site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   2487 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 15, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Stockpile lots of food! Just because there’s theoretically a lot of available land doesn’t mean there’s not going to be mass starvation in the event of a nuclear conflict, for multiple reasons.

  1. Local and international logistical breakdown. International commerce is going to grind to a halt for several years. Maybe even several decades. Maybe even forever. Domestic supply chains will too. Even a limited nuclear conflict will likely involve targeting major rail and logistics terminals. Just because there’s food somewhere in the country doesn’t mean there’s going to be any wherever you are.
  2. There’s likely going to be massive food shortages after a nuclear war for several years, several decades even. The American Midwest and the Russo-Ukrainian steppe feed over two billion people on the planet. Those are going to be fallow for a long, long time. And although there’s a hundred pedants on the Motte that will fight me about this, no one really knows what large scale nuclear a war will do in the long term to the environment. Food is probably going to be tight everywhere for a while. Which leads me to...
  3. Forced requisitioning. What happens when what’s left of NATO starts demanding food subsidies from Australia for continued protection from China? What happens when Chinese troops roll up on the shore and announce that Australia’s food supplies are all being socialized to feed the three hundred million remaining Chinese people? You are after all the only non-irradiated food source on this side of the planet. What happens if your own government starts rationing and sends out commissars to take all the food that isn’t nailed down?

Additionally, you must acquire a leather jacket, a souped-up fast car and a sawed-off shotgun. If the rest of us Mottizens are dead, you have a moral duty to live out all our Mad Max LARP fantasies for us.

What happens if your own government starts rationing and sends out commissars to take all the food that isn’t nailed down?

Then the stockpile is irrelevant because it would be taken by those commissars.

It's tricky to come up with a situation where both I actually need the food and I get to keep it, particularly since I'm regional, not rural (a cult compound in the middle of nowhere can definitely use the food, but I don't live in one).

It's tricky to come up with a situation where both I actually need the food and I get to keep it

Not really. There are plenty of potential scenarios where the rationing doesn't provide enough food but you also don't have such a humongous stockpile that the goverment would bother (or even know to) to go to great lengths to confiscate amounts that can't feed an entire large military unit or something like that.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats