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I just want to say three words, Ben. Just three words. Genetically Engineered Fungus. Like the kind that's been killing off the Cavendish banana for the past 50 years, but mutated to attack basic crops. If you want to run wild with it, have it sterilize farm animals too. A fungus affecting that many crops that harshly all at once is pretty unlikely. It'd have to be time-released. Maybe spread via bees or fertilizer or just wind currents, it would be completely benign for a generation or two before it activates. To attack so many crops it'd have to attack something basic to all plants like the ability to photosynthesize or the genetic doohickeys that signal them to reproduce (which could be devastating to nature, but there you go). Maybe I'm wrong here, but disrupting food production for a few months would cause mass starvation in a lot of places. I think so few people in first world know how to grow crops/ration food and water that if the grocery stores were out of produce for one day there'd be looting and riots. All processed food would be hoarded immediately. poo poo like Diced Tomatoes would be the new currency. Fast food industry would shut down as well as restaurants, shipping companies, and processed food manufacturers. If first-world trade hiccups that bad it trickles down pretty quickly to second and third world economies. Fisheries would get overfished, local wildlife would get hunted to extinction. If it didn't get solved by winter you'd have people raiding and killing each other or living off cans of water-chestnuts while desperately reading eHow articles on farming for when the snows thaw. If the government is not-useless there'd be a lot less democracy. The salaries of municipal utility workers would skyrocket to keep everything on track. The USDA would be handing out incentives and starter kits for new farmers while old farmers would have to burn their old fields to get rid of the fungus and start over praying that the new crops don't catch whatever disease killed the first ones. Cows and chickens would be jealously guarded for their production capability and assuming they escaped the fungus for a while people would be getting their protein from nuts some people already do  .
MrSlam fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Mar 2, 2016 |
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Mar 2, 2016 19:38
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 23:53 |
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