The Duke Dilema

[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.

I wasn't suggesting that the nuclear family does not persist? Simply that there has to be women having at least 3 children in order to have any population growth. It doesn't appear to be very common in the SC universe.

[Laurentian]

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.

2 billion on Tarsonis plus the 8 billion people Raynor says Kerrigan has killed.

[solidsamurai]

I wasn't suggesting that the nuclear family does not persist? Simply that there has to be women having at least 3 children in order to have any population growth. It doesn't appear to be very common in the SC universe.

Just because blizz doesn't explicitly mention it (and they don't mention much), doesn't mean it didn't happen. Nuclear families are quite common in real life. Many people also end up having children that they didn't expect (quite often a nuclear family results from one side of the family putting their foot down and finally saying, 'Okay, we have too many children.'). Also siblings can encourage development of their peers, etc. There's plentiful benefits to the nuclear family.
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2 billion on Tarsonis plus the 8 billion people Raynor says Kerrigan has killed.

When exactly do they say this?

Simply that there has to be women having at least 3 children in order to have any population growth. It doesn't appear to be very common in the SC universe.

Okay, I get what you're saying. But what you say suggests a very high death rate. In their conditions, I'm pretty sure population growth never did stagnate. You don't have any evidence to support that it did, at any point in time.

[Laurentian]

Just because blizz doesn't explicitly mention it (and they don't mention much), doesn't mean it didn't happen. Nuclear families are quite common in real life. Many people also end up having children that they didn't expect (quite often a nuclear family results from one side of the family putting their foot down and finally saying, 'Okay, we have too many children.'). Also siblings can encourage development of their peers, etc. There's plentiful benefits to the nuclear family.

I'm honestly confused by what you mean by nuclear family? Do you have some other definition? I'm not being snarky, I'm honestly confused?
I thought a nuclear family meant a husband wife and their children exclusively sharing living quarters? This is as supposed to living with relatives. I don't believe that nuclear families have any sort of limit on the number of children they can have. I wasn't suggesting that Terrans have any sort of alternative family structure (or have abolished it in any way) since they clearly still have the institution of marriage and a two parent family.

When exactly do they say this?

In the "...Who We Choose to Be" cinematic Raynor states that Kerrigan killed 8 billion people.

As for Tarsonis:http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/game/planet/tarsonis

Okay, I get what you're saying. But what you say suggests a very high death rate. In their conditions, I'm pretty sure population growth never did stagnate. You don't have any evidence to support that it did, at any point in time.

Actually it suggests a very low death rate since the replacement rate for developed countries is about 2.1 due to lower mortality.

True I don't have proof of population stagnation. However there is no proof of many families with children above the replacement rate which doesn't make a lot of sense.

[solidsamurai]

Actually it suggests a very low death rate since the replacement rate for developed countries is about 2.1 due to lower mortality.

Even so - that says nothing about the growth percentage. When there's a higher population, more people do die - but more people are born as well. Even if the actual growth percentage decreases.

[Laurentian]

Even so - that says nothing about the growth percentage. When there's a higher population, more people do die - but more people are born as well. Even if the actual growth percentage decreases.

Eh, yes. Sub-replacement fertility rates means that the population will decline eventually as the death rate will end up exceeding the birth rate.

[mr. peasant]

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.

Don't how to break it to you but your maths is wrong. If there is a population growth rate of 1% per year for 250 years, that means you are applying an addition of 1% to the total population each year. Therefore, population growth is as follows:

Year 1: 10,000
Year 2: 10,100
Year 3: 10,201
....
Year 250: final figure

This would be expressed as 10000x((1+a)^b) with 'a' being the population growth rate and 'b' being the number of years because what you want is:

10000x(1.01x1.01x1.01x1.01... 250 times)

What your equation 10,000^(1+(0.01*240)) is doing is multiplying the population with itself multiple times, as follows:

10000^(1+(0.01*240))
= 10000^(1+2.4)
= 10000^3.4
= 10000x10000x10000... for 3.4 times


The first sign that something wasn't quite right should have been when you realise that Earth, which has a larger base population, growth time and population growth rate (since you yourself pointed out that the numbers you are using are very low), doesn't have the trillions of people that your calculations provided for the K-Sector. In order for a few tens of thousand or even hundreds of thousands to reach tens of billions within a few hundred years, the population growth rate must be much higher than that of Earth's.

[solidsamurai]

Okay, well in order to prove what you say, we need to first figure out the growth rate on earth. Give me some sample countries that are varied enough (united states, countries in africa, countries in south america, etc.). And then figure out the percentile growth rate in those countries as well as a shifts in growth rate at different time periods.

And then we can figure whether not the growth rate needs to be 'much higher' than that of earth.

[mr. peasant]

Whether it is or not is irrelevant. I'm just pointing out that your calculations are wrong.

[solidsamurai]

Oh thank you.

But we still need proof to continue the discussion in the right direction.
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If the growth rate is 6% - every woman about every eight years needs to have had one baby - this doesn't include the fall off that occurs for women that do not have babies prior to age 18 (in their early fertility years, they need to have more babies to make up for it). Accounting for technology, twins, etc., this can happen.

That's my argument.

It'd be interesting if some blood lines originate from clones - although that can only be simulated in a play-by-post rpg that includes character family backgrounds (k-sector ethnics - which are more effective than earth ethnics, because they are fresher).

Soft Evidence:
- The old families are renowned in-breeders with large surviving families.
- Andrea Tygore is over 100 years old, but then again she's an old family member; for all we know she could be a cyborg. Nonetheless, old families have the best health care that their money can buy. For whatever reason, they're the richest, because tradition (which exists for whatever reason; maybe the military is obligated to protect them) has allowed them to preserve monopolies within their hemispheres.
- Nova Terra's mother was about 50 when she gave birth to Nova, I think.

Softer Evidence
- Terrans reverted to old traditions in the core worlds and on many colonies, primarily large families. The likelihood of this is quite high.
- There are a lot of down trodden colonies and slums. In real life, unhinged population growth often leads to atrophy of a society - because there's never enough education to go around, not to mention all of the orphans.
- The confederacy is basically the devil, so they'd probably ban or at least limit the production of contraceptive goods.
- Tarsonis experienced some of the greatest population growth.

Softest Evidence
- Terrans have a penchant for colonizing many worlds. I think a lot of it had to do with living conditions in urban areas. They simply can't afford it - yet they have a friend who can afford a spaceship (and hates urban too). Eventually, they all get together and develop a colony away from the government. The spaceship is their corner stone, giving them all the living essentials they need until they can properly settle down.
- Urban living conditions become more expensive whenever there's more population because there's more demand. The confederate economy has probably faced a few screw ups in its time, considering old family monopolies and government acting apart from citizen interests.

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6% growth rate sets the terran population just above 20 billion, which makes sense. Total terran population in the k-sector might be scaled to something like 30 billion (if you think 6% growth rate is extreme).

But note that areas like Tarsonis experienced the most population. Lots of urban areas, lots of illegitimate children, etc. The growth rate would still be high on fringe worlds too.