History Main / AbsurdlyHugePopulation

This trope can easily collide with ScienceMarchesOn and SocietyMarchesOn, since figures which match this trope in older fiction can these days be not just plausible, but reality. ''Literature/MakeRoomMakeRoom'' has seven billion people on Earth[[note]]Which we reached late October 2011[[/note]], while Creator/IsaacAsimov's short story "The Winnowing" has humanity starving at six[[note]]Of the 7.5 billion people of today, [[http://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/ a little less than 800 million are starving]], a number that's falling despite the increase in population; this leaves us with 6.7 billion people who have food on their plate[[/note]].

* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/Futurama'', it is mentioned that the population of Earth in the year 3000 is 40 billion.

** ''Literature/{{Foundation}}'':

** The Espererin home system is said to be home to uncounted billions espees. [[NotHyperbole The narrator adds that they are]] ''literally'' uncounted.

-->--'''narration''', "Prelude" ''Literature/SecondFoundation''

*** "[[Literatrue/TheGeneralFoundation The General]]": The planet Trantor, capital of the Galactic Empire, is populated entirely of government administrators, and their population is said to be 40 billions, requiring the combined output of twenty [[AgriWorld farm planets]]. This is Trantor ''after'' [[VestigialEmpire decaying to only the core galactic worlds]], though citizens believe themselves to represent the Empire's peak because they have grown so large.

-->''The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reactions of human mobs, Seldon found, could be treated statistically. The larger the mob, the greater the accuracy that could be achieved. And the size of the human masses that Seldon worked with was no less than the population of the Galaxy which in his time was numbered in the quintillions.'' -- "Prelude", ''Literature/SecondFoundation''.

** ''Literature/{{Foundation}}''
*** In ''Literature/{{Foundation}}'', there are 25 million inhabited planets in the galaxy, and while the total population is said to be quadrillions of people, no exact numbers given. While this means the setting as a whole qualifies, the average inhabited planet doesn't: even if we take "quadrillions" of people to mean "100 quadrillions", this gives each planet a population of 4 billion.
*** The planet Trantor is the capital of the Galactic Empire. In ''Literature/FoundationAndEmpire'', the population of administrators alone on the planet is said to be 400 billion. In later stories, Asimov realized how impossible that was and lowered the figure to a more reasonable (?) 40 billion. He also said that its population was fed by the combined output of 20 [[SingleBiomePlanet farm planets]].

-->''The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reactions of human mobs, Seldon found, could be treated statistically. The larger the mob, the greater the accuracy that could be achieved. And the size of the human masses that Seldon worked with was no less than the population of the Galaxy which in his time was numbered in the quintillions.'' -- '''narration''', "Prelude" ''Literature/SecondFoundation''

* In ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' the [[ColonizedSolarSystem Sol system]] has a population greater than a trillion in the 31st century, [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-07-08 Earth alone]] hosts 200 billion people, 4.62 billion of whom are concentrated in the capital megalopolis of Dom Atlantis.

** "Literature/TheLastQuestion": At one point, there are "a trillion, trillion, trillion" people, spread all over the universe.

** "The Last Question" mentions "a trillion, trillion, trillion" people, spread all over the universe.
** The short story "2430 A.D." is about shutting down the last remnants of the last zoo, so that Earth can finally have its perfect, stable society... no animals, no plants except for edible plankton, and as many humans as the planet can support - fifteen trillion.

* ''Film/SoylentGreen'' (and the Creator/HarryHarrison novel that inspired it, ''Make Room! Make Room!'') have a 21st-century New York City populated by 35-40 million people. If that growth is representative of the rest of the planet, that means around 35 billion people live on Earth.

[[folder:Literature]]

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'': Hive cities often reach the tens of billions in population, the vast majority of which are impoverished scavengers feeding on the refuse of the upper atmospheric spires where the nobility lives. The Imperium of Man even outright states in regards to its ForeverWar with the rest of the galaxy: "We count the lives of planets, not men." - implying the Imperium has grown so vast the population changes so rapidly that when you finished counting, you'd have to restart again - [[WeHaveReserves and a callous disregard for the individual humans they send into the meatgrinder]].

* ''Franchise/StarWars'': Plays with the usual connotations of the trope in that the Star Wars setting as a whole takes place "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." Yet this is easy to mistake for taking place in the future with sci-fi tech and {{City Planet}}s. One such is Coruscant, the capital of the Galactic Republic and later the Galactic Empire, has a population topping a ''trillion'' all by itself according to a reference book published prior to ''Film/TheForceAwakens''' release. The entire galaxy has a ''million'' inhabited planets, according to some sources, so the global population could be a quadrillion.

* ''Literature/{{Aeon 14}}'': The colony ship GSS ''Intrepid'' around which the story revolves has a population/crew of millions all on its own, and individual {{space station}}s with populations in the hundreds of billions are described: a 9th millennium 1600-kilometer space station with 150 billion residents is seen as only mildly impressive by protagonist Tanis Richards.

* ''VideoGame/EVNova'': All the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Auroran]] capital worlds have populations in the high tens of billions (Heraan approaches 90 billion residents) stuck in large {{Arcolog|y}}ies.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'': Plays with the usual connotations of the trope in that the Star Wars setting as a whole takes place "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." Yet this is easy to mistake for taking place in the future with sci-fi tech and {{City Planet}}s. One such is Coruscant, the capital of the Galactic Republic and later the Galactic Empire, has a population topping a ''trillion'' all by itself according to a reference book published prior to ''Film/TheForceAwakens''' release. The entire galaxy has a ''million'' inhabited planets, according to some sources, so the global population could be into the quadrillions.

Up the population by a couple of billions, that's how! Despite Earth's current population growth slowing down and estimated to [[http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW peter out]] around between the 9th to the 13th billion barring outside influence as third-world developing countries go through [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition The four stages of demographic transition]], the concept of 'of course there will be more people in the future, duh!' is one that seems self-evident to many readers, and thus it is an easy way to get across how far into the future you are, with populations only growing bigger as you get further and further into the future. These populations will often be so mind bogglingly huge that they are unfathomable to our current worldview.

How such a large population came to be or is sustained, is rarely addressed, though there's sometimes an in-show justification (often involving colonising other planets and simply needing more people to populate them so a modern society could function). It's popular in {{Space Opera}}s with their sprawling {{Space Filling Empire}}s.

This trope can easily collide with ScienceMarchesOn and SocietyMarchesOn, since figures which match this trope in older fiction can these days be not just plausible, but reality. ''Literature/MakeRoomMakeRoom'' has seven billion people on Earth[[note]]which we reached late October 2011[[/note]], while Creator/IsaacAsimov's short story "The Winnowing" has humanity starving at six[[note]]Of the 7.5 billion people of today, [[http://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/ a little less than 800 million are starving]], a number that's falling despite the increase in population; this leaves us with 6.7 billion people who have food on their plate[[/note]].

* ''Franchise/StarWars'': Plays with the usual connotations of the trope in that the Star Wars setting as a whole takes place "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." Yet this is easy to mistake for taking place in the future with sci-fi tech and {{City Planet}}s. One such is Coruscant, the capital of the Galactic Republic and later the Galactic Empire, has a population topping a ''trillion'' all by itself according to a reference book published prior to ''Film/TheForceAwakens''' release.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'': Hive cities often reach the tens of billions in population, the vast majority of which are impoverished scavengers feeding on the refuse of the upper atmospheric spires where the nobility lives. The Imperium of Man even outright states in regards to its ForeverWar with the rest of the galaxy: "We count the lives of planets, not men." - implying the Imperium has grown so vast the population changes so rapidly that when you finished counting, you'd have to restart again - [[WeHaveReserves and a callous disregard for the invidual humans they send into the meatgrinder]].

Parallel draft: [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=89r8ky9okzqs9rnovp1xysii Overpopulation Crisis]]

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Launching this, alongside OverpopulationCrisis, in six hours unless someone halts it.
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