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Comment by pixl97 | Hacker News Reader

The problem we have today is that of specialization. I dont believe there is a viable scenario where only 40% of the population dies. We either lose something like less than 10% of the population or we loose over 80%.

Food is the reason. In 1900 before the green revolution there were less than 2 billion people on the planet and huge portions of them grew their own food. After that point industrialisation and mass fossil fuel production of fertiliser allowed our population to explode. Now were completely dependant on those factories that have massive supply lines fed by specialists.

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2 billion people today rely on subsistence farming, it's silly to think 90% of people on earth would die on account of that alone.

They survive on subsistence farming because their near large urban cities don't. The moment those cities are not fed the terrible order they already exist in gets worse. A supersaturation even can only exist as long as energy is being applied. When that is lost (fossils fuels) then a corrective event occurs.

No, they survive on subsistence farming regardless of what any cities do. That's the definition of subsistence farming.

I agree that the situation in cities would be dire, but over 40% of people live in rural areas and half of them are already growing their own food.

Well, the point is if the cities can’t feed themselves the people would go out into the countryside to search for food, and food wars would break out. So even if you have your own farms, property rights are basically over under a catastrophe of that scale

> So even if you have your own farms, property rights are basically over under a catastrophe of that scale

1. And for the same reason, just any kind of government will be forced to seize land from vapid hipsters, and grow something edible on it, along with enforcing at least minimal rationing.

2. 1/3 of food in the world is wasted

> consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food, 222 million tonnes, as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa

A healthy young adult can live a heck a lot of time on one bag of staple foods.

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