Is 78 people enough of a gene pool?

The generally accepted number is 5000. BUt that number assumes that this is a large family group and people are more or less related either by birth or marriage. If that was the case though, couples would have to be assigned to prevent genetic diseases.

With unrelated people, you could have a lower number, and people could pair up however they please, but I would think 78 is still way too low. I’s go with a couple of thousand.

You also have to have enough people to make two smaller colonies rather than one large one, to prevent a total wipe out in case of natural disaster.

I have to say no. There's too many examples of animals whittled into the double-digits, and inspite of everything we do, they still eventually fall into extinction. Assuming a lot of these people will NOT mate, will NOT produce kids or will simply die before getting old enough to do so (as will a lot of the kids who come later), a good solid number is 7,500.

"When inbreeding effects are included, estimates of MVP (Minimum Viable Population) for many species are in the thousands. Based on a meta-analysis of reported values in the literature for many species, Traill et al. reported a median MVP of 4,169 individuals.[5]"

Not really

Neal Stephenson's Seveneves explores the idea of a society starting based on seven mothers.

However, there are numerous anthropological articles written about evolutionary bottle necks. You might want to read those articles, as they might bring up possible problems for your novel's protagonists to overcome.

This pop-science article say the number is 160.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1936-magic-...

8 in Alabama

Most of our ultra-rich nobility is the product of in-breeding. They INTENTIONALLY married cousins, nieces, and nephews as a means to keep noble blood lines pure. You can argue that caused a lot of defects, but the reality is, you aren't guaranteed any defects just because of in-breeding. All in-breeding does is increase the probability of otherwise recessed genes coming forward. If you have relatively "clean" gene pools to begin with, it isn't that big of a deal. (BTW, lookup the Wikipedia entry for INBREEDING.)

No it’s not