10 ms·
Extreme weather events of 535–536
- bukhtarkhan 6y agohow much weed do u need to smoke to get to this area of wikipedia
- staticautomatic 6y agoSlightly less than the amount which causes you to eat all your food reserves.
- arthurcolle 6y agoAt least 4
- pmayrgundter 6y agoI went back to 1830s on a similar question recently, but granted.. not that far... 2
- mlinksva 6y agoGood reminder to give to https://allfed.info/ https://allfed.info/ again.
- Waterluvian 6y agoI've been thinking about mass famine in modern times. When covid came we suddenly had a mask problem. We were focused on getting them to the medical professionals. And then in what I consider to be one of humanity's most impressive abilities, we adapted, cranked up production, and solved that problem. Can we do the same with food? Say we have some extreme of extremes weather or disease events that wipe out food supplies everywhere. How fast could we muster some solution that doesn't involve waiting a growing season?
- bamboozled 6y agoI think a lot of country have grain reserves for this purpose ? I hope they do :)
- mlinksva 6y agoThat is precisely what the Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED) is researching https://allfed.info/papers/ https://allfed.info/papers/
- whatgoodisaroad 6y agoI'd wager that the parts of the earth that are chronically in need of food were also not supplied with masks.
- lhorie 6y ago> we adapted Yes, by hogging toilet paper. I hate to be a pessimist, but just look at the track record: when covid started, there were shortages of many things (e.g. for a few weeks in march, canned food and chicken ran out of stock at places). We've also seen the impact manifest in the form of price increases (basmati rice[0], for example) If we ever see large scale crop failures due to a weather event, it's quite reasonable to expect lockdown of exports of foodstuff, and it's quite reasonable to expect large spikes in consumer spending quickly depleting with the supply chain pipeline like what happened with toilet paper/canned food. The problem is you can't armchair-engineer sunlight at the scale that humanity's agricultural industry requires, so a large scale volcanic or meteoric event would likely be catastrophic and a lot of people would die. [0] https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/sourcing/basmati-rice-shortages-loom-as-prices-continue-to-rise/604441.article https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/sourcing/basmati-rice-shortages-...
- eyelidlessness 6y agoFor what it’s worth the worst toilet paper shortages were because home use increased dramatically and business use distribution wasn’t readily adaptable to that kind of market or distribution.
- barbazoo 6y agoIt's hard to believe that the behavior we saw can be reasonably explained by demand.
- koolba 6y agoFor people who spent greater than 1/3 of their day at the office, which would be 1/2 of their waking day, it seems reasonable that many would be defecating there as well. Plus it’s a great way to kill time between meetings.
- jonathankoren 6y agoWell, it is. It’s a well know social phenomenon. It even has a name. It’s called a run. Even at the time, stores and suppliers were saying nothing was wrong with any part of the supply chain. If you think there was some vast conspiracy to cover up the toilet paper shortage of 2020, not only do you have to explain where all the toilet paper went, and why the paper mills had a sudden drop in production, but you’re also going to have to explain shortages of flour, sugar, noodles, and most bizarrely of all, bottled water. Bottle water shortages, at a time when there was nothing wrong with municipal water supplies! This isn’t even the first time in my life I’ve seen a run that was caused by panic buying. I think back to the afternoon of September 11, 2001.[0] There were gas runs. Gas stations literally ran out of gas. Prices were gouged.[1] Lines formed like the 1970s oil crisis. The next day everything was back to normal. Why? Because there was nothing wrong with the oil supply. The only shortage was at the retail stations. As soon as the tanker trucks returned, it stations reopened. [0] https://tulsaworld.com/archive/9-11-attack-fueled-panic-at-the-pump/article_0cb51021-ebff-5169-8760-760938a9dda4.html https://tulsaworld.com/archive/9-11-attack-fueled-panic-at-t... [1] http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/12/gas.prices/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/12/gas.prices/index.html
- graeme 6y agoThe most common historical solution has been backyard and community gardens. They were common after the soviet collapse, and during WWII in North America. I know you said “and not wait a growing season” but some backyard crops can grow in 21-30 days. And masks took longer than that. There’s a lot of yardspace that could become gardens and chicken farms in a pinch. A big risk would be if that happened during the winter, or in a place where there is less surplus fertile land. If there’s some event where you can’t grow, the only current thing we can do is already having non perishables stockpiled. We didn’t event a whole new supply chain for masks: existing companies ramped up production and citizens/new companies made cloth masks. But we’re talking established techniques.
- D895n9o33436N42 6y ago> There’s a lot of yardspace that could become gardens and chicken farms in a pinch. I’d do anything to stop caring for the damned lawn.
- koolba 6y agoSo why not stop? Keeping up with the Jones’ or Sisyphusian self imposed torture?
- akiselev 6y agoHOA requirements.
- D895n9o33436N42 6y agoI would never!
- palijer 6y agoIt's interesting to me that the one country that markets itself as "land of the free" is the only one with homeowner associations
- api 6y agoThere are some weird high tech last resort solutions today that we have never had, like petroleum based food. “You can live on it, but it tastes like shit.” - Crocodile Dundee Probably awful for you too but less awful than starvation.
- ardit33 6y agoif you look at things like Leningrad siege during WW2, or the mass famine caused from communism, things don't look good... 1. People will resort up to canibalism to survive, and cheat/steal/fight to get some food (ww2 concentration camps) 2. Humanity will have hard time to adapt, and by the time it does, millions will be already dead. (see the mass starvation caused in slow motion in Ukraine by Stalin, and in China by the great leap, and in many african countries)
- seneca 6y agoYour point is fair, but a big difference is that those regimes murdered those people via starvation largely on purpose, or just through gross negligence. Hopefully, in the event of a famine caused by natural disaster, the opposite would be happening. You are quite correct that history does not paint a hopeful picture on the subject.
- mrtksn 6y agoWe will have to to see mass deaths before we mobilize. Don’t forget that it took hospital corridors to turn into morgue and mass graves dug in NY to accept that this is not just the flu. Even that didn’t convince everyone that it’s serious. A famine will probably be even worse than the covid-19. Maybe the denial won’t be that widespread but you can expect an intense blaming among people with different lifestyles. Everyone will have different degree of understanding the seriousness of the situation and everyone will be willing to cut back on consumption in different degrees. Even without famine people can have strong opinions, some people even hate on people who actually advocate eating less. There’s strong hate towards vegetarians and vegans from the some groups of right wing people. I’ve been reading a lot of messages from non-US citizens being very happy that Trump will stick it to vegetarians. Meat consumption is also a topic among the followers of Jordan Peterson.
- Izkata 6y ago> and mass graves dug in NY This was misreported [0] to stoke fear among people who don't know about Hart Island [1]. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/10/831875297/burials-on-new-york-island-are-not-new-but-are-increasing-during-pandemic https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart_Island_(Bronx)#Cemetery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart_Island_(Bronx)#Cemetery
- mrtksn 6y agoIt looks like it helped. That, together with the refrigerated trucks.
- harikb 6y agoIf 2020 panic is a valid sample, our biggest problem is not lack of elasticity in production, but lack of discipline, empathy, and general sense of humanity in the population. We are still fighting like cavemen when it comes to hoarding groceries, vaccines, you name it. The entitlement of “Freedom” and unreasonable trust in individual responsibility will be the one that will stand in our way. I am not advocating for dictatorship, but that freedom we cherish so much is a double edged one.
- zozin 6y agoWhat a myopic take. The world just experienced one of the most seismic cultural and behavioral shifts in human history on a scale that's probably never happened before and the vast majority of people fell in line without too much complaint. Your takeaway is that we should curtail individual liberties even further? lol
- visarga 6y agoApparently in COVID the most disciplined countries (and small isolated ones) won.
- maxerickson 6y agoYou really think there is a cultural shift? The US started lifting restrictions well before we had even vaccinated vulnerable old people. A few weeks of inconvenience deemed unconscionable. Here in Michigan the faster spreading variants are taking hold, people don't appear to care. We may do okay, vaccines appointments are just about available to everyone, but it can be another rough couple of months for no real good reason.
- seneca 6y agoA market designed to expect people to act in a way that humans have never acted would be an utterly useless market. Self interest is one of the most dependable features of humans, especially in the face of scarcity, and is one of the most effective when exploited correctly.
- jonathankoren 6y ago
- dredmorbius 6y agoA human pandemic, even a quite mild one, has proved traumatic. It's not a bad human infection, but one targeting a staple crop (wheat, maize, or rice) that would truly concern me. That was Ireland's experience in the mid-19th century, and its population still hasn't recovered to pre-famine levels, a century and a half later.
- airhead969 6y agoSnowpiercer Soylent Green
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago536 was considered the worst year ever, to be alive. Kinda puts 2020 into perspective. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-ye...
- selimthegrim 6y agoMaybe the Younger Dryas would have been close to as bad...
- thaumasiotes 6y agoCounterpoint: https://www.amazon.com/1177-B-C-Civilization-Collapsed-Turning/dp/0691168385/ https://www.amazon.com/1177-B-C-Civilization-Collapsed-Turni... > Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he's got an answer: This seems likely to be biased by asking a "medieval historian". Are we surprised that his answer came from the period he studies?
- janmo 6y agoWho knows how 2021 will be. We should also prepare for a 536 type event. With 8 billion people to feed I wonder the effect it would have nowadays.
- askvictor 6y agoNow I'm wondering (and worried) about the possibility of intentionally triggering volcanic eruptions to cool down a heating planet.
- person_of_color 6y agoCould it be extraterrestrials?
- labster 6y agoIf you read the article, most likely not, though some theorists do maintain an extraterrestrial origins though comet impact.
- api 6y agoAfter centuries of philosophical and political hand wringing about the fall of Rome, it would be funny if it was caused by a natural event. Rome was already in decline, but without this it would likely have been more gradual.
- tom_mellior 6y agoBy "fall of Rome", do you mean the events ending in 476 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empi...) or the events ending in 1453 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople)? Both seem difficult to connect causally to the weather events of 535-536.
- seneca 6y agoThis [1] article posted elsewhere in the thread alludes to the Justinian Plague and this famine hastening to fall of the Eastern Empire. I assume that's what the parent comment is referring to, but I don't see the connection. 1. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-ye...
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago"Hastening the fall" when the fall happened nine hundred years later? I don't buy it.
- ck2 6y agoImagine if you could one day somehow triangulate a meteor impact causing that event by looking at the patten of how certain trees on certain geographic locations were affected. But might just be a volcano. Boring in comparison but not for the people that had to live through it. So after 2020, we know exactly what's going to happen if that goes down again, right? A third will deny it entirely (sun is fine, just a hoax, air was always that bad, get back to work).
- slmjkdbtl 6y agoyeah that was a pretty tough year
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jtchang 6y agoCould we survive today if this happened? A year without any crop yields?
- maxerickson 6y agoThe corn harvest in the US is ~1 quadrillion calories. That's ~400 calories per day per person (globally). Not good food, but calories still. So I think a large percentage of people would definitely survive, with a big swing depending on when during the year it happened and how the reaction played out.
- sn_master 6y agoIsn't more likely that we'll nuke it instead to give it a 'kick' away from us?
- jcims 6y agoThere’s a rapidly expanding shell of photons 1-2 light years thick that perfectly capture the events on Earth during that time. Some portion of those photons are heading directly towards a point in space where the will intersect one of the millions of black holes estimated to be in our galaxy. Some portion of those photons will arrive along a trajectory just outside the event horizon, where their path is bent approximately 180 degrees. Some portion of those will, at some point in the future, be intercepted by our planet earth...or hopefully an array of telescopes trained and synchronized in such a way as to allow us to reassemble a coherent view of a past earth.
- maxerickson 6y agoThe view through the atmosphere is more hazy than it is perfect. I bet the statistics are pretty dire after 3000 years too.
- jcims 6y agoSuper dire. It’d be like trying to photograph yourself in the rear view mirror of a pickup truck parked on Pluto. On the other hand, in the case of Saggitarius A we have ~50,000 years to figure it out.
- Koshkin 6y agoWell, looks like we are unable to “reassemble a coherent view” of current events, even. (And, speaking of physics, the light will die out dissipated by clouds of gas an dust.)
- jcims 6y agoProbably but it’s still fun to think about.
- sn_master 6y agoOr we can wait until a black hole swallows another black hole. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLKTZr00xBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLKTZr00xBg
- gdubs 6y agoFor anyone discussing the food system and fragility of society — if you missed “Connections” when it came up here a while ago, it’s brilliant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075430