Population fail @ disco

[Blodo]

Planet Manhattan (and many other Sirius capitals) has every square inch of land covered with cities (at least, that's what I read). An entire planet with the population density of a modern city- that's at least ten billion people on Manhattan alone.

Will people stop with this misconception and read the bloody infocard? It does NOT say Manhattan is completely covered with cities (it's not), it says it is DOTTED with cities. That is a vast difference and one that needs to be emphasized and taken into account. The population of Manhattan is 220 million, which seems reasonable enough assuming a focus on growth which the colony government would likely have, and an exponential population growth. Any higher than that and the explanation for the unbelievable growth needs to become unnatural.

Remember, exponential growth needs to build up momentum in order to grow really fast. Humanity doubled its population in the last fifty years, from 3 to 6 billion. The amount of colonists that landed on Manhattan was something around 50,000. You do the math.

[Friday]

Working backwards, to end up with a population of 220,000,000 (excluding major disasters not mentioned in the history of Manhattan), that planet would had to have had a population growth rate of 1.055%.

This is based on a starting population of 50,000 - and 800 years of consistent average growth.

This compares favourably with growth rates given from Wiki sources:

United States 0.97%
Chile 1.00%
Argentina 1.00%
Hong Kong 1.00%
Australia 1.01%
Lebanon 1.05%
Manhattan 1.055%
Cyprus 1.06%

In fact, the growth rate is MORE than what would be expected from a U.S.A-comparable nation. Must be something in the water...

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[Domjan]

But not everyone lives in metropolises, there are towns, villages etc...220million/capital planet is just unrealistic.

Exactly exactly, my char comes from a small village.