electricity in winter.

[00:01:44]Still enormous, but no longer country level. But still, that amount of electricity is roughly the output of seven to eight nuclear reactors. Great.

[00:01:54]Okay, I'll make this nice and sweet. I'd love if you subscribed. It lets me do more videos like this and I specialize this since this video has way more of an intense editing job because the added special graphics you're seeing. So showing love whether it's commenting or subscribing with notifications on tells me you want more of this. Either way, back to the video. So going forward into a city of just ordinary beings of Tundratown, we did find a few issues in our plan of making this climate wall and overall just really possible. And really at first, you would think it should be pretty easy. You just have to keep it cool. Not anywhere near the task of being the other sister is warm. This should be simple, said no one ever. Our basic goal is even area about 10,400 acres or 42 square kilometers cool 24/7 year-round. Now we did have a base temperature without the climate wall and weather system. So let's use a Fahrenheit climate with a baseline of 39 Fahrenheit winter and a 68 Fahrenheit summer. We basically need to have Tundratown always below freezing even during the summer to keep things working. Now the movie does show giant snow cannons, cold air vents, and the climate wall which on the side blast cold air to keep everything at a good temp. It's basically like a giant freezer. Now there is a reason keeping things cool is easier than heat. At least at first, mainly because cold air is way more cooperative. See, when you cool air, it becomes dense and naturally sinks and pooling in lower areas. And Tundratown is built in a valley with the climate wall on one side and a mountain range on the other. This builds a basically giant bowl where the cold air is a resident, which means this sister doesn't need to constantly fight rising heat the way Sahara's dry air will. But we still have many problems being the heat letting in from above, warm air blowing in from the sides, and most importantly, humidity. See, our first problem is actually cooling the air volume. And we have some real comparisons. Indoor ski resorts like say Ski Dubai have to keep the place cool and use 2 to 3 megawatts of continuous power to keep an area way smaller than Tundratown cold. Now scaling things up to Tundratown, to keep things cool, we'd use hundreds of megawatts of continuous cooling. That does seem kind of possible in terms of a mega project with a lot of investment. Except there's a big difference between Tundratown and a resort. It's outside. Now, we have to deal with heat leaking from above. See, air currents heat downwards from warm atmospheres above. And well, because we're in a hole, the warm environment above us will leak air downwards.

[00:04:16]Thankfully, our Tundratown wall is about 120 m or 400 ft tall, which would make a massive column of cold air that can act as insulation against any heat. Still, even with that, we're adding another 35 megawatts to deal with heat loss. But that is nowhere near the real problem, being wind and humidity. See, wind is going to be a big problem for our artificial environment as it's not artificial. See, Tundratown has about 5 mi of disposable border where outside air could very much blow in. And well, every second that's happening, we're going to get wind pushing massive volumes of warm air from other areas into our district. Not good. Now, to deal with this problem, we're going to add another 830 megawatts to keep things cool. That's almost a whole gigawatt.

[00:05:00]And we still haven't dealt with the real issue, humidity. All air contains water vapors. And well, when you cool humid air, moisture will condense into water then freeze into ice. That process also requires massive amount of energy because it removes the latent heat of condensation and freezing. It's why air conditioners drip water. Now, I'm going to ask you. Imagine that for a whole city. Let's do some math. Worst-case scenario, we get humid air entering Tundratown each second in the summer with 8.35 tons of water condensing per second. In the winter, just 3.2 with an added 3.1 tons freezing as well. Now, the reason this all matters is that again, counteracting all this humidity and making sure we don't raise the temperature with it or melt ice, we'd be using 21.1 gigawatts in the summer and 8.36 in the winter. To put that in perspective, one nuclear reactor produces 1 gigawatt. Tundratown alone needs almost 30 year-round just to deal with the moisture. Not taking in mind the energy section I went over earlier or any other math we did in this section. Adding everything together, we would need 16 gigawatts in the winter and 35 in the summer. That is what a national power grid for a country like the US would need being used for one single district of a single city. Oh my god. But all of this is ignoring a massive issue we can't solve. See, while we can counter out the moisture by just putting more energy and power in our climate wall to keep things cold, the removed moisture doesn't just go somewhere. You're literally pulling tons of water per second out of the atmosphere, meaning Tundratown would constantly produce massive snowfall, huge ice build-up, drainage system problems, and literal daily blizzards.

[00:06:41]On theme, sure, but still not great. But we can actually fix all of this with a simple underground climate system as well as the wall. See, heating the outdoors with a wall is not very efficient, to be honest, from all the problems I've mentioned. And while at first it just raises the temperature down and it ends up wasting so much energy, but instead we can just be smart about it. This applies to all districts, but especially Tundratown. We just need a massive dehumidifier miles underground and specific systems in place to deal with snow and ice. Now, explaining a little to the other areas, we can fix similar problems they'll face, like in Sahara Square, with just underground heating pipes to warm the sands, which means the ground would be hot instead of just relying on the wall. This is used in the real world in some countries to melt ice on paths and heat air ducts used in winter. Now, in the rainforest, we just need hot water pools and steam vents on the ground, which would create a literal artificial water cycle. Our last solution we would use to help out the coldest district is going to be the greenhouse dome solution. See, instead of fighting against the outside atmosphere, we just need to build a dome around the district to keep it separated. This fixes so much stuff because the whole reason we're dealing with wind and outside air is because Zootopia is built outside. And with that, I would like to move forward into a hotter place, being Sahara Square. Let me explain. See, up to this point, it does kind of seem like the climate wall is, well, super possible. Very energy expensive, but still possible. This all changes though when trying to make Sahara Square work, because oh my god, is this place a mess. See, cooling air outdoors is already difficult, but that is nowhere near the difficulty in heating outside air. The main issue here is a contrary to cold air. Hot air when outdoors is not easily controlled, and the second you heat it, it will begin to rise. Now, why is this a problem? Well, the second we try to warm Sahara Square, the air is going to flow upwards and just leave. And as it leaves, colder air will rush in and replace it. This is not good. We can actually use a real-world comparison for this, being outdoor patio heaters. Have you ever thought about how they keep outdoor seating at restaurants hot? Well, they use heaters that output over 40 million joules per hour. This does actually work in their situation by making a tiny bubble of warmth, but even that, anytime a gust of wind comes in, it quickly gets cold. So, imagine that for Sahara Square, which is just a little bigger. And well, things look bleak. But if you remember in the last section, I proposed a solution being the greenhouse dome fix, where we just made the tundra an indoor resort, basically.

[00:09:09]And well, that is an entirely possible for Sahara Square, would help a lot.

[00:09:13]This would fix the wind issue, and would control the internal temperature way more. But it's not perfect, and we still need to get the internal heat of our chamber to be, well, very hot, which the domes that they can't do on their own.

[00:09:25]But I do have a few solutions. See, in the real world, there's a concept called the urban heat island effect, where cities trap heat due to concrete, asphalt, and glass that absorbs sunlight. This makes large cities sometimes have a race warmer than outside air of orders. So, we want to make Zootopia where really hot. We just need to optimize it and get way more sunlight. But during this, we'd add another 3.5 gigawatts for heating as a bare minimum. Great. Now, I do have a problem or more side effects. See, as the dome runs the districts is a single huge dome, then everything inside it, including multiple districts, would interact and things that are for one would not be good for others. For example, heating air that decides humidity by law, air at 100% humidity heated by say 60° Fahrenheit drops by 40°. This is a good thing for sure when applying to our desert until you realize the rainforest district to keep it being a rainforest would be pumping thousands of pounds of water vapor per second in the atmosphere. And if these districts are not fully divided, then Zootopia is going to suck all that wet air into it.

[00:10:27]And when you heat moist tropical air, it would condense into giant clouds right above our district. Now, thankfully, I think we just divide the ecosystems squarely with their separate domes or having the climate walls touch the dome and make a real wall. But it is important to note why that's very much needed. Now, the real issue after all of this is Zootopia is going to be a massive energy issue. With all this we're going to give it to stay warm, making sure it doesn't ruin everything else, it'll be a planet-scale weather project, but also in that probably create massive consequences like deadly storms or tornadoes right outside the walls. Thankfully, we have a solution.

[00:11:03]Being one that could at least fix this our energy problem using a natural method, the ocean. See, the ocean is a naturally powerful heat reservoir and a small slice of ocean currents could supply over 332 gigawatts of heat at all times. And Zootopia is on the coast, meaning we just have water store the heat and with ocean currents, new water will be brought in, meaning the city just has to move heat, not generate it. Is this the perfect plan? no, but it makes it so we no longer have to be using 100 different nuclear reactors to heat things and get them set using natural heat right next door. And with that, I think we can move on to the Rainforest District, which is equally difficult in its own way, but I think I can make it work. Let me explain.

[00:11:46]The Rainforest District is pretty simple in the movie. It's literally a big jungle with the rain and mist. It would be our dome which would just be a big zoo jungle. But even with that, Zion definitely this place is amazing with their lovely infrastructure compared to the other districts as it needs a very powerful literal weather system.

[00:12:04]Thankfully, the movie actually gives us a bunch of clues for this. We see sprinklers in the canopies constantly making rain with fog everywhere that we can assume is made by a huge industrial fog machine. And overall environment is by far the most lush and humid compared to our other districts. Now, to do this, this district needs to have a constant tropical condition of around 80° and 80% humidity with constant simulated rainfall. Now, if you remember earlier, I proposed adding a bunch of warm water pools that could simulate a water cycle creating humidity. But that is not going to stop how much energy it takes to keep things warm. We're looking at 2.5 gigawatts in summer and a whole 10.5 in the winter. And again, that's ignoring humidity. To evaporate enough water to keep things so wet would be using about 22.6 gigawatts in summer and a whole 43.9 in the winter. That means in the winter, this single district needs about 54 gigawatts just to stay warm and wet. For comparison, New York uses about 6 to 7, which means this one district needs the output of like eight New York cities.

[00:13:12]And that's ignoring the rest of our hellish math. See, this setup has enough energy to create a thunderstorm every six days. And that would be inside the dome, meaning all the havoc contained with our animals. See, this is because the The moist air that will be rising, then cooling, condensing, releasing heat, which creates updrafts, will then feed itself into a storm. And without our dome, this warm wet air will also be feeding into other areas and causing blizzards and constant rain. It will also be incredibly difficult to do anything in this district as rainforests are very destructive to any form of infrastructure. From metal corroding, wood rotting, concrete degrading, or mold, this place would constantly be battling against any effort in making it livable. Now, sanely, we have a solution, at least to our energy problem. Remember earlier when I mentioned nuclear power waste heat and how all the energy we're using would end up dumping a bunch of heat waste into rivers, oceans, and just outside. Well, we can use that. That waste heat could easily be perfect for heating the rainforest, meaning we can very much calm down the amount of power it would take to make the rainforest so hot. This is basically just us using the extra heat from the cooling systems as free heat for the hot systems. Add in geothermal heat as a backup behind this, and the rainforest is actually super possible as long as you ignore the horrifying storms inside it. And with that, we are done with our analysis of the climate walls, the districts, and Zootopia itself. And while horrifying and very dangerous, if you do a few fixes and use some science, we can make this place possible in all its horrifying glory. If you'd like more videos like this, click on this playlist right here for my over-analyzing science videos and nostalgic shows. Or this video which YouTube thinks you'll like.

[00:14:58]Either way, bye.