At a time, there was 1 billion people on earth, then it escalated to 7 billion, and capped at the point of 200 billion. The earth could not sustain such amount of people and slowly died out, so the govermwnts of the world decided to try and colonize mars; it sent improtant people: politicians and government officials, then scientists, and finally the rich. The rest of the world had to fend for itself; the population now lies at an all low 100 million in the whole world. Not all hope is loss for the remaining few, every 20 years a space ship comes down and selects 100 people that are deemed worthy to be sent to father earth. (This is one of the Three books in the Trilogy