How Would a Colony be Affected By a Sudden Population Decrease?

My primary setting is a colony that was established in order to mine some Phlebotnium. The original settlers were a mix of workers and research scientists, with some members representing company management. Some of the workers were taken from prisons. Eventually, the colony became a strategic target, with many factions trying to take control of it. During one war, over half of the colony's population was either killed or displaced. Afterwards, a military garrison had to be established in order to protect the colony.

I've been thinking of how this would affect the development of the colony. The most obvious impact would be that the people of the colony would be more martial, with average citizens being expected to take up arms in the event of another attack. One thing I've thought of is that people might marry younger in order to replenish the lost population. Another idea I had was that colonists would try to marry their children off to the soldiers in the garrison, hoping that their children will now be able to leave.

Half a population suddenly removed from the equation? That's going to play merry hell with the economics and wages of the place.

If you want a historical parallel, look up what happened in the immediate aftermath of the Black Plague hitting Europe in the 14th century. One fourth of all European population died and afterwards it had significant upheaval economically and politically. (One could say the Plague is what jumpstarted the Renaissance.)

A lot more diversification of job duties. Like you mentioned already, everyone would be expected to pick up a weapon and fight, should it come to it. Everyone would also probably end up picking up another job or two. With so few people, specialization isn't gonna be a practical option. The researchers are gonna have to get their hands dirty with physical labor, and the laborers will probably have to pick up a tech manual.

Consider the effect on morale. There would be vast psychological damage: people suffering from various forms of trauma including PTSD, survivor's guilt, etc.

Dont forget the sudden influx of immigrants, as opportunity-seekers (ie, carpet baggers) arrive to take advantage of low prices and an extremely good labor market.

• My question is how much of the place was a research facility? Because if that was its main or even just a huge part of the value of the place, whoever's investing would be likely to, you know, send more scientists to this place. If this civilization has the ability to plant troops there fairly easily, then companies (and governments too, if they're putting their military there and the colony is a joint public/private endeavor) would likely feel safer sending more people there.

I mean, right now it just sort of seems like you're assuming that the population won't have people immigrating to replace the dead now. But if it's valuable enough to put a military there then it's valuable enough to resume and continue sending in the specialized researchers AND skilled laborers to continue whatever project was being performed here.

And to that point you might want to reconsider using prison labor (IE, slavery). Like, is the mining not done by robots at this point? Moral issues aside, mining even now is increasingly automated, and what you're likely to get in the future is the need for computer engineers to direct mining robots and the like. That takes education and skill development. In addition to that, what other work do you imagine that these workers are supposed to do? How big is this colony if the only people there are scientists and workers? Because that sounds less like a place people are making into a home and more just a research facility.

Also, no, don't have people marrying their children to soldiers. The way you phrased that makes it sounds like you're having soldiers take advantage of underage kids. Unless the point is that you're taking away agency from the already powerless you should maybe consider other ways to get people off the planet. After all, if they're mining a valuable resource and have a garrison there, then once they get that up and running again they might well be working their way to wealth once again.

To that end; exactly how much control does your company have over this place? You said some of the original settlers were representatives; does this mean this was originally a company town, with all the corruption that implies? (Might want to look up how old company towns were once run in the US) If it was, how does having the government in the form of the military affect things? Or did they always have government representation and contact, in which case I refer again to the earlier idea of a public/private joint enterprise to get this rare resource of yours.

So with regards to how much of the colony is dedicated to research, most of it is focused on extraction. There is a research facility for the purpose of analyzing the phlebotnium and coming up with better extraction techniques.

With regards to workers immigrating to the colony, there are new workers and equipment coming to the colony, but travel is difficult. It takes years for new workers to arrive. The garrison was made up of soldiers who were already in the area because of the war. They often recruit from the people living in the colony as reinforcements take a long time to get there.

With regards to the level of company control, the colony is a full on Privately Owned Society. The company has a contract, giving them exclusive rights to develop the area. However, there is always the threat that they'll lose the contract if they have problems providing a steady supply of the phlebotnium and some other company will obtain the contract. The company actually lobbied for a garrison to be established by the colony to protect their assets.

Ok so here's a major infrastructure question; If it really takes years to get people to this place, is the resource being mined really worth that much, because it clearly takes that long to get it back as well? Also what does years mean in this context? A decade, or more than that? Because it makes a difference to your population if takes fifty years for new people to get there as opposed to ten. Ten years is probably not long enough for people to start thinking that having children early is a good idea. Fifty years is enough for a whole new culture influenced by this to arise and to have no one except the old who remember what it was like before.

Also how long is this war going on? (And again, if this resource is so valuable the government is probably interested in having much more oversight now in its extraction.) Because depending on that, they might well be starting over. OR, you consider that the government would not need to have been lobbied during a war and put some military there to protect reliable assets, because that's part of what militaries do during a war; protect valuable assets. It's a different scenario if they've been there a while, protecting the assets and the citizens living there. (And more reasonable as a scenario, really, than them simply being ignored during a time when the resource they produce is likely needed. To that end, what is this resource and it's purpose?) It doesn't even have to be a big deployment; maybe some ground troops and a ship or two to watch over things.

Hell what's the impact now that the employees have access to the government in terms of getting services like lawyers? How draconian was the company beforehand and how does that play into how well the colonists play with the military and other government reps? Also, do they simply mine it there? Or do they also do the refinement process on planet? Are they just transporting a raw resource?

This substance is valuable enough that an economic collapse could happen if the supply is severely interrupted. The company has actually developed an emergency reserve to prevent this from happening. The substance itself is used in the manufacturing of metal products, but the company has found other uses for it. On average, it would take at least a decade to reach the colony. Under optimal conditions, the journey could take five years. One could make the trip in under a year, but that's dangerous for any human passengers and only done using automated ships.

The war itself started sometime after colonization, but was very limited in terms of scope. Most of the fighting consisted of raids and attacks on supply lines. The occupation of the colony was considered an unprecedented. Up until that point, the company believed it could take care of any security threats if they were ever attack. Their main concern was if these attacks disrupted supplies.

With regards to the governance of the colony, the company was given free reign and all colonists were required by contract to work for the company for a period of time. However, when the contracts ran out, the workers could chose not to renew and try to eek out a living doing something else. In practice, these workers would still be dependent on the company for supplies if say they wanted to open a business. They could try to purchase transport back home, but few did this because of the cost and how long it would take to reach home.

So are they just waiting at least a decade to get this resource? That seems massively inefficient, really, and would make things like attacks on supply lines hard to notice for seemingly years on end. So I would assume that you have this company sending ships back and forth far more often than simply every five years, and possibly even more than once a year. (And possibly faster than light method of communication? Do they simply have to rely on the ships coming in for things like news reports and family letters?) In any case, provided that this back and forth of ships isn't interrupted, you could believably have all those empty posts filled up again within ten to fifteen years, which would, if anything, create an interesting set up between people who were there and experienced the devastation and those who are newbies to the place. This of course, depends on how good the company is at recruitment.

At this point, it seems like your main conflict would be with company reps trying to deal with the sudden government intrusion. Because company towns were massively corrupt and exploited the hell out the people. You can say "people have the option to do other things" but in this case, unless they're going out into the wilderness to live off the land, they're completely under the company's control here. Which, you know, a small population having decided to do just that might be an interesting wrinkle in the situation of your world.

Perhaps requesting a military presence by default opens the world up to scientific observation in this world? IN the vein of government employed biologists and the like? Keep in mind that people sent there by the military and such are unlikely to think of the planet as their home the way the company's colonists are at this point.

Another thing to consider; so the company has the right to mine things there. Does this really stop say, some other group from simply choosing to live elsewhere on the planet? No resource extraction except what they use themselves, because who the hell would be able to buy an entire planet? Because if your main conflict is about how the population decrease effects things, people colonizing for other reasons relatively nearby could a way to both introduce conflict and give the people hope for bolstering their population. You don't necessarily need to rely solely on your fictional colony to provide the new people in this scenario. Maybe there's an ongoing scientific exploration going on of the planet in various spots. Maybe some religious or philosophical organization has started up a colony. Maybe some other group sought out profit of a different kind somewhere else on the planet. Maybe the government just has a habit of saying any planet they have access to is open to anyone who wants to go there, I dunno. Again, I don't think it has to be just the company that is providing a population to the planet here.

No, they can transport the substance in less than a year using automated ships. The issue was that human passengers weren't guaranteed survive that kind of trip.

What you have here is basically the New World during the Age of Exploration on historical Earth. A voyage takes years to complete, colonies are on their own for extended periods of time, inter-colonial competition often results in military raids and full on attacks that devastate population centers. Under these circumstances, the colonial powers have a limited number of stategies available to them. If the resource they are extracting is spread out over a large area, then it might make sense to establish lots of little, expendable colonies, no single one of which is very important, but the total number is high enough that it's very hard to wipe them all out (call this the "French Approach"). If the resource is highly concentrated, then likely the military will be the largest presence from the get go, and will remain that way for the life of the colony (call this the "Spanish Approach"). Finally, the home power might decide to ship enough immigrants over to a small number of population centers that they can extract sufficient resources to equip their own small navy and military, and can then contribute meaningfully to their own defense (call this the "British Approach"). From there, the effect of a devastating military attack becomes evident: the first approach will probably just let the colony die, the second will send significant military reinforcements, and the third will engage in a massive wave of civilian emmigration, focusing esp. on skilled laborers.