Re:Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?
by XorNot on Thursday November 12, 2020 @08:50PM
(#25077915)
There still isn't enough to sustain people on subsistence farming. And subsistence farming, is well, subsistence-level - it precludes specialization which means it precludes most of the advantages technology brings us today.
If you're ever in a civilizational collapse scenario, literally the most important thing you can do is rapidly restart the farm supply chain by whatever means necessary - anyone imagining building a fortress for themselves is building a tomb.
Re:Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?
by PeterisP on Thursday November 12, 2020 @10:16PM
(#25078420)
Subsistance farming for a limited number of people can be done by burying potatoes in the ground and digging them back up in the autumn. Well, it's a bit more to get a good yield, but not that much more, you can (and some places do) teach that to literal kindergartners in a single day. We can't sustain 7 billion of people this way, but if some catastrophe kills 99% of humanity, the availability of better cultivars makes subsistence farming for the remainder much easier than five hundred years ago.
That would make a huge difference compared with traditional indigenous societies. However farming does require steady state weather - which is unlikely after a nuclear war?