Famine

[mskrieger]

Sounds like a question for a taxidermist.

And yes, some folks skin poultry but in my opinio it's wasting the best parts--if you free range your birds you want that good golden omega3 rich fat. And the goose down and feathers!

[mskrieger]

That depends on what you mean by 'doom'. We're all gonna die, some of us sooner than we'd like. But it's entirely possible to have humane, cultured societies that use vastly less energy than ours. I read to the bottom, and I believe Heinberg advocates working toward that goal--of a functional, humane society--on whatever scale you feel most comfortable.

[mskrieger]

Jul 31, 2017 15:02:11 GMT -5 William said:

This doom of which they speak could be relatively anticlimactic. We start to run out of things that make our society run the way it has for some time. We adjust to a new reality.

Agreed. Unfortunately, that method of adaptation also has sad social implications (like the collapse of the manufacturing sector and the subsequent loss of jobs, evisceration of communities, loss of meaning-->opiate epidemic). I'd argue that we are living through this 'doom' right now; some of us see it clearer than others, or have been hit harder and sooner. 

[blueadzuki]

There's also the fact that, since a lot of people are unwilling to even sacrifice any comfort for the betterment of others (let alone survival, which it could get to for some if things got bad enough) any disaster is likely to quickly snowball into even bigger disasters. For example, I fully believe that, in the event of a catastrophic food shortage/lack of civilization induced oversight, we are probably looking at another mass extinction, as people wanting to make the best use of their supplies of bullets and gasoline (some at least presumably know that modern gasoline actually has a very short shelf life, so stockpiling it is sort of pointless) will form hunting trains that go out and cull every last edible animal and plant they can find to cart back for processing and storage, i.e. food strip mining.

Actually nearly everything, as nearly everything falls into one of three categories
1. Things I can eat.
2. Things I can't eat, but that things I eat can eat and
3. Things that can eat things I can eat so need to be eliminated.

I seriously wonder if, at the level of tech we have reached, if we ever get sent back to the stone age, we have messed up the planet so bad that we can NEVER get ourselves back out. We've used up most of the easily smelted metal, we don't have as much massive timber as we used to. It'll be a long road to get back to anything close to "modern" civilization even a more sustainable one.

[prairiegardens]

Japanese knotweed is edible? I was wondering the other day about the food value of brome grass seed. It's certainly abundant and seems relatively unbothered by drought.

If we are living in the new reality it's a much gentler transition than expected and it's difficult to imagine that everything will remain relatively serene as more and more people lose the standard of living to which they feel entitled and expect. I guess I've been expecting something on the order of collapse after the stock market meltdown, and people becoming fairly hostile, actively so.  

[steev]

Aug 1, 2017 17:50:50 GMT -5 prairiegardens said:

I was wondering the other day about the food value of brome grass seed. It's certainly abundant and seems relatively unbothered by drought.

Sure as hell is; I've also wondered about the oil content of star thistle seed, noting that the smoldering seedheads last much longer than the dry plant.

[blueadzuki]

It seems to me that, with the number of smaller wild grass seeds which are in fact edible, there might be value in studying the harvesting and milling processes used on teff, as those would presumably be the best to use on them. Johnson grass is probably a good source too (it is a sorghum after all)

On the somewhat larger seeded wild grasses, buffalo burr/sand-spur seed is edible as well (if you can get it out of the coat without stabbing yourself). A native species is used in the Rajistan area of India and parts of Africa.

[steev]

I tried teff once; it soon became obvious that it really likes water; who knew that Ethiopia had wet highlands; not me, for sure; live and learn, eh.

I think wild oats would be a really insupportable source of food, at least for humans; might be marginably useful for critters useful to humans, but I suspect serious processing costs.

Sorry; I think weeds are marginal products for good reason; our forebears didn't think enough of them to try to domesticate/develop them; they might have known what they were about.

This is not to say that I don't love "weeds", which I consider excellent dietary/culinary input; I just focus on domesticated crops, so far as my gardening effort is concerned.

Were I really concerned about famine, I'd harvest as many of my urban neighbors for dried meat as possible (they being the easiest to hunt) and get my ass to the farm. where I'd pozzi down and wait things out, until the event of betterment, assuming it would come (though I might be the last to know, being in the middle of nowhere, although well-fed).

[prairiegardens]

Today on the radio a report that the phone lines were down across most of eastern maritime Canada. They thought a fiber might have been cut somehow, no phones, cell or landline, no internet, no interact or charge machines working, some banks closing.

It's sobering to consider how fragile our society is now, and how easily it can be derailed. No bombs or biological weapons needed, just a knowledge of how to disrupt electrical or/and phone lines badly enough. It seems it would be like running into the proverbial brick wall for the economy, forcing it to an abrupt halt.

[philagardener]

And the Outer Banks just got power back after a week in the dark because a construction crew driving a pile severed one and damaged two others of the three major underground power cables.

Probably a really bad idea to run all three together in parallel . . .

[steev]

Cheaper on the trenching, no doubt.

[reed]

I read about the heat in the Pacific NW down into California and one local article from Portland OR said it wasn't quite as hot as it might be cause of smoke overcast from the British Columbia fires. Our local news hadn't considered the fires news worthy so I looked them up and found a map. Turns out just the three biggest of dozens of fires total about 750,000 acres. Easily over a million all told.

The county I live in is 43,000 acres so I figure it would take about twenty of em to equal the size of those fires.

Going from dot to dot... smoke from fires  a 1/3 the size of Indiana, burning in a formerly cool, wet area are providing soothing shade to an area miles away and preventing a heat wave of near Biblical proportions from being "quite as hot as it might otherwise be".

No, we're not doomed, certainly not! Everything is fine, nothing to see here.

[steev]

Right. We don't need mature forest when we can easily get weed-cover; oh, wait, does that burn even easier?

Sorry; living in Mediterranean-climate NorCal, I'm a tad twitchy about fire. The notion of driving up to my farm and finding nothing but ashes is not that far-fetched.

[mskrieger]

I like this talk of eating weeds. There is a sushi restaurant in New Haven, Connecticut called Miya's that specializes in invasive species. The owner is a master of marketing BS. But he is also sincere and public minded. I called him out about what was on my plate (I think it was crispy Japanese knotweed?? and he was like "but it's sooooo delicious', grabbed a piece, ate it, then had the kitchen send me another plate and a drink on the house. We need more restauranteurs like that.

[steev]

I'm confused; did you try it? If not, why not? If so, your opinion?

I'm reminded of playing in a river with my daughter years ago; coming on a stand of cattails, I pulled up a tip of tender root and offered her a bite; nooo!; oh, give it a try; so she did and found it OK; I'd made my point: this may not be delicious, but it has carbs and you can eat it in a pinch. If SHTF, one needs more than long pig to be well-nourished.