[meteorite-list] RE: Survival after a large impact event (Delete if you d...

From: stan . <laser_maniac_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:31:28 2004
Message-ID: <Law10-F23KcaBJS3j9F000236de_at_hotmail.com>

>There is certainly several months of
>food supply probably at least two years out there. Everything doesn't come
>out
>of a can, the fields wouldn't be totally destroyed worldwide.

I would guess there would be one 'growing season' of food out there.
presumably there would be enough time to harvest crops that are in the feild
right now. It might mean golf ball sized idaho potatoes and green tomatoes,
but if it puts food in the belly, thats the important thing.


>Marshall law in
>plently of places would be fine, it is not too unlike many countries today,
>and a spirit of cooperation under these circumstances wiould certainly win
>out
>in my vision, since going against it would be bad for your health

Maybe I'm a bit of a cynic, but I would think one's own desire for self
preservation would quickly win out over spirit of cooperation.

>
>Oh for the thinking out of the box ... if you don't think enough food
>production facilities could be set up in a few months time, I disagree
>there.

what kind of food preperation facilities are we talking about? there are
millions upon millions of acres of land dedicated to produce food. lets look
at some numbers assuming we fed the people with rice, as it is one of the
most effective crops to feed large populations with. you can get about 5,500
lbs of rice per acre per year. a 288g serving of long grain white rice will
provide 1000 calories a day. a diet for most people, but enough to live
on... That means 1 person needs 193 lbs of rice a year, or 1 acre would
provide sustinance for about 29 people. To use convinient numbers, lets say
the us has 300 million people. thats 10 million acres of rice production
that would be needed to feed all our citizens. now consider the tasks
involved in seting up such an enclosed growing environment. In the event of
a large impact, we would need to build an enclosure that protects food crops
from the environment, and provides an alternate source of energy to the
crops. rice isnt going to grow if the sun is blacked out for 1000 years
because of a comet induced nuclear winter. How in the world could we enclose
10 million acres in anywhere from a few months, to maybe 2 years (to use
IMHO your overly generous guestimate)? to put that number in perspective, 10
million acres is 15625 square miles, or a square 125 miles on a side. Next
consider the energy requirement of the plants. The sun provides 1kw/square
meter at the surface of the earth. lets assume rice will live with a quarter
of that light level if illuminated for 1/2 a day (ie a perpetually overcast
day). We would need about 182.5 megawatt days to power artificial lighting
for 1 acre of rice feild. 1825 trillion watt days would power enough feild
area to feed the us. thats 48 trillion kWh per year. To put that into
perspective, the total us power generation capibility is about 4 trillion
kWh/year with about 20% of it comming from nuclear. so the total power
output of the US, the worlds most industrialized nation, is only enough to
power the lights above feilds that would feed less than 10% of it's
population. So IF we can build indoor growing areas of 10 million acres in 2
years, and IF we can manufacture enough 100% efficent 'grow lights' (we
cant) we still need 50x the nuclear power generation capacity that we
currently have. I personally dont see us as being able to build 5000 new
nuke plants in 2 years, even if we ignroe all saftey standards.

Now obviously there are ways we can offset this food requierment, ie
overfish the oceans, overhunt while game is still abundant, ect, but this
would buy us years maybe.

Certianly there may be out of the box solutions to the problem of feeding
our population that i havent looked into here, but I think it's safe to say
that simply building indoor foodstuffs growing capabilities isnt going to be
one of them, at least not for the majority of people. And remeber we are
tlaking about the capibilities of the united states, the most industrialized
nation out there... think about what will happen in india, africa and china.
BILLIONS of people would probably die in this sort of event.

> But if I am wrong there, and all this really doesn't work as it would
>have to, heating massive plankton and diatom water tanks could be built
>virtually overnight and heated. Presto: instant flavored whale food for
>distribution.

this is probably a better solution, as with rice, energy efficency is lost
by nature of the fact that only a small portion of the rice biomass is
eadible. if we could overcome the energy efficency problems associated with
indoor growing by using plankton, then that could concievably be a usefull
aproach


>Tastes better than dog food for sure. No doubt withing a week it could be
>turned into a product that farm animals like to. Maybe not cows, so get
>used
>to rabbits and chickens. Rabbits reproduce quickly, we are told...
>Probably the flavored diatom-plankton wouldn't taste any different from
>tofu and they
>reproduce fast in warm water with a light source.

This brings us right back to square one. why feed a cow for a year, the
amount of plankton required to keep 10 people alive, just so you can get 1
man-year worth of t bones? such a long term survivial of the species effort
would have to be concerned with the overall energy efficency of the food
source.. at least initially till more energy sources could be brought
online.

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Received on Thu 26 Feb 2004 05:45:24 PM PST