Population of Zion?

Just been thinking, the machine sent 250,000 sentinels to Zion, one for every person in Zion, so that makes the population of Zion about 250,000 right. So how does a human population grow from 23, with only 16 females to 250,000 in only one 100 years?, yes granted there are a lot that are unplugged as well, so I did some calculations to see whether this was possible.

First lets get the unplugged people out the way, lets say that they unplug one person every single day for 100 years that’s 36,200, say that the life expectancy is 60 years old, and that good considering the condition there living in, that gives only 60% of the 36,200 are still alive, so that a total of 21,720 still alive in Zion that had been plugged in.

Working on the fact that every single woman as 6 kids, and 50% of these kids are woman the other 50% need to be blokes to get the women pregnant, and all there children have six kids taking into consideration that they will have to wait at least 15 years to mature before they can have children and all there children do the same and so do there children est, that mean every single woman in Zion for 100 years as 6 children and 50% of these have children the end amount, only counting the last 60 years(as people before this are assumed dead) the result is only 9720 people

So add them together and the total population is only aprox 31,440 that seems way off from the total of 250,000 people.

So I don’t think that it’s possible for Zion to have a population of 250,000 in only one hundred years

What do people think?
😱

Omega has proven this in more threads than i can remember...even though it is in the Matrix Encyclopedia, i paste it here.

Can Zion's population reach 250.000 in 100 years? Yes.

The One chooses 23 people FROM the Matrix, when the matrix is Reloaded, and these 24 people rebuild Zion. And over the course of the next 100 years they are able to reach a population of 250.000.

Since these 23 are unaware of the past, and are freed by a man, who could “change he Matrix as he sees fit” this gives rise to the prophecy of the One who’ll return.

Let’s assume that each woman gives birth to two children, half are boys, half are girls. And that it takes 6 people 3 months to free a mind from the Matrix. That means in a year 6 people can free 4 minds.
Let’s furthermore assume that half the freed minds are men, the other half are women. Lets also assume that half of the freed minds chooses to stay in Zion to help rebuild. The other half continues to free minds.

Zion year 20: Population 432 (24 originals+32 children+376 free minds). Of these half the children and a quarter of the freed minds will, within the next 20 years, have two children. Half the freed minds and the original 24 can continue freeing minds.

Zion year 40: Population 3159 (432 originals+220 children+2507 freed minds). Lets now in the subsequent calculations exclude half the original population from the previous 20 years, to account for death either premature or of natural causes. There are also not that many hovercrafts. The exact number is unknown, but let’s assume that now 75% of the freed minds stay in Zion instead of half.

Zion year 60: Population 12,045 (1580 survivors + 2100 children+8365 freed minds).

Zion year 80: Population 42,278 (6022 survivors + 8373 children+27,883 freed minds).
The same cycle, except the rate of freeing goes up during the last six months. In this last 20 years the rate of freeing goes up (probably due to the availability of computers. So let’s say it now only takes 3 people 3 months to free a mind – should also account for the extra freeing in the last 6 months).

Zion year 100: Population (Time of the One) 236,309 (21,139 survivors +29,284 children+185,886 freed minds).

This has been based on 2 children calculation, and that half the population from the previous 20 years died. If some women had more than one child the number 250,000 could easily be reached.

(Math, not from the actual movies)

Just a quick cheers to JediHDM, he helped me figure out something I missed from my first calculation, which was that people released from the matrix can also have children, durh!! So I went back to my calculation and add that into it, but I still worked it out to a lot less that 250,000

Well here’s how I worked it out –

Assumptions -
I was working on 16 women starting off and each having 3 children, also that half of the people released from the matrix are female and also have 3 children, I and working of the bais that that one person is released from the matrix every day for one hundred years.

KEY
S= The start amount of people able to give birth i.e woman (16)
Y= the amount of births each woman will have (3)
N= people freed from matrix in the last 15 years able to give birth (2,737)
Z= total number of people released from the matrix. (36,500)

(S+N *Y) + ((S+N *Y / 2)*Y) + (((S+N *Y / 2)*Y / 2)*Y) + ((((S+N *Y / 2)*Y / 2)*Y / 2) * Y) + (((((S+N *Y / 2)*Y / 2)*Y / 2) * Y/ 2)*Y) + (((((((S+N *Y / 2)*Y / 2)*Y / 2) * Y/ 2)*Y / 2)*Y) / 0.1428) + Z

= 153,863 (this is the total number of people that lived in Zion over the hundred years, assuming that non died, which did happen meaning after one hundred years the population of Zion would be less than 153,863)

Break down –

(S+N*Y) = 00 – 35 years -- the first 16 woman plus half (all women) people released from the matrix giving birth to 3 children of a 35 year period because woman can only have children between 15 and 50.

((S+N*Y / 2)*Y) = 15 – 50 years – a 15 year wait for all the children born to mature, and half of them (all women) including one released from matrix to have 3 children

(((S+N*Y / 2)*Y / 2)*Y) = 30 – 65 years – a 15 year wait for all the children born to mature, and half of them (all women) including one released from matrix to have 3 children

((((S+*Y / 2)*Y / 2)*Y / 2) * Y) = 45 – 80 years – a 15 year wait for all the children born to mature, and half of them (all women) including one released from matrix to have 3 children

(((((S+N*Y / 2)*Y / 2)*Y / 2) * Y/ 2)*Y) = 60 – 95 years – a 15 year wait for all the children born to mature, and half of them (all women) including one released from matrix to have 3 children

(((((((S*Y / 2)*Y / 2)*Y / 2) * Y/ 2)*Y / 2 )*Y) / 0.1428) 95 – 100 years -- 60 – 95 years – a 15 year wait for all the children born to mature, and half of them (all women) including one released from matrix to have 3 children, but it is dived by 0.1428 which is 1/7 (5/35) which is the 5 remaining years.

+ z = all the people ever released from the matrix

Conclusion

After looking at this I still believe that it is not possible for Zion to have a population of 250,000 people in 100 hundred years. I would say a population of between 90,000 and 100,000 is a lot more likely

Godfather> Try to go THROUGH the calculation above from the encyclopædia and use the parameters I did. Mine is based on a two-birth and even includes deaths of people.

What's your parameters for freeing people from the Matrix? How many does it take and how often is someone freed?

The death factor could easily be worked out using a average mortality age and using it as a percentage as you are only working over 100 years. Working on an average mortality of 60 year gives a population of 92,317

I was working on 1 person freed per day every day, of course this is only an average, there will be more freed towards the end of the hundred years than at the start, this is where our calculations become rather different, as your calculations says, that in the last 20 years 158,003 extra people are freed that’s 7900 per year, that seems an awful lot. I now where you coming from your saying that there are more people to search and more people to release people, but the films do not give the impression that Zion uses a lot of there resources releasing people, it give me the impression no matter how many people live there they are only sending out a few ships to do that, that is why I came up with a average of only one person per day, 7900 pa is nearly 1 every hour or so, I think the machines would be guarding there batteries a bit better if one every hour went missing. It just seem like that total was only given because if fits in, else the power stations the humans are keep in, would constantly be a flood with humans trying to free people, it just seems to many people getting freed, I’m sure if my amount freed was the same as yours we would get the same answer aprox(as my equation seems sound ).

regards

What is all this 2 or 3 kids nonsense? Even in the modern day there are plenty of places were a mother having 8 or 9 or more kids is common.

Just start upping the numbers, you'll make it up without difficulty. 1% of the human race can be freed; it might be thousands each year even with limited ship numbers. I do agree though that Omega vastly over-estimated the amount trying to free humans. Only people on ships can usefully do that- the amount involved in logistics would not be greatly significant to these numbers. By the time of the films that is hundreds at most.

The bigger problem is that 24 people is not enough for a truly diverse gene pool.

I dont' get how they would start off with 23 people and how they would not remember what happend or the story that Zion started with only 23 people wasn't passed on, etc. Am I slow or something? I just don't understand it in a way.

remember this?

"When the Matrix was first created, there was a man born inside, who had the power to change anything he wanted, to rewrite the Matrix as he saw fit...It was he who freed the first of us..."

that is the entire explanation in a nutshell, thanks to Morpheus...

I don't thin it's 100 year, maybe 200. Didn't Morpheus say that it was some time arounf 2199. Maybe I misheard, but that will make Zion 200 years and that's enough time to reach 250,000. I might be wrong, though.

It's 100 years- Morpheus says that is how long they have fought the machines. As for the literal date, remember that all humans have that all wrong.

Plus the fact that the Architect said that they were in the (I believe) 6th version of the Matrix...but yeah, I think that 250,000 in 100 years is perfectly feasible.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
The bigger problem is that 24 people is not enough for a truly diverse gene pool.

that would be true if it was not if it was not for new people being added in to pool because of being released from the matrix, also most of the people in zion do look rather stupid, maybe because of the inter-breeding 🤪 lol

and I was only working it out with every woman having 3 children as an average, in my calculation every female ever to go to Zion had 3 children, of cause this would not happen, some would not(or could not) have children, some would have only 1 and some would have 6-7, it was just an average. But even when I worked it out with 5 children for every female it fell short of 250,000. And if some thing happened to the first 16 females to go to Zion like Disease or one or two where unable to have children, or died before having them then the population would struggle to grow very fast at all. I just think to get a population of 250,000 there would need to start off with more females or have more than 100 years to do it in.

No, you misunderstand me. I said there are places where having 8-9 children is NORMAL. Small family sizes are a symptom of a heavily populated world.

You need to increase the AVERAGE family size to 8 or 9 children, like it would have been for most of human history, though more would have died back then. This is still far closer to the average in the developing world, and for many Catholic families in the developed world it is not abnormal. It would be the same, at least, in Zion.

ok, i made a little Excel document, that shows how big the population of Zion could get within 100 years, assuming all the women of 18 years or above get pregnant as soon as they have a child, all live until the age of 60, the original people that were freed were 20, and without anyone being saved from the matrix, and by the sixth generation, there would be a potential of over 15 million...now, i know that this is a very extreme circumstance, however, it proves that it is conceivable to have a population of 250,000 in Zion in 100 years...and before women start flaming me about the fact that women are not going to have ~40 children in their lives, i know, that was not the intention, my intention was to show that 250,000 is a very reasonable number for the population of Zion.

yer i worked out it out so that every woman had 35 kids, one every year between the age of 15-50 which is the age I assumed all could have children between and the population did go into millions, so the Theoretically it could happen, but what i was saying in my calculations I set limitations that I though where realistic and it did not reach 250,000, so I suppose it all comes down to what people think are realistic variables, is interesting though to see how many people there could be Theoretically, did those calculation involve any people released from the matrix?

Heres another thought, the world as a population of 4-5 billion right! That may sound a lot but it as taken ten’s of thousands of years to get there, an a population graph is top heavy meaning that its grows faster and faster the more people there are “population explosion”. so how long do you think is took the world to have a human population of 250,000, 100 years or more?

Regards, godfather

well, i believe in the Bible, so i don't think very long at all, but that's just me...of course, i don't believe the earth is older than perhaps 10,000 years, either...

but back to topic, no, mine did not include anyone being freed. It was very unbelievable, but it does show that it could, concievably, have 250,000 people in Zion...