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> Any event or series of events that removes mankind's ability to produce modern computers is a global extinction-level event and rather than dicking around with computers one should really be considering suicide to avoid a slow, painful, inevitable death in a hostile world surrounded by misery.

Hmmm... At a very high altitude extinction-level events have sufficiently sharp edges. But, as we get closer to things it becomes fuzzy. For examples: The Black Death (1347-1351), The Spanish Flu (1918-1919), The Great Chinese Famine (1959-1961), The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), The Irish Potato Famine (1845-1852), each one of these events were extinction-level events for those in the middle of them. What year would you have selected to self terminate? Remember you would not have hindsight or knowledge that the events are temporary.

2 comments

Those were all local events.

The only thing removing mankind's ability to make computers is a large (Chicxulub-ish-sized) meteor strike or andromeda-strain-like sci-fi story made real.

Luckily, I'll be killed by tidal waves if a meteor hits the Atlantic and I'll be killed in the firestorm if it hits land anywhere on Earth.

If it hits the Pacific or Indian oceans, it depends on the size. If large enough, I'll shoot myself in the head to avoid starvation after playing a few rounds of solitare.

> Those were all local events.

> The only thing removing mankind's ability to make computers is a large (Chicxulub-ish-sized) meteor strike or andromeda-strain-like sci-fi story made real.

One of the possible causes of the Bronze Age Collapse (which btw was very non-local) is a prolonged drought that apparently lasted for decades. It's wasn't severe by itself but long enough for the fertile soil to keep shrinking year after year, decreasing the size of sustainable population.

I dwell on this sometimes and I think that probably we underestimate how fragile our food production system is. Feeding 8 billion people is not an easy endeavor. Multi-year global food reserves are not only non-existent but maybe even non-possible at this scale. A global event that would somehow disrupt our ability to produce food for several years in a row will make the hell break loose. I'm not confident that humanity couldn't plunge in a couple of dark age centuries as a result, all bets are off in a truly global famine.

Then the curious question is how likely is such an event? Chicxulub -- yes, but these are extremely rare, once in millions of years. The Volcanic Winters however occur every few centuries, the "Year Without a Summer" was 1816. Could we have "3 years without a summer" at some point? And not just in the northern hemisphere but globally? I don't know, maybe.

After all, the way I think of it is this: modern food production at scale is sun + water + fertilizers. Production of fertilizers seem distributed enough to be resilient at a global scale. Water at the Earth scale is sun again -- as long as it's shining it will rain somewhere, even if the distribution shifts (with dramatic effects for sure, but not a completely desperate situation). But then the sun does seem to be the single point of failure. If there's dust or ash or something else shielding the sun then it is in fact desperate.

(disclaimer - I know very little about this, it's just common sense and theorycrafting)

> Multi-year global food reserves are not only non-existent but maybe even non-possible at this scale.

I agree with the sentiment, but I will risk a hypothesis that in "western" world we have enough canned and highly processed food (the one that lies on the shelf of your grocery store and has best before set 2-3 years ahead) to survive "covid but for crops" event. There are couple of reasons I feel safe about this. We waste massive amout of food on a daily basis. We have a huge variety of food available, and not everything has to be affected. We already rely on global supply chains on a daily basis and for whatever reason while living in EU I'm eating garlic imported as far away as China. And then there's coffee, bananas, etc.

Sure, covid has shown that a massive shift will have a dramatic short term impact. Somehow Shkreli was sent to prison after raising price of a drug by 5000%, but when every pharmacy in my country did exactly the same with face masks everyone was quite ok with that, as long as they could get one. And after the initial shock we got back to seamingly normal life.

If anything, I'm scared about the water.

But all in all, when the shit really hits the fan, I envision scenario similar to McCarthy's `The Road` or for lack of better example `The Walking Dead`. People will be more busy trying to secure food and shelter rather than figuring out how to boot some obscure OS on a defunct computer.

I don't think COVID is a good benchmark. The whole matter was relatively minor, claiming lives of 0.09% of earth population (by WHO estimates). We can surely survive "COVID for plants" with little damage but that's not at all the scenario I have in mind. I'll try to clarify on specific bullet points.

> I will risk a hypothesis that in "western" world we have enough canned and highly processed food (the one that lies on the shelf of your grocery store and has best before set 2-3 years ahead) to survive "covid but for crops" event.

The "western world" is definitely more prepared but if you want to rely on that during global and desperate famine you'll need to have the guts (and the heart) to machine gun hundreds of millions of refuges rushing into the western world to survive. Or nuke them before they depart.

> We waste massive amout of food on a daily basis. We have a huge variety of food available, and not everything has to be affected.

Absolutely all the food we have is based on the ability of plants to absorb sunlight. Exception would be an electric light greenhouse powered by the nuclear plant. Or by the coal/oil (that's some sunlight we can actually store). Take away the sunlight and the whole food variety goes down with it.

> And after the initial shock we got back to seamingly normal life.

Try to imagine a desperate famine: your kids have nothing to eat and will die in a matter of weeks unless you do something. There's no reason to believe the situation will improve. In such times killing your neighbor who has some food left keep your kids alive a bit longer is not an unusual decision. Someone has to die anyway, that is so.

Now imagine that at a global scale, famine is everywhere.

> Those were all local events

In a sufficiently catastrophic event (major loss of infrastructure), one wouldn't be able to tell if the event is local or global. To the people suffering from the Black Death, the event must have felt global as everyone they knew was experiencing it.

Not OP, but I somehow share his sentiment and I'd say that out of your list any would do.

Terrible things are happening right now, and people find their way out, for instance the war in Ukraine. But then again, they have visa cards, they can book travel and accomodation online and flee from the country. A lot of jews have fled from Europe during and before WW2 when things were not so much connected, but still, it was modern day, people had access to press, radio, telegrams and telephones.

But if you live in a rural village and everyone you knew died to a famine that sounds like something you might not want to carry any further.