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HungryHungryHobo2 t1_iu5cxxf wrote

Do you have a source for the "2 people can recreate the population" claim?
Because I've always seen the low range of estimates for human survival saying we need about 5,000 - 10,000 people to have enough genetic diversity to not die out from inbreeding related illnesses.

https://phys.org/news/2018-03-populations-pair.html

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Alis451 t1_iu5nqqc wrote

50 is the bare minimum to prevent inbreeding related genetic depression naturally. With new genetic technologies and extensive breeding program you can do it with 2, there are MANY thought examples out there where they talk about how bad it would be to try to do this naturally, this video does discuss using genetic mapping to prevent mismatches, there are a few that discuss it being possible naturally but requiring tens or hundreds of thousands of years to work out.

Interstellar used this thought experiment, though instead with 1 women and 5,000 frozen embryos, with strict genetic selection as well, i think to ensure only daughters were born for the first few generations.

Basically a lot of stuff to dig through that just talks about dangers, but not many that actually discuss the actual possibility, and with modern gene editing, the answer is "yes, but..." and depends on the access one would have to said technology. I think I saw somewhere strict genetic control and breeding control for 19 generations(~400 years) to get suitable genetic drift to be strangers again, of which you could get 50 from that would be able to satisfy the bare minimum of stable natural population.

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