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Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

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Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#61

Post by j7ake »

vkou wrote: post #34
waihtis wrote: post #7

An event like this, or anything else with a significant impact on food production is something many people should be absolutely prepared for. A bulk of countries, including where I live, are completely dependant on importing food. What do you think will happen if the net exporters experience a global supply crisis? Always be cognizant of events that are improbable but have a high impact on survival.

> A bulk of countries, including where I live, are completely dependant on importing food. Which countries are those? Because I'm pretty sure that no developed country is dependent on importing food to meet the basic caloric needs of its population. Also, a fair amount of food gets fed to animals, which are incredibly inefficient at turning grain calories into meat calories.

Maybe Singapore or other small countries.

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#62

Post by jhgb »

vanderZwan wrote: post #23
fnord77 wrote: post #15

I'm pretty sure that year that the global population of homo sapiens dwindled to about 5,000 members was worse than this...

On a similar note: "to be alive" made me think this wasn't limited to Homo Sapiens, so my money was on the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_e...

Isn't the Permian extinction considered to be generally worse?

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#63

Post by redis_mlc »

modwest wrote: post #3

i read this and think, well small wonder Christianity persisted all this time. the baseline level of suffering they endured is something most of us reading this will never know in our lifetimes, if we’re lucky. (though the hounds of climate change howl outside our doors) skies go dark, plagues. it’s literally biblical. what comfort could anyone turn to when it seemed like the very land and sky around them wanted them…

It's worse than you think.

The Hekla-3 eruption likely ended the Bronze Age c. 1100 BC, wiping out 95% of all Mediterranean cities. The first crop failure was bad enough, but the second year's starved almost everybody.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hekla

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hekla_3_eruption

Note that all societies were very religious (superstitious) whether Aztec, Mayan, Mediterranean or African.

Christianity largely grew after the Byzantine Roman Emperor, Constantine, converted around AD 312.

(The Roman Empire was so large that it had two capitals, Rome in the west, and Constantinople (Byzantium) in the east. The latter became Istanbul in AD 1453.)

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#64

Post by vanderZwan »

jhgb wrote: post #62
vanderZwan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a similar note: "to be alive" made me think this wasn't limited to Homo Sapiens, so my money was on the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_e...

Isn't the Permian extinction considered to be generally worse?

Yeah, as a mass extinction event it is. However, I figured that took longer to escalate than one year, so it wouldn't quite work when answering the question of worst year to be alive

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#65

Post by waihtis »

adrianN wrote: post #56
waihtis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Nordic Diet Need to check this out. There is definitely a possibility to go much more local by just foraging. I ate probably tens of kilograms of golden chanterelle, bilberries (local equivalent of blueberry)& lingonberries last fall - the forests are spilling with food and a lot of it rots because people don't take advantage of it. Healthy, free, very tasty food - and you get exercise and fresh air while forag…

Foraging can't sustain the current population levels. People in Europe were foraging after WW2. Population was much lower than today, people still starved.

Nor did I claim it can

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#66

Post by tokai »

octygen wrote: post #44
waihtis wrote: post #7

An event like this, or anything else with a significant impact on food production is something many people should be absolutely prepared for. A bulk of countries, including where I live, are completely dependant on importing food. What do you think will happen if the net exporters experience a global supply crisis? Always be cognizant of events that are improbable but have a high impact on survival.

Food... or fresh/unpolluted water. For food, I think it's a little easier but societies that have a hard time producing would have to adjust what they eat and how they eat it. Also, less meat, less red wine, more beer and more potatoes. The latter are much more sustainable. E.g., In Canada, we'll have to accept we can't have bananas, pineapple, kiwis, mangos any time. We'll have to stick to locally grown apples, way…

>It's a Danish-run program. E.g., They eat more lingonberries since they grow all over the place

There is no lingonberries in Denmark.

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#67

Post by circlefavshape »

CalRobert wrote: post #58
gambiting wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cows and sheep happily graze on moors and other rocky areas that could not be suddenly used to grow any kind of plants for food. Harry Metcalfe has a good video[0] about it - he keeps cows on the fields that are just too steep and too rocky to grow anything else - but it doesn't bother animals. Same applies to sheep. I imagine animals like chickens will have different considerations, because farm buildings do take la…

True, though in some cases (The Burren in Ireland for instance) it was sheep that stripped the land of vegetation, then topsoil, and left it rocky, in the first place. Whittled Away, by Padraic Fogarty, is a good read on this.

That doesn't mean you could grow good on it though if there was no sheep

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#68

Post by paxys »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #60
waihtis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not acutely aware of this, but is a perfect example of what will happen in severe crisis scenarios: countries will ensure their own survival over others'.

You cannot eat money therefore exporting only works for as long as those supplies are not needed.

The fact that so many developing countries are massive exporters of food and goods while their own citizens are lacking easily disproves this.

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#69

Post by carlmr »

vkou wrote: post #34
waihtis wrote: post #7

An event like this, or anything else with a significant impact on food production is something many people should be absolutely prepared for. A bulk of countries, including where I live, are completely dependant on importing food. What do you think will happen if the net exporters experience a global supply crisis? Always be cognizant of events that are improbable but have a high impact on survival.

> A bulk of countries, including where I live, are completely dependant on importing food. Which countries are those? Because I'm pretty sure that no developed country is dependent on importing food to meet the basic caloric needs of its population. Also, a fair amount of food gets fed to animals, which are incredibly inefficient at turning grain calories into meat calories.

At least for Germany it appears we produce 89% of the food we consume[1]. Assuming we have enough calorie rich foods in that percentage (e.g. potatoes and wheat are grown locally, rice and corn probably not), we would easily be able to survive or even thrive on 89% of the calories. Looking into the details of [1] we overproduce potatoes, pork, milk and cheese. These are all highly calorie dense, and if we mandated more vegetarianism we could get a lot more calories out of the same arable land.

The question is mostly how hard we'd be hit by the immediate effects that caused the global food shortage.

People might need to adapt to different/fewer vegetables, but the average BMI tells me that we're way over the caloric needs currently.

Germany is also one of the more densely populated countries. [2].

[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/659012/umfrag...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#70

Post by amelius »

pikzel wrote: post #40

Every time I think about the climate and events like these, I'm reminded of when it rained for two million years - "About 232 million years ago, during a span known as the Carnian age, it rained almost everywhere. After millions of years of dry climates, Earth entered a wet period lasting one million to two million years." ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03699-7 )

I guess the next time this will happen, the rain will be acidic.
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