So, according to the latest in Seattle 2072, that city, 62 years from today has a population of 3,000,000+ and covers several counties.

According to Wikipedia, that city, 1 year ago, had a metropolitan population of 3,344,813. I thought populations grew, even with VITAS and such, especially since Seattle supposedly had all those NAN refugees and such. So then, what's the deal here? It's a larger "city" area, but the population has actually gone down significantly.


Secondly, Seattle, which is reckoned to have a great emergency response and hospital system currently (also according to Wikipedia) has 11 hospitals servicing those 3,000,000+ people, while in 2072 it has EIGHT times that many.

So my questions are, what would your explanations for these facts be? How many people do you think would actually be living in the Seattle Metroplex with the area it covers? What's up with all of those hospitals?

Maybe about 50 hospitals specialize in gunshot/magical burn related injuries *g*

But really, 80 hospitals? SURE? That sounds weird... or maybe they are counting all those 2 docter-shops, bodyshops with a licensed surgeon and magical healers as seperates?

88 hospitals, admittedly covering a much larger area, but since they're servicing a population of the same size, it seems to me like Seattle would be the freakin' place to be medically speaking.

sounds like we might be in a crappier time than the SR setting... so we're below dystopia now. interesting.

I don't think the listed population incorporates the SINless, which would be significant.

The same section sort of implies that it does.

Also, 10% of people living in Seattle are changelings. Huh?

I didn't read Seattle 2072 but on 2053 Seattle population was also 3,000,000+
Perhaps the population counter can't count beyond 3 millions and anything bigger is 3,000,000+
-OR-
Someone forgot to increase the number and just copied pasted the population from the second edition.

Could be. Like ants. There's either none (less than 1 million) or some (more than one million).

Runner Havens had the population at six million. So three million disappeared in just a few years


I'm doing a comparison of the four books. I have three done but have stalled a bit at the 4th installment. Mainly because of the number of individual businesses involved I think. I'll have to step up again so I can finish this

Seattle: 1990, 1999, 2006, and 2009 Part 1
Seattle: 1990, 1999, 2006, and 2009 Part 2
Seattle: 1990, 1999, 2006, and 2009 Part 3

Carl

Wow. That's pretty intense. Kudos on the big project.

Well, I can't comment on population, because... well its pretty clear there is some wonkiness there.

But as for hospitals, Seattle is an epicenter for medical care. This city has more damn doctors than you can shake a stick at and the UW is turning out ~200 more every year (including your's truly this year ). The thing is, they are all very well trained, and many are at the top of their field. Anyway, there are ~20 major hospitals in the area that will be the metroplex, but I doubt there would be 80 by 2072. I would say that figure would have to encompass major clinics as well (the UW Physicians system, for example, has large clinics all over the metroplex area; those would add ~10 more to the total).

And as an aside, the reason Seattle's emergency response kicks so much ass is because of the MedicOne system (centralized dispatch with very well trained paramedics) and Harborview Medical Center (a community/university hybrid) which is a Mecca for trauma/acute care. That system is unlikely to exist in SR, as most public services are contracted out to the lowest bidder, and we all know how that works (refer to LS vs KE). Plus there are large areas the ambulances just wouldn't go.

Contracted EMS is common across the US, even in major cities. The main advantages to having a governement agency run it is that the EMTs get much better benefits and retirement, typically in exchange for higher costs. But given that the entire government pension system in most states and cities is essentially an inflating Ponzi scheme I doubt that it will be that way for many more years.

There are places in most large cities today where the EMTs are issued body armor and are only allowed to approach and enter once the police have secured the location.

It's actually one of the first things they teach you in EMT-B training: don't enter the scene until it's secure. When I went through it, quite a few people failed practical exams because they didn't check if the police had secured the scene first.

I think the "+" in 3,000,000+ counts as anything from 1 to infinity, so it's technically accurate. Still, I would probably place a metropolitan sprawl like that in 2072 at something closer to 30,000,000.

I didn't say anything to the contrary. Just that the current system in Seattle, which is among the best (if not the best) in the world is not entirely private/contract, and I can't imagine that it would remain as well organized, well funded or well trained in SR's 2070's.

In deed. Don't you work in EMS, kzt, or am I misremembering? Albuquerque certainly has a few neighborhoods I would not want to wander into. The War Zone comes to mind.

Not exactly. Got a license and work with some, but I'm an IT guy at the trauma center.

I think a lot of those hospitals are smaller than the hospitals of the present. Some cater to people who want a hospital in a specific jurisdiction (corporate..), or a specialty. I think with shadowrun medical tech, it's possible to cover a wide range of problems with a smaller hospital (the equipment is more powerful and versatile).

Of course, the level of medical care in shadowrun is somewhat dragged down because about half the hospitals in 2072 have been infiltrated by Tamanous...

Shadowrun's population figures have always been wonky. The setting has all the trappings of a cyberpunk world choked by overpopulation (lots of megasprawls, most people haven't eaten real food in years, etc.), but they've been saying the total population was three billion people since SR1. The real life number hasn't been that low since the 1950's, I think.

Why so large? The 2072 global population is about the same as 2010, and there weren't that many Anglos in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and other nearby NAN-overwhelmed states to displace into Seattle.

Since the 1970s, the trend in hospital size has been downward. The old hospitals with 2000 beds are being dropped in favor of hospitals with rarely more than 1500 beds. If you generously include clinics with a few overnight beds in them, then you can easily reach 80-odd hospitals.



5 to 10 million. Seattle is an economic mecca in the region and received refugees displaced by the birth of NAN. When you factor in the populations of nearby states (minus anyone who pretended to be Native American to help bolster NAN's ludicrous population) minus VITAS, and noting both the stagnant global population from 2010 to 2072 and that many of the Seattle metroplex's districts appear to be low-rise urban/suburban sprawl (unlike, say, NYC's 5 buroughs), a doubling or trebling of the current population is reasonable.

There's certainly room for more people inside the Metroplex, but 2072 Seattle isn't a sea of high rise apartments. Its big buildings are rather concentrated in the urban core.

The most likely scenario is that a lot of the people who lived in those states just stayed there as NAN citizens - at least, that's what I go with. Sure people who really wanted to leave for the UCAS did so, but there would be enough others who agreed with the NAN moving in. The "complete racial segregation!!!" some sources allude to always struck me as a bit silly.

I allways thought it was >3 Million registered Citizens and 3 more SINless ?!!

HokaHey
Medicineman

Because poverty and religion tend to make people breed like crazy. There might not be as much of the latter in the future, but there sure seems to be a lot of the former. I predict that by the time I die (which will likely be in the 2070s), the world's population will be close to 20 billion.

Where would these people come from?
Most european countries are going through a decrease in their population, Japan too. China is taking big pains to control the size of their population, in the African countries people breed like crazy and people die like crazy. Unless Russia and India start breeding like crazy I don't see any other country that could breed that much to bring the population to the 20 billions.

I've also seen data that suggests the population will taper off at 9 billion by 2100, so... *shrugs*

that would mean we have ALOT more totalitarian control, ALOT more violence, or something even worse...

You could also consider how accurate any census would be. You can bet the corps know exactly how many mouths they are feeding (and the return they are getting on each one). But many countries would lack the resources to take an accurate census of everyone else with a SIN, and certainly don't even bother with the SINless. Not that this excuses laziness on the part of the authors, but fluff-wise it might be hard to determine the actual population of a given city in 2072.

And Crazy74 raises a good point- the states that surround Seattle (which are annexed by the NAN) are generally the least populated in the country. Some of those people would move to Seattle, but some would stay put and others would move east. All in all, when you account for VITAS and how many of those become SINless (which, as refugees could be a majority) their actual impact on Seattle's population (especially 50+ years later) might not be that great.

It's not just the strange population number, either - the listed density is only about 1/8 of present-day Tokyo. Makes me feel better about running my players against escaped biodrones in rural Enumclaw - apparently the official 2073 Seattle is closer to reality then it is to Blade Runner.

The first Vitas wave killed aproximately half of the Population
the second Wave about a third of the remaining Survivors (IIRC)

with a survivors Dance
Medicineman

None of those really poor are calculated to population as they are SINless.

Touche.