Re: A thought on Population (Was:[HoE] More Civilazied!!)

[Darrin Bright <darrin@neobright.net>]

At 11:23 AM 9/6/99 -0400, you wrote:
>//RagnaRok wrote:
>
>This reminded me of something I thought of a couple of weeks back.  One of
>the things that's been discussed on this list recently is how there seems
>to be too many survivor settlements in the Wasted West, given that 7/8 of
>the world's population bit the big one in the Last War.  What I was
>thinking is what if the Reckoners arranged things so that so many people
>survived in the American West?  

I don't quite agree that there are too many settlements, but I do think you
have a valid point with the idea that the Reckoners wanted more people to
survive. Y'see, the Reckoners feed off of fear... and if they kill
EVERYONE, they starve to death. So I'd think the Reckoners would be pretty
open to the idea that the population should continue to grow... dead people
can't be afraid of you, and as long as the live ones don't get too uppity...


As far as everything else that's been said about population... I think the
source material has under-counted the population. If the population boom
was anything like it is now only with 100 more years to increase
exponentially, that's a huge a**load of people. Since about 90 to 95% are
going to be living in major cities and urban areas, even killing off 90 to
95% is going to leave a lot of people around. I'm not talking a few million
here, more like several hundred million.

And, sure, dropping bombs on the world's industrial and production centers
will kill more than a few off right at first, but 13 years later, the
survivors are going to discover that the agricultural resources and rural
areas that fed several billion people weren't destroyed along with the
cities. There's going to be a LOT of food around, and the population will
boom again as the food becomes available.

So I think the sparse settlements that the sourcebooks have tried to
portray aren't very accurate. I know it fits more with the theme and the
various post-apoc movies we're all used to, but I don't think the science
supports it. I think you will have rather large population booms again in a
relatively short time.