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https://unherd.com/2024/12/a-food-apocalypse-is-coming/

A lot of people assume that somewhere in Britain there are sheds full of food that we’d distribute in a disaster. Surely there is a grain or butter mountain somewhere? Surely the UK government has a plan for such a crisis?

Nope. No sheds. No stores. No mountains of food. No plan.

All politicians say that food security matters, but no one admits that basically we don’t have it. Britain probably has less than a week of food supplies. The only food in the UK is what’s on the shelves of our supermarkets now, and what’s in their lorries on the way to the shops. Oh, and whatever you have in the fridge, plus a few crops growing on UK farms or stored in barns, and whatever is edible and roaming around in fields. And perhaps you could hunt or forage if you have a gun or a trap or two.

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Discussion

The Dread Slender Gnome 1y ago

He says that what we often see in a crisis is not social collapse but instead people working together, finding ways to ration or share, displaying the best of human nature.

This I think is what a lot of preppers, specifically Americans, seem to forget. We've seen such crisis in multiple countries even in Europe within living memory, and the above is exactly what has happened.

(This is not a reflection on the article's general point, I think he's correct. But this is the first time I see someone say this in writing.)

Henry 1y ago

And we import around 50% of our food and haven't produced enough for the population since around the 19th C at a time when the soil would have been substantially better. Clearly there are more important matters to care about like getting involved in more foreign wars which could turn a bad situation into a famine.

I was listening to 'The Plantagenets' this year during our horrendous weather seemed they also had some really lowsy weather during their rule and the starvation and destitution after the failed crop sounded well frankly pretty grim.