Re: Antarctic Cities

J.J. O'Shea wrote:
On Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:17:14 -0400, John Schilling wrote
Besieged cities, perhaps, but nobody really expects a lone city to
grow its own food. And if an entire nation is effectively besieged,
it's probably fucked for reasons that go way beyond its agricultural
policies.

Japan, 1945. The fire-raids and the nuclear raids were spectacular, and allowed for a
face-saving out, but what killed the Empire of Japan was the submarine
blockade which cut off outside supplies of, well, _everything_. Including
food.

Hong Kong and Singapore, 1942. In both cases, they were city-states on small
islands near to the mainland of Asia, packed full of people and which could
not grow food... indeed, they didn't even have sufficient water. In both
cases, the Japanese army achieved victory by the simple method of capturing
the main water reservoirs, and then turning off the tap.

In both of these cases the entire nation was effectively besieged.
That's the situation John was talking about where a nation is fucked for
reasons that go beyond its agricultural policies. I doubt either of
those situations would have turned out much differently if every citizen
had his own personal cornucopia providing endless free food since you
need more than just a full stomach to hold off modern military forces.

One good thing about buying your food abroad rather than growing it at
home is that if the country you're currently buying it from suffers crop
failure you can just reallocate the money you would have spent there to
buy food elsewhere, whereas if you're growing it yourself and suffer
crop failure you have to come up with the funds from scratch.
.

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