Feeding everyone if the sun is obscured and industry is disabled

Abstract

A number of catastrophes could block the sun, including asteroid/comet impact, super volcanic eruption, and nuclear war with the burning of cities (nuclear winter). The problem of feeding 7 billion people would arise (the food problem is more severe than other problems associated with these catastrophes). Previous work has shown this is possible converting stored biomass to food if industry is present. A number of risks could destroy electricity globally, including a series of high-altitude electromagnetic pulses (HEMPs) caused by nuclear weapons, an extreme solar storm, and a super computer virus. Since industry depends on electricity, it is likely there would be a collapse of the functioning of industry and machines. Additional previous work has shown that it is technically feasible to feed everyone given the loss of industry without the loss of the sun. It is possible that one of these sun-blocking scenarios could occur near in time to one of these industry-disabling scenarios. This study analyzes food sources in these combined catastrophe scenarios. Food sources include extracting edible calories from killed leaves, growing mushrooms on leaves and dead trees, and feeding the residue to cellulose-digesting animals such as cattle and rabbits. Since the sun is unlikely to be completely blocked, fishing and growing ultraviolet (UV) and cold-tolerant crops in the tropics could be possible. The results of this study show these solutions could enable the feeding of everyone given minimal preparation, and this preparation should be a high priority now.

Potential of microbial protein from hydrogen for preventing mass starvation in catastrophic scenarios

“…Current future food security research concentrates on addressing incremental factors such as population increase, resource scarcity, resource depletion and climate change ( Henchion et al., 2017 ). Some estimates, however, predict around 80% chance of a food shock that reduces global food production by about 10% and about 10% chance of total food production loss, both within this century ( Bailey et al., 2015 ; Denkenberger and Pearce, 2014 ; Denkenberger et al., 2017 ). Scenarios that present an approximate 10% food production loss such as severe pollinator loss or abrupt climate change could produce mass starvation, because even disasters that do not affect the food system directly (like the COVID-19 pandemic) can considerably increase the share of population at risk of starvation ( Beasley, 2020 ).…”

“…Sun-blocking global catastrophes are the most extreme food shocks that could potentially affect humanity in the near future, because they entail almost complete food production loss for humanity by making conventional agriculture unfeasible globally for many years ( Denkenberger et al., 2017 ). They are selected as a limiting case scenario to assess the feasibility of potential solutions to food shocks because a solution that works in such extreme circumstances could potentially be useful in shocks of any scale.…”

A National Pragmatic Safety Limit for Nuclear Weapon Quantities

“…Because current industrial civilization depends on finely tuned supply chains, countries could lose their industrial capacity. This means loss of fuel for tractors, artificial fertilizers, and artificial pesticides [50]. To gauge this impact on the food supply of aggressor nation data from the Central Intelligence Agency of the U.S. was used to calculate the arable land [51] per person and GDP per capita [52].…”

“…However, there are reasons why food production per hectare could be lower than preindustrial times, such as untrained labor and inadequate hand farm tools. Assuming that productivity after the shock reverts to preindustrial productivity would produce approximately 2.2 Gt/year of grain equivalent [50]. This spread over the 1.5 billion hectares of arable land yields 1.5 ton/ha/year.…”

Micronutrient Availability in Alternative Foods During Agricultural Catastrophes

“…Although it is still possible to provide for the calories necessary for human existence in the worst scenarios even without industry [20], in most cases these catastrophes would destroy industry only regionally. The majority of global industry would still function under these global catastrophic risk scenarios (particularly the six crop-killing scenarios).…”