A different apocalypse scenario

Umbran · Oct 2, 2012

Nellisir said:
And that will happen everywhere. The Southwest, Vegas, Florida...even the Great Plains do not have greater quantities of instant food on hand. It's possible that there will be silos that afford some kind of sustenance, but the large farms are generally where the people aren't.

No argument there. I wasn't saying the Northeast is special in famine.

Hand of Evil said:
Then you have all those nuke power plants that will over heat and blow.

Modern nuclear plants don't blow up. They melt down. Will there be some release of radioactivity? Probably. Is that really an issue when you're likely going to lose a couple hundred million people to famine alone within a year? Probably not.

Dannyalcatraz · Oct 2, 2012

Just a thought- farmers in modern cultures get screwed in apocalypses, too, even assuming they don't get overwhelmed by ravenous hordes of starving city folk fleeing their concrete canyons.

1) farms tend to be monoculture establishments- growing only one or very few commodities. Thus, they won't have what is necessary for maintaining a healthy diet. And neither will their neighbors. (the ones growing industrial crops like cottong are REALLY screwed.) Conversion to broad based, sustainable farming that can support a healthy diet would take time...

2) most farms get their seeds from seed-supplying businesses. And in certain cases, crops grown from those seeds are not fertile. What do you plant if you have nothing that will grow?

3) unless they make their own biodiesel- there are some who do- they won't be able to power their farm equipment. That means harvesting and subsequent planting will be difficult. Maybe impossible if they don't have manual farming tools on hand. And even if they do, they won't have enough labor on hand to do much more than subsistence farming.

Umbran · Oct 2, 2012

Dannyalcatraz said:
1) farms tend to be monoculture establishments

2) most farms get their seeds from seed-supplying businesses.

3) unless they make their own biodiesel- there are some who do- they won't be able to power their farm equipment.

All good points, especially that last. It isn't like they've got old-time horse-drawn plows lying around in wait, or horses to draw them.

Nellisir · Oct 2, 2012

Umbran said:
All good points, especially that last. It isn't like they've got old-time horse-drawn plows lying around in wait, or horses to draw them.

Ha. My dad does have plows, actually. Came with the property, years ago. I know other people in our town have them as well. Goes back to one of my points about the Northeast - depth of history.

Re: monoculture - depending on the crop, you'll have increased suvivability in the short term, but a lot of work in the long term. Corn can be dried and stored. It's monotonous, but it's one of the principal staples of North American native agriculture. Even low-grade/animal feed corn could be processed for human consumption.

Seed stock would be a great difficulty, though. I think areas that have smaller, more diverse farms and a healthy tradition of heritage crops are likely to do better for the first few generations.

Backwoods Appalachia would do pretty good too.

One would assume that a certain percentage of sterile corn would mutate to a non-sterile variety, but how you would find it....? Leave a few fields unharvested and see what comes up the next year, I suppose.

Janx · Oct 2, 2012

Dannyalcatraz said:
Just a thought- farmers in modern cultures get screwed in apocalypses, too, even assuming they don't get overwhelmed by ravenous hordes of starving city folk fleeing their concrete canyons.

1) farms tend to be monoculture establishments- growing only one or very few commodities. Thus, they won't have what is necessary for maintaining a healthy diet. And neither will their neighbors. (the ones growing industrial crops like cottong are REALLY screwed.) Conversion to broad based, sustainable farming that can support a healthy diet would take time...

2) most farms get their seeds from seed-supplying businesses. And in certain cases, crops grown from those seeds are not fertile. What do you plant if you have nothing that will grow?

3) unless they make their own biodiesel- there are some who do- they won't be able to power their farm equipment. That means harvesting and subsequent planting will be difficult. Maybe impossible if they don't have manual farming tools on hand. And even if they do, they won't have enough labor on hand to do much more than subsistence farming.

The crops farmers grow to sell for money tend to be few. My friend does cows, deer, hay, feed corn. The hay and feed corn are really for the cows/deer.

But just about any farmer has a food garden, because it takes 5 minutes of his time to swing by with the plow or disc to prep the garden after doing the main fields, before he unhooks them and stores them. the wife and kids can tend to the garden, while he tends to the fields.

on fuel:
most farms have their own gas pump (giant elevated tank, with a hose to fill vehicles). So they're good for a while. You don't see many farmers driving tractors up to the gas station, or filling a truck bed full of 5 gallon cans. As for gasoline or diesel, none of the tractors I drove were diesel that I recall. They were all varying levels of old, mind you, and this was 20 years ago.

On crazy post-gasoline ideas:
my farmer friend informs me the brittish ran their tractors during the Great War on Wood Gas. Basically, it's stove like contraption mounted on the tractor that chokes the fire, which causes a gas to be released which is then fed into the engine to be burned. Apparently it works, and my friend is researching to prepare to hook one up.

Nellisir · Oct 4, 2012

I just started reading Daybreak Zero, a post-apocalyptic novel that deals with almost exactly this scenario - nanoparticles eat oil & plastic, and someone is shooting off EMPs at particularly strong electronic emission sources.

The Northeast, in accordance with the laws of post-apocalypse fiction, is a devastated ruin, and one of the new governments is in Oregon. <sigh>

Dannyalcatraz · Oct 4, 2012

But just about any farmer has a food garden

While true, it may still not provide them with everything they need for a balanced diet, which is why those same farmers also have incredible pantries of dried, jarred, pickled and canned food.

But even the best pantry eventually runs out...

(While I don't live there, my family has a farm in Louisiana.)

Janx · Oct 5, 2012

Dannyalcatraz said:
While true, it may still not provide them with everything they need for a balanced diet, which is why those same farmers also have incredible pantries of dried, jarred, pickled and canned food.

But even the best pantry eventually runs out...

(While I don't live there, my family has a farm in Louisiana.)

probably any farmer has more food on his property than I do on mine. So I'll lay odds that they are better positioned for longer term food than most city folk.

Dannyalcatraz · Oct 5, 2012

Right, but the trick isn't to last 6 months to a year- that they can do- the trick is surviving until they can find, sow, grow and harvest enough different foodstuffs to be self-sufficient for year 2 and beyond.

Dioltach · Oct 5, 2012

An important issue that most people seem to be overlooking is that without the internal combustion engine there would be no pizza deliveries. *That's* the real problem!

A different apocalypse scenario

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