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Arab spring is a more modern example. https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-russia-bread-food-prices-civil-unrest-arab-spring-egypt-2022-3 https://www.busine

Arab spring is a more modern example. https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-russia-bread-food-prices-civil-unrest-arab-spring-egypt-2022-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-russia-bread-food-pr... https://medium.com/something-about-everything/food-riots-and-the-arab-spring-4886e4c3604 https://medium.com/something-about-everything/food-riots-and... >My sense is that civil wars are when states/governments fight, not hungry people. You could have stopped at civil unrest. What happens when food is scarce and people are starving for possibly the first time in their life? Anxiety, depression, etc is well established. Then people are going to want to know why they are starving.

Balero 5y ago
The food scarcity we have experienced in the pandemic is more like people wondering why there are no peppers or chicken this week. But there is plenty of other food to eat. I think any issues we have will be people not having their first option of food, not going hungry.
- codefreeordie 5y ago
  Maybe in your neck of the woods. I had a solid weeklong period here where no store within 15 miles had any fresh dairy products, meats, produce other than herbs, or bulk grains (flour, rice, pasta, etc).
  - Balero 5y ago
    Out of interest, where were you? Just to flesh out my experience. In the UK we defiantly had some things missing from shelves, but it would be running out of strawberry cereal bars and having to have raspberry ones instead. Aside from some short term (about 2 weeks) issues with everyone buying all the loo roll, there wasn't anything that couldn't be replaced.
    - codefreeordie 5y ago
      Not where you would think: so cal. Now, it wasn't this bad everywhere in so cal -- for whatever reason certain areas got way more wrecked than others. I was still able to get food during this whole time, just not by going to a market within 15 miles of my house. This was clearly a distribution shortage not a real food shortage. I drove about 35 miles to my parents' neighborhood and everything looked picked-over, but there was plenty of food. For example, I wanted pasta and sauce. I found pasta and sauce, but had to get a weird pasta shape and a more unusual/fancy sauce to find something in stock. That trip, I found some version of everything I needed, except that rice and flour could not be had. I wanted some produce, and I found some. Lettuce was gone, so were bananas and oranges, but I was able to get enough things that I felt comfortable I would still eat. Meat was a bigger challenge -- the regular market had only hamburger and bacon left (but the Costco in my parents' neighborhood still had plenty of all of the expensive meats and were only out-of-stock on the affordable stuff. If you wanted $20+/lb prime ribeye steaks, for example, they had plenty. Not huge mountains like usual, but plenty) And restaurants (that didn't close) were fine at that time even in my neighborhood (they ran low at a different time, when local markets were fine). My local pizza place did a bigger business selling ziploc bags of flour, plastic beverage cups of milk and cream, and to-go containers full of eggs and butter than they did pizza delivery for a solid two months. (and commercial tissues and TP by the roll). These ingredients were all readily obtainable in commercial-sized units from commercial suppliers. Still, I produced some (really bad) footage of completely empty markets, and, as a pretty rich guy in a pretty rich area, felt worried about whether I would be able to keep eating for the first time in my life. (I'll never again not keep at least a few shelves' worth of food in the house at all times)
matthewdgreen 5y ago
Having a well-functioning democracy is probably the best insulation against this. You don't need a civil war when you can vote for a different government.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  >"You don't need a civil war when you can vote for a different government." This is one of those things that works perfectly in principle but does not seem to work in practice. I've lived in solidly red or blue districts all my life and in only one election did the party representation switch to a different team. That was only because blue team had two top-tier names splitting the vote which allowed a red team representative to win the special election. They were defeated in the next general election by a landslide. Furthermore, I also see Congress as having a single digit to low teen approval rating as evidence that being unhappy with one's government does not correlate with actually getting "a different government". Without getting into a long drawn out discussion of why this is the case, I nevertheless think that voting is not the solution it is touted to be. Edit: I still vote regularly and I encourage others to do so as well. It's not a totally hopeless situation but people should have realistic expectations and expect to be disappointed.
  - matthewdgreen 5y ago
    The US has a lot of problems. For one thing, we have a Presidential system in which control of Congress can be held by a different party than the Presidency, which leads to a situation where there are two "plausibly legitimate" elected governments that are in conflict. In many other countries this has resulted in coups and instability (usually in favor of unilateral executive power.) The US is unique in that we're basically the only country that has thrived under this system. For what it's worth, the alternative is a Parliamentary system where the legislature elects the executive. The US also has a lot of gerrymandering of Congressional districts, and far too few of them (don't get me started on the ridiculous Senate.) Plus it has lots of minority veto points like the filibuster requiring 60 votes, the electoral college, and the Supreme Court. Some of these exist "by design" and can be beneficial, but they also present the possibility of legitimacy concerns.
myth_drannon 5y ago
Arab spring was instigated using social media manipulation by outside actors. Look at Russia, they understood the threat of social media and thwarted it early on, and it's calm now despite huge economical issues. The same will happen in US, no doom and gloom. Issues can be blamed on Putin and Ukraine not being able to produce enough due to Russian invasion.
altacc 5y ago
The level of food shortage you're talking about is extreme and very unlikely, excepting an extremely unlikely series of major disasters. It would take a lot to overcome people's inertia to action and by that stage of your theoretical disaster they will be too focused on immediate needs of food, energy & safety for them and their family to consider wider actions.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
You're still mixing up food riots with civil war. Bit of a leap there. Leave it at civil unrest.

Balero 5y ago

The food scarcity we have experienced in the pandemic is more like people wondering why there are no peppers or chicken this week. But there is plenty of other food to eat. I think any issues we have will be people not having their first option of food, not going hungry.

codefreeordie 5y ago
Maybe in your neck of the woods. I had a solid weeklong period here where no store within 15 miles had any fresh dairy products, meats, produce other than herbs, or bulk grains (flour, rice, pasta, etc).
- Balero 5y ago
  Out of interest, where were you? Just to flesh out my experience. In the UK we defiantly had some things missing from shelves, but it would be running out of strawberry cereal bars and having to have raspberry ones instead. Aside from some short term (about 2 weeks) issues with everyone buying all the loo roll, there wasn't anything that couldn't be replaced.
  - codefreeordie 5y ago
    Not where you would think: so cal. Now, it wasn't this bad everywhere in so cal -- for whatever reason certain areas got way more wrecked than others. I was still able to get food during this whole time, just not by going to a market within 15 miles of my house. This was clearly a distribution shortage not a real food shortage. I drove about 35 miles to my parents' neighborhood and everything looked picked-over, but there was plenty of food. For example, I wanted pasta and sauce. I found pasta and sauce, but had to get a weird pasta shape and a more unusual/fancy sauce to find something in stock. That trip, I found some version of everything I needed, except that rice and flour could not be had. I wanted some produce, and I found some. Lettuce was gone, so were bananas and oranges, but I was able to get enough things that I felt comfortable I would still eat. Meat was a bigger challenge -- the regular market had only hamburger and bacon left (but the Costco in my parents' neighborhood still had plenty of all of the expensive meats and were only out-of-stock on the affordable stuff. If you wanted $20+/lb prime ribeye steaks, for example, they had plenty. Not huge mountains like usual, but plenty) And restaurants (that didn't close) were fine at that time even in my neighborhood (they ran low at a different time, when local markets were fine). My local pizza place did a bigger business selling ziploc bags of flour, plastic beverage cups of milk and cream, and to-go containers full of eggs and butter than they did pizza delivery for a solid two months. (and commercial tissues and TP by the roll). These ingredients were all readily obtainable in commercial-sized units from commercial suppliers. Still, I produced some (really bad) footage of completely empty markets, and, as a pretty rich guy in a pretty rich area, felt worried about whether I would be able to keep eating for the first time in my life. (I'll never again not keep at least a few shelves' worth of food in the house at all times)

matthewdgreen 5y ago

Having a well-functioning democracy is probably the best insulation against this. You don't need a civil war when you can vote for a different government.

BitwiseFool 5y ago
>"You don't need a civil war when you can vote for a different government." This is one of those things that works perfectly in principle but does not seem to work in practice. I've lived in solidly red or blue districts all my life and in only one election did the party representation switch to a different team. That was only because blue team had two top-tier names splitting the vote which allowed a red team representative to win the special election. They were defeated in the next general election by a landslide. Furthermore, I also see Congress as having a single digit to low teen approval rating as evidence that being unhappy with one's government does not correlate with actually getting "a different government". Without getting into a long drawn out discussion of why this is the case, I nevertheless think that voting is not the solution it is touted to be. Edit: I still vote regularly and I encourage others to do so as well. It's not a totally hopeless situation but people should have realistic expectations and expect to be disappointed.
- matthewdgreen 5y ago
  The US has a lot of problems. For one thing, we have a Presidential system in which control of Congress can be held by a different party than the Presidency, which leads to a situation where there are two "plausibly legitimate" elected governments that are in conflict. In many other countries this has resulted in coups and instability (usually in favor of unilateral executive power.) The US is unique in that we're basically the only country that has thrived under this system. For what it's worth, the alternative is a Parliamentary system where the legislature elects the executive. The US also has a lot of gerrymandering of Congressional districts, and far too few of them (don't get me started on the ridiculous Senate.) Plus it has lots of minority veto points like the filibuster requiring 60 votes, the electoral college, and the Supreme Court. Some of these exist "by design" and can be beneficial, but they also present the possibility of legitimacy concerns.

myth_drannon 5y ago

Arab spring was instigated using social media manipulation by outside actors. Look at Russia, they understood the threat of social media and thwarted it early on, and it's calm now despite huge economical issues. The same will happen in US, no doom and gloom. Issues can be blamed on Putin and Ukraine not being able to produce enough due to Russian invasion.

altacc 5y ago

The level of food shortage you're talking about is extreme and very unlikely, excepting an extremely unlikely series of major disasters. It would take a lot to overcome people's inertia to action and by that stage of your theoretical disaster they will be too focused on immediate needs of food, energy & safety for them and their family to consider wider actions.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

You're still mixing up food riots with civil war. Bit of a leap there. Leave it at civil unrest.