Trivial Pursuit #3 (which means you can't Google!): What are the five largest countries on Earth by population?

China and India are definitely probably the first two. Then…I’m gonna say…USA? Then probably Mexico, then I’d guess that either Brazil or Indonesia are probably in fifth.

My answer:
1. India
2. China
3. United States
4. Mexico
5. Indonesia (or Brazil)

You can’t be the largest by population, only by territory.

If you mean “the most populated”, then:

1.China
2. India
3.Japan
4.Saudi Arabia
5.USA

* my guess

China
India
US
Indonesia
Brazil

1 China
2. Kansas
.....I don’t know! I just know for sure that China is way over populated.

Indonesia @Espiritus_Corvus? Really?

@Dutchess_III

I’m reasonably certain that Indonesia has more people than Kansas.

That just went over your head, didn’t it @Brian1946.

I just never thought of Indonesia as being that populous. My kids have Indonesian genes.

@Dutchess_III my boyfriend is half Indonesian. It’s a huge country, like half the size of the United States. I think it’s also the largest majority Muslim country in the world.

But it’s a chain of islands….

Yeah, like 14,000 islands.

In no particular order…
China
Indonesia
Green Bay

It’s a bit unfair for me to play this. I check on world pop and starvation stats regularly hoping for good news. There is a lot of effort to distribute food equitably and I am curious as to the effect. So, this was an easy quiz for me.

But I almost blew it with Indonesia. I first put Malaysia because I get the two mixed up sometimes. If I hadn’t checked the answers above mine just before editing time ran out, I would have fucked up.

Actually, 6000. That’s a bunch of islands, though.

Then we would have to have punished you @Espiritus_Corvus!

So more people can play, before giving the answers I think I should leave the question open a day

I like best the discussion around the answers, like the Indonesia talk above.

And when zenvelo said USS Arizona must have been built after 1912 because Arizona became a state that year.

According to the CIA world factbook, there are more than 17,000 islands. Only about 950 permanently inhabited islands, though.

OK @Call_Me_Jay.

Do you have a link to that AnonomousAccount?

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/id.html

under “geography – note”

so, per this source, there are 6,000 inhabited islands, like you said.

The total landmass of Indonesia is approximately the same as the state of Texas.

If it’s the size of Texas, it seems odd that it could be one of the most populated countries. But I believe you guys.

That’s a handy tool, that link @AnonymousAccount8.

In just about every war before WWI, up to 25% of the civilian populations died of starvation and diseases related to malnurishment, including infection due to system weakness and lack of potable water. These were non-combatants, victims of roving armies commandeering food, destroying crops like locusts and destroying water sources in an attempt to deny these things to the opposing armies. Many times these populations belonged to the same nation as the armies that took their food. Railroads and more efficient military logistics changed all that.

I want to give you a GA, @Espiritus_Corvus, but that is so very depressing.

I think EC’s comment was for the #2 trivial pursuit thread though. Not wrong just misapplied.

Oops. ^^Correct. Too late now.

China
India
Russia
United States
Mexico

I checked @Espiritus_Corvus’ answer. I did not realize that Brazil had such a large population, though given its size, that should not have been too surprising. I was also surprised to see that Russia is ranked at 9th. Wasn’t the Soviet Union ranked third? The split obviously had a noticeable effect on their population.

Despite its great landmass, Russia has a population that is less than half of the United States.

Answer time!

@AnonymousAccount8 was really close in the first response and then @Espiritus_Corvus nailed it in the third.

Here’s the top ten

01 China…............1,382,323,332
02 India…............1,326,801,576
03 United States…....324,118,787
04 Indonesia…........260,581,100
05 Brazil…...........209,567,920
06 Pakistan….........192,826,502
07 Nigeria…..........186,987,563
08 Bangladesh….......162,910,864
09 Russia…...........143,439,832
10 Mexico…...........128,632,004

I was surprised that India is so close to China. I guess that one-child policy worked. For the top 10 I would not have guessed Mexico, I thought it was below 100M.

Results from List of independent countries and inhabited dependent territories by total population, based on estimates and projections published by the United Nations in the 2015

Awesome Trivial Pursuit, @Call_Me_Jay! I really learned some stuff.