#population size

In the first episode we see that the southern water tribe is reduced to just under 20 people. And if we want to include Hakoda and his soldiers, then we can assume that brings it up to about 50-70 people left of the southern water tribe in total. That’s so alarmingly close to total genocide of the southern tribe.

In the first season, episode 18, we get a good look at the northern water tribe’s massive city. We get an overhead view and everything, and while that city is absolutely stunning, it most likely is still not a large enough number of water tribe people. This is just one city and chances are that’s the only city that exists of the water tribe. From the infrastructure and size I can say that the city itself is capable of holding perhaps 200,000-400,000 people. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s filled to that capacity but let’s pretend that it is. Let’s also assume that there’s about 20-30 surrounding water tribe villages that extend from this city that help bring resources into the city to keep it’s economy and government running. That would add maybe 10,000-30,000 more people.

That is still insanely low.

To put it into perspective, the entirety of the fire nation’s military force could outnumber the population of the northern water tribe city alone. Now I know the poles are a large landmass and that people are more likely to live near the shores, so let’s compare it to a large land mass of a country today- Russia. Russia may have their people spread out across their country but despite there being massive chunks of empty land, Russia harbors more than one hundred million people. The tribes should have a higher population than the population of the city of chandler in Arizona.