Most cans at any time are indoors. If we’re imagining a scenario where the majority of cans have been burst by heat or whatever, the implication is that even humans sheltering inside are going to be vaporized. So yeah, I’ll maintain my position that this is far from a demonstration of the fragility of humans if we’re needing to roast the whole planet.
The stuff about nutrient values is just desperate flailing, frankly. Canned goods have been consumed decades after their manufacture. We have no reason to suppose that their nutrient value has dropped so much that they would be unable to prevent someone from starving. So it is pure speculation on your part to try to find something to support your point.
It will be variously:
Physically cracked by impact and seismic effects
Underwater
Heated by firestorms to the point of being compromised and hence unsafe
Melted in lava
Covered in volcanic ash
Rusted by acid rain
Just not well-made enough in the first place to last multiple decades safely
There’s nothing “absurd” about an event that has occurred multiple times on our planet already.
Are they in bunkers? Because merely “indoors” isn’t going to matter squat. It’s not just forests that are going to burn in the global firestorm. Cities and suburbs are pretty flammable places too.
The answer again, is that while metal cans are not indestructible, they are robust enough that to seriously conceive of the majority of them worldwide being compromised we need to conceive of truly extreme scenarios like all of Earth’s atmosphere being ablaze for a prolonged time.
This is far more extreme than happened during the dino killer asteroid, and would, for example, probably wipe out most plant species along with all the macrofauna. This is a pretty poor way to show how fragile humans are.
Here’s an example analysis of a 40-year old can of food.
Once again, dino killer sized asteroids have happened multiple times. That’s insufficient for the effects being proposed here.
Taken from sunken ships; a situation in which they would have been at a continuous fairly steady temperature above freezing but well below even a moderately hot day on the surface, would not have been in danger of impact once the ship had settled, and although they would have been wet would not then have been exposed to enough air to start rusting.
Plus which, of course, the people who ran the test needed to have enough resources to find and then to get at the sunken ships.
Yes, some canned goods would survive a strike major enough to kill almost all the people. But quite a lot of them wouldn’t; and even a lot of what survived the first few days wouldn’t survive the first couple of years, because of accumulated heat, cold, temperature swings, and corrosion. And much of what would still be usable in 40 years would be inaccessible.
Your 1% survivors may well be able to keep going on canned goods temporarily. But they’re not going to have anywhere remotely near 8 billion people’s worth of them still usable even immediately, let alone in 40 years, or even in 4.
And here’s a photo of a can that’s not going to make it a year. I can find plenty more, of stuff that people are finding on shelves right now. So your cite refutes my point, how, exactly?
No, that’s perfectly in line with what’s being proposed here. What’s insufficient, it’s become apparent, is the average person’s grasp of what that dino-killer impact was really like.
Even presuming that the house doesn’t burn (and many houses may burn in areas in which some humans survive underground or in more fire resistant houses): unmaintained houses in most of the country [ETA: in most of the world] will either heat up at times into the 90’s+F, or chill down to below freezing, or more likely repeatedly alternate between the two. The cans don’t have to be anywhere remotely near vaporization temperatures, or even in temperatures humans can’t survive in, for their contents to become either hazardous or useless within fairly short periods of time.
The best temperature for storing canned foods is between 50 °F and 70 °F. Avoid storing canned foods in a warm place near hot pipes, a range or furnace, or in direct sunlight. Storage time decreases significantly when temperatures are above 75 °F. Keep canned goods dry to prevent cans or metal lids from rusting, which may cause cans to leak and food to spoil.
So whereas “underwater” was previously cited as one of the reasons that canned food would not last long, suddenly after being presented with a cite to the contrary it’s a pristine environment.
For anyone wondering, MrDibble’s cite is about a geological area formed from some of the events following the Chicxulub asteroid impact.
It is not a cite of why canned food worldwide is going to be “cracked by impact and seismic effects”
I would ask you the same question. All you have posted here is a picture of a dented can.
You would need to give some reason why the majority of cans worldwide are going to not just be dented but dented along the seam in such a way as to break the seal (this is actually the only way a dent is dangerous). I would say that this seems implausible but I think we’re way past needing to say that.
Moisture along with exposure to air was cited as a reason the cans wouldn’t last. Not being underwater.
Let’s back up a bit here, because your whole scenario makes no sense. We first got into this discussion because you said
in the context of a meteor strike.
Now, I can imagine a situation that kills off all but .001 of the human population, but leaves ‘8 billion humans’ worth’ of tin cans (and presumably houses, since you’re saying the cans would last because they’re in houses) intact temporarily. Disease, maybe, or some sort of radioactive pulse that people deep enough underground survived (though if that left the cans radioactive, they wouldn’t help the humans any; but we could posit something with a really short half life, I suppose.) But a meteor strike ain’t it. Any meteor strike drastic enough to kill 99.99% of humans is going to destroy buildings and their contents – yes, including tin cans, which aren’t all going to stay intact if the house falls on them, even in areas and fires that don’t reach temperatures hot enough to burst the cans – over much of the world, via fire, tsunami, and earthquake. If it doesn’t, it’s not going to kill 99.99% of humans, either; a strike that has only relatively local effects, even if ‘local’ is taken to mean half a continent, isn’t going to kill anywhere remotely near that many people. So there’s no way, in that scenario, that all or most of your ‘8 billion humans worth’ of resources is going to survive even the first day or two.
Second, in areas in which most of the canned goods, houses, and other resources survive, there are going to be relatively high numbers of (at least short term) human survivors; so whatever resources are in that immediate area, there are going to be people trying to use them.
Third, travel’s going to be very difficult into or through any area which had enough destruction to finish off its human population, because the roads are going to be to put it mildly not clear, debris and unsafe buildings and rotting disease-spreading bits of bodies will be all over, bridges are likely to be broken, and so on. So people in any one area aren’t going to have much access to whatever resources have survived in areas in which the people haven’t.
Fourth, because of the rapid deterioration of canned goods if stored in widely varying temperatures, even in temperature ranges that humans with at least some clothing/shade handle just fine, survivors are only going to have a few weeks or months in most parts of the world to get whatever canned goods they can scavenge into storage that’s both reasonably dry and also has only limited temperature range. (I’ve provided cites for rapid deterioration in temperatures as low as 90ºF and for freezing damage, which you seem to be ignoring. There are lots more cites out there.)
I certainly would recommend to your theoretical .001% of human survivors that they scavenge what canned goods they can get their hands on and get them into the best storage they can find. I doubt they’ll pull off anything approaching 40 years’ worth, but they could buy themselves some time. But to posit that they’d have “8 billion humans’ worth of resources” to draw on is nonsensical. And to posit that canned goods are somehow immune to damage from a major meteor strike, or even just that they’re immune to damage from exposure to repeated freezing and heating, is also nonsensical.
No, I was referring to MrDibble’s list.
There “underwater” was cited as a reason cans wouldn’t last, no mention of exposure to air.
In any case, oxidizable metals do, very obviously, rust when immersed in seawater, so the distinction is pointless anyway. It’s simply that cans can rust and still be protective of the contents for many years.
With regards to your list, once again, my point was regarding this rhetorical thing of how fragile humans are because a population of 800k would immediately starve. If we’re imagining scenarios where most or all solid metal cans have been destroyed that’s far from fragility that means a scenario where most macrofauna, even most species of plants, are gone. No-one has yet even disputed this and that was my main point.
And of course, as I have said multiple times already, 99.99% of humans dying is not what we’d expect from a dino-killer asteroid; you’d need something bigger than has hit earth any time since multicellular life has existed
I didn’t claim immunity to damage, in fact I directly said the exact opposite. What I am arguing against is the claim that most or all cans worldwide will be spoiled.
Yes cans within a few hundred km of the impact are likely to be destroyed but so will all the humans there.
Worldwide though? It’s not plausible, and I am not sure why you and MrDibble are reaching so much to try to make this claim.
“Underwater on a shelf in a former convenience store” is not “underwater in a boat where it was stored” and “Underwater” doesn’t mean “permanently inundated”, either. Underwater in the tsunamis and then exposed was what I was talking about.
a) Did I say every reason had to have the same effect everywhere? All the world isn’t going to be molten lava nor covered in ash nor underwater, either.
b) The Earth is going to be ringing like a bell. Seismic effects are going to be global. They were last time.
Well, that’s just not true. Dents on the seam and any deep dents are dangerous from a botulism perspective. But that’s irrelevant because this:
is not something I actually said, so I see no point in debating the minutiae of can integrity with you.
You simply used the word “underwater”. When I showed a cite that cans can survive being underwater for decades, the mature thing to do would have simply been to admit you were wrong.
Instead, you’re now trying to add on to what you said, and worse, doing it in a way that implies that I have misrepresented you, or correcting something you didn’t say.
This is the worst of bad faith arguments.
Besides, like I say, cans rust when immersed in saltwater anyway, so this weaseling doesn’t even work. Cans can rust and still protect the contents adequately for years.
Because I assumed everyone was aware enough, by this point in the thread, of the sesimic wave effects of a dino-killer asteroid to know what that meant, what with the links posted and all. But I see you’re still apparently unaware of the tsunami effects (despite having read that Tanis link), so I sincerely apologize for not writing a more extensive essay in that one throwaway point in my list that left you this one nit to pick at, after I’ve countered all the other unfounded objections and strawmen you posted and have failed to adequately respond to. Mea maxima culpa.
Boy, I feel so mature now.
Mmm, so much wiggle room between “years” and “decades”. But I’m happy to acknowledge an undisturbed tin can sit happily rusting underwater and still have edible non-lethal contents. If you think I’m saying this hypothetical survivor tin could not ever exist, you’re misreading what I’m saying.
And I do feel I need to point out, since you seem uninformed as to the full range of effects of a 15km impact, that we’re not just talking about contemporary “saltwater”. We’re talking about greatly increased acidic water, what with all that acidic runoff.
That and the exposure to the elements after the water drains away, or sea level drops as that impact winter kicks in, of course. And then rises again after impact warming follows that.
Nobody said they’d immediately starve. What’s being discussed is the likelihood of long-term survival, first through a term of multiple years, then through multiple generations.
– You’re right that rusting can take place underwater, though cold water slows it down. You’ve at least partially got me there.
But on second look at that article and a bit of googling: that 40 years old can of corn can’t have come from either of the sunken ships, as both of them sank in the 1860’s. I’m not paying for the article, but the abstract doesn’t say either where the corn came from or how it had been stored, or whether the food from the sunken ships would have still been safe to eat, or say anything about whether essential non-mineral nutrients remained in the food from the ships; only that calcium levels were similar, potassium lower, and sodium higher.
I think you can read the whole thing here. ETA: Nope, just the first page.
They say “the can of corn was found in 1974 in the basement of a home in California”
I see no mention of botulin tests…
Wiki does say " In 1974, samples of canned food from the wreck of the Bertrand , a steamboat that sank in the Missouri River in 1865, were tested by the National Food Processors Association. Although appearance, smell, and vitamin content had deteriorated, there was no trace of microbial growth and the 109-year-old food was determined to be still safe to eat."
And reading further, I see the other sample, from the Monitor, isn’t even a tin can.
Given the ambiguous US usage of "canning:, I can’t tell from the one page whether the Bertrand samples are cans or jars.
I was curious, so I have found more info about the Bertrand wreck in a Google peek inside a book called The Steamboat Bertrand: History, Excavation, and Architecture. Chapter entitled Foodstuffs, Liquor and Patent Medicines
I kind of lost count of the number of times the words “badly deteriorated” or “badly corroded” were applied to the canned goods, specifically. I suspect most of the food tests in that paper were done on stuff in jars. Mijin can tell us, as he no doubt read the whole thing and not just the abstract.
Just so we’re all on the same page, I would say jars are a mite more fragile in an earthquake or tsunami than tin cans.
