Demographics of the Worldwar Series

Thande

Thande

Donor
Darkest said:
I think the Race definitely has 1990's technology on all fronts, EXCEPT 1) hydrogen-fueled tech, 2) holographics, 3) hibernation tech and of course 4) interstellar travel.
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I always rationalised those by saying that they were just over the horizon when Turtledove wrote the books (starting in 1993, so it was probably meant to represent the tech of the allies in the Gulf War). 3) is explainable by saying that the Race's physiology is simply more suited to hibernation than human. 4) seems to have been retconned, because the Race ships were just fission nuclear drive in the Worldwar books (which would have been possible to build in 1993, if not that advanced) but have become fusion drive in the later books.

Darkest said:
15:25 kill ratio? Seems like there would be more human deaths. I definitely know that they had a 5:1 kill ratio in armored combat (tanks).
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That was mentioned with regards to the Race vs. the best tanks and tankmen in the world (the Wehrmacht). The Americans, British and Russians all had larger human-to-Race tank kill ratios.
 

Yossarian

As for the race's technology, I always thought of their civilian tech as being much more advanced than their military tech. Their military hadn't changed for tens of thousands of years, when they last had wars amongst themselves, while their civilian tech was advancing that whole time. So hibernation, fusion, etc continued to advance, but tanks and missiles did not.
 

Tyr

I'd say 10-15 million for the conquest fleet.
Though of course they are a modern army, the majority of those people are support personel and not actual soldiers.

As for the race's technology, I always thought of their civilian tech as being much more advanced than their military tech. Their military hadn't changed for tens of thousands of years, when they last had wars amongst themselves, while their civilian tech was advancing that whole time. So hibernation, fusion, etc continued to advance, but tanks and missiles did not.
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Their civilian tech seems to be late 90s/early 00s. In the 60s humans make a faster CD ROM drive then them.
 
Thande

Thande

Donor
Yossarian said:
As for the race's technology, I always thought of their civilian tech as being much more advanced than their military tech. Their military hadn't changed for tens of thousands of years, when they last had wars amongst themselves, while their civilian tech was advancing that whole time. So hibernation, fusion, etc continued to advance, but tanks and missiles did not.
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That's a good point.

@Leej - hologram projectors, common use of videophones... The reason why the humans built a faster CD player was because the Race are conservative and complacent and just hadn't bothered making it any faster for thousands of years, not because they were incapable of doing it. It doesn't speak for the rest of their level of tech advancement.
 

Tyr

Thande said:
That's a good point.

@Leej - hologram projectors, common use of videophones... The reason why the humans built a faster CD player was because the Race are conservative and complacent and just hadn't bothered making it any faster for thousands of years, not because they were incapable of doing it. It doesn't speak for the rest of their level of tech advancement.
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Forgot about holograms.
Are they mentioned in civilian use? I can only recall the military ones.

Videophones are well within modern capability, its just they've never took off.
 

Darkest

Banned
Several hundred of Race starships, just in the Conquest Fleet? Hmmm... Well, we know the ConFleet had at least six starships: 127th Emperor Hetto, 13th Emperor Poropss-The Merciful, 206th Emperor Yower, 29th Emperor Jevon, 56th Emperor Jossano, 67th Emperor Sohrheb. And we know there was at least twelve starships destroyed by Warren's secret attack on the Colonization Fleet. And the ColFleet carried 80-100 million settlers, so that is a big deal. Still, it doesn't give us a good estimate on how many ships there were.

Still, I can't accept the idea that there are so many Race ships in orbit around Tosev 3.
 
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Thande

Thande

Donor
Darkest said:
Several hundred of Race starships, just in the Conquest Fleet? Hmmm... Well, we know the ConFleet had at least six starships: 127th Emperor Hetto, 13th Emperor Poropss-The Merciful, 206th Emperor Yower, 29th Emperor Jevon, 56th Emperor Jossano, 67th Emperor Sohrheb. And we know there was at least twelve starships destroyed by Warren's secret attack on the Colonization Fleet. And the ColFleet carried 80-100 million settlers, so that is a big deal. Still, it doesn't give us a good estimate on how many ships there were.

Still, I can't accept the idea that there are so many Race ships in orbit around Tosev 3.
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Why not?

In any case, the ships are said to be about the size of modern skyscrapers when landed, which gives you a rough estimate on the minimum number of ships if we assume a conquest fleet personnel volume of 5-20 million. Several hundred, at least. We also know that six of them were landed within the (admittedly quite long!) range of the Dora supergun in the Ukraine. If that density is the same all over the world, then...
 

Darkest

Banned
How would there be room for human space developments with so many Race ships! Man! Okay, so the size of modern skyscrapers? We must assume that a good deal of those are designed to hold Lizards in cold sleep, which means you could fit a higher population in just one ship. And, the Lizards are smaller than we are, so we should use that information as well.

I wish I could e-mail Turtledove on the subject. Hmmm...

Try to find the maximum occupancy of residential skyscrapers, about 350 meters long should be good, then we'll figure out what portions of a typical Race ship will be used for the engine, storage, and other facilities.
 
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Riain

If you gathered the 20 biggest cruise liners in the world today, and fitted them out as high density troop carriers, how many troops could you carry at once (remembering that in WW2 the Quenn Mary carried 15,000 troops)? Then double this number for half-size lizards, and launch these cruise liners into interstellar space you have perhaps 1 million troops on an easily imaginable fleet. Does this make sense to anyone else?
 

Darkest

Banned
That would be a pretty good process, but what percentage of the ship should be used up by storage, especially for military equipment, fuel storage, and interstellar engines? Also, I don't think the Lizards are small enough to fit two where only one human might be able to stay.

If we use the following numbers: the passenger/crew capacity of the largest future passenger ship class, the Genesis, compared to RMS Queen Mary's peacetime passenger/crew capacity and the Queen Mary's troop capacity compared to her peacetime capacity. The Genesis, by this comparison, should hold about 38,000. Let's say the Lizards take up 50%, though I would think they'd take up more like 70% of the space. Nevertheless, Lizards don't have to live on the ships, like troopships, they just have to be encased in cold sleep cells. Anyway, this brings us to a Lizard starship being able to take on 76,000 passengers.

However, even with this kind of capacity, the fleet will still need 184 starships for a population of 14 million! Which I consider too many.

In 1942, the tallest skyscraper was the Empire State Building, which was 381 meters in height. Let's say a starship is... oh... 390 meters. Matches the description in the book. If we use ratios once again, compared to the Genesis's 360 meters a Race starship could carry about 83,000 passengers. Does that make a dent in our statistics? Let's see... Well, 169 for 14 million... Hmmm... Its better, I guess. Maybe I should decrease the population of the Conquest Fleet. 12.5 million? 151 starships.

troopship passenger capacity based on volume, with the average Lizard taking up 70% of the room a human does, then you get about 30,000 passengers for one 360 meter long starship. (300 meters to 450 meters is about skyscraper range).
 
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Riain

184 giant ships isn't far fetched. If you add to the giant cruise liners; fleet aircraft carriers and LPHs, oil supertankers, container ships, the 8 USN SL7 fast RoRo ships, giant car carriers you could get 184 ships. With the race's level of technology interstellar propulsion should be no more intrusive than the engines in earth ships. As for boosting these ships into orbit, wouldn't they be built in space? There would be enough raw materials in our solar system to build lots of big structures.
 

Darkest

Banned
While we couldn't get a canon answer unless someone gets Turtledove's e-mail, here's what I am assuming:

The Race
Conquest Fleet
- 13,500,000 individuals
- 163 starships, 2 destroyed during the Attack of Dora, leaving 161
Colonization Fleet
- 95 million (95,000,000) individuals originally; about 92 million (91,976,000) left after the attack (3,024,000 casualties)
- 287 starships originally, 12 were destroyed with about 3 million casualties (3,024,000), now only 275 starships

Now I just need to figure out A) The Race's (probable estimate) death toll during the Invasion of Tosev 3; B) The Race's death toll / death rate during the occupation of Tosev 3; C) the population growth rate of the Race once females arrive; D) the rate of Race immigration to the human powers.

But, before we do that we problem want to come upon an agreement on what the death toll is for the humans, for the Big Five as well as occupied territories.

NOTE: I found one of Turtledove's editor's mail address, so I think I'm going to send him a letter to see what he thinks about the demographics of the Worldwar series.
 
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Riain

The real WW2 killed about 60,000,000, of which almost half were Chinese, Russian, Jewish, Polish and Gypsy civilians. I'd say civilian deaths would be way down and military deaths would be way up, but maybe they balance out or are a bit more. But I can't see 1 or 2 hundred million human casulaties.
 

Darkest

Banned
Well, think about the seventeen cities that were nuked, many of them capitals and very densely populated. I'm using 350 kt weapons on a nuke simulation, modern day, and I've already gotten passed five million with only Berlin, Washington D.C., Tokyo, and Munich!
 

Darkest

Banned
Just one I made in Excel, which I recently scrapped.

How do you get accurate readings for the death toll of cities you've nuked!?! Its driving me crazy. It would really be much easier if I could only discover the historical population density of cities like Berlin, Munich, Tokyo, Sydney, ect.
 

joatsimeon@aol.com

Banned
Casualties

The latest data indicates that the Soviets lost more than the Soviets ever acknowledged in WWII; something like 14,000,000 military dead including dead POW's, well over 30,000,000 total casualties (including many severely wounded), and many more than that in civilian dead. It was a demographic body-blow from which the Russian, Beyorussian and Ukrainian peoples in particular never really recovered.

In the WORLDWAR series, I'd be surprised if the US didn't suffer equivalent losses -- say at least 25,000,000 dead overall, maybe more; around 20% of the population.

The Soviets suffer, if anything, even worse than in OTL's WWII, and so does Germany; and Britain actually gets invaded. Then there's the nuking of cities in Japan, Germany/Europe, the US, and Australia, and widespread combat in areas untouched by WWII like Africa, Latin America and India.

Overall, the Lizard invasion probably doubles the losses from WWII, and spreads them more widely, so that countries which largely escaped in OTL get the sort of working-over that the Soviets, Poles and Serbs did.
 
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