You are right; the correct number was 148.94 million km², which produces 47 corpses per km² of land.
> Though I'm not sure how you go from 14/km^2 to 25 meter separation?
√14 ≈ 4 and I somehow managed to think that 1000m ÷ 4 = 25m. In fact that calculation should have given 250m, and √47 ≈ 7, and 1000m ÷ 7 ≈ 140m. So we're talking about on the order of a city block between corpses.
> there were reports in the UK and the USA of mass graves, normal death procedures being overwhelmed.
Yeah, but it wasn't a question of corpses rotting in the streets despite all the survivors digging graves full-time; it was just a question of the usual number of gravediggers being unable to cope. If people had just dug graves themselves for their family members in their yards, the way they do for pets, it wouldn't have been a problem; but that was prohibited.
Anyway, I think people who worry about health risks from corpse pileups due to society collapsing are really worrying about the wrong thing. The corpses won't be piled up; at most, they'll be so far apart that you could walk for days without seeing one unless you're someplace especially flat or with an especially high density of corpses, and in realistic scenarios, they'll just be buried like normal, mostly over years or decades, not left out to rot en masse.
> Though I'm not sure how you go from 14/km^2 to 25 meter separation?
√14 ≈ 4 and I somehow managed to think that 1000m ÷ 4 = 25m. In fact that calculation should have given 250m, and √47 ≈ 7, and 1000m ÷ 7 ≈ 140m. So we're talking about on the order of a city block between corpses.
> there were reports in the UK and the USA of mass graves, normal death procedures being overwhelmed.
Yeah, but it wasn't a question of corpses rotting in the streets despite all the survivors digging graves full-time; it was just a question of the usual number of gravediggers being unable to cope. If people had just dug graves themselves for their family members in their yards, the way they do for pets, it wouldn't have been a problem; but that was prohibited.
Anyway, I think people who worry about health risks from corpse pileups due to society collapsing are really worrying about the wrong thing. The corpses won't be piled up; at most, they'll be so far apart that you could walk for days without seeing one unless you're someplace especially flat or with an especially high density of corpses, and in realistic scenarios, they'll just be buried like normal, mostly over years or decades, not left out to rot en masse.