The brain accounts for roughly 20 percent of all energy used, despite adding up to only about 2 percent of total body mass. And the actual caloric cost might be even higher. Given that the humans locked inside the Matrix are essentially always at rest, living their lives in a continual dream state, a person of that weight would burn approximately 1,350 calories per day just lying in their pod. There are a lot of factors at play, including body weight and metabolism, but let's try anyway.Ī 185-pound person burns an average of 56 calories per hour, at rest. But looks can be deceiving (somebody tell Morpheus), and even when a body is at rest, there is a whole lot going on.Ĭaloric expenditure is a tricky calculation. There isn't a lot of visible work being completed. In the film, humans are mostly inert, living out their lives in their heads. Whatever energy is put into a system (in this case a meaty flesh suit) can only be converted, either into work or heat. The first law of thermodynamics states, in simple terms, that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Could human bodies, kept inert in creepy cyberpunk containers, act as a suitable power source? Let's take a look at just how well a human body could act as a power supply and see how far this rabbit hole goes. "And then I saw the fields with my own eyes." Yeah, well, seeing is believing, Morpheus. "For the longest time, I wouldn't believe," Morpheus says. The Animatrix confirms this point, mentioning a "readily available power supply, the bioelectric thermal and kinetic energy of the human body." The clear message here, accompanied by images of endless power plants, is humans have been enslaved as a power source for our synthetic masters. But the mention of fusion is almost a throwaway. To be fair, he does mention this harvesting of human energy is combined "with a form of fusion" to provide the machines with all the energy the would ever need. "The human body generates more bioelectricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTUs of body heat," he says. Morpheus explains the terrible solution the machines resorted to in order to survive. The world he knows, the one where he has a job and acquaintances, is little more than a vast simulation meant to keep his mind occupied while his body cranks out juice for an army of robots and computer programs.Īs a result of a global war, centuries before Neo was born, the sky was blackened and the sun blocked out in an attempt to starve the machines bent on human domination. Instead, he is a battery, an energy source for the vast machine civilization ruling the world. Leaving the world he'd known behind, Neo discovers he is not really a human being living in the early 21st century.
It's been 20 years since the Wachowskis introduced us to the world of The Matrix, 20 years since we watched Neo take the red pill and follow the white rabbit beyond the digital frontier into a world of superpowers, sentient machines, and existential crisis.
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