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EP Demographics: A Summary of What We Know

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LatwPIAT LatwPIAT's picture
EP Demographics: A Summary of What We Know
The canon demographics of Eclipse Phase are at times muddled and inconsistent. This post will attempt to collect and summarize information in order to give a clearer picture. [list] [*]According to EP p. 38 second column (third printing), the Solar System had a population of "approximately eight billion, with all but five million of these people living on Earth". The Fall is described as wiping out "almost ninety-five percent", for an AF10 population of "slightly less than half a billion". [*]EP p. 36 second column (third printing) says that "fewer than one in every sixteen survived", or less than 6.25%. [*]EP p. 91 "Habitats" (third printing) says over a billion people lived full time in Earth Orbit prior to the Fall. [*]"Hundreds of millions of people must make do with very basic Splicers, Worker Pods, Cases, or Synths, while a few million are wealthy enough to have custom-designed morphs created for them, [...]" EP p. 91 [*]EP p. 65 (third printing) says "more than four hundred million refugees were uploaded[...]". It further says that half of these easily regained morphs after the Fall (over 200 million). "...another thirty percent of the refugees managed to regain bodies (usually cheap synthmorphs). These indentured servants[...]" (over 120 million, at least 60 million of which are cheap synths). "Slightly more than twenty percent of the original infomorph refugees remain infomorphs," (over 80 million) "the Planetary Consortium has been responsible for the employment of almost half of all remaining infomorph refugees." (about 40 million). [*]EP p. 91 "Population", "reclaimer estimates guess between 20,000 and 100,000 free transhumans remain [on Earth]." [*]EP p. 93 "Mars": "...Mars, with a population of 200 million...". [*] One sixth of all transhumans live in synths (over 83 million). [*] SW p. 125, second column: "Twenty million people live in Martian orbit" [*] Before the Fall, Luna had a population of 1 million. [*] Before the Fall, Mars had a population of 4 million. [*] RW p. 92, sidebar: "Titan’s population grew from two million to sixty million in the decade between the Fall and the present day." [*] "more than half" of the physical refugees live on Luna [*] Luna has a population of 40 million. [*] RW p. 91, second column, "Titan has 60 million citizens." [*] Saturn-minus-Titan has a population of 20 million: RW p. 68, "With a population in excess of 80 million, Saturn’s neighborhood is the second most populous area of the solar system." [*] 80% of all Jovians have the bodies they were born with. [*] Jack Graham said the working number for Jupiter's population was 35-40 million, and 15 million for the Jupiter Trojans. [*] RW p. 47, "Hyoden’s population of about two million people[...]" [*] RW p. 48, "Europa’s transhuman population of 1.5 million lives below the ice, [...]" [*] SW p. 24, "Today, more than 5 million inhabitants live in 20 cities floating in the Venusian atmosphere. " [*] 40% live under the New Economy (200 million). [*] Extropia has a population of 10 million. [*] SW p. 63, "Easily three million transhumans live [in Earth Orbit]". [*] SW p. 88, "The total orbital population of Luna is 3.4 million". [*] RW p. 86, second column, "Over six million people call the Twelve Commons home." [*] RW p. 126, "Less than 100,000 people inhabit the region around Neptune, compared to the millions in the Belt," [/list] From which we can get a picture of the demographics of the Solar System; about 28 million Jovians have their original bodies, and at least as many Lunars have their original bodies; at least 56 million people have their original bodies. If we assume the original colonists were loathe to part with their bodies, this number rises to 62 million. There are no more than 80 million people who escaped the Fall with their bodies intact. At least 414 million people were infugees immediately after the Fall. About 83 million people are sleeved in synths; at [i]least[/i] 60 million of these got them through indenture. At least 237 million infugees are in either pods or biomorphs. There are about 40 million people currently employed under bodiless indenture contracts in the Planetary Consortium. In the Inner System about 160 million are or have been indentured. Adding Mars's population, Luna's population, and Venus' population gives at least 245 million people living in the Inner System. If Mars Orbit is considered separate from Mars, this number rises to 265 million. This does not account for Mercury, Sol, the Vulcanoids, Earth Orbit, or the Inner Fringe. Between Titan, Saturn, and Extropia, only 90 million of the Solar System's 200 million-ish New Economy types are accounted for. In total, over 80 million people live as infomorphs. There are slightly more than 7 million original colonists. At most 20 million people who still have their original bodies live outside Luna and the Jovian Republic.
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branford branford's picture
Interesting.
Interesting. Do we have data for the total number of Fall survivors still in cold storage or on Earth, as well the number of non-human uplifts and AGI's. I'm also curious about the total rate of population growth or decline of each major faction. Given virtual immortality and accompanying lower birth rate, resleeving, the fiasco of the Lost, and that so few people have or want their original bodies, basic homo sapiens may well become extinct in the near EP future.
kindalas kindalas's picture
I'm going to drop this here.
I'm going to drop this here. [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/LkRqV.png[/IMG] It shows the population distribution in the solar system. Kindalas
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LatwPIAT LatwPIAT's picture
Branford: I can check
Branford: I can check Panopticon and Transhuman in detail later, but a cursory search gave me no real numbers for AGIs, uplifts, or people in cold storage on Earth. As to population growth, a radical estimate puts it at a global 2.19%. A more conservative estimate puts it at close to zero. Kindalas: while I appreciate the work that has been put into your map, I A) am not sure that the 20 million in Mars Orbit are not counted among the 200 million on Mars, and likewise with Luna and Lunar orbit. B) don't know where you got some of those population figures, such as how many people live in the Inner Fringe or the Main Belt. I've been unable to find any hard figures. C) get bored of pixel-counting. I know that you have a pop. figure for the Inner Fringe, but I cannot tell what it is without opening the image in an editor, or at best, comparing one block to adjacent ones. This counts double for all the locations given as circles rather than squares.
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branford branford's picture
I think the number of people
I think the number of people in cold storage and where these egos are located, to the extent we know, are potentially very relevant to population figures. If the PC, LLA, Titanians or anyone else could suddenly reinstate millions of people, Kindalas' nifty chart could be rendered meaningless in mere moments. Growth rates are also important. For example, I recall reading that the Jovians encourage and actively support very large families, while I assume many other polities that liberally resleeve, need to pay large sums just to procreate, or live is small habitats that cannot support many more people, might have near zero or negative growth. I also am hesitant to mention the issue of forking . . .
kindalas kindalas's picture
LatwPIAT wrote:Branford: I
LatwPIAT wrote:
Branford: I can check Panopticon and Transhuman in detail later, but a cursory search gave me no real numbers for AGIs, uplifts, or people in cold storage on Earth. As to population growth, a radical estimate puts it at a global 2.19%. A more conservative estimate puts it at close to zero. Kindalas: while I appreciate the work that has been put into your map, I A) am not sure that the 20 million in Mars Orbit are not counted among the 200 million on Mars, and likewise with Luna and Lunar orbit. B) don't know where you got some of those population figures, such as how many people live in the Inner Fringe or the Main Belt. I've been unable to find any hard figures. C) get bored of pixel-counting. I know that you have a pop. figure for the Inner Fringe, but I cannot tell what it is without opening the image in an editor, or at best, comparing one block to adjacent ones. This counts double for all the locations given as circles rather than squares.
I've been away from my primary computer. I should be able to dig up my numbers soon.
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Surly Surly's picture
I'm very curious about cold
I'm very curious about cold storage as well - I'd gotten the impression that the number of infomorphs in cold storage was greater than the number of all other transhumans combined. On inspection, though, I can't find much detail. Panopticon p. 24 says there are millions; p. 40 says there are countless. Rimward says there are millions on Legba alone - and that's in the servers, not counting the cargo bays full of cortical stacks.
LatwPIAT LatwPIAT's picture
Surly wrote:I'm very curious
Surly wrote:
I'm very curious about cold storage as well - I'd gotten the impression that the number of infomorphs in cold storage was greater than the number of all other transhumans combined. On inspection, though, I can't find much detail. Panopticon p. 24 says there are millions; p. 40 says there are countless. Rimward says there are millions on Legba alone - and that's in the servers, not counting the cargo bays full of cortical stacks.
There's a mention in Sunward that there are "billion-strong archives of lost souls uploaded during the Fall.", (p. 98, second column) but this is obviously wrong; a central aspect to EP is that only a sixteenth or so of the world population survived; this cannot be the case if there are billions in storage. More likely, there are no more than 43.8 million Egos stored on disks. At most 438 million people escaped Earth as uploads, 20% of these have not regained bodies, and half of these again are employed by the PC. That leaves 43.8 million who are either free infomorphs or stored on inert harddrives.
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Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Only 43 million! They went
Only 43 million! They went through half their infogee supply already, and they probably took the best ones first (to the extent they could find them of course). Expect the price of new indentures to go up, the quality of them to go down, and the efforts to keep existing indentures in a perpetual debt cycle to redouble.
branford branford's picture
Smokeskin wrote:Only 43
Smokeskin wrote:
Only 43 million! They went through half their infogee supply already, and they probably took the best ones first (to the extent they could find them of course). Expect the price of new indentures to go up, the quality of them to go down, and the efforts to keep existing indentures in a perpetual debt cycle to redouble.
They could always copy the valuable egos . . .
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
And next thing you know, some
And next thing you know, some legal genius indenture gets forked en masse and rented out at competitive prices, and all the hot shot lawyers are losing clients left and right. I don't see the PC opening up for forks.
Lorsa Lorsa's picture
Smokeskin wrote:And next
Smokeskin wrote:
And next thing you know, some legal genius indenture gets forked en masse and rented out at competitive prices, and all the hot shot lawyers are losing clients left and right. I don't see the PC opening up for forks.
Lucky for them, the laws don't count if you're off-world. There are at least one mention of hypercorps forking an ego to have them run through the same contract on various exoplanets, unaware of each other.
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LatwPIAT LatwPIAT's picture
Smokeskin wrote:Only 43
Smokeskin wrote:
Only 43 million! They went through half their infogee supply already, and they probably took the best ones first (to the extent they could find them of course). Expect the price of new indentures to go up, the quality of them to go down, and the efforts to keep existing indentures in a perpetual debt cycle to redouble.
They've gone through far more than that. In addition to the current 40 million infomorphs employed by the PC, some 120 million people have earned bodies through indenture. The PC/Inner System hypercapitalists have put into employment somewhere between 80% and 100% of their infugee workforce.
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Surly Surly's picture
LatwPIAT wrote:There's a
LatwPIAT wrote:
There's a mention in Sunward that there are "billion-strong archives of lost souls uploaded during the Fall.", (p. 98, second column) but this is obviously wrong; a central aspect to EP is that only a sixteenth or so of the world population survived; this cannot be the case if there are billions in storage.
For a given value of "survived." I can see not counting people whose egos aren't running.
Quote:
More likely, there are no more than 43.8 million Egos stored on disks. At most 438 million people escaped Earth as uploads, 20% of these have not regained bodies, and half of these again are employed by the PC. That leaves 43.8 million who are either free infomorphs or stored on inert harddrives.
Thanks! That works. While it can be played either way, I like having the dead-but-retrievable outnumber the living. "95% of humanity is dead" and "80% of humanity is permanently dead, and most of the salvageable dead may never be woken up and given new bodies" are both existentially horrifying. The latter strikes at the idea of transhuman immortality - what's the point of having your mind preserved if no one cares enough about you to run it? Are you really immortal if no one will ever bother to wake your remains from some long-forgotten file system? It also makes the infugee issue more vivid and horrifying, and helps explain why the indenture prices in Transhuman are so cheap. The supply of dead vastly outstrips the demand for their labor.
Lorsa Lorsa's picture
I forgot to say that this is
I forgot to say that this is a great initiative LawtPIAT. Definitely helpful with figuring out who lives where.
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branford branford's picture
As an aside, discussing the
As an aside, discussing the issue of the population of EP really reminded me how I would love to see something released about the Fall survivors still on Earth.
jKaiser jKaiser's picture
Legba
This conversation makes me wonder if an altruistic-minded mission to liberate one of the mentioned "cargo bays full of cortical stacks" on Legba would be opposed by status quo-interested parties. Even getting a few decently-sized crates (to say nothing of one or two the size of shipping containers) of stacks liberated would be, what, several tens if not hundreds of thousands of egos? That would shift things pretty impressively in any hab/planet even if only a tiny fraction got any sort of physical morph.
ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture
iirc a sack is about the size
iirc a sack is about the size of marble try a couple hundred thousand for a medium crate. a shipping crate used on a sea freighter would likely have millions
Panoptic Panoptic's picture
The idea of swathes of
The idea of swathes of upwards of a billion infomorphs locked into dead storage is a compelling one. It explains how the PC is going to easily keep their stocks of indentured servants topped up, not to mention the horrific implications.
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ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture
I am honestly not sure the pc
I am honestly not sure the pc needs keep to their contracts with the indentures. sure we all no a guy who knows a guy who was released from his indenture but what stops them from reverting their most productive indentures back to their original dead storage states to get them to sign a new contract?
Panoptic Panoptic's picture
If one hypercorp breaks
If one hypercorp breaks contract law and the others haven't agreed, they'd have a tool to sue that hypercorp with. Not out of morality mind, but as an excuse to dig at a rival. If all the hypercorps agreed on the matter, that'd be a different story.
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Shunka Shunka's picture
LatwPIAT wrote:More likely,
LatwPIAT wrote:
More likely, there are no more than 43.8 million Egos stored on disks. At most 438 million people escaped Earth as uploads, 20% of these have not regained bodies, and half of these again are employed by the PC. That leaves 43.8 million who are either free infomorphs or stored on inert harddrives.
I'm sorry, but I missed where this number came from. LatwPIAT, would you mind tossing me your source for "at most 438 million?" I ask because, as some others have mentioned, the idea of the 'retrievable-not-quite-dead' outnumbering the living is something that interests me. I consider it a great potential source for an enormous amount of conflict on economic and moral levels (as has been mentioned here by others).
jKaiser jKaiser's picture
One thing that re-reading the
One thing that re-reading the sections reminded me of, most of the info we have on various places, Legba, etc., is written in-character from proxies and other agents. So, it's entirely possible that any numbers from said sections are to be taken with a grain of salt; even more so possible hyperbole, like the aforementioned Legba...though I do rather like the idea that in a horror setting with aliens, runaway AI, and other huge threats, the most disgusting and, well, horrific part is arguably one that's just humans being dicks to other humans on a massive, massive scale. Another possibility that's entirely feasible is coming across a wrecked ship, overlooked somehow or only recently drifted out of killsat range, etc., that's chock-full of thousands, even millions of stacks or dead-storage Egos on servers, blowing even the most liberal in-universe estimates on "survivors' out of the water. How to cope with such an upset of the status quo would make for one hell of a plot, methinks. Me, personally, I'd try to avoid any hard numbers cataloging a near-extinction-level event, albeit mostly for plot purposes.
ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture
I like quoting the 5million
I like quoting the 5million count to my friends because it makes them blink
LatwPIAT LatwPIAT's picture
Shunka wrote:
Shunka wrote:
I'm sorry, but I missed where this number came from. LatwPIAT, would you mind tossing me your source for "at most 438 million?"
There are 500 million people alive. There are 35 million people in the Jovian Republic. 80% - 28 million - have their original bodies. At least that many with their original bodies are on Luna, for a total of 56 million with their original bodies. There are an additional 4 million Martian and 2 million Titanian original colonists, for a total of 62 million non-infugees. Subtracting from 500 million, that leaves 438 million infugees at most. 20% of these are in infomorphs; half of these are currently employed by the PC; that leaves 10% who are not accounted for, or at most 43.8 million. Tinkering a bit with these numbers can stretch this to a very unlikely 44.4 million, or a more likely 43.2 million, give or take some tens of thousands.
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Chernoborg Chernoborg's picture
LatwPIAT - Having done some
LatwPIAT - Having done some similar data mining for my own projects,I can appreciate the effort that went into this . Thank you for sharing your work! While there're always some discrepancies between books, it's nice to see the overall picture come together like that. Kindalas - While I'm here I'll also say thanks for the population map!
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Shunka Shunka's picture
LatwPIAT wrote:Shunka wrote:
LatwPIAT wrote:
Shunka wrote:
I'm sorry, but I missed where this number came from. LatwPIAT, would you mind tossing me your source for "at most 438 million?"
There are 500 million people alive. There are 35 million people in the Jovian Republic. 80% - 28 million - have their original bodies. At least that many with their original bodies are on Luna, for a total of 56 million with their original bodies. There are an additional 4 million Martian and 2 million Titanian original colonists, for a total of 62 million non-infugees. Subtracting from 500 million, that leaves 438 million infugees at most. 20% of these are in infomorphs; half of these are currently employed by the PC; that leaves 10% who are not accounted for, or at most 43.8 million. Tinkering a bit with these numbers can stretch this to a very unlikely 44.4 million, or a more likely 43.2 million, give or take some tens of thousands.
I see. I had not, myself, equated "alive" with "lost in carbon storage, awaiting rediscovery and retrieval."