In The Walking Dead’s sprawling post-apocalyptic zombie story, humanity is utterly decimated, and the entire world is brought to its knees in an especially chaotic and bloody way, with only a relatively small handful of people surviving the original zombie outbreak. And after being asked to give a ballpark number about how many civilians made it past the initial plague sans craving brains, series creator Robert Kirkman gives a definitive answer that fans might find surprising.

Memorably kicking off the fall of humankind by following series protagonist, Rick Grimes, after he wakes up from a coma in an abandoned hospital, The Walking Dead continued to put its cast through the wringer time and time again, killing off almost as many characters as it introduced.

And while it can be assumed that the amount of people who perished when the dead came back to life to savor the living easily range in the hundreds of millions, the real tally is even more staggering, with Kirkman confirming that a mere 1.6 million people in total survived the original zombie outbreak!

Less Than Two Million People Initially Survived The Zombie Apocalypse

A precise survivor count revealed by Kirkman in The Walking Dead #177’s “Letter Hacks” column after a reader poses the question, “Approximately how many humans do you figure are left on earth?” Kirkman jokes that he tries to be equal parts honest and misleading when answering these types of questions but ultimately opts for a direct response to this ask instead. Telling fans, “It’s about 1.6 million humans total, worldwide” that initially made it out alive, this means that an unfathomable amount of people — far more than fans might have guessed — are either dead as doornails or shuffling around the country as walkers; two fates that are one and the same.

The fact that less than two million people survived the purge of the human race is a mind-blowing canon fact that only gets more depressing the more fans think about it. The implications alone of losing over 95% of the world’s population are far too great and far too numerous to count, with Kirkman even going on to note that “There are VAST dead zones out there,” referring to the uncountable locations around the globe that are devoid human life, or worse, the towns, cities, and suburbs entirely populated by members of the undead horde and nothing else.

The Zombie Outbreak Decimated Earth’s Population

So while it’s incomprehensible to think about losing that many people all thanks to the dead coming back to life, the zombie apocalypse would be the one cataclysmic event that could wipe out almost all of humanity — complete and total nuclear war probably being the only other exception. Somehow the remaining survivors of The Walking Dead eventually found a way to continue living despite the odds stacked against them, and in an effort to repopulate and re-establish the world, 1.6 million is as good a start as any, especially considering the alternative.