world population after the third robotech war

[Alpha 11]

It seems to me that by the end of the third Robotech war earth's surviving population must be tiny! Considering that 70% died in the first war, leaving (going from memory here, and the first edition RPG) ~105 million in North and South America put together, and approximately the same number in china and India and the EBSIS, with a total of about 330ish million. Then considering that IIRC ~25% of the remaining population died in the second war, reducing the number to around 50 million, 89% of whom died in the Third Robotech war, leaving the global population at under 30 million!, or about 3% of what it was before the first Robotech war!. this seems a bit crazy to me, do any of you know if there are any published sources that provide an actual number?

It might be even less then that if you go by the TV series. I haven't seen the series in a while, so I don't have a clear memory of it, but we got into this topic on another thread, and it sounded, like I said, less. And welcome to the boards!

[Seto Kaiba]

It seems to me that by the end of the third Robotech war earth's surviving population must be tiny! Considering that 70% died in the first war, leaving (going from memory here, and the first edition RPG)

The series actually says that only the people living aboard the SDF-1 survived the first war... the 70% thing is from a totally different thing entirely (the Grand Cannon's damage report). That's a starting population of about 70,000. (Which is smaller than it was in the original Macross, since they don't mention the other four Grand Cannons at all, or them serving as shelters, or the colonies up in orbit or on the moon.)

this seems a bit crazy to me, do any of you know if there are any published sources that provide an actual number?

None do, AFAIK... Robotech has to be somewhat vague about it by necessity, since the differences between the three hastily adapted series mean that humanity basically has near-misses with extinction three times in as many decades. Of the original three shows, only Macross really offered details on that front anyway.

[jaymz]

World wide I'd venture to say 1 million tops. Probably half that but I wouldn't go much less. Humantiy was pretty scattered after the first war and even more so after the second one.

[Hystrix]

Typical PB lingo is that we lost 98% of the world population in the First Robtech War.

You also have to remember that there were Zentreadi who survived and integrated with human society. There were also Tyrolians who survived the Second Robotech War who integrated in with the people of Earth.

When you are talking about WORLD population, I'd say as low as 10 million, or as high as 100 million. Remember, the Earth had enough people to send out with the Expiditionary Force with enough left over for a couple million Southern Cross troops. The World population BEFORE the Invid invaded had to have been around 100 million (or more).

After the Third Robotech War there were definatly survivors. If I had to guess, I'd say over 10 million. Remember this isn't North America, or Austrailia, it's the whole WORLD. There would be pockets of cilization everywhere.

[thorr-kan]

Figuring 5B @ time of Zentraedi Holocaust, 98% killed leaves 100M survivors.

Humans are hard to kill.

[Seto Kaiba]

Typical PB lingo is that we lost 98% of the world population in the First Robtech War.

IIRC, 2E says 70%, but that's Palladium's usual less-than-spectacular standard of research for you. Like I said in a previous post, the actual value given in the dialogue of the series for the total human population that survived the 1st Robotech War was 70,000... not coincidentally the same number of people living aboard the SDF-1. If we're excluding people who weren't living on Earth at the time, that's 100% of the population. If we count the lucky ones on the SDF-1, it's 99.99884% of the ~6 billion humans living on Earth in 1999 actual.

[glitterboy2098]

given that the SDF:macross OSM had more survivors than just the 70K, and there is plenty of evidence for more survivors in the show (large communities shown in macross saga too big to be made of fragments of the SDF1's pop., the ASC's massive fleets and army, a manhattan that is way too large and complete to have been just a rebuild (seriously.. why would you rebuild Harlem, queens, and most of new jersey?) ), i think we can assume that more than just the SDF-1 survived.

honestly, leaving it at 98% dead, and only 100 million alive, works fine. enough people that you don't have to worry about genetic diversity at all, but with a death toll high enough to still make things horrific.

the 70% i believe came from the descriptions of the bombardment.. if we assume they ignored the oceans, the loss of 70% of the land surface would still be pretty nasty. it would also help explain how you had intact jungle for Khyron to hide his ship in, and excuse the presence of the greater new york/new jersey metropolitan area in New Gen.

[Hystrix]

Typical PB lingo is that we lost 98% of the world population in the First Robtech War.

IIRC, 2E says 70%, but that's Palladium's usual less-than-spectacular standard of research for you. Like I said in a previous post, the actual value given in the dialogue of the series for the total human population that survived the 1st Robotech War was 70,000... not coincidentally the same number of people living aboard the SDF-1. If we're excluding people who weren't living on Earth at the time, that's 100% of the population. If we count the lucky ones on the SDF-1, it's 99.99884% of the ~6 billion humans living on Earth in 1999 actual.

OK. It may be 1E that said 98%. It dosn't matter. The whole 70,000 survivors thing just dosn't hold water, even for the cartoon. No way in 10 years 70,000 survivors grows to a few million. Which is minimum what they would need for the EF and the ASC. Even incorperating the Zentreadi, that wouldn't work. And the series largly implies that Dana was a rare case (human/Zent hybrid). I don't know for a fact, but there had to be more survivors than just the 70,000.

[Seto Kaiba]

Is it less than sterling research, or a pointed decision NOT to buy into the Macross settings 70K figure, and set a new precedent for Robotech that makes the latter population bases make considerably more sense?

Would now be a bad time to point out that you should check your facts BEFORE you object, not after? The 70,000 figure doesn't come from Macross, or even the Macross Saga of Robotech. The original Macross setting had, in the aftermath of the bombardment, a surviving population of approximately 1 million humans (and ~8 million Zentradi). In the original, humanity also bolsters its numbers using Zentradi cloning technology.

Robotech's version of the story not only fails to mention any other group of survivors, it consistently refers to those 70,000 survivors from the SDF-1 as though they were the only survivors. We know, courtesy of Captain Gloval's dialogue from "The Long Wait" (Ep4), that there were ~70,000 civilians on the SDF-1 for the duration of the first war. Fully fifteen years after the end of the Macross Saga, Supreme Commander Leonard outright confirms that the number of survivors on the human side was 70,000 in an address to the academy's graduating class (in "Dana's Story").

One could easily argue that, since 2E in particular was meant to stick as close to the content of the series as is humanly possible, it's an error regardless of whether they meant to do it or not. I think they just didn't remember, honestly. They copy-pasted most of the Macross Saga book from OSM sources, where (as I said) the number was much higher.

given that the SDF:macross OSM had more survivors than just the 70K, and there is plenty of evidence for more survivors in the show [...]

We've trod this ground before... there are explanations that don't require the dialogue of the series to be wrong. The 70% thing is, as I've pointed out before, not connected to the bombardment at all... it's part of the Grand Cannon/Alaska Base damage report. (The switch from "Sectors" in their actual reports on the bombardment to "Sections" when the 70% line's voiced at the start of the Grand Cannon's status report is fairly telling.) Never mind that, if 70% of the Earth's surface is destroyed, that's enough to cover 100% of Earth's landmass twice with about 11% to spare.

The simplest, most straightforward, least-contradictory explanation is the same one from the OSM... they had a Zentradi fleet gathering dust in orbit, including several literal boatloads of cloning hardware. "Love and War" confirms protoculture chambers are used for cloning, and we know (courtesy of "Khyron's Revenge", etc.) that the UEDF had possession of the cloning technology and more than sufficient excuse to use it. Those people had to come from somewhere... and with so much consistency, even across two sagas (something practically unheard of in RT), the 70,000 figure beggars belief.

The whole 70,000 survivors thing just dosn't hold water, even for the cartoon. No way in 10 years 70,000 survivors grows to a few million.

It does when you've got a cloning machine and a dire need to build up populations quickly. It's actually 17 years, mind.

[BookWyrm]

Figuring 5B @ time of Zentraedi Holocaust, 98% killed leaves 100M survivors.

Humans are hard to kill.

Yeah, a rather tenacious breed, ain't we?

[Seto Kaiba]

Interesting accusation there chief. See that "?" at the end of my post? That makes it a question, as in a posited theory, not a statement of fact. I don't need research to ask a question, however much it might or might not help.

Sorry, but in this case you really do. You might've been asking a question, but in so doing asserted that the actual 70,000 figure given in the series came from Macross's setting, not Robotech itself. Therefore, as an error, it merited an immediate correction, since the 70,000 number is something entirely unique to Robotech and is not from the Macross Saga either, as it's baldly (lol) stated by Commander Leonard of all people.

Either way, you have yet to actually present anything more than anecdotal evidence to support cloning being the savior or humanity, when its clear that route wouldn't work anyhow.

It's the only answer thus far presented that doesn't require that we contradict a consistently-presented fact cited by the three people best-qualified to know across two separate sagas. The Narrator, Captain Gloval, and Commander Leonard all agree on the particulars, and their line is not deviated from in the Macross Saga or Masters Saga. If we follow the official policy on resolving such matters, the answer MUST favor consistency with the series itself. Having other survivor groups exist produces multiple contradictions and complications... far more than the cloning theory does. Particularly since there exists explicit, canon evidence that humanity had cloning technology, knew how to use it, and had no shortage of time in which to use it.

There were multiple sizable cities, and apparently even that graduating class of soldiers that is supposedly representing only the70K survivors were entering into a military that was already established and ready to fight. They were ONE class of cadets graduating from one military academy into a military of millions, into a world where cloning is treated as a somewhat ill understood concept, never mind a science.

There were multiple cities, though sizable is somewhat dubious since we never really get a good picture of any apart from Monument City itself... how populous, we can't say, as it never comes up. Your objection here is based principally upon a body of suppositions. We're told point-blank by Earth's top dog that there were only 70,000 survivors while he's giving an address to said class of cadets, and with 17 years of hindsight there's no reason to suspect that he wouldn't know, esp. within the context of the RPG, which confirms the popular view of the series that Leonard was ruler of Earth in everything but name. In case you forgot, we're also told that the cadet class he's speaking to is THE FIRST graduating class. They say as much right at the start of the address. They needed 17 years to dredge up enough people for ONE graduating class... gee... imagine that... and how old are most of the young soldiers we're introduced to? 16!

Never mind that there's no evidence of the multiple academies you're asserting exist... or the size of the military being as big as you claim... or, really, anything else you just said.

Cloning isn't the answer here. A larger initial population base is. However much I detest the whole "Zentraedi have bad eyesight, since they missed New York City" concept.

With humanity's established precedent of rebuilding familiar landmarks exactly as-is in the Macross Saga, that New York is still around and has some familiar monuments isn't terribly surprising.

[glitterboy2098]

except it's not just new york. it's new york, queens, harlem, all of new jersey, pretty much the entire New York New Jersey metropolitan area. in the exact fashion it existed in the 1980's, slums and all.

in macross they rebuilt specific landmarks. but why the hell would 70,000 people build an exact copy of an urban nightmare that houses 11 million people?

[Seto Kaiba]

except it's not just new york. it's new york, queens, harlem, all of new jersey, pretty much the entire New York New Jersey metropolitan area. in the exact fashion it existed in the 1980's, slums and all.

I'm not sure we can reliably say that... there are a few recognizable landmarks, true, but other than that it's a fairly grey and generic cityscape. MOSPEADA's creators probably didn't have the time or the budget for a fact-finding trip out just for one episode. That sort of thing didn't become possible until recently (e.g. Kawamori and co's fact-finding trip for Macross Frontier, which took them to San Francisco).

in macross they rebuilt specific landmarks. but why the hell would 70,000 people build an exact copy of an urban nightmare that houses 11 million people?

To be fair, in Robotech they rebuilt Macross City almost exactly as it was how many times? Three? (I'll admit that's not quite on the same scale as rebuilding New York brick for brick, but we can't really reliably demonstrate they did rebuild NYC exactly as it was. Macross has indulged in similar large-scale rebuildings in later titles tho... Island-1 on Macross Frontier was a scale replica of downtown San Francisco, right down to certain famous storefronts.)

I willingly concede that first part chief. I was in fact mistakenly under the impression that there were only 70K survivors at the end of the Macross OSM setting war. I also presumed that that was where the number came from, as opposed to it coming from Robotech itself.

The truly funny part is that you're protesting one of the few parts of Robotech where we can definitively point to a change from the original material and say "They absolutely did that entirely on purpose". The vast majority of the things that changed are random, almost knee-jerk things caused by rewriting existing episodes in a hurry without the time to sit down and cross-check each other's work. This was the opening narration of the only original Robotech episode, the only one where they had 100% control over the contents. To suggest that it's an error is, well, beyond laughable.

As to the next bit. Cloning clearly isn't the answer, or it wouldn't be considered a mystery to anyone, no more than the Internet, [...]

That objection just doesn't hold water... there are entirely too many people today for whom things like combustion engines, lithium batteries, and the internet are utterly inaccessible dreams. Then again, there are also entirely too many people for whom those things are incomprehensible and mysterious even though they're readily accessible. Hell, I paid for college off the money I made from people who owned computers but didn't have the first frigging clue how they worked or how to fix 'em, and not a day goes by I don't run into someone who has only the vaguest notion of how their car works. (And that's right here in the Motor City, no less!)

Considering how many people today don't understand the science behind cloning, or even understand how widely it's used already, I just can't accept that as a viable objection. (I mean, c'mon, I went to a seminar on alternate fuels a while ago, and watched a room full of college-educated engineers gawp like yokels when a corn farmer for an ethanol concern talked about cloning engineered corn for maximum fuel yield as though it were something utterly mundane.)

They seriously acted like the concepts of cloning and artificially created people was super science, [...]

Is this really so surprising? Can we not point to other, advanced technologies humanity has widely applied in Robotech that they don't freaking understand? Something like... oh... protoculture? Or shadow devices? The only folks in Robotech who even understand how robotechnology works decades after the fact are a handful of "robotechnologists" owned by the military.

but if everyone was cloned form 70K people to start (and not Zentraedi, since no one looks like a Zentraedi here, not even the half breed), why would everyone act like its so weird?

Let's ask ourselves this... why would they act like it's so weird when they spent five solid years in a series of conflicts with an alien clone army? Y'know... those Zentradi guys you just mentioned. Clones, to a man! Cloning should not have been anything like a surprise to them AT ALL. Of course, for a good while there they couldn't decide if the pilots were clones or androids, humans or Zentradi, etc., so perhaps they can be forgiven for a certain amount of confusion. Maybe it's just a different KIND of clone, there's more than one way to make one.

That 70K figure, while stated a few times, is clearly utterly impossible to accept without cloning, and cloning is apparently not a widely accepted precept of their society, unlike say the oft times misspoken Macross II RPG and the later Macross OSM universe.

See the above for why that makes absolutely no freaking sense.

I could swear we saw at least two cities, but either way, we for sure have Monument City, which is large enough that an attack by the Masters takes some time to provoke a response, [...]

With the official position apparently being that the UEDF/ASC is the dregs that failed to make the cut for the UEEF, I'm not sure that's entirely defensible... then again, that kind of delay in response occurs in the Macross Saga too on a couple of occasions. (Like the time the Zentradi boarded thru the Daedalus arm, and were into the city itself before anyone got to respond.)

and New York City, which has to have existed at this stage, or else we are forced to accept the depleted UNDF/UEG rebuilt it AFTER the Masters last tantrum, in the year during which mop up operations were underway, and the Invid were about to drop in and throw a party, to which no one was actually invited.

We're told that, in the period between 2014 and 2029, they rebuilt quite a few cities... or at least built new cities and put old names on them. Denver, for instance. I imagine it probably helped if the city was merely wrecked (as some we see in the Macross Saga were) rather than outright obliterated.

This of course ignores the concept that they built a city for millions of people when there was no need for it, or even that they built a city for millions of people in a single place, when experience makes it clear you really should spread em out a bit.

If they were cloning at a similar pace to Macross, they could honestly justify it. (Consider that, in the same year the Invid invaded in Robotech, the corresponding Macross date would've seen well over 10 million sent out as space emigrants.) Mind you, the population tends to be somewhat overstated in Robotech fan estimates, due to the vague distortions regarding the UEEF ship complements. Well, that and a general misconception about the size of the ASC itself, possibly owing to shoddy OSM translations. (The Southern Cross Army in the original was actually quite small, the entire ATAC was only the 15 squads.)

About the academies, plural, thing. That might be a flashback to 1st Edition. It might even be that the flavor text in the 2nd Edition indicates there are several academies for several specialties, like we would kind of expect actually.

The actual content of the series indicates just the one, the Robotech Academy... which seems to provide training for officers and enlisted men (both!) belonging to all divisions. Realistically, that would not be at all surprising, and specialism training would be handled after basic and academy coursework.

Now figure out how many people you need to man all the ships we saw.

If what we've seen is any indication, the numbers in the Infopedia and elsewhere for crew sizes could be thought of as a happy maximum... rather than typical complement. The number varies, of course, depending on whether or not the ships we've seen in various fleet shots are duplicates, or the various alluded to variant subclasses the RPG mentioned, etc. We just don't have enough information to take a stab at it in the Masters Saga. The New Generation's a different story, but merely slightly less problematic for the aforementioned reason.

Now explain to me where all those other people that weren't involved in the spacy went, and where all the people that were filling all of those slots came from, if that group of 16 year old kids were the first class of graduates ever?

Based on the available personal data we have, some of them were already alive and part of the 70,000 survivors from the SDF-1 Macross (e.g. Angelo, Sean, Nova, etc.), and some were probably clones.

The more you listen to Leonard, the more he sounds like an idiot. Which is a shame really, since he simply can't be as dumb as they try to make him out to be, right?

Really, Leonard is a lot of things... he's amoral, vicious, pig-headed, treasonous, and guilty of mass murder, sabotage, and many other crimes, but stupidity isn't one of his traits. Indeed, one would have to point to the scale of his treachery and the success he had at it as proof positive that he isn't stupid... he's extremely capable and intelligent. Dummies don't go and orchestrate the dissolution of a top secret defense program without anyone suspecting a thing, while simultaneously orchestrating a global coup d'etat that was only narrowly averted at the last second by the maverick actions of a pilot who had already been suspended, and the buttery-smooth hijacking of a colossal WMD-equipped spaceship without anyone involved being any the wiser until it was way too late.

[glitterboy2098]

except it's not just new york. it's new york, queens, harlem, all of new jersey, pretty much the entire New York New Jersey metropolitan area. in the exact fashion it existed in the 1980's, slums and all.

I'm not sure we can reliably say that... there are a few recognizable landmarks, true, but other than that it's a fairly grey and generic cityscape. MOSPEADA's creators probably didn't have the time or the budget for a fact-finding trip out just for one episode.

we don't need landmarks. just scale. we have shots showing the island of manhattan during Corg's attack that shows the entire island. as seen from the shore. which is also heavily urban. http://www.robotechresearch.com/picture ... _large.jpg

the island itself can house 2 million people. so why the hell build one of the boroughs at all? much less fully urbanized?

and other scenes show the surrounding area is pretty darn urban: http://www.robotechresearch.com/picture ... _large.jpg

why would you spend the resources to build so many skyscrapers with no use, and room for 5+ million people, when your population is only 70,000?

particularly when we already have a city of 70,000 people in macrosss city, built using prefab modules and buildings that had survived being in the SDF-1?

and we have locations like portland, which is another fairly large city with lot of people when we see it attacked by zent rebels.
and all those ruins we see in macross saga's reconstruction episodes, like the ones minmei toured. why the hell would people leave new macross city to go squat in a bunch of ruins?

add then we have the cities from the rest of the show.
like 'laketown' http://www.robotechresearch.com/picture ... n/out.html which is big enough for thousands of people.
rooks hometown http://www.robotechresearch.com/picture ... n/out.html which is big enough for thousands of people.
the secret route town, http://www.robotechresearch.com/picture ... _large.jpg also big enough for a couple thousand people.
the seperate ways town, http://www.robotechresearch.com/picture ... n/out.html which while abandoned, is in pretty good shape, meaning either it survived the zent attack (meaning people would have survived there), or a city for hundreds of thousands of people was built after the bombardment, and abandoned sometime during the 2nd war or invid occupation.
and the 'crater towns' http://www.robotechresearch.com/picture ... _large.jpg which are big enough for several thousand people each.

so either humanity decided to waste most of their resources building cities for many many many more people than they had, or that many people actually survived the bombardment.

and it can't be zentraedi, since they are beleived extinct on earth according to dialog in the show, and went almost entirely with the UEEF according to Harmony Gold..

and clones doesn't work either, because a society of clones was a complete shock to the ASC, which wouldn't be the case if all of earth's population was clones.

[Seto Kaiba]

we don't need landmarks. just scale.

That is, of course, assuming that any of that is actually occupied... and not just a semi-ruined city area like the one that was used as an Invid trap at the start of the New Generation.

and other scenes show the surrounding area is pretty darn urban:

But, in what will probably become something of a refrain, is that new construction the ruins of a city that was merely badly damaged instead of outright removed from the map by the Zentradi? Is all of that occupied? Looking at it in the series, I would be inclined to favor "No, it's not occupied" and "Yes, it is leftovers". The parts of the city we see are pretty badly dilapidated, and look much older and every bit as battered (if not moreso) than other cities and towns encountered in the New Generation.

particularly when we already have a city of 70,000 people in macrosss city, built using prefab modules and buildings that had survived being in the SDF-1?

For Macross City itself, which would have naturally been the staging ground for any later building projects... the other towns we see, including the ones built during the timeskip that we see later on (Denver, etc.) are clearly not prefab.

why the hell would people leave new macross city to go squat in a bunch of ruins?

I dunno, but they do it fairly often in the Macross Saga... most of the towns we see are pretty dilapidated, squatting in or near ruined cities, or sometimes directly in the shadows of crashed Zentradi ships.

so either humanity decided to waste most of their resources building cities for many many many more people than they had, or that many people actually survived the bombardment.

Or... wait for it... they had the technology and motivation to make a whole bunch more people on the quick to bolster the rebuilding of Earth and the rapid build-up of the military. How very fortunate that we have ample proof in the series itself that they had Zentradi cloning technology at their disposal.

and it can't be zentraedi, since they are beleived extinct on earth according to dialog in the show, and went almost entirely with the UEEF according to Harmony Gold..

The dialogue that implies that the Zentradi are extinct or near to it doesn't come until 2043-44, after the Masters and the Invid have had a chance to wreck the place up, but I agree it's unlikely they were Zentradi.

and clones doesn't work either, because a society of clones was a complete shock to the ASC, which wouldn't be the case if all of earth's population was clones.

And I've explained already why THAT makes no sense whatsoever... since they'd only just finished a war with a society of clones 15 years earlier, spent the intervening years fighting bands of renegade clones from said society (per the RPG), had many such clones attempt to integrate themselves into human society, the military's top brass and even junior NCOs were alive during that war, and the leader of the ATAC unit that discovers it is the descendant of one such clone.

Sufficed to say, the idea that the ASC somehow found cloning an alien concept makes less sense than proposing that the UEDF supreme commander was really five ducks in a man suit.

[glitterboy2098]

they fought a group that used clones soldiers. which they'd already seen the master's were using. the idea of cloned civilians though completely blindsided them. but if earth had been populated with clones of 70,000 people, this wouldn't have elicited much response.


and seto, make up your mind. either new york was destroyed and no one survived, or it wasn't destroyed and people did. you can't have it both ways. you can't have a new york (or any other city) that is left as ruins without there being human survivors in said ruins.
especially in an orbital bombardment like the zents used. if there are ruins, it means the zents missed, and the city was only effected by the blast front. blast fronts are survivable.
so take your pick... crater or survivors. can't have both.

[devillin]

I went over this subject last year in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=131978 . Here is the analysis of the scenes in question:

So after taking a look at the map during Force of Arms, here's what I came up with. The Zentraedi seemed to concentrate their fire on the coastlines of the continents. The following areas were noticeably hit and brightly glowing red: Australia (completely gone), West Africa (Congo to Liberia), Africa (Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, S. Africa) Europe (completely gone), Northern coast of Russia, Black Sea region, Mediterranean area, Middle East (completely gone), Persian Gulf Region, Eastern China, Japan, eastern half of India, US West Coast, US East Coast (except for Manhattan), Canada (Quebec, Pr. Ed Island, Newfoundland), Greenland, all of Central America and the Caribbean Islands, and South America (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana).

North America (central US and Canada), Central Asia, and Central Africa all appear to have taken individual hits, but nothing concentrated.

Areas that weren't hit too badly include Manhattan (complete miss), New Zealand (complete miss), Madagascar (complete miss), All of Saharan Africa, East Africa from Tanzania north to Sudan, Brazil (except for the Atlantic coastal region), Mexico (except for the Pacific and Atlantic coasts).

So if I were going to give survivor estimates for directly after the Rain, but before Reconstruction, it would be as follows in millions: 51.5 US (Including Manhattan), 5 Canada, 50 Mexico, 120 Brazil, 100 East Africa, 21 Madagascar, 4.4 New Zealand, 23 Russia, 79.5 China, and 238 India/Central Asia. Giving us a grand total of 692.4 Million survivors. This number takes into account all of the areas listed above as not being hit too badly, plus the rural populations of those areas that took individual hits. I figured that those individual hits were on major population centers, so those populations were eliminated.

If we figure that there were only survivors in those areas that were either missed, or had their damage concentrated in one specific area, then we get an estimate of roughly 534.9 Million.

Either way we are looking at the new power houses being Mexico, Brazil, Madagascar, New Zealand, and India due to the fact that the majority of their industrial population centers surviving almost intact. If the US and Canada survive, their new capital might be Cleveland or somewhere else in the American midwest. If the population survives, Manhattan may remain as a tourist spot. Pretty much all of central Mexico survived, including the Mexico City metropolitan area. Brazil lost a large portion of its population with the Atlantic Coast, but the majority survived in the inland areas. With their biodiversity, I could see Madagascar and New Zealand selling fauna and wildlife to those areas trying to regrow their agricultural and pastoral areas. East Africa will live or die as a whole depending on if the population pulls itself out of its chaos. Russia will probably be a rural backwater due to the majority of its political and industrial power dying in the west with Europe. China would break apart due to the surviving population being mostly in the western regions like Tibet and Mongolia. India would be the new empire of Asia with pretty much its entire population northwest of Madhya Pradesh surviving, including most of the northern cities, minus New Delhi. It's only rival will probably be Pakistan.

[Seto Kaiba]

they fought a group that used clones soldiers. which they'd already seen the master's were using. the idea of cloned civilians though completely blindsided them.

Go back to the series, the whole issue of clones in general blindsided them... as though they'd forgotten that the Zentradi had ever existed. (Aren't dialogue screw-ups wonderful?)

and seto, make up your mind. either new york was destroyed and no one survived, or it wasn't destroyed and people did.

Need I point out that it's perfectly possible for New York to not have been completely obliterated (like many towns we see) but nevertheless had no survivors. Unlike in Macross, the Robotech version alleges that these blasts left behind radiation and such, which can be decidedly lethal in concentration, and d'you think a massive conurbation like good ol' NYC would be able to feed itself for any duration with the surrounding landscape baked to a desert? Even if the impacts, blast shockwaves, radiation, etc. doesn't kill 'em, starvation and exposure will kill 'em in fairly short order.

So, as you see, it is perfectly possible to have a city not be totally destroyed and yet have no survivors. The series, of course, explicitly tells us that there were no survivors apart from those aboard the SDF-1, so that's a fact and no two ways about it unless Tommy gets off his duff and explicitly labels that as incorrect. devillin's analysis would be good fodder for the RPG's more populous aftermath though.

[Alpha 11]

Does anyone know what the minume a population needs to survive? Because if its to small, then interbreeding will come into play and that will spell doom for humanity. Also, humans in space. Since they were tring to set something up on Mars, and we know that they had base on the Moon that wasn't really being use in the Master's saga, I think we can take a leap and say it might have been started before the Zentradie came, more resorces and people at that time. We have no evidence of the Zentradie attacking the moon, so the base would be safe. I don't think it would be big, several hundrend, a thousand or 2 at most. But with earth getting wasted, I would not be surprise if they brought them back to earth, hence now the unused moon base. People out at sea might also have survive. Most, most likely would be military. Still that could be anywheres from several hundread to as many as 5 to 10 thousand. In the end, there has to be more then just the 70,000 on the SDF-1, because humanity could never have done what it did after the Rain of Death. We don't even have an acurate number of Zentradie. We know that Breeti's ship, if I had to guess, close to a full crew when they went to get the Robtech Factory. And we also know around 10,000 Zentradie gave up on humanity, but even that number can be question, beacause even they didn't know the exact number. It could have been more or less. We don't even know the man to women ratio in the Zentradie fleet! Or how many of the female Zentradie survived. We only see 2 at the end. In the end, we just don't have the info. Though if HG came out tommarow and said cloning, I could at least except that. But we just don't know.

[Seto Kaiba]

Does anyone know what the minume a population needs to survive? Because if its to small, then interbreeding will come into play and that will spell doom for humanity.

After a little research into the matter of a minimum viable population estimate for humans, it seems to be one of those big questions where you'll get as many answers as you have conservation biologists to ask. I've seen estimates ranging from just 120 to several tens of thousands for humans, depending on the conditions in which they're living and how thoroughly they're policing breeding practices. The happy medium for terrestrial vertebrates in general seems to be about 6,000. In most, if not all, of the studies and calculated estimates I've encountered thus far, 70,000 would be viable long-term in a technologically advanced society like the one in Robotech.

Also, humans in space. Since they were tring to set something up on Mars, and we know that they had base on the Moon that wasn't really being use in the Master's saga, I think we can take a leap and say it might have been started before the Zentradie came, more resorces and people at that time.

Remember, the base on Mars in the Macross Saga was just that... a military base. It wasn't meant to function in the long-term as an offworld colony. The moon bases that cropped up during the time skip between the Macross and Masters sagas were probably no different, though rotating personnel to and from them would probably have been much easier with the much shorter distances involved. They were, as far as we're aware, principally resource stations rather than any long term off-world habitat.

Now, that's not to say that's not possible... because there was a fairly large military base on the moon, as well as colonies for civilians, in the original Macross version of events. Those bases did, as you guessed, escape notice by the whole Zentradi armada, providing a not-insubstantial proportion of the ~1 million human survivors in that version of events. Both the civilian colonies and military bases remained in operation after the war. Hikaru did a stint as a pilot at one of the moon bases during the timeskip between Ep27 and 28 (see The Lost Two Years in Macross: Perfect Memory), and former Macross bridge operator Shammy Milliome (RT equiv: Sammy Porter) moved there after retiring and at last mention was living happily in one of the colony cities with her husband and eleven children.

In the end, there has to be more then just the 70,000 on the SDF-1, because humanity could never have done what it did after the Rain of Death.

Unless, of course, they had other means of raising their population... which we know for an absolute, indisputable fact they did. (Theft of the requisite equipment from one town was kind of a major plot point.)

We don't even have an acurate number of Zentradie. We know that Breeti's ship, if I had to guess, close to a full crew when they went to get the Robtech Factory. And we also know around 10,000 Zentradie gave up on humanity, but even that number can be question, beacause even they didn't know the exact number.

All told, the Robotech version seems to have been much more unkind to the Zentradi. Instead of 100+ Zentradi ships being added to the UN Forces inventory, the only surviving ship ever shown or mentioned was Breetai's, and the number of Zentradi survivors (and their long-term success at surviving) seems to have been far lower. In the original, it was roughly eight million Zentradi survivors, only a fraction of which threw their lot in with Kamjin (RT: Khyron). RT's version seems to have had only a few tens of thousands of Zentradi maximum, with most of them apparently dying during that revolt Khyron led, and the few remaining apparently joining the UEEF.

We don't even know the man to women ratio in the Zentradie fleet! Or how many of the female Zentradie survived. We only see 2 at the end. In the end, we just don't have the info.

If you didn't mind OSM info, I could give you a rough order estimate... but the number seems to have been very low in the RT version, and it doesn't appear that any Zentradi actually had children with their own kind thus far. In fact, the only one who seems to have had children period is Miriya, and only two then.

[jaymz]

Actually Gryphon the UEDF/RDF HAS to fully aware of the Zentraedi being clones whether they state as much or not. Otherwise they have NO explanation of how the Zentraedi exist. What is silliness is the shock about cloning they have in the master saga. Besides what is cloning other than test tube babies which we have been able to do for decades.

[Seto Kaiba]

[...] a cloning theory that is unstated, unproven, barely supported, and relies on an ability we aren't even sure a Protoculture Resizing Chamber actually has.

Okay, I've chastised you enough for not checking your facts before you (loudly) object to something already, so let's both save time and you can re-read one of my old diatribes on the subject at your leisure.

Just as a point of fact, one I've pointed out in previous posts, the canon comics for Robotech do show us those protoculture chambers are used by the Zentradi for cloning as well as resizing. I believe it was one of the issues from the Love and War limited series.

But your unwilling to accept a much, much larger population base of survivors even though the visual evidence supports it pretty thoroughly?

Because there are alternate explanations for the presence of a large population that do not require us to refute what's said explicitly and consistently across two sagas about how many (or how few) people survived the bombardment. It's not in any doubt that 70,000 is not a translation artifact, it's a number they DELIBERATELY cited in the only episode of Robotech that the American rewriters had 100% control over the contents of.

Until Tommy overturns that number explicitly, that number is not a theory... it's a FACT. Cold, hard, and indisputable.

Actually Gryphon the UEDF/RDF HAS to fully aware of the Zentraedi being clones whether they state as much or not.

I believe Lisa's report first brings that to the UEDF's attention.

[glitterboy2098]

i can buy that heavy pariticle beams like the zentraedi used to bombard earth have a radiation component. Bremsstrahlung at the very least, the electrons released from the charged particles hitting the target. but radiation, especially Bremsstrahlung, is not a 100% killer. the radiation pulse would be transitory (literally only seconds long), albeit powerful. but radiation dissipates quite quickly when passing through atmosphere and other materials. people who are underground, be it basements, subways, or whatever, would be safe from the pulse pf radiation. and people inside 'fallout shelter' certified buildings made during the cold war would also be safe, even above ground. and there would not be lingering radiation. while neutron radiation can cause isotopic transmutation i nmaterials to make them radioactive, this only occurs after extremely long periods of exposuire. so there would be no fallout from the strike to contaminate the area. and supplies in the city would not be effected much either. while things like fresh produce might not last long, radiation pulses actually have the beneficial side effect of sterilizing food, making it last longer.
it is said that most cities are only a few days from starvation, but that only includes supermarkets. not emergency supplies , nor does it factor in losses to the population. in robotech, earth already new aliens were coming, and had powerful weapons. they'd have planned for potential bombardments. bunkers like we saw under macross Island were almost certainly built under most communities, and stocks of emergency rations and other supplies would have been laid on, just like during the cold war there were many government and private shelters constructed and stocked. while obviously not everyone could have evacuated to the shelters, a sizeable portion of the population would have survived in each case. conditions would not have been ideal, but they would have been able to hold on for some time.


as i said. if a city did not receive a direct hit, there would be survivors.

[Seto Kaiba]

i can buy that heavy pariticle beams like the zentraedi used to bombard earth have a radiation component. [...] and there would not be lingering radiation.

Official materials and, IIRC, the series mention long-term radioactive contamination... enough that several newly rebuilt cities are described as having to be sealed off because of it. That means that, for whatever reason, there was a long term radioactive threat after the bombardment, and that it was severe enough to justify sealing off entire cities years after the fact... so it's a safe bet that it was harmful if not lethal levels too.

it is said that most cities are only a few days from starvation, but that only includes supermarkets. not emergency supplies , nor does it factor in losses to the population. in robotech, earth already new aliens were coming, and had powerful weapons.

But they categorically underestimated the scale of the threat (which they make a meal of acknowledging in the series after the bombardment starts), so it's unlikely that the UEG was anything like properly prepared for that unthinkable worst case scenario. Hell, they were so unprepared they didn't even signal an evacuation. They weren't so much caught with their trousers down as off entirely.

bunkers like we saw under macross Island were almost certainly built under most communities,

This is a rather baseless assumption, isn't it? Macross Island is the only place bunkers are even mentioned, and then there are plenty of other reasons why only that island might have them... it was attacked several times, and it was handling hazardous alien materials. There's also no guarantee that the bunkers would've been proof against the much greater scale of the orbital bombardment involved in sterilizing Earth's surface.

The fact remains the series explicitly says 70,000 survivors total.

[Seto Kaiba]

Chastised Me?! No, you know what, I'll let that one get by, since its pretty much unimportant here.

It happens fairly often... don't tell me you don't remember.

So a series of six comics, that I have never read, and are only obtainable for about 10-20 bucks a pop at this stage, [...]

Just because you, personally, didn't follow one of the few new Robotech titles in the last decade doesn't make their contents invalid. Indeed, Harmony Gold's creative staff have repeatedly cited those comics as true and totally valid components of the official Robotech ongoing (post-reboot) universe.

[...] that mention (likely in passing, unless it's centrally critical to the story) [...]

I wouldn't call it critically central to the story, but it is most definitely shown, not told. Fairly blatantly, as it so happens. (We get a very good look at an "infant" Zentradi growing in one such chamber.)

[...] and this ends up being canon because of a policy that opted to chop off various other source appendages and accept others as canon.

In a word, you said it.

(No, don't object and tell me that's three words... I'm a heavy tipper.)

Essentially, that's right on. Those comics are canon because they were launched primarily to 1. actually launch the rebooting of the Robotech universe and 2. build momentum for their stab at continuing the story in an animated form, which culminated in the Shadow Chronicles movie. They, particularly that "From the Stars" comic and "Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles", underpin the reboot. As a whole, the Wildstorm RT comics have already been confirmed as canon for the official Robotech continuity.

And this of course only goes into the basic concept that a PC Sizing Chamber, PC Cloning "Chamber, and Stasis Chambers are in fact the same thing. [...]

This "stasis chambers" thing you keep mentioning must be a RPG-ism, because there's never any mention of Zentradi in stasis in the series itself. If you'd prefer the short version of why this is the case, it goes back to the OSM. The micloning machine didn't shrink the Zentradi, it literally created a smaller (or larger) version of the person's body, which got the existing body's mind transferred across to it. That's why, in the animation, you see the body at one size fade away/vanish and a new body appear in the other part of the chamber. Tommy and the other comic contributors were simply taking their lead from the true creators of the material... in which the sizing is just a different application of the cloning technology.

Or even that they had sufficient PC on hand immediately after the bombardment to clone literally millions of beings in the very first year.

We know for an unimpeachable fact that they had the galaxy's last protoculture matrix, meaning they weren't lacking for fuel. The Zentradi were, but with the sole source of production and all of the existing stockpiles under very tight military supervision, it's not terribly surprising that they weren't able to steal much. They were apparently flush with the stuff to the point that they could afford to just put the frigging sizing chambers in the city center for anyone to operate, as we see in one episode of the Macross Saga.

Even though visual evidence says otherwise. Sometimes, canon is wrong.

You realize you've just cited a contradiction in terms, right? Canon and "wrong" are mutually exclusive. If it's "wrong", then it's not "canon", because a canon is a list of works whose contents are declared to be accurate and true. They have not explicitly stated that this aspect of the series is wrong, therefore it is not wrong because the series itself is canon. There are things in the series that are known to be wrong, like the "Sylphid Veritech" or the VF-1 with missile racks on its stabilizers, or the time Rick accidentally calls his gunpod a missile, but this is not one of them. On top of everything, this figure comes from the one episode in the entire series that the creators of Robotech has 100% complete control over the contents of... "Dana's Story". Exactly 0% of that dialogue is OSM, it is all RT, all the time there. The 70,000 figure is very obviously intentional.

When confronted with the twin facts that not only is it accurate in the eyes of Robotech's current creative staff, but that the original staff very clearly meant to do it, suggesting that it is incorrect is beyond preposterous.

The 70K number is still as ridiculous now as it was before canon backed it up.

Just because you don't like it doesn't make it ridiculous, or any less of a pure, iron-clad fact.

Let's look at it this way. The population of New York City in 1980 was over 7 million. If only 1% survive, then the number of survivors is already twice what has been stated so far.

But, as nobody on Earth survived, as the series clearly indicates, this is not an issue. Move along. The bombardment might not have been what killed everyone, some could've died of starvation, radiation poisoning, and collateral injuries sustained during the blasts, but the point is the show tells us very clearly that there were only 70,000 survivors total, and we know exactly where that 70,000 came from... the SDF-1.

Lets count cruise liners at sea. Lets count military surface naval warships too. Lets count submarines.

Depending on who you listen to, the Zentradi either blanket the entire surface or just 70% of it, but in the latter case that's still enough to account for 100% of all planetary landmass and 40.8% of the oceans as well. With impacts like those we see in the series, there were probably some fairly massive impact-produced waves and pressure differentials that would account for most marine life and oceangoing vessels.

Lets count oil drilling platforms. Lets count survivalists bunkers. Lets count low tech enclaves in various parts of the planet that might have had a single generator working at the time.

See the above about the implications of being bombarded by weapons that make nukes look anemic, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of shots at a go. Most bunkers are not designed to survive a direct nuclear strike, just the effects outside the blast radius. We see in the series that these shots VAPORIZE entire cities and leave substantial (and deep) craters where they used to be. Survivalists in bunkers likely were vaporized or died when the bunkers in which they sheltered caved in. Assuming, of course, they had enough warning to actually take shelter. We saw in the animation that even the army didn't see it coming (soldiers talking to kids and sitting around in their tanks with the hatches open...). Low-tech enclaves? The math indicates that even the low-end estimate favors the loss of 100% of the land mass twice over with room to spare.

The population at the time was 6 Billion.

The population at the time is UNSTATED. You're using a real-world figure, we never had a Global War, or conflicts with an Anti-Unification League that were significant enough where the vaporization of an entire island were possibilities... it's safe to say Earth was probably significantly less populous even before the Zentradi went to town on it.

If even a single percentage point of that survived, then we get 60 million survivors.

That's a big IF, one the series shoots down in flames across two sagas.

It certainly fits better than a claim that they cloned a large number of people, and simply forgot to tell us this monumentally important fact.

Robotech has done worse things... the Masters Saga later acts like the very idea of clones is radical, when they just 15 years earlier fought a major war with a clone army. The Shadow Chronicles movie outright lies about how the humans came into possession of shadow technology, even though the person giving the account was fully briefed on everything and was physically present for much of the operation.

It certainly fits better than claiming that cloning replacements was the answer when they aren't even sure they would have access to sufficient protoculture yet, and might or might not have the appropriate gear until the Robotech Factory is recovered.

There is no indication that the humans suffered any kind of fuel shortage, only the malcontent Zentradi rebels who had no direct access to the matrix. Likewise, with every Zentradi ship supposedly possessing at least a few chambers, the idea that they didn't have the equipment is laughable... especially in light of newer details from RTSC, which indicate a considerable amount of salvaging was going on where old Zentradi ships were concerned.

Even further, they aren't going to have the food resources needed until they set up crop production,

They fed 70,000 people for how long on just what they were able to salvage from Macross island?

Honestly, if you're going to object to something at least make sure the show doesn't make your objection untenable.

because if there are only 70,000 people alive at the time, all of which are from the SDF-1, then almost none of which know squat about farming.

Prove it. (Don't bother, we know you can't.)

Better yet, if everyone else on Earth is dead, then they must have been killed by this mysterious radiation you mention, because they sure as hell weren't all hit over the head with a particle beam strike.

The people in the Grand Cannon beg to differ, they destruction as "total annihilation". Lisa indirectly confirms this in that same scene as well. The lingering radiation might've finished off any handfuls of stragglers who were very very lucky and didn't get vaporized on the first go-round, and was apparently an issue 15 years later.

So then, there isn't any viable farm land for at least as long as your radiation takes to die down, because that is the only way everyone else is dead too.

Hydroponics is a viable option there. The implication in their description of the radiation is that it wasn't an all-over thing, since only some cities needed to be sealed off. The relevant materials could be imported from (comparatively) uncontaminated areas.

Next, with only 70,000 survivors, and an irradiated planet, they need to create housing for your clone boom and the housing for them must be near a civilized region...which is the SDF-1...period. Cause, ya know, no survivors and all, and the cities are apparently irradiated for sometime yet.

Unsurprisingly, there's mention of several new cities being built... some of which were likely situated near particularly important resources (it's a no brainer what the ones in the shadow of Zentradi wrecks were built to exploit).

Alternates approaches, whatever they are, work.

As the show indicates, they do not. Thank you for playing, but please actually check your facts before you start to object loudly to facts. The only thing you're doing by denying that consistently presented facts are facts is to make yourself look like you don't know what you're talking about.

[jaymz]

Eh I just do my own thing and say a few million total survived, plus Zentraedi survivors and I also have cloning (more like test tube babies than true cloning) get used. Saves me the headaches of canon.

[Alpha 11]

Eh I just do my own thing and say a few million total survived, plus Zentraedi survivors and I also have cloning (more like test tube babies than true cloning) get used. Saves me the headaches of canon.

I'm also going to have to go with something like that. It makes things little more logical, IMO.

[Seto Kaiba]

The whole series of comments about the cloning comes down to an interpretation of apparently limited visuals that aren’t stated to be one thing or another then.

*sigh* Here's a novel idea, instead of trying to speak as an expert about a source you freely admitted you've never even seen, actually seek out those sources before you start commenting on them.

You have decided that its showing an infant Zentraedi growing in the same chamber, when you have no clear idea if it’s A) the same thing or not, and B) Being created under special conditions that aren’t normally present on a line of battle warship.

*heavier sigh* Check your facts BEFORE YOU POST, not after. If you had done so, you would know that, when the clone infant is shown, it's on a front-line warship during active service. It's very clearly inside one of the miclone machines. We are shown the device in question being used to produce a clone, your objections are immaterial because the fact is we know for a fact this technology is capable of what I'm saying it is, BECAUSE THEY SHOW US AS MUCH.

Yes, we known sizing chambers exist, which are apparently normally under military escort. We have no idea if those same chambers can actually clone new warriors, or Khyron would have been able to make new warriors for his army.

Use your common sense, please. Khyron's rebel force was strapped for fuel (protoculture), the UEG Forces were not. He barely had enough juice to resize his force to a size that could crew his repaired ship, and turn over the frigging engine. He had more immediate needs than making new soldiers, even if he had the time to do so.

Since he didn’t mention this wondrous ability to create cloned troopers out of thin air and protoculture, it isn’t a supported ability of a resizing chamber in Robotech.

Except for, y'know, the fact that a canon Robotech story straight-up shows it being done...

I'm not going to dignify this little denial fest of yours any further, because at this point you're not arguing from the facts or anything remotely resembling a fact.

If we remove the requirement for these chambers to also be stasis chambers, we make them more uncommon, not less so.

But, as the presently available information suggests, many (or possibly all) Zentradi ships possessed at least a few of these chambers, that's immaterial.

Now you don’t need enough of these chambers to stash your spares around till you need them, so Zentraedi crew are always active, and even flagships have fairly modest numbers of these chambers compared to their crew sizes.

An assumption without any supporting evidentiary basis... like every other point in your argument thus far. They apparently had enough chambers active to reduce dozens of Zentradi to human size on VERY short notice on Breetai's ship, during the time they willingly took a hit from the Daedalus attack, so I think you're rather short-selling them here for the sake of your spurious claims.

Even so, in Robotech, we don’t get confirmation these chambers are BOTH for resizing AND for cloning.

*sigh* We do, in Love and War, a 100% confirmed-as-canon Robotech story.

You need to post a screen cap or an image showing the cloning aspect, since in Robotech, we hear about it all the time, but never see it until the Masters come along.

Here's another novel idea... why don't you look at the series yourself. It's apparent pretty much any time someone dusts off the micloning machine. It's the sort of thing that shows up much more readily watching the animation itself, rather than in a static screen capture.

The OSM can call it whatever it wants, and has scads of info, I’m sure, to back it up. Robotech apparently has one comic panel showing this connection that I, and presumably many fans, have never so much as seen.

You're one of the few people I know who hasn't seen it... don't assume that just because you couldn't be bothered to seek it out, everyone else hasn't. Also, the OSM is the foundation for virtually everything RT. They follow its lead so hard it isn't funny anymore.

All we know about PC levels post 2011 is that the SDF-1 would have only enough power to barely get in the air and fire its gun as Khyron on a low powered setting once.

*sigh* Let's consider the obvious for a second...

The SDF-1 had enough power to fire its gun once and fly for a short period. Why? Because it was a decommissioned ship that, depending on which adaptation you favor, was either destined for life as a static monument or slowly being scrapped for parts to build the SDF-2. Why would they keep a ship they're either abandoning or disassembling fully fueled? That's not evidence of a fuel shortage.

Since the entirely of the UNDF/UEDF at that time was encompassed in non-PC powered mecha for the most part, there wouldn’t be a lot of need for it…but the remnants of their big stick didn’t even have significant amounts of it at hand for defending itself.

Obvious man, to save the day~!

They were in the middle of a massive fleet build-up, and their ships ALL use reflex furnaces, which means protoculture. In light of the massive amounts of evidence that say there wasn't a fuel shortage of any kind, I'm gonna go ahead and say no such fuel shortage existed. That much ought to have been rather obvious.

And you realize that canon being wrong is so common it’s laughable, right? That’s why canon gets changed every now and then in pretty much all fiction.

Depends on the author, really... there are some titles where canon is a hacked together mess (most American comics for instance) because of shared-author production, reboots, and the like. There are others where things stay beautifully and totally consistent. In this case, Robotech's creators have been pretty good about identifying when and where there are errors in the otherwise canon contents of the series. The 70,000 is not one of them. Have a nice day.

(Look! An Alpha really can fly form the Moon to the Earth and back! Who’d have thought that.

Not Harmony Gold's creative staff, apparently... they describe it as not being capable of that, or several other feats that were mistakenly shown in the Shadow Chronicles. Errors are errors, you're trying to cherrypick the things you like (whether they're acknowledged errors or not) and call the things you don't like wrong. What you're doing has nothing to do with canon, and everything to do with denial of a validated fact the authors like but you don't.

(What does their control over the audio have to do with the OSM…since the OSM was all in Japanese originally, and nothing in Robotech is in Japanese?!

I don't even have words for this. Anything I could say to do this mess justice would be a personal attack. Holy cow, I'm actually in awe of how nonsensical that is.

To explain it to you simply, Robotech's content was a hasty, imprecise, and almost completely unplanned adaptation of the plots, stories, characterizations, etc. of the original three shows. Most of the differences are entirely superficial. Only one episode, out of the entire 85 episode run, is NOT based on the contents of the original shows. That episode is "Dana's Story". It's the one chance they had to create an entire episode's worth of content from scratch, without having to use a hasty, imprecise translation of the originals. They weren't constrained by original dialogue, they had a free hand to choose what animation to use for it. What they did there is, in its very fundamental nature, deliberate. They MEANT to say that there were only 70,000 survivors.

Heck, protoculture gets a complete facelift in Robotech, blatantly underlining the Robotech =/=OSM concept from the very moment it first gets mentioned. Actually, since Overtechnology isn’t completely identical to Robotechnology, that’s another difference really.)

Congratulations, you've discovered a few of the superficial, cosmetic differences I alluded to above.

Except, people in Earth DID survive, and apparently for some time, since T.R. Edwards doesn’t get picked up for some time after Lisa. Rick and Lisa fly out of the Grand Cannon (one of those sites of radiation apparently, and the site of a fairly intensive bombardment) without any protection from radiation exposure at all.

*sigh* This is another one of those times when I tell you to actually check your facts. I've said it so much in this post I'm honestly sick of the words. CHECK. YOUR. FACTS.

A grand total of two, if we're counting... both of whom were six kilometers or so underground at the time, and only one of whom actually got away unscathed. (Edwards got his fetching scar there, after all.) There is no mention that the areas around the Grand Cannon specifically were irradiated. The exact areas of radiation contamination are not mentioned, just that some cities being (re)built were in areas where it was a definite hazard. As Macross City was rebuilt fairly close to the Grand Cannon, and it was NOT a sealed city, we can safely assume that area was not comprehensively irradiated like some others (Denver, as a likely example and the only sealed city we've yet seen) were.

The SDF-1 becomes the site of an actual city, even though the ship was literally inside the galaxies single largest discharge of weapons fire ever recorded.

That rather depends on if reflex warheads create radioactive debris... we know that serial bombardment with the massive beam cannons apparently does. What the SDF-1 was exposed to was a massive reflex warhead detonation, and it was behind its barrier for that, if you recall.

This radiation is apparently a big thing for you, but it never seems to be much of a factor, except around the three mounds site where the SDF-1, SDF-2 and a Zentraedi Monitor all died, and in that, the radiation aspect is apparently grossly overstated.

Not a big thing for me, it's something that's explicitly stated in the official materials... and credited as the reason for certain precautions when building new settlements, a likely explanation for domed-over Denver.

The series indicates that there are more than 70,000 people running around in 2029.

Are we a little unclear on the idea of there being 17 years separating 2012 from 2029?

Younger soldiers like Dana, Bowie, etc. are under 17 years old, meaning that *gasp* people were actually BORN during that 17 year period.

The series indicates that cloning is NOT how those additional bodies came about.

No, it honestly doesn't... in fact, all it DOES say about cloning is a fairly nonsensical bout of the ASC acting like they've never seen a clone before, often shortly before or during a talk with the descendant of a known clone.

The series does NOT indicate the total sterilization of all life on Earth.

Except, y'know, all the times that it explicitly does... I think you may need to review the series. Come to that, you may need to review an awful lot of things if all the unsupportable and factually inaccurate assertions you've made so far are anything to go by.

Either the shocked aspect of cloning is wrong, or the statements of 70,000 people is wrong.

Unsurprisingly, there's a fair amount of blindingly obvious evidence that the "shocking aspect of cloning" is wrong, and fairly consistent presentation of the "nobody but the 70,000 lucky sods on the SDF-1 survived" line too. Your alternate take is, quite frankly, 100% unsupported by anything even remotely resembling a fact.

Clearly the Zentraedi didn’t hit 1-00% of the land mass…or it all would be craters…everywhere.

You mean like all those landscapes we see that are nothing but crater-filled deserts? We only see a type of terrain that's different from that YEARS afterwards. Hell, most of the planet is STILL like that during the Masters Saga 17 years later.

While your math may indicate that the Zentraedi pasted the world’s surface twice over, if they had vaporized 100% of the land mass, where the hell did Khyron find an entire jungle to hide multiple warships in!

I think you may need to go back and re-read what I said, I said that the LOW END ESTIMATE of 70% was enough coverage to completely cover Earth's landmass twice over, with room to spare. The rest? Well, I've covered that several times already and see no need to repeat myself again for your benefit.

That can’t even be reconcile din the OSM, now that I think of it.

Too bad for you, it actually is. Yet another tick in the "Check your facts" box.

(The forests we see are explicitly mentioned as part of the ecological recovery programme underway in the series itself, no less. You don't even have to go to official publications for that much.)

The SDF-1 fired its main gun while sitting in the ground. It blew a huge chunk of the surrounding island away when it did. There was no significant concussion, radiation, or back scatter effect to be seen.

You can't prove that... because, quite frankly, they don't stick around long enough to talk about any of that.

Some (apparently dense) people mistook it for fireworks.

A figure of speech is not that hard to grasp, man.

The blast is admittedly pretty sizable, but the side effects appear to be negligible, and the radiation is more an aspect of whatever got hit leaking than the beams themselves…or Rick, Lisa and Edwards are immune to radiation poisoning.

It's a beam tightly focused enough to hit ships with pin-point precision from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, so the spread of the radiation outside the stream is probably pretty negligible. It's still immaterial though, the radiation that's mentioned after the serial bombardment is a stated fact.

Even were the Zentraedi to have deliberately targeted that water (entirely possible, there were nearly five million ships with literally hundreds of millions of guns total), and they missed entire mega cities, a huge metropolis at the time.

This is another one of those times where I tell you to prove it, secure in the knowledge that you can't.

More than that, submarines tend to stay underwater, and the UEDF apparently had two really, really big types.

Semi-submersible doesn't mean "fully submersible". *sigh* Please, PLEASE check your facts BEFORE you post.

(If it matters, the Daedalus and Prometheus weren't, as the title suggests, capable of full submersion. They could only submerge far enough to put their upper decks underwater, with the bridge towers still sticking out. There are some quite beautiful pictures of them doing so, in fact. They are not submarines by any stretch of the imagination.)

Unless they took a direct hit, most of these subs would barely notice a surface strike vaporizing trillions of tons of water.

Except for, y'know, those beams being shown as carrying immense kinetic force too... (something even the RPG notes, in an unusual moment of accuracy). The pressure shock of the flash-vaporization of the water and the massive explosion would crush submarines like tin cans.

A surface ship that didn’t’ have a strike land literally on top of it wouldn’t even be phased.

*sigh* Except for, y'know, the massive wave fronts such impacts would generate... capsizing, sinking, all those typical concerns.

A shot hitting a mere 3-4 klicks away wouldn’t do more than rock a modern light warship, and wouldn’t even be of note to a sizable freighter, liner, or heavy warship. Hydrodynamics doesn’t work that way.

You're bringing a lot of wild assumptions, with nothing to back them up.

As for the 6 Billion being a high number, fine. Let’s say [...]

Better yet, let's not. 70,000 survivors total is an unimpeachable fact from the series itself. It'll stay a fact until such time as Harmony Gold overturns it.

I'm just going to skip the rest, because you repeat the same fallacious assertions over and over again, to no useful end.

[Alpha 11]

I think we can agree to disagree at this point.

[Hystrix]

OK.

Dialogue in Robotech is bad. We all know that.

So I watched Episodes 37 and 38 of the Southern Cross series. I noted the Commander Lenard proposes two (ridiculous) notions -

1. That there were only 70,000 survivors and these were there descendants.
2. That it took almost 7 years after the SDF-3 left Earth for them to graduate a class of Soldiers for the ASC. Meaning that before 2029, there was NO army at ALL. Good to know.

Moving on...

3. The Robotech Masters present another gem of dialogue confusion stating that the Earth people who defeated the Zentreadi are no longer living! So after 17 whole years EVERY ONE of the original 70,000 survivors are dead. Hmm...

Just in case anyone has any doubts about the facts stated in the first two Southern Cross episodes...

4. Dana incorrectly identifies herself as a Sergeant when speaking to Marie Crystal.
5. Bowie incorrectly calls Dante a "Corporal" when he is identified as a Sergeant earlier in the Episode.
6. Emerson goes from Brigadier General to Major General and back a few times.

Aaannnd...

7. Apparently the higher social echelon you are in Robotech Masters society, the more outlandish your side burns are!

Facts that can be extracted

1. Anyone over the age of 17 had to have been on the SDF-1 before the Rain of Death. Meaning Lenard, Emmerson, Dante, Louie, and many others had to have been survivors who were on board the SDF-1.
2. There was NO army from the time the Expeditionary Force left Earth (about 2022) until 2029. Good that they graduated that 1st class RIGHT before the Robotech Masters attacked.
3. There had to be way fewer adults that 70,000 because the SDF-3 left Earth in 2022. We don't know how many, but the SDF-3 had to have a crew of at least 30,000 (maybe 1/3 Zentreadi). Leaving the Earth with ~ 40,000 adults...
4. ...except that all 40,000 survivors must be dead according to the Robotech Masters.
5. Southern Cross Soldiers don't understand basic rank structure.
6. The Robotech Elders have crazy side burns.

I guess my point is that while I want to agree with series as much as possible, there also this little thing called common sense. If it doesn't pass the common sense test it shouldn't be even considered a possibility.

The Earth couldn't defend itself with merely the decedents of 70,000 survivors after only 17 years. The Southern Cross would JUST be graduating their first class 7 years after the departure of the SDF-3. And clearly not ALL of the 70,000 survivors were dead after 17 years. And don't get me started about the ridiculous notion that the world is full of clones. None of these things pass the common sense test.

While I love Robotech, especially the Masters Saga, it is not a religion. Also, neither the cartoons nor the comics, no matter how canon, are not a Bible.

[Seto Kaiba]

Dialogue in Robotech is bad. We all know that.

That's putting it mildly... but, for our purposes, it's a question of what parts are consistent and what ones aren't. The bit about the destruction and loss of life being "total" in the Macross Saga and Dana's Story is, while the other dialogue in the Masters Saga proper (Ep38 and on) tends not to be.

So I watched Episodes 37 and 38 of the Southern Cross series. I noted the Commander Lenard proposes two (ridiculous) notions -

Um... neither of those two are ridiculous in any way, shape, or form. It fits perfectly with what we know about that era, from official materials and bloody common sense. He confirms what the previous saga said about the number of survivors from the previous war, and identifies the graduating class in front of him as the first from the UEF Academy. We know he ought to be correct about the former, because both the general official interpretation of the series and even the RPG are saying that he's not just the top dog of the UEDF, he's basically Earth's actual ruler. The latter, well, you're reading some interesting things into it. At no point is it established that there was no army before 2029, just that the graduating class that entered the service in 2029 was the first from the UEF Academy. With such a small initial population, it wouldn't be terribly surprising for them to have needed 17 years to get a (literal) new generation of recruits together, in numbers big enough to justify even having an academy. That doesn't preclude the presence of recruits before the establishment of a proper academy.

(Mind you, some exceptionally poor choices of terminology by the people who did the "research" for the RPG tend to leave people thinking the ASC was much, MUCH bigger than it actually was. Most of those groups listed as specialist corps and divisions are actually individual special mission units of fairly small size. The entire ATAC is just 15 tank squadrons, about 400 people total. The UEEF's size is similarly exaggerated by many fans, who miss important details in the animation that indicate the UEEF's ships are operating WAY below their stated capacity... by as much as 66%.)

3. The Robotech Masters present another gem of dialogue confusion stating that the Earth people who defeated the Zentreadi are no longer living! So after 17 whole years EVERY ONE of the original 70,000 survivors are dead. Hmm...

The Robotech Masters dialogue is especially problematic in the Masters Saga, partly a result of dialog artifacts from their original incarnation and partly the result of writers not cross-checking each other's work during rushed production. They don't exactly have great intel early on in the series either... they go into it believing the Disciples of Zor are behind their Zentradi fleet's destruction, after all.

4. Dana incorrectly identifies herself as a Sergeant when speaking to Marie Crystal.
5. Bowie incorrectly calls Dante a "Corporal" when he is identified as a Sergeant earlier in the Episode.
6. Emerson goes from Brigadier General to Major General and back a few times.

#4 is a dialog artifact that wasn't caught due to insufficient editorial review of scripts during recording, the original version of Dana (Jeanne Francaix) was a Sergeant Major. #5 is just a goof, and IIRC #6 is a similar artifact, they made a few huge translation errors when it came to rank system terminology. (There's a decent body of evidence to suggest that they had some really archaic sources, which were almost certainly the genesis of the whole 1st-2nd-3rd Lieutenant thing.)

7. Apparently the higher social echelon you are in Robotech Masters society, the more outlandish your side burns are!

Really? All this time, I thought it was that they showed their rank by how ridiculously ostentatious the collars of their robes are... like pauldrons or commissar caps in 40K.

1. Anyone over the age of 17 had to have been on the SDF-1 before the Rain of Death. Meaning Lenard, Emmerson, Dante, Louie, and many others had to have been survivors who were on board the SDF-1.

Is this terribly surprising? We know for a fact Leonard was involved in Destroid development, and apparently had at least some connections to starship engineering too (as he was able to get terrorists onto ARMD-01). There were whole families living aboard the SDF-1 during the war too, so Dante, Louie, etc. could easily have been the descendants of the Macross Island residents or tourists who'd come to see the launch.

2. There was NO army from the time the Expeditionary Force left Earth (about 2022) until 2029. Good that they graduated that 1st class RIGHT before the Robotech Masters attacked.

As I pointed out, that does not actually follow from what we're told...

3. There had to be way fewer adults that 70,000 because the SDF-3 left Earth in 2022. We don't know how many, but the SDF-3 had to have a crew of at least 30,000 (maybe 1/3 Zentreadi). Leaving the Earth with ~ 40,000 adults...

There are a few ways to approach this... RTSC and various other canon titles have shown us the crew numbers for those later starship designs are considerably exaggerated, often by an order of magnitude. The SDF-3's crew probably wasn't all that large... maybe a few hundred people total. Just look at the way the Tokugawa-class is treated. The stats for those claim they have a crew of 6,500... but when we're actually shown 'em, they only seem to have a crew of maybe a hundred or so, and only one or two fighter squadrons. When the SDF-3 herself commits to an assault, we see them land just a small group of troops and one fighter squadron.

The other tack we could take is that the population was growing for reasons I've alluded to before...

4. ...except that all 40,000 survivors must be dead according to the Robotech Masters.

Who apparently think they were the disciples of Zor, so they aren't exactly reliable.

5. Southern Cross Soldiers don't understand basic rank structure.

They're supposedly the dregs who weren't good enough to make it into the UEEF, so...

6. The Robotech Elders have crazy side burns.

And how!

[Colonel Wolfe]

Does anyone know what the minume a population needs to survive? .

The book I got out of the motel desk drawer says 2....

[jaymz]

Does anyone know what the minume a population needs to survive? .

The book I out of the motel desk drawer says 2....

[Alpha 11]

Does anyone know what the minume a population needs to survive? .

The book I out of the motel desk drawer says 2....

And how do we know that the ATAC only had 15 squads? And if it is as small as you say Seto Kaiba, were did Lenard get all those troops to continue to throw at the Masters and the indusual base for all those ships? And as for the population during the Invid Invasion, New York itself looks like it has 10s of thousands of people living there. Not counting the thousands of people they past on they way up through South America and the American west. Just those snap shots of humanity alone, we can make a good guess that the population is in the hundreads of thousand would wide at the minumum. So something doesn't seem to add up right.

[Seto Kaiba]

And how do we know that the ATAC only had 15 squads?

Because we have the org chart for the Southern Cross Army from which all info on the army's organization is drawn, and it's not exactly ambiguous on that note.

And if it is as small as you say Seto Kaiba, were did Lenard get all those troops to continue to throw at the Masters and the individual base for all those ships?

I'm not sure what you mean by "all those" troops, since we never see troops conducting maneuvers in large numbers in the Masters Saga. At best, we see formations of a couple dozen battloids at once. Maybe as many as a hundred or so in the very largest land-based battle scenes. Considering those are all one-pilot machines, that's not a large number of troops... not by any standard. We don't see all that many ships either, which isn't terribly surprising since the bulk of Earth's forces were out in deep space with the UEEF, and we know that that amounted to just a few hundred ships, which tend to be on the small side crew-wise even if we assume the Infopedia stats aren't exaggerated (which they are, based on all available RT evidence and the OSM).

And as for the population during the Invid Invasion, New York itself looks like it has 10s of thousands of people living there.

Again, considering we only actually see a handful, and most of the time the streets are presented as deserted, that's it's a heavily populated area is more wishful thinking than anything. About the only time we see a crowd is in Lancer's imagination, the largest actual group of people we see is about 20... and clearly New York's not as big as it used to be, since the city is described as being "only a couple miles long", and modern NYC is a quite a bit bigger than that.

EDIT: Scott describes New York City's total population as being "thousands"... not "tens of thousands", "hundreds of thousands", or "millions", (New York City's 2012 population estimate being 8.3 million, Manhattan alone having 1.6 million of that.) If New York, the most populous city in the US, supports a population that's only in the thousands, that bodes ill for the idea that there are millions of humans living on Earth. The largest group of people we see out in the streets numbers only about 20, spread out across about a hundred yards or so.

Not counting the thousands of people they past on they way up through South America and the American west.

It might get into the thousands if you added every single town and village they stop in together... but most of what we're shown are fairly small communities of at most a few hundred people... and they only run across a few such settlements in the entirety of Central and North America. That doesn't speak of a large population.

So something doesn't seem to add up right.

The thing that doesn't add up is your recall of the show's contents, I'm afraid.

[Alpha 11]

How many waves of ships did they send againest the masters, 3, 4? And yes, I was talking about the ships. And also when they attacked the Masters ship that had grounded, that must have been 100 plus mecha for each assult, and they did that multi times. To do anything less when attacking somthing that size would be crazy. They had to have had hundreds, if not thousands of troops working on trying to get into that down Master ship. And as for NY city, been a long time since I saw that episode, so I forgot he said that. But, we got to take into account that he MIGHT have been guessing that number. That number MIGHT have been 10,000 plus. Its possible. Again, were did you get that info on there only being 15 of them, what sourse? I honestly don't remember that in the TV series, books, or RPGs. And as for poeple, I'll try to go in order of who they come across.

The Lost City, a couple a hundred.

Lonely Soldier Boy, maybe a hundred or so.

Curtain Call, couple of thousands maybe more.

Hard Times, hundreds to MAYBE a thousand or 2.

Paper Hero, couple hundred.

Eulogy. hundreds if not thousands, till the Invid destroy it.

Enter Marlene, the village near Point K, maybe a hundred or so, till the Invid attack.

The Secret Route, hundreds to maybe a couple of thousands, and who knows how may went before they got there, though they are most likely all dead.

Annie's Wedding, maybe a 100 or 2, hard to say.

Ghost Town, couple hundred.

Hired Gun, couple hundred.

The Big Apple, thousands, if not 10,000 plus.

And I'm sure they didn't go through every single town in South and North America. With evidence that there was more, before the Invid came, with serveal towns deserted.

Again, this is just guessing and what I remember. Also, I remember in the last episode or 2 of they Masters that they said that the Southern Cross troops all over the world were preparing for the finnal assult, so IF troops are all over the world, then civilines are also. In the end, it seems to be pointing to a higher population. I'm sorry, but, we will have to agree to disagree. The dialage and pictures just doesn't seem to add up, IMO. In the end, we need HG to go and do what has been done to several cartoons and anime, redo it and line everything up, with the facts they say, to the pictures.

[Seto Kaiba]

How many waves of ships did they send againest the masters, 3, 4? And yes, I was talking about the ships. And also when they attacked the Masters ship that had grounded, that must have been 100 plus mecha for each assult, and they did that multi times. To do anything less when attacking somthing that size would be crazy. They had to have had hundreds, if not thousands of troops working on trying to get into that down Master ship.

Again, you're saying that... but it doesn't actually match what's in the show itself. Simply insisting that it must be so does not actually make it so.

And as for NY city, been a long time since I saw that episode, so I forgot he said that. But, we got to take into account that he MIGHT have been guessing that number.

Until we're shown people fleeting from Corg's forces, the streets are invariably depicted as being almost entirely empty in one of New York's most populous areas... and even when they're fleeting, we don't see hundreds of people fleeting. The series shows us tens of people. So, no... there is absolutely no reason to assume that Scott isn't absolutely correct. In total, we only see about fifty people in total in the entire episode... counting the protagonists.

That number MIGHT have been 10,000 plus. Its possible.

Considering Robotech's considerable love of hyperbole, if the number were over 10,000, Scott would have said tens of thousands. A colander holds water better than that suggestion.

The Lost City, a couple a hundred.

Try 25, that's the number of citizens we actually see in the animation... occupying a very small, and mostly wrecked little community on an island.

Lonely Soldier Boy, maybe a hundred or so.

The village is described in the opening narration as "desolate", and its population as being "a handful of humans". Nice try, but again you're not actually referencing the show... you're just throwing out random numbers. If the establishing shots in this episode are anything to go by, the entire city is based around a single street. Yellow Dancer's performance has a total audience of only about a dozen. The largest group we see only numbers about two dozen.

Curtain Call, couple of thousands maybe more.

Definitely several hundred packing the stadium, but your assumption is, as is becoming a trend, apparently not based on the show. Rand's earlier remarks suggest that this number is the bulk of the town's population.

Hard Times, hundreds to MAYBE a thousand or 2.

The city is shown to be mostly deserted, referred to as "ghostly". Again, we see a maximum of a dozen or so people at any given time. Clearly this is another desolate city. The "snakes" biker gang is the largest group of people we see, and they have about 13 members that we actually see.

Paper Hero, couple hundred.

Maybe, it's a small and rural community. It depends largely on how many of the approximately 60 buildings seen during the establishing shot are actually homes. If we assume all of them are, and that each supports an average sized family of four, that's only 240 people. Some of them are doubtless businesses rather than homes, so that number is probably a higher-end estimate.

Eulogy. hundreds if not thousands, till the Invid destroy it.

"Soldiertown" in the episode "Eulogy" should not be considered, as it is not a town populated by surviving civilians from the previous Robotech Wars. It's a deliberately erected containment area (a prison camp in everything but name) where Invid permit soldiers from the various failed landing operations to congregate for easier disposal.

Enter Marlene, the village near Point K, maybe a hundred or so, till the Invid attack.

The village was almost totally demolished and abandoned, a population of zero. The number of houses is indeterminate due to the advanced state of ruin they're all in.

The Secret Route, hundreds to maybe a couple of thousands, and who knows how may went before they got there, though they are most likely all dead.

In terms of the number of people actually seen, the village seen in The Secret Route is the second most populous town in the whole New Generation. A whopping 22 people in the establishing shot. Still, the shots from Donald's mansion appear to show that the town is fairly dispersed, and consists of only a hundred or so actual buildings. A couple hundred people would be a safe estimate assuming, again, that every building is a domicile holding an average family of four.

Annie's Wedding, maybe a 100 or 2, hard to say.

We see about a dozen, all told... counting MacGruder.

Ghost Town, couple hundred.

33, actually... the most populous shot in the New Generation. The actual town and nearby city are pretty much deserted, however, as seen in the animation. A couple hundred isn't unreasonable, assuming every single one of the men we see is a father with a family. If not, then that number gets quite a bit lower.

Hired Gun, couple hundred.

Impossible to say, as we never get a good look at the town... just a row of three buildings in it.

The Big Apple, thousands, if not 10,000 plus.

Scott says "thousands", meaning "less than 10,000", and he's referring to the whole of NYC when he says it... not just the island of Manhattan.

And I'm sure they didn't go through every single town in South and North America. With evidence that there was more, before the Invid came, with serveal towns deserted.

Yeah, you listed several deserted towns as though they were occupied by hundreds of people...

Again, this is just guessing and what I remember.

Yeah, that's the problem... you're guessing, based on wildly inaccurate memories of the show's contents. I reviewed every episode you listed there, and almost nothing you said holds water.

Also, I remember in the last episode or 2 of they Masters that they said that the Southern Cross troops all over the world were preparing for the finnal assult, so IF troops are all over the world, then civilines are also.

I can think of a great many military outputs across recent history that beg to differ...

In the end, it seems to be pointing to a higher population. I'm sorry, but, we will have to agree to disagree.

No, it really doesn't... because so far you haven't actually presented any proof of what you're claiming. You ran off a nice list of nonsense and made a bunch of claims the show doesn't support, then tried to contradict a piece of dialogue that is one of the few cases where a postwar settlement's population is identified. I'm not going to agree to disagree, because I have already pointed out your assertions have no basis in the show or anything else. Your misremembered statements are not on an equal footing with the actual content of the series.

The dialage and pictures just doesn't seem to add up, IMO. In the end, we need HG to go and do what has been done to several cartoons and anime, redo it and line everything up, with the facts they say, to the pictures.

The dialogue and animation add up just fine most of the time, the problem is that your objection is not based on what's in the show itself... it's based on a very faulty and inaccurate memory of what's in the show. The most populous city in the entire US is established as having, circa 2044, a population that's only into the thousands. That SUPPORTS the idea that there are not millions of humans kicking around.

[Hystrix]

Seto - Ok, I have to know then. If the ASC are decendents from merely 70,000 survivors, then they can't be more than a few 10's of thousands.

Basic Math - With 70,000 survoivors we know not all of them were child bearing age (either to old or too young). We know Minmie, Rick, Lisa, Gloval, Sammie, Kim, etc didn't have children at the time. Let's say, you had 40,000 (20,000 men, 20,000 women) who were having babies.

According to Hellin's Law 1:80 births are twins, 1:6,400 are triplets, and 1:700,000 are quadruplets.

Now if there was a baby "boom" in 2012 and all 20,000 couples had children within a year of each other that would give us about 20,128 children (countring multiple births) in that time frame. Now I realize that these couples would be having more chilren later, but they would all be too young to fight during the 2nd Robotech War (with a few close sibling execptions).

Now with now with no misscarrages, no still births, no SIDS, and no teenagers killing themselves (either by accedent or design) that gives you:

between the ages of 16-17: +/- 20,128
those in the 15(ish) range: +/- 20,128

If they took recruits young that would be a total of 40,256 who were (mostly) old enough to fight in the ASC.

Now in real life, not every kid is fit for service in the military for various reasons. One source (An Army Colonel) that I talk to said that only 25% of kids are even fit for service. Let's say the ASC have loose standards (they definatly appear to) maybe half of these kids can join. That gives you a pool of +/- 20,000 to recruit from.

Now, I can live with the ASC being mostly kids.

My question is, are you saying the ASC are maybe 20,000 new recruits and a few thousand veteran officers/ncos, and that's it? To defend the whole planet? And if so, how small are the Masters forces supposed to be?

[Seto Kaiba]

Seto - Ok, I have to know then. If the ASC are decendents from merely 70,000 survivors, then they can't be more than a few 10's of thousands.

Granted, there would only be a few tens of thousands of them if they're relying solely on natural reproduction as a way of building up their numbers. There is a fair amount of circumstantial evidence to suggest they may have relied upon both natural and artificial means. We know they had access to protoculture chambers, and that those chambers are used for both resizing and cloning in Robotech, and that is how humanity boosted its numbers for space colonization in the original Macross (which means there's at least 90% certainty Tommy would affirm it just because that's how it was in the original).

Basic Math - With 70,000 survoivors we know not all of them were child bearing age (either to old or too young). We know Minmie, Rick, Lisa, Gloval, Sammie, Kim, etc didn't have children at the time.

More's the pity that the Robotech version kills most of them off too... I keep hoping one of Shammy/Sammy's eleven children in Macross will play a role in a future story.

If they took recruits young that would be a total of 40,256 who were (mostly) old enough to fight in the ASC.

All things considered, that's probably actually more than enough to make up the force we see in the series. The ATAC isn't a huge organization by any means, just 15 squads of 20 or so tanks, for instance.

[Alpha 11]

You still haven't answered the question as to were you get your info on there only being 15 squards in the ATAC. So were did you get it?

I said they were destroyed, you didn't have to point that out again.

This was animation done in the early 80's, with an episode a week coming out, of course they are going to simpify things buy not putting a lot of moving poeple in shots at times, if they can avoid it. The same thing can be said for the Sotheren Cross fleet, we don't really know how big it was, or the REF fleets. We can maybe guess, but in the end, we don't really know. We only know the last fleets numbers because they could do shots like that now a days. Unless, HG has the numbers somewhere that I don't know about.

And come on, with the way things were, do you think they would put troops out in the middle of no were. No, they would most likely put them near places of importences, like importent road ways, natural resores, and induesteres. And to get those things going, you would need people, and then you have a beginning of a town.

[Seto Kaiba]

You still haven't answered the question as to were you get your info on there only being 15 squards in the ATAC. So were did you get it?

It didn't bear answering, because the original post you questioned said where. It's the original Southern Cross Army org chart from which all branch/division terminology comes from, as well as all the insignia and most of the arming doublet art. It was a color insert in This is Animation 10: Southern Cross.

This was animation done in the early 80's, with an episode a week coming out, of course they are going to simpify things buy not putting a lot of moving poeple in shots at times, if they can avoid it.

You can't dismiss it like that, because even the Robotech version often goes out of its way to mention these towns being barely inhabited, desolate, mostly ruined, etc. There aren't thousands of people hiding just off camera, these were very small areas of human habitation. Most of the towns we see are so small they have less than 100 buildings in total... and the few big cities we see are either established to be abandoned or only inhabited by a few thousand people. These aren't cases of the animators cheaping out, they demonstrated they can show large numbers of people when towns have large populations (e.g. that stadium full of people during the protoculture heist). These towns are mostly abandoned.

The same thing can be said for the Sotheren Cross fleet, we don't really know how big it was, or the REF fleets. We can maybe guess, but in the end, we don't really know.

This is rapidly becoming something of a theme... just because you, personally, don't know or can't be arsed to go look for a reliable answer doesn't mean an answer does not exist. I'll grant you, thanks to the chronic lack of consideration that was the defining trait of Southern Cross's production, there's no information about how large that fleet was. On the other hand, between the MOSPEADA OSM, the "Invasion" limited comic, and the Shadow Chronicles movie, we can put together a reasonably firm estimate of the UEEF's actual size circa 2040.

We know the bulk of the Expeditionary Forces were committed to the final Reflex Point offensive, and we know exactly how many ships were there (360 Garfish-class, 30 Ikazuchi-class, 4 Shimakaze-class, and the SDF-4), and that three ships were absent (the Deucalion, Pioneer, and Icarus). The previous Reclamation force (2nd) was a fleet consisting of 10 Ikazuchi-class, 40 Garfish-class, and 160 Horizon-T-class, according to the animation production materials. There were roughly 36 ships shown in the defensive formation protecting Liberty station in RTSC, we can safely round that up to 39 on the basis of their reuse of copy-pasted formations from earlier in the movie.

Not counting the handful of ships dispatched to Earth during the 2nd Robotech War, the handful of ships send back for the initial Earth reclamation force, and ships that had been retired, were not front-line ships, or were incomplete at the time, that's a total fleet composition of:

2x one-off Super/Shadow Dimension Fortress type (SDF-3 and -4)
5x Shimakaze-class (late introduction)
~43x Ikazuchi-class carrier
~437 Garfish-class escort

Leaving off the indeterminate number of unarmed shuttle craft incapable of inter-system travel, that's 487 ships. Quite a fleet, all told. It would indicate a very large number of soldiers if the official stats were not undermined by the animation both from 1984 and 2006, indicating crew sizes are much, MUCH smaller than indicated. What we're shown of crew sizes from ships as large as the Tokugawa-class and as small as the Garfish-class is that the crew sizes the RT.com Infopedia offers are exaggerated by an order of magnitude. The Garfish we see in the series seems to have a crew complement of less than forty (its bridge only seats four, the stats say it carries 15 fighters, though the actual art on its page clearly shows it can only fit nine, as the original creators intended). The massive Tokugawa is evacuated with just a handful of Horizon-T's, indicating a crew capacity of only a few hundred at best. If we're incredibly charitable and assume all 360 Garfish-class ships are holding their Alphas in reserve, the animation of RTSC indicates the UEEF Ikazuchi-class carriers are operating at one-third capacity or less, deploying only two squadrons instead of six, for a fairly large decrease in personnel. Take the extra order of magnitude out of the official numbers, and the UEEF still has a good thirty to forty thousand troops in total, but it's hardly the kind of massive force people paint it is. It certainly has nothing on some of the absolutely monstrous fleets in Macross.

(Please note that this is actually a much larger number than if we were using just the sources from the original animation materials, which indicate that the 3rd ERF was mostly light shuttles carrying about 30 infantry, and the number of actual warships was only marginally greater than the 2nd ERF, so we are taking pains to come to a very high-end estimate.)

[Seto Kaiba]

Are we willing to accept that the UEEF fleet, which isn't getting more bodies form Earth after 2030, is pretty sizable, and that it is at least reasonable to presume the UEDF fleet was at least half that size, and that includes not having super cruisers like SDFs in place?

Well, for one, we're told that by the 2040s the UEEF's "new generation" of soldiers were born out in deep space, so they're not really all that dependent on Earth for warm bodies. Likewise, the official position on the matter of the UEDF is that it's painfully under-equipped to defend Earth... one of the few things that actually makes Leonard less of an incompetent arse instead of more of one.

A single Tristar is 1100 people. The other ship types probably have fewer crew than that or course, but that single ship, apparently one of some number, whatever that is, is a fairly sizable percentage of any reasonable number anyone can produce.

That's assuming, remember, that the actual number stated in the Infopedia is correct. There's rather a lot of evidence in the canon animated and comic book material to suggest there's an extra zero on the end of those numbers. The ships in Robotech are either not as capacious as the Infopedia claims, or are operating WAY below capacity for lack of crew and mecha. When we see the ASC fleet launching fighters, we don't see huge swarms of 'em like "Force of Arms", we're shown relatively small groups from each carrier. Dozens, not hundreds. The same pattern repeats itself in the New Gen, and RTSC as well.

Never mind the Tristar variant classes that supposedly exist (the 2E RPG does allude to them as such), which are not quite as large as the base model.

And all of that ignores the sizable personnel numbers involved in just the UEEF of course.

Again, correcting for exaggeration, we're looking at a force that (optimistically) doesn't even make it halfway to 100,000 in total, counting all the ships and crews they lost on abortive assaults on Earth.

Wait, Seto, you're saying a Horizon-T only has like 30 troops aboard it during Scott's offensive? Then what's in those two large containers, packing foam!?

A variety of things, based on the line art and animation. The back area appears to be cordoned off into a modular rack for cargo, while the front portion contains larger items like Cyclones for the infantry or the occasional tethered-down fighter (the art shows a Beta/TLEAD being transported in this fashion). It seems safe to assume the nondescript cargo packs to which most of the pod is dedicated contain the necessities of operating in the field... like fuel, ammunition, food, medical commodities, replacement parts for the ship and the mecha it's carrying, etc. The number of troops we actually see on a Horizon-T during the first episode is 14.

[Alpha 11]

I completely agree with you with the ship count for form Shadow Chroincals. So how many ships do you think were in the Southern Cross fleet? At the minumum, I'm guessing maybe 100 total. And that's to have any chance againest the, I'm guessing here again, 4 to 6 mother ships. Though another thing comes to mind, if the numbers are that low, fighting would be the last thing on my mind! Preserving the human race would be. Women would not been put anywhere near combat, and other extrem measures to prevent us from being wipe out. But we really don't see any of that. It looks like to me, the human race is contiueing to try to commit suicide. And as for the 15 squards question, I don't remember seeing that answer, so thank you for answering it. So, other then that, do we know if HG took that info into Robotech? Another thing also, if the Southern Cross was so week, even with the Masters so week, and only 10% of their Bioroid force, that's 3,500 per ship, could be fielded. But, least go with only 1%, that is still 350 per ship. With 4 ships, that is only 1400 Bioroids. With 6, 2100. Not including ground troops. I know the Masters were being causes and all, even if I saw that they were that weak, I would have just plowed over them. Unless the Master were worse off then that. And if we go with your low number, even one left on earth and everthing would have had to have been to war. That would have been the only way they would have stood a chance, but we can see that was not the case. And with only 110,000+ with population, before you send out the REF. This is making even less sence. We need more people, eithor vial cloning, or survivers, or both. Not counting Zentradie. To parallel Rosline from Battlestar Galatica, they need to be making babies, not war.

[Seto Kaiba]

I completely agree with you with the ship count for form Shadow Chroincals.

I would hope so, there's really not any more definitive way to estimate it than an eyes-on count of the number of identical ship formations in HD on one big damn TV. Harmony Gold's pathetically low budget for that movie really made my job there MUCH easier. The entire fleet is literally the same 13-ship, 24-fighter formation copied 30 times. The best part is that the animators only actually textured half the ships... the other side of each ship is the same texture after a "flip horizontal" in Photoshop. (You can tell that's what they did, the text is BACKWARDS. )

So how many ships do you think were in the Southern Cross fleet? At the minumum, I'm guessing maybe 100 total.

On balance, my estimate would be somewhere between 120 and 150, depending principally on how many of those ships we see are actually Tristar-class and how many are the aforementioned almost-identical-looking smaller variant subclass designs the RPG alludes to. It's really hard to say, since Southern Cross has some fairly awful issues with consistent animation. (Its creators don't seem to have decided how big anything was, except the few land mecha, so ship sizes got into a bad habit of fluctuating scene-to-scene, and there's no art for 90% of them.)

Though another thing comes to mind, if the numbers are that low, fighting would be the last thing on my mind! Preserving the human race would be.

Yeah, but when you leave Earth in the hands of a man who was an avowed and confirmed rabid xenophobe when an alien armada comes calling, you really have nobody else to blame when a shooting war starts. Note that Emerson and his staff were very VERY interested in wanting to use nice cheap words to end the conflict instead of very expensive lives. On the other hand, at least the UEEF supposedly had an excuse in that they didn't initiate their shooting war the way the UEDF's troops did.

Women would not been put anywhere near combat, and other extrem measures to prevent us from being wipe out. But we really don't see any of that. It looks like to me, the human race is contiueing to try to commit suicide.

They put Admiral/Major General Rick "Zap Brannigan" Hunter in charge of their military... if that's not a concerted effort to commit species suicide, I don't know what is. Even Macross recognizes that Hikaru was no leader of men, he got his arse stuffed in the first convenient plane and told to leave the anything resembling administration to his infinitely capable wife Misa. It's like humanity in Robotech is determined to put the worst possible people in charge of the military, to ensure that wars are as destructive as possible. (Small wonder the Haydonites were worried the humans would end up as the Robotech Masters, second edition in "Prelude".)

And as for the 15 squards question, I don't remember seeing that answer, so thank you for answering it. So, other then that, do we know if HG took that info into Robotech?

They took literally everything else from that chart, from the art to the names of the individual branches and squads of the Southern Cross Army forces. I don't see why it wouldn't have been taken too. I don't believe they mention any ATAC unit numbered higher than 15.

Another thing also, if the Southern Cross was so week, even with the Masters so week, and only 10% of their Bioroid force, that's 3,500 per ship, could be fielded. [...] I know the Masters were being causes and all, even if I saw that they were that weak, I would have just plowed over them. Unless the Master were worse off then that.

To be fair to them, they weren't just being cautious... they were in the grip of a crippling fuel crisis too. They barely had enough fuel to get them to Earth in one piece, let alone wage a large scale war. Note that, when they finally said "Enough of this ****!" and got serious, the ASC forces were steamrollered into oblivion so fast they barely had time to notice they were being annihilated.

We need more people, eithor vial cloning, or survivers, or both. Not counting Zentradie. To parallel Rosline from Battlestar Galatica, they need to be making babies, not war.

Well, we know the Zentradi were largely wiped out and the few left had gone with the Expeditionary Forces into space (a move that just delayed their extinction a bit). There definitely need to be more people than just those being born by any natural means, but the series makes such a meal out of the 70,000 number over the course of two different sagas that it can't be easily dismissed. Cloning is the logical explanation, and the one with official precedent.

[Alpha 11]

That's why I think they need to go back to "update" everything, like they have done with Evangalian, and Yammoto 2199. Update the animation, minor twick the dialoge, and we are good to go. Problem solve. And as for Rick, ya he isn't perfect, but look at who they had availible. They weren't actually swimming with people who were similar rank or higher then him. He was just one of the VERY few to choose from.

[Seto Kaiba]

That's why I think they need to go back to "update" everything, like they have done with Evangelion, and Yamato 2199. Update the animation, minor tweak the dialog, and we are good to go. Problem solve. [...]

If that were a viable option, I'm sure they would be considering it. The problem with that idea is that neither Harmony Gold, nor their long-time partner Tatsunoko Pro., actually own the material used in Robotech's Macross or Masters sagas. In those specific cases, the material belongs to another company (Big West) that Harmony Gold and Tatsunoko aren't on good terms with anymore.

Both Leiji Matsumoto and Studio Gainax were able to remake the iconic series in question (Space Battleship Yamato, and Neon Genesis Evangelion respectively) because they created and own the original material on which the remake was based. Harmony Gold USA doesn't own the material that makes up Robotech, and their partner Tatsunoko only owns 1/3 of it (Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, AKA Robotech's New Generation), so they can't legally remake the Macross Saga or Masters Saga because that material belongs to someone else who'll never give them permission.

And as for Rick, ya he isn't perfect, but look at who they had availible. They weren't actually swimming with people who were similar rank or higher then him. He was just one of the VERY few to choose from.

Actually, they seem to have had quite a few high-ranking officers to choose from... either of the Generals Reinhardt (the one in RTSC is explicitly identified as the son of the one from Sentinels), Lisa, the various nameless mooks who are sitting pretty around the conference table in Prelude, etc.

[Alpha 11]

Great. Then we're stuck with this good, but plot hole story.

Reinhardt is younger then Rick. So by the time he joined, Rick was like a Commander or Captain in rank. Battle field promotions. And since Lisa out rank him, should she not take some blame also.

[Seto Kaiba]

Great. Then we're stuck with this good, but plot hole story.

Pretty much.

Reinhardt is younger then Rick.

One of them is... there are two. The official Shadow Chronicles art book confirms that the General Reinhardt from the Sentinels OVA does still exist after the reboot, and that he's the father of the General Reinhardt who appears in RTSC. I've forgotten his given name, but he was a fair bit older than Rick. His son, the one we see in command of the SDF-4, is a good bit younger than Rick.

[Alpha 11]

Great. Then we're stuck with this good, but plot hole story.

Pretty much.

Reinhardt is younger then Rick.

One of them is... there are two. The official Shadow Chronicles art book confirms that the General Reinhardt from the Sentinels OVA does still exist after the reboot, and that he's the father of the General Reinhardt who appears in RTSC. I've forgotten his given name, but he was a fair bit older than Rick. His son, the one we see in command of the SDF-4, is a good bit younger than Rick.

Yes and no. Yes there were 2 Reihardts, but the one on the SDF-4 is 51. Deluxe Gold Edition, page 213. Wait, wasn't there a Reihardt on the SDF-1? Wasn't he in charge of like the Destroids or something?

[Seto Kaiba]

Yes and no. Yes there were 2 Reihardts, but the one on the SDF-4 is 51. Deluxe Gold Edition, page 213.

Pretty sure that's not right, but I don't have my copy of AotSC on hand at the moment so I'll have to get back to you on that.

Wait, wasn't there a Reihardt on the SDF-1? Wasn't he in charge of like the Destroids or something?

No, you're thinking of Colonel Maistrof. Reinhardt (I think it was Adam Reinhardt) was a character invented for the original (canceled) Sentinels series, who is the father of the one in RTSC (Gunther, IIRC).