A severe disaster could cause total collapse of society and lack of food. Think like the aftermath of a full nuclear war between two large super powers, or an e

A severe disaster could cause total collapse of society and lack of food. Think like the aftermath of a full nuclear war between two large super powers, or an electromagnetic storm hitting earth, or a man made virus that wipes out half the population and has the other half hiding indoors scared to go outside - borders closed and massive quarantines. None of these things is particularly likely to happen IMO. But if they did happen, you suddenly have a large portion of people not being fed. When people aren't being fed, you get uprisings, wars, and desperate people joining the roving bands of marauders that the article talks about. But man, the Earth currently produces so much food. It's incredible really how much we can do with so few humans, with modern agriculture. Most of it goes to animals, and in a time of need we could slaughter them and eat the corn directly. It would be really, really hard to seriously damage the food output of Earth - or at least first world countries. And it's only going to increase with technology like genetic engineering, super efficient robot greenhouses, or microorganisms bred to produce things like sugar 20x cheaper than conventional agriculture.