Hypothetical scenario; the world’s about to be destroyed (& with it the human race) and you get to pick 500 people to live and start over on another planet. Don’t name 500 specfic individuals. What types of people would you choose? What sex ratio? 50/50 men/women or more women than men? Would you include very young children? What occupations would you include? What you include only those capable of breeding? What if someone past breeding age had valuable skills? What about diversity? These people will be all that’s left of humanity, yet at the same time must form a stable community. There are about 170 countries in the world; would you try to take someone form each one? Each major religion? Racial group? Language?
I suppose it would depend on the planet we were being sent too…and what we were being set with. For a generic planet though I’d probably pick the standard doctors, engineers, manufacturing types (clothes and such), farmers/fishermen/herdsmen, miners/geologists, etc. If we aren’t going to get anything (i.e. technology) then I’d probably want folks who know how to reproduce lower technology…say 18th or 19th century, or perhaps even earlier. Metallurgists/blacksmiths, engineers who are familiar with steam power, engineers familiar with early blast furnace technology, doctors who know more primative medical techniques, farmers who know how to farm with lower technology, weavers/tailors, someone able to produce paper, etc. If I’m given some time before the end I’d probably want to cross train all the people in a different disipline, and I’d probably want a backup for the really essential skills (like doctors).
As for the ratio again it would depend on the planet and what we could take with us. I’d have the selected people bring their families (wives/husbands, children) with them. I’d also probably look for folks in their upper 20’s to low 50’s. The spouses and children would also be cross trained as much as possible for a fronteer type lifestyle (learning basic domestic skills, wood working/construction, etc).
-XT
I can see this being moved to IMHO.
Firstly we only have 500 people, so realistically diversity is out. From a purely practical viewpoint those people will all need to be able to speak and read a common same language to be able to maximise the transmission of knowledge and minimise isolation etc.
Assuming we are going for the best candidates by any criteria the chances of them being the best and being bilingual is probably fairly. If we decide on Cantonese for example the chances of the best blacksmith in France speaking Cantonese is pretty low. The more ‘technical’ the profession the better the chance of the candidates being bilingual, at least WRT English I guess. SO maybe we could decide on English as the language, that might give us more scope for diversity. But I suspect we will simply end up selecting the best Chinese blacksmith, the best Chinese MD, the best Chinese botanist and so forth based on language, rather than worrying about diversity.
As for the types of people, you simply haven’t provided enough information. If we are starting again with many years prepare then we can bank on a system that will sustain technology for at least 100years. That means that physical strength and many low-tech skills are less important. If we are staring with the equivalent of a boatload of colonists arriving on alien shores with at most a few tonnes of equipment then that will require a very different set of colonists.
For a high tech world the number of men wouldn’t need to be very high. That doesn’t mean they won’t be, since men tend to be the leaders inmost fields and thus more likely to be selected anyway. In fact there would probably be a need to deliberately select sufficient women even though they weren’t the best candidates. In that case there are two ways to go: ether select young healthy women primarily as “incubators” to get the maximum reproductive rate. Or else select the best female candidates for the job, even if they are some way down the list. 500 people really isn’t very many, particularly for a risky enterprise, so consideration of reproductive potential really is required. So it’s very doubtful if children or the elderly would be included. Children confer no advantage and can be produced readily enough upon arrival, while the elderly would have a limited reproductive span.
In suspect that the population would be something like 40% men 35-45. That lower age range gives a reasonable chance of having a reasonable amount of experience and skills while it still gives the 15 years of reproductive input needed to last until the next generation comes through. That way there is no age bottle neck. The rest of the population would be women, mostly 16-25. That ensures reproductive maxima and also allows for continued reproduction until the next generation matures. I say mostly that age for women because almost certainly some candidates will be selected entirely because they are ideally suited, with reproductive capacity being secondary.
For a reasonably low-tech colony you would probably need 60% or higher men. That’s because simply because the death toll on men is higher and because without technology a lot of the muscle power is going need to come from men (and hence the higher death rate).
Of course in a sufficiently well-organised and established colony you could just about do away with men altogether. Maybe 1 in 10 would be required. The reproductive potential could easily be taken care of by frozen semen while selection of intelligent young women and a good library could take care of most skills. The only men required would be those with essential physical skills, primarily tradesmen etc. Those things tend to be hard to learn properly from books. But in a well established colony you could probably find sufficiently well-trained women in most fields. So maybe we would have the first generation growing up never seeing a man.
Similarly with occupations it depend on how well established this is. A hurriedly established colony with a few tonnes of supplies will need lots of experienced farmers, horticulturalists, hunters, botanists etc just to get enough food. Then we need to throw in at least 100 tradesmen. And of course people with mining and prospecting experience, practical chemists and so forth. And depending on the environment soldiers. In essence you will be selecting primarily for those skills which will prevent the society from reverting back to the stone age. Highly technical jobs like neurosurgeons and physicists will have very low priority since it will probably be generations before they would have any use. The best we could hope for is to preserve sufficient written records to allow that level to be recaptured eventually. But in reality I suspect that a medieval technology would result under these circumstances and everything else would be lost forever.
A well established colony with a functioning “town” based on the ship might do better. In those cases surgeons would have better conditions be able to manufacture better equipment etc and this could preserve some sort of working knowledge base at least. Also the base town would represents something to work towards for the generation that never knew Earth. Without that it would be hard to stop people fragmenting within a few generations and the knowledge being lost through dissipation.
As far as I’m concerned religion can go to hell. It’s not as though 500 people struggling to survive (and they will struggle) will see any sort of representative religions survive anyway. I’d put money that within 5 generations there will only be one religion no matter what is attempted.
Me and 499 of the hottest women left.
OK, maybe we’ll need a bit more genetic diversity…me, 4 other guys and 495 of the hottest women left.
Fixed title-inserted “pick”.
If it weren’t for your name, this line would have been entirely predictable and unfunny.
If you’re talking about being set down in a habitable but unoccupied wilderness, then barring what they can carry with them 500 people are pretty much going to have to live at the neolithic level. There just won’t be a big enough population base for anything more ambitious for a while. In fact they’re going to be praying that nothing wipes them out for the next 4-5 generations. Much of civilization is based on necessity. As long as hunting and gathering in a pristine environment is at least as good a way to live as farming, you’ll have people deciding to “go bush” rather than stick to settlements.
A common language is indispensable. I’ll pick English, although most major languages have enough people to be able to be choosy if you only need 500. The main thing is that a lot of knowledge is going to have to be put aside for a couple of generations until there are enough people to put it into practice, so literacy will be vital.
Wilderness survival skills and handcrafting knowledge will be a big plus. You’ll want people who can build a thatch hut, knap stone tools, make a bow and arrows from scratch, tan and sew buckskin, make a dugout canoe, weave baskets, spin cordage, make fishing nets, weave on a loom, etc. Pretty much all the stuff you read about in wilderness survival manuals. If you could find a deposit of iron ore, then blacksmithing would be a vital skill to preserve because it can be done on a small-scale basis, yet is a stupendous advance over stone tools.
I can’t decide if firearms knowledge would be preservable or not. A flintlock rifle would be desirable if hunting/defense againt predators is a major survival factor; but we’re talking about being able to build a gun and make the black powder and lead bullets for it, from scratch, in a wilderness, with no outside support or backup. Iffy.
One or two generations in, I see the following scenerio: The original base camp has grown into a permanent village. The people who live there farm food and support some basic settled technologies, like metalworking. In the outlying hinterland are bands of people who live primarily by hunting and gathering, but come into the village to trade. They bring in fresh game, hides and furs, wild berries in season and mineral resources they’ve found. They trade those for grain and other storable staples, metal tools, alcohol 
, cloth. Closest analogy would be the English-speaking North American settlements in the 17th century.
There have been numerous colonies around the world that were set up with fewer than 500 people that managed to maintain well above neolithic technology, so I can’t see this being a major problem. The trick is to select a fertile area that can readily maintain that population. So long as food is readily able to be provided by farming there is no problem maintaining relatively complex societies.
Yet experience tells us that exactly the opposite is true, doesn’t it? Of all the colonies established around the world none of them had people “going bush” and reverting to being HGs until that became essential for survival. Even Neolithic colonists like the Polynesians maintained stable farming communities, even in the most marginal farming land while colonists in Australia and the US never ‘went bush’ even when they faced starvation.
The life of a HG is not a pleasant one, even if the food is easier to come by. HGs can’t build good shelters because they have to move every month or so and can only take what they can carry. So even tents are not an option. HGs have to live in lean-tos made out of branches and bark. Even a wattle and daub hut is a vast improvement. HGs also have to cope with a lack of possessions generally. Once again, they are limited to what they can readily carry on a 12 hour march, and that includes the children. So even simple things like religious material, artworks, pottery and so forth are mostly out of the picture.
For a person from an agricultural society the concept of reverting to HG is not a pleasant prosect. I know of one instance in the US where this has happened when it wasn’t essential for survival, but only because of the presence of vast resources that couldn’t be exploited because of a lack of animal agriculture. Had animal agriculture been an option (and I assume our colonists will be taking livestock) there is no way anyone would revert to HG lifestyle no matter how much food it provided.
The other thing that needs to be factored in is education and indoctrination. It would be a simple matter to teach children that dropping out of society like that is simply wrong. Sure, a few people might break ranks, but it would be a lonely life. Maybe after several generations that effect might dissipate but by that time the population should number in the tens of thousands even at conservative reproductive rates.
I really don’t see reversion to HG lifestyles as a serious outcome provided that farming can provide sufficient food.
I think iron would be secondary to copper. Bronze is far easier to make and work and the skills are taught more easily. A knowledge of how to make iron would be nice to maintain (if only in writing) but for a population of a few hundred people bronze technology is far more practical. Realistically at the sort of population levels available bronze would suffice for all practical purposes.
You are talking about a rifle. Manufacturing the bore alone is going to require someone who is a dedicated fulltime weaponsmith. That rifling was a significant advancement for firearms but damn hard to come by. And if you aren’t making rifles then you are better off with a bow.
I’d say that virtually none of them would be from the first-world countries. Many of us are too far removed from the work necessary for subsistence to be either used to or knowledgeable about how to start a world from nothing. The only group in the US with this kind of working knowledge I can think of would be the Amish. About all I’d pick from first-world countries would be geologists(and even then only the field geologists) and some historians who specialized in the history of various technological advances. I MIGHT pick some first-world administrators and logisticians, but in a community of 500 starting from nothing that is a skill we could grow. I’m not sure first-world doctors or nurses would be helpful in a world with no modern medicines or equipment. We’d have to go back to “bite on a stick” type medicine unfortunately and those who already have the most experience with those conditions would be preferred. Some drill sergeants who know how to lead people without treating them like shit maybe. Midwives would be a must and there aren’t that many of them in the US.
I’d say it needs to be about 60/40 females to males to have a stable labor pool(mainly men) while we ramp up the population. I’d also want to grow a little slower that way we could establish infrastructure as we grew. Focus on younger individuals, but have the mean be ~25 years old with most on the younger side and a few ancient ones for their life experiences. They would take on the roles of teachers almost immediately. It would be vital to transfer and spread this knowledge as broadly as possible to the next generation. But if we’re on a new planet then the idea of not teaching old dogs new tricks has to come into the equation.
Enjoy,
Steven
Just touching on the genetic diversity bit, the more women you can have who are currently pregnant by men who aren’t in the 500, the better. Probably 2:1 or 3:1 women to men, if they’re agreeable to some nonstandard social and sexual interactions for the first few generations.
It’s inevitable that a lot of knowledge will be lost with such a small population, but if as many specialists as can record their knowledge for future generations, it could probably be regained in a few generations.
Better from a diversity POV, but not very good for survival I suspect. The idea that a sizable proportionof women will be in the late stages of pregnancy within the first 9 months of arrival doesn’t seem real feasible.
A better solution would be to use frozen semen. AI technology is simple to use and mainatain and allows pregnancies to be planned better than just shipping a lot of alreayd pregnant women.
Once again this adresses the diversity issue but I’m not sure how practical it would be in a low tech society. It suggests that 2/3-3/4 of the population at any given time will be significantly hampered by pregency or infnat children. Added to that heavy labour required to suport the colony will fall to the 1/4 men. That may be possible but it increases the risk of death and injury for those men significantly.
That were completely on their own, with NO further input beyond the initial settlement? That had nothing but what they could build with their hands from raw materials?
I didn’t intend to imply that people would abandon agriculture altogether. Since the invention of agriculture, most people who lived in areas where farming or herding was at all possible did so. But for a long time farming was supplemental to hunting/gathering, or vice-versa. As long as it’s an option, people seem to like agriculture to provide a basic sustinence (or favorite foods not easily come by, like grain), supplemented by “free” game and wild plants. It isn’t until population growth wipes out most undeveloped land that you get total dependency on farming. And while the original settlers may start out with a purely settled agricultural culture, a few generations in you get frontiersmen who choose to live primarily in the wilderness with only minimal reliance on civilization. If nothing else, the antisocial misfits end up becoming hermits.
Copper is easier to work than iron, but iron is much more common and makes a superior tool. Tin to make proper bronze is even rarer than copper. I presumed that if anyone is going to retain metalworking knowledge at all, they would “skip up to” iron on the tech scale. Granted it would be precarious at first since you would probably start up with just a few blacksmiths (conceivably, one plus his apprentice) until the population grew enough.
Well, exactly. I said I wasn’t sure if this would be possible at all.
I must admit, you have an astonishingly good idea.
Not so. The smoothbore musket/fowling piece was the preferred weapon in the North American colonies for a very long time, even when rifled weapons were available. This was true both among the colonists and the indigineous people. The smoothbore weapon could be loaded with shot for use on small game or fowl. If necessary it could be loaded with a single large projectile (or buck and ball) for use at modest range against larger animals or hostile humans. As long as the ball is closely sized to match the diameter of the bore, smoothbore arms are capable of better accuracy than commonly supposed. Military smoothbore weapons are notoriously innaccurate because they are used with undersized balls in order to speed the loading process and to allow the soldier to continue firing after powder fouling accumulates.
It may be a predictable comment, but there may be some truth to it. I can see a 500 person colony suddenly thrust into its very survival failing very easily. So, the person in charge of selecting 500 people might as as well have as much fun with as many people as possible, male or female, before humankind reaches its end.
Of course, if it’s 499 males and 1 female, you’re dooming the colony to fail from the start. But a 499 female and 1 male colony may succeed (if possible).
Nah, Id be too affraid that if I (or you) did this a meme would develope in which women would be more attracted to other women. Thus leaving “The Lone Dicksman.” Quite frustrated and quite out of luck.
I’m ESPECIALY sure this would be true if the other women KNEW you (or me) was the asshole responsible for who should go and who doesn’t. As I’m fairly certain 499 of the hottest women on this planet don’t know squate about farming, engineering, building, etc…"
The only chance this might work is to bring along a shoe cobbler to keep the masses satiated. Then you (or me) might have a chance.
Me and 499 of the women who’ve told me “Not if you were the last man on Earth!”
Enjoy,
Steven