TEOTWAWKI - Food

I do not like typing "global food crisis" into Google news and getting 6,059 hits. (When did this become a recognized metric?) For those of you unawares, the UN has been raising a stink as riots over food are breaking out in select places worldwide. I heard someone describe it Tuesday as a perfect storm:

harvests down (Mr. Gore, care to comment?)
fuel corn is not food corn
forests are being increasing destroyed to make up for the land taken by biofuels
the earth is overpopulated
American war spending is reduction in American everything else spending
American economy otherwise on the brink - housing/credit, wall st v main st, inflation, poor get poorer
fuel prices drive production and shipping costs

Am I more afraid than a perfectly informed person ought to be? Perhaps. Are we going to fix enough things this time around that only a couple million will truly suffer? Probably. Do I need to live my own personal life and not worry my little head over global and unstoppable events that started before I was born? Absolutely. Or, at least until it really is TEOTWAWKI.

A global food crisis. Holy fucking shit.
One teensy, tiny reason I had stayed here in Ohio past my return flight to Minneapolis was a question in the back of my head. Is it now? I'd rather be home on the farm when it hits, than 600 miles away in an urban center. I don't think it is. Not yet. Not here in richpoor middle America. But my mind is creeping closer to the more paranoid worldview held by simonzayne.

Resource

TEOTWAWKI

The end of the world as we know it, as it's written on apocalypse forums. Blatantly stolen from this article. Looks a bit like Wotokahan.

A favorite bar discussion of mine is TEOTWAWKI. It's best to include at least two people you have just met or barely know. Fresh water and guns. Gardeners and college hippies. Survival training and suicide. Future projections. There's a large amount of ground to cover. Drinking adds wide-eyed accusations and a good lack of critical reasoning. Fun times had all around.

At work my super is the only one willing (able) to discuss literature with me. For a reason I promptly forgot, she brought me one of her favorite books to read, Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. Never mind the paper thin characters and the plot consisting of the most unbelievable tripe, Mr. Frank sucks at imagining a post-apocalypse America. Just utter and complete failure.

After the bomb, city dwellers wouldn't just sit in their cities.
Hanging one highway-man in a small town would not deter all further lawlessness.
You do not forget the artesian well.
You do not forget the food you prepared the day before the bomb (in case of just such an emergency) for six months.
...

Trashy pulpy nonsense. Which would be fine, but this book consistently gets rave reviews for "getting it right" and "thinking it through." I think Cormac McCarthy's The Road, by getting it actually right has ruined me for all previous and woefully failing attempts to create a realistic Post story. I remember finishing the Road in awe of his lack of writing a passage that I could find at all dubious. This is akin to when I finished No Country For Old Men last summer and dreamed of the amazing movie that could be made from it. Thank you for not sucking, Coen brothers.