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The book Feeding Everyone No Matter What: Managing Food Security After Global Catastrophe presents a scientific approach to the practicalities of planning for long-term interruption to food production.

Video[edit | edit source]

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Feeding Everyone No Matter What

Description[edit | edit source]

Mass human starvation is currently likely if global agricultural production is dramatically reduced for several years following a global catastrophe: e.g. super volcanic eruption, asteroid or comet impact, nuclear winter, abrupt climate change, super weed, super crop pathogen, super bacterium, or super crop pest. Even worse, such a catastrophe may cause the collapse of civilization, and recovery is not guaranteed. Therefore, this could affect many future generations.

The primary historic solution developed over the last several decades is increased food storage. However, storing up enough food to feed everyone would take a significant amount of time and would increase the price of food, killing additional people due to inadequate global access to affordable food. Humanity is far from doomed, however, in these situations - there are solutions.

This book provides an order of magnitude technical analysis comparing caloric requirements of all humans for five years with conversion of existing vegetation and fossil fuels to edible food. It presents mechanisms for global-scale conversion including: natural gas-digesting bacteria, extracting food from leaves, and conversion of fiber by enzymes, mushroom or bacteria growth, or a two-step process involving partial decomposition of fiber by fungi and/or bacteria and feeding them to animals such as beetles, ruminants (cows, deer, etc), rats and chickens. It includes an analysis to determine the ramp rates for each option and the results show that careful planning and global cooperation could ensure the bulk of humanity and biodiversity could be maintained in even in the most extreme circumstances.

Key Features[edit | edit source]

  • Summarizes the severity and probabilities of global catastrophe scenarios, which could lead to a complete loss of agricultural production
  • More than 10 detailed mechanisms for global-scale solutions to the food crisis and their evaluation to test their viability
  • Detailed roadmap for future R&D for human survival after global catastrophe

Readership[edit | edit source]

Researchers, professionals and students in food security, food engineering, disaster management and public health, preppers

Table of Contents[edit | edit source]

  1. Introduction
  2. Worldwide Crop Death: The Five Crop-killing Scenarios
  3. No Sun: Three sunlight-killing scenarios
  4. Food Storage, Food Conservation, and Cannibalism
  5. Stopgap Food Production: Fast food
  6. Fibre Supply for Conversion to Food
  7. Solutions: Stored Biomass/Fossil Fuel Conversion to Food
  8. Practical Matters: Energy, Water, Nutrition, Taste, Biodiversity, & Cooperation
  9. Moral Hazard
  10. Serious Prepping: A Guide to Necessary Research
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Supporting Publications[edit | edit source]

Praise for Feeding Everyone No Matter What[edit | edit source]

  • "This book lays out the agenda for a new research field: how to feed the world in the event of a global catastrophe. This could be the most important research we hope never to have to use. Denkenberger and Pearce take a hard-nosed look at where we could turn for food in the event of the collapse of agriculture. Their ideas are innovative and striking, and surely worthy of further development." -- Robert Wiblin | Executive Director | The Centre for Effective Altruism, housed in University of Oxford
  • "It's a fascinating read that gives us some great insight about not only a probably state of agriculture but also how different or similar it is to our current state. " - Christian Arca
  • "When I first read their manuscript, I was immediately struck by how fearless Denkenberger and Pearce are in taking on really big problems. This book is a real tour-de-force, and represents a practical, thoughtful response to seemingly catastrophic events. In addition, some of these solutions can have multiple benefits even in the absence of a global crisis, like reducing malnutrition where food supplies are currently inadequate, and sets out a research agenda that everyone can contribute to, from individuals to governments." ~Jeff Greenblatt
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Eating Insects

Discussion[edit | edit source]

  1. Reddit PostCollapse
  2. Reddit Survival
  3. Reddit Mycology
  4. Survivalist Boards, SB2
  5. The Homesteading Boards
  6. FreeRepublic board
  7. Feeding Everyone No Matter What Future of Life Institue - MIT
  8. GETTING TO UTOPIA Deb Chachra (also posted on her twitter account)
  9. Food news for Thanksgiving 2014 - Crazy Eddie's (blog)

Experiments in Alternative Food Supplies[edit | edit source]

See also[edit | edit source]

Davos IDRC Conference[edit | edit source]

In the News[edit | edit source]

Crises Cafe
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Feeding Everyone No Matter What- Cambridge

International Press[edit | edit source]

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US Nuclear Stockpile Safety

Australia

  1. How We'd Feed Ourselves After The Apocalypse - Gizmodo Australia
  2. Bacterial Slime or What to Feed the World After Catastropic Crop Failure What's New in Food Technology and Manufacturing Magazine Jan/ Feb 2015 Issue pg. 10

Austria

  1. Welche Nahrung uns über einen nuklearen Winter brächte - derStandart.at (Newspaper/webportal)

Canada

  1. Bacterial Slime: It's what's for Dinner #(After a Catastrophic Crop Failure) - Innovation Toronto
  2. The Rome of food security Richmond Review

Chinese

  1. 细菌粘液——世界末日之人类的粮食 "Bacterial slime - end of the world human food" Labbase (China)
  2. [http://news.sciencenet.cn/sbhtmlnews/2016/7/314371.shtm 假如世界末日来临……

——盘点或置人类于死地的四大威胁] - ScienceNet (China)

Dutch

  1. Wat eten we? Bacterieslijm! - "What do we eat? Bacterial Glue!" MSN Nieuws (Dutch)
  2. Wat eten we? Bacterieslijm! - "What do we eat? Bacterial Glue!" FAQT (Dutch)

German

  1. Leben nach der globalen Katastrophe - Wie Bakterienschleim die Menschheit rettet - "As bacterial slime saves humanity" N-TV (German affiliate of CNN)
  2. Es gibt eine Lösung für den Hunger auf der Welt – aber sie ist ziemlich eklig - "There is a solution to hunger in the world - but it's pretty gross" Huffington Post Deutschland
  3. Wissenschaft Leben nach der globalen Katastrophe: Wie Bakterienschleim die Menschheit rettet [Science] life after a global catastrophe: how bacterial slime saves humanity - My Gully

Greek

  1. Τι θα τρώμε μετά από μία παγκόσμια καταστροφή- "What you eat after a global catastrophe" Neakriti.gr
  2. Τι θα τρώμε μετά από μία παγκόσμια καταστροφή - "What you eat after a global catastrophe" KPNTN

Hungarian

  1. Baktériumon fogunk élni !!444!!

Macedonian

  1. Храна за сите во случај на глобална катастрофа - "FOOD FOR ALL IN CASE OF GLOBAL CATASTROPHE"Fakulteti
  2. Feeding Everyone No Matter What Daily Macedonia
  3. Храна за сите во случај на глобална катастрофа Food for all in case of global catastrophe EHAYKA.MK

Portuguese

  1. Que tal um mingau de bactérias para o jantar? - "How about a porridge of bacteria for dinner?" Planeta Sustentável

Russian

  1. Ужин будущего - тарелка бактериальной слизи - "Dinner future - a plate of bacterial slime" News.Open.By (Belarus)
  2. Feeding Everyone No Matter What - Rahva Raamat
  3. Чем питаться после глобальной катастрофы - Mag.org.ua
  4. [Чем питаться после глобальной катастрофы] What to eat after a global catastrophe
  5. - конверсия материи в энергию и обратно путем добра и света "Conversion of matter into energy and vice versa, by goodness and light"

Spanish

  1. Diez alimentos que se podrían comer tras una catástrofe global - "Ten foods you might eat after a global catastrophe" RPP (Peru)
  2. Diez alimentos que se podrían comer tras una catástrofe global - "Ten foods you might eat after a global catastrophe" Entorno Inteligente (Venezuela)
  3. Qué comer después del apocalipsis - Sanandolatierra.org
  4. Investigadores descubren la manera de alimentarnos tras un apocalipsis "Researchers discover how to feed after an apocalypse" Alerta Catastrofes

Slovenian

  1. Feeding Everyone No Matter What: Managing Food Security After Global Catastrophe EMKA.SI Slovenian Book Store

Turkish

  1. Olası gıda krizine karşı ilginç öneriler - "Interesting proposals against a possible food crisis" Firat News
  2. Olası gıda krizine karşı ilginç öneriler - "Interesting proposals against a possible food crisis" Bestanüçe
  3. Olası gıda krizine karşı ilginç öneriler "Interesting proposals against a possible food crisis" - Dogu News

United Kingdom

  1. How We'd Feed Ourselves After the Apocalypse - Gizmodo UK

Media[edit | edit source]

  1. KMO talks to Global Catastrophic Risk Institute researcher, Dr. David Denkenberger - KMO podcast listen
  2. Welcome to the "New Backup Food Solutions For Catastrophes" Replay -- American Preppers Network (Jan. 2015)
  3. Feeding-everyone-no-matter-what HMONG HUB music video online (~4,000 hits)
  4. Feeding Everyone No Matter What Alkeenana News channel
  5. Feeding Everyone No Matter What Frequency
  6. Feeding Everyone No Matter What Blue Marble Space Institute, Institute of Science podcast
  7. The Next Chapter - on PRX
  8. In the post-apocalyptic future, we'll eat rats, mushrooms, and bacteria slime - CBC's Spark - Nora Young interviews Dr. Pearce
  9. [https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/david-denkenberger-allfed-and-feeding-everyone-no-matter-what/ We could feed all 8 billion people through a nuclear winter. Dr David Denkenberger i
FA info icon.svg Angle down icon.svg Page data
Authors Jill Stone, Joshua M. Pearce, Jill
License CC-BY-SA-3.0
Language English (en)
Translations Chinese
Related 1 subpages, 397 pages link here
Impact 5,048 page views
Created October 18, 2014 by Joshua M. Pearce
Modified December 24, 2023 by StandardWikitext bot
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