Giving Compass' Take:

• Dr. David Denkenberger believes we can feed the world through a nuclear winter - or similar disaster - if we are properly prepared. 

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of preparing for a devastating, but uncertain, disaster? Can this preparation fill existing nutrition needs?

• Learn more about disaster preparedness. 

If a nuclear winter or asteroid impact blocked the sun for years, our inability to grow food would result in billions dying of starvation, right? According to Dr. David Denkenberger, co-author of Feeding Everyone No Matter What: no. If he’s to be believed, nobody need starve at all.

Even without the sun, David sees the Earth as a bountiful food source. Mushrooms farmed on decaying wood. Bacteria fed with natural gas. Fish and mussels supported by sudden upwelling of ocean nutrients – and many more.

Dr. Denkenberger is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and he’s out to spread the word that while a nuclear winter might be horrible, experts have been mistaken to assume that mass starvation is an inevitability. In fact, he says, the only thing that would prevent us from feeding the world is insufficient preparation.

Not content to just write a book pointing this out, David has gone on to found a growing non-profit – the Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters – to brace the world to feed everyone come what may. He expects that today 10% of people would find enough food to survive a massive disaster. In principle, if we did everything right, nobody need go hungry. But being more realistic about how much we’re likely to invest, David hopes a plan to inform people ahead of time would save 30%, and a decent research and development scheme 80%.

According to David’s published cost-benefit analyses, work on this problem may be able to save lives, in expectation, for under $100 each, making it an incredible investment.

These preparations could also help make humanity more resilient to global catastrophic risks, by forestalling an ‘everyone for themselves’ mentality, which then causes trade and civilization to unravel.

But some worry that David’s cost-effectiveness estimates are exaggerations, so I challenge him on the practicality of his approach, and how much his non-profit’s work would actually matter in a post-apocalyptic world.

Read the full article about feeding the world through a nuclear winter by Robert Wiblin and Keiran Harris at 80000 Hours.