Population Simulator Launch - Visualizing the Fertility Crisis

Every time I saw a number like "Korea's fertility rate: 0.72" in the news, it didn't feel real. So I decided to visualize it myself. I wanted to show just how serious 0.72 is by putting it next to other countries. The result is Population Simulator, which I launched on December 28.

Table 1

I built the 3D globe with Three.js. It's WebGL-based, so it runs fine on desktop, but frames drop a bit on mobile. Rendering 31 countries' data at once has limits I can't fully avoid. It needs optimizing, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

Sorted from lowest, Korea is #1 at 0.72... #2 is Hong Kong (0.77), #3 Singapore (0.85). Knowing the numbers and actually lining up 31 countries side by side turned out to be different things. Run the 100-year simulation and there are plenty of countries where the population falls below half. I felt a little choked up putting the data together.

Honestly, I didn't build this to make money. I just wanted to make it. I could put AdSense on it, but more than that, I hope people look at this data and feel a bit of the weight of what's actually happening.