When civilization collapses: the first 72 hours

[Blake]

@Lantern

In any event I am not sure what the relevance of this is.

The relevance is that your claim that you can extrapolate US population potential for Chinese potential is ludicrous. The two aren’t comparable in any way, as can be seen by the fact that even with its huge industrial and economic advantage the US still produces less than half the food per hectare that China does.

Tropical agriculture isn’t necessarily more productive than in temperate countries.

All other factors being equal, yes it is.

Tropical countries have more serious pest problems because of mild winters for example.

Cite. Seriously I would love to see some evidence for this claim.

Several temperate countries like France in the early 19th century also supported population densities greater than the US today .

The area of France is in no way comparable to the area of the US. this is even less valid than trying to compare China to the US

I had a feeling you were going to use the analogies of the Soviet Union and Maoist China but they are largely without merit because their circumstances were completely different from the hypothetical.

Yes, there was much less pressing need and much better control.

For one thing these countries were simultaneously trying to boost their agriculture and industrial production.

Right, and a total lack of industrial production will make it better will it?

In our hypothetical it would be clear to the vast majority of the population that the agricultural system would collapse creating mass starvation unless there was a massive government-led transformation.

Which solves none of problems at all. The people still don;t have a clue about farming. You are still taking land from productive landholders and giving it to those people. There is still no working economy and thus absolutely no incentive for anybody to produce more food than they need. There is still no mechanism for distribution.

All you’ve done is switched from “it would be clear to the workers of the state that the politicalal system would collapse creating mass starvation unless there was a massive government-led transformation” to “it would be clear to the vast majority of the population that the agricultural system would collapse creating mass starvation unless there was a massive government-led transformation”

Isn’t the answer obvious? The US has superb infrastructure and can produce enormous amounts of food with very few people. It doesn’t need to worry about producing massive amounts of food quickly to survive

This makes no sense at all. If a scientist can produce new crop that produces more food more quickly, then that is gold. It doesn’t matter whether that food is needed to survive, or to make money off. There are thousands of plant breeders working towards this for every crop in the world. Your idea that they aren’t making any real effort makes no sense at all.

In our hypothetical you have exactly the opposite: little infrastructure and large number of surplus workers. Completely different situation so agricultural solutions that are not needed today would be quickly developed and tried out.

How does that work?

If a crop can produce more food than current varieties using outdated an inefficient manual labour and organic fertiliser, then how the hell can it not be absolute gold when combined with more efficient and productive modern farming practices?

This makes no sense at all. How can any variety produce more food by using less efficient husbandry?

[Bryan_Ekers]

Well, when darkness falls, leaving shadows in the night, I don’t plan to be afraid. I’ll wipe the fear from my eyes. It’s possible a desperate love will keep on driving me wrong, but I won’t be afraid; I’m not alone.

[Koxinga]

If the sky that we look upon, should tumble and fall, or the mountains crumble to the sea, I won’t cry – I won’t cry. No, I won’t shed a tear. As long as you stand – stand by me.

[Lantern]

Cite. Seriously I would love to see some evidence for this claim.

Try this. Now please provide a cite which shows that tropical agriculture is more productive than in temperate countries.

The area of France is in no way comparable to the area of the US. this is even less valid than trying to compare China to the US

Why not? You can add the UK to the list as well. It also supported a higher population density in 1800 than the US today. So did Italy.

Right, and a total lack of industrial production will make it better will it?

The point is that a huge amount of resource were diverted from agriculture to industry in communist countries. For example in the Great Leap Forward the harvest would not be collected because agricultural workers were busy producing useless steel in small furnaces. Apparently there were also massive locust attacks because huge number of sparrows had been killed in the Great Sparrow Campaign.None of this nonsense would happen in the hypothetical.

Anyway let’s take the collectivization of the Soviet Union and China as baselines. Though there were famines they weren’t large enough to cause a massive drop-of population. In fact Soviet population in 1937 was significantly higher than say 1923. China’s population in 1963 was substantially higher than 1953. So neither of these examples suggest that collectivization would cause a massive drop of population in our hypothetical.

You are still taking land from productive landholders and giving it to those people.

Except that in our hypothetical the landholders are no longer productive. The infrastructure that they use to run their farm systems no longer exists. The only way to keep farms running is to import vast quantities of workers who no longer have any work and put them to work on the farms. This would also have the advantage of putting people near the food since your transportation system will break down. Yes they would have to be trained quickly but a lot of labor-intensive agriculture is fairly unskilled manual work and these workers would have a strong incentive to learn the rest very quickly.

If a scientist can produce new crop that produces more food more quickly, then that is gold. It doesn’t matter whether that food is needed to survive, or to make money off.

You obviously don’t understand much economics. First of all the optimal production technology depends on the cost and availability of inputs. Today in the US labor is very expensive by global standards and there is a massive capital stock. In our hypothetical the opportunity cost of labor becomes practically zero and a large portion of the capital stock is rendered useless. Therefore production techniques which would be utterly uneconomical today would make economic sense in the hypothetical.

Secondly food production in the US isn’t oriented towards the minimum requirements for survival. Consumers in rich countries demand much better tasting food, more meat and so forth. These higher quality foods fetch higher prices and therefore that’s what farmers produce. In our hypothetical none of this matters. So for example today there is no incentive at all to produce some fast growing vegetable which tastes like crap but provides useful nutrients. In our hypothetical such vegetables would be produced on a huge scale.

[Blake]

@Lantern

Try this.

Umm, what exactly is that supposed to establish? That poor countries have less resources to devote to pest control? It certainly doesn’t indicate that tropical countries have more serious problems because of climate.

Now please provide a cite which shows that tropical agriculture is more productive than in temperate countries.

Og, this is so uncontroversial that it’s astounding that you even need to ask. It’s also common sense. The tropics simply receive more energy than anywhere else on Earth. How could they possibly not be more productive? Productivity is dependent on available temperature and light, both of which are higher int the tropics. So how could you believe the tropics could possibly be less productive?

Assuming that the season available for crop production in a year is the frost free period in the tropical and temperate zones potential productivity…at maximum efficiency is 21.6, 13.6 and 9.5 T/ha. These estimates correlate reasonably well with recorded yields.

Why not? You can add the UK to the list as well. It also supported a higher population density in 1800 than the US today. So did Italy.

Why not? Because those are tiny areas,much smaller than the US, that’s why not. To have any validity at all you either need to compare those areas to similar sized, high density area sin the US, or else compare the US to a similar sized area of Eurasia. I can’t believe that you didn’t get that even after I pointed it out.

To make it even plainer, the US has its current population density because there are huge, sparsely populated areas. You can’t simply pretend they don’t exist, or that you can just average it out by distributing the whole nation’s population across the land area equally. The US has vast areas that will never support humans at anyhting like the populations seen in Europe.

The point is that a huge amount of resource were diverted from agriculture to industry in communist countries.

But that had no significant bearing on the famine according to any author I’ve read.

For example in the Great Leap Forward the harvest would not be collected because agricultural workers were busy producing useless steel in small furnaces.

Can we have a reference that this was significant, or that the famine would not have occurred if not for this?

None of this nonsense would happen in the hypothetical.

No, you wouldn’t have any industry at all, and an even smaller pool of people who know how to farm without it, and just weeks to change the entire nation;s production system.

Yep, that should go better.

Anyway let’s take the collectivization of the Soviet Union and China as baselines. Though there were famines they weren’t large enough to cause a massive drop-of population. In fact Soviet population in 1937 was significantly higher than say 1923. China’s population in 1963 was substantially higher than 1953. So neither of these examples suggest that collectivization would cause a massive drop of population in our hypothetical.

Yes, they do. Because in both cases agricultural productivity declined. Yet to keep 90% of the population alive for more than 3 months you need to *increase *productivity. That was the whole point of this wonderful collective scheme, to enhance productivity. Clearly it ain’t gonna do this.

Except that in our hypothetical the landholders are no longer productive. The infrastructure that they use to run their farm systems no longer exists. The only way to keep farms running is to import vast quantities of workers who no longer have any work and put them to work on the farms.

How is that going to work? People with no farming experience are going to not only feed themselves, but others as well? How? Why?

This would also have the advantage of putting people near the food since your transportation system will break down.

Near what food source? You only have 8 weeks before people become too weak to walk, so what is this food source that they are close to?

Yes they would have to be trained quickly but a lot of labor-intensive agriculture is fairly unskilled manual work and these workers would have a strong incentive to learn the rest very quickly.

Well first off, no, a lot of labor-intensive agriculture is not fairly unskilled manual work. Some is, but not a lot.

Secondly a strong incentive to learn does not equal an ability to learn, particularly with no teachers.

You obviously don’t understand much economics.

More than you it would appear.

First of all the optimal production technology depends on the cost and availability of inputs.

Right, and mechanised farming has lower costs and seeks to minimise inputs. So any variety that increased yields under a system with higher costs and higher inputs would be gold.

[quote Today in the US labor is very expensive by global standards and there is a massive capital stock. In our hypothetical the opportunity cost of labor becomes practically zero and a large portion of the capital stock is rendered useless. Therefore production techniques which would be utterly uneconomical today would make economic sense in the hypothetical.[/quote]

Such as what? I can not think of a single one. If a variety is more productive when the grubs are picked off by hand, it will be more productive when they are sprayed with insecticide.

And you still haven’t explained what your evidence is that these varieties either exist or could possibly be produced in just a few months.

Secondly food production in the US isn’t oriented towards the minimum requirements for survival.

No, it’s geared towards productivity.

Consumers in rich countries demand much better tasting food, more meat and so forth.

Anyone who has eaten a supermarket tomato or iceberg lettuce knows that isn’t true. Supply quantity is pretty much all that matters.

These higher quality foods fetch higher prices and therefore that’s what farmers produce.

Once again, everybody who thinks about it for a second knows this is not true. Heirloom varieties are much higher quality in terms of taste and nutrition, but that;s not what farmers produce. They produce varieties that have the highest deliverable yield.

So for example today there is no incentive at all to produce some fast growing vegetable which tastes like crap but provides useful nutrients.

No, today we don’t even worry about the nutrients. So it’s even more efficient than in your scenario.

In our hypothetical such vegetables would be produced on a huge scale.

How? Where do they come from? What are you irrigating them with? Are you forcing people to grow them at gunpoint? Who is making the pesticides, and how are they being transported.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Blake

How are they going to do this in the face of hundreds of tens of millions of wandering refugees?

That’s a real problem. As the people in the cities start to starve they aren’t going to just sit there. They will move out over the countryside as they have in every other famine in history. Only now the city populations are much larger than at any other time and the road network so much better. Even on foot a person can walk across the whole continent in under six months.

Even if we restrict ourselves to refugees from within a thousand kilometres/two weeks walk, that still means the Northwest is going to be inundated by refugees from as far afield as Calgary, Salt Lake City and San Francisco, while the rural south, depending how you define that, will be taking in people from Washington and Mexico City.

Maintaining a semblance of order when the locals are outnumbered at least 20 to 1 by starving hordes is going to be tricky.

I suppose the locals will dynamite roads, set up road blocks, and so on to delay the migration.

[Lantern]

It certainly doesn’t indicate that tropical countries have more serious problems because of climate.

Actually that’s pretty much what it says in my reading. In any event here is another sourcewhich makes a similar statement.Frankly I am surprised you don’t know this stuff ; I thought it was common knowledge that tropical countries suffered from worse pest problems because of mild winters. I am not clear about the nature of the research that you quote in your cite. It seems to be based on theoretical models of productivity based on soil surveys and climatic conditions. Are these actual studies which look at real-world productivity in tropical countries after adjusting for input use?

But that had no significant bearing on the famine according to any author I’ve read.

I have yet to read any account of the Great Leap forward which doesn’t prominently mention the role of the industrialization policies in creating the famine. Could you please cite any of the authors you claim to have read which say otherwise?

Here is an academic article which discusses the evidence.

China has around the same amount of arable land as the US. In the late 50’s it had twice the population of the US and yet was able to continue growing its population despite the horrendous inefficiencies of the Great Leap Forward. So the question is would the US government in our hypothetical be able to quickly organize an agricultural system supporting half the population of the Chinese system under Mao. Nobody knows but I would guess yes or that it would at least come close.

In any case there is really no point in going into details about what would happen in the hypothetical scenario since there are so many imponderables: how much of the infrastructure could be repaired , what resources are available, what kind of agricultural solutions would be feasible and how the population would react. We can just make conjectures and counter-conjectures.

I am not going to bother about the rest because you clearly aren’t familiar with even the basics of agricultural economics.

Just to give one example of the kind of stuff which I don’t want to waste time arguing against:

Anyone who has eaten a supermarket tomato or iceberg lettuce knows that isn’t true. Supply quantity is pretty much all that matters.

Believe it or not, eating a supermarket tomato doesn’t make you an expert on agricultural supply functions. Are you aware there is an enormous amount of empirical work done on the elasticity of supply for different crops as well as related topics like the production function in agriculture and substitution of inputs in response to input price changes and so on?

[silenus]

@Blake

Maintaining a semblance of order when the locals are outnumbered at least 20 to 1 by starving hordes is going to be tricky.

That’s why they make rifles that take 30 round magazines!

[ZPG_Zealot]

Having been in some crappy situations were a lot of the trappings of 20th century civilization did break down (former Yugoslavia in the 90s), find someplace out-of-sight (virtually any stronghold is takeable if people are desperate enough) and gather as many reliable family members as possible.

[dropzone]

@Der_Trihs

The existence of a bureaucracy implies that civilization hasn’t collapsed.

There is always a bureaucracy. Warlords need scribes and accountants, too. And it would be a chance for us old farts to use our ability to cipher without a calculator. Wise-ass kids asked, “Why do we need to learn the times table?” Armageddon is why, dumbasses!

[Cat_Whisperer]

I’m going to find out where the pedants from this thread are and go the opposite direction. We’re going to need people of action, not people of boring nitpickery.

[Acid_Lamp]

Making my reply without reading the thread first here:

Assuming the OP’s mention that I implicitly understand that there will be no recovery, My first trip is by bike a few miles down the road to the gun shop. I will then purchase in cash, (or take advantage of the scenario to use a manual credit card slip) a few decent hunting rifles and plenty of ammo for both the rifles and my personal handgun. Also acquired there will be at least one new compound bow and one recurve bow, along with arrows and replaceable broadheads. Kitted up, I’ll make a stop at Home Depot’s garden center on the way home and raid the seed racks. I’ll use the same plan of “take cash-manually run a card”, or I’ll just steal them.

Once at home, I’ll round up the neighbors and get a few on board with me to secure the backyards of a double home block. Since most of the homes are empty now, and nearly everyone rents, this shouldn’t be too hard. We will then go across the road and steal some cattle and goats from the big pasture. Florida cracker cattle can live on poor, natural diets and the block yard should be able to support a small herd that will be sufficient for both meat and milk. Since it is a commercial herd, providing nothing but a tax shelter to the property owners, they won’t miss a dozen head or so from the three hundred that roam around out there. Chickens occasionally frequent the neighborhood so these can be rounded up and cooped as well. Companion animals will be fenced off and fed on a rationed pool of dog/ cat/ whatever food until their relative worth to the community can be ascertained.

Begin construction on garden plots simultaneously with a reasonable strengthening of our defensible area. We have many ponds and small creeks in the immediate vicinity so water will not be an issue. Establish one home as a infirmary and hospital. Establish a toilet/ latrine area. Hold “village” elections and assign full time responsibilities to village members based on previous skills.

Once these motions are completed we can move forward with trading, or travel. Establish a home school and small library in an empty home. Begin patrols of the extended home area to secure further buildings for future needs.

[Acid_Lamp]

This is fun!..

Having utilized my first week establishing the basics for our village, and assuming that we don’t have massive security issues yet; I propose to the newly elected “village council” that we expand our enforceable area further and grab another block or two. In particular the ones that abut the cowfields and wooded areas. Expand patrols accordingly and deal with other “villages” that may be trying to lay claim to the arable land. I also propose an exchange for villagers to trade non essential goods with each other. Assuming they approve, we co-opt an empty home for that. We also establish a machine shop/ blacksmith/ armory. Initially all these small home sites can be established by re-locating non-essential items into them and placing them under the care of the assigned person.

[coremelt]

the OP’s premise is just silly. It would take the world a few years to recover and civilisation would not collapse.

Electrical components that are stored in boxes unplugged would mostly survive. Lots of old valve equipment thats lying around would survive. The actual copper cabling survives, it just needs to be reterminated to functioning terminals.

Theres 100’s of millions of people with the skills to rebuild needed key equipment and they are not all going to die in the panic and looting. Diesel generators are incredibly simple devices, and they can run off almost any thing, again theres 100’s of millions of people that know how to fix them or rebuilt them from components.

So 90 percent of electronics are fried including control systems for the power grid and oil refineries. Yes there would be panic, looting and starvation but we’d rebuild key systems from stored components that weren’t effected while running emergency jury rigged systems from diesel generators.

Meanwhile there’s huge parts of the planet which wouldn’t even notice, in many parts of the world ALL electricity is from generators, and transport is by mule, horse or human porters. Thats still civilization and they would barely even know this disaster happened.

Collapse of civilisation is impossible short of a 100 km asteroid strike, theres too much redundancy in the system for anything less to cause a complete collapse.

[handsomeharry]

@Fear_Itself

Why are guns valuable?

Here’s one good reason to have a gun: If the police aren’t doing what they should, and a few guys come by and decide that your spouse or elementary child has a pretty mouth, could you think of anything that you could do with a gun?
We can make all kind of what ifs, but no serious person would doubt the value of a gun in this scenario, imho.

hh

[Fear_Itself]

@handsomeharry

Here’s one good reason to have a gun: If the police aren’t doing what they should, and a few guys come by and decide that your spouse or elementary child has a pretty mouth, could you think of anything that you could do with a gun?
We can make all kind of what ifs, but no serious person would doubt the value of a gun in this scenario, imho. hh

What good is a gun when you run out of ammo? It is a temporary comfort, at best.

[silenus]

Pardon me, but I’m having trouble parsing the phrase “running out of ammo.”

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@silenus

Pardon me, but I’m having trouble parsing the phrase “running out of ammo.”

It’s what forces you to hit <CTRL>-R so that you can keep shooting Nazis, or zombies, or aliens, or whatever the hell it is you are running around in tunnels in a box canyon shooting for some unexplained reason.

Stranger

[silenus]

Ah. So it was a game-specific comment. Because I just can’t see that happening to me IRL.

[Bookkeeper]

Read One Second After for a plausible idea of what would happen.