Beset by aging population and low birth rates, Japan is facing a slow-moving crisis: researchers calculated that it could become extinct in 1,000 years!
Academics in the northern city of Sendai said that Japan's population of children aged up to 14, which now stands at 16.6 million, is shrinking at the rate of one every 100 seconds.
Their extrapolations pointed to a Japan with no children left within a millennium.
"If the rate of decline continues, we will be able to celebrate the Children's Day public holiday on May 5, 3011 as there will be one child," said Hiroshi Yoshida, an economics professor at Tohoku University.
"But 100 seconds later there will be no children left," he said. "The overall trend is towards extinction, which started in 1975 when Japan's fertility rate fell below two."
http://xkcd.com/605/
Ever seen The Ghost in the Shell anime? Ever wonder why almost all the charicters are drawn as westerners not Asians? It's the future, as seen by the author.
There's a population problem coming up but not the one most expect.
The political capital will probably move back to Kyoto.
Decline in population overall -- plus a sort of Japanese Diaspora after Fukushima -- might leave remaining Japanese in desperate need of manpower. So, should North Korea relax its borders even for a few months, there will be a massive surge of Koreans flooding into Japan.
These rural North Koreans will lack skills to deal sophisticated technology, and so will be the first to fall to the the Robot Uprising.
If this trend continues, I'll starve to death within weeks.
Just a heads up in case you thought otherwise.
This person has taken a couple of dots on a trend line and extended those out as if the trend itself has no causes or contributing factors that can ever change.
When I was in high school, I had no job. In college, I got a job that paid about $100/wk. If I connect those two points and extend them to today, I should be making a bazillion dollars a week.