Stand on Hawai'i

I remember two facts about population and the dead from trivia books when I was a kid:

1. Living people today outnumber the total dead from all of history
2. The dead outnumber the living 30 to 1

They're irreconcilable, but you see the first one quoted more. Except that it isn't true, according to this Scientific American article. Not even close, not even with very conservative numbers (e.g. statistician Carl Haub starts with a for-the-sake-of-argument Adam and Eve in 50,000 BCE whereas most authorities would grant modern humans twice that span, maybe up to four times). 18 dead'uns for everyone alive today - with at least another 100 kiloyears of humans to add on, it looks like fact#2 was just about on the money. Thank you the Usbourne Book Of Facts. (And thank you New Scientist, who favoured fact#2 back in 1996).

"Stand On Hawai'i"? John Brunner's Stand On Zanzibar gets its title from the area taken up by ten billion people, the population of the Earth when the story takes place; if the entire human race, dead and living according to Haub's numbers, formed a crowd we would cover Big Island of Hawai'i.