Population Question

[Arclight]

Hello all,

I'm new to the forum but a long time roleplayer and has just got back into the swing of things with T2K.

I'm thinking of running a short adventure for my gaming group.

My question is what is the population level for the UK after all the deaths from war, famine, germs and general accidents. Cica 2000 - 2001

I saw in T2013 that 90% of the world pop was gone and was just wondering what the split would be across the world.

Fear not will be running T2K version 2.2 and T2013 is quite complex for my group.

Any input would be helpful.

[Rainbow Six]

Hi Arclight,

If it's any help. this is taken from the V1 Survivor's Guide to the United Kingdom (pg 14)

Cheers

The war produced some dramatic changes to the country. Some
25 million people were killed in the nuclear exchanges, while
another 10 million died during the fighting, disease and starvation
caused by the harsh winter of 1997-1 998, as well as the lack of
medical care after the nuclear exchange. At the turn of the century,
approximately 20 million people were left in Britain.

[Arclight]

Thank you that helps a lot.

[James Langham]

Hi Arclight,

If it's any help. this is taken from the V1 Survivor's Guide to the United Kingdom (pg 14)

Cheers

I would suggest the 25 million is not just instant but by 2000 from strike caused sickness, etc.

The UK is still fairly well off in TW2000 terms (although I'm sat right on a marauder group area!).

Where are you looking at basing the game and I'll see what bits I have written up for there.

[Raellus]

IIRC, the average population of Europe (including Russia) is down about 50%, c.2000. Some areas, like Poland, might be down a lot more, while others, like France, would be down much less.

Sounds like the UK was hit particularly hard.

[Bullet Magnet]

I saw in T2013 that 90% of the world pop was gone and was just wondering what the split would be across the world.


90%? That seems a bit much. Does T2013 have an all out nuke-fest?

Now, the 1st edition timeline, as I recall, has the figure at around 50% dying by the time it all plays out.
It's already been said, that some countries would be hit harder, ad others not so much.
Hmm, this might be an interesting project, figuring out what kind of casualties each nation around the globe suffers. Last time I ran a T2K game was around 15 years ago. At that time I just used population numbers from a 1972 atlas I have. Since 2000AD had a word population around 6 billion, and my atlas had a world population figure of around 3.6 billion, I decided at the time it was close enough.
The more I think about this, the less I'm sure anyone could come up with accurate numbers however. So many variables: the extent of nuclear damage, death by sickness, starvation, rioting in the affected areas.... Still, it might be interesting.

[Added after the original post] Back when I had my game going, I had compared the numbers in my 1972 atlas to more recent (at the time, early 1990s) populations and noticed many African nations had significantly larger increases in population than the US or other western nations. At the time I figured disease and starvation across the continent would explain the population drop, but since then I've realized those countries have had those problems, along with somewhat consistent warfare, for decades.
So, what are your thoughts on the African nations in T2K and their populations? I'm also thinking some of these issues could come up regarding Latin American nations as well.

[RN7]

Urban and strategicaly important centres in most European countries, North America and the Soviet Union got the worst of the nuclear strikes, although China seems to have also got a battering from Soviet tactical nukes and Korea, Israel and some Middle Eastern sites are also targeted. India and Pakistan are also likely to have gone nuclear and I think its mentioned somewhere. 2300AD would also include Australia and Japan.

Latin America, Africa and some parts of Asia get off lightly, although conventional warfare, famine and disease are likely to be rampant.

In Europe the best places to be are France, Switzerland and Sweden.

[Legbreaker]

As an example (V1.0) of just how much difference between areas there is, Selesia in southern Poland suffered 97% casualties while the US was something like 50%.
Countries not directly involved it the war and far from any fighting are likely to have been only lightly touched - maybe 10% losses due to famine and disease.
As the warring countries are also the most populated on the whole, the global reduction might run at about 50-60% (wild guess on my part) possibly more depending on just how badly China with it's billions of people was hit.

[atiff]

A few references relating to all this

- Eastern European Sourcebook (IIRC) says Poland went from 36 million population to 9 million (25%)
- Leg's note of only 3% left in Silesia is from Black Madonna, I think?

From Wikipedia: Fertilizer
Inorganic fertilizer use has also significantly supported global population growth — it has been estimated that almost half the people on the Earth are currently fed as a result of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use.
^ Erisman, Jan Willem; MA Sutton, J Galloway, Z Klimont, W Winiwarter (October 2008). "How a century of ammonia synthesis changed the world". Nature Geoscience 1 (10): 636. doi:10.1038/ngeo325. http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilkins/energy/Resources/Essays/ngeo325.pdf.xpdf. Retrieved 22 October 2010.


90%? That seems a bit much. Does T2013 have an all out nuke-fest?

The T2013 book (p59) has the breakdown on how they removed 90% of people from planet Earth. Most were not due to nuclear effects. Paraphrasing from the book:
- 1/3: starvation, dehydration, exposure (i.e., lack of sustenance and shelter)
- 1/3: disease (e.g., cholera) and lack of health services; plus influenza epidemic
- 1/10: combinatoin of: self-inflicted; existing medical conditions; and misadventure/accident
- 1/20: civil disorder and violence
- 1/20: direct and secondary nuclear effects
- 1/40: conventional warfare

[Tegyrius]

90%? That seems a bit much. Does T2013 have an all out nuke-fest?

Not really. We postulated a relatively limited exchange - but a near-total social and industrial collapse. Somewhere around here, I have the breakdown of causes of death we provided. We were a lot more cynical than the GDW team about the modern population's ability to survive "on your own."

Aha. I think this is an early draft, but I've posted it before. Not sure if it was here or elsewhere:

Here are our estimates, assuming a global population of 7 billion at the beginning of 2012. GMs should feel free to adjust these numbers based on their own views of Armageddon.

Public health failure: 2.8 billion (40% of prewar population). The widespread destruction of public utilities by both conventional warfare and EMP effects led to a global breakdown in public health and sanitation systems. Personal hygiene and disease prevention were low priorities for populations concerned with food and shelter - until the plagues began. Cholera, typhoid, bubonic plague, and other diseases ran rampant in both surviving communities and refugee settlements.

Starvation, dehydration, and exposure: 1.7 billion (24%). The single greatest killer during the Last Year was not bullet, blade, fire, or atom, but the breakdown of most nations' ability to provide sustenance and shelter for their inhabitants.

Civil disorder: 310 million (4.4%). Panicked desperation resulted in temporary but intense civil unrest in most heavily-populated areas. Across the globe, citizens cast off the mantle of civilization in favor of whatever actions they felt they needed to take to preserve their own lives. Repressed population groups also seized the opportunity to settle old scores, and violent crime flourished to levels unseen in centuries.

Secondary nuclear strike effects: 250 million (3.8%). Secondary casualties from the nuclear exchanges broke down into two groups. The first includes victims of radiation poisoning or related complications such as compromised immune systems. The second is comprised of individuals who received physical injuries that were immediately survivable but ultimately (after weeks or months) fatal. This total does not include the vastly-increased cancer rate that current survivors will experience over the coming decades.

Self-inflicted: 240 million (3.4%). An astonishing number of people died by their own hands, either to avoid a worse fate or because they weren't psychologically capable of accepting continued existence after the Last Year. Precise causes of death were split evenly among action (deliberate suicide or requests for euthanasia) and inaction (simply lying down and waiting to die). Self-inflicted deaths with religious motivations comprise a significant minority of these totals.

Existing medical conditions: 230 million (3.3%). Modern medicine extended the life spans of millions of people around the globe. In the absence of functioning hospitals and pharmaceutical production, conditions that were otherwise minor annoyances with regular maintenance became terminal in a matter of months. Specific ailments responsible for these deaths ranged from AIDS and kidney failure to diabetes and asthma. This total also includes age-related deaths at both ends of the spectrum (infant and elderly).

Misadventure and accidents: 210 million (3%). Failures of overstressed technology, errors in judgement, and simple human stupidity contributed to a significant number of fatalities. Many of these would have been survivable had a prewar level of trauma care been available. An even greater number were the direct result of individuals lacking the basic crisis management skills to get themselves and others through life-threatening situations.

Influenza: 180 million (2.8%). The H5N1 ("bird flu") pandemic that caused such concern in the early 2000s never materialized on a global scale, though it was responsible for an undetermined number of deaths in Southeast Asia. Instead, the influenza strain that swept the globe over the winter of 2012-13 was a mutation of H3N2 ("swine flu"), a relative of the virus that caused the 20th century's Spanish Flu pandemic. Had international transportation not already curtailed by that time, outbreaks likely would have been much more widespread and severe.

Conventional warfare: 170 million (2.4%). The Twilight War erupted with such speed that the world's militaries had little opportunity to build their forces up to Cold War levels. At the beginning of 2012, 0.4% of the world's population - some 28 million people - was engaged in some form of military service, including millions of irregular insurgents. As always, the vast majority of war-related casualties were civilians rather than soldiers.

Nuclear strikes: 75 million (1.1%). This figure includes primary casualties: people who were critically injured or instantly killed by the direct blast, thermal, or radiation effects of nuclear detonations. A small amount of this total includes victims who were not exposed to blast effects but were killed by the EMP-induced failure of technology; most such casualties died in mass transportation accidents or were reliant on medical life support equipment.

Natural disasters: 2 million (0.3%). Earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis didn't stop for the Last Year. However, even without relief efforts that mitigated the death tolls of previous natural disasters, the tolls exacted by these events paled in comparison to the damage humanity did to itself.

... of course, I immediately turned around and dropped the casualty numbers to something like 63% in the Czech Republic setting material. So YMMV.

- C.

[Webstral]

Petroleum and inorganic fertilizers are musts for modern mechanized agriculture. They aren't necessary for supporting a large population or a high population density, as China's history illustrates. However, they are necessary for the maintenance of a modern society and a modern economy in which a small part of the labor force is involved in food production. If you put 75% of the labor force back into food production, shortages of almost any resource can be mitigated with labor. One of the principle variables is how quickly a nation can be transitioned and what happens with those who don't make the transition. Either way, we're talking about the end of the world as we know it. Some nations are in a better position to transition the majority of their labor pool into food production using labor-intensive methods--if in fact there is a transition at all.