In Fallout 3, and some other stories (none of which come to mind right now, sorry), it seems that too many people die for the world to even exist.
For example, the people in Andale probably eat 10 people per year each, which would mean that they'd have to catch and kill someone every few days just to stay alive. The Raiders, too- there's tons of them, and they've probably killed at least one person on average. Every mercenary has probably also killed before.
The Brotherhood of Steel. One of them dies every minute or so that they're fighting, even if it's just in the Arlington Library or on the Mall. The Family, they'd have to kill SO MANY PEOPLE to live off blood. Mr. Tenpenny, he kills stuff all day from his balcony.

It just seems to me, that if everyone went around killing people all the time, there wouldn't be enough kids to grow up and have more kids, and there wouldn't be enough advlts to make those kids. So the entire wasteland should be empty by now.

Has this struck anybody else as strange?

2 words:

Little Lamplight.

Remember, it's called game scaling. The amount of people you see is only representative of what's "actually" there.

Besides, the Family normally goes after cattle; not people. Though People do seem to be a "preferred" choice.

By 2077, the United States probably had at least a billion people. So, it's safe to say that even with the 90% fatality rate, there's plenty more where that came from.

Remember in Fallout 1, even though you only saw a few dozen people in NCR, they are supposed to have a population of 5000. Though, I think Bethesda got lazy, and could have definitely added more people to the mix.

Well there's that, and making the game efficient by reducing the amount of NPCs that are around at a certain time.

As said, the game is scaled, and there are tons of people you're not seeing.

Also, per video game logic the player character is seeing every single interesting thing happening, including deaths and battles, which means your perspective is skewed. In the US in real life there is a murder like every hour or something, but we don't see or hear about them... in a game, you notice every single one.

The argument that makes it valid is that you never walked around in the entire NCR You only walked bits of it. The same applies to most settlements.
However, i agree Beth failed.... alot.....

They did it to keep the frame rate down. Don't think a settlement like megaton loading with... 200+ NPCs would be easy on what was running it.

It would not have been easy on most PCs OR the consols, people really need to step back and just remember its a mere representation of the total population. In the game NWN you walk through EACH district, but there is hardly a population comaritively, yet its a large city. You don't take things so litteral as you see them. If you still dont like that, then if your on the PC, make a mod that fills the population up. Simple.

Lets se:
*tad optmization
*tad less poly
*who said there was going to be 200 on the screen?

In case you didn't notice, people are capable of exponential reproduction. Each generation after the war could very well have been twice the size of the prior population.

There aren't that many people in the game because it's a videogame that has hardware and software limitations.

Hell, Rivet City doesn't even have more people than Megaton but it's supposed to be much bigger. It's a matter of perspective, here.

And im glad it's scaled down, I already get enough lag as it is.

Techniclly...people -can't- live off blood, as it lacks vital nurtrients, and it made of almost all plasma, which is worthless for human consumption. Our bodies aren't set up to process it, really, so that alone makes no sense.

If you want more people in the Wasteland use http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6044 mod.

Again, it's because Fallout 3 would run too slow on older machines.

Condensed world for technical reasons. 'Nuff said.