Questions tagged [population]
For questions on population sizes, maximums and minimums, how they are affected by different events, etc.
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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 ...
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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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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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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 ...
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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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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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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 ...
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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 ...
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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 ...
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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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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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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 ...
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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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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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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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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 ...
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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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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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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 (...
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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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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.
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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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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 ...
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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 ...
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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