The number of people living in the Matrix and the number of people living in Zion are both crucial to the understanding of the machines’ plans in the Matrix movies. Essentially the only two settings in the Matrix movies, the Matrix simulation, and Zion represent the mind prison and the real world, respectively. However, the scale of the Matrix simulation compared to Zion is often forgotten.
While The Matrix sees Morpheus and the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar brief both Neo and the audience on everything they need to know about Zion, the last remaining human city, it is only in The Matrix Reloaded that audiences actually see what Zion looks like. Localized as far as possible from the surface, the countless caves that form Zion use the Earth’s core as their main source of energy. The machines, on the other hand, use the humans in the Matrix as their batteries.
The Matrix films had a couple of establishing shots showing the vastness of the machines’ Power plant, and the structure where the harvesting pods are stored, but none of those ever revealed the true scale of how many humans the machines were keeping inside the Matrix simulation. Likewise, Zion’s unique architecture makes it difficult to picture how many people actually lived in the real world. Here’s a comparison between the Matrix population and Zion’s population.
How Many Humans Lived In The Matrix Simulation
When describing his feelings towards humanity and the Matrix simulation in the first Matrix movie, Agent Smith mentions “Billions of people just living out their lives, oblivious.” That line establishes that the Matrix’s population is in the billions, although no solid number is given in any of the films. That said, an early draft of The Matrix Reloaded reveals that there were 6.5 billion in the Matrix. While that specific number never made it into the actual film, 6.5 billion people living inside the Matrix does make sense considering everything that was established in the Matrix movies. Earth’s population in the real world was around 6 billion in 1999, and while a significant part of humanity was killed during the First Machine War, the machines had found a way to artificially create more humans to serve as batteries inside the Matrix.
How Many Humans Lived in Zion
At the highest point of its population, that is, right before the machines eventually attack Zion as seen in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, Zion shelters around 250,000 people. That is the same number of sentinels the machines sent to destroy Zion in The Matrix Reloaded, which means there was basically one sentinel per human attacking Zion in Reloaded and Revolutions. It’s important to notice that 250,000 represents Zion’s usual maximum population at each cycle, as every time the machines reboot the Matrix all of Zion’s population is killed.
In fact, at the end of each cycle, the Analyst gives The One an ultimatum – free 23 people from the Matrix to rebuild Zion and start a new generation of free humans or continue to fight and risk extinguishing humanity. All the fives Ones before Neo were given the same ultimatum, and all of them chose to restart the cycle by freeing 23 new people from the Matrix. Zion’s population growth from 23 to a quarter of million habitants in less than 100 years may seem abrupt, but it is important to that countless other people were later freed from the Matrix and ed Zion.
Zion’s Population Explains A Lot About The Machines’ Plans
The fact that the Matrix’s population was in the billions while only a quarter of a million lived in Zion puts in perspective how little threat humanity actually posed to the machines. Zion was never humanity’s biggest hope, it was the piece of a puzzle set up by the machines to keep humanity in check for hundreds of years. Zion’s purpose was to give the freed human a false sense of hope, which is why none of the Matrix characters, not even Morpheus or the of the Council, knew the whole truth about how many years had ed since machines took over the world. Starting with the 23 humans freed by The One, the machines only allowed Zion to grow so much before launching the sentinels to destroy the human city – thus keeping humanity in an endless loop.
