Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Whatever people you take, they later will be divided to warriors and workers (slaves)? It's never changes.

The simple fact is you take an account of every person dead at the hands of another person in history, 95% of those hands belonged to young men.

where do you get those numbers from?... and how do we assume they did it own their own free will and weren´t forced to do so during war?... and history means which time scale in this statistic?

 Chongara wrote:

 Steve steveson wrote:

 Chongara wrote:

 Viktor von Domm wrote:
a group as small as 50 peeps...humanity is done for...reproduction rate won´t be ever enough to have the planet repopulated again... and if...because the remaining were really bored and did nothing else than hop on each other, it still would mean we only get something with mainly teeth as the gene pool would be so laid dry after the next three or ten generations... it wouldn´t matter at all...

Very true. Even my assumption of 1000 people is a pretty shallow gene pool and that's with active management. You'd need a few thousand if you wanted a viable population without intrusive controls on who you have kids with and when.

Honestly if we've got a Stargate and the backing of the US Government and we're really interested in having a backup, I can't imagine it being sensible to have anything but a pre-built site with room for ~5000, with 1-2k in regular residence. Generators, farming, resource extraction and transportation etc... should already be in be place before we have to move the full backup population over.

The minimum viable population for humans is somewhere between 150 and 3000, depending on who you ask and how you calculate it.

As to who, I would say you need as many experts and specialists as possible.

Off the top of my head I would want, doctors, nurses, engineers, builders, plumbers, electricians, mechanics, farmers, hunters, fishermen, carpenters, chemists & pharmacologists as a priority. People who have practical skills that can be used to make things, fix things and do useful stuff. Probably a gunsmith and a butcher too.

If numbers are limited I would not want lots of military people in that number as people have suggested. Possibly one person who has some understanding of deference and security, but I think I would prefer an experienced police officer to do that. Ultimately this would not be a military campaign, but a re-building situation, and you need experts who can teach others, and as much redundancy as you can get in your skill spread.

I think the real answer is "whoever the hell you can get" but if we are talking about "build a bunker and fill it with who you need" I would not be looking for military. I would however include someone who is very senior (a high ranking politician or civil servant) who can take charge and direct, as long as they were under orders that the first thing to do is to organize proper leadership, which may or may not be them, but has the power to immediately take charge and implement this.

The number I've heard for the minimum population you want to have a nice robust diverse sampling without needing artificial muddling that is managed pairings is ~2000. Maybe that's bunk, maybe not. At any rate I think if we can avoid it we don't want ot be going for "minimum viable" we want to aim to be well above the minimum healthy, robust and redudant.

I'd also agree on the military point. In a universe where our little pocket of population are the only humans in existence there just isn't any need for a military. Some general peackeeping, police would be nice but if we go with my idea and don't allow any males under 35 or so, the need for them is greatly reduced. You don't need anyone to keep the peace when nobody wants to break it in the first place, when you don't have any young men there isn't anyone to break the peace. Pretty much all social instability & unrest is caused by young men. Without them around we can count on things to stay basically peaceful barring huge unforeseen external pressures.

you realize older people commit crimes all the time and create more GLOBAL instability then all the 16-24 year olds combined

 Ghazkuul wrote:

you realize older people commit crimes all the time and create more GLOBAL instability then all the 16-24 year olds combined

If you're talking national-level organized violence, then sure it's largely older individuals that have the power required to instigate big conflicts.

However if we're talking a small scale population that's more/less a single organizational unit: A few thousand people in our new colony, young men will be the biggest destabilizing force. 90%+ of murderers are young men. They basically have a monopoly an escalating personal conflicts into cyclical vendettas and physical retaliation, sexual assault, and casual belligerence. What I'm concerned with is violent crime by individuals and small groups, often for personal reasons. This is what would destabilize our young colony and it's the sort of thing that's almost exclusively done by young males.

 Chongara wrote:

 Ghazkuul wrote:

you realize older people commit crimes all the time and create more GLOBAL instability then all the 16-24 year olds combined

If you're talking national-level organized violence, then sure it's largely older individual that have the power required to instigate big conflicts.

However if we're talking a small scale population that's more/less a single organizational unit: A few thousand people in our new colony young men will be the biggest destabilizing force. 90%+ of murderers are young men. They basically have a monopoly an escalating personal conflicts into cyclical vendettas and physical retaliation, sexual assault, and casual belligerence. What I'm concerned with is violent crime by individuals and small groups, often for personal reasons. This is what would destabilize our young colony and it's the sort of thing that's almost exclusively done by young males.

Most crime and "trouble making" is caused by poverty or idleness. Of which there will be close to none in this situation. Everyone will be too busy trying to survive to cause these kinds of issues. Except possibly when it comes to competing for mates. But it won't be the huge issue you think it will.

Human society functioned just fine in small bands, all of which contained young men, for thousands of years. In fact, the portion of young men has only gone down since people are living longer. It used to be you were lucky to see 50, and most would barely make it to 40.

You do want some older men to give some experience, but its perfectly fine to take young men in their 20s.

If I were rebuilding society....

I'd take me, my breeders, some serfs, and my half-life warboys.

Not to mention that in a post apocalypse world where medicine is scarce you are going to want a young healthy population to work the most and not suffer as much as older individuals.

I am with Reds8n and I vote for Kate Upton.

More seriously, the genetic diversity problem can easily be solved by frozen gametes.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

More seriously, the genetic diversity problem can easily be solved by frozen gametes.

But should NOT be relied upon as it requires some relatively complicated technology and has many points of failure.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I am with Reds8n and I vote for Kate Upton.

More seriously, the genetic diversity problem can easily be solved by frozen gametes.

Too Risky!

Even a short power outage, minor handling error, earthquake or severe weather event could wipe those out. You don't want to be putting all your eggs in one fragile, power-dependent basket.

If you have a sufficient number of fertile men and women, all of your eggs would not be in one basket, but you would be able to achieve a much higher degree of genetic diversity than whatever your living population offerd.

Have any of you read Seveneves by Neal Stephenson? The first
2/3s of the book is how humanity tries to survive an apocalyptic
event, the last third is the result. Fascinating stuff.

Ive not read it but I think I might.

Personally, I would take as many people as I could, and as much machinery (agriculture and raw material gatering and processing) as possible. Setting up food and raw material conversion would be a priority. Once your food source and the ability to create technologically advanced materials and items is secured, the reliance on old school survivalist skills is significantly reduced and the continuance of civilised society becomes much more likely. Imagine a human based von neumann machine

Based on this, I would only want a handful of survival experts, mostly as a training resource in the short term and to help identify safe locations/plants/etc in the long term, and as a fall back plan incase the technology breaks down.

I would have a similar small pool of experts in agriculture and livestock for similar reasons as the survival people; to teach others practical skills and to manage this aspect of the colony.

The rest of the colony would ideally be made up of reasonably skilled workers, scientists, engineers, skilled trades, etc.

People would be picked based on field, skill, and abilities to work in a team and also teach; survival of human knowledge and skill will rely on being able to pass it on and work both at a practical and theoretical basis. Ideally families with children to increase chance of stability.

As above, I would choose a small police force for defense (assuming a reasonably hospitable world) and general security. I would hesitate putting in soldiers.

Ideally frozen gametes of both human and livestock to rapidly boost population and diversity.

The people they picked WERE a combination of Scientists and Survivalists.

They were a large group of MILITARY, protecting the Scientists and Doctors.

And, just because you are a Scientist, does NOT mean you are "Tech Dependent."

What is important is protecting the people who know WHAT needs to be re-built (and how to re-build it), when they have to work from nearly nothing.

Science is a methodology that is very complex, and very difficult to learn well.

Which is why there is a VAST difference between the Computer Scientists we have running research programs and the Code Monkeys who churn out billions of lines of code every year, despite having only an Associates Degree, or a Coding Certificate.

And that is in a piddling Science degree like CS.

When you get to the REAL Sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Biology), then you get a LOT more than just people who know how to use a machine.

These people, combined with mathematicians would be the fastest means to re-building a civilization, because they are the foundations of Engineering.

You take just Engineers, and you have no Sciences to further their knowledge. You basically stagnate.

But, if you take the Scientists, Engineering is just applying Sciences on/in Scale.

And, yes, you would want to take a few Entertainers.

They would be very important.


MB

I would just point out that engineering and engineers are scientists too; unfortunately the title has been coopted to mean "anyone who can hold a spanner".

Is this apocalypse one that involves widespread destruction of infrastructure and advanced technology?

In Seveneves, the apocalyptic event is something explodes the
moon. Everyone think it's fascinating, but then the scientists
figure out that a large amount of debris is eventually going to
ruin earth's atmosphere in the span of two years and so humanity
has to get its act together in that time.

well if we loose the moon we have more pressing problems than just loosing over a timespan of two years our atmosphere... spin and course of the earth would change... i bet that temperature would shift in an unfriendly way, and with the change in gravitation we would get floods and quakes amass...i doubt that anything substantial could be built or planned to get humanity as such to somewhere else...(read a helpful part of humanity...)

Let's make it simple

EMP detonationS
Massive Solar Flare

Something that wipes out all electronics

When preparing for an unknown cataclysm- you'd need learners, and teachers. The finest mechanic in the world is less desirable than a decent mechanic who can train others- and wouldn't mind learning how to farm in their off day. You need people with enough skills to maintain technology as long as you can, and transition into a lower technology as the need arises. Along the way, you must ensure that specialties are not lost. Particularly to an accident. If there's an incident with a scythe and your designated farmer goes down... is that it, or can 3 cross trained specialist make it through to harvest?

Identifying folk like this is more difficult. You really want people currently passing along their skills, while simultaneously acquiring new ones, ideally in very different disciplines.

Why you go to the libraries and store the books one would need eventually

 Jihadin wrote:
Let's make it simple

EMP detonationS
Massive Solar Flare

Something that wipes out all electronics

Something like that would be hard for western nations but would be reasonably easy to recover from. Especially given all the hardened systems around.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jihadin wrote:
Why you go to the libraries and store the books one would need eventually

There is only so much you can learn from books. Sometimes you need someone to show and explain things, talk through concepts, etc.

 malfred wrote:
Have any of you read Seveneves by Neal Stephenson? The first
2/3s of the book is how humanity tries to survive an apocalyptic
event, the last third is the result. Fascinating stuff.

Sounds awesome.

I'd prefer to just have everyone gone, cleanse humanity with fire and get it over with.

 stanman wrote:
I'd prefer to just have everyone gone, cleanse humanity with fire and get it over with.

And onto the government watchlist you go...

This site had a fun article on the subject of guys who go on about how great it'll be when the apocalypse comes, because they'll totally be so prepared and it'll be frickin awesome!

Note, the article's called "The Post-Apocalyptic World Sucks Balls"... It does make the point, if you're so eager to experience such a scenario, then take a wee trip to a developing world's ghetto. The video games don't really put across the stink of all those shanty towns. =P

 Wyrmalla wrote:

 stanman wrote:
I'd prefer to just have everyone gone, cleanse humanity with fire and get it over with.

And onto the government watchlist you go...

This site had a fun article on the subject of guys who go on about how great it'll be when the apocalypse comes, because they'll totally be so prepared and it'll be frickin awesome!

Note, the article's called "The Post-Apocalyptic World Sucks Balls"... It does make the point, if you're so eager to experience such a scenario, then take a wee trip to a developing world's ghetto. The video games don't really put across the stink of all those shanty towns. =P

spend 6 months in afghanistan and you will never want that to spread

 Wyrmalla wrote:

 stanman wrote:
I'd prefer to just have everyone gone, cleanse humanity with fire and get it over with.

And onto the government watchlist you go...

This site had a fun article on the subject of guys who go on about how great it'll be when the apocalypse comes, because they'll totally be so prepared and it'll be frickin awesome!

Note, the article's called "The Post-Apocalyptic World Sucks Balls"... It does make the point, if you're so eager to experience such a scenario, then take a wee trip to a developing world's ghetto. The video games don't really put across the stink of all those shanty towns. =P

Speaking off, did you guys hear Fallout 4 is gonna come with Scratch and Sniff cards?

 Ghazkuul wrote:

 Wyrmalla wrote:

 stanman wrote:
I'd prefer to just have everyone gone, cleanse humanity with fire and get it over with.

And onto the government watchlist you go...

This site had a fun article on the subject of guys who go on about how great it'll be when the apocalypse comes, because they'll totally be so prepared and it'll be frickin awesome!

Note, the article's called "The Post-Apocalyptic World Sucks Balls"... It does make the point, if you're so eager to experience such a scenario, then take a wee trip to a developing world's ghetto. The video games don't really put across the stink of all those shanty towns. =P

spend 6 months in afghanistan and you will never want that to spread

Six months eh
36 months in Afghanistan
24 months in Iraq

Which can be
Afghanistan = Battlefield Earth
Iraq = Thunder Dome

Edit

Let's go with a good size asteroid nailing some country putting the Earth in a semi winter freeze eh

Is it bad that when playing Fallout 3, I always wanted to join the Enclave? Screw the Brotherhood of Steel, let me join and fight for the Enclave!

 Jihadin wrote:
Let's make it simple

EMP detonationS
Massive Solar Flare

Something that wipes out all electronics

Well, nothing on that order would wipe over everything. I'm sure the government has plenty of spare computers safely squirreled away in EMP shielded bunkers. And even if every electronic component was wiped, it wouldn't be too difficult for many people to bodge functioning circuits back together to get the system running again. It might take a few years to get back to where we were, and our markets would totally collapse, but it wouldn't mean we'd be back to the stone age.