Human population and colonies as of 2156

[S12RPG]

Hey all, was doing some more world-building for the Earth-Romulan war RPG I'm running, and I wondered what you guys all thought about the population of the Sol system and its colonies as of 2156 (the end of ST:ENT).

My interpretation of canon is that WW3 and the post-atomic horror brought the Earth's population steadily to its lowest of 2B by 2070. At that point the Vulcan backed United Earth finally put an end to the fighting and humanity began a growth rate of 7.5% per decade increasing to 20% per decade by 2110. By 2160 this leads to a total human population of 7.1B.

I assumed that people started leaving Sol system in 2060, after Warp drive was invented. In 2060, 1 in 1 million leave every decade. This rate increased exponentially until 2140, when it stabilized at 1 in 100 leaving every decade. I'm assuming that there are 7 major human systems (Alpha Centauri, Vega, Deneva, Sirius, Cygnia Minor, Berengaria, Beta-Aquilae) and that immigration to these systems started at various times after 2070. This leads to the 7 colonies having populations ranging from 10M to 40M.

My goal is to be as canon Star Trek as possible, but also make the colony systems, especially Deneva where the campaign is set, to be decently well populated and important economically and politically. By my numbers Sol has 6.9B of the total 7.1 humans, so it's hard to imagine that the colony systems are significant for anything other than political and military (strategic location) purposes. Any advice there would be appreciated.

In game, the Deneva system has 25M people total. 10M on a lush agrarian planet (based off this TOS ep), 4M mostly in orbit of a dilithium mining/manufacturing planet, 5M in the asteroid capital of the system (first settlements were here), and 4M in the various asteroid belts (alpha, beta, gamma, delta segments with different topography/cultures/POIs/etc). While this seems sparsely populated, canon colony planets in ST seem to have just one or two major settlements each, so this has seemed to check out with my players so far.

What do you guys think? For more details, see the CSV file used to calculate

[Eternal_Freedom]

Well for one thing as per First Contact warp drive wasn't invented until 2063, ten years after the end of WW3 which according to Riker left "600 million dead." So the initial figure of 2 billion humans in Sol in 2070 seems far lower than it should be.

[Solauren]

Trying to stay close to Canon Star Trek is pretty difficult, since they retroactively change or ignore canon as needed.

Right now, Earth has a population of approximately 7.8 BILLION people, with a growth rate of just over 1% per year.

Let's assume that there is no growth change between now and the start of Star Trek WW3 - 2026 World War three lasted until 2053.

Actually, come to think of it, a 27 year world war, and only 600 million dead? With just about every major city destroyed?

That actually seems LOW.

I'd go with instead 'At the Start of World War 3, world population was 8 billion. AT the end, it was 2 billion, with 6 BILLION dead.'

Slight change, and your numbers work wonderfully.

[S12RPG]

Death rate in WW3 is an interesting topic for sure. I actually didn't remember the First Contact dialog, thanks you Eternal_Freedom. I went back and watched that specific scene and it says that in April 4, 2063 it is 10 years past WW3, most major cities destroyed, few governments left, and 600M are dead.

I do agree with Solauren though, it seems like the death count should be much higher...

So, I wonder if the death rate cited in First Contact is perhaps that decade's casualties rather than the casualty up to that date. I say that because we know the war started in 2026, perhaps the war had "ended" in 2053, but it seems like Lily in First Contact was very worried that there would be more attacks. Perhaps there was a episodic state of conflict. Also the "Post-Atomic horror" may have inflicted a huge amount of deaths through deformities, starvation, resource scarcity. The court scene in Q's fantasy at Encounter at Farpoint was purportedly in 2079, which Picard stated was in the Post-Atomic horror.

So, how do you guys feel about the bulk of the deaths happening within the first 20 years of war, with the post-atomic horror continuing to polish off humans until the 2080s. Below would be excess deaths, and population growth factor would be ranging between 2% to 10% / decade
- 2020-30: 3B excess deaths, 10% growth (WW3 starts)
- 2030-40: 2.2B excess deaths, 2% growth
- 2040-50: 0.6B excess deaths, 3% growth
- 2050-60: 0.6B excess deaths, 3% growth (WW3 ends)
- 2060-70: 0.6B excess deaths, 3% growth (first contact)
- 2070-80: 0.6B excess deaths, 3% growth (Encounter at Farpoint court scene)

Then if you assume that growth rate increases to 20%/decade by 2110, and there are no further excess deaths, we have a minimum of 1.9B humans in 2070 and a end point of 6.7B total humans by 2160.

I like the numbers this gives, but I admit it's a stretch given Riker's dialog. It's just a bit hard for me to imagine humanity coming out of a nuclear war with more people that we entered it with. I imagine the conflict would be of a completely different scale than WW1 or WW2 given the wide ranging environmental impacts and targeting of most major cities, rather than a few unlucky ones. What do you guys think?

[Solauren]

Riker's dialogue could also refer to 600 million dead in North America. After all, they destroyed the Borg, figured out where they were attacking, and then when, then Riker spoke. And if that's where the Borg were going to start assimilating Earth, the local conditions would be important.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Riker's dialogue could also refer to 600 million dead in North America. After all, they destroyed the Borg, figured out where they were attacking, and then when, then Riker spoke. And if that's where the Borg were going to start assimilating Earth, the local conditions would be important.

I'm not sure we can assume that - his dialogue was "Makes sense. Most of the major cities destroyed, every few governments left, six hundred million dead" emphasis mine. Unless pre-WW3 in Trek history the US and/or Canada broke up into multiple smaller entities the "very few governments" bit implies a global statement not a North American one.

I've just been perusing Memory Alpha's page on WW3 in ST and it confirms the 2026-2053 dates, the 600 million death toll - but also mentions that somehow during this global crisis there were launching missions to Mars (Ares IV) and out of the Sol system (Charybdis). Hell, a global war that lasts twenty-seven years and involves confirmed use of nukes on a large scale should have killed a lot more than that! For that matter, a conventional war that lasts that long would probably have killed more - especially given we know (from TOS: "The Savage Curtain") that "genocide" was involved.

Given the 2026 date was Colonel Green and his eco-terrorists kicking things off by killing 37 million people, and then the nukes aren't confirmed as dropping until 2053 (when the bunch from Indiana were taken to the Beta Quadrant by the Red Angel) and there were major joint spaceflight efforts in the interim period (Areas 4 in 2032 was under the control of the "International Space Agency" with NASA in support") I have to wonder if the 2026 conflict and the actual WW3 nuclear war are two entirely separate incidents.

I mean, can you really imagine a joint Mars and/or extrasolar mission in the middle of a global war?

[Lord Revan]

Riker's dialogue could also refer to 600 million dead in North America. After all, they destroyed the Borg, figured out where they were attacking, and then when, then Riker spoke. And if that's where the Borg were going to start assimilating Earth, the local conditions would be important.

I'm not sure we can assume that - his dialogue was "Makes sense. Most of the major cities destroyed, every few governments left, six hundred million dead" emphasis mine. Unless pre-WW3 in Trek history the US and/or Canada broke up into multiple smaller entities the "very few governments" bit implies a global statement not a North American one.

I've just been perusing Memory Alpha's page on WW3 in ST and it confirms the 2026-2053 dates, the 600 million death toll - but also mentions that somehow during this global crisis there were launching missions to Mars (Ares IV) and out of the Sol system (Charybdis). Hell, a global war that lasts twenty-seven years and involves confirmed use of nukes on a large scale should have killed a lot more than that! For that matter, a conventional war that lasts that long would probably have killed more - especially given we know (from TOS: "The Savage Curtain") that "genocide" was involved.

Given the 2026 date was Colonel Green and his eco-terrorists kicking things off by killing 37 million people, and then the nukes aren't confirmed as dropping until 2053 (when the bunch from Indiana were taken to the Beta Quadrant by the Red Angel) and there were major joint spaceflight efforts in the interim period (Areas 4 in 2032 was under the control of the "International Space Agency" with NASA in support") I have to wonder if the 2026 conflict and the actual WW3 nuclear war are two entirely separate incidents.

I mean, can you really imagine a joint Mars and/or extrasolar mission in the middle of a global war?

I suppose it could be a case of it starting as relatively small scale event (depending where Col. Green hit 37 mil dead doesn't have to mean very wide scale conflict) that then slowly spread so there were space flights at early parts when it had not quite became a global conflict while the nukes were when it was a full on global conflict.

[Eternal_Freedom]

That's possible, but I don't think that fits with our own history, never mind Treks. Consider that WW2 is generally recorded as starting in 1937 or 1939 - even though you can include Japan's invasion of Manchuria (in IIRC 1931), or WW1 is always listed as 1914-1918, even though you could conceivably include the two Balkan Wars as events leading in to it. The French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars are split into two different "wars" despite being closely linked and split by only a short stretch of time.

Given the numbers dead thanks to Colonel Green (who was somehow still alive in ~2056, after the all-out nuking stage), I could buy that there was an initial conflict then a couple decades of a tense-ish peace then a resumption of hostilities, a la WW1/WW2, but then I'd expect it to be categorised as different wars.

For that matter, you have that whole 92-96 Eugenics Wars thing, that despite involving a good portion of the globe doesn't get lumped in as a world war. The entire evidence for 2026 being the outbreak of WW3 comes from a single display screen in "In a mirror darkly," and given what ENT often did with screwing with Trek history I prefer to ignore that.

Frankly I consider it much more likely that the timeline runs something like this:

1. 1992-1996, Eugenics Wars
2. 2026-maybe 2030 or so? Colonel Green goes on his "Genocidal war" (that was apparently caused by genome enhancement, showing they really didn't learn from Khan and Co). Given the next events I would expect this to have happened in Asia or Africa, maybe Central/South America, but might have involved the US/Europe/Russia etc, possibly in some sort of intervention to stop it.
3. 2032 - The USA is still kicking, NASA works with other nations to launch the Ares IV mission to Mars (insert The Martian reference here), perhaps this was a "the horrible war/genocide is over, we helped stop it, so let's show how united we are and go to Mars!"
4. 2037 - Charybdis mission launches, sent by NASA under direction of an enlarged, 52-state US
5. 2053 - Latest date of when the nukes get fired (though Colonel Green apparently killed hundreds of thousands of radiation sickness victims, so maybe there was a nuke or two used early, maybe part of his eco-terrorism crap).

So yeah, I'd expect WW3 proper to be a short war, given the apparent technology development by then, maybe a few weeks in 2053.

Of course, given the apparent global destruction of cities it's possible that a lot of historical information was lost by the 23rd century so that display screen in "In a Mirror Darkly" (on the prime-universe USS Defiant that gets taken to the mirror universe) is incorrect - hell, Starfleet were willing to send Kirk and co back in time for "historical research" so methinks a lot of info is lost.

I have thought of a way to reconcile the "most major cities destroyed" with "only" 600 million dead - if there was a drawn out buildup of hostilities, maybe a few initial tactical nuclear exchanges, then I could totally see people fleeing the cities, so when the missiles fly the cities get blasted with much lower casualties - which might tie in to the events seen in Discovery's "New Eden," where we see bombers, not missiles, hitting some unknown target in in Richmond, Indiana.

[S12RPG]

Nice stuff all, I like it. I guess historical precedent is that nuclear weapons tend to end wars rather than start them, so I can imagine the bulk of the deaths from WW3 happening near the tail end of the conflict.

What did you guys think about the projected population of Earth colonies? In 2156, do you think a population on Earth of ~7B with a population of 200M spread among its 7 colonies?

I assumed that people started leaving Sol system in 2060, after Warp drive was invented. In 2060, 1 in 1 million leave every decade. This rate increased exponentially until 2140, when it stabilized at 1 in 100 leaving every decade. I'm assuming that there are 7 major human systems (Alpha Centauri, Vega, Deneva, Sirius, Cygnia Minor, Berengaria, Beta-Aquilae) and that immigration to these systems started at various times after 2070. This leads to the 7 colonies having populations ranging from 10M to 40M.