For the price of the Iraq War, we could've helped sexually active Alaska teens by building a wall of condoms along the Alaska-Canada border high enough to reach the the ozone layer.
The Alaska-Canada border is 2477 km. Using the online ruler shows that a LifeStyles lubricated condom is 5.5 cm long. This means that it would take 45 million condoms to stretch along the entire border.
While ozone is somewhat diffuse in the earth's atmosphere, the ozone layer is formed by greater concentrations of ozone in the stratosphere from 20 and 40 km above the earth's surface. It would thus take about 363,636 condoms to reach the ozone layer. Building a wall this high along the Alaska-Canada border would require 16.4 trillion condoms. Purchased in cases of 1000 from ripnroll at $159, this many condoms would cost $2.6 trillion, which is less than Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes' estimate of $3 trillion for the cost of the Iraq War.
