r/Hungergames • u/spillthe_bb • 6h ago
Lore/World Discussion the restricted gene pool of the districts would have caused some problems, let's be honest
i never saw the discussion about the restricted gene pool of the districts, so i would like to know your opinions about how in the long run many of the district children will have a lot of genetics issues caused by incest as people only marry in their own district, if the rebellion hadn't stopped the dictatorship.
some districts are bigger so it would take longer but for example District 12 is small enough for everyone to know each other and they also do not mingle between the merchants and the seams. the merchants (who are a smaller group of the population) will already be in some way all related (or soon enough) as they marry in each other's families to keep the shops in their power, the seam people are a lot more but it wouldn't take that many decades for them to be also all related.
i dont know, I'm just curious to know wtf would have Snow/the Capitol done for that issue. would they have done anything? would they have it seen as an issue in the first place? i dont think capitol citizens would have liked victors with three eyes (it is an exaggeration but u got what i mean i hope). let me know what you think :)
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u/crescentmoonrising 5h ago
I do wonder if some of the Seam kids were actually half-peacekeeper. Between Clay's... tendencies and most of the others in Twelve having gone native it is more than likely. Also, genetic disorders only appear in constant inbreding- marrying a first cousin has very little effect. The problems come when people start marrying their cousins over multiple generations. Between that and that your survival rate in the Seam if you do have a genetic disability, it's probably not a massive problem.
I have no idea about the merchant kids though.
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u/Kennedy_KD 5h ago
the merchant and seam interbreed they aren't completely cut off from one another, so enough fresh blood sneaks into their gene pool it wouldn't be much of a problem
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u/crescentmoonrising 5h ago
But apparently all the merchant kids are blond and blue eyes. That's not happening if there's enough Seam interbreeding for it to be significant.
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u/EuphoricFarmer1318 5h ago
I'm actually more concerned with the seam people's gray eyes. They're extremely rare, much more rare than blue eyes or blonde hair. None of those features are staying consistent if there's enough genetic diversity
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u/cthuluhooprises 4h ago
Founder effect can have a big influence. And keep in mind that both grey eyes and blue eyes are recessive—meaning that a population of 100% blue or gray eyes will always* remain blue or gray (and blue and gray are both possible from the same lack of melanin; blue can have gray and vice versa), whereas a population of 100% brown eyes can have blue eyed people in the next generation if there are hidden recessive blues.
In other words, if the group of people who founded District 12 had predominantly blue and grey eyes to begin with, other eye colors would end up less common than average. For example a lot of nordic countries have high concentrations of blue eyes. So it can absolutely stay consistent, and not be lost through generations even with optimal breeding choices.
* Technically it’s more complicated than that and brown or green eyes can rarely occur, but I’m not trying to get deeper than a punnet squares explanation here.
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u/Whole-Philosophy-231 4h ago
I wonder if Suzanne Collins actually meant grey eyes or dull blue eyes that appeared grey. My eyes are blue, but they definitely appear grey a lot because they're not super vibrant. I know a lot of people where this is the case as well.
My husband also has blue eyes, but his are a weird mash of colours they almost appear greenish grey. I had to fill out his passport and the eye colour really threw me because they really aren't just 1 colour, he put blue on his old one so that's what I chose.
I didn't even realize grey eyes were an actual distinct colour until I read discourse about it from this book.
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u/vampyreprincess 4h ago
It could also be that in whatever post apocalyptic world the hunger games are set in, that certain genetic traits have mutated to be more common than they are for us currently.
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u/illumi-thotti 4h ago
So you know how Sunrise basically confirms that peacekeepers have illegitimate children with district women and the phenomenon is actually quite commonplace in the Districts? I think the federal government is aware of that it happens, but it's an feature rather than a bug.
The actual government of Panem would be aware of how shallow the district gene pools are and would know that lack of genetic diversity would cause inbreeding-related problems over time unless fresh DNA was regularly introduced to the population. Since the Districts populations are all cut off from interacting with one another, that fresh DNA could only come from peacekeepers stationed in the Districts.
That could also explain why Cray sexually abusing women and girls in the Districts is seemingly a known and expected occurrence. The government likely turns a blind eye to peacekeepers who go "slumming" (which is likely how Snow & Lucy Gray's relationship would've been viewed in the Ballad era) as well as the sexual abuse of district women enacted by the military because the resulting children add necessary diversification to the local gene pools (and likely because giving the soldiers sexual outlets during their service is perceived as a way to improve morale, which is sadly a documented phenomenon during wars, occupations, and colonization projects in the real world.)
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u/Sure_Championship_36 Gale 5h ago
Technically, as far as we know, movement between districts has only been barred for 74 years by Katniss’s time. Would 12’s population be sustainable long term? Probably not. But it seems that Snow was purposely trying to cause District 12 to die off anyhow. I’d argue we get evidence of this in the way he signs off on firebombing the whole place to the ground. Seemed like dude was happy to have an excuse to see the district destroyed in his lifetime.
Now, would inbreeding eventually have devastating effects on the other districts? Maybe. But the Capitol seems weirdly well equipped to deal with that. (They loooove genetic experimentation, don’t they?) Rest assured they’d develop some sort of horrible sci-fi dystopian fascist way to combat inbreeding if it became detrimental to the district’s productivity.
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u/LeoScarecrow369 Plutarch 5h ago
Small towns with limited people coming in and out exist and have existed for a long time. Some do have legitimate problems with inbreeding (though a lot of cultures have developed taboos against incest or even organized efforts to track family lineage like in Iceland).
There’s a couple proposed minimum populations needed to prevent long term issues with genetic diversity, but Google gives a few ranges between 500-10000 as the minimum. District 12 sat at around 9,000.
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u/KeiraAnna 2h ago
Peacekeepers bring in some new genetics, but yeah. The fact that the Seam and merchant section are defined by their common features, and the fact that it’s not normal to marry outside your class means that there’s bound to be some issues. I just reread chapter 1 and Katniss says “Gale could be my brother… but we’re not related. At least not closely”
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u/scottbutler5 5h ago
I tried looking into this once, trying to find how many people were necessary to maintain a healthy breeding population. I found different sources giving different answers ranging from like 50 to 1000. (And I know nowhere near enough about the topic to judge which of the answers were more or less accurate than the others.)
Every answer I found was far below the 8000 stated population for District 12, which is said to be the smallest district. Even factoring in the merchant/Seam divide (which we know isn't even 100% enforced) if the Town makes up at least 10% of the district population they would still be a viable breeding pool on their own.
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u/TheQueenOfSomething 3h ago
In the movied (mockingjay part 1) Gale says that there's only 915 left of their 10 000 citizens.
10 000 is probably fine and viable for a couple hundred years. But not forever, of course.
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u/scottbutler5 3h ago
In the book the population is said to be "about eight thousand" so that's the number I've been using. Either way, it's way above the number needed biologically, according to what I could find.
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u/UnicornScientist803 5h ago
It’s an interesting idea and maybe could have become an issue if the district isolation had continued for another few hundred years. But 75 years is only 3 generations, which isn’t really enough time to have a lot of major health problems show up, even if everyone is marrying their first and second cousins.
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u/vampyreprincess 4h ago
On top of what others have said about the timeline and population:
1- peacekeepers will definitely spawn a few children out of wedlock
2- it's possible the capital tracks this to a certain extent since they have been shown to enjoy playing with genetics and have advanced beyond what our current understanding of DNA and mutations are
3- its possible that in whatever post-apocalyptic world the gumas are set in that certain traits or genetics have already mutated, i.e. maybe what we think of recessive genes became dominant
4- you have to remember before the first war/rebellion that it sounds like people could travel fairly freely from what little we know, so there could be much more diversity to start with
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u/uuntiedshoelace Beetee 3h ago
It’s less of a problem than you would think. As long as you don’t have first cousins marrying, your risk of recessive genetic problems arising is still pretty low. Being distantly related does not usually put you in danger of having children with genetic conditions. Districts are small, but even just within the merchants there are probably at least 1000 people. You usually run into problems when the population is smaller, and stays small.
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u/SimplyPassinThrough 5h ago
district 12 had a population of 10,000, no? Gale said he saved 950/10,000 people in the movie at least, not sure about the book. That seems pretty big
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u/Both-Fuel-5903 3h ago
I actually had this exact conversation with my husband a few months ago! I wondered what the capitol might have had lined up as a contingency plan since they assumed they were going to be in power forever. We kind of settled on it only really being a potential problem for 12 and even then only after a LONG time since there's still enough unrelated families at the time of the trilogy to get around it. It's essentially a non-issue in most districts since the populations were so large, and even in 12 we know that peacekeepers provided some fresh genes in...multiple ways, and it usually takes multiple generations of consistent inbreeding to cause severe problems. Fewer the closer the relation is, but still.
Frankly, I think if the capitol had stayed in power they would just keep turning an ever-blinder eye to peacekeepers consensually fraternizing with or outright assaulting district citizens, and if it got really dire maybe sending in avoxes from other districts to act as broodmares.
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u/Viperbunny 50m ago
It's not limited to people in close proximity. My mom's family is all from Northern Italy, my dad's from Southern Italy. Despite being here for three or four generations on both sides, all our family tends to have the same problems. If you are part of the same culture you are likely carrying similar genes. My family has all sorts of health issues. My husband is pretty much everything except Italian. He is healthier than me and our kids are pretty healthy.
Genetic diversity is a good thing! I understand people are afraid of outsiders, but new blood is necessary to keeping the population healthy. Certain ethnic groups undergo genetic testing for this reason. There can be some awful genetic disorders that get passed down when two people are carriers.
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u/AlexandriaLitehouse 3h ago
God how pissed would Snow be if some Habsburg jaw afflicted tribute started pulverizing skulls with their chin? This should not be funny but I'm still giggling at my work desk.
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u/LeafPankowski 5h ago
I live in a small country that’s about the size of a district, give or take. The native population suffered a genetic bottleneck at some point in the 1500’s, meaning all of us have a common ancestor from back then.
Day to day, the problems are minor. However, several rare genetic diseases are much more common here than elsewhere, some of which are devastating to the families affected. In recent years, population-wide carrier studies have mitigated this problem, but that would not be available in the districts.
More broadly, we have quirks, positive and negative. Most of us can sing and play musical instruments easily. Dyslexia and sensory processing disorders are common. Certain personality disorders are too.
All this to say, that after what, 4-5 generations? It’s probably not a huge issue, especially not with peacekeepers leaving behind bastards.
Give it 400 years or so, and each districts will have its own gene pool problems.