
What to Eat After the Apocalypse - pmcpinto
http://nautil.us/issue/101/in-our-nature/what-to-eat-after-the-apocalypse
======
lultimouomo
> You would never know the difference between say, a sausage patty, a veggie
> sausage patty, and an insect sausage patty. It’s all the same! It’s just the
> spices.

We should really stop with this BS. There are a lot of delicious ways to cook
vegetables; but a veggie patty does NOT taste like a sausage one. I'd bet the
second part of the sentence applies to insect as well. I'm not sure I'm ready
to find out about the first part.

~~~
pawn
I'm amazed at how often I hear "you can't taste the difference" with something
that obviously tastes different. Its like a color blind person saying "you
can't tell the difference between red and green" instead of "I can't tell the
difference". I can taste the difference between and specify about a dozen
types of animals. How in the world does anyone think I won't be able to tell a
veggie patty or insect patty from any of them?

~~~
pmoriarty
There's a difference between _thinking_ you can tell the difference or
convincing others that you can tell the difference, and _actually_ being able
to tell the difference.

Nowhere is this difference more strikingly demonstrated than in the studies
that have been done on wine tasting.[1]

An example from the article:

    
    
      Hodgson isn't alone in questioning the science of
      wine-tasting. French academic Frédéric Brochet tested the effect of
      labels in 2001. He presented the same Bordeaux superior wine to 57
      volunteers a week apart and in two different bottles – one for a
      table wine, the other for a grand cru.
    
      The tasters were fooled.
    
      When tasting a supposedly superior wine, their language was more
      positive – describing it as complex, balanced, long and woody. When
      the same wine was presented as plonk, the critics were more likely
      to use negatives such as weak, light and flat.
    

[1] - [http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-
tas...](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-
science-analysis)

~~~
Ntrails
Excellent, we can see that subtler differences are harder to identify, and
that we can have subjective applications to flavour because humans are biased
to like things in proportion to how they expect to.

But I'd put money that every experienced taster was able to deduce in blind
tasting the bordeaux from the (insert other wine type??). Indeed as I
understand it from watching Frasier there are clubs which do these blind
tastings all the time.

In other words. I may tell you this bordeaux is cheap and acidic, but at no
point was I mistaking it for a bottle of Rose.

~~~
lisper
Actually, there have been studies where they put red food coloring in white
wine and given it to self-styled experts who could not tell that what they
were drinking was not red wine.

~~~
m_mueller
I'm sure you could find just as many studies proving the opposite. The human
nose is not as bad as many people think. I've conducted a little experiments
myself together with four or five roommates. We first sampled four different
red wines, then going at them 'blind' (not knowing the label) again. Me and a
colleague got all four right, the others had two of them mixed up (always the
same as I remember). All of us were completely untrained in wine testing. At
least we could find good evidence that we were better than random agents, even
though to do it conclusively the sample size would have to be larger.

I think when you try to trick somebody into thinking a wine is something
different from what it is, that's very much different from saying we can't
tell apart wines at all.

~~~
lisper
There's no question that people can tell one wine from another. But the point
is that people's perceptions of wine are as much a function of their
expectations as the actual chemistry of the wine. The same thing can be said
about insects or veggie-burgers. Yes, veggie burgers don't taste like real
burgers. But if people claim that veggie burgers taste _worse_ (or better)
than real burgers, that could be as much a function of their expectations as
it is the actual flavor.

------
blisterpeanuts
Why wait until after a world apocalypse? Insects are plentiful and nutritious
and we should be eating more of them now.

There's plenty of evidence that insects are high quality protein with low fat.
In many traditional societies around the world, termites, grubs, grasshoppers,
and other creepy crawly things play an important nutritional role.

Years ago, my wife and I read a beautifully illustrated travelogue "Man Eating
Bugs" written by a husband-and-wife team who traveled the world to see (and
sample) insect cuisine in many cultures. Fascinating stuff.

It's a generally well supported view among paleontologists that primitive
humans ate lots of bugs. We were opportunistic foragers from way back. It's
only in recent centuries, in "civilized" places, that we have regarded bugs as
a repulsive thing to eat.

I would imagine that in and after a nuclear winter, animal and vegetable life
would dwindle to a tiny population that would take hundreds if not thousands
of years to replenish. Probably we should be caching genetic material, sperm,
and seeds of every species in some safe, underground arkology, so that two
hundred years after the meltdown, whoever's left can restore some
biodiversity.

~~~
logfromblammo
I raise Tenebrio molitor in a 5-gal plastic bucket, as pet food. I haven't
tried cooking them, but eating the live larvae or pupae isn't altogether
horrible. With the adults, bits of the exoskeleton, especially the legs and
wing covers, get stuck in your teeth, just like with popcorn.

But they aren't very flavorful, either. I'm not sure what I was expecting,
really. I think if I blended the suckers, the resulting bland protein paste
could be added to practically any recipe, like tofu or ground chicken.

But there is a big problem. The other people in the household have a
contagious, irrational prejudice against not only eating beetles, but also
knowing that I might be eating them, using the same dishes and utensils that
they might be using later. Bugs will only ever be post-catastrophe food for
them, because they literally will not even entertain the notion until they are
actually facing starvation.

That's why wait.

The only likely path for getting more insect protein into the US food supply
is by feeding them to premium organic poultry fowl or egg-layers. So there may
be an opportunity there for industrial-scale insect breeders, but I expect any
attempts to go a more direct route will generate a backlash bigger than "pink
slime".

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
_by feeding them to premium organic poultry fowl or egg-layers_

Which leads me to an anecdote I find interesting. I raise chickens. My older
child can immediately tell the taste difference between an egg from one of our
chickens that have a varied diet and one from the store. And that's without
even seeing them. As soon as you break the eggs open, it's obvious which is
which: ours have deep orange yolks vs the pale yellow store bought ones.

tl;dr: eggs from chickens eating bugs and grass taste far different than from
chickens raised on cheap feed.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
Is it even possible to get true free range eggs anywhere? I know plenty say
cage free, but that could just be opening the cage for an hour or so in a day
just to make the marketing claim.

~~~
logfromblammo
Drive into the country and look for the hand-painted sign that says, "EGGS 4
SALE". Selling traditionally farmed eggs to city people is a relatively common
way for rural people to make a little cash on the side, or for 4H kids to
learn the business. You can think of it like a lemonade stand without the pity
purchases.

You may need to bring your own containers, tolerate an occasionally unreliable
supply, buy only at a few oddly-scheduled times during the week, and pay in
cash. Also, don't tell your foodie friends where you found them.

------
swamp40
Most of the advice in the article is a bit silly; however, the question _is_
vitally important.

Most large cities only have 2-3 days worth of food available. If the daily
deliveries stop for _whatever_ reason, things will go bad fast.

The best three pieces of advice I ever heard: _1) Get out of the cities. 2)
Get out of the cities. 3) Get out of the cities._

~~~
nate_meurer
Yep, just-in-time logistics are highly efficient, at the expense of low
inventories.

The oft-repeated advice to vacate cities is complete bullshit. No matter what
"countryside" means, there's less food there in almost every case. Go to any
small town and what do you find? Smaller grocery stores, with inventories just
as tight as in the cities. Same suburban-style communities of people just as
unprepared as anyone else.

Emergency provision of supplies is made efficient by the same things as normal
delivery logistics: densely clustered populations and major infrastructure,
exactly the things that make cities what they are.

Just look that the slow-motion SHTF scenario of the Great Depression of the
'30s, when the American countryside was drained of its population, never to
recover.

~~~
hga
While I agree with your general point, outside of course grain growing
regions, there were too many things going in the '30s to ascribe the rural
depopulation you note to just this.

Biggest example would be the federal government suppressing food production
and trying to keep prices high, at the same time the same Department of
Agriculture estimated 1/4 of the population was malnourished. As was confirmed
by the WWII draft, and I've read that was one of the inputs into the Truman
school lunch law.

As an extreme example, see _Wickard v. Filburn_ where in 1942 the Supreme
Court ruled the Federal government could prevent you from growing wheat on
your own property for your own consumption.

Get back to the price supports, a big problem was an inability for all
farmers/farms to make a living on what they could produce. Specialization
meant it was _much_ harder to try to provide for yourself everything you
needed, and people responded to these incentives and opportunities in more
urban areas, real ones at least once WWII production got started and the draft
drained the manpower pool.

And of course a large part of this was increased mechanization, which pretty
much never stopped replacing farm labor with machines. My parents are from
farms and the Silent Generation, so they experienced the tail end of this. And
they made very sure to "get off the farm", the work is brutal, a lot more so
back then.

~~~
nate_meurer
Grain-growing regions have grain, not food. Short term survival in oft-
fantasized SHTF scenarios depends on easily accessible calories. A grain
elevator full of maize is not accessible calories. Less so a cow. So while
you're in the country trying to break in to a grain bin so you can chew on
some raw millet, I'll be cowering (and crying) in my suburban basement waiting
for the National Guard to set up a food distribution center close enough for
me to fight my way to it with two mags of 9mm and a sharp stick.

See how absurd these discussions get?

BTW, I have family in a small Kansas town a with couple thousand people, four
dipshit cops, roughly equal amounts of meth and ammo, and one giant grain
elevator. If SHTF I bet you my mano&metate that they show up at my house in
the city within days or weeks.

~~~
hga
" _A grain elevator full of maize is not accessible calories._ "

Only to those who so little imagination they literally can't pound rocks:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metate)

Although as _Nuclear War Survival Skills_ (NWSS) points out, bundling three
metal pipes together works a lot better.

Boil with water and you have edible gruel. Maybe not enough fat to keep
children thriving (NWSS said that about wheat, at least), but that can wait a
bit.

~~~
nate_meurer
If you had bothered to read my previous post, you'd know that I won't have my
mano or metate because I will have lost them both to YOU in a frivolous bet.

I'll look into those bundled pipes. You figure out how to fend off the co-op
members when we try to break into their granary. They don't care much for city
folk down there.

------
Zarkonnen
So this is "what to eat after an apocalypse that is not the one we're actually
facing". I would be far more interested in knowing how we deal with a "soft
apocalypse" of fossil fuel depletion, drinking water scarcity, high ocean
acidity, etc.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
Fossil fuels will not run out anytime soon. Depleting all the deep gas and
coal deposits will take centuries.

~~~
sbierwagen
Yes, that's not the point. We haven't run out of gold, either, but if you
invented an engine that could burn gold it sure wouldn't be too useful for
powering cars. Oil doesn't need to run out to be economically useless for
powering the world economy.

------
jessaustin
This person ought to understand ocean ecology better. If there's not enough
sunlight for agriculture, fishing is unlikely to be more productive than it
already is now with normal sunlight.

~~~
Semiapies
I think they have a general problem with ecology in general. Knock out the
plants, and you can't sit pretty by eating bugs and rats, either.

------
jmnicolas
> _What kinds of disasters do you think about?_

> _Let me take the most likely one: the nuclear winter case._

The nuclear winter is pretty low in my list. Financial meltdown and climate
change are at the top.

~~~
wanda
Yeah I can't take this article seriously. It reads as though written by some
nutrition/health food fanatic who distorts reality to suit their conclusions.
There's just something not quite sane in the writing.

    
    
        The vast bulk of humanity would survive, eventually.
    

I mean this is nitpicky, but what?

~~~
Ntrails
He's decided that nuclear winter involves a very very small nuclear war
hitting a few large cities. Which means the vast majority of humans live.

If US and Russia unload, say, 75% of their arsenals I'm pretty sure that is
inaccurate. Not to mention there seems to be no consideration of the radiation
levels in various foods?

~~~
hga
The earth is very big, and we are very small in comparison.

Even back when the warhead and delivery inventories were _much_ larger (100
times or so if my memory serves), a LLNL _3D_ simulation of "nuclear winter"
resulted in a single nuclear fall (TAPPS, which I read when it came out and
studied, was fraudulent, especially in it's use of a 1 dimensional model of
the atmosphere (i.e. no winds, no oceans, etc.)). Not good, just like all too
many volcanic eruptions in recorded or thereabouts history, but not the end of
the world.

An _overall_ radiation increase would small to immeasurable, the effect
immeasurable. It would suck to be close and downwind of a warhead explosion
unless you're prepared, further away not so good, but even in Cold War
targeted US 10s of millions would have survived without lifting a finger WRT
to radiation.

------
lbenes
So the article inspired me to try some white pine tea for the first time. I'm
sipping it right now, and it tastes quite good. If you live in the north try
it out.

Here's the recipe that I followed: [http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Make-Safe-
Healthy-Pine-Needle...](http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Make-Safe-Healthy-Pine-
Needle-Tea)

~~~
rglover
Good lord:

 _Ponderosa Pine; also known as Blackjack, Western Yellow, Yellow, and Bull
Pine. This pine contains isocupressic acid, which is known to cause abortions
in cattle._

~~~
lbenes
Nope, definitely was White Pine, 5 needles on each sprig and black bark.
Ponderosa Pine doesn't grow natively in the North-East. Oddly, people do make
tea out of Yellow Pine too! Give you an idea, this stuff is pretty good. Going
help myself to a second glass once I'm sure I don't have any weird reactions.

[1] [http://rockymountainbushcraft.blogspot.com/2012/11/rocky-
mou...](http://rockymountainbushcraft.blogspot.com/2012/11/rocky-mountain-
tree-identification_19.html)

------
hga
Let me elevate a comment in a subtread to the top level: nuclear winter is
bunk, real effects would be on the scale of historical volcanic eruptions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8768412](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8768412)

BUT, if you want a disaster of that scale, _nature will be happy to provide!_
Just have a big meteorite hit an ocean; hitting a big and deep body of water
is critical, because otherwise "too much" of the heat radiates back into
space. That's a big reason the vast majority of fielded nuclear weapons never
got very big, there effects doesn't scale well.

There's some good science fiction that covers this and how to respond, email
me at my contact address if you want a recommendation that is necessarily a
spoiler.

------
cowardlydragon
The degree of cooperation the article assumes is untenable on a global scale.
Perhaps more isolated countries could coordinate, or maybe after the initial
chaos some coordination could develop...

He ignores that the most plentiful source of food will be other people after a
month or so...

~~~
vorg
Yes, based on the litmus test of the recent lack of global cooperation in
managing climate change, we can expect developed countries to look after their
own citizens only, using their militaries to steal all available food from
less developed countries. Immigration-based countries such as the U.S. will be
better positioned to convince their citizen base that they owe nothing to
other countries peoples by presenting their own population as "representative
of the world's ethnic balance", and even as "the subset of the world that God
wants to save". Expect to hear "the United States is the Ark of Noah for this
day and age" broadcast on U.S. televisions as drone robots march through the
Brahmaputra harvesting rice for loading onto ships destined for the U.S. as
the local population starve. The leaders of developing nations with nukes such
as Russia and India will be given U.S. citizenship en mass, Roman Empire
style, in return for control over those weapons. English-language testing will
be canceled for Chinese students wanting to study in the U.S., who'll be
distributed around colleges in cities all over the U.S. to discourage their
parents launching Chinese nukes at them.

------
wahsd
> "...an invasive water mold ... reached Ireland, where, '... four out of ten
> Irish ate no solid food except potatoes, and … the rest were heavily
> dependent on them.'

Imagine if something were to arise that took out the corn crop .
[http://ensia.com/voices/its-time-to-rethink-americas-corn-
sy...](http://ensia.com/voices/its-time-to-rethink-americas-corn-system/)

~~~
qwerta
> Imagine if something were to arise that took out the corn crop

There would still be plenty of food to go around. Problem was that British did
not allowed people to eat corn.

~~~
Wildgoose
Rubbish. There was famine across the whole of Europe. The government imported
millet to feed people and militant Irish Nationalists called it "Peel's
Brimstone" (it's yellow, remember) and claimed that those eating it would put
their immortal souls in danger.

Yes, they could have done more. But that doesn't mean they actively plotted to
starve people as modern Irish Nationalists like to claim.

------
crabhapple
> The Great Famine, as it came to be known, could have been avoided in any
> number of ways, not least by ceasing the export of food from Ireland to
> Britain. But the British government failed to take effective action.

"...the British government failed to take effective action"

That's one way of putting it!

------
Adam503
Braiiiiins, of course. Jeez.

------
carsonreinke
Nice to see Michigan Tech!

------
escape_goat
I am going to try to divert your minds away towards some questions that you
might not be interested in, but nonetheless could be more productive than the
game of hole-poking that this essay invites.

I think many readers will have arrived at a similar set of conclusions, based
on whatever assertions or citations may have inspired doubt; for me, it was
Pearce's surprise that the world was unable to feed everyone despite having
full agricultural production. Perhaps I have greatly misunderstood the matter,
but I had believed that problems of famine and chronic hunger were entirely
due localized logistic and political problems, and that the world was in fact
handily capable of feeding everyone, even with the current (very inefficient)
distribution and scale of agricultural production.

This suggests to me that either I am very wrong --- something that does happen
--- or that Pearce and Denkenburger might not have done a lot of what one
could term 'peripheral' research on the topic they were interested in. This is
a situation where two engineers are attempting to problem solve in a domain
that might require, at any given turn, significant expertise in chemical or
biological processes; or manufacturing processes, for that matter, or
logistics, or economics, or international commerce.

Consequently, this comes across as what one might term a 'Dunning-Krueger
Study': facile, misinformed "solutions" to misunderstood problems in which the
progenitor has an erroneous confidence. Given my own lack of knowledge, it
would be hypocritical to label it thusly; the deposition of their suggestions
should be placed in the hands of the various relevant domains.

My question is regarding this type of research in general. I imagine the
defence of it would be that it (at least) initiates investigation and problem
solving, and that it (at least) arrives at useful suggestions, preliminary
analyses, and approximate solutions. Does the Dunning-Kruger phase of
knowledge have a discernible utility or application? Is there in fact a use or
place for such investigations? Are they a form of deceptive mimesis, imitating
research in pursuit of resources? Does ignorance of the domain of knowledge
ever have a value? If so, how does one identify that one is in a Dunning-
Krueger situation, and how should one proceed from there? Can one have
knowledge about the meta-domain of Dunning-Krueger situations that allows one
to limit or avoid the negative consequences of misjudgement?

It strikes me that perhaps situations analogous to the one in which a
hypothetical Peirce and Denkenburger are required to figure out how to feed
the entire world after an apocalyptic event are not in fact rare, but actually
occur all the time, and that it is a routine problem in design and engineering
that one needs to find solutions in a problem domain that one understands
poorly or not at all. I have no expertise to support this notion; there is a
question mark hanging on the end of the assertion. But one could regard this
as occurring in the course of ordinary life as well. How does one
systematically make the best possible decisions on the basis of incomplete and
possibly erroneous information, given that computation is itself a cost? In
that context, a Dunning-Krueger epistemology starts to look like a reasonable
strategy.

~~~
maxerickson
You are over-interpreting the Dunning-Krueger paper.

I also think "mimesis" is the wrong word. They aren't imitating research, they
are applying their real actual research and analytical skills in pursuit of
resources.

~~~
escape_goat
> You are over-interpreting the Dunning-Krueger paper.

Almost certainly true, as I've never read the actual paper; I've encountered
the concept and phenomena in the wild. I take your word for it. If you have a
better term for what I am describing, I will be happy to learn it.

Their research seems to lack introspection and fundamental rigor. Did you get
a different impression than that, from the essay? My contention (if mimesis
was my thesis) is that it is research insofar as it carries out the _activity_
of research, but that it carries out that activity without being truly
informed by the _material_ of the research; process disassociated from
content. However, it was a question, not an assertion; I've no opinion.

~~~
maxerickson
Interdisciplinary research is a thing. Though I guess it doesn't start from
the presumption that incompetence will be helpful.

------
subbz
Some dark force made me read "Where to Eat After the Apocalypse".

~~~
staz
Still better than "Who to Eat After the Apocalypse"

------
crpatino
Slimy yet satisfying.

~~~
yabs
hornworms, you mean?

~~~
crpatino
I don't think the article mentions specific species of insects, but...

I have tasted maguey worm and crickets, and they are both quite good. So,
unless it is poisonous, I think hornworm would do, too.

------
aikah
Apocalypse means "revelation".

I hate when people use that word like it means "the end of society as we know
it",or like it's "madmax time" or something.

Apocalypse is of religious nature.It has nothing to do with a "global
catastrophe.".

Aren't scientists supposed to be smarter than the rest of us?How can they
continue to spread that non-sense?

PS:I'm not religious.But the word Apocalypse has a specific meaning.

~~~
pmoriarty
While we're on the subject of pet-peeves, I hate it when people speak of an
"existential threat". That has absolutely nothing to do with
Existentialism.[1] What people probably mean when they use that term is "a
threat to ___'s existence". "existence" != "existential".

I also hate it when people say "hackers" when the proper term for what they
mean is "crackers".[2]

And I hate it when people say "Linux" when they should properly say
"GNU/Linux".

But I rarely complain about these pet-peeves of mine, since I recognize that
language is a living, changing, growing thing, out of the control of any one
person or small group of people, though the French language police[3] and
dictionary publishers may disagree.

[1] -
[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/)

[2] -
[http://catb.org/jargon/html/C/cracker.html](http://catb.org/jargon/html/C/cracker.html)

[3] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_of_Culture_%28France%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_of_Culture_%28France%29)

~~~
Jongseong
The word "existential" (attested since the late 17th century) was used as an
adjective relating to existence long before the birth of Existentialism. In
the phrase "existential threat", there is no cause of confusion (unless there
is cause to speak of threats relating to Existentialism). So I don't have a
problem with this usage.

