[DesuMaiden]

There is currently 7.2 billion people on this planet. We add an addition 200,000 people onto this planet everyday. We add additional 70 to 80 million people onto this planet every year. Eventually something has got to give in. There is simply too many people on this planet. The planet cannot support over 7 billion people in the long-term.

I think there will be a huge purge of population sometime in the near future. That's because we are running out of every essential natural resource ranging from oil, wood, fresh water, fish, coal, rare earth minerals, natural gas, and etc. I believe several billion people will die in the span of a few decades between 2020 to 2050. When the oil supply in the world is too low compared to demand, the world population will receive a major dent. The world population will rapidly decrease as there is no longer enough oil to meet its demands.

So what do you say? Do you think Thomas Malthus was right the whole time about there being a point where there are too many humans to feed? Resulting in a massive starvation and death of countless people because there isn't enough food to feed everyone. I believe the earth will reach a point where there is too many people and not enough food, and then billions of people will starve to death.

Many people laugh at Thomas Malthus. Many people think Thomas Malthus was crazy in suggesting that there will be a point where there is more people than we can feed, and many people will starve to death. It has happened before in Ireland during the 1840s potatoe famine. It will happen again on the global scale when world oil production falls significantly below world oil demand. When there isn't enough oil, the food system would fail. Modern agriculture is highly dependent on fossil fuels. When fossil fuels become too scarce, food production will become too low to feed the population.

I think a Malthusian disaster is going to happen sometime in the near future. I just hope I can survive it. Anyone got any tips on how to survival a Malthusian catastrophe?

[JohnnyOnTheFarm]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DesuMaiden', '
')I think a Malthusian disaster is going to happen sometime in the near future. I just hope I can survive it. Anyone got any tips on how to survival a Malthusian catastrophe?

[vtsnowedin]

T.R. Malthus was off by about two hundred years in his predictions being blindsided by the invention of the steam engine and all the progress that it led to. But I do agree that he is about to be proven ultimately correct absent a workable fusion reactor.
How to survive it?
Be a team member of the biggest strongest team that controls the most resources and has the means to protect them.
In short be a US citizen.

[DesuMaiden]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', 'T').R. Malthus was off by about two hundred years in his predictions being blindsided by the invention of the steam engine and all the progress that it led to. But I do agree that he is about to be proven ultimately correct absent a workable fusion reactor.
How to survive it?
Be a team member of the biggest strongest team that controls the most resources and has the means to protect them.
In short be a US citizen.

[vtsnowedin]

Did I not just say that?

[Newfie]

Occur, yes. Exactly when and how? That's tougher. A slow downward trend is assured, but it may not come for quite sometime. Humanity seems a long way from accepting population as a problem.

It is possible, perhaps likely, that some regions will see more dramatic population decreases. But predicting the where and when eludes me.

[dashster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnnyOnTheFarm', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DesuMaiden', '
')I think a Malthusian disaster is going to happen sometime in the near future. I just hope I can survive it. Anyone got any tips on how to survival a Malthusian catastrophe?

[vtsnowedin]

Population crashes due to overshoot are not gradual events and they are not uniform or absolute. The deer herd example is often used where population grows quite fast in good years but then one hard winter comes along when the food supply has become insufficient and four fifths of the herd dies before spring. The remainder has the reprieve of the summer and much less competition in the next few winters until the population recovers. Also the food producing plants get a reprieve from over grazing and restore the food supply in the spring and summer after the die off.
A human die off would be even more messy and random with wars, disease, and famine all playing parts simultaneously.
A large number of guns is not necessary as you can only shoot one at a time. A couple with ample ammunition for them is sufficient.

[KingM]

I would say absolutely correct. In fact, even in a country like Japan, with a crashing birth rate, it's only a matter of time. The people who don't want many kids are getting weeded out of the gene pool. Give the human biology a few generations to adjust to the easy availability of birth control and all you'll have left are the Amish and the Lubbavitchers.

As a thought experiment, eliminate every other person on earth, and leave only the Amish, their population doubling every 20 years. There are currently 250,000 of them. In 200 years, the population of the U.S. is back to its current level. That would be like imagining only 1/4 million Amish in the U.S. at the time of the War of 1812, and now having a quarter billion of them. 100 years after that, the Earth is back to its current population, only 100% Amish.

Obviously, that's not going to happen, but it shows how even a single group, even a tiny one like the Quiverfull movement with a few thousand of them, will quickly expand to fill all available space. The only possible solutions, long term, are either a population limited by the environment (in the case of humans, disease and starvation), or enforced government control over procreation, deciding who can reproduce and when. I'm not keen on the government option, but I'm less thrilled about the alternative.

[Pops]

I think it will be close. There is no food shortage now and not likely to be soon - some put the calories produced at twice that required for every person alive. The problem is the increase in yields is slowing, maybe faster than the slowing rate in population increase.

The bigger problem is distribution. As usual, globalization has changed everything and made more of us rich meat eaters. And nothing sucks up calories like a hog at the trough than a hog at the trough. As the rich world expands and consumes their rightful double helping, the rest will be growing poorer and skinnier. I think that is a bigger issue that the price of fuel either at the gate or to the market - at least in the near future.


BTW,
Malthus had the thinking religious man's problem, he knew smaller family size was a requirement to keep the population contained but he was saddled with the belief that any type of birth control was a "sin." His solution was to encourage people to marry later but continue to have children with abandon thereafter - except of course for the lower classes like the Irish peasants.

Sounds like that version of politics hasn't really moved forward much in the intervening period, LOL

The irony is Maltus' whole treatise was about how God used overpopulation and famine as a way of keeping Man from getting too lazy and that Darwin was influenced by that idea of competition (to whatever extent) in his formulation of the theory of natural selection and ... Evolution!

http://www.economist.com/node/18200702

[Whitefang]

Standing at the edge of extinction,
not much of a brain needed to conclude we are in the middle of a succesfull suicide by consumption, together with most of organic life on Earth.
Sure Thomas M. were right.
Took some time though........giant Eart and us petty little humans making machines.

See what happens with food/water and martial law, people with guns who control resources.
Short term collapse worldwide, happening rightabout now, no reason to think we will have yet another harvest to feed everyone in the midst of an abrupt change of climate.
Not even our corrupt management wants this, they are not ready prepping I guess.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/ ... 95820.html

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')n Friday, dozens of people appeared at a local ravine overgrown with shrubs, all desperate to get any water they could from an obscure water pipe, the only source in their neighbourhood.
Things are so bad I had to get dirty sewage water just to re-use to flush my toilets.
Rosa da Silva, Itu resident
With empty buckets and plastic soda bottles in hand, they waited patiently in line, some for more than an hour.
This is where Rosa da Silva waited to get water, now a precious commodity in many neighbourhoods in this working class town of 154,000 people outside Sao Paulo.
Da Silva, who lives with her three children and two adult relatives, has been without water in her home for 12 days.
"I have to get water here to cook and clean because we haven't had one drop of water in our house (in the past 12 days)," she said.
Another Itu resident, 84-year-old Antonio Barbosa, shuffled up to the line holding a plastic bottle.
"It’s been 10 days without water in my house, so I come here to get a little so I can take a shower and cool down so I can sleep," he said.
Nobody is quite sure where the water from the pipe comes from or if it is clean. Some people say they have become sick from it, others say they have not.
What most here do agree on is that it is humiliating to have to do this and it’s out of necessity not desire.

[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KingM', '-')snip-
The only possible solutions, long term, are either a population limited by the environment (in the case of humans, disease and starvation), or enforced government control over procreation, deciding who can reproduce and when. I'm not keen on the government option, but I'm less thrilled about the alternative.

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Whitefang', '
')About survival, be prepared to leave town to find more trees and less people.
Guns and ammo are heavy to carry, might be usefull tools at the start of collapse, no gradual decent into chaos when it comes to food. A rifle for hunting small game, light ammo but useless after that last round. Same for small handgun.
To become a special force in the army is fine for prepping and training but you do not want to be on the terror side when SHTF for real and at your home.

Having no army at hand to defend my house or even that bug out 5th wheel loaded with everything needed to come through the first winter into the wild.
One would have to be very picky where to relocate, fresh water is absolutely essential. Northwest comes to mind......
Long term survival and while out in the wild, why not seek the spirit instead of things we do involving more and more complex machines, nothingness which is death.
You would have to learn to take only what is needed, live of the land, forage, fish, trap and hunt.
Make fire, shelter, natural medicine and so on.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'b')ut the planet itself is doomed, there is no fixing the damage.

[KaiserJeep]

We can doom our own species on the planet, at least. We have already done so. I was speaking of that thin film of life that itself makes this a desirable place to live. We are destroying that life at a rate unprecedented in all of Natural History. The astronomical body itself will perhaps change color slightly but will look not much different from that range.

To me, mankind is the only part of the Ecosystem that matters. I care not if any of the other species continue to exist. In my human-centric view, they are only there to serve humanity, as food or companionship or transportation.

[KingM]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KingM', '-')snip-
The only possible solutions, long term, are either a population limited by the environment (in the case of humans, disease and starvation), or enforced government control over procreation, deciding who can reproduce and when. I'm not keen on the government option, but I'm less thrilled about the alternative.

[Newfie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dashster', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnnyOnTheFarm', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DesuMaiden', '
')I think a Malthusian disaster is going to happen sometime in the near future. I just hope I can survive it. Anyone got any tips on how to survival a Malthusian catastrophe?

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'W')e can doom our own species on the planet, at least. We have already done so. I was speaking of that thin film of life that itself makes this a desirable place to live. We are destroying that life at a rate unprecedented in all of Natural History.

[KaiserJeep]

I have no cognitive dissonance, all my views are consistent. I have no problem with TEOTWAKI, but I refuse to believe that civilization or technology will end. Tech is the only thing that enables 7.2 Billion humans to live and proper on one small planet. The population overshoot began killing the planet around 1800 AD, and over two centuries later, the Earth is perishing so fast that it can easily be seen in a single human lifetime. The true hubris around PO.com is the incredible and entirely mistaken idea that we can stop or reverse the damage to the planet. Forget that, you in truth cannot even convince a majority that their presence and lifestyles are the reason the planet is dying, much less get them to change their ways.

Tech will enable us to escape the fate of the Earth. The planet was only the creche, the true home of humanity is in Space - interplanetary space for the next few centuries, and interstellar space after that.

It matters not and I care not whether you agree with my analysis or not. It's going to happen anyway. After the die-off on Earth, the place will be squalid, ugly, and unhealthy, - occupied by cannibals that differ in no important way from orcs or zombies - save that they are born to and aspire to be more effective human predators. We will gaze down upon it and shudder that our ancestors occupied such an ugly and hostile environment. We will devise ever more capable robots so that no human ever need set foot on a planet again.

[KingM]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', ' ')Forget that, you in truth cannot even convince a majority that their presence and lifestyles are the reason the planet is dying, much less get them to change their ways.