The latin word, populus.
Which means people gives us the root popul.
Words from Latin populus have something to do with people, so thats why it means population, which means how many people in a area, or region.
The subjunctive mood is the best.
The subjunctive is rarely used in colloquial English. Totally irrelevant information, but... it is a relic from Latin, where there are many uses for a subjunctive. There is even a special conditional using the subjunctive mood that expresses the exact circumstances you described, which is usually called future less vivid.
