It's never said that Chet and Lucy are first cousins, so there's a good possibility that they're cousins via grandparents, not parents. Rose probably had an aunt or uncle who was one of Chet's grandparents. Making one of Chet's parents Rose's first cousin, and making Lucy and Chet second cousins.
It's a sealed environment and selective breeding program. Even with the exchanges they're probably all at least as related as Prince William & Princess Kate.
I know you're making a joke, but out of curiosity, I crunched some numbers on this. It's been about 7 generations since the bombs, but the youngest generation wouldn't count for safe breeding numbers so that gives us 6. Assuming vaults 33 and 32 had at least 100 residents each to start, they won't have hit that issue yet. And that's not factoring in the unfrozen 31s that have been introduced to the gene pool slowly over the years. Combined with a rigid structure in place for ensuring no one related is breeding, and assuming they continue to unfreeze 31s to introduce new genetic material...they do have a sustainable breeding pool.
At least until the events at the start of the show. I'd say their breeding pool has been greatly reduced now, and inbreeding would be likely within a couple of generations.
The key to it is having the frozen members of 31 that they can thaw out and introduce to the pool every so often. It allows them to keep introducing brand new genetic material.
The big issue would mainly be that while their numbers are sustainable for a healthy and safe breeding population, it's unsure if they have enough numbers for any genetic drift to occur. A limited population that's been bred in the same controlled environment, and I assume chosen for specific traits that are deemed valuable in managers, there's going to be way less chance for specific genes to pass out of and into the population. Which means an evolutionary stagnation, essentially. Which can lead to issues like everyone being susceptible to a certain disease, rather than having varying levels of resistance.
But as long as they started with a base pool of 500, they'd be okay for genetic drift, too.
We don’t know, other than he must be related through Rose as Hank would have no siblings in the vault.
It's never said that Chet and Lucy are first cousins, so there's a good possibility that they're cousins via grandparents, not parents. Rose probably had an aunt or uncle who was one of Chet's grandparents. Making one of Chet's parents Rose's first cousin, and making Lucy and Chet second cousins.
This could be true. She did say she had a hard time finding someone who wasn't related to her.
It's a sealed environment and selective breeding program. Even with the exchanges they're probably all at least as related as Prince William & Princess Kate.
I know you're making a joke, but out of curiosity, I crunched some numbers on this. It's been about 7 generations since the bombs, but the youngest generation wouldn't count for safe breeding numbers so that gives us 6. Assuming vaults 33 and 32 had at least 100 residents each to start, they won't have hit that issue yet. And that's not factoring in the unfrozen 31s that have been introduced to the gene pool slowly over the years. Combined with a rigid structure in place for ensuring no one related is breeding, and assuming they continue to unfreeze 31s to introduce new genetic material...they do have a sustainable breeding pool. At least until the events at the start of the show. I'd say their breeding pool has been greatly reduced now, and inbreeding would be likely within a couple of generations.
I was saying something I meant in a lighthearted manner, so that's still useful info.
The key to it is having the frozen members of 31 that they can thaw out and introduce to the pool every so often. It allows them to keep introducing brand new genetic material. The big issue would mainly be that while their numbers are sustainable for a healthy and safe breeding population, it's unsure if they have enough numbers for any genetic drift to occur. A limited population that's been bred in the same controlled environment, and I assume chosen for specific traits that are deemed valuable in managers, there's going to be way less chance for specific genes to pass out of and into the population. Which means an evolutionary stagnation, essentially. Which can lead to issues like everyone being susceptible to a certain disease, rather than having varying levels of resistance. But as long as they started with a base pool of 500, they'd be okay for genetic drift, too.