Sorry for my voice recognition software error-I now have fixed it. It turns out that if you want to store enough food to feed 7 billion people for five years, it would cost tens of trillions of dollars. What I am proposing is spending tens of millions of dollars for targeted research and development and planning. The idea is that we would not have to spend a lot of money on emergency use only machinery. I use the example of the United States before World War II-it hardly produced any airplanes. But once it entered World War II, it retrofitted the car manufacturing plants to produce airplanes very quickly. I am targeting food sources that could be ramped up very quickly with not very much preparation (in months, see graph here. The easiest killed leaves (for human food) to collect would be agricultural residues with existing farm equipment. For leaves shed naturally (leaf litter), we could release cows into forests. I also analyze logistics in the book, and it would be technically feasible. Note that these catastrophes would only destroy regional infrastructure. However, the big assumption is that there would still be international cooperation. Without these alternative food sources, most people would die, so it would likely be in the best interest of many countries to initiate conflicts. However, if countries knew that they could actually benefit by cooperating and trading and ideally feed everyone, cooperation is more likely (though of course not guaranteed). So you could think of this as a peace project.
Sorry for my voice recognition software error-I now have fixed it. It turns out that if you want to store enough food to feed 7 billion people for five years, it would cost tens of trillions of dollars. What I am proposing is spending tens of millions of dollars for targeted research and development and planning. The idea is that we would not have to spend a lot of money on emergency use only machinery. I use the example of the United States before World War II-it hardly produced any airplanes. But once it entered World War II, it retrofitted the car manufacturing plants to produce airplanes very quickly. I am targeting food sources that could be ramped up very quickly with not very much preparation (in months, see graph here. The easiest killed leaves (for human food) to collect would be agricultural residues with existing farm equipment. For leaves shed naturally (leaf litter), we could release cows into forests. I also analyze logistics in the book, and it would be technically feasible. Note that these catastrophes would only destroy regional infrastructure. However, the big assumption is that there would still be international cooperation. Without these alternative food sources, most people would die, so it would likely be in the best interest of many countries to initiate conflicts. However, if countries knew that they could actually benefit by cooperating and trading and ideally feed everyone, cooperation is more likely (though of course not guaranteed). So you could think of this as a peace project.