Post OYW Population

[Kavik Ryx]

With post 0079 to Zeta Gundam, something has always bugged me. Zeon gassed sides 1, 2, and 4; obliterated 5; subjugated the Moon; slaughtered millions on Earth; and lost a good number of men themselves. With half the population dead, how was space repopulated so quickly? How many of the colonies were actually gassed? And were the Spacenoids who grew animosity toward Earth on places like Colony 30 colonists who happened to be sparred?

[Lans]

Well MSG started with half of human population died from Zeon-Federation war. That's alone is enough established fact. With only 8 years in between, there's no possible way to repopulate space.

[ORegan]

I don't think they gassed every single colony in sides 1 2 & 4, maybe just a few to show their power against any who would speak against them and for their colony drops, but I doubt all of them were.

[Mark064]

Most of the colonies were destroyed by Zeon in Side 1, 2 and 4 and of course 5 during the course of Loum. There seems to very few the remain populated but there were some like Side 1's 1 Bunch Colony Shangrila. We don't know how much of space was repopulated or really the size of the sides anymore either.

But let's start off from what we do know. In UC 0050 the population is 11 billion, with 9 billion living in space. We don't know the population of UC 0079 but it's probably nearing 12 billion. The deaths of Side 1, 2 and 4 kill 2.8 billion people. Another 2.5 billion are supposedly killed at Side 5. The rest I suppose are the deaths of those on Earth due to operation British when we learn on January 31st that half the population is dead. So let's say that around January 31st there is around 5.5 billion alive total.

Now going back to 9 billion in space since a total of 5.3 billion were supposed to have been killed at the sides we should have over 4 billion still alive in space, this is going by the assumption that the population continued to rise. Now unless the population of Zeon is This would read a billion alive on the Earth.

The problem rises here is that we don't have post OYW population figures at all. But let's say that around 5 billion surrvived the war with around 1 billion on Earth and 4 billion on space. We don't know too much on the size of the Sides anymore just the "main" sides are now Side 1, 2 and 3 as they are the ones mentioned most often. Side 4 is a shoal zone where no one lives. Side 5 and 6 are rarely mentioned, Side 5 gets mentioned in CCA and Side 6 in ZZ Gundam. So we can probably say that the number of colonies in Side 5 and 6 are minimal at best. With quite a few colonies now at Side 1 and 2. It's not a repopulation in the end just a reshuffleing of sorts.

[toysdream]

The problem rises here is that we don't have post OYW population figures at all.

Well, maybe you do. The distribution of the pre-One Year War population and the wartime casualties varies dramatically in different accounts, but the specific casualty figures you're using here - 2.8 billion space colonists killed in the One Week Battle, 2.5 billion in the Battle of Loum - seem to be based on those in Entertainment Bible 39. EB 39 actually cites 2.0 billion casualties at Loum, as well as about 200 million from the colony drop on Earth, but this was the first source to introduce the "2.8 billion" number for the One Week Battle so I think that's where you're getting the numbers.

As it happens, EB 39 also provides total figures for pre- and post-war population: 11.3 billion before the war, 5.4 billion at the end. That comes to 5.9 billion casualties - a little less than every human being alive today! - which is 900 million more than the total of the events above.

Of course, EB 39 isn't the first or the only source of numbers. The timeline in the original setting notes, which gave us the factoid that 9 billion people out of a total population of 11 billion were living in space as of U.C. 0050, put the total casualties of the "Three Day Battle" and the Battle of Loum at 6.5 billion, including multiple colony drops. (The body text of the setting notes gives a total of 5 billion, though.)

Most later sources agree that the opening battles claimed a total of 5.5 billion lives, although they disagree on how to divide this up. Gundam Century and Entertainment Bible 1 report that the colony drop actually claimed more than 2.3 billion lives on Earth - 320 million in the impact itself, 2 billion due to its aftereffects - which would mean a correspondingly lower spacenoid bodycount. If that seems like an implausibly high figure given Earth's own population, bear in mind that the opening narration of the second and third Mobile Suit Gundam movies says that half the population lives in space, and the only reason everyone assumes that the space population is so much higher is because they're clinging to the numbers from the (otherwise totally obsolete) setting notes.

-- Mark

[Brave Fencer Kirby]

We had a thread on this a while ago at Gundam Evolution. Let me dig my notes out....

My suggestion would be to take the grand total of 6.5 billion casualties from the setting notes, and then go by the numbers from Gundam Century and EB 1 (3 billion casualties in Sides 1, 2, and 4, and another 2.5 billion on Earth). The remaining 1 billion would then be due to the Battle of Loum. Since the opening narration tells us that "half the total population" was killed in the first month of the war, this would suggest a pre-war population of 13 billion people, a natural progression from roughly 12 billion as of U.C. 0040. This population would be more or less evenly split between Earth and the space colonies, as per the movie narration.

That's more or less what we came up with after poking numbers around for a while. This puts the population of both Earth and Space at ~6.5 billion, meaning there were roughly a billion people in each Side 1-6, except the closed-type Side 3 which has half again the normal value for a total of 1.5 billion. In order to make this work, we had to chuck the timeline's population figures entirely, but that isn't that big a deal considering that they contradict themselves anyway.

If we assume slightly-less-than-total casualties at Sides 1, 2, and 4, then the post-OYW Side reshuffling works out pretty well if you combine the survivors of Side 1 and Side 4 (which share an L-point) into one under-population Side 1, and merge Side 2 with Side 6 (which also share an L-point) to create a Side 2 with a ridiculous number of colonies (Reccoa claims to be from "Side 2, Colony 85" in one episode of Zeta, which would be a stupidly huge Side unless Sides 2 and 6 were combined) but only a slightly-above-average population. This would be why we never hear from Sides 4, 5, or 6 after the One Year War -- Side 4's population got shipped to Side 1, and Side 6 folded into Side 2, leaving Sides 4 and 6/2 (one or the other, depending on whether they just changed Side 6's name or actually moved everyone from Side 6 colony cylinders to Side 2 colony cylinders) empty and Side 5 all blown up.

[toysdream]

That's more or less what we came up with after poking numbers around for a while. This puts the population of both Earth and Space at ~6.5 billion, meaning there were roughly a billion people in each Side 1-6, except the closed-type Side 3 which has half again the normal value for a total of 1.5 billion. In order to make this work, we had to chuck the timeline's population figures entirely, but that isn't that big a deal considering that they contradict themselves anyway.

And more to the point, those numbers come from a timeline in the original setting notes, which are very different from the story that was eventually animated and shouldn't be taken as gospel anyway. I suspect that the dates and numbers from the setting notes just crept back into later timelines because there weren't any "official" equivalents.

-- Mark

[Lans]

So what's the figure of the total population before the start of Zeta?

[Brave Fencer Kirby]

I don't think there is one. The closest we come to post-OYW population figures is Quess mentioning offhandedly that 10 billion people are living in space during CCA. But, given that (as near as we can figure) there are only around six and a half billion people alive in 0079, it seems stupendously unlikely that there are even 10 billion people total in 0093; 10 billion spacenoids alone is completely ridiculous.

[Phantomexe87]

Does Luna count as space, or is it counted separately? Not that I imagine that Lunarians suffered significant casualties during the war.

As for ridiculousness, I often point out the fact, that the premises of UC is fairly implausible. That is, the Federation being able to build enough space colonies in 50 years to comfortably house 9 billion people.

Though the population going up after the One Year War isn't too surprising. It seems human tradition, that whenever a huge catastrophic war ends, everyone starts partying, and has a ton of kids. See the Roaring 20s after World War I, or the Baby Boom shortly after World War II.

[Bremics]

But let's start off from what we do know. In UC 0050 the population is 11 billion, with 9 billion living in space. We don't know the population of UC 0079 but it's probably nearing 12 billion. The deaths of Side 1, 2 and 4 kill 2.8 billion people. Another 2.5 billion are supposedly killed at Side 5. The rest I suppose are the deaths of those on Earth due to operation British when we learn on January 31st that half the population is dead. So let's say that around January 31st there is around 5.5 billion alive total.

Eh? I never new the population difference between the Earth and spacenoids was so large.

2 billion on Earth versus 9 billion in space? What happened, did all of Indio-Asia decide, "screw Earth, space is awesome!" and mass exodus?

[Kenji]

Logistically, it's impossible. I doubt they could carry out enough people to match the birthrate. However, in regards to characterizing the Federal leadership as a cabal of elitists who want to keep the Earth's beauty to themselves, having the vast majority of the plebs exiled to space would certainly fit with that image.

[Brave Fencer Kirby]

Does Luna count as space, or is it counted separately? Not that I imagine that Lunarians suffered significant casualties during the war.

They're counted in the spacenoid figures, but the population of places-in-space-that-aren't-Island-3-colonies (like Luna, Luna II, Moon-Moon, etc) is so small as to be virtually nonexistent. From the same thread I quoted earlier:

As I've noted before, the population of the asteroids and lunar cities would be pretty negligible. Granada, the second largest lunar city, houses only 200 thousand people according to the Zeta novels. As for Von Braun, the Victory Gundam novels say its population is still less than one million, and that's after it's been made the Federation capital. On this basis, the entire lunar population is probably under ten million - less than a single space colony.

Eh? I never new the population difference between the Earth and spacenoids was so large.

We're suggesting that it isn't. By the number's we're using, there were 6.5 billion spacenoids and another 6.5 billion Earthnoids before the One Week Battle. The opening narration of the second and third MSG movies mention that half of humanity lives in space. The 2 billion/9 billion figure comes from the original setting notes -- which are horribly out of date in every other respect, as well, so it's not that big a deal to dismiss them.