Jim Raynor was raised on a dirt farm, without any siblings, and he's not a clone. There's too much lore to prevent that kind of thing.
Printable View
Jim Raynor was raised on a dirt farm, without any siblings, and he's not a clone. There's too much lore to prevent that kind of thing.
And then BAM! Raynor awakes from the Matrix... :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Kimera757
Kidding aside, some sort of cloning technology would've been used to boost numbers since some of the peoples in the Koprulu sector were descended from those who had history of using (or are results from) outlawed genetic manipulation and experimentation.
But he's not a first generation colonist either (i.e. he was born on said dirt farm as opposed to moving there when it was being set up). Also, not a clone. Using artificial uteri and insemination still involves two unique gametes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kimera757
The main 'problem' with the lore is that nothing of the sort has been mentioned as taking place. But then again, ALL explanations for the Terran population will be like that since Blizzard clearly did not work out the mathematics of it beforehand.
It doesn't help that he have retconned the population to make it larger. Originally Korhal had 4 million people but this was changed to 35 million. Perhaps they will retcon the original settlers to make them larger?Quote:
Originally Posted by mr. peasant
Most third world countries have HUGE birth rates, but they also have a high mortality rate. Women attempt to have the most children in order to see who survives. This huge exponensial growth in Sierra Leona or Zambia just won't help the food shortages and economy. Rwanda on the other hand went through some important child control and anti-AIDS measures which greatly decreased some issues.Quote:
Originally Posted by Laurentian
IIRC Bick and Angelini were once discussing about using Fash's DNA to enhance other ghost units. Blizzard just had no clue genetics would be important to lore, I guess, when they wrote 1998 StarCraft . They could always redcon tecnology.Quote:
Originally Posted by mr. peasant
Birth rate is an exponential function. Assuming the birthrate of terrans is 5% (per year) - and the beginning pop was something like 10,000 (pretty low), and they had 200 years (the lore gives an idea of something 250 years) to develop, then they would easily grow into the billions.
It's an exponential function. Beginning pop^decimaled growth percentage(1 +x), where x is the years since the first year. The population gets pretty high.
So birth rate is not up for discussion and never really should have been to begin with. That doesn't include fertility supplements, advanced delivery methods, cloning, etc.
For a birth rate of 5% per year, that means that every year, 10% of the female population needs to give birth to a live child (assuming an approximate 50-50 ratio between men and women). That 10% would be composed solely of women within the age of 18 and about 50 to 55 (menopause); which would be about 40% of the total female population (assuming an equal age distribution, an average lifespan of 100 years and rounding the number of fertile years to 40). Meaning, 25% of the fertile women need to give birth every year. That's 1 in every 4 women of fertile age.
While such a high rate would give you a population of billions, it doesn't take into account the death rate; both, from old age and the many wars that take place throughout Terran history.
Terran colonists only have about one major recorded war in the lore before the first and second great war - being the guild wars.
Also, even if we reduce the birthrate down to 1% (to make it more natural - and taking into consideration death rate and natural immunities that humans have probably developed from advanced technology and immunizations given to their ancestors - that's still in the billions if we begin with a population of 20,000 and extend it over 250 years (56 billion or so, in actual fact; doesn't include terrans that immigrate/assimilate from other planets controlled by one of the other two major terran factions; there were 60,000 colonists in total).
Also consider that they were probably living somewhat like third worlders in at least the first 100 years or so. So a meritocratic/sub-par democratic culture probably developed, which in turn eventually devolved into an oligarchy with the illusion of continuing democracy.
Yet the only people who come from three child families are Nova and Warfield. The former is a member of the Old Families and the latter's parents were a neurosurgeon and hospital administrator on Tarsonis. So it doesn't look any character we've seen came from a large family. I speculated on a lower birth rate in the recent decades. Though this means the currents wars could have doomed the human race since their is little or no population growth to make up for the 10 billion plus people killed.
Er only 32 000, unless they retconned it. Also the other terran factions came from the original settlers so immigration or assimilation can't play a part.Quote:
doesn't include terrans that immigrate/assimilate from other planets controlled by one of the other two major terran factions; there were 60,000 colonists in total.
It doomed about 10% of the human race, according to my estimates (if you include all major concurrent factions). Not enough to seriously harm the economies of major planets that are able to depend on the imports from what is probably a reliable association of relatively few well-protected planets (they make up the core worlds; if one core world is destroyed entirely - another can be expanded to fill its place) - not to mention technology to make a military that is practically self sufficient (if we go by in-game logic; it is cool and can make sense though, depending on how you look at it).Quote:
Originally Posted by Laurentian
Also, you've got no proof that the nuclear family does not persist in terran culture. The only way terrans can really prevent it is through a 'one child' policy, but that wouldn't make much sense considering the technology is available to make colonizing worlds inexpensive enough to be rather independently funded. And overpopulation is the only logic behind the one child policy.
Ugh right... well that comes down to an average birthrate.Quote:
I speculated on a lower birth rate in the recent decades.
Are you sure that 10 billion people have been killed? I'd bet a few billion - billion is a big number though, so it's easy enough for the UNN to stretch it out to mean billion(s), in order to incite further outrage.
Yes it can - I'm talking about later on. Surely there were refugees during the guild wars and the like.Quote:
Er only 32 000, unless they retconned it. Also the other terran factions came from the original settlers so immigration or assimilation can't play a part.
32,000? Whatever. 10,000 with a 1% growth rate is... 3 billion in 240 years. So I don't know - surely I could see extensive mating programs.
EDIT: Scratch that. I forgot to add a +1 to my equation. :P
For a 1% growth rate - 100 babies are born in the first year. That means that, if there are 5100 female settlers, and women are fertile for 40 years - can someone work out the math for me?
----
EDIT: Okay the equation is: 10,000^(1+ (y*x)), where x is the number of years since settlement and y is the decimal percentage.
With a 1% growth rate and 240 years, the equation becomes: 10,000^(1+(0.01*240)).
Which is in turn - 30 trillion something. Very large number. Assuming 1% isn't at all realistic. We could shorten it to 0.1% (incredibly low birth rate) which would give us a population of 90,000 or so. Which would be far too low.
After some experimentation - I came up with a growth percentage of 0.7%, which gives us a grand total of 52,480,746,024.97 (50+ billion; irrational number). That seems like a fairly reasonable terran tarsonian diriven population, which suits the universe; also assuming that tarsonian terrans are the most populous - how else could the confederacy achieve such power on the interstellar theater?
In conclusion: I think people have simply misunderstood the exponential function.
What's left to argue? Whether or not 0.7% is a reasonable birth rate percentage.