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Food is pretty easy, from my readings of nuclear war survival during the Cold War. E.g. a single semi-tractor trailer, long before their allowed weight was upp

by hga 10y ago

Food is pretty easy, from my readings of nuclear war survival during the Cold War. E.g. a single semi-tractor trailer, long before their allowed weight was upped to 80,000 pounds, could carry enough wheat to keep 100,000 people fed for one day. It's the water supply that would be the big killer, you can't go without it for more than a few days, and that just wouldn't be enough time to get enough to everyone. I'm not sure they'd be so successful in "pillaging and destroying any remaining food pipeline" ... how do you to that to an interstate highway? At most, to the fueling stations, but those are a fairly small scale, and I would expect easily replaced thing. But that would also help to self-limited the radius of the pillaging and destruction, keep it mostly away from the farms themselves, which aren't exactly defenseless if such is needed for only a relatively short period of time.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Its the farms that are vulnerable. Hungry thousands trampling crops looking for anything to eat. Then a breakdown of hybrid seed - that's a delicate pipeline that took generations to build, and can be destroyed in a single season of neglect. Hopeless to rebuild in time to save everyone. We'd be reduced to a percentage of our previous population. Assuming widespread social failure.
- hga 10y ago
  But many if not most cereal grain farms (plus legumes besides soybeans?), the ones that count for getting the most calories to the most people, are quite some distance from big cities. And if you only have to deal with an initial wave, you can do a Maximum Effort to keep them out of your fields, it's long term banditry where farmers by themselves inevitably lose because they can't do both at the same time. Hybrid seeds aren't used for all crops, not for wheat as I recall, I'm not sure about soybeans. Corn is of course the big one, but at least going forward humans wouldn't particularity want to eat corn if wheat is available. But I agree with your bottom line, on the problem of big cities, well, Dean Ing, in the appropriately titled novel Systemic Shock, put it this way: The American public had by turns ignored and ridiculed its cassandras: city planners, ecologists, demographers, socialists, immigrants, who had all warned against our increasing tendency to crowd into our cities. Social stress, failure of essential services, and warfare were only a few of the spectres we had granted only a passing glance. We had always found some solution to our problems, though: often at the last moment. Firmly anchored in most Americans was the tacit certainty that, even to the problem of nuclear war against population centers, there must be a uniquely American solution; we would find it. The solution was sudden death. A hundred million Americans found it.

by hga 10y ago

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

Its the farms that are vulnerable. Hungry thousands trampling crops looking for anything to eat. Then a breakdown of hybrid seed - that's a delicate pipeline that took generations to build, and can be destroyed in a single season of neglect. Hopeless to rebuild in time to save everyone. We'd be reduced to a percentage of our previous population. Assuming widespread social failure.

hga 10y ago
But many if not most cereal grain farms (plus legumes besides soybeans?), the ones that count for getting the most calories to the most people, are quite some distance from big cities. And if you only have to deal with an initial wave, you can do a Maximum Effort to keep them out of your fields, it's long term banditry where farmers by themselves inevitably lose because they can't do both at the same time. Hybrid seeds aren't used for all crops, not for wheat as I recall, I'm not sure about soybeans. Corn is of course the big one, but at least going forward humans wouldn't particularity want to eat corn if wheat is available. But I agree with your bottom line, on the problem of big cities, well, Dean Ing, in the appropriately titled novel Systemic Shock, put it this way: The American public had by turns ignored and ridiculed its cassandras: city planners, ecologists, demographers, socialists, immigrants, who had all warned against our increasing tendency to crowd into our cities. Social stress, failure of essential services, and warfare were only a few of the spectres we had granted only a passing glance. We had always found some solution to our problems, though: often at the last moment. Firmly anchored in most Americans was the tacit certainty that, even to the problem of nuclear war against population centers, there must be a uniquely American solution; we would find it. The solution was sudden death. A hundred million Americans found it.