What Would The Destruction In 'The Avengers' Have Really Cost?

Dear Lord. Twelve figures would buy a lot of brooms.

So it's more than likely that nobody left "The Avengers" this past week wondering, " And just who the Hell is going to tidy up all that mess?!" Still, just in case, someone actually sat down and worked out an estimate.

Nobody ever said us geeks were always great time-managers.

The real-life damage that Earth's Mightiest Heroes and their foes would have caused Manhattan would have run up a roughly $160-billion clean-up tab, The Hollywood Reporter claims. Kinetic Analysis Corp. crunched the numbers after viewing the film and guessed that physical damage to the city would've been worth $60-70 billion alone. The actual costs associated with cleaning up the city would've amounted to an estimated $90 billion. Finally, payouts to families of individuals who lost their lives would've run up the balance an additional approximate $10 billion to the suggested $160 billion toll.

"The extensive damage to Grand Central Terminal could prove highly disruptive, depending on the subsurface damage to the subway system," the KAC assessment noted. "Although such damage is unlikely, as the 9/11 events showed, collapsing buildings can cause significant damage to subsurface infrastructure such as gas, communications and electrical systems. Detailed site surveys will be required to assess the state of the subterranean infrastructure."

Have a healthy dose of perspective, compliments of KAC: cleaning up the Sept. 11 attacks cost around $83 billion. Hurricane Katrina clean-up cost roughly $90 billion. The closest reference to the destruction caused and the bill run up? The 2011 Japanese tsunami - about $122 billion.

But wait! There's a catch.

SHIELD is a government body, and would therefore likely have sovereign-immunity liability protection, KAC predicts. KAC also notes just to be smart-asses - very, very literal smart-asses - that main villain Loki hailing from the mythical Norse realm of Asgard technically protects under most insurance policies any damage caused when Loki keeping it real goes wrong.

After all, it would all technically be one big "act of God."

"Compared to the aliens in 'Independence Day', for example, these guys were amateurs," KAC's Chuck Watson said.