American gamers blow up 1:1 replica of Denmark in Minecraft

The Danish Geodata Agency recently recreated the entire country of Denmark in Minecraft at a 1:1 scale. It’s one of the biggest Minecraft creations ever, made up of about 4000 billion brick and 1 terabyte of data. It was ingeniously built using the agency’s 3D elevation model and was meant to be used as a teaching tool. Of course, players almost immediately began blowing it up. They weren’t supposed to be able to. The Danish Geodata Agency, disabled the ability to use dynamite, but neglected to disable the minecart with dynamite item. 

Last week, the Danish government put a 1:1 scale replica of its country online at Minecraft and invited players to politely explore the land of Lego and Carlsberg. Gamers being what they are, you can guess what happened next. “Several large Danish towns have been leveled to the ground and a lot of new things have been built all over the place,” Chris Hammeken, chief press officer at the Danish GeoData Agency, told state media outlet DR. “We don’t have a complete overview yet, but we’ll probably choose to reconstruct Copenhagen and the other cities.” The agency built the Minecraft model to show off its mapping data and it was intended for such wholesome uses as teaching local schoolchildren about town planning and encouraging design skills. The country data is also available as a 1TB download, and extra servers have had to be brought online because the download is so popular.