Questions tagged [population]

For questions on population sizes, maximums and minimums, how they are affected by different events, etc.

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3 votes
2 answers
150 views

Indian Ocean continent - which humans get there first?

Trying to develop an ATL in which several 'lost' continents in the Indian Ocean - namely Kerguelen, Broken Ridge and the Mascarene Plateau (just east of Madagascar) - never end up being submerged and ...
3 votes
1 answer
66 views

What level of phenotypic change is plausible over 10-15,000 years?

I'm developing a story with 4 distinct group of humans who inhabit 4 geographically separated and ecologically distinct islands (Iceland to Greenland sized). These groups descend from a single diverse ...
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1 vote
2 answers
192 views

How much could a population of 15000 grow over the course of 50 years?

How much could a population of 13,000 grow in 50 years? They are just coming out of a 13-year war with many deaths and few births. They have no medicine or technology to extend life, many plentiful ...
16 votes
10 answers
6k views

Max tech level for society of 200,000

Given a remote island colonised by modern day (2023) explorers, with a total population of about 200,000 but cut off from the outside world for political reasons, what level of technology could they ...
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6 votes
3 answers
271 views

How many children could a human have in one pregnancy (with safety being no concern)?

There's a nation with extreme fertility and population problems. Someone suggested the government could induce certain candidates to have a great number of children in a single pregnancy... at the ...
3 votes
4 answers
267 views

What population would the Americas have if the natives were as advanced as Europeans?

If you check a list of the most densely populated nations, a lot of New World countries are near the bottom and almost no Western Hemisphere nation (excluding small islands) are near the top. The ...
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2 votes
3 answers
194 views

Starting population to reach 1 billion people in a post apocalyptic scenario

Let's assume a post apocalyptic scenario, specifically a world which's sentient population was critically reduced due to a series of calamities, such as a sudden climate change chain reaction caused ...
-2 votes
5 answers
135 views

How much could a population of 100 million rise in 30 years? [closed]

How high could a population of 100 million people rise in 30 years, living on a terraformed planet with more or less limitless resources and advanced life-prolonging nanotech?
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3 votes
2 answers
336 views

If the current population of humanity along with necessities could fit on a spaceship, how large would that ship need to be?

Here's the picture. Earth is beyond saving and is too polluted to be habitable anymore. My plan is to have this ship built on the moon, using materials from our asteroid belt. A bit of a problem is, I'...
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1 vote
0 answers
68 views

How would a secretive vestigial population grow alongside humans, given that they live different lifestyles? [closed]

This is a heavily revised version of a post I made earlier, along with some edits from my friend Enthalpy. This new post is strictly about population growth, and contains no extant references to third ...
12 votes
13 answers
4k views

A subtle war between the sexes

In this question, I detail a world with a third human sex, lilim, who have bat-like wings and taloned feet like a bird's. The TL;DR is that lilim give birth to equal numbers of men, women and lilim (...
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1 vote
0 answers
128 views

How would the UK be affected if 90% of the world’s population died from a virus? How long would it take before it would impact climate change? [closed]

The idea I'm currently working with would be the world overpopulated, things a bit further in the future in terms of the effects of climate change than now, being hit with a global virus that kills ...
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7 votes
3 answers
192 views

How would populations work out in a society with people of vastly different sizes?

Let's say we have a society with people (living creatures with human-like intelligence) of vastly different sizes, from mouse-sized to elephants. People have jobs like us humans do: some physically ...
14 votes
14 answers
5k views

Solutions for overpopulation for an immortal race

Imagine a city full of people that are immortal; they can't die by aging and normal weapons can't hurt or kill them. So the government needs to find ways to overcome its overpopulation issues. After a ...
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3 votes
3 answers
207 views

What's the largest population we could sustain indefinitely on a distant space station?

Imagine that humans put a space station in orbit around something further than 0.5 AU from Earth. So: not Earth, not the Moon, none of our Lagrange points -- none of the "easy" spots. The ...
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-2 votes
1 answer
136 views

Impact on genetic diversity with 6 person mating groups

Context I know enough about genetics to know I need to ask others. I'm writing an alien humanoid species that revers the number 6 as part of their culture and religion. Their marriage equivalent forms ...
6 votes
2 answers
122 views

Can the culture of 500 people last after 1000 years? [closed]

A cabal of necromantic nobles and their (human) servants and retinues fled west after their expulsion from the old empire. They landed in a new, mostly wild realm. Probably a fifth of the colonists ...
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3 votes
4 answers
337 views

What is the minimum population for a civilization to advance technologically, if given knowledge of math, physics, astronomy, etc

My civilization has global free energy, understands the physics of antigravity, etc. It was able to advance technologically through its own efforts. Six separate civilizations become a confederation ...
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6 votes
2 answers
355 views

Which areas of USA would have the most successful centers of growth after nuclear holocaust?

This is related to my previous question: How many survivors would grow on earth years after a worldwide nuclear holocaust? In an earth with roughly a billion modern day survivors, and 20 million ...
7 votes
2 answers
2k views

How long would it take a parasite that transmits via parent to child to spread through a population?

So here is the basic setup. The parasite lives in the cells of it hosts and can only spread via reproduction, and will spread 100% of the time to a child regardless if the infected was the mother or ...
3 votes
1 answer
110 views

What would the survival rate be for a group of people forced into an underground, bunker style community?

Suppose 1000 people were forced underground into a relatively well set up bunker style community. Assuming they have no official leadership or organization to begin with, they must rapidly learn their ...
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2 votes
3 answers
384 views

Only 35 random people from disappeared Earth population are alive at any one time, how long before "new" babies are born?

Based on: If everyone in the world disappeared except 35 random people, how long would it take for one of them to realize they're not alone? Everyone suddenly disappears from Earth except 35 ...
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11 votes
10 answers
3k views

How can a massive walled city be viable?

I'm working on a small story, and in it I'm wanting to include a city surrounded by multiple layers of walls. The walls themselves are colossal, but were created/held up by sorcery. I would go into ...
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1 vote
1 answer
170 views

Population recovery time after a fantasy nuclear winter

One of the major events of my setting is an all-out war between two factions of gods (and their human subjects) using basically the magical equivalent of nukes and nuclear technology. The world was ...
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1 vote
2 answers
160 views

With a Fertility Rate of 2.2, all else being held equal, what is the population doubling time?

I get confused with the math here, and wasn't able to find an easy fertility rate to pop. growth to pop. doubling time online. If anyone can walk me through the answer here, that would be very useful.
6 votes
3 answers
255 views

How fast would a colonizing population grow on virgin soil?

I have a story where the setup is that, ~600 years prior to the story's beginning, there was an apocalypse of a magical nature that rendered most of the world uninhabitable. A few survivors from ...
2 votes
5 answers
193 views

A nation is using its citizens as a distributed computing network to solve some kind of problem. What kind of problem is it trying to solve? [closed]

Long story short, the government of The People's Representative Democratic Federated Republic of Southeast Countryistan has its citizens fill out a couple of forms per day, each with some kind of ...
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1 vote
3 answers
139 views

Self inflicted extinction in a modern setting - Plausibility and Duration?

Suppose there exists a species of humans which are better physically, mentally and aesthetically(in a conventional way) by at least three standard deviations(any large margin will do) when compared to ...
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6 votes
5 answers
301 views

What Might the Highest Plausible Fertility Rate For A Wealthy Society Be?

The world's fertility rate has fallen to about 2.4, and in the next few years may reach replacement levels (2.1) outside of Sub-Saharan Africa (where it's still 4-5, though falling quickly). Even some ...
1 vote
1 answer
124 views

What is the largest population a single spaceship could sustain? [closed]

In this setting I'm brainstorming, a significant percentage of humans live not in planets or static habitats, but in massive ships that traverse the cosmos at ultrarelativistic speeds. As such, these ...
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-2 votes
1 answer
133 views

Rebuilding humanity from forty-ish people in the middle of an alien world within 400 years [closed]

Near the beginning of my fictional worlds history (that is, when things start getting bad)the small population of around 10,000 humans is mercilessly slaughtered by the recently formed population of ...
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2 votes
2 answers
272 views

How many adventurers?

So, On average, how often one could encounter an adventurer in a world the details of which are written below? The World Population Roughly 13 people per square kilometer overall, with up to 55 in ...
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4 votes
3 answers
1k views

How could my island-country mostly populated by massive humanoids subsist its inhabitants?

In my prospective dramedy science-fantasy children's videogame Salade de Fruits (which means naturally Fruit Salad), there is an island-country comprising a total of eight islands: The smallest has ...
3 votes
1 answer
173 views

What population size is reasonable for a moving, steam powered, predatory city?

For a DnD campaign, I'm designing a setting with steampunkish tech level, as well as magic used to explain tech accomplishments not possible with real world physics. Almost all settlements in this ...
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2 votes
7 answers
158 views

How to ensure magic-sensitive population remain low? [duplicate]

In my world, China earns its beginning to three major clans: the Huang, the Yan, and the Chi You. Huang and Yan are normal homo sapiens, but Chi You is a clan of sentient magical reptiles like dragons ...
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1 vote
1 answer
94 views

Naked mole-rat people [closed]

After dropping in childhood, the human death rate in adulthood rises exponentially, doubling every 8 years like clockwork until the number of survivors is so low that the statistics breaks down (...
2 votes
1 answer
185 views

What would it take to have a 100% redhead population?

Redheaded-ness is a recessive trait. Obviously a society could just kill every baby that comes out with a different hair color, but is there any passive way for a human ethnic group to be 100% ginger?
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2 votes
2 answers
311 views

How Many Generations for Elves to Match All Other Races in Population?

So Elves and their long lives are well-known to be a fantasy trope but I wanted to determine how long it would take for the Elves to achieve dominance not through magic or wisdom but sheer numbers. ...
3 votes
6 answers
460 views

Any given couple is either only capable of having sons or only capable of having daughters [closed]

Consider a world in which every human is divided into two groups: call them Group 1 and Group 2. There's a completely random 50/50 shot for everyone to end up in each one, and it's not genetic or ...
7 votes
12 answers
997 views

How many votes should a solar system sized AI get in a galactic democracy? [closed]

In a setting where there is a multispecies Galactic Democracy with Proportional Representation that has expanded with the rule of giving one vote to any individual, how should they deal with a Machine ...
2 votes
1 answer
133 views

Space station stable population

An isolated space station that has 18 lab grown babies every day. The average lifespan is 120 years. What is the total size of the population for the birth death rate ratio to be even? Im having a ...
9 votes
5 answers
2k views

How could a society of giants remain hidden?

How could a society of about 10 giants remain hidden from the world in this day and age? These giants are ~50 feet high, uneducated, and eat humans. They run very fast and are very strong. How could ...
3 votes
1 answer
289 views

What Point of Departure Would I Need to Turn The World's Largest Cities Into Kowloons?

In 2018 estimates by the United Nations, 81 cities around the world have been categorized as metropolitan areas with a minimum human population of five million. Tokyo stands out on top, with a ...
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7 votes
3 answers
291 views

How densely populated can a rural area be?

The state of Bihar, in India, has an estimated population density of 1,307 humans per square kilometer even though 89% of the population lives in rural areas. How much more people could inhabit a ...
  • 555
4 votes
4 answers
431 views

Can encouragement of same sex relationships be used as a form of population control?

In the setting, the available living area is relatively sparse and valuable, but the industrial revolution is booming, and the associated rapid population growth posing real overpopulation and ...
0 votes
1 answer
163 views

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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2 votes
5 answers
544 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 ...
10 votes
8 answers
2k views

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 ...
10 votes
19 answers
5k views

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 ...
6 votes
2 answers
269 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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