Terran Population in the Koprulu Sector

[Lupino]

Copy/Paste from BF forums, just in case they get lost, and perhaps get some new discussion going.

Anyways, we know from the manual that the original Terran population started out at 32,000 spread across three planets. We also know from the same source that two hundred years separates the time between colonization and the events of Starcraft. What we don't know is what the final population number was at that time, or the rate of growth of the population, but we can guess.

For this I'm assuming a range of numbers, between 1% to 5% growth rate. The first represents the kind common to developed nations, while the last is found more in developing nations. These are not meant to be constants, but simply averages, therefore the final tally will also just be an average.

Now right off the bat we can exclude 1 or 2% growth, as either options lead to a population of just 230,000+ and 1.6 million and could not account for Korhal's 4 (or 35) million inhabitants. At 3% we get close to where we need to be, with almost 12 million Terrans. However, this also would not fit with recent retcons that Korhal had 35 million, and if we stick to the manual it would mean the Confederates had wiped out 1/3 of all Terrans in the Koprulu Sector. Stupid and incompetent they may be, but not IMO genocidal.

It's only with the higher growth rates that we can get anywhere close to a realistic estimate. At 4% we get over 81 million Terrans, which would work better for the 4 million figure but again with recent retcons we are faced with the idea that the Confederates were genocidal when they wiped out 35 million, or 40%, of their entire population.

The only figure that becomes workable is when we start getting towards 5%, which at the extreme end means a population of over 550 million, but generally we can expect a population in the hundreds of millions. The death of Korhal's population remains an extreme tragedy without becoming a debilitating loss to the continued survival of the species.

Now obviously as noted such a growth rate is usually only found in certain extreme parts of the world, aka shitty third-world countries, but with advances in science nifty things like people living longer can increase that rate. Indeed it was stated for this very reason why Earth had grown to 23 billion people in the BW manual.

[Kimera757]

Probably just copying my answers from the old thread:

Population growth, even among humans, can be even faster than the 5% figure if there's unlimited living space. People traveling to thinly populated areas could found very fast colonies, or so I presume, until they approach the carrying capacity.

Like, say, colonial North/South American colonies, the growth rate would take a bit to start up. (You need to build houses and various facilities first.) Also, while there may be many livable planets in the K-Sector, many are crudholes that can't support a large population.

Tarsonis was probably the most heavily populated planet in the Sector, and what happened to it could be considered genocide. Of course, there may have been evacuations; the novel StarCraft: Ghost: Nova made that pretty clear. (They were evacuated by Arcturus Mengsk, who presumably wouldn't allow just anyone aboard.)

[Alex06]

In one of the BlizzCons demonstrations, you could hear the news on a TV screen and it said "Deaths are numbered in the billions". This would mean there's around 10 billion people in the Koprulu Sector at least.

[MattII]

Other minor (possibly useless) facts we know are that it took sixty years to redevelop sub-warp (interplanetary) drives, and that Korhal was one of the seven original colonies in the Tarsonis system. If we assume that all the colonies are more-or-less the same in terms of population, that gives us 28 million not including the three primaries, or second-generation colonies, putting us in the region of a 4% growth (around 81-82 million total). using 35 million as the base, we get 245 million for the first generation colonies, putting us closer to 5% (around 553 million) or greater growth.

[Roobster]

In one of the BlizzCons demonstrations, you could hear the news on a TV screen and it said "Deaths are numbered in the billions". This would mean there's around 10 billion people in the Koprulu Sector at least.

And this takes place just a few years after the original game in which 9 of the 13 core Terran worlds were cleansed of human life by the Zerg, so the pre-SC population could easily have been as much as tens of billions. The only solution to explaining these incredible numbers is to retcon the number of passengers on the original colony ships to be several millions of people at least and then had an extreme population growth rate.

[ParticleBeam]

So we have Korhal now being populated by 6.3 billion inhabitants.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/game/planet/korhal

And it was noted that before that, the planet had around 4-35 million inhabitants. Did they relocate the many sudden billion refugees from the nine devastated core worlds all to Korhal? Did the mommies in the Koprulu Sector make quintets every year? And for that matter, I still gaze in marvel to Korhal becoming a partial Coruscant in simply 4 years.

[Pandonetho]

Edit: Nevermind.

I don't think they would relocate all the refugees to Korhal. Most likely because Mengsk wouldn't care about the people.

[Kimera757]

Well, Tarsonis lost 2 billion people. Who knows how many people were not killed? Moria and Umoja both have around 2 billion people, and the former has only been majorly attacked once. (Umoja got a raid, which was actually targeted at Arcturus Mengsk.)

So we're looking at 6 billion plus, not including Korhal!

[ParticleBeam]

So if there were many billion survivors from the devastated worlds, where did all these refugees go?
Or did the Terran Dominion execute some kind of massive relocation-program? I mean, from a planet that was devoid of all lives except for some kind of mutant scorpions, they got over 6 billion people living on Korhal in just 4-5 years.

Also, evacuations and resettlements take time. Did all these people have some kind of long-range teleporter connected to Korhal?

The grade of technology amongst the Terrans must be more than marvelous to accomplish such a thing.

[Visions of Khas]

According to the site there are at least 12 billion terrans in the Koprulu sector, plus whatever other colonies they have out there.