The Crucis Margin Question - How did 590 BILLION inhabitants go missing?

[GypsyComet]

I'm not sure we have seen evidence of the Imperium conducting terraforming on anything but worlds that have potential but no actual life. The only known exception is for reasons of Quarantine.

The K'ree, on the other hand, start terraforming without notice or regard for current inhabitants.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The only known exception is for reasons of Quarantine.

And in that case, it's pretty much inevitably the exact opposite of terraforming.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The only known exception is for reasons of Quarantine.

And in that case, it's pretty much inevitably the exact opposite of terraforming.

Found this while going back through my old posts.

This strikes me as amusing.

So, you've just discovered a civilization-threatening situation on some world. One that can only be contained by modifying the planet to have ATM=6 and HYD=7, and introducing a Terran-standard biome.

What threat needs this precise remedy, rather than just glassing it from orbit?

I mean, it's just got to be something interesting...

"That's it then. Unless we trigger a Cambrian Explosion, right now, the galaxy's doomed. And contact the Colonization Bureau -- we won't be truly safe until the place hits Pop Code Six." (wikipedia link)

Yeah, that Star Trek movie, and Haviland Tuf could have done it with his ship.

I'm just wondering what could make it necessary.

 

[aramis]

There are many reasons for large scale population loss that have applied historically: War, Famine, Disease and deliberate/accidental Genocide have generally been relatively small contributors to population decline. The biggest are Economic Collapse and Ecological Collapse. These may follow (or cause) the first four. And economic collapse doesn't even have to be local. If the neighbour's economy stops importing your export you can be in trouble too.
e.g. I feel sorry for those sophont natives who live on a planet that the Imperium has decided to terraform! Suddenly all your native foodstuffs are dying off, the air is becoming incompatible and your life expectancy is dropping like a stick.

Local economic insecurity is a common enough damper on population growth... even when it doesn't lead to collapse.

Plus, several high tech locations (esp. Urban China, all of Japan, several US cities) have less than 1 child per adult making it to adulthood. Add to that that these populations generally have later age of first offspring, and the growth rate slides down.

Many people raised on the "Two parents and 2 kids" propaganda of the 1960's to 1980's saw that 2 kids was better standard of living than three, did the math, and opted for 1 planned.... if you're maximizing your offspring's benefits from your wealth, you only have one. If you want to maximize the odds of your children living to produce more, 3-4 seems about typical, as maternal peri-partem and post-partem death starts to rise after 4, and finances get pretty thin after 3-5 children.

As for why MJD reused the subsectors and sectors, but not the UWPs? IIRC, GtD was written before Hunter purchased the JG Traveller Material IP. The sector names were in prior GDW maps. I suspect, but have no evidence to back it, that the subsector names were canonized by the license in 1979-1983. But man, was I peeved when Atlas explicitly decanonized the JG sectors.