Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

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.

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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.

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Re:Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction? by arethuza on Friday November 13, 2020 @04:30AM (#25080630)

Subsistance farming based on potatoes is not without its risks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

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