Question about New Alderaan and Population Growth

This is a question for people good with math and statistics. I am neither.

According to the Wook, following the resettlement of New Alderaan, the world had 13,000 inhabitants. Prior to the attacks by Zsinj and Palpatine, the world had 60,000 Alderaanians.

Assuming that New Alderaan was not attacked between the end of the Galactic Civil War and the up through the Sith-Imperial War of 127 ABY, what would the world's population be based on standard human birth rates?

How long would it take for Alderaanians to have their population back to heathly levels? Given the wealth of the Alderaanians survivors, couldn't New Alderaan become a major player a few hundred years following the destruction of their original homeworld?

--Adm. Nick

 

Is that jump to 60,000 just from reproduction or is it mostly more refugees from Alderaan going to settle there? I would guess it's mostly refugees. For a real-life example, not every Jew returned to Israel immediately, and many still haven't. Given its long history and widespread influence, I would guess there are hundreds of millions of refugees from Alderaan scattered around the galaxy. If just half of them have relocated to New Alderaan by now, plus decades of population growth, they could already have a decent population by FOTJ.

I wish we saw more of New Alderaan in the EU, it doesn't have to be a major political player, just a personal retreat for Leia and the others.

 

Yeah, New Alderaan may be one of the most underused planets in the EU that have that type of symbolic significance. The exact figure of Alderaanian survivors has never really be established. As far as New Alderaan is concerned, the Wook says it initially had 60,000 people. Following the various Imperial attacks the world faced, the population (which had been evacuated by the NR) was significantly smaller.

In my mind, there must be millions of Alderaanians that survived the destruction of their home planet. Merchants, off world politicians, people serving in the Imperial military, tourists, and Alderaanaians who had resettled to other worlds.

--Adm. Nick

 

Statistics aside, I'm in full agreement that I wish we saw New Alderaan more (or, well, ever). It has such symbolic power, and has existed since the early days of the EU, and yet, strangely, never got used.

Personally, I think it'd have been a great world to have seen again during, say, the NJO or LOTF, acting as one of the temporary capitals while Coruscant was otherwise engaged or occupied. Looking at the galactic map, I see it's even right next door to Dac, so could easily have acted in its place during the Vong War.

Or, even better yet, what better world in LEGACY from which to have had Stazi stage his new rebellion? Film worlds like Utapau are great and all, but Alderaan was a film world too, after all. Sure, New Alderaan isn't Alderaan itself, but any casual fan would instantly catch the significance of it -- you needn't be some big time EU buff to imagine the symbolism behind the "New" part.

Such untapped potential...

 

Zor, you have summed up my thoughts EXAXTLY.

Regarding New Alderaan circa 137 ABY, the Essential Atlas did show that New Alderaan was within a "GA Remnant influence" sphere on the map. I can totally see New Alderaan being a support of Gar Stazi and the GA. I can also see the people of New Alderaan being the type who would offer to aid/support/hide refugees from Dac.

Maybe once fans spend time on Alderaan in TOR there will be a renewed interest in Alderaanians in the Expanded Universe. New Alderaan as a member of the Galactic Alliance would be awesome indeed.

--Adm. Nick

 

Maybe New Alderaan would have been a more important place... if it wasn't far away in the distant Outer Rim. I can't help but think that many New Alderaanians simply relocated to a world within the civilized galaxy, like Chandrilla or Naboo, the first chance they got.

 

The Alderaanian Alliace (through the Alderaanian Council) are the ones who settled New Alderaan. There is a symbolic importance attached to Alderaan's surviving leaders trying to start over on a new world.

Now, prior to the defeat of the Empire, I can see many Alderaanians being hesitant to settle in one place, for fear of being a target. However, following the Bastion Accords, there is no reason that Alderaanians wouldn't try to turn their new homeworld into a thriving place. It is situated in a safe portion of the Outer Rim, near New Republic/Galactic Alliance powerhouses like Dac. In fact, that particular portion of the Outer Rim is part of the Slice, which tends to be among the most civilized portion of the galaxy.

By 137 ABY, the people of New Alderaan potentially have lived in peace and prosperity for over a century. There is a incredible amount of wealth available to the Alderaanian Council, so I can see them spending large amounts of credits to turn New Alderaan into the type of place fellow Alderaanians would want to live.

It just feels... right to see New Alderaan become a bigger player in the galaxy. I can see them being an advocate for democracy and refugee rights in the post-Krayt galaxy.

--Adm. Nick

 

The fact it was mockingly referred to as "Alderim" by the Remnant probably didn't help.

Okay, so I made that up.

 

I've always thought it odd that Leia was constantly castigated during the NR era for representing "no one" considering the small amount of Alderaanians. Then again, I don't see why she couldn't have been the representative for the Ash Worlds sector - I have a feeling that there wereother Alliance safeworlds scattered there.
I'm also wondering what Sector the Alderaan system is in - I realize that they probably had one of those "founding worlds" single-system exemptions in the Senate, but I'd still like to know.

 

I'm not a sociologist or anything, but I can do a bit of math and read statistics.

First, some assumptions. The GFFA is a place of better-than-we-have health care. This implies a low infant death rate and reasonably effective birth control (this allows us to assume that most children are planned, and family sizes can then be based on socioeconomic factors we can kinda predict). Let's also assume that a newly colonized planet is more rural than, say, Coruscant or a major city in the US. Major, industrial cities have lower birth rates among the upper middle class (likely the people who could afford to be off Aldreraan) and upper class. I'm going to go w/three kids per mother. Last, let's assume that, without major cataclysms, that the life expectancy is around 80-90 (over 120 years, this results in only the first two-three generations having died off). We also need a reasonable 'average age of motherhood'. Leia was 28-ish when the twins were born, but she was also quite busy fighting a galactic empire in her early twenties. I'm going to aim for 20.

Women make up about 51% (0.51) of the population. I'm tossing out 10% (a bit high) of the possible child-bearing population for reasons of accidental death before motherhood, homosexuality, infertility, and not wanting to be a mother. We'll shoot for 120 years in the future (about 6 generations), and then subtract off the first three (the original settlers, their children and their grandchildren) for having all died in the intervening period.

Thus we get a factor we can multiply the original population by as:

(0.51*0.9*3)^(120/20) -(0.51*0.9*3)^2-(0.51*0.9*3)-1 = 2.5

Thus, without immigration, the population would only be about two and a half times larger over 120 years. If you want to mess around with this simple model, the 0.51 is the fraction of women in the population, the .9 is the fraction of women that end up having kids, the 3 is the number of kids each woman has, and the factor of (120/20) is 120 years and 20 years per generation. This is a bit of an ad hoc model, though, and doesn't account for a number of factors.

A few other possibilities:
*If we assume that every mother has 5 kids, the multiplicative factor is about 140 (turning 60,000 people into a bit over 8 million).
*If we assume 3 kids per mother, but the average age at childbirth to be 15, the factor is 8 (turning 60,000 people into 480,000 people)

-Bob

 

Oops - I did some bad math there. The multiplicative factor is wrong. It should be

(0.51*0.9*3)^(6)+(0.51*0.9*3)^(5)+(0.51*0.9*3)^(4)+(0.51*0.9*3)^(3) = 18

This accounts for generations 3 through 6. I was just looking at how much larger the most recent generation was compared to the original, (and I did it badly).

Anyway, that's 1 million people 120 years later for the first case.

With 5 kids, 60,000 ---> 14+ million people
With 15 year old moms 60,000 ---> 81 million people

 

The math looks sound, but I object to 20 years as a generational measure. For real Humans, the estimated Generation size is 25 years.

We know this to be true in Star Wars too, because 1,000 generations refers to almost precisely 25,000 years.

So, assuming 125 years is 5 generations, instead of 120 years being 6 generations (keeping the idea that generations 0, 1 and 2 are dead, but 3-5 are alive), we get:

(0.51*0.9*3)^(5)+(0.51*0.9*3)^(4)+(0.51*0.9*3)^(3)

= 11.16

which means a population of roughly 670,000, 125 years later (5 generations).

 

Ehhh.... I'm not sure if most Alderaanians could think that Alderaan could really start over again. Let's say that for some reason, all of Israel sunk beneath the waves and the Jews lose their homeland forever. Do you think that all the remaining Jews would be able declare some other spot as "New Israel" and expect all of their kind to treat it as their new promised land?

Despite the symbolism inherent with New Alderaan, the fact remains that it was really nothing more than a glorified safe-world set aside for Alderaanian refugees. I wouldn't doubt that most refugees never considered New Alderaan to be a new homeworld, just like how most refugees don't consider their refugee camp to be an actual home.

 

I'm not too comfortable about the maths, but I would take two other elements into account:

Alderaan's population was 2 billions (according to Wookieepedia) so the question would be what percentile of refugees could there be?

The average lifespan of a human is 100 in the GFFA (RPG Saga Edition Core Rulebook; not to mention the rejuvenation cures mentioned in Millenium Falcon).