battlestar_blog: Colonial Population

Canadave (

mencc1701) wrote in

battlestar_blog,
@ 2008-05-05 01:09:00

Colonial Population
So I was bored tonight, and so I decided to make a chart of the Colonial population from "33" up until "The Road Less Traveled". I used the numbers in Wikipedia's episode list, so it's as complete as I can make it, barring those few episodes where the population is unknown. So for those interested, click the cut.

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	gdg 2008-05-05 05:14 am UTC (link)
	wow.. this is really cool :) (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mencc1701 2008-05-05 05:50 am UTC (link)
	Glad you liked it. :) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	sjwashere 2008-05-05 05:53 am UTC (link)
	They need to start having babies...like yesterday! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mencc1701 2008-05-05 05:55 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, there are a couple spots where the count goes up by one or two, presumably to account for that, but it's a very small amount, relative to the losses. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	fate_challenger 2008-05-05 05:55 am UTC (link)
	That big drop is from when they were on New Caprica, right? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mencc1701 2008-05-05 05:56 am UTC (link)
	That'd be it. The other two being the Astral Queen and the battle in the nebula. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	crossoverman 2008-05-05 10:26 am UTC (link)
	Astral Queen? You mean Cloud Nine? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	mencc1701 2008-05-05 05:12 pm UTC (link)
	No, actually, I meant the Olympic Carrier, not the Astral Queen. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	moonlight_steel 2008-05-05 06:31 am UTC (link)
	I'm not sure I see this show ending anywhere in the realm of good... Sweet graph though (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mencc1701 2008-05-05 06:33 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, it's not an encouraging trend, is it? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	moonlight_steel 2008-05-05 06:42 am UTC (link)
	yeah I may be slightly worried (Reply to this) (Parent)

	privateskylark 2008-05-05 07:59 am UTC (link)
	I can't see anything? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mencc1701 2008-05-05 05:21 pm UTC (link)
	Should still be working... (Reply to this) (Parent)

	boudiceaborn 2008-05-05 09:10 am UTC (link)
	Nice. Is every tick an episode, or is the scale done by time? And I assume the one jump is when the Pegasus joined the fleet? I guess that big drop includes the Cloud Nine deaths as well as the deaths on New Caprica. It would be interesting to see how many died in the explosion versus the occupation and exodus. (Reply to this) (Thread)

mencc1701
2008-05-05 05:19 pm UTC (link)

Every tick is an episode. Unfortunately, it'd be a pain in the ass to try to work out the population by time... lol.

And my impression is the majority of the deaths were the Cloud Nine explosion. The population of New Caprica City was what? 39,000 or so, leaving another 2,500-3,000 to man the remaining ships in the fleet? Seems to me, then, that most of the loses came from Cloud Nine...

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	laharah 2008-05-05 09:25 am UTC (link)
	OMG! that's cool! :D and pretty scary! :( like Roslin said, they need to start having babies, or there are not going to be many people left ;) (Reply to this)

	nnaylime 2008-05-05 10:30 am UTC (link)
	Are there x values? I'm assuming the bump is Pegasus and the big drop is post Exodus while the second, smaller drop is is HtBiM? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mencc1701 2008-05-05 05:23 pm UTC (link)
	The x values are just the episodes. Bad graph presentation, I know, but I didn't think the information was terribly important and it just cluttered things up. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	the_justiner 2008-05-05 11:58 am UTC (link)
	very cool! but yeah, come on Laura, you said it yourself. START HAVING SOME BABIES. :D (Reply to this)

	mors_amor 2008-05-05 12:17 pm UTC (link)
	that was really cool. It wouldn't surprise if there is a big drop before they reach Earth. They need babies... Edited at 2008-05-05 12:17 pm UTC (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mencc1701 2008-05-05 05:13 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, by the time they reach Earth, they may lose as many as 15,000 from their original number... (Reply to this) (Parent)

	pangea_maru 2008-05-05 01:45 pm UTC (link)
	Very cool graph - thanks for doing this! Oh, and I'm no genetics expert, but do they even have enough people left to keep the human species viable (short of every woman in the fleet having a dozen kids?) (Reply to this) (Thread)

crwilley
2008-05-05 02:52 pm UTC (link)

In the real world, the human population may have been as low as 2000 at one point.

And every woman in the fleet having a dozen kids would create its own problems - they have finite space, and food has become scarce from time to time even with the population as it is. I'm not sure they want to establish a huge growth rate while they're still refugees. Maintain or slowly grow the population, and hope like heck that no other ships get destroyed.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	millari 2008-05-05 02:35 pm UTC (link)
	Wow, it's definitely not looking so good for the Colonials, species-wise. (Reply to this)

	liona5 2008-05-05 04:56 pm UTC (link)
	Mmmh,really interesting.They need babies. (Reply to this)

	cely 2008-05-05 06:05 pm UTC (link)
	Cool graph. Thanks for posting/sharing. (Reply to this)

	anneliese 2008-05-05 08:06 pm UTC (link)
	this is a weird request, but could you make another version in which the y-value at the origin is 0? I love this, btw. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mencc1701 2008-05-06 02:48 am UTC (link)
	Done and done. :) (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

anneliese
2008-05-06 05:03 am UTC (link)

omg you are so awesome!

Looking at this is interesting, because it makes the drops less dramatic. Still, it is clear that, at the rate of population decline in seasons 1-3, it would only take another 12 seasons for the human race to be extinct. Additionally, it appears that the rate of decrease has only steepened as time passes, given that the two most catastrophic events have occurred more recently. Of course, with only 3 major drops, it's hard to make generalizations like that.

One might also imagine that, since there appear to be few elderly people in the fleet (which makes sense--the elderly would be less likely to travel, and less able to get to escape vessels quickly during both the initial apocalypse and in the exodus from New Caprica), then another demographic shift looms on the horizon: the aging of the population. Without a great increase in the birth rate (unlikely), the population decline would also steepen as the majority of the population nears old age.

Of course, all this is moot since the show will be over at the end of the season, and presumably either they'll find Earth or die horribly, but fun to think about.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

mencc1701
2008-05-06 06:53 am UTC (link)

Yeah, I originally chose to have the Y values start at 38,500 because it makes the steady background decline a lot more visible, but this one works better for showing the "true" decline, I agree. :)

It would be interesting to see a population pyramid for the fleet, too, but unfortunately our demographic information is limited to a weekly survivor count. ;)

That's okay, though, since I think seeing "251 males aged 0-9, 236 females aged 0-9, 111 males aged 10-19 ... and 61 females aged 80 or more, in search of a home called Earth" would get a little tedious. ;)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	gcg2004 2008-05-05 11:30 pm UTC (link)
	That came out quite well. Very informative. I never really thought about how many people that was until I saw it here. Wow. (Reply to this)

	xscylon 2008-05-06 07:30 pm UTC (link)
	Very cool!! (Reply to this)

	managizzle 2008-05-06 09:10 pm UTC (link)
	Wait .... if you superimpose one half on the other, line up the correlating axis and shrink it '33' percent, will it spell the name of the last cylon? :-) (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mencc1701 2008-05-06 10:16 pm UTC (link)
	Only when you play it backwards. ;) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Fantastic! lindylousmith 2008-05-07 05:26 pm UTC (link)
	this is awesome -- thanks for doing this! :) (Reply to this)

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