House Tindal. Physicist, Head of the Crystal One development team and all around curious man. A late term cancer patient, Dr. Gage heads out to Bellisarius Territory to settle his own curiosity about some flaws in the eyewitness reports. He now finds himself spending the last days of his life with his reformed team of Crystal One scientists in an attempt to prevent the literal end of the world.
Now that is a rtue story. But they won’t just drop like fies. They’ll take others down with them, any others that they can get to. The Survivalists are not completely wrong there. Yes, most analysis show most of them not lasting the first fortnight. Those that have well stocked larders might make it the first month, provided that they have ammo and a good defensive position.
Minimum viable population for humans is about two or three thousand.
That depends, of course, on whether they are all located more or less in the same region.
I suppose you could ‘cheat’ if a number of them were geneticists with the infrastructure to support them in their efforts to sustain a smaller population.
With only a couple of thousand people,though, they would be set back in their , economic and social development…because every type of infrastructure a larger population depends upon would be gone…everything from toilet paper to vehicles to home repair to you name it, it all disappears. They’d be thrown back to sustenance farming, if not hunter gatherer groups.
If that happened in this story, after a few thousand years, the only thing left would be the towers…and a few ruins of certain types of megalithic structures. …or some of the artifacts which were found underground and in caves.
In his ‘back story,’ James has built a very rich and complete world, here. Overall, it’s logically consistent and avoids many of the inconsistencies found in other fictional worlds and universes. Population viability has been one of those problems he has also avoided, imo.
If something happened on earth that killed all but one in a million people, Earth would still have 7.000 people on it. People can get remarkably effective at surviving when their lives are on the line, so depending on the original population count, 2 or 3 thousand survivors wouldn’t be to hard to come up with. In fact I think it would take something uniquely deadly to successfully achieve 100% kill.
One in a million surviving would actually be far worse, almost for sure dropping below genetic diversity survival levels–that 7000 would be spread over the habitable land in ways not conducive to survival. Granted, if you are a survivor in LA or NYC, there’s lots of canned food that will usable for a long time, and bottled water, but you have to assume anyone you meet is hostile, and wanting to take yours. It is probably the case that willingness to do violence is inversely proportional to willingness to do actual work. Safer to just shoot anyone you see.
Now that is a rtue story. But they won’t just drop like fies. They’ll take others down with them, any others that they can get to. The Survivalists are not completely wrong there. Yes, most analysis show most of them not lasting the first fortnight. Those that have well stocked larders might make it the first month, provided that they have ammo and a good defensive position.
In your first sentence you misspelled true.
mispell != mistype
😉
me too lol mistyped that is
Troll.
lol.
The thing is, you don’t need a lot of survivors. I suspect – if they are all long-lived – that you’d need less than a hundred.
Minimum viable population for humans is about two or three thousand.
That depends, of course, on whether they are all located more or less in the same region.
I suppose you could ‘cheat’ if a number of them were geneticists with the infrastructure to support them in their efforts to sustain a smaller population.
With only a couple of thousand people,though, they would be set back in their , economic and social development…because every type of infrastructure a larger population depends upon would be gone…everything from toilet paper to vehicles to home repair to you name it, it all disappears. They’d be thrown back to sustenance farming, if not hunter gatherer groups.
If that happened in this story, after a few thousand years, the only thing left would be the towers…and a few ruins of certain types of megalithic structures. …or some of the artifacts which were found underground and in caves.
In his ‘back story,’ James has built a very rich and complete world, here. Overall, it’s logically consistent and avoids many of the inconsistencies found in other fictional worlds and universes. Population viability has been one of those problems he has also avoided, imo.
I ‘ve got to say very true.
Infact, most do not seem to grasp that concept, maybe James learned from their error?
If something happened on earth that killed all but one in a million people, Earth would still have 7.000 people on it. People can get remarkably effective at surviving when their lives are on the line, so depending on the original population count, 2 or 3 thousand survivors wouldn’t be to hard to come up with. In fact I think it would take something uniquely deadly to successfully achieve 100% kill.
One in a million surviving would actually be far worse, almost for sure dropping below genetic diversity survival levels–that 7000 would be spread over the habitable land in ways not conducive to survival. Granted, if you are a survivor in LA or NYC, there’s lots of canned food that will usable for a long time, and bottled water, but you have to assume anyone you meet is hostile, and wanting to take yours. It is probably the case that willingness to do violence is inversely proportional to willingness to do actual work. Safer to just shoot anyone you see.