Can someone explain the population of Humans in SC?

So in SC2 Raynor states that Kerrigan has killed over 8 billion people.

However, as far as I can tell, the 40k prisoners that crash landed to form the UED only arrived a few hundred years ago.

How do you go from 40k people to 10's - 100's of billions of people in only a few generations??

 

Here's a useful thread to read up on things. IIRC there's info on terran population as well.

 

Through many fun times. Also I would assume drugs.

However 32,000 people survived. Having no knowledge of the ethical issues at this time lets say each person has 2-3 children over their life time (max of 1 every year from half of pop). After 20 years these children have children. So after 250 years i see it as possible. Our population has exploded in the last 200 years due to better medical/nutritional enviroments so if we assume that the terrans are even better then it could happen. Maybe each person has 5-6 children over their life time.

Anyone want to run the numbers for me ?

 

you have to remeber the humans in SC2 live so much more longer because of technology and really have the chance to give birth more then double the average of us in todays world. like marinefreak said there going to have 5-6 possible more. if you look up some of the ages on a few people you'll be a little starteled

 

Only modern terrans have that kind of tech, not the originals.

250 years would be 250/30= 8 generations
the two previous generations would still be mostly alive (lets say 5/6 of the parents and 3/4 of the grandparents

so the sum would be
40,000 * X ^ 8 + 5/6 * (40,000 * X ^ 7) + 3/4 * (40,000 * X ^ 6) = 16 billion (assumption, assuming the zerg killed half the humans in the sector, it serves as a fair minimum)
X is the average number of children per person here.
according to my calculator X is 4.89. But only women are capable of childbirth, so 4.89 * 2 = 9.78 kids per family. Take into account minor wars and other such things, you'd need a whopping average of 10 kids per family.

 

You are forgetting the fact that at some point maybe in the early years of this 250, the terrans invented the technology to live longer => more kids for the next generation. And I think the Zerg killed more than the half, how many planets were destroyed?

 

I think Terran livespans were mentioned somewhere as being around 100 years average, but I can't recall where. On the other hand, longer life does not lead to longer fertility due to the biology of the Earth female.

I just had the weirdest thought: what if the Zerg swarm passed UED territory on its way to the Koprulu sector and chomped down the populace of Alpha Centauri or some other place like that. It's really improbable though, but it does make the numbers a bit more likely.

 

The origination of Terrans in the Koprulu sector was a population of 36,000 spread over 3 initial planets (Umoja, Tarsonis, and Moria). Thus the original factions of the Umojan Protectorate, the Kel-Morian Combine, and the Confederacy.

The confederacy being the strongest, eventually the three factions managed to establish in excess of 35 colonies, some considered "core worlds" with large populations and other "outposts" mostly on moons and agricultural planets such as the Agria we're familiar with from StarCraft II.

Ultimately about 60% of these colonies were destroyed during the Brood Wars. Most of the population then condensed into the core worlds with refugees fleeing the destruction.

As far as how the population got there, given roughly 250 years of history and starting with 36,000. Assuming a generational gap of 30 years (9 generations) and a birth rate of 3 (and a death rate of 1, normal for exponential human population growth) minus the death rate you end with essentially a birth rate of 2. That means over 9 generations for every two humans you would end with a population of 1024 (roughly).

So starting with 34,000 humans over 9 generations and ignoring food limitations or non-natural causes of death, you'd end with a population of around 19 billion.

However, it is also highly likely that if resources were abundant you could assume a higher birth rate (China is a great demonstration, originally they were experiencing a birth rate of 5: minus 1 rate for death, so 4) you would be looking more at a population after 9 generations of around 3 trillion.

I'd say it'd be safer to assume a growth rate of 2.5 including death, war, and famine, and say that the Terran population was probably somewhere around 129 billion at the beginning of the Brood Wars.

Even with 8 billion killed, it's likely that the exponential growth continued with hardly a noticeable slow-down. The Terran population is likely still rapidly increasing.

In fact, you could theorize that if the Zerg were able to kill only 8 billion Terrans within a span of 3 years, based on exponential growth the Zerg simply wouldn't be able to defeat the Terrans even considering unlimited resources on both sides without somehow increasing their killing efficiency.

That is, of course, assuming the Terran technological level remained the same and the Zerg didn't somehow increase their killing efficiency. They'd need to be able to kill around 10 or 12 billion a year to slow the exponential growth of the Terrans.

 

1024 times 17.000 is 17 408 000. Your 19 billion is off by 19 billion.

 

34,000 not 17.

 

erm, no.

Even then, it would be 35 million, not 19 billion.

 

So after playing the demo, I am just gonna handwave this as UNN botching the numbers of the dead for the sake of propaganda, so that military expenses would be more tolerated by the scared populace. Raynor regularly watches UNN, and even though it's usually crap, he might have picked up the number from there.

 

How many missions are there in the demo?

 

Only the first three and the cinematic afterwards about the re-appearance of the swarm.

 

I still stick with a Terran population of around 130 Billion.... by now they've gone way higher than that.

 

You just keep upping the ante, don't you?

 

I noticed the same thing, and the only explanation I could think of was the UED Expedition. They were sent to conquer the Dominion and the Zerg and apparently did so by requisitioning Dominion manufacturing centers, so they had a lot of people, possible more than the Dominion itself. It's possible all the people left in the Koprulu sector after the fleets defeat could have made 8 billion a realistic casaulty count, particularly if that figure includes the UEDs losses in the brood war.

 

I could agree with the UED fudging the numbers a bit to get more people behind the war effort. Governments do it today, so why wouldn't they?

 

Don't you usually claim your opponents have less power than they actually have?

 

Not if you want to portray them as a massive evil force where everyone has to gather against them behind you... or die!