World prisoner population map. Source: Prison.
Xah Lee, 2003-09, 2006-03, 2008-10
World prisoner population map. Source: Prison.
Map of modern death-ticket distribution.
Several countries in South Africa have AIDs infection 25 percent or 1 in every 4 person. This is a horror show. As a consequence, their massive population growth rate is declining quickly. The citizens of most civilized countries don't know much about Africa, thinking it perhaps just jungles and safari and elephants and lions, really because there's nothing much worthy to know. Africa in general is the world's most over populated place in the context of subsistence, and the politics there is one of most chaotic and corrupt, probably worse than Middle East. (See: Corruption Of The World (Map).)
Human animal growth rates world-view map.
I've been interested in the issue of population in recent years. Such study is called demographics. I have been wondering about which place in the world makes a better abode, and as well which place is densely populated. Here's a bird's eye view.
Human concentration map by Encarta 2004. Aptly colored, red plaque.
Apparently, east part of China and entire India are woeful. Good thing that their population growth is checked. UN is the primary watchdog for world population.
Here's the population density stats by country. pop_density.txt Density by Country is not a good indicator because countries vary greatly in size and the population distribution. For example, density by country makes China rank 51th with 134.2 people per km^2. However, a good half of China is plateau or desert barely inhabited. For practical purposes, the east side of China has a population density that'd rank first or second in world.
Wikipedia has a article: list of selected cities by population density. This is a good list to tell which place in the world are most densely packed by human animals. Because, the most populated place are invariably cities.
Human animal population thru the ages.
Human animal population thru the ages, plotted as the years that the population doubles (projected figures up to 2050s).
Imagine, for the first few thousands years of human animals, its population is under one billion. But, in a short 123 years after the first billion in 1800, human heads count to another billion. The sharp contrast between few thousands years versus just over a hundred years is amazing. How is that, human animals all of a sudden multiplied themselves ten fold? Like, did they suddenly decided they need more babies?
The answer to that is: Technology. It is not that human animals suddenly decided to have more babies. They have always fucked and with that the consequence of babies. However, nature is unforgiving, in that it has droughts, plagues, tigers to put human animal's numbers in check. However, human's technology changed this.
It is technology, that has made human animals powerful in increasing their propagation. Note that 1800s is what people call the Industrial Age, where machineries, such as steam engines and factories, were born, and there's all other sciences and discoveries such as vaccines etc. Now, look at the graph again. To grow another one billion, it took just 33 years in the 1900s. This tells us, the incredible power and impact of technology and its exponential growth nature. Also of interest, is that 1900s is where World War One and World War Two happened. WWI killed 15 million. WWII killed 55 million, by far the largest mass-death as a single event in human history. Together they killed 70 million. However, despite their oft cited shocking value, it's no matter; The human animal's numerousness and propagation rate went on to increase basically sans a dent.
In 1975, it took just 15 years to add another billion, and 12 years after that in 1987. Another 1 billion is added after 12 years, in 1999, to reach a total of 6 billion. Today as of 2006, there are about 6.5 billion human animals walking on this earth, and the 7th billion is projected to be 2012.
Since the 1800s, there's a worry about “Malthusian catastrophe”. Meaning of the fact that, people will just multiply to beget more people, and more people will beget more, and very soon the needs of people such as food, will not be enough to sustain all human animals, and great catastrophe will happen. Although no Malthusian catastrophe has occurred as some dire catastrophe, but its manifestation is clearly seen regionally in some poor nations such as Africa and in China ( Great Leap Forward ). Meanwhile, apparently, Malthusian catastrophe is no match for human's technology, and in rich nations of today's world such as Japan or Hong Kong, or metropolis sprawls in Europe or North America, the localities are very densely populated and poeple there often suffer from obesity. In particular, farming by modern technologies have increased its efficiencies tens or hundreds fold. Efficiencies in food safety, distribution, storage etc all massively increased in parallel.
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