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Comment by JulianMorrison | Hacker News Reader

The carrying capacity (of hunter gatherer humans) of the Earth is 100 million at peak biodiversity (which it is not). The human population is 7.3 billion. That means that any notion of "surviving without modern technology" is absolutely 100% predicated on you having the privilege to do it while the rest of the population continues to live in cities. It is a self deception much comparable to Marie Antoinette's "rustic" retreat at Versailles.

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Why are you assuming that "survival without modern technology" means living as hunter gatherers?

What the site means by surviving without modern technology is surviving and rebuilding a civilization with the level of technology available in the early 19th century. The Earth's carrying capacity at that level of technology is easily over a billion.

Umm, can you cite something supporting your assertation that Earth's carrying capacity is 100 million humans?

Take the population today, and remove modern agriculture. Take the food supply down to what it would be per-acre without fertilizer. Then lower it again for lack of irrigation in many areas. That's a start.

You'll have to remove more than "modern" agriculture, considering that the world population passed 100 million over 2500 years ago [1].

[1] https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/worldpo...

I think the point is that "100 million" is an extremely suspicious round number, and smacks of pulling a number out. It could be an "Everest" number (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00031305.1982.104...), but that seems highly unlikely.

Well according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_human_population), world population in 1800 was estimated at one billion. It was estimated at 400m in 1000 AD.

So yeah, not sure where that 100 million comes from.

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