three BILLION people?

[RobertScorpio]

My friend and I had an interesting debate. Lets say something was threatening earth, a wandering black-hole, or whatever, and the Federation had one week to evacuate Earth...and lets say earth's populaton, TNG era, was 3 billion people....Could everyone be evacuated in time?

So..one week to evactuate three billion people from TNG era earth...could it be done...

Rob
Scorpio

 

[Plecostomus]

No, that's why it's always a huge deal when Earth in in peril. If they could just evacuate everyone they would. I mean Earth has turned into some kind of cosmic Glory Hole with every bad-nasty-son-of-a-gun headed that way every other episode... I'm sure if they could move three billion in a that time frame there would be less urgency.

"Earth is about to be assimilated by the Borg."
"Meh. Everyone left last Tuesday, except for the Amish... and they are mostly irrelevant."
"Ah ok nevermind then!"

 

[cultcross]

At a pinch I'd say you could support 5000 people on a Galaxy class ship. That means you need 60,000 Galaxy class ship capacities to evacuate Earth. Not feasible, I'd say.

 

[Skywalker]

If only the Federation had some sort of transporter technology...

 

[Frodo Lives]

Where's everyone being evacuated to? Is Mars considered a viable option for relocation? Or is the entire Sol System considered a hot-zone?

If Mars is allowed in this scenario, I'd say yes: the Feds could probably set up a ferry system that could pick people up and drop them off fairly quickly - you'd still need a hell of a lot of ships though. As many Starfleet and civilian craft as possible would have to be called in. Or perhaps they could set up a intra-system transporter relay, to beam people directly from Earth through a carrier station (big ass, mid-way transporter buffer) and onto Mars.

If Mars is out, what sort of distance are we talking for the evacuation? Alpha Centauri? Vulcan? Would everyone have to be moved in one trip? Or can ships ferry people back and forth?

 

[ladyheather69]

I like that idea FL of a ferry system, but a problem that arises is, how far away are these ships that the Federation has to get? I sort of get the feeling that when Earth is in peril that the reason a mass exodus isn't feasible is because the ships just aren't available fast enough. And back to the ferry situation, is it reasonable to think that they Federation can set something up like that?

So I guess my answer to the question being posed is NO...I don't think Earth could be evacuated in a week's time.

 

[Frodo Lives]

Starfleet seemed to be able to mobilise a fairly sizeable fleet near Earth in a matter of minutes in Endgame... ugh, sorry, I feel dirty bringing that up, but there ya go.

 

[Dayton3]

Utterly impossible.

Ask yourself this:

With todays technology, how long would it take to completely evacuate a nation with the population of the United Kingdom (60 million give or take), assuming you had EVERY airplane and EVERY ship on Earth to use?

It would take months at the very least.

That would be a task comparable to evacuating Earth with 24th century technology.

And in all likelihood, in the 24th century, Earth will have 8 to 10 billion people and not 3.

 

[Broccoli]

Starfleet seemed to be able to mobilise a fairly sizeable fleet near Earth in a matter of minutes in Endgame... ugh, sorry, I feel dirty bringing that up, but there ya go.

Well...keep in mind, those ships were probably the ones hanging around in Spacedock and nearby starbases/systems.

 

[JiNX-01]

My friend and I had an interesting debate. Lets say something was threatening earth, a wandering black-hole, or whatever, and the Federation had one week to evacuate Earth...and lets say earth's populaton, TNG era, was 3 billion people....Could everyone be evacuated in time?

So..one week to evactuate three billion people from TNG era earth...could it be done...

Rob
Scorpio

NO WAY.
With only the USS Enterprise within range....

 

[T J]

How could Earths population only be 3 billion in the 24th century??? It's at over 6.5 billion now, shouldn't it be more like 12 billion?

 

[Frodo Lives]

Well I just crunched the numbers, arguably not my strongest suit, and taking into account the distance between Earth and Mars (50 million kms at its closer point), the range of the Starfleet transporter according to the tech manual (40,000 kms), the time it would take for one person to be transported (I'm guessing maybe five minutes, assuming they are only dematerialised and rematerialised at the start and end points, which is still ludicrously low, I know) the amount of ships required for just one transporter relay (1398, assuming Earth and Mars have their own transporter facilities), the amount of people that could be transported at once (I just picked 200 - again, a ludicrous number) and the timeframe we've been given (7 days) and it would take well over 12 million ships to completely evacuate just 3 billion people from Earth.

Whew. Long sentence.

Sooo, I'm guessing I'll have to change my answer to no.

 

[Braxton]

How could Earths population only be 3 billion in the 24th century??? It's at over 6.5 billion now, shouldn't it be more like 12 billion?

Depends. Remember, there was the Eugenics War (something like 30-40 million were killed, no actual number has been given) and WWIII (over 600 million dead according to Riker, could be closer to 1 billion when you consider the aftermath). Do not forget the colonies. My guess is that millions left to go establish Earth's colonies.

I always thought that Earth had a population around 5-6 billion in the 24th century. Families consisted of only 4 people, parents and two kids at most. Millions would leave to go to other planets that were sparsely populated (stay on a planet 6 billion people or move to a planet that has less than 1 billion?).

 

[RobertScorpio]

I like that idea FL of a ferry system, but a problem that arises is, how far away are these ships that the Federation has to get? I sort of get the feeling that when Earth is in peril that the reason a mass exodus isn't feasible is because the ships just aren't available fast enough. And back to the ferry situation, is it reasonable to think that they Federation can set something up like that?

So I guess my answer to the question being posed is NO...I don't think Earth could be evacuated in a week's time.

Can those massive STAR BASES, like the one that orbits Earth, move? And if so, how many people could fit in one of those???

Rob

 

[Sci]

How could Earths population only be 3 billion in the 24th century??? It's at over 6.5 billion now, shouldn't it be more like 12 billion?

No. In fact, it should be lower than it is now, for a couple of reasons:

1) The planet's population growth in real life is the result of population explosions occurring in rapidly industrializing countries like India. As populations grow more industrialized and thus more educated, population growth rates tend to decrease on a macro level, and as individuals grow more educated, they tend to have smaller families on a micro level. Since one of the fundamental premises of Star Trek is that everyone is well-educated, real-life tells us that they'll probably have smaller families, meaning that the population growth rate should decline, possibly even becoming negative for a time before stabilizing.

2) A larger population is bad for the planetary ecosystem. This is due to a number of factors. To start with, for every individual living an industrialized, Western lifestyle (which Star Trek implies is the norm), it takes acres and acres of land to support that lifestyle. Further, there's the basic, fundamental fact of thermodynamics: Every living organism generates heat, and the more human beings you have on the Earth (with the accompanyingly larger levels of technology and industrialization), the more heat you have. Eventually, the heat becomes so large that it would damage the entire planetary ecosystem, inhibiting the ability of even the super-industrialized world of Trek to support the population. And that's not even taking into account the fact that we don't know how power is generated on planetary surfaces in the 24th Century; I'd certainly hope, for instance, that they don't use matter/anti-matter reactors, since those things seem like they'd be incredibly dangerous in an atmosphere.

3) A larger population is just a bad idea. A smaller population means that resources go further. On top of that, it becomes proportionally difficult to manage a population as it gets larger. For instance, I sent an email to my state senator the other day on an issue and just got a call back from her today; in India, which is supposedly a democracy, each legislator represents such an incredibly large number of constituents that meaningful democratic accountability to the average Indian becomes virtually impossible. A smaller population is more conducive to human liberty and to democracy.

 

[Gepard]

^You forgot 4) Starfleet has colonized other planets, and many people may have moved from Earth to live somewhere else. (But those are excellent points.)

 

[Bill Morris]

What's the population of Mars in the late 24th century, anyway?

 

[Sci]

^You forgot 4) Starfleet has colonized other planets, and many people may have moved from Earth to live somewhere else. (But those are excellent points.)

Actually, I don't consider that a major factor; it wouldn't take a large population of settlers for a new colony to dramatically increase its population, so there's no reason to think that Earth's population must have significantly decreased in the long run (though I suppose it may have decreased in the short-term in the late 21st and early 22nd Centuries when the initial exoduses to Luna, Mars, Vega, and Alpha Centauri began).

Also: We've never seen Starfleet colonize a planet. We've seen the Federation or its Member States colonize planets, and we've seen Starfleet engage in colonization support operations, but that's not the same thing. For Starfleet to colonize a planet, the colony's entire population would have to be part of a Starfleet chain of command, and we've never seen that.

What's the population of Mars in the late 24th century, anyway?

I don't believe that there's any canonical data on that. If we expand our palate to include non-canonical data, however, we do know from the novel Enterprise: Last Full Measure by Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin that United Earth's MACO forces fought in something called the "Martian freehold uprisings," and from Section 31: Rogue (also by Mangels and Martin) that Mars fought what is referred to as the Martian War of Independence against Earth to establish Martian sovereignty. The novel The Genesis Wave: Book II seems to imply that Mars is a separate Federation Member State from United Earth (much the same way that the State of Maine, in spite of having once been a part of it, is now a separate polity from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts). Rogue also establishes that many Martian citizens feel that Mars has become nothing more than a garage for Earth's starships because of the presence of Starfleet's Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards -- and interesting dynamic, if I do say so myself.

 

[AlanC9]

The TNG staff worked up numbers for planetary evacuation; they're published in the technical manual. A Galaxy-class ship is capable of supporting 15,000 evacuees for short periods, and can transport 1,250 people per hout via transporters and shuttlecraft. So it's twelve hours to load, twelve hours to unload, plus flight time to the destination.

Even with a population of one billion or so, this is going to take a long time.

 

[Timo]

Earthling scientists in the TNG era might have a few contingency plans for this worked out. Outlandish ones, to be sure, so that it would be preferable to trust Starfleet's ability to deflect the Borg once again. But a couple of things could be done:

-Store everybody in fancy transporter buffers of some sort, so that a single starship can carry, say, a million people. Load up the buffers using dirtside transporters, which must be legion, so that the loading can be completed in seven days.

-"Freeze" everybody using conventional stasis technology, perhaps modified from whatever the food industries use, and haul the "frozen" people out aboard grain or reefer ships not normally rated for people. There are references to "agricultural worlds" such as Gault where Worf grew up. That sort of implies the ability to ship the products of such worlds to "industrial" or "recreational" or "intellectual" worlds or what-have-you, which in turn implies capacities surpassing Starfleet's witnessed cargo-hauling abilities thousand- if not millionfold. With a little forethought, all that could be harnessed to literally "move people like cattle". (Except 24th century humans don't seem to believe in cattle any more.)

-Facilitate the evacuation with massive administration of mind control drugs and Scalosian water. People will never become a bottleneck or other problem then, the evacuation speed being dictated by the abilities of transporters and ships.

-Apply Kelvan secrets to turn all people into assorted rhomboids, for hauling away with the existing stock of freighters. The above administration of chemicals would be a necessary preceding step, I guess.

-Use personality transfer techniques to store the three billion people in starship computers, or other possibly more capable mobile data storage devices.

-Cloak or phase out the entire planet to avert the danger. "Evacuation" to invisibility or parallel realms still counts, doesn't it?

Timo Saloniemi