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What do people eat after the collapse, aka the inferred holocaust


king of nowhere

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How much food is available to support the world population?

With hunting and gathering, the planet could only support a few million people. To feed more than that, agriculture is needed.

In the ancient age, agricullture was done manually, and hystorians estimate the world population before the industrial revolution to have reached close to one billion people, most of whom worked on the field to feed themselves.

Modern agriculture started with chemical fertilizers and, later, machinery, and allowed the demographic boom that we had in the last century. now (before calamity) we are 7 billions, and we can only eat because of fertilizers and oil-driven machines.

MInes extract millions of tons of phosphate minerals to provide the phosphorous component of fertilizer, air liquefiers separate nitrogen from air, send it to factories that convert it to ammonia with hydrogen (which itself is oobtained as a byproduct of oil reforming, done in even different plants), and the ammonia is converted to urea, and other minor elements are also extracted and thoroughly worked for fertilizing, and agricultural machinery is produced, and oil is extracted to empower all those processes, and a huge transportation network ensures that all those millions of tons of material get moved from their origin to the various factories and then to the fields.

 

The collapse disrupted all of this.

 

While some people may still work in the mines, I doubt the factories are still functional, and certainly, given the state of the roads, there is no way to transport all the wares around; certainly not the millions of tons the world uses. In the world of the epics, modern agriculture is impossible, except for a few isolated realms whit really good connections, or where epic provided food. Newcago is such an example, with conflux providing all the energy needed for the various processes. It would still be awfully difficult to find and import all the phosphate required, but for a single city it can be done. In new york, dawnslight makes food for everyone. However, those are exceptions. when david travels, he sees a desolated wasteland. No intensive agriculture is possible there. MAybe some basic subsistence agriculture, no more. Most fields are abandoned anyway, for fear that too close a concentration of population will draw epics.

And the storages of canned food should have run out long since

 

Which means that the world population cannot be much higher than 500 millions. The other 6 and a half billions are dead. Over 9 people in 10 died following the collapse. And not much for epic attacks, but because the subtle and complex mechanism that brings food to our tables and we take for granted and don't even think about got broken.

 

That makes me look at the setting in a different light.

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That all seems pretty accurate.

Epics would help to some degree- they eat food as well, after all, so every despot would have farms or import stuff. Likely there are Epics with powers that can create food out of nothing, or help it grow, and these Epics export their surplus to others. Remember in Steelheart- Megan questions how David knows about bananas and says that Steelheart doesn't import from Latin America.... Implying that others do, or else she wouldn't have said it like that.

But in general you are right, and the series doesn't pretend this isn't true. Most of humanity has been wiped out. New York, a city of millions, was reduced to at most a few thousand hippies on rooftops, and that is after the whole rest of the cities population has moved to Manhattan.

The rest of the world wouldn't have fared any better, although I imagine wildlife is flourishing pretty well. Humanity devastated, most of the destruction focused on cities.... The animals and trees should be fine, mostly. Probably lots if humans foraging for a living, hiding in the woods worldwide.

Edited by Blackhoof
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The rest of the world wouldn't have fared any better, although I imagine wildlife is flourishing pretty well. Humanity devastated, most of the destruction focused on cities.... The animals and trees should be fine, mostly. Probably lots if humans foraging for a living, hiding in the woods worldwide.

 

An awful lot of Tarzan-Epics running around the jungle in tigerskin loincloths, I should reckon.

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An awful lot of Tarzan-Epics running around the jungle in tigerskin loincloths, I should reckon.

 

it would depend I think, but most epics seem to have a driv to dominate others, or at least kill them for fun. I don't think the jungles and wild places of earth would have much for epics.

 

Well there's still a factory manufacturing cola somewhere so I think agriculture must be doing pretty alright still.

indeed- if imports are happening, from other continents (albeit land-connected ones) then epic rulers must have the ability to guarantee supply chains to some degree (probably with epic guards and the threat of retaliation. We know Steelheart brought out futuristic battle-tanks to fight Dialas when he cut off Newcago from some food supplies.

and if imports and some supply chains are happening, then logically large-scale agriculture can occur, if almost exclusively at the behest of powerful Epics.

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We'll obviously the agricultural industry isn't doing that bad, since we know that they're making cola on a large scale factory, since it's being shipped country wide, and we know that sugar cane is a major ingredient in cola. Since sugarcane is a relatively small crop in comparison to beans and corn, we can infer that Smallville, Kansas still stands.

david's first plan was to get superman to fight the epics.

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so, there must be some epic ruling on the agricultural countryside? Because it is mentioned that several cities have one epic ruling them, but I doubt many epics would have much interest in the fields surounding and feeding the city. even steelheart wasn't caring much outside the city, if i remember correctly.

From what we see of the world, most of the land is abandoned. It is possible, indeed it is likely, that mmodern facilities survived in many more places than just newcago. the fact that every kind of technological product can be found with the right contacts implies that there are still somewhere the means and capabilities to produce that technology. That does not mean most of the world population is dead. there is still agriculture done somewhere, probably even with modern machinery, but only in a few, limited places.

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so, there must be some epic ruling on the agricultural countryside? Because it is mentioned that several cities have one epic ruling them, but I doubt many epics would have much interest in the fields surounding and feeding the city. even steelheart wasn't caring much outside the city, if i remember correctly.

From what we see of the world, most of the land is abandoned. It is possible, indeed it is likely, that mmodern facilities survived in many more places than just newcago. the fact that every kind of technological product can be found with the right contacts implies that there are still somewhere the means and capabilities to produce that technology. That does not mean most of the world population is dead. there is still agriculture done somewhere, probably even with modern machinery, but only in a few, limited places.

David says in Steelheart that Steelheart kept a pretty tight grip on the farms surrounding Newcago, so we know that in at least one city there is controlled agriculture. I think it's safe to assume that cities that weren't Babilar also had at least several hundred acres of farmland surrounding them, which were closely monitored by the Epic despots there. Beyond that, there was probably some abandoned land, which people living between cities could use for subsistence agriculture. Edited by TwiLyghtSansSparkles
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Yeah farming actually seems like it'd be one of the safer careers, other people might come to steal food but at least Epics would leave you more or less alone as long as you sold to them. Safer that a casino server in Newcago in any event.  :ph34r:

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Yeah farming actually seems like it'd be one of the safer careers, other people might come to steal food but at least Epics would leave you more or less alone as long as you sold to them. Safer that a casino server in Newcago in any event. :ph34r:

Ironic, because pre-Calamity, I'd list server as "physically demanding, but with a low likelihood of bodily harm."

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