Nuclear winter is a severe and prolonged global climatic cooling effect that is hypothesized to occur after widespread firestorms following a large-scale nuclear war. The hypothesis is based on the fact that such fires can inject soot into the stratosphere, where it can block some direct sunlight from reaching the surface of the Earth. It is speculated that the resulting cooling would lead to widespread crop failure and famine. When developing computer models of nuclear-winter scenarios, researchers use the conventional bombing of Hamburg, and the Hiroshima firestorm in World War II as example cases where soot might have been injected into the stratosphere, alongside modern observations of natural, large-area wildfire-firestorms.
A supervolcano is a volcano that has had an eruption with a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 8, the largest recorded value on the index. This means the volume of deposits for such an eruption is greater than 1,000 cubic kilometers.
Survivalism is a social movement of individuals or groups who proactively prepare for emergencies, such as natural disasters, as well as other disasters causing disruption to social order caused by political or economic crises. Preparations may anticipate short-term scenarios or long-term, on scales ranging from personal adversity, to local disruption of services, to international or global catastrophe. There is no bright line dividing general emergency preparedness from prepping in the form of survivalism, but a qualitative distinction is often recognized whereby preppers/survivalists prepare especially extensively because they have higher estimations of the risk of catastrophes happening. Nonetheless, prepping can be as limited as preparing for a personal emergency, or it can be as extensive as a personal identity or collective identity with a devoted lifestyle.
Food security is the availability of food in a country and the ability of individuals within that country (geography) to access, afford, and source adequate foodstuffs. According to the United Nations Committee on World Food Security, food security is defined as meaning that all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life. The availability of food irrespective of class, gender or region is another element of food security. There is evidence of food security being a concern many thousands of years ago, with central authorities in ancient China and ancient Egypt being known to release food from storage in times of famine. At the 1974 World Food Conference, the term "food security" was defined with an emphasis on supply; food security is defined as the "availability at all times of adequate, nourishing, diverse, balanced and moderate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices". Later definitions added demand and access issues to the definition. The first World Food Summit, held in 1996, stated that food security "exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."
Human extinction is the hypothetical end of the human species due to either natural causes such as population decline from sub-replacement fertility, an asteroid impact, large-scale volcanism, or via anthropogenic destruction (self-extinction).
Leaf protein concentrate (LPC) refers to the proteinaceous mass extracted from leaves. It can be a lucrative source of low-cost and sustainable protein for food as well as feed applications. Although the proteinaceous extracts from leaves have been described as early as 1773 by Rouelle, large scale extraction and production of LPC was pioneered post the World War II. In fact, many innovations and advances made with regards to LPC production occurred in parallel to the Green Revolution. In some respects, these two technologies were complimentary in that the Green Revolution sought to increase agrarian productivity through increased crop yields via fertiliser use, mechanisation and genetically modified crops, while LPC offered the means to better utilise available agrarian resources through efficient protein extraction.
The Last Days on Earth is a 20/20 science special which aired on ABC in August 2006 and has been aired on The History Channel.
Single-cell proteins (SCP) or microbial proteins refer to edible unicellular microorganisms. The biomass or protein extract from pure or mixed cultures of algae, yeasts, fungi or bacteria may be used as an ingredient or a substitute for protein-rich foods, and is suitable for human consumption or as animal feeds. Industrial agriculture is marked by a high water footprint, high land use, biodiversity destruction, general environmental degradation and contributes to climate change by emission of a third of all greenhouse gases; production of SCP does not necessarily exhibit any of these serious drawbacks. As of today, SCP is commonly grown on agricultural waste products, and as such inherits the ecological footprint and water footprint of industrial agriculture. However, SCP may also be produced entirely independent of agricultural waste products through autotrophic growth. Thanks to the high diversity of microbial metabolism, autotrophic SCP provides several different modes of growth, versatile options of nutrients recycling, and a substantially increased efficiency compared to crops. A 2021 publication showed that photovoltaic-driven microbial protein production could use 10 times less land for an equivalent amount of protein compared to soybean cultivation.
A nuclear holocaust, also known as a nuclear apocalypse,nuclear Armageddon, or atomic holocaust, is a theoretical scenario where the mass detonation of nuclear weapons causes globally widespread destruction and radioactive fallout. Such a scenario envisages large parts of the Earth becoming uninhabitable due to the effects of nuclear warfare, potentially causing the collapse of civilization and, in the worst case, extinction of humanity and/or termination of all biological life on Earth.
The term food system describes the interconnected systems and processes that influence nutrition, food, health, community development, and agriculture. A food system includes all processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population: growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, distribution, and disposal of food and food-related items. It also includes the inputs needed and outputs generated at each of these steps. Food systems fall within agri-food systems, which encompass the entire range of actors and their interlinked value-adding activities in the primary production of food and non-food agricultural products, as well as in food storage, aggregation, post-harvest handling, transportation, processing, distribution, marketing, disposal, and consumption. A food system operates within and is influenced by social, political, economic, technological and environmental contexts. It also requires human resources that provide labor, research and education. Food systems are either conventional or alternative according to their model of food lifespan from origin to plate. Food systems are dependent on a multitude of ecosystem services. For example, natural pest regulations, microorganisms providing nitrogen-fixation, and pollinators.
A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical future event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, even endangering or destroying modern civilization. An event that could cause human extinction or permanently and drastically curtail humanity's existence or potential is known as an "existential risk."
Stranded assets are "assets that have suffered from unanticipated or premature write-downs, devaluations or conversion to liabilities". Stranded assets can be caused by a variety of factors and are a phenomenon inherent in the 'creative destruction' of economic growth, transformation and innovation; as such they pose risks to individuals and firms and may have systemic implications. Climate change is expected to cause a significant increase in stranded assets for carbon-intensive industries and investors, with a potential ripple effect throughout the world economy.
Alan Robock is an American climatologist. He is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University, New Jersey. He advocates nuclear disarmament and, in 2010 and 2011, met with Fidel Castro during lecture trips to Cuba to discuss the dangers of nuclear weapons. Alan Robock was a 2007 IPCC author, a member of the organisation when it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change".
Joshua M. Pearce is an academic engineer at Western University and Michigan Tech known for his work on protocrystallinity, photovoltaic technology, open-source-appropriate technology, and open-source hardware including RepRap 3D printers.
The effects of climate change on agriculture can result in lower crop yields and nutritional quality due to drought, heat waves and flooding as well as increases in pests and plant diseases. Climate change impacts are making it harder for agricultural activities to meet human needs. The effects are unevenly distributed across the world and are caused by changes in temperature, precipitation and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels due to global climate change. In 2019, millions were already suffering from food insecurity due to climate change. Further, the predicted decline in global crop production is 2% – 6% with each decade. In 2019 it was predicted that food prices would rise by 80% by 2050. This will likely lead to increased food insecurity, disproportionally affecting poorer communities. A 2021 study estimated that the severity of heatwave and drought impacts on crop production tripled over the last 50 years in Europe – from losses of 2.2% during 1964–1990 to losses of 7.3% in 1991–2015.
Nuclear famine is a hypothesized famine considered a potential threat following global or regional nuclear exchange. It is thought that even subtle cooling effects resulting from a regional nuclear exchange could have a substantial impact on agriculture production, triggering a food crisis amongst the world's survivors.
A climate apocalypse generally denotes a predicted scenario involving the global collapse of human civilization and potential human extinction as either a direct or indirect result of anthropogenic climate change. Academics and researchers posit that in actuality, unless a major course correction is imminently implemented, some or all of the Earth will be rendered uninhabitable as a result of extreme temperatures, severe weather events, an inability to grow crops, and an altered composition of the Earth's atmosphere.
End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World is a 2019 non-fiction book by journalist Bryan Walsh. The book discusses various risks of human extinction, including asteroids, volcanoes, nuclear war, global warming, pathogens, biotech, AI, and extraterrestrial intelligence. The book includes interviews with astronomers, anthropologists, biologists, climatologists, geologists, and other scholars. The book advocates strongly for greater action.
Scenarios in which a global catastrophic risk creates harm have been widely discussed. Some sources of catastrophic risk are anthropogenic, such as global warming, environmental degradation, and nuclear war. Others are non-anthropogenic or natural, such as meteor impacts or supervolcanoes. The impact of these scenarios can vary widely, depending on the cause and the severity of the event, ranging from temporary economic disruption to human extinction. Many societal collapses have already happened throughout human history.
Appropedia is a wiki-based website that contains content relating to poverty, environmental degradation and international development.
