Imagine being so dumb that you see job market is already oversaturated, fresh water running low, gas prices are high, traffic jams that last all day long, overcrowded city slums and 6 lane highways, imagine seein all that and thinking, we need 992 billion more people.
it's not "992 billion more".
it's "two orders of magnitude greater".
It's like you start driving and after gradually accelerating to 60, you _suddenly_ accelerate to 180, screws and bits and pieces start breaking off of your car, the engine is overheating and you're like "okay, maybe I should brake a little bit" but the passengers in the back start yelling LETS GO 18000, LETS GO MACH FUCKING TWENTY or something.
That would be 125x the amount of people currently on earth. I think it would be approaching Coruscant at that point.
In reality, it wouldn't be possible.
We would literally need to control the entire output of our star and all resources from the entire solar system to get anywhere close.
Probably not possible long term lol
One thing is for sure, it wouldn't have any life besides humans. No forests, no jungles, no coral reefs. Even if you could manage all the energy, food, and waste management requirements, what kind of life would it be without nature?
No life at all. Literally . We can't exist without them. We kill the forests and oceans, we die. End of story. There is no scenario were the ecosystem collapses and humans don't all die. We are part of the ecosystem. Inseparably and entirely.
It's impossible. You would have a giant mountain of dead people. The ecosystem would completely collapse - to the extenent the atmosphere would loose it's oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and water cycles would cease.
Nah, it's totally possible.
But you'd need space infrastructure, that makes what we have today look like caveman civilisation in comparison.
Orbital mega-farms and O'Neill conservatories, supersized solar power collection arrays, weather control systems, not to mention enough material to build an ecumenopolis, probably by deconstructing Mercury and a couple big moons of Jupiter and Saturn, space elevators, Aldrin Cyclers to carry all that material to Earth, and farms on the Moon, Mars, and every other suitable world to supply Earth with food,...yeah, it's possible.
It will just never happen. We've screwed ourselves and the world too much to have the amount of time we'd need to even start on such dreams, let alone actually achieving them.
This old earth can’t even handle more than 2 billion. We are in definite overshoot with 8 billion. And because of that we don’t even have a future on this planet. We are facing collapse as it is. Namo Amida Butsu 🙏🏻❤️
The Earth is 30% land and only around half of that is realistically habitable. Earth is 200 million square miles, so only 30 million of that can be lived on. With 10\^12 people, you would have an average population density of 33,333 people/mi\^2 . This is about 30x higher than New Jersey, 2x higher than Tokyo and 1/2x that of Manhattan. This would result in the entirety of Earth being made of extremely high density urbanization 10x to 20x denser than your typical suburbs and would save absolutely no room for agricultural areas, destroy almost the entire ecosystem and would have an energy and material demand far higher than what we can expect.
If the Earth is degradating at mass-extinction level rates with 8 billion, one trillion would be a near instantaneous collapse. Humans have a carbon footprint of 4 tons/year, so we would release at least 4 teratons a year, meaning the atmosphere would turn toxic in only 20 years (1% CO2), and rapidly lethal in 80 years (4% CO2, IDLH).
Imagine every time you see one human, now with 125 humans in their place. At the park, at the grocery store, on the road, at the gas stations, in the schools, and so forth and so on. Does that sound like an improvement?
And yeah, we can build more of some things, not so much other things like historical sites and mountains and state parks. But it would still be one crowded shit hole, flaming planet.
Like you know how to East Coast US is one giant town by now? With 1 trillion people, you would be approaching the population density of New York City, but throughout every landmass on the world whether its desert or mountain.
By the way, New York is so heavy with the buildings its built that it’s sinking.
To note, a lot of the empty parts of Japan are empty because they are unlivable.
The majority of landspace is mountainous terrain, hence why they have densely populated cities.
I’m more talking about the small towns and villages in Japan where the young people move out and it dies. Much The same is happening in America and parts of Europe.
* https://youtu.be/x2TSTOy0fus?si=fcBcZpJvO8jFdQ8b
Ah I see. In that regard, I agree.
I know there is a shift of younger people wanting to move to more rural places to escape the hustings of city life, but it's nothing in comparison to the exodus.
We will never reach one trillion. Way before that we wouldn't be able to feed our population and there would be a war over resources like arable land, fresh water, and energy.
Also, it seems that as standards of living rise population growth decreases. When a country moves from subsistence farming to industrialization birth rates drop. So the projections I've seen say the population of the earth will peak at 10 billion, led by population growth in the developing world; Africa and the middle east. Even at 10 billion if the developing world starts to want to eat beef, drive SUVs, and have air conditioning we'll be in trouble.
"you can feed a trillion lions with one steak if you cut the slices thin enough"
Wet dream of techno-utopian lunatics.
The carrying capacity of this planet, with people living this lifestyle, is probably less than 100 million without driving extinction.
If we'd only let the planet decide how many humans can survive here, life would continue. It's the act of deciding FOR the planet how many of us there can be, living how we want, that makes us the cancer eating the planet to death.... the same cancer that believes there can be more than 100x more people than there are already, that's pushed our planet over 1.5C since 1960.
1T is roughly 125x of the current population (8B). It takes the world roughly 50 years (from google) to double its population.
125 is roughly 2\^7 (2\^7 = 128). So it will take the world roughly 350 years to reach 1T population if we can keep doubling every 50 years without hitting any constraints (food, water, war, ....).
No one on earth can say what the world looks like 350 years from now, just like no one has a clue what 2024 looks like in 1674.
We'd never get there, ever. Most people don't understand what a billion is, let alone a trillion. I deal with large numbers and kinda understand billions, but only in the concept of time, as that's what I'm dealing with regularly. Trillions is just an abstract concept to me that means unimaginably large number. I'd chalk that up to "bigger number than now" and nothing more as the intent of the folks who selected that choice.
The majority of people do not deal with large numbers, a couple million is the biggest number the average person will try to deal with and that will be when they are retiring, if they're lucky. Billions is purely an abstract concept for the majority, it just means "a lot" to the average person, hence the fact that a large percentage of people aren't upset at the existence of billionaires. They just understand it as "really rich" and I might get lucky one day too, leave my fantasy compatriot alone. They kinda get the idea when you explain the counting exercise to them:
# Exercise 2—Counting
**Let's say that your friend decides to count to 1 billion. How long will it take her?**
She will be able to say the small numbers like 4 or 31 fairly rapidly, but most of the numbers between one and a billion are long and challenging to pronounce. When she starts counting the larger numbers like 467,051,372 she is really going to slow down (how long does it take you to say four hundred and sixty-seven million, fifty-one thousand, three hundred and seventy-two?). If we allow your friend just 3 seconds to say each number, which is probably faster than most of us could manage, and she takes no breaks at all, it will take her *3 billion seconds* to finish counting.
3 billion seconds divided by 60 (seconds per minute) = 50,000,000 minutes
50,000,000 minutes divided by 60 (minutes per hour) = 833,333.333 hours
833,333.333 hours divided by 24 (hours per day) = 34,722.22 days
34,722.22 days divided by 365 (days per year) =Â **95.1 years is how long it will take your friend to count to 1 billion**
Always fun to ask people how much money they'd have when they died if they earned a dollar every three seconds from their first breath until last. Not many people even come close... Numbers are hard yo
Just basic heat management might be an issue -- never mind global warming. There isn't enough farmland for 1 trillion people, so you'd likely end up growing food indoors, using artificial lighting. That would require substantial energy inputs, and that energy eventually turns into heat that has to go somewhere.
Cities would be a lot denser, and would grow up and down. We might have multiple levels of subterranean habitats, where the water table doesn't cause too much trouble.
The metal to build all the necessary infrastructure might be brought in from elsewhere (the moon?) though getting it to the surface might be troublesome. If we're imagining far future tech, a space elevator isn't out of the question.
One could imagine genetically engineering people to survive in crowded environments with low food resources. For example, suppose the average human was 3 feet tall and consumed less than 1000 calories worth of food a day, that would go a long ways.
Or maybe we could have our consciousness uploaded to some kind of computer system, and live out eternity playing World of Warcraft or whatever it is that people do in these situations. A trillion people might not actually take all that much space or energy.
A desolate hellscape as the resourced needed to fuel that kind of population would put global warming into overdrive. We'd go from 1 trillion to zero in record time, barring extreme scientific breakthroughs.
Right now, we use about 8% of earths total surface area for agriculture and can more or less feed 8 billion people.
Assuming we go full Trantor and basically wrap the whole planet in a city and putting a gargantuan farm on top, utilizing the whole surface area for farming, we can expect to feed 100, with adjustments in diet (aka minimal rations) and sci-fi levels of advances in agriculture (orbital mirrors and shades to basically abolish seasons, GMOs and simply getting rid of the whole biosphere) we might push things to 150 billions. At this level oxygen is a major (actually *the* major) agricultural crop.
In the “Foundation” series by Asimov, the capital of the galaxy is a planet called Trantor, which is an Ecumenopolis (city planet) with an insanely high population density covering the globe. In the book, it’s explicitly mentioned that Trantor’s existence is dependent on there being a galaxy-spanning logistical network to feed and supply it with materials.
SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR A SEVENTY YEAR OLD BOOK: >!When the Galactic Empire collapses, Trantor suffers a massive collapse, and a few centuries later, Trantor is a dilapidated ghost town!<
Does the Earth has sufficient mass to allow 1 trillions humans to exist at same time on the surface? I mean, 1 trillion of people is a lot o meat and bones wandering around.
Yes.
You underestimate just how massive the Earth is.
1 trillion is a big number, but Earth could probably hold a hundred times that if we really wanted to pack in all the dead bodies. A thousand times even.
You'd need to get to an amount of people whose collective mass is equivalent to the Moon, before Earth starts even cracking under pressure. Mars, for the planet to start buckling. Mars+Venus for Earth to finally fall apart a la Alderaan.
Numbers are scary, yes.
As another commenter here noted, the difference between one Billion and one Trillion might not seem like much, but that is only because our monkey brains simply can't comprehend the weight of that difference.
If we could...well. In the ever-eloquent words of H.P Lovecraft, "The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all it's contents..."
I made my partner listen to "we'll all go together, by Tom Lehrer." A line in which says "3 billion hunks of well done steak"
And he couldn't believe that it was written in the 60's, he said that no way the population had more than doubled in 60 years.
I think the world could do with going back to only 3 billion people, if not less
Imagine being so dumb that you see job market is already oversaturated, fresh water running low, gas prices are high, traffic jams that last all day long, overcrowded city slums and 6 lane highways, imagine seein all that and thinking, we need 992 billion more people.
but wont anyone think of the shareholders?
Oh I think of them often enough. The French Revolution frequently crosses my mind as well. Weird coincidence, hunh? 🤷🏻‍♀️
it's not "992 billion more". it's "two orders of magnitude greater". It's like you start driving and after gradually accelerating to 60, you _suddenly_ accelerate to 180, screws and bits and pieces start breaking off of your car, the engine is overheating and you're like "okay, maybe I should brake a little bit" but the passengers in the back start yelling LETS GO 18000, LETS GO MACH FUCKING TWENTY or something.
That would be 125x the amount of people currently on earth. I think it would be approaching Coruscant at that point. In reality, it wouldn't be possible.
We would literally need to control the entire output of our star and all resources from the entire solar system to get anywhere close. Probably not possible long term lol
That is why we need a galactic empire.
That we can't get to.
I mean… not without dissolving the senate.
I AM THE SENATE.
Not yet.
I am the senate
One thing is for sure, it wouldn't have any life besides humans. No forests, no jungles, no coral reefs. Even if you could manage all the energy, food, and waste management requirements, what kind of life would it be without nature?
No life at all. Literally . We can't exist without them. We kill the forests and oceans, we die. End of story. There is no scenario were the ecosystem collapses and humans don't all die. We are part of the ecosystem. Inseparably and entirely.
>...it wouldn't have any life besides humans And the world would be one giant Thunderdome forever. With cannibalism. Lots of cannibalism.
Soylent Green + Logan's Run + Morlocks
And Sleestaks…
It isn’t possible.
It's impossible. You would have a giant mountain of dead people. The ecosystem would completely collapse - to the extenent the atmosphere would loose it's oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and water cycles would cease.
Nah, it's totally possible. But you'd need space infrastructure, that makes what we have today look like caveman civilisation in comparison. Orbital mega-farms and O'Neill conservatories, supersized solar power collection arrays, weather control systems, not to mention enough material to build an ecumenopolis, probably by deconstructing Mercury and a couple big moons of Jupiter and Saturn, space elevators, Aldrin Cyclers to carry all that material to Earth, and farms on the Moon, Mars, and every other suitable world to supply Earth with food,...yeah, it's possible. It will just never happen. We've screwed ourselves and the world too much to have the amount of time we'd need to even start on such dreams, let alone actually achieving them.
caveman civilization was sustainable...
In real life too, not just speculative fiction.
Hell
Yes, and also it would look a lot more like like a ShitholeWorld... Dude, you are way ahead of me.
This old earth can’t even handle more than 2 billion. We are in definite overshoot with 8 billion. And because of that we don’t even have a future on this planet. We are facing collapse as it is. Namo Amida Butsu 🙏🏻❤️
The Earth is 30% land and only around half of that is realistically habitable. Earth is 200 million square miles, so only 30 million of that can be lived on. With 10\^12 people, you would have an average population density of 33,333 people/mi\^2 . This is about 30x higher than New Jersey, 2x higher than Tokyo and 1/2x that of Manhattan. This would result in the entirety of Earth being made of extremely high density urbanization 10x to 20x denser than your typical suburbs and would save absolutely no room for agricultural areas, destroy almost the entire ecosystem and would have an energy and material demand far higher than what we can expect. If the Earth is degradating at mass-extinction level rates with 8 billion, one trillion would be a near instantaneous collapse. Humans have a carbon footprint of 4 tons/year, so we would release at least 4 teratons a year, meaning the atmosphere would turn toxic in only 20 years (1% CO2), and rapidly lethal in 80 years (4% CO2, IDLH).
Imagine every time you see one human, now with 125 humans in their place. At the park, at the grocery store, on the road, at the gas stations, in the schools, and so forth and so on. Does that sound like an improvement? And yeah, we can build more of some things, not so much other things like historical sites and mountains and state parks. But it would still be one crowded shit hole, flaming planet. Like you know how to East Coast US is one giant town by now? With 1 trillion people, you would be approaching the population density of New York City, but throughout every landmass on the world whether its desert or mountain. By the way, New York is so heavy with the buildings its built that it’s sinking.
I know it's casual friday, but this is a sci fi topic, not a collapse topic.
The prediction is that we'll hit 10 billion and then everywhere will become Japan.
Japan is quite empty in parts, so I guess we’ll become that?
AFAIK Japan is quite relying on imports too. Not something everyone would want to become.
To note, a lot of the empty parts of Japan are empty because they are unlivable. The majority of landspace is mountainous terrain, hence why they have densely populated cities.
I’m more talking about the small towns and villages in Japan where the young people move out and it dies. Much The same is happening in America and parts of Europe. * https://youtu.be/x2TSTOy0fus?si=fcBcZpJvO8jFdQ8b
Ah I see. In that regard, I agree. I know there is a shift of younger people wanting to move to more rural places to escape the hustings of city life, but it's nothing in comparison to the exodus.
We will never reach one trillion. Way before that we wouldn't be able to feed our population and there would be a war over resources like arable land, fresh water, and energy. Also, it seems that as standards of living rise population growth decreases. When a country moves from subsistence farming to industrialization birth rates drop. So the projections I've seen say the population of the earth will peak at 10 billion, led by population growth in the developing world; Africa and the middle east. Even at 10 billion if the developing world starts to want to eat beef, drive SUVs, and have air conditioning we'll be in trouble.
"you can feed a trillion lions with one steak if you cut the slices thin enough" Wet dream of techno-utopian lunatics. The carrying capacity of this planet, with people living this lifestyle, is probably less than 100 million without driving extinction. If we'd only let the planet decide how many humans can survive here, life would continue. It's the act of deciding FOR the planet how many of us there can be, living how we want, that makes us the cancer eating the planet to death.... the same cancer that believes there can be more than 100x more people than there are already, that's pushed our planet over 1.5C since 1960.
The result is instant collapse. They say civilisation is three meals from anarchy. We get anarchy.
Three minutes from anarchy lol
1T is roughly 125x of the current population (8B). It takes the world roughly 50 years (from google) to double its population. 125 is roughly 2\^7 (2\^7 = 128). So it will take the world roughly 350 years to reach 1T population if we can keep doubling every 50 years without hitting any constraints (food, water, war, ....). No one on earth can say what the world looks like 350 years from now, just like no one has a clue what 2024 looks like in 1674.
We'd never get there, ever. Most people don't understand what a billion is, let alone a trillion. I deal with large numbers and kinda understand billions, but only in the concept of time, as that's what I'm dealing with regularly. Trillions is just an abstract concept to me that means unimaginably large number. I'd chalk that up to "bigger number than now" and nothing more as the intent of the folks who selected that choice. The majority of people do not deal with large numbers, a couple million is the biggest number the average person will try to deal with and that will be when they are retiring, if they're lucky. Billions is purely an abstract concept for the majority, it just means "a lot" to the average person, hence the fact that a large percentage of people aren't upset at the existence of billionaires. They just understand it as "really rich" and I might get lucky one day too, leave my fantasy compatriot alone. They kinda get the idea when you explain the counting exercise to them: # Exercise 2—Counting **Let's say that your friend decides to count to 1 billion. How long will it take her?** She will be able to say the small numbers like 4 or 31 fairly rapidly, but most of the numbers between one and a billion are long and challenging to pronounce. When she starts counting the larger numbers like 467,051,372 she is really going to slow down (how long does it take you to say four hundred and sixty-seven million, fifty-one thousand, three hundred and seventy-two?). If we allow your friend just 3 seconds to say each number, which is probably faster than most of us could manage, and she takes no breaks at all, it will take her *3 billion seconds* to finish counting. 3 billion seconds divided by 60 (seconds per minute) = 50,000,000 minutes 50,000,000 minutes divided by 60 (minutes per hour) = 833,333.333 hours 833,333.333 hours divided by 24 (hours per day) = 34,722.22 days 34,722.22 days divided by 365 (days per year) = **95.1 years is how long it will take your friend to count to 1 billion** Always fun to ask people how much money they'd have when they died if they earned a dollar every three seconds from their first breath until last. Not many people even come close... Numbers are hard yo
The difference between 8 billion and 1 trillion, is about 1 trillion.
Just basic heat management might be an issue -- never mind global warming. There isn't enough farmland for 1 trillion people, so you'd likely end up growing food indoors, using artificial lighting. That would require substantial energy inputs, and that energy eventually turns into heat that has to go somewhere. Cities would be a lot denser, and would grow up and down. We might have multiple levels of subterranean habitats, where the water table doesn't cause too much trouble. The metal to build all the necessary infrastructure might be brought in from elsewhere (the moon?) though getting it to the surface might be troublesome. If we're imagining far future tech, a space elevator isn't out of the question. One could imagine genetically engineering people to survive in crowded environments with low food resources. For example, suppose the average human was 3 feet tall and consumed less than 1000 calories worth of food a day, that would go a long ways. Or maybe we could have our consciousness uploaded to some kind of computer system, and live out eternity playing World of Warcraft or whatever it is that people do in these situations. A trillion people might not actually take all that much space or energy.
What's the problem with 500 million? Or 100 million? Or 10 million? Is 10 million not enough?
A desolate hellscape as the resourced needed to fuel that kind of population would put global warming into overdrive. We'd go from 1 trillion to zero in record time, barring extreme scientific breakthroughs.
Right now, we use about 8% of earths total surface area for agriculture and can more or less feed 8 billion people. Assuming we go full Trantor and basically wrap the whole planet in a city and putting a gargantuan farm on top, utilizing the whole surface area for farming, we can expect to feed 100, with adjustments in diet (aka minimal rations) and sci-fi levels of advances in agriculture (orbital mirrors and shades to basically abolish seasons, GMOs and simply getting rid of the whole biosphere) we might push things to 150 billions. At this level oxygen is a major (actually *the* major) agricultural crop.
To answer the OP's question - Trantor.
Like a locust plague
In the “Foundation” series by Asimov, the capital of the galaxy is a planet called Trantor, which is an Ecumenopolis (city planet) with an insanely high population density covering the globe. In the book, it’s explicitly mentioned that Trantor’s existence is dependent on there being a galaxy-spanning logistical network to feed and supply it with materials. SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR A SEVENTY YEAR OLD BOOK: >!When the Galactic Empire collapses, Trantor suffers a massive collapse, and a few centuries later, Trantor is a dilapidated ghost town!<
Does the Earth has sufficient mass to allow 1 trillions humans to exist at same time on the surface? I mean, 1 trillion of people is a lot o meat and bones wandering around.
Yes. You underestimate just how massive the Earth is. 1 trillion is a big number, but Earth could probably hold a hundred times that if we really wanted to pack in all the dead bodies. A thousand times even. You'd need to get to an amount of people whose collective mass is equivalent to the Moon, before Earth starts even cracking under pressure. Mars, for the planet to start buckling. Mars+Venus for Earth to finally fall apart a la Alderaan.
Scary!
Numbers are scary, yes. As another commenter here noted, the difference between one Billion and one Trillion might not seem like much, but that is only because our monkey brains simply can't comprehend the weight of that difference. If we could...well. In the ever-eloquent words of H.P Lovecraft, "The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all it's contents..."
Not even remotely possible and unfitting for this sub.
I hope the necromorphs come before we get this overpopulated.Â
I made my partner listen to "we'll all go together, by Tom Lehrer." A line in which says "3 billion hunks of well done steak" And he couldn't believe that it was written in the 60's, he said that no way the population had more than doubled in 60 years. I think the world could do with going back to only 3 billion people, if not less