Population Est of Major Settlements within NCR Circa 2241/42 and Settlement Patterns

Z

zowmaster

First time out of the vault
According to the NCR history holodisk in Fallout 2, NCR circa 2241/2242 has 700,000 total population. Furthermore Shady Sands is the largest city/capital, with 'many tens of thousands of people' (from the Vault City travel log holodisk, for our purposes let's just say ~50,000). Because I like to have my Fallout universe robust as possible, what are some plausible estimates for the major settlements in NCR that are mentioned from Fallout 1 and 2?

The Vault City travel log goes on to state that during the same time, Vault City has 103 citizens (not including courtyard or servants), Broken Hills and Redding both with 'hundreds of residents' each and New Reno with 'several thousand "people"'. I don't expect the games or think it was the designers intent to have every single citizen in a city represented (pretty obvious and the reason why NCR/Shady Sands in NCR has ~50,000 but only like 50 actual people in game).

With that said all the minor settlements Ghost Farm/Slags, Vault 13 & 15, Navarro, The Stables, Vault Village, Umbra Tribe and the Abbey (last 3 all from RP project) probably realistic all have 100 residents (some a lot lower than that). That leaves the major settlements of Klamath, The Den, Modoc, Gecko and San Francisco from Fallout 2 and Junktown, the Hub and LA Boneyard from Fallout 1.

I would venture a guess and say Klamath, Den, Modoc and Gecko are also probably in the hundreds population wise also with the Den the biggest out of the four. Also I could probably reasonably make a case the Frisco and Boneyard are definitely in the thousands, if not the lower ten thousands. That leaves Hub and Junktown, I would say more in the thousands as opposed to hundreds, thoughts?

Also this leads to my second point, with a 700,000 population (in early 2240, in New Vegas era forty years later probably over 1,000,000) and only a couple of cities over 10,000 population (Shady Sands confirmed, possible San Francisco and Boneyard) is NCR’s population primarily made up of small settlements? Or do we just not hear about the cities with 10,000+ population in the games? If they were comprised of primarily smaller settlements, I personally feel like this would make NCR harder to stay solvent and will lead to a quicker demise for them, what do you guys think?
 
I know San Francisco is still controlled by the Shi and not NCR in 2281 (New Vegas era), but I mean that area...
 
Off the top of my head the major economic sectors of NCR seem like brahmin ranching, farming, defense, minor manufacturing or repair, scavenging, and mining, in roughly that order (maybe). Ranching would support a low density population, farming a bit more dense. Manufacturing pretty dense, scavenging and mining could be in the middle. Many settlements would have a mix.

Someplace with a lot of brahmin ranching or farming in the surrounding region could be a pretty small town (hundreds or low thousands of people) but might be a few times larger when surrounding farms are included. In times of trouble, the people nearby might head for the larger settlement for defense.

I'd figure that once you are within the NCR's borders, there would be a more or less continuous array of farms, villages, and towns everywhere people could find a way to scratch out a living. However, if NCR grows too fast, then you could have some pretty sparse regions. Anywhere that was empty would create a weakness in terms of trade, defense, and political cohesion. Of course a lot of land wouldn't support anybody.

Small settlements would be weak, as you noted, but to paraphrase General Oliver, you're not just pissing on them, you're pissing on the Bear. If the threat of the NCR's size isn't enough for some bunch of raiders, a punitive expedition or a bit of old-fashioned "exterminate all the brutes" would settle their hash.

Sorry, there's no numbers there, but I'm thinking of the dynamics.

But your figure of 700,000 was something I had forgotten about. I do have some thoughts on population, coming from the other direction...what was lost:

Current US population (2010 census) is about 310 million. Rough estimate for 2077 population would be 500 million (increase of 1.6x).

Assuming 99% of the population is lost in the war and it's aftermath leaves US population as low as 5 million. The low point could be hit up to 10 years after the war (a guess),

Current CA population (2010) is about 37 million, so using the ratios above,maybe 60 million right before the war, and 600,000 survivors. The area of the Fallout 2 NCR represents very roughly 35 million prewar population, so 350,000 people at the postwar minimum. That means in the 160 years since, the population had grown by a factor of 2. That seems small.

I might revise the population loss figure up to 99.7%. Then you would have seen a postwar minimum in NCR's territory of just 105,000 people, and growth by a factor of 6.7 by 2241.

The much higher loss figure has a nice dynamic when you consider the Vault Dweller part of the population. Total Vault population capacity is about 123,000. That makes Vault Dwellers 2.5% of all survivors in the 99% losses scenario, which seems insignificant. In the 99.7% scenario, 123,000 / 1.5 million US survivors puts Vault Dwellers at a more respectable 8% of the population. That seems like enough to have an important impact on the wastes, without undermining the "Vaults were experiments, and not run too well" aspect.
 
Well for starters, it's INCREDIBLY vital that you consider setting factors when you try to use stated populations as a "sample" to gauge other settlements by. New Reno is MUCH closer to what more established settlements would look like in terms of population size, and not Vault City. Remember, Vault City was SUFFERING from background radiation induced sterility and its incredibly low Citizen count reflected that. However, as is always the case with VC, they played that off as unimportant. Why draw attention to this town with just over a hundred population (of the category that they care about, that is) when you can just highlight that all these other places are populated by filth and human refuse? So that's what it did. When you look at settlements, and you read that they are estimated to have populations in the "hundreds", that means closer to 1,000 than 100. VC was an exception, it simply refused to acknowledge that it was.

So, it's pretty likely that many of these territories that were much more established had many thousands of citizens, each. Smaller towns like Modoc would have a few hundred, but SF would have thousands, minimum. Hub and Boneyard, meanwhile, would have MANY more citizens, considering their massive size and/or bustling metropolis streets.
 
Only confirmed NCR cities are those that appear in Fo1. Cities of Fo2 aren't confirmed as being part of the NCR.
If you want to believe they are, you can, but if you want to believe they are independant, they could be. Let's give FoNV credit for not outright confirming those stuff.

Also, i might be wrong, but i think that the Hub has a bigger population than Shady Sands. It was already pretty big 80 years before Fo2 and i guess it kept extending in the meantime...
 
Vault Maker, that is a very intriguing/valid point you bring up about population. I guess I was not considering that the casualty rate would be that high, but it definitely makes a lot of sense. Heck I would even say the casualty rate could be 99.8% or 99.9%, although in those cases (especially 99.9%) the growth factor would be a lot higher than 6.7 and might not be realistic...

Snap, that is a good point, I have been estimating on the low side based off the quoted amounts, it would make more sense if they were on the higher end. Naossano, I know F:NV doesn't confirm the addition of F2 cities, but Fallout wikis from wikia and gamepedia lists those cities as being NCR territory at least...
 
zowmaster said:
Vault Maker, that is a very intriguing/valid point you bring up about population. I guess I was not considering that the casualty rate would be that high, but it definitely makes a lot of sense. Heck I would even say the casualty rate could be 99.8% or 99.9%, although in those cases (especially 99.9%) the growth factor would be a lot higher than 6.7 and might not be realistic...
Click to expand...

When I've thought about this in the past, losses above 99% seemed likely, but (maybe the mind recoils) I started thinking 95% might be more reasonable. But the tidbit about the NCR disk made me revisit it.

I'm not sure how fast population bounceback might happen. I don't think I've seen much on it in Cold War literature. In the case of NCR, it might not be all birthrate. I can imagine a steady stream or trickle of immigration to NCR territory, especially early on, when NCR might not be sure enough of their power to expand their territory quickly.

You know, it's odd how you say 99.8 or 99.9%. I first wrote my post using 99.8% losses, with total 1 million US survivors, and about 12% in Vaults. 99.9% losses leaves just 500,000 survivors, and 25% in Vaults.

All the assumptions with Vault population at 123,000 are of course the "design" capacity, assuming 122 Vaults x 1,000 people each, plus an extra 1,000 in Vault 15. The actual figures once they buttoned up are somewhat lower.

Wandering a bit more into the Vault population topic: if the Vault percentage is too high, it makes the Vaults seem like they were a viable way of rebuilding the country all by themselves. If that were their true purpose, and they were designed and managed very well, that could be correct. But that transforms the Vaults into something they weren't.

Then again, if the Vaults are opening sporadically starting about 10 years postwar, and the survivor population is growing the whole time, then maybe the 99.9% loss number is ok.
 
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