Public reserves and food continuity
Almost all the good resilience literature lives here, and it is not domestic: strategic reserves in highland areas, a hardened grid, scalable resilient foods and national risk assessments. It is decided by voting and pressing, not by shopping.
- Level
- Civic
- Cost
- High cost
- Effort
- Ongoing
- Evidence
- Projected
What it does not solve
It is not a household measure and cannot be turned into one. The models behind it assume intact international trade and standing industrial infrastructure; when trade breaks, the calorie coverage of an animal-traction scenario falls from 80% to 30%. That also buries the vegetable patch as personal calorie insurance: the bottleneck is trade and national allocation, not the area you cultivate.
It works if you understand what scale we are talking about. Almost all the good resilience literature lives here, and it is not about houses: it is about states. The nutrition model for an abrupt reduction in sunlight concludes that requirements can be met “given preparation”, but that preparation means scaling up low-cost greenhouses, producing single-cell protein in a coordinated way and growing algae at scale, assuming international trade stays intact [851]Nutrition in Abrupt Sunlight Reduction Scenarios: Envisioning Feasible Balanced Diets on Resilient FoodsView source ↗. The paper on agricultural fragility explicitly lists cyberattacks on the electricity grid among the triggers, with yield falls of 15% to 37% in the first year [743]The Fragile State of Industrial Agriculture: Estimating Crop Yield Reductions in a Global Catastrophic Infrastructure Loss ScenarioView source ↗verified through Crossref.
It does not work if you turn it into a household measure. The draught animal study is the best antidote to that temptation: even producing enough wheat for 80% of global caloric demand, the demand of the working animals themselves and the collapse of trade leave coverage at 30% [748]Potential for Cropland Cultivation and Expansion Using Animal Draught Power in an Abrupt-Sunlight-Reduction Scenario with Loss of IndustryView source ↗. The bottleneck is trade and allocation, not the area under cultivation, and that buries the urban vegetable garden as personal caloric insurance.
Evidence. Projected, with published and peer-reviewed models. The recommendations that follow are public policy ones: reserves in high-altitude areas, a hardened grid, parliamentary commissioners for extreme risk, backup communications [580]No Place to Hide? Regional Resilience and Vulnerability to Global Catastrophic RiskView source ↗verified through Crossref.
Cost. High and state-level. For you, the cost is one of participation.
What it does NOT solve. Nothing specific to AI. It is the right lever for the cyber branch, and honesty requires saying that it was written for other risks.
Works if…
- Catastrophe through misuse · Partial
The paper modelling the loss of agricultural industry lists cyberattacks among the triggers of a power supply failure: that is where the preparation transfers.
- AI as normal technology · Partial
- The intelligence curse · Partial
The state's capacity to sustain those left out is exactly what this scenario projects will be defunded.
Does not work if…
- Rapid loss of control · Does not work
- Power grab by a small group · Does not work
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Sources
- [851] Nutrition in Abrupt Sunlight Reduction Scenarios: Envisioning Feasible Balanced Diets on Resilient Foods · ALLFED 2022
- [743] The Fragile State of Industrial Agriculture: Estimating Crop Yield Reductions in a Global Catastrophic Infrastructure Loss Scenario · ALLFED 2024 verified through Crossref
- [748] Potential for Cropland Cultivation and Expansion Using Animal Draught Power in an Abrupt-Sunlight-Reduction Scenario with Loss of Industry · ALLFED 2026
- [580] No Place to Hide? Regional Resilience and Vulnerability to Global Catastrophic Risk · Jehn, Florian Ulrich 2026 verified through Crossref