" I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature."
Posted on 05/06/2021 3:38:00 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The short answer is, it depends... However, putting some of these conditions aside and focusing on population size, the minimum number is likely very small compared with the approximately 7.8 billion people alive today.
Smith's research into early human civilizations and space colonization gives him pretty good insight into our apocalypse survival hopes. He expects big cities would be most vulnerable if global civilization were to crumble, as they import almost all of their food and are heavily reliant on electricity. Surviving populations would, therefore, likely spread out to find resources.
A surviving population of just a few hundred people would need a way of maintaining a breeding system, Smith said. Inbreeding, or breeding between closely related individuals, is one major challenge small populations face.
A sufficient number of breeding-age individuals of the opposite sex, known as the effective population size, would also be required for successful interbreeding to take place.
A starting crew of just 98 people would be enough for a 6,300-year-long journey (travelling in a hypothetical spacecraft at speeds that are possible with current technology) to Proxima Centauri b, a potentially habitable Earth-like exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the sun, according to a 2018 study published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society led by Frédéric Marin, an astrophysicist...
The Proxima Centauri b crew would not consist of a random sample of 98 humans, but rather 49 unrelated breeding pairs, ready to pass on their genes. The population would only remain genetically diverse and healthy over time under certain conditions, so for example, the crew's breeding would have to be monitored and restricted. Furthermore, a larger starting crew of 500 would likely be a safer choice, as they would be more likely to retain their genetic diversity with more breeding pairs...
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
" I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature."
ping
I was thinking 101 people...me and 100 young beauties.
Well, maybe 50 years ago.
you win the lottery 100 beauties,no problem......
500 million per the Georgia Guidestones. Now how will they pick the 500?
2? Bill and Melinda Gates?
Hahahaha
2
It worked before.
Me and about 10,000 females.
Darn, you beat me. Should have read before I posted.
Bingo
Zero. Is that not the goal of the greenies, that humanity is bad for Mother Gaia?
Never have played that game
First thing I thought of.
There was a link out there I had bookmarked but it has been removed. They had the world population listed by century. Going back just a few 1000 years, the total human population of earth was in the tens of millions. Before that it was speculative but obviously even lower.
Actually, all you would need is 100 women, some frozen sperm, and a turkey baster.
Sorry guys.
Nowadays, farmers don’t borrow the neighbor’s bull to breed their cows.
:-)
2
Myself and many many women supermodels.
It was just me and a thousand guinea pigs. They turned... carnivorous.
Yep, 2.
Then a near repeat with Noah, wife, and kids - I think 8 total.
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