Features of collapse - Famine

[RE]

Then the history of medieval Europe becomes contemporary American history.  Eventually complete with horses serfs, royalty, and the right of first night.

Prima Nocta is actually among the least egregious aspect if current sexual morals are concerned.  Add regular rape, polygamy, concubines, child marriage, eunuchs, slavery etc.

However, all tribal cultures don't evolve all those things, and some Kings are good leaders and want a peaceful kingdom.  Peasants tend to revolt with Prima Nocta.  See Braveheart.

RE

[RE]

No, these are nothing like pioneers.  They have no skills to provide for their basic needs.  Everyone is beholden to the ruling authority for food.  Video games have not prepared anyone to grow food.

Not like Pioneers.  Like poor Black kids in Detroit.  They form gangs, they sell drugs, do smash and grb etc.

RE

[RE]

No, these are nothing like pioneers.  They have no skills to provide for their basic needs.  Everyone is beholden to the ruling authority for food.  Video games have not prepared anyone to grow food.

Not like Pioneers.  Like poor Black kids in Detroit.  They form gangs, they sell drugs, do smash and grb etc.

RE

A better example might be like African countries like Rwanda that turn into failed states.  The regular system of food distribution fails, and the UN steps in with Food Aid.  They send in a truckload to a central distribution point with an armed escort.  They turn over the food to some local gang leader to pass out, but he only hands out food to his friends.  The guys not on the friend list form a gang and hit the gang at the food distribution point.  Or they hit individuals piecemeeal after they head home with the groceries.

In this case, instead of the UN, it would be the Federal or State goobermint passing out the food instead of the UN.  This goes on as long as the feds chave farm areas under their control they can take food from, but this dwindles and food aid drops ff to the cities.  The remaining city folk start migrating outward in groups toward farming communities to hit them up directly.  Farming community forms self protection militia to fight off the wandering Zombies.  People on both sides are killed off until a truce is established and the nomads left become part of the community militia.  These groups now jostle for resources with neighboring groups, since none of them has everything necessary yet.  They start trading with each other also, and finally you build up to a self sustaining region with a bunch of groups that has enough people to defend itself but not so many they can't feed.

RE

[K-Dog]

These groups now jostle for resources with neighboring groups, since none of them has everything necessary yet. 

And while all this is going on where is the food? From the time wandering zombies get to a farm to the time of harvest will be months.  Nobody knows how to farm, and within weeks of supply chains failing this will be the norm.



When this happens there is no room for a rugged individual.  Everything you learned in the century of the self is wrong.  You are prepared for nothing.

Here is a video I found,  This video is from the fourth planet from the sun in another solar system.  The narrator looks like an earthling, but people from this planet are different than earth people.

Most people from this planet can give you the years of the great Chinese famine which killed between 15 and 45 million.  Most earthlings get this wrong.

What are the years of the great Chinese famine. 

A. 1893 - 1897
B. 1927 - 1929
C. 1959 - 1961
D. 1967 - 1969

[RE]

Go back and re-read the scenario.  This whole process takes a while.  There is an interim period where Food Aid is still moving from farm area to urban areas organized by probably the military/national guard.  Not enough food for everyone, so you have the gang warfare period.  As the population dwindles through starvation and gang wars, you get outward migration.

Say the city is Springfield, MO.  Surrounding the city are many farms in a 100 mile radius.  The city dwellers form a gang, they hop on their bicycles and ride out.  They hit a couple of farmhouses, kill the farmer and family, steal the food and/or eat them.

So now the farmers form a self protection militia as a coop venture.   They have patrols watching for gangs coming out of the city.  Some farmers and some gang bangers killed in each attack.  Population dwindles more.

Now farmers need help with planting and harvesting.  Make truce with gang bangers for protection and labor.

This is exactly how it worked in the middle ages after the fall of the empire.  Cities like Rome dwindled in size and there were roving marauders all over the countryside.  So they started building castles and walled cities with farms around them.  When marauders showed up, they ran inside the walls.

If the marauders could mount a long enough siege, they could starve  out the farmers.  Sieges went on for months at times.

Truces were called, allliances formed, armies developed.  But it all takes generations to play out.

RE

[K-Dog]

Your gangs won't know what to do with the farm which can't grow anything without fossil fuel inputs.  The soil is sterile, it will take several years before live soil can grow crops.  They have no fucking seeds.  All the bunnies in the meadow die.

I have already found something interesting.  Famine as a subject is little studied.  The bulk of research consists of case studies, and a detailed analysis of famine has been done by few people.  There seems to be a hardwired avoidance of the subject.  Famine is not a simple matter of running out of food.  There are many anthropogenic factors.  Easy answers are sought.

Famine is considered, when it is considered at all, to be temporary and a problem that is easily solved with care and concern.  Relief organizations are quick to claim the world produces more food all the time with no end in sight.  There is a complete disconnect from reality.  People in the 1870's knew famine in a way they could not deny.  Modern people have no conception of their experience.

It's not easy to forget the deaths of 50 million people, but we have managed it. A global drought in the 1870s caused mass starvation in South America, Africa and Asia, but the event doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.

The great famine of the 1870's

I feel like a prospector who has found a new vein of denial.

[RE]

Your gangs won't know what to do with the farm which can't grow anything without fossil fuel inputs.  The soil is sterile, it will take several years before live soil can grow crops.  They have no fucking seeds.

That is an entirely different problem.  Not just the gangs don't know how to farm without fertilizer and seeds purchased from Monsanto, neither do the farmers.

Again though, this won't happen overnight.  Just like the military will bring Food from the Farms to be rationed out in the cities. in the first year or two they'll bring fertilizer and seed from Monsanto production facilities to the farms.

This stuff will start running out in a season or two, and the people still left will start saving seeds and shit for fertilizer.  They'll also be burying a lot of bodies.  Great fertilizer.  But of course, still less producton the next season, more fighting, more starving, more killing, more dead people.

By the 3rd season, 95% of the people are dead.  Your land won't be as productive, but fewer mouths to feed.  At some point, equilibrium will be established.  Everybody is not gonna die.  This is not an extinction level event.  You seem to believe everybody will starve.  No.  At 99%, wild critters will be all over.  Plenty of rats running around.  They make good eating.

The homo saps will dwindle down exponentially.  Year 1, 1/2 the people dead.  Then half again next year, etc.  I would guess by 5 years, 2⁵=32 or 1/32nd of the original population is left and it will stabilize.  Roughly 97% die off.

You heard it here first.

RE