You might find this sight interesting Zack…

http://www.space1999.net/metaforms/kb/1m/pop.htm

Obviously, this detailed analysis doesn’t take into account anything that happens in the Powys novels, but it’s still really useful (I think Analysis 4a is probably more accurate than any of the others!) 😉

Zack,

Interesting questions about events surrounding Breakaway, in regard to lunar population. Steve pointed out scenario 4a, which does start with 11 less (i.e. 300) as a starting point with the idea that maybe the 11 deaths that had occurred recently [i]before[/i] the Breakaway event may not have been reported to the media. This is possible, yet so is 311 even if Simmonds were holding back to a degree. Various possibilites regarding both, now that I think about it more.

311 Scenario I: Simmonds and the ILC have been reporting deaths all along but holding back on details, knowing it is difficult to hide the fact of deaths (families to notify, or even delaying that, the presence of rumor mills).

311 Scenario II: Simmonds and the ILC have not been reporting deaths leading up to before Breakaway, but right after Breakaway, release a number reflecting those pre-Breakaway deaths. At first, the big news would be about the Moon — and Earth-side damage — as a whole. Maybe in those days, the ILC could inform the individual families of the pre-Breakaway 11 fatalities about their prior deaths — when most of the media focus is elsewhere. How long the media would take to piece together all of this about the pre-Breakaway deaths, who knows, but in general, this creates another layer of scenarios….

311 Scenario IIa: Spin the earlier fatalities into something that sounds related to the later Breakaway disaster but avoiding any appearance of improper conduct on the part of ILC. In this scenario, perhaps they could even try to make Simmonds (and thus the whole ILC) sound non-culpable.

311 Scenario IIb: If it had been just Simmonds holding back, the ILC could describe that up front (i.e. lay the blame on him).

311 Scenario IIc: If it had been more people than Simmonds, the ILC could (1) sack them early on, then point that out later (i.e. lay the blame on both Simmonds and them), or (2) not fire those people, hide their involvement, and try heaping extra blame on Simmonds.

Still, there are certainly ways to support the accurate number being 300 just before the Breakaway, despite GTV’s report….

300 Scenario I: The ILC, in the initial post-Breakaway chaos, fails to give the accurate number and GTV mistakenly reports 311, and….

300 Scenario Ia: They correct this afterwards, but too late for the audience (us!) to hear a correct number reported. What other details there are may be similar to several of the 311 scenarios, I suppose.

300 Scenario Ib: The ILC totally cover up the 11 pre-Breakaway deaths. Whether or not such a cover-up remains successful, especially under likely very detailed Earth-side investigation of lunar events pre-Breakaway, I leave for others to speculate.

This all is not even covering another pair of scenarios, labeled 3a and 3b at Metaforms, that in the initial chaos, GTV may have simply had outright bad information, from an innocent mistake anywhere along the chain. Perhaps the population was (e.g.) 334 moments before Area Two started blasting the Moon out of orbit.

Regardless, unless I am missing something (certainly possible), I am not sure we the audience have sufficient information to determine a clear answer, leaving us free to speculate and choose a “most likely” scenario accordingly.
🙂

—-David

P.S. I’ve long thought that pre-Breakaway events, the GTV number, and Y1 events leave a lot of room for population speculation before reaching the next lower bound (at Arkadia) and hard number (at Psychon). These latter two numbers are close together and not hard to bridge, and from there, the number at Entra is also not that far apart and not that difficult (IMO) to bridge. It is getting from pre-Breakaway/GTV/Y1 to Arkadia/Psychon numbers that leaves lots of open room, I think.