Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-14138255-20140926004722/@comment-226878-20140927034103

Shadow at Morning wrote: I still find those numbers hard to believe. There should be a number of normal Hunting academies, of which Beacon et al are the best. 5000 Hunters worldwide seems rather insufficient, unless they've got backup every step of the way. Too few for Remnant's population, even allowing for it to be significantly smaller than Earth's, especially, as you said, with casualties.

I don't remember there being any implication that Hunters had to graduate from Beacon or another school of its tier to become Huntsmen. That's more than likely simply Ozpin's issue. Ironwood would probably not require his own students to study for so long before joining his infantry. It's likely that attending a starter school like Signal/Sanctum would be enough if circumstances were dire. The fact that the world has "so few" schools is just the sign of its era of peace in the world. Grimm activity is apparently experiencing quite a lull.

I also have a theory that the people of Remnant did not simply come from Dust. I think that Remnant is actually comprised of what was left of their species after wars tore apart their world (the shattered moon) and that this place they call Remnant is what once was their moon now terra-formed. I am impressing plot from my own story (not a RWBY fanfiction) into this theory, but still RWBY entertains a lot of science fantasy... which does not get along well with classic fantasy which requires the audience to take everything at face value. Eventually, science fantasy has to dig in and explain the logic behind events, people, and things. So saying man came from Dust, in a science fantasy setting, would be more than likely a metaphor or exaggeration.

If any of that is true, it would mean that Remnant's population is relatively young and significantly less than that of our own world.