Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

We can survive on mushrooms, rats, & insects after a sun-blocking apocalypse

#1
C C Offline
https://www.businessinsider.com/after-as...ive-2019-9

EXCERPTS: . . . Bryan Walsh's 2019 book "End Times" examines how catastrophic events, both natural and human-made, threaten our existence. In it, he points out that three types of potential catastrophes — asteroid impacts, supervolcano eruptions, and nuclear war — all have one thing in common: they could block the sunlight needed to feed plants.

"Blot out the sun, and even the best-prepared survivalist, a master of the wilderness, will starve to death along with everyone else," Walsh writes in the book.

In order to survive, he says, people would need to adopt sunlight-free agriculture — cultivating mushrooms, rats, and insects.

[...] The mushroom cultivation solution in Walsh's book comes from David Denkenberger, a civil engineer who suggested it in a 2014 book about post-apocalyptic agriculture, called "Feeding Everyone No Matter What."

"Maybe when humans go extinct the world will be ruled by fungi again," Denkenberger told Walsh. "Why don't we just eat the mushrooms and not go extinct?"

[...] Rats, much like mushrooms, can digest cellulose, the sugar that makes up 50% of wood. So anything the mushrooms leave behind could be fed to the rats, Walsh suggests. That way, any human survivors could eat meat.

[...] Insects could also provide protein, and many of them would survive a sun-blotting catastrophe.

[...] Walsh's book debunks another popular idea about how to feed ourselves during an apocalypse: cannibalism.

That would not help in the aftermath of a catastrophe that puts humans at risk of extinction, he says, because other people are simply not a sustainable food source. Walsh points to a 2017 study in which a group of undergraduate students calculated how long the human species would last if we subsisted on cannibalism alone. They found that only one person would remain after 1,149 days (about three years)... (MORE - missing details)

End Times: Brief Guide to the End of the World: Michael Shermer with Bryan Walsh ... https://youtu.be/YdguLZv2dAo

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/YdguLZv2dAo
Reply
#2
Magical Realist Offline
MMMmmm...A mushroom, rat, and cockroach casserole! Tongue
Reply
#3
confused2 Offline
I'm just hoping Sainbury's don't run out of mushrooms on the day - apart from that I'm good to go.
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Article Worm that jumps from rats to slugs to human brains has invaded Southeast US C C 0 65 Sep 24, 2023 03:25 PM
Last Post: C C
  Whatever happened to the Bee Apocalypse? C C 3 125 Jun 29, 2022 11:49 AM
Last Post: Kornee
  More on rats: They smell cooperative behavior in other rats & increase their own C C 5 347 Nov 26, 2020 11:02 PM
Last Post: C C
  The secret social lives of giant poisonous rats C C 1 254 Nov 20, 2020 10:37 AM
Last Post: confused2
  Loners help society survive, say Princeton ecologists C C 0 471 Mar 18, 2020 09:23 PM
Last Post: C C
Lightbulb The ''rising and setting'' of the sun Leigha 1 261 Jan 8, 2020 08:21 PM
Last Post: Zinjanthropos
  Banana apocalypse finally begins: Fungus hits the Americas, the end is nigh C C 0 192 Aug 13, 2019 06:04 AM
Last Post: C C
  The Coming Worm Apocalypse Should Terrify You (get in line doomsayings) C C 1 382 Aug 7, 2018 09:22 PM
Last Post: Yazata
  Can the impending banana apocalypse be prevented? C C 0 364 Apr 17, 2018 05:54 PM
Last Post: C C
  How Mushrooms Became Magic C C 0 242 Aug 24, 2017 10:48 PM
Last Post: C C



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)