157 comments on Scenario 2020: The Future of Food in Mendocino County
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157 comments on Scenario 2020: The Future of Food in Mendocino County
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Robin, I don't want to argue with you about The Coming of the Zombies, but I'll simply say that you are grossly underestimating the lawlessness and criminality that would occur if food were to become permanently scarce in the US.
Mamba - I guess i'm orienting my thinking more to the situation in the UK where far fewer people will be roaming around with guns. I expect that the vast majority of people, who live in cities, will not venture very far across country, which is very alien territory to them, and they would soon become exhausted. Most would not venture far from their urban "mother" anyway, hoping for authority to come to their rescue as had always happened ever since their birth.
But I do incline to agree about the catastrophic effect of a shortage, even in the uk. Due to the factor you describe I see a very high likelihood that nice-kind-person Jason's "Little Death" would in reality be a "Little Survival", leaving perhaps just a few hundreds in the canniest survivalist communities.
Thing is, this prospect we're describing scares the hell out of most people, and they will be hard enough to convince that there'll be a food crisis anyway.
So we need to sort out arguments which are very soundly based and reasoned, conceding to the "doomer" side only as a last resort. No-one takes any notice of my warnings to stock food already as it is.
Okay ...
- Most people in America won't go anywhere unless they can drive there. In case of breakdown, the autobound are helpless.
- Where do you get this idea that farmers are peaceniks? I grew up with farmers, people who lived in small towns, rural folk ... who also hunted ... with firearms ... with bows and arrows ... with pistols ... shotguns ... etc. Last person I'd wanna mess with was a country or small town person. Jesse James met his end in Northfield, Minnesota at the hands of ... townspeople:
http://www.civilwarstlouis.com/History/jamesnorthfield.htm
- The idea that trained 'mercenaries' will be sitting around waiting 'til the last second and then shepharding the hopeless is not realistic. Training ='s preparedness. I suspect most 'mercenaries' will have their own farms or, in some other manner be 'ahead of the game'.
- Just as many farmers will be able to protect their farms as there are those without farms.
- In case of breakdown, there will be 'food' (skidloads of 'nutrients' and 'cholesterol', Twinkies and Big Macs) but chaotic delivery. In case of breakdown, authority will do everything it can to maintain itself, the easiest way is to get trucks and diesel fuel and deliver food, either on its own account or via the Red Cross, local governments and emergency services providers or by the National Guard. It's not difficult, the US has a strategic petroleum reserve and the military itself can divert some of its vast store of fuel for emergency use for a short period to assure food delivery. Obviously, this simple process failed post- Katrina. Blame it on Bush, but the resources were available to meet the needs of citizens after that storm.
People have wild fantasies about gangs terrorizing the peasants and making all kinds of trouble. More likely is organized reaction against the government. A possibility is a coup d'etat or constitutional crisis where the in- power government is literally driven out of town by unhappy masses; the 'Million- Angry- Man March'.
Even during the Depression, where poverty was widespread, there was little more banditry than there was during the 1920's. Leaving out Bonny and Clyde, of course. People would steal food and pilfer items they could sell for a few pennies. Armed robbery was rare; most people had little so robbing them was pointless, at the same time the conditions were so desperate that support and understanding were valuable. Most cities and towns had 'Hoovervilles' where homeless hobos, the jobless and migrants camped ... these were not dangerous places since all were more or less in the same boat.
During the Depression, there was political discontent that bordered on insurrection. In the midwest there were groups armed to prevent foreclosures; 'revolutionary committees' and militias readied; (William Manchester 'The Glory and the Dream').
If there is to be fighting, it will be insurrection not robbery.
It's safe to say that there are multiple scenarios possible, and none of us are in a position to say with any certainty which will truly be the one to unfold in the situation Jason described.
I think Steve's got it - I've spent some time among the very poor and hungry all over the world, and it is surprising how docile they are. People in the US are used to being told to wait - some will get angry and cause destruction, but the trained and organized militias are likely to exist more among the farmers than among the urban dwellers.
I think we've all got zombies movies inscribed in our brains - it messes up our thinking. The idea that we'll immediately organize into "marauders vs. pacifist farmers" requires enough suspension of disbelief that it falls in the category of "why borrow trouble when they are giving it away for free." Crime will rise, and people will struggle, but the warlords are a good ways off.
Sharon
I think in some of these posts there is a confusion of two or more quite different things.
Firstly there are people who have grown up in a situation of chronic poverty and hunger (rather than starvation). They aren't faced with an abrupt deterioration, nor with an urgent death-threatening situation. Not surprisingly they are docile as Sharon says above.
Secondly there are oppressively rising food prices in for instance Pakistan, leading to riots, that is protests against the government aimed at lowering of those prices.
Thirdly there is a catastrophic abrupt collapse of the vast global/industrial/corporate/oil-powered/debt-delusions-financed food-supply machine, with accompanying failures of petroleum markets (hoarding), resulting in trucks no longer coming to city food-stores. In this latter scenario, which I consider to be almost inevitable, people will be faced by an abrupt shocking deterioration they never forsaw, and an urgent death-threatening situation. They won't protest against the government (with "food riots"), because the government didn't impose it and can't correct it. They will resort to mugging, looting, ambushing, burglary, and rampaging expeditions. There will be so many of such incidents going on, including by authority personnel themselves, that the authorities will not be in any position to suppress this disorder. By the time it's calmed down, the population will have been decimated (choose your preferred fraction here).
Allow me to point out a rare example of a famine in a modern industrialised nation and it's consequences: the Netherlands during the winter of '44/'45.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongerwinter
A railwaystrike combined with an offensive that cut the country in half, Germans blocking food transports to the west of the Netherlands in retaliation for the railwaystrike, and an unusually harsh winter, lead to a famine that caused circa 18000 people to die (on a population of 9 million).
There was not a lot of violence; surprisingly little actually. Families trekked long and far to reach farmers, with whom they bartered for food. Most farmers were reasonable, some were shrewd, some were stolen from and some took advantage of the situation (it's been suggested the latter 2 categories overlapped). There were NO violent robberies. There were instances of German-controlled constables seizing food on the roads, and subsequently dumping it in a ditch, and there were examples of hungry people stealing collected food from other hungry people when they weren't looking.
Mostly timid victims, I'd say.
Regarding to how it would play out in a modern day situation, I think it would depend on local culture (vis a vis attitude), gun prevalence, and mainly: the suddenness. If oil *suddenly* stopped flowing, and food suddenly stopped being transported into populated areas, panic will set in, and violence will occur. If it happens slowly (i.e. food harder to get but not impossible), the population will sooner grow morose and discontent, a much more manageable combination.
Comparing a homogeneous, disciplined European population under occupation in 1944 to the melting pot of races in 2010+, all feeling entitled and all armed with guns, is fatuous, to say the least.
An Egregious error! (sorry...)
The name of the Netherlands reflects that fact that it was/is an exceptionally atypical country. Its inhabitants had to literally reclaim their land from the sea, by means of huge community co-operation in building and maintaining a technologically sophisticated system of dykes (a bit like New Orleans).
This physical basis, in which not just their lives but their whole existence depended on that constant co-operation, was reflected in the Dutch being much more co-operatively-minded, less criminal, more environmentally aware. I've put some past tense in there for reasons related to the jihad victim Theo van Gogh and the likewise threatened Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders. Because unfortunately community-minded people all too often allow their kindness to be abused by parasites.