Higher Global Population?

Keep in mind though that much of the Americas are desert, tundra, mountains etc. and thus minimally fit if at all for human habitation.

Hence chopping that number in half. There's still major river systems through very habitable land that are largely rural in the Americas. Just imagine if the Mississippi watershed (at least, the main rivers) had the population density of the BosWash corridor.
 
Hence chopping that number in half. There's still major river systems through very habitable land that are largely rural in the Americas. Just imagine if the Mississippi watershed (at least, the main rivers) had the population density of the BosWash corridor.
Imagine if the Mississippi basin had densities of the Yangtze basin - it alone would have 500-600 million people. Louisiana (the modern state) would have > 100 million.
 
Keep in mind though that much of the Americas are desert, tundra, mountains etc. and thus minimally fit if at all for human habitation.

It's still got a large river system (Colorado) running right through those deserts. Alaska could support a much larger population both now and historically. Finally, let's never forget how the Andes played host to possibly the most advanced civilisation on the continent pre-colonisation.

Get rid of imperialism-capitalism on the late 1800s, boom, a myriad of genocides and atrocities would be avoided.

It would certainly help India (in particular Bengal) and the Congo.
 
Get rid of imperialism-capitalism on the late 1800s, boom, a myriad of genocides and atrocities would be avoided.
I don´t wanna be and seem insensible, still you know that the population growth of just a couple year in recent years FAR outweights most genocides´ casualties numbers? So in terms of increasing population there is a solution actually easier than your.

In your scenario, you would have to have a country or countries that somehow just spreads new technology to the places conquered by imperialist countries AND somehow avoid internal conflict between powers in Africa that now have guns(like guns entering Japan massively increased the intensity of the Sengoku Jidai). When you get down to it is not just "if people were nicer", you gotta find a way to actually have that not backfire from behind.
 
Imagine if the Mississippi basin had densities of the Yangtze basin - it alone would have 500-600 million people. Louisiana (the modern state) would have > 100 million.
But can it have that density? Is like saying "if the Ob river had the same density of the Volga, Russia would be the most populous country" doesn´t mean that is possible. Isn´t most of the US´ land used for farming anyway(also subsidized)?
 
It's still got a large river system (Colorado) running right through those deserts. Alaska could support a much larger population both now and historically. Finally, let's never forget how the Andes played host to possibly the most advanced civilisation on the continent pre-colonisation.



It would certainly help India (in particular Bengal) and the Congo.
Given recent Californian droughts, I wouldn´t be so sure you can support that bigger of a population.

The Andes have 55 million people today(Ecuador+Bolivia+Peru, Chile is not there because they were mostly not Inca) that´s 4-5 bigger what the Inca had before, given what we see in Europe comparing 1500 to 2000 it doesn´t seem that the Andes are that underpopulated at all.

Bangladesh has the highest population density for a big country so I don´t see why avoiding the famines would let the population be feasible bigger, you could remove any trace of wilderness left maybe but still, is quite pushing it. Bangladesh unlike Ireland, recovered tremendously and didn´t really even lose steam in its population growth despite all the British induced and non induced famines.
 
But can it have that density? Is like saying "if the Ob river had the same density of the Volga, Russia would be the most populous country" doesn´t mean that is possible. Isn´t most of the US´ land used for farming anyway(also subsidized)?
Fertile river valleys are by definition the densest places in the world, and contain the largest cities. We can imagine New Orleans as large as Shanghai (25 million), St. Louis (or somewhere similar) the size of Wuhan (10 million), Memphis the size of Nanjing (8 million), Louisville the size of Changsha (5 million), Nashville the size of Nanchang (4 million), Minneapolis the size of Chengdu (12 million), etc etc. Iowa would be as dense as Hebei (giving it 55 million), Illinois *excluding Chicagoland* having 60 million, and so on.

:eek::eek::eek:
 
Fertile river valleys are by definition the densest places in the world, and contain the largest cities. We can imagine New Orleans as large as Shanghai (25 million), St. Louis (or somewhere similar) the size of Wuhan (10 million), Memphis the size of Nanjing (8 million), Louisville the size of Changsha (5 million), Nashville the size of Nanchang (4 million), Minneapolis the size of Chengdu (12 million), etc etc. Iowa would be as dense as Hebei (giving it 55 million), Illinois *excluding Chicagoland* having 70 million, and so on.

:eek::eek::eek:
Rivers are not create equally, doesnt the US plains suffer from tornados, typhoons and isn´t the area quite swampy?
 
The deadliest tornadoes aren't in the Midwest US, but in Bangladesh. Doesn't stop people from living there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tornadoes_causing_100_or_more_deaths

Swamps *can* be drained (for real, not just as an empty political slogan) to create fertile farmland. Most of the world's dense river deltas are naturally swamps.
Well you gotta look at the relative casualties, in any case Bangladesh is more fertilite, the Mississippi is not at that level.

Yeah but people don´t exactly live on the mouth of the deltas, Cairo, Dhaka, Nanjing etc. they live more inland. So New Orleans would have hard time growing there.

I still don´t get this claim that the Mississippi is basically the same as other big rivers like the Ganges or Yellow river and that the climate can support as many people.
 
Well you gotta look at the relative casualties, in any case Bangladesh is more fertilite, the Mississippi is not at that level.

Yeah but people don´t exactly live on the mouth of the deltas, Cairo, Dhaka, Nanjing etc. they live more inland. So New Orleans would have hard time growing there.

I still don´t get this claim that the Mississippi is basically the same as other big rivers like the Ganges or Yellow river and that the climate can support as many people.
Maybe New Orleans wouldn't be 25+ million. But Baton Rouge? It's nitpicking, regardless.

A USA with China-level densities seems shocking because it's unfamiliar. It will be much more claustrophobic, but no more so than in much of Europe or Asia.
 
Maybe New Orleans wouldn't be 25+ million. But Baton Rouge? It's nitpicking, regardless.

A USA with China-level densities seems shocking because it's unfamiliar. It will be much more claustrophobic, but no more so than in much of Europe or Asia.
Maybe, anyway.

I don´t live in the US so I wouldn´t know. Still the comparison doesn´t ring true because we have no examples of big population center in the Mississippi outside the US expansion there and so there is no real reason to believe China like density can be reached, outside the South the basin is nearly 100% farmland so I don´t see where you can find even more food, more so pre green revolution.
 
Arguably the Mississippi basin is even better than China for agriculture, as even excluding the Tibetan Plateau and deserts, much of China is rugged. This means the USA would have a population larger than China's. There's no reason why Kansas can't have the densities of Henan - with the same climate and same type of soil. This would give Kansas alone 120 million people. As for food, China is (mostly) self-sufficient already. The US is already the export powerhouse of corn and wheat, so I see no reason why it can't be self-sufficient ITTL.
 
Maybe New Orleans wouldn't be 25+ million. But Baton Rouge? It's nitpicking, regardless.

A USA with China-level densities seems shocking because it's unfamiliar. It will be much more claustrophobic, but no more so than in much of Europe or Asia.

New Orleans is certainly better placed than Baton Rouge. It was a series of New Orleans screws that made it what it is today.

Even otl, Baton Rouge was and until very modern times was more of a subsidiary. Further New Orleans has very important towns and areas next to it, Métairie, Arabi, Lacombe, Laplace, LaBalize, Côte des Allemands, etc....
 
Last edited:
Fertile river valleys are by definition the densest places in the world, and contain the largest cities. We can imagine New Orleans as large as Shanghai (25 million), St. Louis (or somewhere similar) the size of Wuhan (10 million), Memphis the size of Nanjing (8 million), Louisville the size of Changsha (5 million), Nashville the size of Nanchang (4 million), Minneapolis the size of Chengdu (12 million), etc etc. Iowa would be as dense as Hebei (giving it 55 million), Illinois *excluding Chicagoland* having 60 million, and so on.

:eek::eek::eek:

Many of those places with the right PODs could be at that already. An industrial South that moved away from slavery earlier could have given you the Nashville metropolitan area at 4 million by the 21st century. But all of those places, I think, we'd have to resort to an agricultural POD. Come to think of it, agricultural PODs are necessarily the best way to increase global population, although to me they almost feel like cheating. Like say the Mississippians develop better agriculture so that they don't decline as in OTL, and the entire region is basically like Mesoamerica in terms of cultural sophistication and most importantly, population density. We'll probably also want that for the West Coast. And why not throw in Lands of Red and Gold-style stuff for Australia/New Zealand?

Given recent Californian droughts, I wouldn´t be so sure you can support that bigger of a population.

The Andes have 55 million people today(Ecuador+Bolivia+Peru, Chile is not there because they were mostly not Inca) that´s 4-5 bigger what the Inca had before, given what we see in Europe comparing 1500 to 2000 it doesn´t seem that the Andes are that underpopulated at all.

Bangladesh has the highest population density for a big country so I don´t see why avoiding the famines would let the population be feasible bigger, you could remove any trace of wilderness left maybe but still, is quite pushing it. Bangladesh unlike Ireland, recovered tremendously and didn´t really even lose steam in its population growth despite all the British induced and non induced famines.

Different water use policies would help California out immensely. Earlier desalination, too. But the current drought is no worse than historic major droughts in California, going by the climatology record in the region. And if California is at its limit, it seems to me plainly obvious that the rest of the West Coast up to Alaska is underpopulated.

I say Bangladesh because the population is still expected to expand by large numbers. Yes, Bangladesh does export large parts of its population elsewhere (mainly to India), but that's beside the point. The land is so rich it can support many more people, and keep in mind by Bengal, I'm also including (Indian) West Bengal. India as a whole too, since many regions were severely affected by numerous famines under British rule. Ireland's an interesting case, since it wasn't just the famine that made Ireland so underpopulated, it was that constant outmigration.

I'm mainly speaking in a historic context--at the turn of the 20th century, things were far different than now in terms of underpopulated regions, and it's thanks to the agricultural revolutions of the 20th century that returned many regions to what historically "should" have been the expected result. Like take the Maghreb, which could've reach it's current population densities decades ago. I think a more densely populated Maghreb, for that matter, would've been a population exporter as Italy and Spain were (probably to Latin America, going by where the Spanish emigrants largely went, as did the Lebanese).

Well you gotta look at the relative casualties, in any case Bangladesh is more fertilite, the Mississippi is not at that level.

Yeah but people don´t exactly live on the mouth of the deltas, Cairo, Dhaka, Nanjing etc. they live more inland. So New Orleans would have hard time growing there.

I still don´t get this claim that the Mississippi is basically the same as other big rivers like the Ganges or Yellow river and that the climate can support as many people.

Those brutal Bangladesh tornadoes are because of terrible disaster preparation, especially in the era they happened in. It's like comparing Haiti to Japan in terms of earthquake preparation. Case in point, 2011 had two major tornadoes strike mid-sized metropolitan areas (Tuscaloosa and Joplin) and that entire year, the US recorded only 553 fatalities and not much more over 5,000 injuries. It isn't like it hurt China's potential that much of it's very vulnerable to earthquakes and is densely populated.
 
Top