# What would the population be if there was no war? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 13, 2016, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081 "2016-04-13T16:04:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Karen\_X2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/90db22/32.png) [@Karen\_X2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karen_X2)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/1 "2016-04-13T16:04:40Z")
Let’s assume that that everyone in the world got along peacefully from the beginning of time. Would the earth be over saturated with people? Would we have used up all of our natural resources long ago? I’m thinking of all the people that have been killed in wars, and all the children in their family that would have been born, and so on. How large would our population be today? ---
**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:** [April 13, 2016, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/2 "2016-04-13T16:12:52Z")
Too many parameters. No way to tell how we would have developed, what diseases would have sprung up, what cures might have sprung up, what methods of population control might have sprung up etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/3 "2016-04-13T16:29:14Z")
First of all, infectious diseases have killed many more people historically than warfare. The Black Death is estimated to have killed 60% of the population of Europe, and it is believed that diseases introduced from Eurasia and Africa killed about 90% of the indigenous population of the Americas after contact in 1492. Wars have never had anything close to that effect (excluding perhaps some deliberate genocides). Second, there is a positive feedback between population density and disease. Disease can spread more easily in denser populations. So if people weren’t being killed by warfare, an even greater number would have been killed by disease. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/4 "2016-04-13T16:30:48Z")
Overall I suspect the answer is essentially indistinguishable from the current population. Wars have not killed enough people to make much of a dent in things. For most of history simply getting to be old enough to get killed in a war was the main battle. You could perhaps argue that there is a roughly constant portion of the population that gets killed in wars. You might then simply add that to our current population. But it won’t make much difference, and indeed with the other variables in our history, is probably in the noise. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/5 "2016-04-13T16:37:53Z")
My guess is that not much would change if wars didn’t exist. Other factors would prevent overpopulation, mainly famine and disease. For state-level societies at least, the actual demographic impact of wars as compared with other factors is often highly overstated, because wars are dramatic (example: the Spanish Flu epidemic killed at least twice as many people as WW1, and happened at the same time, but gets a lot less press). > **[Spanish flu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic)** > > The 1918 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer of the Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was March 1918 in Kansas, United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected in four successive waves. Estim... Death toll from Flu: 50-100 million > **[World War I casualties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties)** > > The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was about 40 million: estimates range from around 15 to 22 million deaths and about 23 million wounded military personnel, ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history. > The total number of deaths includes from 9 to 11 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was about 6 to 13 million. The Triple Entente (also known as the Allies) lost about 6 million military personnel while the Central Powers lost abou... Death toll from WW1: 18 million. Edit: thoroughly ninja’d! ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/6 "2016-04-13T16:41:31Z")
In addition to disease and famine picking up the slack, there’s also a subtler demographic effect in that resources freed up by the absence of war and competitiveness channeled into peaceful competition would presumably lead to faster economic development, which tends to result in lower birthrates. ---
**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:** [April 13, 2016, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/7 "2016-04-13T16:41:58Z")
Wars cost money, and perhaps money not spent on war would be spent on disease prevention and/or cures? edited to add: And what **Steve MB** said. ---
**Author:** ![Karen\_X2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/90db22/32.png) [@Karen\_X2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karen_X2)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/8 "2016-04-13T17:06:20Z")
Interesting. I didn’t include disease in my original thoughts, but it most certainly is a deciding factor. Am I wrong to think that the earth itself will control the balance of population by introducing sickness and famine when necessary? ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/9 "2016-04-13T17:12:24Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > First of all, infectious diseases have killed many more people historically than warfare. For most of history, this was true even of combatants during war. World War I was the first major war where battle killed more people than disease (about 1/3 killed by disease, 2/3 by battle). Prior to that, disease killed more soldiers than fighting did during wars. Another point is that warfare has always fueled increases in technology and knowledge. Modern computers got their start in primitive calculating machines used to calculate missile trajectories and to decode cyphers. A lot of medical knowledge along the way has come from desperate doctors experimenting on field casualties in an effort to reduce the death rate of wounded soldiers. Without warfare spurring us on, our knowledge of technology and medicine would not be as advanced as it is now. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/10 "2016-04-13T17:30:45Z")
> [@Karen\_X2](#): > > Interesting.Am I wrong to think that the earth itself will control the balance of population by introducing sickness and famine when necessary? The earth won’t do much of anything - it’s a lump of rock. There’s no concept of necessary here - population pressures have impact but there’s no reason to believe that sickness and famine can’t be avoided with better technology and hygiene. There’s no set carrying capacity of the planet, and there’s no actor who can introduce famine or disease into the equation. Population density, poor hygiene, and other factors can cause diseases that exist to become more prevalent, and evolution can result in variations that are resistant to our current crop of drugs. But no particular directed outcome is necessary or inevitable. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/11 "2016-04-13T18:15:11Z")
> [@Karen\_X2](#): > > Am I wrong to think that the earth itself will control the balance of population by introducing sickness and famine when necessary? Yes, that is wrong. “The Earth” doesn’t care whether it’s inhabited by 15 billion people or 100 billion jellyfish. Populations do encounter natural limits to growth, such as starvation when they exceed the amount of food available, or become dense enough for disease to propagate. Human populations have exceeded those limits greatly in the past few centuries through agriculture providing much more food than previously available and by eliminating most infectious diseases as a major cause of mortality. New infectious diseases are unlikely to again be a major source of mortality on a world-wide basis to the extent that they limit population. Even such diseases as HIV/AIDS have done little to slow population growth worldwide. At some point, perhaps in this century, we will begin bumping up against the limits of the amount of food that can be produced by the amount of arable land available. (Famines today are mainly produced by failures of food distribution rather than food production.) However, predictions of when that would take place have repeatedly been proved wrong by new innovations in food production. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/12 "2016-04-13T18:18:03Z")
I think there’s some misconceptions about how lethal even bloody wars like WWII are; the 60 million killed as a result of the war was just 3% of the world’s population in 1945. So overall, it didn’t do much at all in terms of decreasing population. I don’t doubt that post-war Europe, Russia and Japan were deeply affected in a local sense, but in terms of total human population, the war didn’t do a whole lot. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/13 "2016-04-13T18:24:01Z")
And the birth rate often goes up after a major war, as witness the Baby Boom in the US. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/14 "2016-04-13T18:30:31Z")
One should also look at migration patterns because often an area was taken over by another power in a war and that war was often caused by a lack of resources in another area. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/15 "2016-04-13T18:46:37Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > For most of history, this was true even of combatants during war. World War I was the first major war where battle killed more people than disease (about 1/3 killed by disease, 2/3 by battle). Prior to that, disease killed more soldiers than fighting did during wars. > > Another point is that warfare has always fueled increases in technology and knowledge. Modern computers got their start in primitive calculating machines used to calculate missile trajectories and to decode cyphers. A lot of medical knowledge along the way has come from desperate doctors experimenting on field casualties in an effort to reduce the death rate of wounded soldiers. Without warfare spurring us on, our knowledge of technology and medicine would not be as advanced as it is now. This is true in historical periods, because war (well, violent death in any form) makes such a small dent in the vast state-level society populations that existed when people had the tech to write histories. Interestingly, while murder made a larger impact, percentage-wise, on hunter-gatherers, it wasn’t that much larger. Where wars and violent death made the greatest impact, was in agricultural or pastoral societies at the tribe/chiefdom level of social evolution: they were (and to the extent they still exist, are) often _much_ more violent, in percentage terms, than either hunter-gatherers, or state-level societies. If you lived in such a society, in some cases, your chances of dying by violence ranged from 10% to over 50%! Here’s an example of some very interesting stats on the subject: > **[Data review: ethnographic and archaeological evidence on violent deaths](https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-evidence-on-violent-deaths)** > > What quantitative data is there about violent deaths in non-state societies? Note the relatively low level of death by violence in even the most violent state-level society surveyed - 5% for ancient Mexico. For US in Europe, from 1900-1960, the rate is less than 1% … ---
**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:** [April 13, 2016, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/16 "2016-04-13T18:49:15Z")
If there were no wars, can it be assumed that people would migrate only to places where there were no already established populaces? Short of one country just volunteering to give up their sovereignty to another for the greater good, expansionism would be an alien concept. Smaller countries with tighter borders-not to keep out human invaders, but microscopic ones. Some countries will be successful, some not so much. Those that fail miserably will free up land to expand. ---
**Author:** ![obbn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/d6d6ee/32.png) [@obbn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obbn)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/17 "2016-04-13T19:32:06Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Wars cost money, and perhaps money not spent on war would be spent on disease prevention and/or cures? > edited to add: And what **Steve MB** said. I’ll agree wars cost money, but it’s not like that money disappears. It gets spent on the manufacture of weapons, trucks, ships, uniforms, planes, etc. Which means the money goes into the economy, workers get paid. ---
**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:** [April 13, 2016, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/18 "2016-04-13T19:38:37Z")
> [@obbn](#): > > I’ll agree wars cost money, but it’s not like that money disappears. It gets spent on the manufacture of weapons, trucks, ships, uniforms, planes, etc. Which means the money goes into the economy, workers get paid. I’m not saying the money disappears, but it would be spent on something different. If the current big crisis is not war but disease, might not the big money be concentrated there? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/19 "2016-04-13T19:42:41Z")
> [@obbn](#): > > I’ll agree wars cost money, but it’s not like that money disappears. It gets spent on the manufacture of weapons, trucks, ships, uniforms, planes, etc. Which means the money goes into the economy, workers get paid. True, but it isn’t an optimally efficient use of money. This issue is often discussed in the context of the “broken window” fallacy: > **[The Broken Window Fallacy: Definition and Examples in Economics](https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/broken-window-fallacy.asp)** > > The broken window fallacy is a parable that is sometimes used to explain the problem with the notion that waging war is good for a nation's economy. > [@](#): > > The broken window fallacy is often used to discredit the idea that going to war stimulates a country’s economy. As with the broken window, war causes resources and capital to be funneled out of industries that produce goods to industries that destroy things, leading to even more costs. According to this line of reasoning, the rebuilding that occurs after war is primarily maintenance costs, meaning that countries would be much better off not fighting at all. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081/20 "2016-04-13T19:53:29Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > I’m not saying the money disappears, but it would be spent on something different. If the current big crisis is not war but disease, might not the big money be concentrated there? There are leaps forward in emergency medical treatments during wartime due to necessity (head trauma, pain management, artificial limbs, burns, infection, blood transfusions). These work their way back into general usage fairly quickly so there is already a strong correlation between war and trauma medicine. Is there any similar correlation between war and contagious diseases? It looks like there were treatments for malaria developed during WWII, for example. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-the-population-be-if-there-was-no-war/752081.md?page=2)