I'd gotten the impression that there were several thousand million still in the world as a whole, perhaps even up to a few billion (current here-and-now is something north of 6 billion, I think?). Admittedly there's not a hell of a lot of canon documentation, but I'd have a hard time imagining a city such as Nova Praetoria without a world population well past the subsistence level.
The DE and Hamidon waged a terrible war on the earth, and most places outside the surviving cities are dangerous wilds -- I think of it as being something like the American Frontier era in terms of danger, but high-tech. This is feasible because the DE are lots more dangerous than your average bear, thus raising the bar for survival a bit.
In terms of super ratios, Cole probably has the advantage. After all, on Primal Earth super registration is voluntary; in Praetoria, it's mandatory. And so on.
But I think the basic premise is that Cole came to power because people were scared of the Hamidon and DE, and not because they'd been depopulated so harshly.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
The DE and Hamidon waged a terrible war on the earth, and most places outside the surviving cities are dangerous wilds -- I think of it as being something like the American Frontier era in terms of danger, but high-tech. This is feasible because the DE are lots more dangerous than your average bear, thus raising the bar for survival a bit.
In terms of super ratios, Cole probably has the advantage. After all, on Primal Earth super registration is voluntary; in Praetoria, it's mandatory. And so on.
But I think the basic premise is that Cole came to power because people were scared of the Hamidon and DE, and not because they'd been depopulated so harshly.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs