Strange, I read another post by RFC that IIRC stated that the military put Operation Ark together all by itself, the volunteers had no clue what they were in for, and civilian governments weren't included at all in the process, so the link to the latest Pearls is a surprise to me!JeffEngel wrote:But otherwise, they'd be picking for genetic diversity so as not to create any remotely dangerous bottlenecks, and ethnic diversity if for no other reasons that to preserve a representative slice of Earth and make sure the whole of Earth's political base was behind this in full.
I might be tempted to agree with you here, except that Project Ark was put together in total secrecy, and the "volunteers" had no idea what they were volunteering for. Yes, the Chinese might have been asked for so many million, healthy "volunteers," but nobody outside of the military and the very highest levels of governments (and I suspect many governments were excluded) knew about Project Ark at all!
So I highly doubt the military worried too much about Earth's political base. They had the fabbers and the power to launch Operation Ark all by themselves. They simply needed 8 million colonists, and with over two billion members of the military from whom to draw, they didn't need to get those colonists from Earth. Considering the need for utmost secrecy, I absolutely astonished that they did!
Yes, there was a need to keep the genetic pool deep by all means. This was a war of attrition and destruction, and those 8 million colonists were the only ones who would make it out alive. I'm certain there were criteria to select them, and overall genetic health was probably one of those.
I find it ironic that the Chinese demanded that their people be kept together to preserve their cultural heritage, which was really pretty silly since blocking out foreign influences when you are the largest bloc of humanity and are supposed to regain technology after 3 or 4 centuries would have been awfully counterproductive. Perhaps they accepted that dealing with "Westerners" would be part of their reprogramming. (Heck, most of the planet has an epithetic fold around their eyes, so despite China's demands, it's pretty clear that there were so many Chinese that they had to be spread around just to have partners for all the Adams and Eves!)
That would have been the most peaceful approach anyway, since it would have created a truly worldwide genotype, so you wouldn't end up with any Nazi "We're the superior race" groups causing problems. (Ignoring that the Northerners might have turned more pale and their hair might have lightened after almost 1000 years. Who knows?)
