# Population Growth after Noah's Flood **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 14, 2021, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053 "2021-12-14T15:34:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/21 "2021-12-19T19:49:44Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Past performance is no guarantee of future gains. The period in question includes the early industrial era, where things grew exceedingly fast, and an era in which the United States was a collossus and the rest of the world developing rapidly. Also, you need to correct for inflation. Also you need to correct for dividends. The DJIA performance as usually given excludes dividends which are a major component of their returns. I don’t have the DJIA numbers here but for the S&P, $1 invested in 1900 would have grown with dividends to $102,911 by the beginning of this year. That’s an annual rate of 9.95%. Inflation over the same period grew at an annual rate of 6.83%. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/22 "2021-12-19T20:32:02Z")
The bank you put money into a few thousand years ago isn’t going to pay out jack. It went bust a few thousand years ago. If you were lucky enough to pull it out before that bank collapsed, it also happened to the next financial institution you put your cash into. And the next one. And the one after that. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/23 "2021-12-19T20:53:59Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > The bank you put money into a few thousand years ago isn’t going to pay out jack. It went bust a few thousand years ago. If you were lucky enough to pull it out before that bank collapsed, it also happened to the next financial institution you put your cash into. That’s why the smart bronze age investors choose Myrrhcoin. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/24 "2021-12-19T21:18:04Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > That’s why the smart bronze age investors choose Myrrhcoin. Or they get some [“Compounded Interest”](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-go-back-in-time-and-put-money-in-the-bank-a-hundred-years-ago-would-you-make-money/604616/28) (short story by Mack Reynolds) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2021, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/25 "2021-12-19T23:53:08Z")
Another science fiction short story about this is “John Jones’ Dollar” by Harry Stephen Keeler, where a man puts a dollar into a bank account where the money in the account can only be withdrawn by his fortieth-generation descendant. The money in the account earns standard compounded interest each year. The point of the story is what happens towards the end of this time. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/26 "2021-12-20T00:02:21Z")
A story that predicts Zoom college lectures, pretty accurately, too, over a century in advance ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/27 "2021-12-20T02:35:00Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > I suspect that the graph has a linear Y axis. Constant exponential growth (and I’m not claiming the word’s population did that) always looks flat at the beginning even though the growth rate is constant. Not over the time span covered in the graph. You could even see the slight decrease due to the plague. When we did get to exponential growth, it is very clear. Remember, it is at least 10,000 years of linear growth and 200 years of exponential growth. There was a spurt at the beginning of agriculture, though. Here’s the video of the map. > **[Human Population Through Time | AMNH](https://www.amnh.org/explore/videos/humans/human-population-timeline)** > > It took most of human history for our population to reach 1 billion—and just over 200 years to reach 8 billion. When will our global population peak? ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/28 "2021-12-20T07:38:27Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > The bank you put money into a few thousand years ago isn’t going to pay out jack. It went bust a few thousand years ago. If you were lucky enough to pull it out before that bank collapsed, it also happened to the next financial institution you put your cash into. > And the next one. > And the one after that. > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Another science fiction short story about this is “John Jones’ Dollar” by Harry Stephen Keeler, where a man puts a dollar into a bank account where the money in the account can only be withdrawn by his fortieth-generation descendant. The money in the account earns standard compounded interest each year. The point of the story is what happens towards the end of this time. Another story along these lines, by H.G. Wells, is his less known story “The Sleeper Awakes” where some guy goes into a coma for over two centuries and the institute that got donations to look after his body eventually became the dominant financial institution running the world. (Also notable for the first description of aerial dogfights.) The more current story I heard was of the fellow who invests his money in stock market funds, then has himself frozen for two hundred years. When he’s revived, he phones his broker to find out how his money is doing. The broker tells him “your account is worth about 9 billion dollars now.” “Wow!” he says, but then the operator comes on and says “please deposit two million dollars for the next 3 minutes.” ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2021, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/29 "2021-12-21T04:49:03Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > The more current story I heard was of the fellow who invests his money in stock market funds, then has himself frozen for two hundred years. When he’s revived, he phones his broker to find out how his money is doing. The broker tells him “your account is worth about 9 billion dollars now.” > > “Wow!” he says, but then the operator comes on and says “please deposit two million dollars for the next 3 minutes.” Then there’s Heinlein’s take on this: “$100 placed at 7% interest compounded quarterly for 200 years will increase to more than $100,000,000–by which time it will be worth nothing.” ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2021, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/30 "2021-12-21T13:10:22Z")
An in Heinlein’s novel about a fellow who sleeps for 30 years, his investments are lost when the bank he used went broke (though apparently other banks that he could have (and in fact intended to) invest in did quite well). ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2021, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/31 "2021-12-21T13:25:11Z")
Plus, if this suspended animation+compound interest plan ever becomes viable, you just know someone will start taxing it. “We’re not letting some corpsicle become the richest person in the world!” ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/32 "2021-12-22T00:09:51Z")
It does seem as though the person in the deep-freeze would be poorly positioned to defend their interests. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/33 "2021-12-22T00:22:26Z")
As we see in Niven’s works, where the deeply frozen are risking being woken up one organ at a time, as needs demand. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/34 "2021-12-22T01:46:11Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Sometimes you’ll see them assume such a growth rate, but not take into account death. There was a rather infamous case where the apologist got all the math right . . . but didn’t include a death rate. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/35 "2021-12-22T02:03:02Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > There was a rather infamous case where the apologist got all the math right . . . but didn’t include a death rate. Isn’t it 100%? You need a bit more precision by looking at births minus deaths when you’re looking at short timescales, but over long timescales you can just look at the average number of kids per person as your “net” growth rate. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/36 "2021-12-22T02:06:46Z")
Well, there was this one time according to apologists… ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053/37 "2021-12-22T03:08:36Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > You need a bit more precision by looking at births minus deaths when you’re looking at short timescales, but over long timescales you can just look at the average number of kids per person as your “net” growth rate. Surviving kids per person - which in most of the timescale considered was considerably less than it is today. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-growth-after-noahs-flood/956053.md?page=1)