What is the Minimum viable population for humanity

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I keep hearing the 5000-10000 figure thrown around, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering the origin of humanity would probably be in a far smaller group and any exodus to new continents wouldn't have had a large amount of members

 

[MrTroll]

Two. Me, and one other person to upvote my posts.

 

[$80 Nude Haircut]

Depends on how many whites (not Russian) and good-quality east Asians you can get.

 

[Milkis]

It depends on whether you're talking about the MVP for

• avoiding a genetic bottleneck and inbreeding depression.
• any number of humans from any culture and time, surviving by living in their traditional methods. each family can largely fend for itself.
• any number of humans from the present day, living off agricultural production (and possibly industrial production) with an organised division of labour. my point is, you can maybe teach a barista to get a sickle and harvest wheat, but you are going to need blacksmiths and carpenters to make the tools for her. teaching her flint-knapping, binding with twine, foraging for food, building and living in a thatch hut? no way, it's just too much at once.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

500 million.

5000-10000 is probably in reference to this:

How Human Beings Almost Vanished From Earth In 70,000 B.C.

By some counts of human history, the number of humans on Earth may have skidded so sharply that we were down to just 1,000 reproductive adults. And a supervolcano might have been to blame.

www.npr.org

Well, we've waxed. So we can wane. Let's just hope we wane gently. Because once in our history, the world-wide population of human beings skidded so sharply we were down to roughly a thousand reproductive adults. One study says we hit as low as 40.

Forty? Come on, that can't be right. Well, the technical term is 40 "breeding pairs" (children not included). More likely there was a drastic dip and then 5,000 to 10,000 bedraggled Homo sapiens struggled together in pitiful little clumps hunting and gathering for thousands of years until, in the late Stone Age, we humans began to recover. But for a time there, says science writer Sam Kean, "We damn near went extinct."

You don't want to be near the minimum, but you might not get a choice.

 

[YayLasagna]

Zero

 

[Divine right to rule]

me and about 5000 young women

 

[Neo-Nazi Rich Evans]

well id say at least 5 women to each man living in my mineshaft bunker.

 

[Kosher Dill]

One man and one rib.