As the kind of person who likes reading dry academic papers for fun, I occasionally find something that brings a huge smile to my face. In this case, it was the work of the Alliance To Feed The Earth in Disasters (ALLFED). Especially their proposed megaprojects of building a ridiculous number of greenhouses, seaweed farms, “coal butter” plants, and so on. A way to ensure that eight billion people can still eat well after a major catastrophe (nuclear war, Yellowstone-esque eruption, etc…) that massively disrupts conventional agriculture.

It honestly reads like something you’d expect from a popular science magazine in 1958. And that is not meant to be an insult in the slightest. Having lived through the COVID pandemic, having seen both a genuine societal disruption and a massive ramp-up of special production, I can say that while one is right to be skeptical about the smoothness of such an endeavor… something like it is still possible in broad strokes.