What’s the Population of Panem?
October 26, 2011 in Editorial, Top
Anyone who has read The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins has likely wondered how many people reside in the fictional Nation of Panem. Panem is the county that “rose out of the ashes” of North America after it was destroyed by wars, famines, and natural disasters. Instead of 50 states, Panem has 12 districts which surround the Capitol. About 75 years before the start of the novel, we learn that the districts rebelled against the Capitol, which is painted as an oppressive dictatorship to those who live in the districts. The era was known as the “Dark Days”, the Capitols triumph over the districts is what leads to The Hunger Games and the story of Katniss Everdeen.
There is much uncertainty about the state of Panem. Even after finishing the books, many readers are anxious to learn more about the country that has replaced the one that many of us live in today. Perhaps the biggest unknown about Panem is its population. Fortunately, this question is not impossible to answer. Using the clues that Collins hides in her books, we are able to get a rough estimation of what the population of Panem would be. The book implies that the development of civilization is not much different than the present day world because the devastating effects of the wars and natural disasters counteracted any progress that was made over the decades. Therefore Centives will use the contemporary world as a basis for several assumptions.
The first thing we know is that after the catastrophes that lead to the end of civilization as we know it, the population of North America is substantially lower than it is today. We also know that each of the districts specialize in some unit of production. Here’s the list:
The first thing that is evident at once is that District 12 is the only district dedicated to producing a form of power. Therefore, we can predict, based on Panem’s need for power, about how many people reside in the country. The first thing to consider is how many of the residents actually work in the coal mines. We know that district 12 has about 8,000 citizens. It is also understood that the population is generally young. Katniss mentions that, in District 12, so many people die young that living old enough to have grey hair is something worthy of admiration. Therefore we can estimate that the majority of District 12’s inhabitants are younger than 60. Katniss describes the percentage of the people who live above the poverty line, or in the “Merchant Class” to be “Very Small”. Centives assumed that since district 12 is one of the poorer districts, and most of Panem is living in poverty, that only 10-15% live above the poverty line, with the rest of District 12 living in the Seam, the poverty stricken area of district 12.
While some of those living in the Seam have other professions like Katniss’s mother, or do not work, it is implied that the majority of those who of adults go and work in the mines. How many miners does Panem have? If we subtract the merchant class then there are 7,000 potential workers. Malawi, Rwanda, Mozambique, Brazil, Madagascar, Guinea and Niger have poverty rates today, according to the World Bank that are similar to those we estimate exist in District 12 of Panem. In those seven countries on average about 40% of the population is young according to the CIA World Factbook. So we can subtract another 2800 people from the number of miners. Assuming that a number of people don’t, or are unable to work, Centives concludes that about 4,000 people mine coal in District 12.
Using this we can estimate how much coal District 12 produces. In the United States today we have roughly 100,000 people producing 973MT (million tons) of coal a year. That comes out to .0092 MT/ Year of coal per worker. If we assume that the technology hasn’t changed much since our present time then 4000 District 12 workers could produce 37.12 MT/Coal a year.
What kind of population could you sustain with this much energy? The book suggests that the war was so devastating that it returned Panem to a pre-industrial age. People use less energy in such areas, and so a bigger population could be supported on fewer resources. Let’s return to those countries that the World Bank said had a similar poverty rate, and, let’s assume, a similar population to energy support ratio. Brazil is the most prominent example and it consumes about 13 MT of coal a year. But unlike in Panem, coal only makes up about 1% of their energy consumption. If coal was the only resources that Brazilians used to produce energy then they would have to produce 185MT of coal a year to support a population of 200 million. This comes out to about 0.93 MT of coal for every million inhabitants.
But the income inequality depicted in Panem seems to be at levels that are unimaginable in today’s era. It’s fair to assume that between the capital and the vast amounts of energy required to maintain the electrified fences only about 90% of the energy produced is used on the citizens of Panem that reside outside of the capital. This leaves about 3.7 MT of coal for the majority of Panem. If we assume that the Brazilian ratio of energy to population holds true in Panem as well, Centives estimates that Panem can support a population of 4 million within its 12 districts. The book gives us no reason to believe that there are any other sources of energy or international trade of any sort. Given these numbers we now see that Susan Collins was not exaggerating when she claimed the population of Panem to be significantly less than that of the United States today. The last time the United States had a population this small was in the late 1700s. With numbers like that, the odds of being reaped into the Hunger Games are certainly not in your favour.
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district 5 have solar cell panel
The population before the rebbelion was roughly 4,000,000 now, panels population is 1.9 million not including district 13 a large district has a population of 150,000 so a small district has maybe 10000 so that should give you an answer
When Katniss speaks with Rue they talk about how they burn coal in their homes. I got the impression that the coal from 12 was used to supply the residents of the districts, and that 5 supplied the capital with electricity from other means. Since the coal production isn’t continued after the war it doesn’t seem to have been critical to the capital’s economy.
At the parade it is announced that 100,000 people are I the capitol. So what I wonder, was this the whole population? It seems if the Capitol is much larger then more people would have been there. Any ideas?
It seems unlikely to me that Panem’s energy demand is entirely or even primarily dependent on district 12’s coal production, simply because of Snow’s willingness to firebomb the place into oblivion. Sure, he might’ve had substantial reserves sitting in the Capitol’s vaults to burn until he could send new workers to 12 from the other districts to restart production, but if 12 was the only source of the stuff, he’d have lost all of its expertise and most of its infrastructure. It’s very unlikely that he had enough hoarded coal reserves to take such a risk.
My guess is that Panem has other sources of power. Perhaps ancient nuclear plants are still running or the Tennessee Valley Authority’s hydroelectric plants are still running, or they are extracting and refining natural gas or oil from the Permian basin.
I don’t really think we have enough information to derive a population for Panem, the military personnel numbers are revealing. A transfer of one hundred additional peacekeepers to 12 was considered a major imposition…. It seems to me that the population of Panem is likely to be small… Most likely much smaller than 4,000,000. The high speed rail network is also interested. Clearly, this is legacy infrastructure from before the Dark Days, but it would still need to be maintained. The books suggest (from the mention of a repair spot) that some manner of spare parts and repair capability exists. Similarly, 13 seems to have the capability to manufacture hovercraft and possibly fixed wing combat aircraft ( even if these might very be the equivalent of converted Cessna biplanes) as well, buy that it took them many years if not decades to make just a few units. This suggests at least some scale manufacturing capability. Also, the arenas are massive high tech undertakings that also suggest duvet stops scale in both labor and manufacturing capacity. Remember that one of these need to be built every year. All told, I’d guess that there are at least a couple million productive people in Panem.
There’s no way 4000 coal miners can support a civilization capable of creating high-tech computers, weather manipulation over large arenas and advanced medicine production.
This might be salvaged if we assume that coal is used only for things like steel production and chemical feedstock. Then we can assume that Panem uses atomic power (fission they definitely have, maybe even fusion) for most needs.
Besides, at the end of the book coal production at District 12 is not restored, hinting strongly that it was not really that critical.
You are right. It’s mentioned that District 13 supplied power to Panem before it was destroyed, and they were focused in nuclear research. That means that coal isn’t the main source of power for Panem. Maybe District 5 is the other supplier?
District 5 produces the countries power. district 13 specialized in graphite and no one really knew that it specialized in nuclear weapons because it was a secret, well supposed to be coal would be used a lot in district 3 and 8 because they are described as big and industrial places the power would be nuclear and a lot of power is needed to power the fences if we presume that all the districts have fences the actual population would be pretty small maybe less than 4 million. They keep saying in the last book that destroying the Capitol after they win wouldn’t be a good option because it would effect the population to much. Suzanne Collins probably wrote the book the way she did to make people think about these things but I would also recommend reading the panem companion that should explain somethings
This analysis highballs the numbers very significantly. We know that the population of District 12 is roughly 8000 people. 12 is a “small” district. Nonetheless, the burden of providing one tribute a year is felt equally heavily in the other districts. Moreover, we know from the final book of the series that the war between the districts and the Capitol endangers potentially the continued survival of the population of North America via the loss of biodiversity in the breeding population. Consider also that people in each district look almost identical to one another. For example, District 12 has only 2 phenotypes.
This means that a “large” district is not much bigger than a “small” district. Let’s say that the factor is 3 or 4. This would mean that a “large” district has at most 32,000 people. Assuming that EVERY district is “large”, including 13, we get an upper limit for population in the districts as a whole of 392,000. The Capitol consumes most of the resources produced by the districts, but there is still no way the Capitol has anything but a fraction of the combined population of the Districts. Let’s assume for a moment that Capitol is able to sustain an enormous population superiority over each individual “large” district of 3:1. That would STILL put only 92,000 people in Capitol. Even with this very generous assumption, we have 488,000 people IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY. In other words, we are talking about a civilization in collapse, so decimated that it cannot even maintain its own facilities or retain the sum total of its knowledge.
Now you should understand many peculiarities of the novels:
— Capitol “bombers” attack with small HE bombs and dumb incendiaries at such a low level that ARROWS and SMALL ARMS FIRE are a threat. Katniss earlier notes that the high-tech bow Beetee gives her has an effective range of only 100 yards. (compare to B-52s dropping 250,000-lb JDAMs from 20,000 feet on the Taliban today, or even B-17s flattening Dresden). Conclusion: the “bombers” are the equivalent of converted CROP DUSTERS
–District 13 puts kids as young as 14 on the front lines
— “squad” and “squadron” are interchangeable terms. Squads have individual numbers unique in the District 13 army, like REGIMENTS do today.
–President Coin’s right hand man personally leads a squad into battle
–District 13 has high-tech bows and arrows in its regular armory. Katniss marvels that Beetee’s high-tech bow can put an arrow with an explosive warhead 100 yards downrange. A modern RPG-7 launcher can put a rocket 380 yards downrange. A silenced AK can put a 7.62mm bullet 300 yards down range, too. So why are there bows in the armory? Because no one can replace lost small arms!
–Capitol uses big white lizards with claws to track Katniss and tracker jackers in pods instead of land mines (not enough explosives to go around)
–A Capitol hovercraft chasing fugitives may have an “invisibility field” but has to use a harpoon and a net to attack the fugitives (because the guns are broken or because ammunition is scarce, take your pick), nor can it detect Katniss and her friend hiding under a rock ledge a few meters away (trivial with even modern FLIR — if it was working. But it DOESN’T work and there is no one who could fix it)
–Refugees from District 8 have a high-tech solar powered laser rifle taken from a dead Peacekeeper, but most of the war is fought with regular old guns that fire regular old bullets.
There are many others, but you get my drift.
the industry of district 5 according to the promotional information for the movie is power, presumably electricity manufacture
In many of the districts they have fireplaces (therefore needing coal) so I imagine that the coal goes to the other districts and the Capitol (being much more advanced than anyone else) may produce power using other means.
4 million does seem a reasonable figure. If district 12 has 8000 it could be an average size (district 11 is much bigger but in most districts the population can fit into a single square for the reaping) then that would put the population of the districts at 96,000 plus the extra of district 11. It is unlikely that the districts would go over 150,000 in population.
So the remaining 3.85 million must live in the Capitol which is quite possible as the capitol is a big city.
Good analysis, but I’d question the assumption that Panem miners produce anything close to US miners today. Mining is very capital intensive (and the story made it sound like vehicles were non-existent in District 12). I’d be shocked if Panem Miners could produce anything close to what US miners currently produce per capita. I’d suggest looking at mining production around the world, India produces only 540 MT with 550,000 workers, which is about 1/10th as much coal per person per year.
according to thecapitol.pn website, District 5 produces power
I think District 12 just mines the coal that is then transported to District 5 where the power is actually generated
Yes, I believe that District 5 simply generates the power from the raw goods. This number seems pretty accurate.
Distict 5 uses nuclear power to run the nation of panem as well as solar and possibly hydro as there is a large dam in the Capitol as depicted in the movie adaptation. The coal is probably used in district 3 and 8 for there factories. It’s obvious that they would use nuclear power to run the nation as it is more effective and district 13 had plenty of nuclear weapons and so does the Capitol. Seems logical since it would take a lot of coal and the seam in which they use in district 12 would have run out by now.