... which translates to 3,302,088,419 ounces. Since gold is selling at $1,127.34 per ounce as of this writing, according to our calculations (read: Google's) that means Scrooge has $3.7 trillion dollars. Or: enough to buy some fucking pants. Come on, man.

But, wait, there's more. Way more, in fact. LiveScience reached their number by assuming that the 127-foot vault is half full, but that's clearly not the case. As seen in the drawing above (among many others), Scrooge's gold pile is about 90 feet tall -- and, as djublonskopf at Observation Deck calculated, all of the gold in the world would only fill the vault up to 57 feet. That means Scrooge McDuck has more gold than exists on the planet. He has gold from alien worlds and is presumably holding back scientific progress because no one can use gold in transistors or computers and such.

Walt Disney
Which explains why most of Duckburg looks like a medieval village.

So, there you have it. The exact amount of money in Scrooge's vault is: too much.

Still, it's a little hard to picture the distances covered in the story, since all of it happens in some made-up land full of wacky creatures with outlandish accents (New Zealand). Luckily, the fantastical world of Middle Earth has been recorded in greater cartographical fidelity than most central African countries, allowing an enterprising Imgur user called mattsawizard to translate Frodo's journey into real-life terms. The initial trip between Frodo's home in Hobbiton and The Prancing Pony inn, for instance, was 120 miles -- the same as walking from Boston to Bridgeport, Connecticut (51 hours).

Mattisawizard
Boston also has a "Prancing Pony," but it's an S&M club for bronies.

While mattsawizard didn't explain his methodology, he clearly used the scale provided in Tolkien's map of Middle Earth (and a copy of MS Paint). According to his calculations, the total distance traveled by Frodo from Hobbiton to Mount Doom was 1,350 miles, which is about the same as walking from Los Angeles to Austin, Texas (444 hours).

Mattisawizard
And really, if you had to put Mount Doom somewhere, Texas seems the most appropriate.

Note, however, that mattsawizard didn't take into account all the backtracking and roundabout paths the characters had to take. In order to do that, you would have to be a nerd of truly colossal proportions ... like, you know, the ones at LotRProject.com. They went as far as to create an interactive day-by-day chart tracking Frodo's every movement for the entire duration of the story, including the times when he just sat on his ass all day.

LOTR Project
"Sam goes to the bathroom (83 hours)."

The grand total? 1,800 freaking miles (the same as Pittsburgh to Alberta, Canada), covered over the course of 185 days. Damn, Sam could kick through steel with the calves he must've developed after that hike.

To put those numbers in perspective, the average millennial is expected to sleep with eight partners in their lifetime, the average Gen Xer 10 partners, and the average baby boomer 11 partners. Although we expect those numbers to skyrocket the moment NASA makes first contact and then we all get our alien freak on, any number higher than 100 is pretty damn high for a woman born before the FDA approved the pill, let alone before FDR proposed the New Deal.

Step two is the tried and through method of branching out once you hit a target:

DataGenetics
Or, if you're in a hallway, running away from this lunatic babbling about Battleship.

Now that you've sunk a ship, visualize the ones still missing: Where could they possibly fit in the grid? Do these possible hiding spots overlap anywhere? If so, your chances of hitting something are way bigger in that area, so focus your firepower there.

DataGenetics
Your little sister won't know what hit her.

The final step is just adding it all together: the (odd/even) squares you don't need to hit, the length and possible positions of remaining ships, and the locations where said positions overlap. Using this method, your friends will be convinced you have psychic powers, and you'll begin to wonder why nerds haven't always fought wars.

Scrabble games can get highly competitive, especially when your opponent starts making up ridiculous words such as "irregardless" and double-especially when it turns out that abomination is actually in the dictionary. Ever wondered about the most possible points you can make in one turn? 200? 1,000? It can't be more than that, can it?

Way off, pal. Scrabulizer.com is a site that lets filthy cheate- ... er, players enter the current state of their game and be presented with all possible moves. One user, Arian Smit, set out to find the highest scoring Scrabble word possible, using downloaded word lists, the different dictionaries accepted by the game, and an enviable amount of free time. After some trial and error, he finally discovered the Contra Code of tile-based word games: You can get 2,044 points if you use DGQSZXI to make "sesquioxidizing" (the creation of a type of oxide, not the depraved sex act you're imagining) in the below configuration.

Scrabulizer
"'Overcompensated' is a very appropriate word for you, Doug."

"Jabberwocks," "Fritz," and "Highfaluting"? We've heard it's not a good idea to beat Yosemite Sam at Scrabble. He doesn't handle loss well.

Even after news reports from that era were unearthed (mentioning E.T. as one of many Atari games supposedly buried), most were still understandably skeptic of the veracity of this story. Then, a Canadian production company looking to make a documentary about the buried games decided to get their hands dirty. Literally. After securing funding from Microsoft, the crew started taking ground samples from the Alamogordo, New Mexico, landfill, using newspaper dates to determine where the pixelated turds might be buried.

Once they settled on a place, the crew knew they had one chance to get it right -- the city had only given them permission to make a single giant hole in the ground in the pursuit of video game history. They dug 20 feet down with cameras rolling until they found some old Atari equipment, but that didn't prove anything: Throwing your Atari in the trash was the third most popular hobby of 1983, just behind Safety Dancing and cocaine. Then, it began: They found a complete boxed copy of E.T. -- and then another, and another.

Fuel Entertainment

Fuel Entertainment
Surprisingly, those Starbursts still don't expire until 2019.

The team hit the mother lode, recovering hundreds of copies of E.T. and other games that ended up selling for somewhere between $37,000 and $108,000 (reports conflict) on EBay, while simultaneously solving the second greatest mystery in video game history. Now, all that's left is to assemble an elite team of experts to find out what the hell happened to Half-Life 3.

Jacopo is the author of License To Quill, a James Bond spy-thriller starring William Shakespeare and Guy Fawkes, which you should totally buy now.

Psst ... want to give us feedback on the super-secret beta launch of the upcoming Cracked spinoff site, Braindrop? Well, simply follow us behind this curtain. Or, you know, click here: Braindrop.

Yes, lots of pop culture mysteries have been answered by the truly dedicated. Like we know when Ice Cube's good day took place. And we know how much the bill was that New York sent to The Avengers. See those and more in 6 Mind-Blowing Pop Culture Questions Answered By Super Fans and 5 Insane Pop Culture Questions Answered By Super Fans.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out A Moment By Moment Breakdown Of The Worst Music Video Ever, and watch other videos you won't see on the site!

Also, follow us on Facebook, and let's all try to figure out how large The Labyrinth really is.

Did you know cats modeled their "meow" after the cries of human babies, just because they knew us humans care about that noise? Did you know dogs can read your mind (emotionally), and live in constant suspicion that you know where the good food is (you totally do)? In the next LIVE episode of the Cracked Podcast, host Jack O'Brien leads Cracked's team of pet-loving/fearing comedians through all the ways our dogs and cats are more powerful, creepy, and awesome than we ever could have imagined. Jack will be joined by Carmen Angelica, Dan O'Brien, Alex Schmidt, and Jake Weisman at the UCB Sunset Theatre on Wednesday, March 9, at 7 p.m. Purchase your tickets here!