American war planners have considered the food question. Here is Cresson H. Kearny writing in 1987:
Recovery from a massive nuclear attack would depend largely on sufficient food reserves being available to enable survivors to concentrate on restoring the essentials of mechanized farming. Enough housing would remain intact or could be built to provide adequate shelter for the first few crucial years; enough clothing and fabrics would be available. But if survivors were forced by hunger to expend their energies attempting primitive subsistence farming, many deaths from starvation would occur and the prospects for national recovery would be greatly reduced.
Americans’ greatest survival asset at the end of 1985 was about 17 billion bushels (about 850 billion pounds) of wheat, corn, grain sorghums, and soybeans in storage, mostly on farms. If 200 million Americans were to survive a limited nuclear attack and if only half of this stored food reserve could be delivered to the needy, each survivor would have adequate food for over 3 years, by Chinese nutritional standards.
The reason so much grain and soybeans was being stored in 1985 is because Americans in 1985 ate a lot of meat, and cows, pigs and chickens eat a lot of feed. Since Americans still eat a lot of meat, I expect there is a similar amount of grain and soybeans being stored today though I would prefer to verify that somehow.
Another quote from Kearny’s book (end of chapter 2):
Some maintain that after an atomic attack
America would degenerate into anarchy—an every-man-for-himself struggle for existence. They forget
the history of great human catastrophes and the self-sacrificing strengths most human beings are capable
of displaying. After a massive nuclear attack
starvation would afflict some areas, but America’s
grain-producing regions still would have an abundance of uncontaminated food. History indicates
that Americans in the food-rich areas would help the
starving. Like the heroic Russians who drove food
trucks to starving Leningrad through bursting Nazi
bombs and shells; many Americans would risk
radiation and other dangers to bring truckloads of
grain and other necessities to their starving countrymen. Surely, an essential part of psychological
preparations for surviving a modern war is a well-founded assurance that many citizens of a strong
society will struggle to help each other and will work
together with little regard for danger and loss.
Note that Kearny has war experience (working for the forerunner of the American CIA in China in 1944) in a country at war (with the Japanese and also with each other in the Chinese civil war that ended in 1949 with the victory of the Chinese Communist Party) in which millions of citizens were starving.
American war planners have considered the food question. Here is Cresson H. Kearny writing in 1987:
The reason so much grain and soybeans was being stored in 1985 is because Americans in 1985 ate a lot of meat, and cows, pigs and chickens eat a lot of feed. Since Americans still eat a lot of meat, I expect there is a similar amount of grain and soybeans being stored today though I would prefer to verify that somehow.
Another quote from Kearny’s book (end of chapter 2):
Note that Kearny has war experience (working for the forerunner of the American CIA in China in 1944) in a country at war (with the Japanese and also with each other in the Chinese civil war that ended in 1949 with the victory of the Chinese Communist Party) in which millions of citizens were starving.