»The Growth of Zion from only 23«

Ok this was a response to another thread which is about to be retired.

knnknn wanted to keep the response so I'm popping it here.

------ CUT HERE ------

Ok, it's been covered before, but what the hey.

bossman187uk wrote:

Right in Reloaded the architect says something about zion being destroyed b4 like 15 times or something and being restarted each time from 23 people.

FIVE times, he said, it had been destroyed five times.

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so surely this city is heavily inbread

Possibly, Depends what you mean by inbred, with 7 males, you are effectively starting 7 family lines which should offer enough genetic diversity reduce the risk of throwbacks.

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and to make a culture that size 15 times from 23 people wouldd take a VERY long time thousands of years

Have you heard of the thing with the chessboard and the grains of rice?

Population growth is exponential - it increases with each generation.

After 9 months (hey why hang about), you have at least 16 new citizens (all be it small helpless and noisy ones).

By the time these 16 have reached maturity (lets say age 16 to be conservative though I doubt they would be), they could have almost 400 little brothers and sisters.

If half of each batch of babies are women, a further 9 months later, there would be another 24 babies, nine months later another 32, etc.

It starts slow, but it speeds up quicky. I really don't want to sit down and work it out, but I don't think it would take thousands of years.

Plus there are still people in the Matrix. As soon as they get unplugged, they add to the numbers.

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and have these people no record that there city got destroyed? can someone please help me cause either im confused or this is a huge part of the story that doeasnt corrispond. cheers

The 23 selected would be from the matrix, they have no prior knowledge of Zion. The only person with memories of the destruction would be the one, presumably to tell everybody the whole story would undermine the point of having Zion.

Population-wise a growth like this could be possible. But do you see any elder people at the gathering? They are young and horny.

Since it's an important gathering one would expect

The elders maybe died because of a bowls-of-snot-overdose.

Also getting pregnant too often kills your wife.

Another thing: If you start 100 years ago (1890) and start to free youngsters, well thank you very much...kids with the educational level of 1890 fight against sentinels.

knnknn wrote:

Another thing: If you start 100 years ago (1890) and start to free youngsters, well thank you very much...kids with the educational level of 1890 fight against sentinels.

I've seen this a lot of this 1890 thing, I assume it refers to resetting the matrix. To this I offer two points.

1) This assumption is based on the people being released AFTER the reset. Why not before? Then your youngsters are bang upto date.

2) Why 1890? This assumes that this happens every 100 years and that the fall of Zion and the matrix reset are inseperable.

If the machines were to reset everything, there is no reason to suppose that all memory would be erased, perhaps "adjusted".

I'd like to offer an alternative start point if you must have one. 1943.

Two reasons mainly, the obvious one being then end of a major war which could be used to explain all sorts of things and act as a major distraction.

Secondly, that was the year the first digital computer was created - it seems only appropriate to commemorate this in some way.

As for them being youngsters, I would tend to go for early teens (puberty?), thus starting the population growth much quicker. At this age, kids heads are pretty much messed up anyway so the destruction of their whole reality would be lesser in comparisin to an Adult.

I'll post an alternate timeline sometime in the near future to back this up, but I'll let you digest this first.

marl64 wrote:

I really don't want to sit down and work it out, but I don't think it would take thousands of years.

Ok well I did, so there, here's a brief rundown.

To simplify the maths this assumes;

1. All women are in labour pretty much all the time for 20 years (Sorry, I don't know if this is feasible, but I needed to start somewhere)
2. Each birth produces a single child (no twins, no miscarriages etc.)
3. The ratio of female babies to males is around 2:1 (XX+XY etc.)
4. Girls start "reproducing" upon reaching the age of 16.
5. Death is not included at all.
6. People freed from the matrix are not included in these figures

If anyone wants to do it again, to correct these assumptions, please be my guest.

All the calculations were based on 9 month cycles and converted to years after so some rounding may occur.

Code:

Yr   Adults Children Population   0       23        0       23  10       23      208      231  20       71      426      497  30      183    1,336    1,519  40      345    2,927    3,272  50      888    6,581    7,469  60    1,692   14,137   15,829  70    3,488   26,927   30,415  80    7,403   57,926   65,329  90   13,043  106,633  119,676 100   23,789  201,122  224,911

So it's not too far off 100 years, but I don't think you could sustain that growth level. Particularly if you were at war.

This is one basis for my beleif that the Zion cycle is longer than 100 years.
I'm going for around 130 to 150 years.

Morpheus said that they've "fought them for a hundred years". OK I don't have a problem with that, but I'd add.

"Yea but you needed 30 to 50 years of growth before you declared war on a machine city of millions."

knnknn wrote:

Population-wise a growth like this could be possible. But do you see any elder people at the gathering? They are young and horny.

As my figures demonstrate, children outnumber adults about 8:1, most adults are away for the weekend during the zion parties

And the years of the "Girl Power" movement when nobody got laid. Entire crops were lost...

emp wrote:

And the years of the "Girl Power" movement when nobody got laid. Entire crops were lost...

Entire loads were cropped

Sorry, but I just can't stop thinking about the sequence from ETM now...

Trinity: "When are we going to find you a girlfriend?..."
Ghost: "I'm dedicated to a higher purpose...Onanism."
Trinity: "Is that why so many saints are blind?"
Ghost: "Celibacy is a hands-on job."

(yeah I know it's on your site knnknn, that's where I stole it from )

Anyway, one final note for those who love the wierd stuff.

marl64 wrote:

Code: Yr   Adults Children Population 100   23,789  201,122  224,911

I was just closing down all the apps and when I came to close the spreadsheet I did the above stuff on, I noticed something.

*** CUE Twilight Zone Music ***

The time it would take for the population to reach 250,000 according to my (rather clumsy) calculation...

101 Years.

"It's like the computers are talking to me"

WHOA.. thats amazingly kool and weird !! . 250, 000 men women and children, 250 000 sentinels.. they really were being specific..and if morpheus is saying "for a century we have fought these machines" it must be the 101 year for his to sya that theyre done it for that long.. if he was being specific ..

knnknn wrote:

Another thing: If you start 100 years ago (1890) and start to free youngsters, well thank you very much...kids with the educational level of 1890 fight against sentinels.

Are you forgetting that this is a virtual reality? History does not need to be recreated. I imagine that the civilization is based on a static history that does not age. It is 199_ everyday. No one needs to know any different. They will watch time pass by seeing their friends and family age and change and new situations come and go, but there is no need for the machine world to replicate world history into the matrix.

Besides, the 199_ environment would be much simpler to create realistically without having to change it according to a historical timeline AND having to recreate historical figures and people and events and make sure its stays the same and that none of the popualtion of batteries interupts or changes history (oh no they shot Einstien- now how is society going to enter the nuclear age?).

Balphaus wrote:

WHOA.. thats amazingly kool and weird !! . 250, 000 men women and children, 250 000 sentinels.. they really were being specific..and if morpheus is saying "for a century we have fought these machines" it must be the 101 year for his to sya that theyre done it for that long.. if he was being specific ..

Your forgetting - if you look at Reloaded again... when Trinity/Neo/Morpheus get off the evilator to see the Merovingian... the floor they are on is "101".... you can clearly see it in the background. 101 also can refer to binary code.

marl64 wrote:

Quote: and to make a culture that size 15 times from 23 people wouldd take a VERY long time thousands of years Have you heard of the thing with the chessboard and the grains of rice?

Double a penny(.01) everyday for one month. The results are quite surprising.

Day 1 .01
Day 2 .02
Day 3 .04