Population sizes

[lurker]

Just some facts, observations and possibilities for those who try to use Earth as an example for imagining things in the future.

Digit 9 - Billions - 1,000,000,000+ - Present day Earth

- Present day China has a population of 1.3 billion all on their own.
- China has a land area of about 9.6 million square kilometers.
- China is only the world's third largest country, ranking after Russia and Canada.
- China makes up 6.5 percent of earth's land mass.
- With their high population, China still exports more than they import.
- China has lower tech than many of it's trade partners
- China’s food export reached 6.591 million tons (2007) and food exports are increasing rapidly
- China exports more food and live animals than it imports (2003 - sorry, I couldn't find more recent data)

- The world population has doubled in the last 50 years.
- The world population has increased more than 10x in 500 years.

- In the US, individual farm sizes are growing but the total # of farms is decreasing and the total amount of farm acreage is decreasing.

Traveller takes place how many years into the future? There will be advances in producing food. Necessity is also the mother of invention. High population and low food resources could result in developing farms that float on the ocean and they may even have propulsion to locate favorable rain and weather or avoid storms and clouds. There is also underwater farming, vertical farming, and how about orbital farming. If land mass is needed for food production for the growing population, the people can go vertical, under or on top of water, underground and orbital.

Oh, by the way, one of the reasons that certain areas of the world have unfed people is because the local companies/farmers make more money selling their food to foreign industrialized/rich countries or the richer population within their own country - a byproduct of free trade, reduced export restrictions/taxes, and non socialized governments. I don't want the thread to get sidetracked by this, I just want to point out that we have the resources to feed everyone, we don't because there is no monetary reward in doing so. You may want to consider how government, trade, and technology all impact population. There have always been poor and unfed, even long ago when the population was very low.

I think it is very possible for the Earths population to double, making it population A, and still provide the necessary food for everyone, even with todays technology. I can see a future where the population and food production increase another 10 fold further and a population of B is supported without interstellar trade (perhaps some population or farming on the moon). There will still be a percentage of the population that is hungry if people/governments continue to ignore those who are least able to afford food.

Imagine a pop B world, with pop digit 7. That's about 100 times as many people on Earth as there are now....

What EDG wrote confuses me a little.

The population digit can be viewed as the number of zeros following a one

A pop DIGIT of 7 would be a population of 10 million, 10,000,000+. I believe you are using the 7 as a population MULTIPLIER (something I don't recall seeing in the book). Just wanted to clear that up.

Disclaimer - This post is full of facts that come from the internet and may or may not be accurate. This post also includes my opinions which are always 100% accurate, in MTU. You have the right to your own opinions which can differ from mine and still be 100% accurate, in YTU.

 

[EDG]

A pop DIGIT of 7 would be a population of 10 million, 10,000,000+. I believe you are using the 7 as a population MULTIPLIER (something I don't recall seeing in the book). Just wanted to clear that up.

Sorry, yes, that's what I was referring to. Pop B, multiplier 7, so that's 700 billion people. I've edited the post to correct that.

 

[Infojunky]

One thing I am pondering is how do you get all the people to breed in such a crowded planet.

In general there would have to be strong cultural reason for people to proceed on such a course.

As a society becomes more urban it tends to decrease in fecundity, just look to the urbanized countries, many of these have fallen bellow replacement rate.

So in a word pop A is not such a bad limit for a planet.

Now if we ammend the pop score to be for the entire system, all bets are off.

 

[EDG]

Now if we ammend the pop score to be for the entire system, all bets are off.

That approach made a heck of a lot more sense to me. I can see how you could have tens (A) or hundreds (B) of billions of people in one system (on orbitals, moons, space stations, whatever). Trillions (C) is a bit of a stretch IMO though.

I think these really high pop worlds (or systems) would have to be incredibly rare though, because they'd destabilse the interstellar economy (as CJ points out, Trantor basically pulls in the resources of a whole lot of other worlds just in itself).

 

[lurker]

One thing I am pondering is how do you get all the people to breed in such a crowded planet.

In general there would have to be strong cultural reason for people to proceed on such a course.

As a society becomes more urban it tends to decrease in fecundity, just look to the urbanized countries, many of these have fallen bellow replacement rate.

So in a word pop A is not such a bad limit for a planet.

Now if we ammend the pop score to be for the entire system, all bets are off.

Is this because of population and urbanization? Historically, what percentage of children are planned? Perhaps it is just technology providing and people using various means of birth control?

It would be nice to have a population DM based on the 'age' of the world. A long established world like Earth will have lots of time to build up a population while a world colonized a mere 1000 years ago would not.

 

[Infojunky]

Is this because of population and urbanization? Historically, what percentage of children are planned? Perhaps it is just technology providing and people using various means of birth control?

Yes, yes, and no. Meaning that Urbanization leads to stress which leads to a lower number of children coming to term. The number of spontaneous abortions/miscarriages gos up in a population under stress. With the addition of Birth control the choice of number of children be comes a cultural issue instead of a physiological issue.

It would be nice to have a population DM based on the 'age' of the world. A long established world like Earth will have lots of time to build up a population while a world colonized a mere 1000 years ago would not.

That really depends, is it a closed colony or open (open means more people can come in from the outside). In 400 years North America the United States in specific has become the 4th most populated country in the world.

 

[captainjack23]

I think these really high pop worlds (or systems) would have to be incredibly rare though, because they'd destabilse the interstellar economy (as CJ points out, Trantor basically pulls in the resources of a whole lot of other worlds just in itself).

Well, depends on what we want to call a high pop world we are talking. Pop A is 1/36 - you'll have one or two per subsector - and 10G isn't too bad, really. We almost qualify now, on earth Granted, 99G is worse, but that's within SF extrapolation, IMHO; and thats why pop 9 and A get a TL boost, I suppose. .

Under straight worldgen, pop B is currently 0/36 chance - that's pretty rare, no ?

Smart ass comments aside, the implication is that they should only be placed by the GM.

 

[captainjack23]

If you use either of the Variations for UWP generation methods (in the gray box on page 180, you can get positive DMs for Population.
.

Lets see. Without them, the prob of a pop A world is 1/36. or 2.7%
A prob B world is impossible.

With the Mods we have a 21.7% liklihood of getting a world with a +1 DM to POP, any other world will get a -1 DM if I read the chart right....
So under those rules one can only get PopA with the +1 dm anyway.....

get prob Pop A = 21.7 *5.4 or 1.2%
Pop B = 21.7 * 2.7 or 0.59%

So, you'd get a pop A world about 1/2 subsecors, and a pop B world about 1/5 Subsectors. (Thats the average expected value, not the probability of getting at least one.....but you can figure that out yourself if you know what the difference between the terms is )

 

[Bakemono]

If you use either of the Variations for UWP generation methods (in the gray box on page 180, you can get positive DMs for Population.
.

Lets see. Without them, the prob of a pop A world is 1/36. or 2.7%
A prob B world is impossible.

With the Mods we have a 21.7% liklihood of getting a world with a +1 DM to POP, any other world will get a -1 DM if I read the chart right....
So under those rules one can only get PopA with the +1 dm anyway.....

get prob Pop A = 21.7 *5.4 or 1.2%
Pop B = 21.7 * 2.7 or 0.59%

So, you'd get a pop A world about 1/2 subsecors, and a pop B world about 1/5 Subsectors. (Thats the average expected value, not the probability of getting at least one.....but you can figure that out yourself if you know what the difference between the terms is )

Thank you for the answers. I have now a much better view on hows and whys of the population size determination of the UWP has been done.
I wasn't planning to start a real world discussion about food supply and distribution though (^_^)

Personally I think there should be some connection between the size of the planet and the population size, but then again Hard Science variant already provides some of this.

 

[captainjack23]

If you use either of the Variations for UWP generation methods (in the gray box on page 180, you can get positive DMs for Population.
.

Lets see. Without them, the prob of a pop A world is 1/36. or 2.7%
A prob B world is impossible.

With the Mods we have a 21.7% liklihood of getting a world with a +1 DM to POP, any other world will get a -1 DM if I read the chart right....
So under those rules one can only get PopA with the +1 dm anyway.....

get prob Pop A = 21.7 *5.4 or 1.2%
Pop B = 21.7 * 2.7 or 0.59%

So, you'd get a pop A world about 1/2 subsecors, and a pop B world about 1/5 Subsectors. (Thats the average expected value, not the probability of getting at least one.....but you can figure that out yourself if you know what the difference between the terms is )

Thank you for the answers. I have now a much better view on hows and whys of the population size determination of the UWP has been done.
I wasn't planning to start a real world discussion about food supply and distribution though (^_^)

Personally I think there should be some connection between the size of the planet and the population size, but then again Hard Science variant already provides some of this.

You are quite welcome ! Wow....thanking me for posting permutation counts ? stats ? You are my new best friend ! I shall never leave this board....of course, as a result of that , you have several new mortal enemies..

Seriously, I had a feeling something was being missed in the thread...glad it helps.

One of the things to keep in mind that in a system like this -with lots of interrelated modifcation but fairly tight ranges of results, is that a smallish change can produce surprising change....as an example, the mods noted above will also drastically reduce the number of worlds with a trade code of Industrial, AND lower the overall tech level of any given sector. Both of which are fairly important issues from a sector building perspective....especially if one doesn't vette the results with an eye to how you want the final result or feel to be.

 

[Infojunky]

Personally I think there should be some connection between the size of the planet and the population size, but then again Hard Science variant already provides some of this.

Well, currently the population density of the land surface of the earth is about 40 people per square kilometer I can see a relatively easy metric there.

But, that only works for planets with a shirtsleeve environment.