How many people on earth survived?

[Husarsky]

So i was playing project zomboid and started to think, how many people actually survived the apocalypse on earth? As far as we know, some people are immune to the spread of the virus through droplets. In the internet there's only fan-made theories, so i tried to make my own calculations. Of course, they can be wrong so correct me if i made a mistake. And all of this is only my theory and headcanon.

First, I counted a total number of background screams and gun shootings we can hear during gameplay. There's propably 11 in total if i'm not wrong. If we assume that each of them (especially the shots) were fired by different people, then we would get a 11 survivors. Half of them however, are propably dead like screaming male/female, and if we won't count these, we get 6 people. And if we won't count the same gun firing, then we have 3 people. Of course we have to remember that these sounds can be repeated, but hey, we have to start somewhere. Let's also remember that there were places where survivors survived a few days after it all began, which can be seen on (for example) maps of survivors, where sometimes places where there are supposed to be living people are marked (of course, in the end there are only infected). So after summing up all these things, I personally assume that in the first week or two there could have been about 100 to even 500 survivors in the whole county, but after a month the number is only maybe 20 to 30.

For our next calculations, let's assume that after a month there was about 20 survivors in Knox County. So how many people could survive on earth after a month? Knox County covers an area of 1362 square kilometers / 526 square miles. Assuming that there are 20 survivors per 1362 square kilometers, about 1,540 people could survive in the entire state (which is a size of 105,000 square kilometers), and by that in the whole United States there would survive around 140 thousand people. In the whole world however, there could be around 2 million survivors in total, which would be 0,04% of 1993 human population. Of course these are only estimated numbers, and it can be lower or higher. There can be many small villages and towns for example in Siberia in Russia, where people living far from cities and larger human groups could survive. There's also a lot similar places in Africa, China, Canada; a bunch of people could survive on Antartica in polar bases, and in space on space stations (although they will die sooner or later anyway). On the other hand a lot of those who survived first week in urban areas still would propably die because of many infected; for example in eastern China, India, Japan, and propably all cities in the world, except for those far from other like those in siberia. So in my opinion the total number is around 5 to 10 milion in the whole world which would be 0,18% of previous human population, with the biggest human groups located in far russia, north canada, central africa and maybe some islands or microstates on the pacific ocean.

Now let's assume the second (less likely) scenario, that we are the only survivors in the entire Knox County. This would mean that there is one person per 1362 square kilometers. This would mean, in turn, that about 77 people could survive in the entire Kentucky county, about 7,000 people in the entire United States, and about 102,000 in the world. For many, this may be a more likely number, which would mean that 0.002% of humanity in the world survived, but as I said, it doesn't make sense to me, because throughout the game until we die, we can regularly hear gunshots and screams in the distance once in a while. So I personally stand by my theory about 0.04% of humanity making more sense.

Of course, it's only my theory and calculations, and if you have a different one, you can write it. I would like to read your opinion. And pls don't hate me for any mistakes i made.


Edit: Okay after some time and thinking, i realised i forgot one important thing: people living in Knox County were less prepared than those in other regions. That means that more peple could survive out of Knox County, but still it's not a huge numbers. It can be about 30-40 people per county. So as i said earlier, the number of survivors in the whole world can be much bigger than i calculated.

[le mec la bas]

My personnal theory is that the world isn't in danger at all. I think that people tried to contain the infection and that as soon as knox containment failed, everyone tried to flee somewhere else, and there is no reason for zeds to swim to asia or europe. I like to think that, the situation is so bad the whole continent is in quarantine.

[Copy Orange]

Originally posted by le mec la bas:

My personnal theory is that the world isn't in danger at all.

It is a worldwide event.

Source: Ingame TV & Radio

[Silmaril03]

I think much of the calculations would be centered around an airborne virus or not, and infection rate of the airborne variant. There seems to be credence given to an airborne virus, and that PZ twitter had various places in the world falling to infection makes it probable.

I think your .04% number is fair for how many would be left. My head cannon is 1% - 0.1% would be immune to airborne, but a lot would die based upon being bitten, or dying in some other way, like being shot or crashed into by vehicles.

There is also a question of how effective would air scrubbers be to the infection. There are a lot of government buildings, bunkers, command centers with air scrubbers against nuke fallout, so that they can be operational in the event of an attack. If the virus is airborne it was manufactured by the military lab, and the government would have known the dangers and placed their facilities in lockdown. Some of these facilities would have as many as a few hundred to 1k workers

I would love to see, instead of a bunch of zombies in the hidden lab, a team of hazmat enemies, either securing the site, or still conducting research at the site. Add to some of lore of the lab, maybe add a Spifos exec to show maybe there was a collab going on with the meat

[DaddyEcho69]

Well according to steamdb there's around 29k survivors rn. But that's just the steam users.

[le mec la bas]

Originally posted by Copy Orange:

Originally posted by le mec la bas:

My personnal theory is that the world isn't in danger at all.

It is a worldwide event.

Source: Ingame TV & Radio

wich one ? I never saw radio or tv tell that other continents were exposed to the infection, it suggests that knox county failed to contain but I don't remember it going further, not mentionning there is apparently a safe airport where helicopters come from

[Scorch215]

Originally posted by le mec la bas:

Originally posted by Copy Orange:

It is a worldwide event.

Source: Ingame TV & Radio

wich one ? I never saw radio or tv tell that other continents were exposed to the infection, it suggests that knox county failed to contain but I don't remember it going further, not mentionning there is apparently a safe airport where helicopters come from

near the end the it says the Knox virus shows up in the UK, Somalia and Tokyo and has gone airborne with only anecdotal evidence of people being immune to that strain.

from Tripple-N final Official Broadcast July 16th.

Host:

This is Triple-N.
I'm afraid we come with bad news. Worse news.
As scenes of horror unravel at home, shocking news from overseas.
Symptoms similar to those of the Knox Event have been reported in the United Kingdom...
... and in Somalia, Africa.
These pictures clearly show Knox Event infections...
...in Norfolk, England and at an unknown location within the Somalian capital Mogadishu.
I'm so sorry.
We have anecdotal evidence that a very small minority...
...of people may be immune.
Wherever you are though, please take care.
Take care of your loved ones, find food and hide.
Please don't fight.
We can do this together.

WBLN around the same time urges people to tune into Triple-N as the story breaks that the virus goes airborne. its why the TVs stop working at a certain point and power and water shut off. there is no one left to run any of it.

These are the end times.

[Husarsky]

Originally posted by Silmaril03:

I think much of the calculations would be centered around an airborne virus or not, and infection rate of the airborne variant. There seems to be credence given to an airborne virus, and that PZ twitter had various places in the world falling to infection makes it probable.

I think your .04% number is fair for how many would be left. My head cannon is 1% - 0.1% would be immune to airborne, but a lot would die based upon being bitten, or dying in some other way, like being shot or crashed into by vehicles.

There is also a question of how effective would air scrubbers be to the infection. There are a lot of government buildings, bunkers, command centers with air scrubbers against nuke fallout, so that they can be operational in the event of an attack. If the virus is airborne it was manufactured by the military lab, and the government would have known the dangers and placed their facilities in lockdown. Some of these facilities would have as many as a few hundred to 1k workers

I would love to see, instead of a bunch of zombies in the hidden lab, a team of hazmat enemies, either securing the site, or still conducting research at the site. Add to some of lore of the lab, maybe add a Spifos exec to show maybe there was a collab going on with the meat

As far as i know, npc's are planned to be added back in b43, but I don't think they will be so advanced. In my opinion, these will be ordinary NPCs that you can meet once in a while and interact with them by talking, trading, maybe creating a "alliance" with them, and "factions" among NPCs such as military remnants, goverment scientists as you said (at least in my opinion) will be added in b44. That doesn't change the fact that it would be great if they added such a mechanic.

[Beltneck]

Hopefully none.

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by Husarsky:

How many people on earth survived?
So i was playing project zomboid and started to think, how many people actually survived the apocalypse on earth? As far as we know, some people are immune to the spread of the virus through droplets. In the internet there's only fan-made theories, so i tried to make my own calculations. Of course, they can be wrong so correct me if i made a mistake. And all of this is only my theory and headcanon.

First, I counted a total number of background screams and gun shootings we can hear during gameplay. There's propably 11 in total if i'm not wrong. If we assume that each of them (especially the shots) were fired by different people, then we would get a 11 survivors. Half of them however, are propably dead like screaming male/female, and if we won't count these, we get 6 people. And if we won't count the same gun firing, then we have 3 people. Of course we have to remember that these sounds can be repeated, but hey, we have to start somewhere. Let's also remember that there were places where survivors survived a few days after it all began, which can be seen on (for example) maps of survivors, where sometimes places where there are supposed to be living people are marked (of course, in the end there are only infected). So after summing up all these things, I personally assume that in the first week or two there could have been about 100 to even 500 survivors in the whole county, but after a month the number is only maybe 20 to 30.

For our next calculations, let's assume that after a month there was about 20 survivors. So how many people could survive on earth? Knox County covers an area of 1362 square kilometers / 526 square miles. Assuming that there are 20 survivors per 1362 square kilometers, about 1,540 people could survive in the entire state (which is a size of 105,000 square kilometers), and by that in the whole United States there would survive around 140 thousand people. In the whole world however, there could be around 2 million survivors in total, which would be 0,04% of 1993 human population. Of course these are only estimated numbers, and it can be lower or higher. There can be many small villages and towns for example in Siberia in Russia, where people living far from cities and larger human groups could survive. There's also a lot similar places in Africa, China, Canada; a bunch of people could survive on Antartica in polar bases, and in space on space stations (although they will die sooner or later anyway). So in my opinion the total number is around 5 to 10 milion in the whole world which would be 0,18% of previous human population.

Now let's assume the second (less likely) scenario, that we are the only survivors in the entire Knox County. This would mean that there is one person per 1362 square kilometers. This would mean, in turn, that about 77 people could survive in the entire Kentucky county, about 7,000 people in the entire states, and about 102,000 in the world. For many, this may be a more likely number, which would mean that 0.002% of humanity in the world survived, but as I said, it doesn't make sense to me, because throughout the game until we die, we can regularly hear gunshots and screams in the distance once in a while. So I personally stand by my theory about 0.04% of humanity making more sense.

Of course, it's only my theory and calculations, and if you have a different one, you can write it. I would like to read your opinion. And pls don't hate me for any mistakes i made.

Depends if people read the Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z by Max Brooks

[hardy_conrad]

As has been pointed out, the actual game content indicates pretty much everyone is dead aside from the player. That said I've long thought a zombie "apocalypse" or any kind really would be more entertaining if it was just the US. Speaking as a dirty foreigner it does get a little tiresome being endlessly subjected to media insisting the only way that country could ever possibly fall apart is if the rest of the planet goes as well. It's a pretty superficial ego trip after all.

[Tom Cruise]

game is hoarding simulator with no real lore.. dead game

[le mec la bas]

Originally posted by Scorch215:

Originally posted by le mec la bas:

wich one ? I never saw radio or tv tell that other continents were exposed to the infection, it suggests that knox county failed to contain but I don't remember it going further, not mentionning there is apparently a safe airport where helicopters come from

near the end the it says the Knox virus shows up in the UK, Somalia and Tokyo and has gone airborne with only anecdotal evidence of people being immune to that strain.

from Tripple-N final Official Broadcast July 16th.

Host:

This is Triple-N.
I'm afraid we come with bad news. Worse news.
As scenes of horror unravel at home, shocking news from overseas.
Symptoms similar to those of the Knox Event have been reported in the United Kingdom...
... and in Somalia, Africa.
These pictures clearly show Knox Event infections...
...in Norfolk, England and at an unknown location within the Somalian capital Mogadishu.
I'm so sorry.
We have anecdotal evidence that a very small minority...
...of people may be immune.
Wherever you are though, please take care.
Take care of your loved ones, find food and hide.
Please don't fight.
We can do this together.

WBLN around the same time urges people to tune into Triple-N as the story breaks that the virus goes airborne. its why the TVs stop working at a certain point and power and water shut off. there is no one left to run any of it.

These are the end times.

Never saw it, thank you !

[Venomir]

This is a really difficult question to answer as there needs to be many assumptions made in order to come up with as accurate an estimate as possible. Here would be my take.

Base Assumption #1 – The question posed was “how many people actually survived the apocalypse on earth?”. Since the apocalypse has not ended you surely are not asking about how many people survived once the apocalypse ended as there is no endpoint. Thus you must be inquiring as to how many survived the initial outbreak.

Base Assumption #2 – focusing on the initial outbreak and realizing that the apocalypse would strike different areas of the world at different times, any attempt to quantify survivors should be focused on survivors who made it past the initial outbreak in their specific locale as opposed to a census of survivors at any singular point in time.

Base Assumption #3 – Further, we shouldn’t focus on survivors beyond 1 week as anyone alive in the first week could be considered to have survived the initial outbreak. (Keep in mind your character starts in week 2 of the Knox event so anyone alive in the first week our character is alive is in day 8-14 of the event). Thus if they die during the first playable week, they still survived the initial outbreak. Also, as time goes on meta events might very well be capturing the sounds of the same survivors. Ie. Gunfire on one day might be from the same person who you hear screaming and probably dying on the next day.
Base assumption #4 – default apocalypse settings
Base Assumption #5 – no mods, especially ones that expand the map, etc

Counting assumption#1 - Helicopter event – Even if you play with regular helicopters we are only counting the first week, therefore the helicopter accounts for 1 survivor minimum, but chances are there are at least 2 people in that helicopter, a pilot flying and at least one spotter. I’m going with 2, even though there is likely more people alive at the base the helicopter took of from.

Counting assumption#2 – PZ wiki says Up to once a day, the player may hear random gunfire, screams or dogs barking in the distance. It is not currently possible to locate the source of these "meta sounds", but they will cause zombies to migrate. Will assume 11 survivors as did OP, eliminating repeats. Unlike OP however, I will count all as survivors as there is no evidence that anyone dies, there could easily be plenty more survivors involved in each meta event we hear, and even if they do die, it is irrelevant since they still lived past the initial outbreak and should be counted as a survivor.

Counting Assumption #3 – Survivor houses. They obviously survived the apocalypse, at least initially as they had time to board up their house. I often play in Muldraugh and usually encounter 2 or 3 survivor houses and each house obviously has at least 1 survivor, but I’m going to go with 2 survivors per survivor house. The map says there is 229 houses that could qualify to spawn as survivor houses. I’ll go with 3 in all of Muldraugh which puts the rate at about 1 in 75 houses that COULD be a survivor house ARE a survivor house. Ball parking the map at about 10 Muldraughs fitting inside of Louisville and I get about 18-20 “Muldraughs” on the map. I’ll go with 19…thus 19 * 3 * 2 = 114 survivors in survivor houses in the entire map.

I get 2 helicopter survivors + 11 meta event survivors + 114 survivor house survivors = 127 survivors.

Population of Louisville, KY metropolitan area according to the 1990 census was 962,851. So there is a survival rate of 1 in 7582 in Knox Country.

Assuming similar survival rates in other areas of the US (which would not be true), the population of the US in 1993 was 260.3M and so there should be 34,331 survivors in the US.

Assuming similar survival rates in other areas of the world (which would not be true), the population of the world in 1993 was 5.557B and so there should be 732,920 survivors in the world.

This in my mind is very conservative as Counting assumption #1 and #2 are bound to be occurring in other places on the map, unless we are to believe that the 11 meta events only happen in our one little corner of the map that we spawn in, and that more helicopters aren’t flying around that we can’t see/hear etc.

Also, out of scope in this calculation is playing multiple characters if your character dies, multiplayer, upcoming NPC’s we know about, and other future unannounced changes. We also are not taking into consideration the “invisible people” who are now looting houses before we can get to them.

Additionally, I would likely build in an inflator of some type to account for all the people you don’t see or hear about, who initially survived and perhaps continue to survive without our knowing. I think the cockroach rule applies here in that when something like a cockroach avoids light and doesn’t WANT to be seen they generally WONT be seen. Human’s (I would like to think) are smarter than your average everyday cockroach so they should be more successful at not being found than a cockroach. Generally, you are told if you see a cockroach there is likely to be dozens if not a hundred or more cockroaches hiding in the walls and other places you can't see. With that logic, an inflator of 12 additional survivors for every one survivor we know about seems on the low side but still reasonable. Thus I might go with:

127 known survivors * 12 unknown survivors = 1,524 survivors in Knox County, 170,801 survivors in the US and 3.646M survivors world wide.

Maybe our characters aren’t very special after all.

[Husarsky]

Originally posted by アンジェル:

Originally posted by Husarsky:

How many people on earth survived?
So i was playing project zomboid and started to think, how many people actually survived the apocalypse on earth? As far as we know, some people are immune to the spread of the virus through droplets. In the internet there's only fan-made theories, so i tried to make my own calculations. Of course, they can be wrong so correct me if i made a mistake. And all of this is only my theory and headcanon.

First, I counted a total number of background screams and gun shootings we can hear during gameplay. There's propably 11 in total if i'm not wrong. If we assume that each of them (especially the shots) were fired by different people, then we would get a 11 survivors. Half of them however, are propably dead like screaming male/female, and if we won't count these, we get 6 people. And if we won't count the same gun firing, then we have 3 people. Of course we have to remember that these sounds can be repeated, but hey, we have to start somewhere. Let's also remember that there were places where survivors survived a few days after it all began, which can be seen on (for example) maps of survivors, where sometimes places where there are supposed to be living people are marked (of course, in the end there are only infected). So after summing up all these things, I personally assume that in the first week or two there could have been about 100 to even 500 survivors in the whole county, but after a month the number is only maybe 20 to 30.

For our next calculations, let's assume that after a month there was about 20 survivors. So how many people could survive on earth? Knox County covers an area of 1362 square kilometers / 526 square miles. Assuming that there are 20 survivors per 1362 square kilometers, about 1,540 people could survive in the entire state (which is a size of 105,000 square kilometers), and by that in the whole United States there would survive around 140 thousand people. In the whole world however, there could be around 2 million survivors in total, which would be 0,04% of 1993 human population. Of course these are only estimated numbers, and it can be lower or higher. There can be many small villages and towns for example in Siberia in Russia, where people living far from cities and larger human groups could survive. There's also a lot similar places in Africa, China, Canada; a bunch of people could survive on Antartica in polar bases, and in space on space stations (although they will die sooner or later anyway). So in my opinion the total number is around 5 to 10 milion in the whole world which would be 0,18% of previous human population.

Now let's assume the second (less likely) scenario, that we are the only survivors in the entire Knox County. This would mean that there is one person per 1362 square kilometers. This would mean, in turn, that about 77 people could survive in the entire Kentucky county, about 7,000 people in the entire states, and about 102,000 in the world. For many, this may be a more likely number, which would mean that 0.002% of humanity in the world survived, but as I said, it doesn't make sense to me, because throughout the game until we die, we can regularly hear gunshots and screams in the distance once in a while. So I personally stand by my theory about 0.04% of humanity making more sense.

Of course, it's only my theory and calculations, and if you have a different one, you can write it. I would like to read your opinion. And pls don't hate me for any mistakes i made.

Depends if people read the Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z by Max Brooks

You got my huge respect for knowing about these books. The best zombie literature i've ever seen and it's sad that the tv version of World War Z has so little to do with the book which is 100 times better (apart from this wall in Israel, I don't remember anything to do with it). Of course if someone likes this movie it's okay, I respect a different opinion ^^

[Husarsky]

Originally posted by Venomir:

This is a really difficult question to answer as there needs to be many assumptions made in order to come up with as accurate an estimate as possible. Here would be my take.

Base Assumption #1 – The question posed was “how many people actually survived the apocalypse on earth?”. Since the apocalypse has not ended you surely are not asking about how many people survived once the apocalypse ended as there is no endpoint. Thus you must be inquiring as to how many survived the initial outbreak.

Base Assumption #2 – focusing on the initial outbreak and realizing that the apocalypse would strike different areas of the world at different times, any attempt to quantify survivors should be focused on survivors who made it past the initial outbreak in their specific locale as opposed to a census of survivors at any singular point in time.

Base Assumption #3 – Further, we shouldn’t focus on survivors beyond 1 week as anyone alive in the first week could be considered to have survived the initial outbreak. (Keep in mind your character starts in week 2 of the Knox event so anyone alive in the first week our character is alive is in day 8-14 of the event). Thus if they die during the first playable week, they still survived the initial outbreak. Also, as time goes on meta events might very well be capturing the sounds of the same survivors. Ie. Gunfire on one day might be from the same person who you hear screaming and probably dying on the next day.
Base assumption #4 – default apocalypse settings
Base Assumption #5 – no mods, especially ones that expand the map, etc

Counting assumption#1 - Helicopter event – Even if you play with regular helicopters we are only counting the first week, therefore the helicopter accounts for 1 survivor minimum, but chances are there are at least 2 people in that helicopter, a pilot flying and at least one spotter. I’m going with 2, even though there is likely more people alive at the base the helicopter took of from.

Counting assumption#2 – PZ wiki says Up to once a day, the player may hear random gunfire, screams or dogs barking in the distance. It is not currently possible to locate the source of these "meta sounds", but they will cause zombies to migrate. Will assume 11 survivors as did OP, eliminating repeats. Unlike OP however, I will count all as survivors as there is no evidence that anyone dies, there could easily be plenty more survivors involved in each meta event we hear, and even if they do die, it is irrelevant since they still lived past the initial outbreak and should be counted as a survivor.

Counting Assumption #3 – Survivor houses. They obviously survived the apocalypse, at least initially as they had time to board up their house. I often play in Muldraugh and usually encounter 2 or 3 survivor houses and each house obviously has at least 1 survivor, but I’m going to go with 2 survivors per survivor house. The map says there is 229 houses that could qualify to spawn as survivor houses. I’ll go with 3 in all of Muldraugh which puts the rate at about 1 in 75 houses that COULD be a survivor house ARE a survivor house. Ball parking the map at about 10 Muldraughs fitting inside of Louisville and I get about 18-20 “Muldraughs” on the map. I’ll go with 19…thus 19 * 3 * 2 = 114 survivors in survivor houses in the entire map.

I get 2 helicopter survivors + 11 meta event survivors + 114 survivor house survivors = 127 survivors.

Population of Louisville, KY metropolitan area according to the 1990 census was 962,851. So there is a survival rate of 1 in 7582 in Knox Country.

Assuming similar survival rates in other areas of the US (which would not be true), the population of the US in 1993 was 260.3M and so there should be 34,331 survivors in the US.

Assuming similar survival rates in other areas of the world (which would not be true), the population of the world in 1993 was 5.557B and so there should be 732,920 survivors in the world.

This in my mind is very conservative as Counting assumption #1 and #2 are bound to be occurring in other places on the map, unless we are to believe that the 11 meta events only happen in our one little corner of the map that we spawn in, and that more helicopters aren’t flying around that we can’t see/hear etc.

Also, out of scope in this calculation is playing multiple characters if your character dies, multiplayer, upcoming NPC’s we know about, and other future unannounced changes. We also are not taking into consideration the “invisible people” who are now looting houses before we can get to them.

Additionally, I would likely build in an inflator of some type to account for all the people you don’t see or hear about, who initially survived and perhaps continue to survive without our knowing. I think the cockroach rule applies here in that when something like a cockroach avoids light and doesn’t WANT to be seen they generally WONT be seen. Human’s (I would like to think) are smarter than your average everyday cockroach so they should be more successful at not being found than a cockroach. Generally, you are told if you see a cockroach there is likely to be dozens if not a hundred or more cockroaches hiding in the walls and other places you can't see. With that logic, an inflator of 12 additional survivors for every one survivor we know about seems on the low side but still reasonable. Thus I might go with:

127 known survivors * 12 unknown survivors = 1,524 survivors in Knox County, 170,801 survivors in the US and 3.646M survivors world wide.

Maybe our characters aren’t very special after all.

Man huge respect for what you have done. I appreciate that you had the patience and willingness to write and calculate all of this. This is probably the most thorough and detailed analysis of the topic I have ever seen on steam. I've read all of this and I'll tell you this: you did it better than me, and I think you should write a separate post or something like that so that more people see it. And your calculations also make more sense than my "guessing" and "suggesting".