" I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature."
Same as the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop: three.
The early Don Johnson movie, “A Boy and His Dog”, showed some ideas on how to survive. In the underground city of Topeka Kansas they wanted him to help replenish the population. The method was a bit different than he thought it was going to be:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072730/
There will be the apocalypse.
Only a few will survive the carnage.
Jesus will rescue the Jews from imminent extinction.
He will rule the world from Jerusalem.
Jewish women will have babies by the bus load.
The obvious answer is “One.”
The experiment has already been done: Mitochondrial Eve and her sperm donor.
"What?? HIM??!!
(Breeding population decreases by one, but, then what do you do with the perp?)
Five in the Appalachians or MS or AL.
Two .... one of God’s each ... male and female, about 18 or 20 years old (or as I suspect, about 33 ... but that’s a different theological theory)
just one is needed to survive ME!!!... ideally there would be about 1,000 women to care for my needs and a hand full of guys so I would not over dose on all that estrogen.
>>” I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.”
Wouldn’t work today.
They would announce the future is female and say that they don’t want to be held back by raising a child.
Related (a little), SpaceX successfully landed Starship SN 15 yesterday, so Elon is making progress toward his goal(s)...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9eoubnO-pE
The real issue is food and water supplies. Security from others might need numbers, however it just gets back to the food supply for any given number.
So a spacecraft travels more than 6000 years to get to Proxima Centauri. Then what? They find that there’s nothing interesting there and come back? When their descendants reach earth no one has any knowledge of the project and nobody can understand English as it had been spoken 12,000 years earlier? At least maybe they can stay in touch with the people back on earth via Facebook.
Two very healthy ones.
The last time, humans were down to about 30,000. So, I am going with me and 29,999 others.
can’t guarantee anything but if you give me some contact info i may be able to give you some results of the situation if it occurs in my timeframe... 😁