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

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

nkoren wrote: post #54

vkou wrote: post #35

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UK food production minus exports is 55% of the food consumed in the UK. [1] Turn off the exports, and you're going to get close to self-sufficient. If the EU disappeared tomorrow, I doubt the UK would starve . [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/food-statistics-poc...

If people ate money, that would be true. But the important thing for self-sufficiency is not the monetary balance of trade, but the caloric value of trade. It is typical for smaller countries to export high-value refined agricultural products (wine, cheese, etc.) while importing lower-value bulk commodities (grains, oilcrops, etc.) This can cause a vast disparity between the economic and caloric balance of trade. In…

Post by eloff » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #90

eloff wrote: post #81

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We've only had industry 250 years. Give it 250 million, maybe we sort that out, or most industry moves off planet as in Jeff Bezos vision with blue origin.

Moving industry offworld is actually not a bad idea. Especially to the moon. Transport costs Moon-surface -> Earth-surface are ... non-intuitive to say the least.

Post by tonyedgecombe » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

djxfade wrote: post #50

octygen wrote: post #44

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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…

In Norway, there is a large import tax on foods like cheese and meat, to encourage buying locally. This seems to work, as most shops only sell Norwegian produce.

Post by ummonk » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 11:45 PM UTC

danjac wrote: post #43

ummonk wrote: post #37

> the 6th-century pandemic was still responsible for destroying at least one-third of the eastern Roman Empire population, leading to its collapse. Say what? What possible connection could there be between the plague of Justinian and the collapse of the Roman Empire several hundred years later?

While the empire continued until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 (depending how you define "empire") the Justinian plague did effectively end the campaign to retake Italy and reunite the Mediterranean under Roman rule. But it marked the beginning of a prolonged slow decline rather than a collapse.

Post by Jedd » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:16 AM UTC

JetSetWilly wrote: post #103

Jedd wrote: post #78

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Supposing that it was an isolated 'the skies go dark' scenario, then being self-sufficient in food is quite a complex question to try to answer, as most food chains require the skies to not be dark, at least not all the time. An interesting (and today, happily, academic) question is what happens to the UK in the event of, say, AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation -- aka the gulf stream that sends warm ai…

> An interesting (and today, happily, academic) question is what happens to the UK in the event of, say, AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation -- aka the gulf stream that sends warm air up from the equator) shutting down. Noting that London's only 4 degrees latitude away from, say, Moscow. Probably not that much because the notion that the gulf stream shutting down would send Northern Europe into an ice a…