David Denkenberger et al. 17 {International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, Global Catastrophic Risk Institute. 1-5-2017. “Feeding Everyone if the Sun is Obscured and Industry is Disabled [Shut Down].” https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/science/article/pii/S2212420916305453}//JM
For combined sun blocking and industrial failure scenarios, the reduced output of conventional agriculture would present a threat of causing mass starvation. This study showed that one solutionin the short term is extracting edible calories from killed leaves using distributed mechanical processes. Then a constrained food web could be formed where part of the remainder from this could be fed to chickens, and the rest coupled with leaf litter could have mushrooms grown on it. A secondgroup of solutions is growing mushrooms on dead trees and the residue going to cellulose digesting animals such as cattle and rabbits. Typically, in these catastrophes the sun is not blocked completely, so some agriculture would be possible based off of existing farming in extreme environments (e.g. growing UV and cold tolerant cropsin the tropics). Furthermore, the cooling climate would cool the upper layer of the ocean, causing upwelling of nutrient-rich deep ocean water. This would facilitate algae growth in the ocean, feeding fish; retrofitting of ships to be sail powered could enable significant fishing. The results of this study show these solutions could enable the feeding of everyone given minimal preparation, and this preparation should be a high priority now.
