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Comment by empthought | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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