10 May 2006:   from Greer Watson to Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Dear Jacqueline,

Okay, now bear in mind that this is a very very much guesstimated figure.

I've started with a total North American population of 30 million.   And then assumed that one quarter of them live in Sime Territory (i.e. 7.5 million).   The rest live in Gen Territory, and are nearly all either Gen adults, or their children.   There are a small number of feral juncts living in Ancient ruins, and such like places; but, since they are hunted out periodically by the army, their numbers never get a chance to grow.

My figures, as calculated so far in the material that you've already read, show that at the Doom point (which, of course, we never reach), there would be a ratio of 330 pre-Gens to 54 Gens to 1 Sime.   That is, for every adult Sime, there would be 54 adult Gens, and 330 children of Gens living on the Genfarms.   Also there would be some people in the Householdings; but I've had to leave them out of the calculations, since I don't know what proportion they represent of the population as a whole.

This leaves out two groups:   first, there are people who live in neither territory, i.e. the Freeband Raiders.   I figure they probably comprise about 10% of the total Sime population on the continent, have no kids, and live at most two years.
        I'm leaving them out.

Then there are the pre-Simes, i.e. the children of the Simes.   (Some of them actually turn out to be Gens, just as some of the Gens' children turn out Sime; but that doesn't affect the numbers.)   The other 90% of Simes live maybe ten years, except that by Zelerod's Doom this figure is rising.   A lot.
        Since the only birth control is being junct, I'm assuming that each Sime woman has maybe three kids on average—but, since she is young and (if she is born of Sime parents) unused to the concept of nursing the sick, the death rate is higher than it is among Gen-born kids.   So maybe 40% of the babies die in the first year, of sheer ignorance, if not of actual neglect. The mortality rate thereafter is also higher, so that, in the end, fewer than half the kids grow up.
        At which point a third of them promptly turn in to Prime Kills.
        Which means that Sime reproduction is far below replacement levels.
        Which means that about half the Simes are actually changeover survivors with Gen parents.
        Who, given the buffer zones around Gen Territory, probably are almost all escapees from the Genfarms.
However, it doesn't matter for this purpose because I'm leaving out the kids, too.

So the calculations are:

In other words, there is no way that the Sime population of North America can ever reach as high as 20,000.   In fact, it isn't anything like as high as that—not so much because I left out the Simes' children, because, as there are so few Simes, they produce only a small number of children.   No, the reason there are fewer Simes than that is because this is the Doom figure.   And we are still a long way off Doom.
        I would say that there couldn't possibly be more than maybe 15,000 Simes living in North America.   That's at the time of Zelerod's Doom, which is the highest figure you ever get pre-Unity.

Greer

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