Seaweed as a Resilient Food Solution After a Nuclear War

Abstract

Abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios such as a nuclear winter caused by the burning of cities in a nuclear war, an asteroid/comet impact or an eruption of a large volcano inject large amounts of particles in the atmosphere, which limit sunlight. This could decimate agriculture as it is practiced today. We therefore need resilient food sources for such an event. One promising candidate is seaweed, as it can grow quickly in a wide range of environmental conditions. To explore the feasibility of seaweed after nuclear war, we simulate the growth of seaweed on a global scale using an empirical model based on Gracilaria tikvahiae forced by nuclear winter climate simulations. We assess how quickly global seaweed production could be scaled to provide a significant fraction of global food demand. We find seaweed can be grown in tropical oceans, even after nuclear war. The simulated growth is high enough to allow a scale up to an equivalent of 45% of the global human food demand (spread among food, animal feed, and biofuels) in around 9–14 months, while only using a small fraction of the global ocean area. The main limiting factor being the speed at which new seaweed farms can be built. The results also show that the growth of seaweed increases with the severity of the nuclear war, as more nutrients become available due to increased vertical mixing. This means that seaweed has the potential to be a viable resilient food source for abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios.

Open-Source Flexible Material Tensile Testing Apparatus

“…A combination of resilient foods could avoid mass starvation [7,8], but many are at the early stages of development and the ramp rates necessary are challenging during a disaster. A promising candidate resilient food that is appropriate for a low-technology setting and could be ramped up quickly [13] is algae [14] and seaweed [15,16]. Seaweed is an established human food [17]; the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has been encouraging seaweed production for many years and the seaweed industry has been growing [18].…”

“…Seaweed does not compete with land or freshwater and does not use pesticides [19]. Seaweed can maintain good yields in low-tech settings [15,16], and it may be resistant to high UV radiation levels, which is expected from ASRSs [20][21][22]. Remarkably, seaweed can meet all human protein needs [23] and globally 48 million km 2 are suitable for seaweed production [24].…”

Can foraging for earthworms significantly reduce global famine in a catastrophe?

“…These solutions should be well-suited for contributing to an adequate food supply for the greatest number of people even in the worst scenarios." Numerous promising resilient food solutions have been proposed, such as ramping up seaweed production [5], crop relocation, extracting edible calories from killed leaves, growing mushrooms on dead trees, fishing [1], repurposing paper mills to produce lignocellulosic sugar [6], crop relocation [7], and building methane single cell protein factories [8]. Resilient foods also increase the chance that trade is maintained, which would dramatically increase the number of people fed [7].…”