Questions tagged [population]
For questions on population sizes, maximums and minimums, how they are affected by different events, etc.
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How long would it take the internet to shut down if everyone else suddenly disappeared? [duplicate]
Let's say you are browsing the internet, and the entire population of Earth instantly vanishes from existence. How long would it take before a link that you try to open fails?
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5answers
480 views
What percentage of NPCs does a god need in order to remain benevolent?
A god (G) of an Earth-like world is benevolent. At the same time G allows free will. The problem is of course that some people will choose to harm others. This presents the god with a problem; how ...
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8answers
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How long will it take for the off-World population to exceed Earth's population?
As I type these words in March 2021, there are numerous private companies developing engineering solutions for reliable, high-capacity and relatively cheap access to space. At this point in time, it ...
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0answers
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How many people lived in a medium sized european villiage around the year 800? [migrated]
My question is, how many people lived in a medium sized european villiage(like germany) in the year 800. And how many people would have walked on the streets in a daily routine?
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19answers
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How Do I Keep the Population of an Ecumenopolis Reasonable?
In the galaxy I'm worldbuilding for my science-fantasy series, by far the most important planet in the galaxy is an ecumenopolis called Ishga. What I had in mind for this planet is something ...
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2answers
223 views
Realistic Postwar Population Explosion
Okay, let's say that we have a starting population of 7.7 billion, and a brutal, month-long war wipes out 1.3 billion people. 1% of Earth is rendered uninhabitable by the war. This would put carrying ...
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4answers
147 views
How would having many small towns vs a few big cities affect a countries society and economy?
Kind of a theoretical question, but if a small country in a late medieval-ish era sought to discourage large, crowded, dirty, and poor cities by encouraging more towns of a smaller size, how much ...
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1answer
136 views
How would I calculate population growth over 300 years with little advancement after an extinction event?
HEAVY EDIT after a few hours sleep and some coffee. Retracting my own answer and adding it to the questioon as it doesn't actually solve my problem and gave me more questions. My logic last night was ...
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1answer
144 views
How many children can a society of 250-300 people produce in a year?
Basically, my world's societies (They're tiny-sized for reasons too complicated to explain in a simple post) are forced to provide about 1 human sacrifice every month (Because reasons) and to fight ...
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5answers
452 views
Could the world function as “normal” if the rich, famous, and a certain percentage of each country left the planet? [closed]
My story is about a radio intern who is left in charge of the station after a few ships carrying a chunk of the Earth's population leave while claiming that the ships will be sent back for the rest of ...
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5answers
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Is a utopia a necessarily aged society?
Following the issues raised in the question How to limit population growth in a utopia? I'd like to ask a related question. In a stable utopia, would the population be old-aged, compared to less-than-...
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6answers
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How big can a town get before everyone stops knowing everyone else?
In small towns, people often say that everyone knows everyone. While probably not literally true (for all but the smallest towns), the rate of interaction between members of the town is still high ...
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2answers
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How many people would a 1500 ish colony need [closed]
How many people would a colony with around 15th century technology (i.e. Bows, crossbows melee weapons mostly, a few guns and cannons) need to survive? A few things to mention would be that charms, ...
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4answers
2k views
Maximize living descendants of a cult leader with zero morals
A young man receives a message from "God", and has been told to procreate as fast as possible in order that his descendants can outnumber all the heathens (everyone who isn't his descendants)...
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3answers
260 views
What would determine the rate that a hereditary condition reveals itself after years of dormancy?
Long ago, an Eldritch deity was summoned to the city of Innsmouth within a ritual circle, where it was killed and consumed by the population. Devouring the flesh of the deity increased the mana supply ...
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4answers
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Population Size of a Colony With a Large Gender Disparity
This is my first post on this site, so please bear with me.
I am working on a series of stories about an interstellar colony with a large gender disparity. Namely the initial population was made up of ...
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3answers
391 views
How to calculate a village's population size
I have the two largest towns of this smallish Kingdom's populations, but the first place the protags of my story are going to encounter is going to be village or hamlet sized. Most of the resources I ...
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1answer
134 views
Which professions/backgrounds can make better slaves for an improved alien society in case of a selective termination? [closed]
Let's say that an advanced alien society somehow annexed or conquered earth for its natural resources. Then they discovered that these "human"s consume so much resources and they need to be ...
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0answers
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How much hunting land and/or vassalized livestock herders would a dragon need to sustain itself given any possible caloric requirements? [closed]
Writing about a setting with a nation of intelligent dragons has got me thinking about the limits of greater draconic society. I found the discussion here very helpful, but I want to expand on it. ...
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1answer
105 views
What jobs would be necessary on a colony world with no access to any other civilized planet? (Too far away/no FTL travel)
I need to know what jobs/roles a completely self sufficient colony world would need to get started and continue to function.
The colony would be made up of 200k-300k colonists. They would be organized ...
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3answers
164 views
How quickly can an interstellar human population grow after 200 years post-Apocalypse?
In relation to my other questions, the earth gets destroyed in 2165 and the humans that would have survived go to a new planet.
Now, context is that the humans have been into interstellar travel for ...
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6answers
502 views
How large could a population of supernatural beings be and still be plausibly hidden?
I am trying to figure out how large the population of supernatural beings can be in a stereotypical urban fantasy setting before their numbers stretch the suspension of disbelief. I.e., your standard ...
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5answers
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How many people within a given population could reasonably be “noble” without inbreeding becoming an issue?
I have searched around the site and seen several population-related questions, but not one that is getting at what I'm specifically wondering (or that is at least explaining it in a way that my ...
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2answers
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How can an immortal emperor's descendants affect the rate of population growth?
In the ancient nation of R'lyeth, a carpenter named Yeshuah Targeryean walked into a desert to prepare for his ministry. During this time, he was visited by a tentacled monstrosity who promised him ...
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4answers
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How would dozens of humanoid species affect early migrations?
In our world, humans evolved and spread to pretty much every place in the world they could reach. Would that still be the case if there were, say, a dozen different humanoid species? Would they all ...
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3answers
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What would the population and financial requirements be to create a self-sustaining country based on UBI that could be apart of the global economy [closed]
If a mega rich individual wanted to test the validity of UBI (Universal Basic Income) in the most efficient way possible and how it integrates into a global modern economy, what would the population ...
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2answers
120 views
What conditions would allow for a medieval England type population to have only red or blond hair? [closed]
Only fair haired, with no occurrences of black or brown hair. I am seeking a reason that this type of genetic occurrence is plausible?
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1answer
173 views
Is it at all possible to have a populous, formerly colonial nation in the Indian Ocean?
The temperate latitudes of the Indian Ocean and adjacent regions are essentially empty- only the extreme Southwest of Australia and extreme South of Africa dip into the temperate belt.
What if there ...
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1answer
240 views
What would be the an avarage and/or realistic population density be for an medieval based city?
I'm currently building a world for a medieval based D&D campaign (i know super original) and I'm trying to make my cities as realistic as i can. Right now I'm planning on making a city in the ...
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3answers
160 views
what percentage of the world’s population is religious? [closed]
I recall asking a question that applies to Hell, but I have since realized that said story idea didn’t make a lot of sense.
I have been thinking and thinking and thinking, and I think I’ve finally ...
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3answers
225 views
How long could a city that is completely cut off sustain itself? [duplicate]
I have a city, and let's say this city gets cut off, Berlin '45 style. Nothing in, nothing out. Classic siege. I want to be more specific than that though: Suburbs won't be in it, it will be all the ...
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5answers
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What is the maximum population density in a settled land where farming and homesteading is impossible?
Let’s say that early middle ages humans discovered and expanded into a newly discovered land. Those humans made a concentrated effort to populate this new territory; they shipped several ships of ...
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1answer
135 views
What would the job market look like if half the population suddenly disappeared? [closed]
Half of all humans on planet earth one day suddenly disappear, leaving no trace. My question is, how would this affect the job market?
First I assume there would be a lot of grieving over lost loved ...
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2answers
287 views
Would the human population increase without ''natural sexual discouragement''?
I read a theory once which stated that the natural pain, sickness and general discomfort that humans can experience during sex, pregnancy, and childbirth help control the human population by ...
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2answers
173 views
How Large could this Optimized Preindustrial Population Get?
There are a lot of questions on this site about historical population levels and densities, and they have good answers about taking into how hard it was to survive in the past, and how inefficient ...
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4answers
199 views
Giving a Will/Inheritance to a goat in a medieval setting? [closed]
A lord of a manor is dying and plans to leave his manor and fortune to a goat, who is a demon in disguise. I'm wondering how can I make this idea feasible. Being a demon, the goat could influence the ...
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4answers
317 views
How long would it take to kill an army of 100k
The time period is similar to the crusade time instead of asia there is an entirely different island continent. The people on it are not homosapiens but some different earlier branch. they are though ...
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13answers
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Why would a country with high population suffer from low manpower?
This country has very low mortality rates and basic medicine, it is also very well-connected with a strong government and homogeneous culture and people. The country is self-providing of all resources....
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2answers
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200 commoners of varying gender/age from 1750 Europe are marooned in a strange land. What does population growth look like?
200 inadvertent settlers fall through a portal, and the portal closes. These 200 people were possibly the population of a small hamlet, transported against their will. They find themselves in a land ...
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5answers
438 views
How many people can live on planet Earth?
How many people can live comfortably on planet Earth, assuming that humanity reaches Kardashev scale Type I level?
This implies:
Energy is cheap, and available in an almost unlimited quantity, ...
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4answers
269 views
In a population of 30 million, how many people would a 3,000-year-old know?
In my universe, everyone is a few thousand years old (ranging from about 1,500 to 4,000 years) and the population is capped at around 30 million people. People live pretty spread out across a planet ...
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6answers
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Why might a vampiric race have low birthrates?
This pure-blood vampiric race is not immortal, but their lifespans are about five times that of mortals. This race has lived in a vast city beneath a small mountain range for thousands of years (the ...
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4answers
276 views
Can all citizens/residents of town/city be wealthy? [closed]
Was just reading a bedtime story to the kids where there was an isolated small town and "everyone was wealthy and happy" and that got me thinking, can it actually be true?
If everyone is "wealthy", ...
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2answers
130 views
How would an AI divide its physical sphere of inflence into a “grid” of sectors?
So, my colony mothership crawls along through sub-space at a "slow" ftl as it sends out faster probes ahead of it. Once it has located a cluster (meaning an acceptably dense grouping, not necessarily ...
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2answers
300 views
How to calculate medieval urbanisation
Pretty simple question, or I think so, anyway. I want to know how to determine a realistic ratio of people in my fantasy medieval province living in supercities, cities, towns, villages and farming ...
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2answers
159 views
How quickly do prehistoric populations grow?
I am working on a species that ressembles humans beings and that, although slightly engineered in the sense that the evolutionary leaps are aided by genetic modification, they are left to go through ...
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1answer
306 views
how can the city of Carthage sustain a healthy population growth?
The Carthaginian Empire was one of the greatest empires in history. After crushing the silly Roman savages in the Punic Wars, they went on to establish territory and conquer the western world. The ...
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1answer
164 views
Help with population figures for colonization game
I am working on a space game that allows players to participate in the human colonization of a distant star cluster. I could use some help determining what sort of numbers I should have aboard the ...
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3answers
194 views
How many human inhabitants could Earth host in a far future? [closed]
Assuming a technologically advanced civilization that has grown sustainably from the resources of its own planet (and maybe "a few" additional resources from its own solar system), what would be the ...
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2answers
656 views
Nomad tribe population
There lives in a desert a large nomad culture, composed of many tribes who wander about herding camels, goats and sheep, trading and offering services to cities and towns, and occasionally raiding ...
