Ensuring post-apocalyptic survival at TL8?

[vicky_molokh]

Greetings, all!

Yes, the question is somewhat 2012-inspired. Assume a hypothetical situation:

You're in charge (either single-handedly or in a council of unspecified size, up to but no larger than the number of planned survivors) of making sure a small part of humanity (and civilization of at least TL7) survives. The new place to live will be roughly Earth-like in climate and ecology.

For an absolutely clean and simple experiment, assume this is a colony on an Earth-like world after Earth's destruction, but disregard the cost of actually launching the craft and landing on the world - only putting up the colony. For other examples, you can also assume a Perimeter-style dimension-hopping base that shifted to an IW-ish Earth where humanity never developed.

In any case, what would be the minimum population (which would be, based on some googling, probably slightly above 200 for genetic reasons, but probably more like 1k+ for other reasons), cash cost, and material requirements of such a project? I.e. to maintain TL7 or even TL8 on the 'new world' in no more than one generation.

This more of a thought experiment, though a civilian space colonization program would be a fitting solution too.

Thanks in advance!

[Agramer]

I think you would need around 2000 people there.All adult pairs 1000 males +1000 females....due need for population growth speed.

Starting 2 years would be spent in hard labour of setting things up.Next 3-8 years,depending on climate,would be spent in consolidating things,moving from makeshift homes to sturdier ones,"building civilisation"..from plumbing,electricity,kindergartens(very important due labour needs),schools....made to last.

From 5th year on baby-boom is to be expected and enforced.Anywhere from 50-70% of female population will be pregnant.On TL7/8 artificial fertilization would be used to speed process up and more importantly to gain on genetic diversity (If cloning is available all families would be required to foster few clone kids).Most likely minimum number of children would be prescribed per family,anywhere from 4+,somewhat again depending on climate and other conditions of life.

Targeted goal for baby boom would be minimum increasing twofold population/generation though more likely it would be up to 3 fold increase.

Major problem such community would face in early years is food.So you could expect 65-70% of population becoming farmers.Further 20% would be miners,due extensive need of higher TLs for mineral ores.5% would be in science/education(preserving TL knowledge) and 4-9 in construction,with 1% in exploration/security/hunting....
This numbers are very rough and there would be much overlap,community projects pulling on whole or part of population base,wast majority of people chosen would be multiedisciplined....

Than Big question is:

How much technology,spare parts can they bring with them? ...

If unlimited (as theyre in bunker on Earth in stasis for 20y before opening vault) than things look peachy for them.

If theyre going with starships,multidimensional devices...etc..anything restricting amount of gear they can bring with them than ...

....First generation will have to downscale their TL by 2-4 TLs depending on discipline....than they will have to extract ores,build tools to build tools to build tools to start producing their TL stuff.Process could last several generations depending on area/discipline/science involved.

Thats from top of my head..interesting topic though :))

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Agramer

From 5th year on baby-boom is to be expected and enforced.
[ . . . ]
....First generation will have to downscale their TL by 2-4 TLs depending on discipline....

But that's the failure to meet the primary requirements of the challenge. The question is how much people, money and materials (mass) is required to avoid dropping the TL by more than 1 by the time the new generation grows up.

As I said, disregard the transportation costs themselves if they're fiddly. Just name your requirements for manpower, funding and mass. I bet many people would be interested in this scenario from a Spaceships PoV, but I think being more generic is better.

At TL9 and TL10 this isn't much of a challenge because of 3D-printers and Infomorphic lifeforms (which basically reduce survival minimum to that of a Von Neumann machine with the data to build a bioroid and some ghosts archived somewhere).

[Agramer]

Originally Posted by Molokh

But that's the failure to meet the primary requirements of the challenge. The question is how much people, money and materials (mass) is required to avoid dropping the TL by more than 1 by the time the new generation grows up.

Than ,Id say 1mil+ City.

Though there isnt any city in world that could sustain its TL by itself.

So you need:

a)1*Major University (With 2 dozen different universities encompassed in it)
-something like, today with 40+K students
Example is some small country central university like "Zagrebačko Sveučilište" (Universities of Zagreb)...which encompass 95% of Uni level education in Croatia (Only thing missing there to my knowledge is Naval university,though it does include shipbuilding)

-so essentially some smaller Countrys centralised Capitol is needed

b)All major and minor industries

c)Something on level of Million+ tonnes of spare parts,until some very minor stuff dont get set up for production

d)A LOT of people to run whole mess( 1 mil as probably minimum)

e)A lot of food reserves until your production is properly set up(some stuff takes years after planting to give fruit:Wine,Olives,Apples....)
-also from where will you get rubber...etc (if In north hemisphere)..if synthetic...again new techs needed

And with all above I think youd be lucky to keep your TL in full,since there is no place on earth(except Amasonian tribes,which are beside point in this discussion) that has everything "homemade"...so specialised parts will start giving way to wear&tear and some of it you wont be able to replace no time soon and you will have to "reinvent"(or refabricate) whole technological base to 2homemade" one.

[Agramer]

this is alternate history series 1st book 1632 about some small West Virginia town getting transported from today to 1632 year.

Interesting parts are with retooling to make tools to make tools and problems about some stuff we take for granted today.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Molokh

In any case, what would be the minimum population

Tens or hundreds of thousands. As a starting point, just to maintain all the knowledge which makes up TL8, you'd need something like the faculty of a large university. Say, 2000-3000 people. They can only spend part of their time doing useful work, so you'd have to at least partly mirror them with more specialists, so say 4000-5000 high-tech specialists. You'll need several (ten? twenty?) times that many to keep the industries they support actually going; that 4-5k includes the engineers who design power plants and automobiles, but you need a lot more people to build and maintain them. Then you need teachers for the next generation of children (a separate set of specialized skills), janitors and other manual laborers, bureaucrats (I include public servants like police and firefighters in that category), and farmers to feed them all. Each is a small percentage of the total population, but it adds up.

On the plus side, you've got a large enough population base that genetic diversity pretty much takes care of itself.

Originally Posted by Molokh

material requirements

A ready-made city with a very diverse range of chemical plants and factories (from microchips to consumer electronics to heavy machinery to aerospace), or one which can be constructed quickly from prefab materials, plus food supplies for a year or two, livestock (heavy reliance on animal power is probably inevitable for a few years until power generation gets up to speed). Don't forget that they'd need to be well situated with regard to water supply and farm land.

Originally Posted by Molokh

cash cost

Lots.

[Buzzardo]

Summarizing TBC's post and putting a real comparator on it, you'd need to transplant a city the size of Albuquerque (only with a far more diverse manufacturing base). It'd cost at least a couple trillion dollars (leaving aside transportation costs), possibly several trillion. But yeah, genetic diversity is not a concern.

[riprock]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

Tens or hundreds of thousands. As a starting point, just to maintain all the knowledge which makes up TL8, you'd need something like the faculty of a large university. Say, 2000-3000 people. They can only spend part of their time doing useful work, so you'd have to at least partly mirror them with more specialists, so say 4000-5000 high-tech specialists.

I strongly disagree with this estimate.

You don't need all the departments.

You don't need the math department. You don't need the statistics department. (Are pure mathematicians vital to the frontier?

"Hey, Klaus, now that we're on an alien world, let's devote our lives to finding a more elegant proof for Fermat's Last Theorem."

"No, no, John, I want to paraconsistent logics!")


You don't need the dance department, the theatre department, or the interpretive basket-weaving department. (Basket-weaving is good for the soul, but the engineering wizards will just do crunchy tech for eight hours each day, and then basket-weave for an hour or two as a relaxation method.) You need the core faculty of a vocational/technical college, not the entire faculty of a university.

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

You'll need several (ten? twenty?) times that many to keep the industries they support actually going; that 4-5k includes the engineers who design power plants and automobiles, but you need a lot more people to build and maintain them. Then you need teachers for the next generation of children (a separate set of specialized skills), janitors and other manual laborers, bureaucrats (I include public servants like police and firefighters in that category), and farmers to feed them all.

Again, you don't need designers. Design work need not be a full-time job.

You definitely don't need farmers at all. If you have full-time farmers, the colony will be very inefficient.

Consider the impact of earthships, raised-container greenhouses, "square foot" gardening, vertical gardening, aeroponics, hydroponics - every family can have enough space to grow its own food. Maintaining food crops and putting earthworms in the compost would be the vital home maintenance duties.

You don't need a sewage system that pipes the sludge out of each house and centralizes it - such a system would suck. You need each family to live in a Buckminster-Fuller-style earthship -- a hyper-efficient machine for living that will recycle their sewage into topsoil with trivially small labor input.


Say, five hundred people total.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Molokh

In any case, what would be the minimum population (which would be, based on some googling, probably slightly above 200 for genetic reasons, but probably more like 1k+ for other reasons), cash cost, and material requirements of such a project? I.e. to maintain TL7 or even TL8 on the 'new world' in no more than one generation.

Well, Space suggests 50 million people. It would probably be easier to preserve the knowledge for later use than to move enough people to actually maintain the use of TL 7-8 in a start-up colony with no contact with the mother world.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Well, Space suggests 50 million people. It would probably be easier to preserve the knowledge for later use than to move enough people to actually maintain the use of TL 7-8 in a start-up colony with no contact with the mother world.

Well, storing knowledge is probably a non-issue.

50 million is a scary number - I was hoping the answer would be no larger than Iceland (in fact, I was hoping the most pessimistic answer would be 100k).

If things are so bad, I guess it would never be an interesting premise for a hard-science scenario. (BTW, reminds me of Alpha Centauri, whose realism is often debated from both sides . . .)

And now I guess that the only way to get any concrete numbers is Spaceships . . . which is good, in a way.