Ridiculously low number of Metalborn (Bands of Mourning Spoilers)

[DeadFencer]

Did anyone else think the estimations for the number of metalborn were ridiculously low? One in a thousand people is a misting? And even less are ferrings? For one thing, I feel like ferrings should be the more common of the two, since a fifth of the people who survived the Catacendre were Terris. Mistings at the one in a thousand rate seems like it should be during the final empire, when only half the metals were known, snapping was harder, and nobles and skaa couldn't intermarry. We even saw that more than one in a thousand were mistings when preservation snapped skaa at the end of HoA, and skaa weren't even supposed to have allomancy then!

[Tellingdwar he/him]

Yeah, I had the impression that post-Catacendre it was more like one in ten in the high end and one in a hundred on the low end. Not that I have any canon source for that..

[natc]

While a fifth were Terris, the last of the Keepers was gone when Sazed Ascended. The surviving Terris would have no feruchemy or nearly so, and remember, the Terris of the Final Empire were themselves descendants of Terris with no feruchemy who survived Rashek's Ascension, as everyone who did became mistwraiths. Obviously carriers survived, but the blood, I presume, has been greatly diluted.

[Aiel Heart]

Diluded blood is probably the answer to both the mistings and ferrers being "rare". They were already seeing the effects of it in the old days, and this is generations later. Though let's note that at the end Marasi makes this sound common compared to what the masked people (can't remember their name at the moment) have

[Landis963 he/him]

I thought it was more like "any given Metalborn is one in a thousand."  It might still amount to 16% of the population, but given that you have Mistings, Ferrings, and Twinborn all competing for the same space, there's still some dilution taking place.  

[fyodor]

I think that any given kind of misting was one in one thousand, rather than mistings generally.

 

 

Otherwise the numbers don't work out. You'd end up with one in 16,000 for any given allomantic ability and say Feruchemy is half as common, something like one in 32,000 for any feruchemical ability, or one in five hundred million for any given twinborn combination.

 

 

Where if the 1/1000 refers to a given kind of misting or ferring you end up with 1/2,000,0000 for crashers or somewhat less if the lines don't fully interbreed.  Elendel has a population of about 5,000,000. Assuming another 5,000,000 elsewhere and say half the post-ascension population being alive today, imperfect knowledge, record keeping, etc, it's about right.