Evil Malthusian and Cold Equation

A new trope just launched, Evil Malthusian, about a villain who tries to reduce the size of the population in the belief that it's necessary to prevent overpopulation from consuming their resources. And I got to wondering how we should define the relationship between this trope and Cold Equation, which is also about reducing the number of people consuming resources to make those resources last longer.

I'm just curious how we'll define the relationship and differences between these two tropes, and if it's a case where some examples can appear on both trope pages, or if it should be one of those situations where appearing on one disqualifies it from the other?

I'd say a big difference is that the Cold Equation seems like it's in specific scenarios where there IS a resource drain (real or percieved), while the Evil Malthusian simply BELIEVES that there will be a resource drain unless they do something- the Evil Malthusian is more idealogy-driven.

A Malthusian Collapse is a specific premise that Evil Malthusian uses as the backbone, being both about population size and resource management. It is also about being a villainous motivation, and not just a Malthusian Collapse being discussed in fiction.

Cold Equation is thus more of the supertrope, any moment where having fewer people in the "equation" means a higher chance for success. This would intersect with population size and resource management, but also accounts for the odds of survival for two people dragging an injured third person across a desert.

We also have Overpopulation Crisis, which is the problem, real or imagined, that an Evil Malthusian purports to be attempting to solve.

Edited by StarSword on Apr 8th 2024 at 1:02:06 PM

The Trope Namer of Cold Equation is about two people, one of whom needs to die for the ship to get important life-saving resources on time. An Evil Malthusian specifically wants to cull an entire population, and is portrayed as villainous for it.

I'm not sure offhand if Cold Equation is even applicable to stories where the antagonist is a character, rather than an impersonal crisis. An Evil Malthusian might be a More Hateable Minor Villain in a Cold Equation scenario, or they might be the main antagonist trying to create a situation in which sacrificing people they don't care about is justified.