From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Mon Oct 16 2000 - 12:19:21 PDT
Jeff Bone writes:
> Well, not exactly, there's the whole minimum seed population necessary to have
> viable genetic diversity, but then you know that.
According to archaeogenomics we seem to have passed through a
diversity bottleneck a (long) while ago. We're all successors of a
small band of people.
I don't think population diversity thing is applicable to
people. Technology insulates nicely from adverse effects of inbreeding
(see rednecks for an example) until population will grow large enough
to sustain variability due to mutation, and average fitness will begin
to rise again.
> Nah, I think aforementioned big rock could do the job for us nicely but would
> probably leave the freakin' roaches.
I wouldn't count roaches as higher organisms. And even the worst
impact winter can only last a few years. Unless the rock falls
directly on top of their head or they're hit by the tidal wave anyone
remote enough from marauders with a lot of supplies should survive.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 16 2000 - 04:04:33 PDT