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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.

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.)

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Discussion

diem 1y ago

I think it is great to fantasise about the rise local communities and locally produced food in the countryside - I see that taking off more and more in the next decade (and I believe that nostr could play a part in this).

However, I can’t quite visualise how these future diversified and diffuse supply chains would work with regard to feeding cities.

Maybe in future AI and autonomous vehicles fill in the gaps in the jigsaw puzzle and enable this all to happen, but then of course it still hasn’t addressed Rebanks’ main point about just-in-time logistics not being sufficient.