Operation population explosion

[G]

The empire of humanity knows what it needs to do to prosper in the future, and the first step is to increase there population by 10 or 100 or even 1000 times per generation. Otherwise they just get outnumbered by animals.

In order to do that we they need a few things.

Lets assume a human could have 30 animal nannies reporting to them. Each Wensleydale SHEEP (lets use the doctor from my last thread) could perhaps nanny 10 humans. you'd need resources like food (taken care of by genetically engineered plants) and clothes (we are using sheep as nannies, perhaps they have extra) for them and a safe place. The children can be produced by an egg, so as to avoid the whole child birthing problems.

With a few years to grow & train the nannies, you start increasing your numbers by 300 for every one human, repeated as often as possible if the first time works. putting some sort of system of education into place, such as teachers, unless we genetically engineer them memories too...perhaps by cloning..which might be a good plot as it can create problems..which can be fun. Perhaps they can even be grown faster than usual to become adults..which may cause more problems.

So every human has 300 clones...which need weapons, armor etc. Perhaps the location is an abandoned military base (or naval ship) which survived with enough supplies to get them started.

What use would you put your 300 clones too? You could have a battleship manned by 300 clones (and 30 sheep medics).

[Razorwing]

If I remember correctly, the Empire of Humanity has already tried a cloning project with somewhat disastrous results (i.e. the clones tried to take over the Empire). One of the problems is that identifying a "pure" human, even with the Empire's technology is very difficult (most tests are only look for human appearance and some "key" genetics that could easily be modified to fool such testing). Even those humans with verifiable bloodlines dating back to before the Crash have required fertility treatments to produce offspring in many cases (not to mention many have likely had "improvements" over the generations to help ensure survival in areas where such things were possible).

After the Puretyville incident, it is unlikely that the Empire will try cloning again in the foreseeable future. There may be a few elements within the Empire who feel that the Empire gave up on this path too early... and may even be trying in secret to prove that it is viable... but at best, it will be an isolated and rogue operation that isn't likely to produce the kind of results you are suggesting (or are needed)... at least not for some time.

[Cedric Caleb]

Mad scientists beware, you shall face the wrath of man.

[Nightmask]

Glancing back at this it looks like you really underestimate the issues of trying to expand things at such a rate, especially once you try and increase numbers in the 300:1 ratio. If you had 10 humans that would be 3000 children needing care, including education, and if you have just 1 caretaker mutant animal per infant that's another 3000 caretakers needing upkeep as well. You also wouldn't go the cloning route because that would undercut genetic diversity which would be extremely necessary to produce a sustainable population. So you'd need a different mother for each infant and preferably a different father for each one as well, even if you're using artificial wombs to grow them in.

One thing though that you do have going for you is that with advanced genetic technology you could eventually produce every possible pairing of those say 5000 mothers and 5000 fathers by storing and replicating the genetic material as needed. You'd likely either reach your population goals of forced generational production before even moving on to pair the next generations with previous unrelated generations or long before you needed to keep tracking genetics to avoid inbreeding problems. Just a rough guess you produce one complete generation every 5 years (either 5000 kids of one gender or 10,000 total with 5000 of each gender) and in less than 20 years the first generation is old enough and hopefully well educated enough to help raising the younger generations so now you've got at least 5000 (barring unexpected deaths) more to help out every 5 years so in those 20 years you've got at least 20,000 in the newer generations plus the original 5000 males/females used to provide the genetic material for the genetic diversity.

You'd need to basically build a full-sized town with housing and layout for those new generations so you'd need to build a town able to handle say 50,000 with lots of unused buildings to absorb the exploding population as you spread them out to handle the starter population and the newer generations and plan out how to keep expanding it ahead of the population growth, with likely a break of skipping things every so many generations to give a bit more breathing room to deal with the burgeoning population.

[say652]

Ok I have 300 human clones. For posterity ten different templates. 5 male 5 female.

So 100 grunts or basic military. Even mix men and women.
50 technicians. Robot and vehicle repair Etc.
10 Elite clones working on new weapin and vehicle designs. Min IQ:26.
40 Special operations soldiers. Better trainibg and gear.
40 medical personnel.
20 "recruiters" find other human espionage operatives.
10 Genetically enhanced super clones. Sdc juicer variants. Hopefully.
10 normals one of each template allowed to live and learn in a noncombat role.
10 Elite psychic/magic units. Any psionic or magic power catergory acceptable to your game.

[Razorwing]

First thing Say... your math is a little off (by 10 clones... you only accounted for 290 clones)

Second, I think people are seriously underestimating the impact the Puretyville incident has had, both on the Empire and on cloning in general. If the best scientists of the Empire could make such a tragic mistake and fail to identify such a potential threat with the most advanced technology at their disposal, what chance do you really believe a rogue element of the Empire has? Chances are they won't be able to get the best minds to run this project or the best equipment... at least not without drawing attention to their operation (the last thing they would want until they can prove the experiment is a success).

The fact that the Empire completely failed to identify the "human" population of Puretyville as really being Pig People is a big huge mark against the Empire's ability to consistently prove who is human and who isn't. To put it simply... even with the best minds and the best technology at their disposal... the Empire of Humanity not only failed in such an endeavor... they fell flat on their face and only survived because of the intervention of the very mutant animals that they would murder for the sake of humanity.

Do you really think the Empire would repeat such a costly and embarrassing mistake regardless of any controls or safeguards a new attempt might put in place to prevent such a repeat?

[Nightmask]

First thing Say... your math is a little off (by 10 clones... you only accounted for 290 clones)

Second, I think people are seriously underestimating the impact the Puretyville incident has had, both on the Empire and on cloning in general. If the best scientists of the Empire could make such a tragic mistake and fail to identify such a potential threat with the most advanced technology at their disposal, what chance do you really believe a rogue element of the Empire has? Chances are they won't be able to get the best minds to run this project or the best equipment... at least not without drawing attention to their operation (the last thing they would want until they can prove the experiment is a success).

The fact that the Empire completely failed to identify the "human" population of Puretyville as really being Pig People is a big huge mark against the Empire's ability to consistently prove who is human and who isn't. To put it simply... even with the best minds and the best technology at their disposal... the Empire of Humanity not only failed in such an endeavor... they fell flat on their face and only survived because of the intervention of the very mutant animals that they would murder for the sake of humanity.

Do you really think the Empire would repeat such a costly and embarrassing mistake regardless of any controls or safeguards a new attempt might put in place to prevent such a repeat?

I can think of one way of getting pure human DNA to work with, since the graveyards should be filled with the bodies of pure humans and their genetics technology looks sufficiently advanced to actually take DNA from the long-dead and use it to produce living humans.

[say652]

The remaining ten are new recruits.
Imperfect clones of varying appearnce and abilities. I.e. the player characters.

[Razorwing]

You do realize just how long it has been since the Crash, yes? At least a couple generations (50 years) or more. Even Before the Crash, gene therapy was being used on humans to get rid of diseases and cure disabilities... often with the introduction of animal DNA. After the Crash, such gene therapy was used by the survivors to make sure their children would survive (by this time, gene tech had become a consumer product so all it would take is getting a computer working through a generator of some sort... not that difficult really).

So, the chances of being able to extract DNA from corpses that old is problematic enough... and most likely such DNA will be incredibly degraded. Beyond that, verifying that the DNA is actually "pure" human is almost impossible... not even the Empire of Humanity can actually verify "pure" humans with their technology (arguably the most advanced on the planet). If the most advanced tech can't identify fresh DNA as being "pure" human... what is the chance of it being able to identify the old and degraded DNA of the dead... even if you can be sure the corpse is from a time before gene therapy was ever used? The further back you try to go with the dead, the less chance there is of getting enough DNA to clone a "pure" human.

In all likelihood any scientist who attempted such an endeavor would end up using the same trick they did in Jurassic Park... filling in the gaps in the gene sequence with DNA from another source... which brings us full circle. Will such DNA actually be "pure" human anymore?