How The World Would Look With Just 1,000 People

a society full of teens a doctor with a lengthy wait list and a massive need for pool floaties follow us down the rabbit hole as we theorize how the world would look if there were only 1 000 people left on Earth to complete our thought experiments let's imagine that the entire population of 1 000 people was living together in one place even with everyone packed together

people would be rightly concerned about obtaining food data from the World Bank shows that the number of farmers worldwide has declined from 44 percent of the world's population in 1991 to 27 percent in 2019 in its analysis of this problem the BBC states that young people have spurned agriculture as the livelihood citing hard work for little reward the shortage of farmers contributes to food and security

problems throughout the globe this means that in our imagined post-apocalyptic world of a thousand people only about 270 are farmers the American Farm Bureau Federation says that in the United States only two percent of the population are farmers and ranchers who produce a food surplus so if agricultural technology is maintained it's likely that Humanity won't start yet maintaining current levels of Technology with such a low

population may be impossible with research showing that the population size and rate of Technology growth are positively linked with so few people who know how to use farming equipment or even the basics of growing food productivity could easily collapse this is what farmers do well then maybe I'm not a farmer demographically a world with a random but representative assortment of a thousand people around the world

would skewed Young World demographic data collected by the United Nations shows that the median age of humans worldwide is 30. the un's data on percentages of people by age group also reveals what can be expected to translate in a world of a thousand for example 22.2 percent of the world's population were between the ages of zero and four in 2021. this would translate to 222 of

the post-apocalyptic world of a thousands this young Society becomes clearer since 52.8 percent of the world's population is between the ages of zero and 19 which translates to 528 people looking at the other end of the age Spectrum there would be relatively few Elders those over 65 years of age comprise only 4.8 percent of the population meaning that there would be 48 of these older cohorts

in the world of a thousand people but the fact that Society will be young might be a good thing the UN tells us that countries with young populations have accelerated economic growth though they also tend to be politically unstable if you older people will hopefully come to be treated as respected Elders based on their experience and perhaps this would help stabilize the 1 000 person world

you're a strong young boy show some respect for the elderly and carry your grandfather's bag an idea as for planet Earth itself it would no doubt be thankful for a thousand person world the fact is that with so few humans all the environmental stresses caused by people would virtually vanish disruptor explored the question as to what would happen if all humans vanished in an interview with

associate professor Mike Weston from deakin University he predicts that while Wildlife would quickly repopulate the planet domesticated animals might die out in addition populations of animals like rats pigeons and seagulls that are not domesticated but have thrived in symbiosis may suffer population shocks still on the whole Professor Weston imagines a healthier world when considering how depopulated areas such as Chernobyl ecologically recovered with humans absence it

is easy to picture with only one thousand people around there would hardly be a single person in this Society equipped with the skills to hack out a living in the wilderness in 2018 the proceedings of the National Academy of Science published an article that studied hunter-gatherer populations they estimated that there are about 10 million people divided among 300 different hunter-gatherers Societies in a world with 8

billion people this equates to roughly 0.125 to the world's population when this percentage is applied to a population of one thousand they would consider themselves lucky if there was even a single individual with a hunter-gatherer background this lack of traditional skills might endanger the entire population of course some people who are not punter gatherers learn survival skills such as those in Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts

however the number of Scouts are even fewer than hunter-gatherers so Humanity may be doomed unless they can find a DVD of Bear Grylls shows if you're one of the 1000 people left on Earth you would naturally be concerned about maintaining your health so you'd hope there'd at least be a few among the population who were doctors they're a doctor we need a doctor however World Bank

data tells us that there are about 1.6 positions per 1000 people so while this means that there would be at least one doctor that person would have 999 patients then there is the problem of what kind of doctor it is while there is no clear data worldwide in the United States the association of American medical colleges shows that the largest specialty is internal medicine followed by

general practice this means that the odds are that the physician in the post-apocalyptic world would be a generalist which is probably the most useful for minor issues but in a world where the knowledge of modern medicine has essentially been wiped off the planet even small issues would quickly become big problems as life-saving Basics like antibiotics run out a world with a thousand people would also have

levels of disabilities together the 1.6 billion translates to about 20 percent of the world's population or 200 persons in a world of one thousand on one hand their outcome may be Grim as some societies like ancient Sparta rid themselves of children perceived to be less than perfect by leaving them to die through exposure on the other hand in the 1000 person World such visibility might make

disabilities normalized and Society could work harder to accommodate them in a world with 1 000 people one of the chief difficulties would be language barriers there are over 7 100 languages spoken in the world today but the language website ethnologue points out that the vast majority of people are speakers of only a handful of them this means that the 1000 person world will possibly face a

breakdown in communication unless everyone agrees on one common language there are 1.5 billion English speakers in the world which is almost 19 to the world's population while Mandarin Chinese comes in at 1.1 billion which is almost 14 percent thus in a world of one thousand people 190 individuals would speak English and 140 would speak Chinese the third most spoken language is Hindi which comprises 7.5 percent

of the world's population therefore in a world of one thousand there would be 75 Hindi speakers from there other languages would be spoken by fewer and fewer people isolating those speakers for many other survivors since the beginning of time humans have waged War upon each other for a multitude reasons with that said one might expect that any 1 000 person World a fair number of people

who come from a random sampling of humans today would be of military ilk the truth is rather surprising World Bank shows that in 2019 27.6 million people were service members of the Armed Forces around the world this equates to 0.35 percent of the world's population of cineworld of 1 000 people there may or may not be one person who is active in the military however there

would likely be a veteran or two does this mean a world without war is always hope a Rutgers University Newark study published in Scientific American agrees that while humans certainly kill on an individual basis war is not an innate trait the author writes war is fostered by culturally specific systems of knowledge and values that generate powerful meanings of US versus them and in a 1 000

person world is there really much of a them to speak of one key skill for those who want to survive is swimming regrettably in a world of one thousand people most would be unable to swim Gallup analyzed a Lloyd's Register Foundation World risk poll and found that 55 of humans aged 15 and older could not effectively swim if we assume those younger than 15 or even

less likely to have learned how to swim that means only a few hundred people know how to swim in a 1 000 person world I can't swim interestingly and what demonstrates a small example of the inequality between different countries of the world today the swimmers in this world would mainly come from countries that were wealthy before the apocalypse the data shows that 76 percent of people

from high income countries know how to swim as compared to 27 from poor countries even in wealthy countries research shows there's a big difference between whites and minorities as the latter are less likely to have learned how to swim what is more there would be a sex divide among swimmers around the world 57 percent of men can swim compared to only 32 percent of women all

of this data shows that in a world of 1 000 people Humanity would be far better off setting up Inland rather than the ruins of something like a former seaside resort if there were 1 000 people in the world most people would follow a religion but there would likely be only three to choose from The View Research Center conducted a study concerning the breakdown of religions

by size as a portion of the world's population they found that of the different religions Christianity Islam and Hinduism were the most dominant being practiced by 31.5 23.2 percent and fifteen percent to the population respectively if these percentages are applied to a population of one thousand people this means that a little over 310 people would be Christian a bit over 230 Muslim and 150 individuals Hindu

other religions would be much smaller for example by applying a few percentages there would be just over 70 Buddhists and 20 Jewish people in a world of 1 000 persons people who practice various folk religions which may include native Traditions throughout the world would account for about 59 people with Statistics like the society would be religiously pluralistic but the long-term notion of peaceful Toleration may be

remote since multiple religions in one place is usually cause trouble for example people in the 20th century Lebanon ran a republic represented by blocks of Christians and Muslims in 1975 differences between the groups proved to be insurmountable resulting in a civil war that lasted for over a decade killing over 100 000 people when looking at a world of a thousand people one may wonder what the

ethnic makeup of such a society would be but ethnic makeup is not always easily measured so what might be a little more accurate is measuring from where people originated statista provides a breakdown by continent of the world's population in its analysis it places 59 percent of the world's population in Asia with nearly 18 percent from Africa in the hypothetical one thousand person world this would mean

that 590 come from Asia and 180 from Africa representation from the other continents would be quite small for example there would be only 47 people from North America and 93 people from Europe the 1000 person world would be genetically diverse at first this would be helpful in the long run since a one thousand person population would result in a genetic bottleneck over time these initial survivors

will have children and eventually there will be interbreeding genetic diversity will start to diminish and the population would become susceptible to disease and find it harder to adapt in the long run Humanity may be doomed to some future disease to which it cannot Act [Music]