In case of disaster, eat wood and kelp – study
First the bad news: a nuclear conflict has occurred, killing hundreds of millions and throwing enough soot into the air to block out the Sun for a decade.
Now the good news: there is a chance that we can get through the resulting years of endless winter without the survivors starving. But it’s going to involve a lot of seaweed, the mass relocation of crops, and extracting sugar from paper.
An international academic collaboration has produced a road map for surviving an ‘‘abrupt sunlight reduction scenario’’.
After an asteroid impact, a huge volcanic eruption or an exchange of nuclear weapons, most of the deaths could come not from the catastrophe itself but as a result of the mass starvation that follows crop failures.
‘‘We’re trying to promote preparedness – a culture of having institutions, government and companies prepared for a kind of global catastrophe that has been quite neglected,’’ said Juan Garcia Martinez, from the Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters, which works with scientists around the world.
He and his colleagues looked through the options available to humans in such a scenario and have concluded, in the journal Nutrients, that there will be three key phases.
In the first, immediately after the catastrophe, we would be reliant on stored and legacy foods. The world has a few months of supplies at any one time, which would be rapidly depleted. Fish are likely to last longer than land animals, so should be exploited immediately.
On top of that, there will be livestock, which are a highly inefficient way of making calories. Most could be slaughtered, with some ruminants kept on, as they can make milk from indigestible grass.
Using these resources wisely, the researchers argue, will buy time to scale up other food sources – not least through a scheme to turn humans into a kind of ruminant, too.
With the mass death of forests, there will be a lot of wood. Within that wood is a lot of energy, extracted today as a byproduct of making paper. Although we cannot access it, chemical processes can.
Taking sugars from wood could be part of the second phase, starting about six months later, allowing time for the logistical effort required to rebalance Earth to produce as many calories as possible from as little incoming energy as possible.
Key, said Garcia Martinez, would be for staple crops to be shifted closer to the equator. ‘‘That would allow us to use what little sunlight we might have left in the most efficient way possible.’’
And crucially, in part to cover nutrient deficiencies, seaweed farms will need to be built. Seaweed requires less sunlight and is better protected from radiation.
‘‘We believe that by being more prepared for this type of scenario, it would reduce the likelihood and severity of a potential collapse of civilisation,’’ Garcia Martinez said.