Guest post with author Susan Kelley - Minimal Viable Population

I'm still enjoying some family vacation time, but I have a special treat for you. Please welcome the wonderful Susan Kelley to my blog!

MVP: Minimal Viable Population

I’m thrilled to be here on Christine’s blog and take it over for a day. Let’s talk some genetics science stuff.

Survivors of the Apocalypse, my three book dystopian romance series, is set three hundred years in the future. A virus has nearly wiped out mankind. Inside a doomed city are thousands of people, surviving by keeping their sterile city completely closed to the outside. But there are people outside the doom who survived the pandemic. They’re living rugged, frontier lives, but they have plenty of resources. The thing they don’t have is a large population.

This forces the frontiersman to reach out to the city, hoping to recruit people so they can maintain a MVP, minimal viable population. What is that number for humans? There are many examples in science of species being brought back from extinction, some with as few as one breeding couple. But what about humans?

There are plenty of opinions on that, ranging from 50 couples to 10,000 or even 50,000. The TV show Salvation put that number at 160, which is a number sometimes quoted in the scientific community. The population would have to careful to prevent inbreeding. Why is inbreeding bad? After all, many of the old noble houses in Europe, and let’s not forget the Tsars of Russian, who married relatives for generations. And that most famous of fictional inbreeding stories, Game of Thrones, showcases how common though not always accepted marrying a close relative was in medieval times. Here’s an interesting debate on those numbers.

Now for the bad:

Any birth defects that are in the family line become more likely to appear.

Genetic issues that are recessive are more likely to come up if related people have offspring.

Successive generations of close inbreeding will decrease the diversity more and increase the rate of bad mutations.

Siblings or parents and kids (super disgusting) marrying are the worst. They share 50% of their DNA. First cousins share 12.5% and until rather recently, wasn’t considered that bad of a thing. Before people became more mobile, most people were born, lived, and died within less than a ten-mile radius. They didn’t have many options. It was also a way to keep wealth within the family. Once people moved around more and women had more say in their futures, first cousin marriage started to be frowned upon. In some parts of the USA, it is against the law though the US is the only western country that has such a prohibition. However, there are groups of people in the world who still practice it. Read more interesting facts about cousins marrying.

On the fictional series like Game of Thrones, we see the Targaryens have many family members who suffer from some mental issues. But what we really want to know is if Jon and Daenerys should have children, being aunt and nephew? Most of today’s societies would consider that an incestual relationship. But then again, it’s in Westeros.

But back to my series, the outsiders are smart enough to understand they need a larger gene pool. But can the city people survive the outside air where the virus still lurks? Can the outsider people possibly convince the city folks that a match with a rugged frontiersman is the best thing for mankind?

The last book in the series, Exile’s Savage Lady, is now available along with the first two books at all major eBook retailers. Robin Linden was saved was saved by the outsiders when he was exiled from the city by a corrupt government. Now he’s determined to return to the city and bring the cure to the starving, oppressed population. Kerry Gibbs was raised with her brothers on the wild frontier and isn’t afraid of anything. Until he realizes she might lose the strong, quiet big man back to the city he feels responsible for saving. Her only choice is to sneak into the city with Robin and make sure he doesn’t get himself killed. Robin is willing to sacrifice himself to save those unfortunates, but Kerry is going to do everything she can to make sure he survives. The city is a dangerous place and neither of them may make it out alive.

Amazon Link

Susan Kelley has been writing for more than ten years and has nineteen published romances. She resides in a large country home in central Pennsylvania where she has raised six children alongside her husband of many years. Deer, turkeys, hawks, and other wildlife cavort outside the window of her office where she writes fulltime. Find her:

On her blog, Susan Says

On Facebook

On Twitter

What do you think about marrying cousins? How close is too close? How many people would you put on a ship to populate a space colony?

Friday Five for March 11, 2016

1. Today is my final guest post with The Really Real Housewives. It's been such a fun week with those awesome ladies. I've been talking about geek parenting on a budget. Today we discuss SCIENCE!

2. I'm working on book #4 of my Totem series, and it's sounding more like a contemporary romance than a paranormal one. Where's all the creepy stuff? My protagonist is fighting hard to make it all about her. Sure, the theme is discovering her true self, but still, I need to drop more supernatural scares in there.

3. The final edits are done for the second book in my Sasquatch Susies series, Big Longing. The release date is April 1st. No joke! The third book in the series is my favorite, so I'm eager for my editor to delve in to that one.

4. Next week is my son's spring break. The first of two weeks. Yup. Wouldn't you have loved two weeks off as a kid? Since we haven't had many snow days, the kids have two weeks off. I'm making playdates and writing a list of things to do. This means I won't be around as much. So please forgive me if I get behind in visiting everyone.

5. Finally a big thank you to everyone who participated in the MEME Blog Hop. It was so much fun! And you made it difficult to judge. Plus a huge thanks to my amazing co-hosts Tara Tyler and C. Lee McKenzie. Here are the winners:

2 Grand Prize Winners of $20 Gift Cards

M Pepper Langlinais

and

Yvonne Ventresca

J. Lenni's

We also chose J Lenni Dorner (Broken Branch Falls by Tara Tyler & Double Negative by C. Lee McKenzie) and Juneta Key (Sudden Secrets by C. Lee McKenzie & Of Blood and Sorrow by Christine Rains) as 2nd runners up, winning two ebooks each!

Juneta's

And here's the rest of our winners, each receiving an ebook:
Michelle Wallace - Jolissa by Tara Tyler
Tamara Narayan - Pop Travel by Tara Tyler
Jess Haight/Fairday Morrow - (still deciding)

Have a fantastic weekend!

Escalation Blog Tour - guest post by Stephen Tremp

SUPERNOVAS

Few words in the English language can evoke the WOW! Factor quite like Supernova. There have been bands, songs, and comic book superheroes named after this type of exploding star.

Supernovae occur at the end of a star's life when its furnace runs out of fuel. Because gravity then overcomes the star's ability to remain puffed up, there is a violent collapse, followed by an explosion that produces radioactive elements such as nickel and cobalt. Most of the light we see from a supernova is emitted as those radioactive elements decay, so the brightness falls sharply over a period of weeks.

Incidentally, all the iron in your blood came from the decay of radioactive nickel manufactured in a stellar explosion. So most of the atoms in your body were once in the interiors of stars. Reference In January 2014, a Type 1a Supernova in Messier 82, otherwise known as the Cigar Galaxy which is about 12 million light years from the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear) was discovered by students at the University College London. Some scientists call this a potential Holy Grail as it may give valuable insight into Dark Energy (more on this in a future post). It is positioned between the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper. This rare cosmic event would be visible through a telescope any amateur stargazer could buy at a store.

We see this light 11.4 million years after the explosion happened, because of the time light takes to reach our galaxy. So it was a really special time in M82 11.4 million years ago. Reference

Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or months. During this interval a supernova can radiate as much energy as the Sun is expected to emit over its entire life span. Reference: Reference

A star can go supernova in one of two ways:
Type I supernova: star accumulates matter from a nearby neighbor until a runaway nuclear reaction ignites.
Type II supernova: star runs out of nuclear fuel and collapses under its own gravity Reference: Reference

Did You Know: A supernova occurs in our Milky Way Galaxy about twice every hundred years. This may seem to be a rare occurence. But since there are about 30-40 million spiral galaxies in the universe, this translates to a supernova happening somewhere about once every two seconds.

Supernova Fun Facts:
1. Some supernovas become black holes.
2. When a star explodes, it shoots out billions of atoms into space, where they form a huge cloud of dust called a nebula.
3. Most of the carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, silicon, and iron that we have on Earth originally came from a supernova explosion.
4. In 1054 AD, astronomers in China and the Islamic Empire recorded a supernova (they noticed a star so bright you could see it in the daylight). That supernova is now the Crab Nebula.
5. If a supernova is one light year away, you will have one year to prepare for your eminent doom.
6. Even though one day our sun will die, it is not large enough to go all supernova on us. It will simply expand into a Red Giant and consume the Earth. So you can go to sleep in peace knowing you are safe from dying from our sun going supernova on you. Reference

Stephen Tremp is the author of the Breakthrough series. Together, Breakthrough, Opening, and Escalation follow the lives of the unlikely participants from innocence to a coming of age through sacrifice, betrayal, passion, lust, unconditional love, and hope. Escalation will appeal to fans of modern-day science fiction, paranormal, action, horror, and even romance.

Stop by Stephen’s Blog for more information on the Breakthrough series.

To download Escalation: The Adventures of Chase Manhattan CLICK HERE.

If you think this post is worthy, please give it a Tweet or a Facebook share.

For those who know there is far more beyond our four dimensional continuum than our five senses can perceive.

* * * * *

Don't forget my HUGE Speculative Fiction Giveaway celebrating 500 followers. You could win a grand prize pack of books donated by 14 amazing authors!