8 women servicing 800 men?

This way, when a child was born, no one man could have bragging rights or a feeling of superiority over the other men because there would be no way to know which man was the true father. And not knowing who the real father was, all of the men had a shared responsibility of parenting the child.

The purpose was to avoid conflict amongst the men as much as to rebuild the human population.

Also, it would be better to know who the fathers were so as to minimize inbreeding in the future.

And I would have thought that breeding new mouths to feed would not be a high priority until after the virus threat had been neutralized, or some sustainable sources of food and energy had been secured.

That would be ideal conditions for "being fruitful and multiplying" as it were, but circumstances were that at that point in time, there were only 8 female researchers/technicians stationed in Antarctica compared with 800 men, so they had to adapt. (I was surprised the ratio was that skewed toward men though--it probably would be pretty skewed but not that skewed--although this was made in 1980.)

Plus you wouldn't want to "multiply" very fast, until more hospitable and arable areas of the world became safe again at least (due to development of the vaccine)--whatever provisions were stored at the Antarctic bases came from elsewhere, and would only go so far. I'd have probably foregone having any children until sustainable sources of food could once again be secured (a point dangus made above). I guess if push came to shove there was plenty of seal and penguin meat around there though, and fish--vegetation though, not so much.


"No more half-measures."