Disclaimer: Nothing of what follows is intended either to initiate or sustain a “canon feud”. Where interpretations of undocumented items, like the number of survivors in California or a specific region of a state, differ I think it’s worthwhile to have a conversation about the thought process leading to the differences of opinion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TrailerParkJawa
As for population I personally se the bay area far less than 3 million. More like a few hundred thousand but That just my vision
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Certainly, I would not try to shout down your vision. If “a few hundred thousand” means about 300,000 (often, a few is three), then we’re talking a tenfold difference—rather substantial. I do think that the difference in our numbers is the basis for a conversation.
One of the factors I try to bear in mind when I am doing the creative work of assigning population levels is the total number of survivors as given in Howling Wilderness. The total loss of population through July 2000 is 52%, amounting to 135 million people. The surviving 48% amount to about 125 million. The population will drop even further by early 2001, but I want to focus on the July 2000 population for now.
By the end of 1999—certainly by the beginning of 2000—the food situation will have stabilized a good deal. Locally, there will be shortages. However, the pre-war food largely will be gone or will have reached its expiration date by the end of 1998. There will be exceptions, of course—even important exceptions. By and large, though, the population of 2000 will be living off the 1999 harvest and the means of local production put into place since early 1998. The bulk of the dying from starvation will have happened already. The people still alive in 2000 will have been eating post-Exchange food for at least a year. However one divides and organizes the [American] survivors, in July 2000 there are about 125 million of them eating food grown, hunted, or gathered since the Exchange.
The San Francisco Bay Area (hereafter referred to as the Bay Area) has a pre-war population of about 10 million. Southern California has a population of about 15 million, leaving 6-7 million more Californians scattered throughout the rest of the state (by 1997 population estimates).
From a population estimate standpoint, many big cities have taken massive losses in population. Los Angeles was wiped out. We don’t know about San Diego, but the occupation by Mexico and the almost certain loss of water would have a very detrimental effect on the population level. The other nuclear strikes against targets in southern California, coupled with the disruption to water supplies and the movement of refugees, would have killed millions—quite possibly more than 10 million.
Boston is virtually destroyed by civil unrest following the nuke strikes, even though Boston doesn’t get hit. Manhattan loses about 95% of its population by the end of 2000. Philadelphia is destroyed. I could go on and on.
Somewhere in there, the numbers have to add up to 125 million in July 2000 if one is to go with the pre-drought numbers given in Howling Wilderness. I’m inclined to do so. However, I’ve already assigned some numbers to my own work in addition to or replacing the figures given in Howling Wilderness.
According to Howling Wilderness, South Carolina suffered a 30% reduction in population through 1999. We don’t know how many more have died by July 2000. Call it another 10% of the pre-war population, and South Carolina reaches mid-2000 in slightly better shape than the national average.
Also according to Howling Wilderness, the populations of Vermont and New Hampshire have dropped to pre-colonial levels. I presume this means “pre-colonial” as we were all taught in grade school, not the pre-colonial levels that were so dense there was no room for European colonizing until European diseases had run their course. I have chosen to revise the population estimates upward to about 30% in Vermont, 35% in New Hampshire, and 40% in Maine.
The pre-war population of Rhode Island has dropped by 80%, from about a million to 200k. [Howling Wilderness]. We don’t know what the population of Massachusetts is.
In Arizona, the pre-war population of 4.5 million is reduced by 80% to 900,000 [Thunder Empire]. Of these, 500k live in the area controlled by Fort Huachuca, 100k are scattered throughout greater Phoenix (revised upwards from previous estimates), 75k live in greater Flagstaff, 50k live on Navajo lands, 50k live in Yuma, and about 125k are scattered throughout the rest of the state.
In Nevada, the pre-war population of 1.7 million is reduced by 85% to 255k, which is pretty much the pre-war population of Nevada outside of Las Vegas and Reno [Silver Shogunate]. Las Vegas is a ghost town, but Reno struggles on with a fraction of its pre-war population. Almost everybody else lives along the Humboldt River or in the agricultural area in the south central part of the state.
In New Mexico, the pre-war population of about 1.7 million has been reduced by about 80%, leaving about 350k people in the state [Roadrunners]. Albuquerque is gone, and most of the other major population centers are deserted or severely depopulated.
With all of these population reductions taken together, some places have to be less hard-hit than others if the US population is to be 125 million in July 2000. This is one reason I haven’t emptied out the Bay Area. I could see, however, moving more people to the periphery of the Bay Area (thus including them in the count or not depending on where you draw the lines). If 60% of the population of the Bay Area is dead, that leaves 4 million to work with. Move a million to the Central Valley (no mean task), and you’re left with 3 million in the Bay Area. The Delta has an abundance of good farmland and a need for labor with the end of mechanized agriculture. If (big if) the needs of the farming community can be filled by the needs of urbanites to move from the paved-over areas of the Bay Area to the Delta, Napa, west Marin, San Jose and areas south, Pacifica (for fishing) and even southern Sonoma and areas north of Salinas, then a lot of lives can be saved. I know I’m asking for a lot. This is why 60% of the population is dead. Moving hundreds of thousands of people 100 miles is no mean feat. The young, the elderly, and the infirm aren’t going to make it.
So I could see reducing the number of people living in the Bay Area itself to 2 million with the proviso that 2 million refugees have survived to trek to the periphery of the Bay Area or the Central Valley as of July 2000, where they provide labor that once was performed by machines. Along the way, as many as 2 million refugees have perished. This leaves 4 million to die in place in the Bay Area—still a staggering number.
A natural question is how all of this is organized. I’d like to get some opinions on this one. For now, my kids are waking up from their naps and need to be changed and fed.