Beth,
You and I had some pretty good discussions about this stuff before (for which
I'd like to thank you again). But I have a couple of follow up questions:
1) In your low population model, I think your NAC population offworld must not
be canonically consistent. Please consider the following:
"2135 The Anglian Confederation moves its Parliament to Albion, which now has
population almost as large as England thanks to massive immigration and
engineered population growth programmes. The reigning monarch, King Charles V,
divides his time between palaces in England, Vermont, Ottawa and Albion."
Do we susect that England only has 8 million people in it in 2135? Possible,
but unlikely. I think this alone indicates that Albion must
have at least 40-60 million people by itself. I'm not sure if you were
meaning the low and high cases to be canonically consistent or not though.
2) What are the possibilities of mixed cases? That is to say, having one
nation obey one set of constraints and another user a different progression?
Particularly, it strikes me that the NI just vastly lack in population when
compared to the SK and the IF. Even assuming help from the NAC or UN, they're
likely to be in dire trouble with the enemies they have due to sheer numbers.
I was wondering if NI could be following a heavy reproduction regime
(essentially case high) while the other nations were following a normal (case
average) regime.
Or perhaps some assumptions about how bad the destruction of Israel was for
them, how many people they got from other countries to go to their garden
world, etc. might not have been quite accurate (or the assumption is that they
didn't absolutely torch the middle eastern enemies they have, thus vastly
reducing their populations). All I'm
suggesting here is the numerical disparity is kind of staggering -
quantity has a quality all its own (famous line).
In order to address this, tweaking downwards the IF pop and/or upwards
the NI pop might be workable. What do you think? Seems to me that if the
holocaust that destroyed Israel was bad, the neighbours would be getting
seriously reduced in retributive return. If, OTOH, it wasn't that bad, maybe
the NI should get some more pop. And certainly they would have every incentive
to pursue further aggressive population growth.
Thoughts?
TomB
G'day Tom,
I must say its nice to have you back around.
> 1) In your low population model, I think your NAC population offworld
Not really. Almost the opposite of St^3 Jon in the low and high cases I took
the bounding assumptions and played them out everywhere to see what it'd look
like rather than being tied up meeting canon exactly. You could spin some PSB
for the UK dropping to 8 million under the low case (anything from
catastrophic events to shifting centre of gravity to the Nth Americas as the
UK becomes increasingly unpleasant place to live and loses bunches of arable
land under sealevel rise or something), but it'd be PSB;)
> 2) What are the possibilities of mixed cases? That is to say, having
Plenty of scope for that. It was a simple model run with simple bounds to show
the scope of potential outcomes. There's plenty of room for more specific
tailoring.
> I was wondering if NI could be following a heavy reproduction regime
Nothing to stop an even more differential split across nations, some on low,
others medium yet others on high. The only constraint is on migrants, some
combos will be feasible as there will be migrant pools as feeders, you can't
have the source populations on low and the sink populations on high because
you wouldn't have high enough migration rates to meet the high immigration
rates.
> All I'm suggesting here is the numerical disparity is kind of
Simply based on actual numbers available as feeder populations from current UN
numbers and then plausible (with grains of salt for tech
expansion) growth/transport rates etc. I think this is one spot where
the PSB has to go on thick to fit something in with Jon's imagination. For
instance the bulk of the IF may get tied up on a world that goes insular
(think of the Chinese through history). The beauty of the space setting is
that its not the equivalent case to having a billion people
who can just walk across the border, they have to be on transports - so
millions on the ground do not equate necessarily to millions able to get up in
your face.
> In order to address this, tweaking downwards the IF pop and/or upwards
True and there is plenty of space to do that. But if you look the IF
populations on Earth are already comparable with that of the NI, its just the
IF have a much broader base of people to draw on globally as migrants than the
NI. I can chase up some figures for you later, but off to a meeting.
Cheers
> On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 8:18 PM, <Beth.Fulton@csiro.au> wrote:
> > In order to address this, tweaking downwards the IF pop and/or
Yeah, but looking at quality vs quantity...
Blegh. I wouldn't want to start an off-world colony that relied on
advanced technology with Arab colonists responsible for doing the upkeep. It
would have to be perfectly habitable to begin with.
On the other hand, most inhabitants of Israel (and the world-wide
population of folks that might emigrate to New Israel) are educated
and familiar with technology beyond the goat-herder stage.
> Tom B wrote:
I was assuming a mixed case between Medium and High when I was developing my
NI history. I gave NI a 2194 population of abut 34 million offworld, and 5
million Jews (not technically NI) on Earth and
3 million more scattered through the Core worlds/Inner colonies. That
actually makes a fairly isolationist assumption - that most Jews would
in fact congregate to the NI colony worlds instead of simply making up a
fraction of a percent of most general populations.
I also followed the line that NI bought second-hand ships from the
major powers early on, progressing to contract buying, progressing to
a home-built space navy.
regarding Jon's caveat about the GZGverse and timeline. One of the things
that's become clear to me,: in the arena of space combat sims, the GZGverse is
a full blown genre of its own given the popularity of the minis and the rule
set. So flashing this stuff out, while all in good fun, is as engaging as
understanding EA history in the Babylon 5 Universe, or the galaxy map and
relationships in Trek.