Providing Non-food Needs if Industry is Disabled
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Pearce Publications: Energy Conservation • Energy Policy • Industrial Symbiosis • Life Cycle Analysis • Materials Science • Open Source • Photovoltaic Systems • Solar Cells • Sustainable Development • Sustainability Education
Source
- Mohamed Abdelkhaliq, Michael Griswold, Deborah Cole, David Denkenberger, Joshua M. Pearce, Providing Non-food Needs if Industry is Disabled. International Disaster and Risk Conferences (IDRC) Conference Proceedings 2016, Davos, Switzerland. pp. 23-27 (2016). open access
Abstract
A number of risks could cause widespread electrical failure and temporary global electronics loss, including a series of high-altitude electromagnetic pulses (HEMPs) caused by nuclear weapons, an extreme solar storm, and a coordinated computer virus attack. Since modern industry depends on electricity and electronics, it is likely that much industry would be temporarily halted. The most challenging need to be met in these scenarios is likely to be food, and this is analyzed elsewhere in this conference. However, without industry, food cannot easily be shipped around the world, so one method to maintain the human population without widespread use of electricity in an emergency is relocating people to the food sources. We find that this is possible even in the worst-case scenario by retrofitting ships to be wind powered. We also discuss solutions for non-industry inland transportation, water supply and treatment, and heating of buildings. We find that the nonfood needs could be met for nearly everyone in the short and medium term.
Keywords
solar storm, high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, computer virus, global catastrophic risk, existential risk, industry, electricity
See Also
| Feeding Everyone No Matter What- Cambridge |
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| Feeding Everyone No Matter What |
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- Feeding Everyone No Matter What - The full book main page
- David Denkenberger and Joshua Pearce, Feeding Everyone No Matter What: Managing Food Security After Global Catastrophe , 1st Edition, Academic Press, 2015
- Free Preview: Google books
- Cover on Academia
- Facebook page
- Alternative Foods as a Solution to Global Food Supply Catastrophes
- Resilience to global food supply catastrophes
- Feeding Everyone if the Sun is Obscured and Industry is Disabled
- Cost-Effectiveness of Interventions for Alternate Food to Address Agricultural Catastrophes Globally
- Dave Denkenberger Publications
- Feeding Everyone: Solving the Food Crisis in Event of Global Catastrophes that Kill Crops or Obscure the Sun
- Food without sun: Price and life-saving potential
- Cost-effectiveness of interventions for alternate food in the United States to address agricultural catastrophes
- Micronutrient Availability in Alternative Foods During Agricultural Catastrophes
- Preliminary Automated Determination of Edibility of Alternative Foods: Non-Targeted Screening for Toxins in Red Maple Leaf Concentrate
- Scaling of greenhouse crop production in low sunlight scenarios
- Potential of microbial protein from hydrogen for preventing mass starvation in catastrophic scenarios
- OSE Wiki "Synfood" (i.e. protein and other dietary components from microbial organisms fed on gas or other hydrocarbons)