I'm reading the comments to the food stamp article.

[conuly]

One person rather hopefully mentioned urban gardening, and another said "well, who's going to do it? I can't picture EBT recipients getting their hands dirty."

Fuck* you. When society collapses and we all have to resort to cannibalism, you are going right to the top of the list, buddy.

(Is it wrong that I keep a list just in case society collapses and we all have to resort to cannibalism? I like to be prepared, that's all!)

* autocorrect made this FCC you. LOL!

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Cannibalism, eww, think about all the toxic chemicals humans ingest, and all the retroviruses and stuff - hell, one couldn't even feed superfluous humans to the pigs, because the toxins would concentrate and the viruses would be passed on just the same. Humans are dog food at best. We'll still need dogs after society collapses, and they don't do well on a vegan diet.

Have to wonder how much subsistence gardening the person who made the ignorant remark has ever done.

Autocorrect couldn't spell its way out of a paper sack.

[conuly]

"Have to wonder how much subsistence gardening the person who made the ignorant remark has ever done."

Not to mention, as I often point out when the subject of "poor people should just garden!" comes up, even if you have the time, knowledge, energy, and money to set up a garden, the urban poor often shouldn't because of heavy metal contamination of the soil, including but certainly not limited to lead and mercury.

Cannibalism isn't ideal, but if you gotta do it you can worry about the toxins later. Of course, that list correlates heavily with my "not even if we were the last two people on earth" list, and if I wouldn't fuck 'em to stave off human extinction I probably shouldn't eat 'em for the same reason, but....

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Even if the last two people on earth were healthy, genetically-sound young people who had three male and nine female children, and if each of the nine sisters had four children by each of their three brothers, the third generation would still be only 102 individuals: nine matrilineal Families, in which each child has three full siblings by his father-uncle and eight half-siblings, four by each of his other two uncles. Each child would each have four half-siblings by his father-uncle from each of his eight aunts - 32 altogether.

So, in total, out of 102 individuals, each one has 3 full siblings, 40 half-siblings, and 59 first cousins on both sides. If every woman of the third generation has at least one baby by a cousin in each of the eight other Families, and if every woman of the fourth generation has at least one baby by a not-first-cousin in each of the eight other Families, by the fifth generation the genes would be spread out far enough, and the population would be great enough, that the breeding program would be unnecessary, though it would probably remain the custom to have each child by a different father, preferably all from different Families.

The point I was going to make before I got carried away by the math of it all was just this: even under optimum conditions, two people saving the human race from extinction is a very 'iffy' proposition. That's as small as an evolutionary bottleneck can get: suppose the second generation is all boys? Game over! (If it's all girls, they'll have to do like Noah's daughters: eww.) So unless one was the strapping, fertile young New Eve, ready to crank out a dozen babies with New Adam, why would one even bother trying? Tell you what, if I was the last woman on earth, the last thing I'd want is a baby.

I don't know that cannibalism would be worth the trouble either. Certainly not if one had to kill the people oneself: what's the quality-of-life difference between that, and being a zombie? Oh sure, "cooking" - like that's gonna last; as soon as the fuel runs out, it'll be Brains Tartare on the menu. Better to just not even go there: what, there's no cans of beans left? Not even Lima beans? Time to die.

[conuly]

If there aren't many people left, we can always burn spare books and flags. Fuel won't run out that fast.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

If there's not many people left, then surely hunting canned goods is going to be a whole lot easier and safer than cannibalism. If we're reduced to burning spare books and flags, I'd say we're done for anyhow.

[conuly]

So I'm just supposed to let these people live after the end?

What if it isn't exactly the end, we're all just stranded in a lifeboat or up in the Andes or something, can we all at least agree to eat them first?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

It doesn't follow that they're going to live just because you don't kill and eat them. If you WANT to kill them, fine, go for it - isn't that the whole reason for having an Apocalypse in the first place, so everybody can kill whoever they want without worrying about the tiresome old Rule of Law? Shoot 'em down, cut 'em up, set fiendish traps, whatever. I'm just saying it's a bad idea to eat them yourself. Really, given the choice, I'd rather eat canned dog food and give the long pork to my faithful dogs.

If you're stranded in a lifeboat in this era, you're not going to be stranded in it long enough to starve to death, because technology, right? If the wind and sea are going to kill you, they'll kill you; if they don't, the Coast Guard will find you before you have time to even die of thirst. Things tend to go badly for those who turn cannibal right before the rescuers arrive, like Gorging Jack and Guzzling Jimmy (http://www.poetry-archive.com/t/little_billee.html) - however, you might very well have time to accidentally push certain people out of the boat, and to accidentally hit them in the head with an oar while trying valiantly but unsuccessfully to rescue them.

Up in the Andes? I'm betting technology can find you up there pretty quick these days too, especially if you've got fire (and if you don't, you'll surely freeze before you starve.) Planes have radios and GPS transmitters and automatic distress signals and all kinds of cool stuff, so again, your best course of action would be to accidentally push the unnecessary members of the party over a convenient cliff before the Search and Rescue helicopter shows up.

[conuly]

Feed them to the dogs! Heck, no. I'd sooner eat dog meat myself!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Feed them to the dogs, absolutely. Eating dog meat is always an option if it comes to that, of course, but a good dog, or better still a hunting pack, is more than worth its weight in long pig. If the world deteriorates to the point where people are turning cannibal, I will definitely be wanting me some loyal bodyguards with sharp ears, keen noses and nasty pointy teeth.

After all, I'm probably at the top of more than one 'Little List' myself. }-

[conuly]

Some people don't need much excuse.

I've never been a big fan of dogs, though. Maybe my luck with cats can extend to really big cats...? (Now THAT is wishful thinking! Though, one thing Emergence got right that I don't see in many other dystopias is the existence of megafauna all over North America. As the genius protagonist (and, thus, author) realizes, zookeepers don't get into it for the easy money. In the event of a world-ending killer plague, more than a few of them can be reasonably expected to release the animals rather than let them starve to death caged up. You ever read that book?)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

No, I never even heard of it before - sounds good; I will keep an eye out for it, though unfortunately my book-budget for this year is spent already. (and I'm drowning in books here, ack! must get rid of some.)

There might be some megafauna. For sure, many of the zookeepers would release their dear beasties, but most of the poor critters would not survive long, especially in places with harsh winters. The wolves and bears and some of the big cats might do all right. Cheetahs are said to be the most trainable, but they come from a hot, dry land, and would probably not adapt very well to cold rain and snow. Siberian tigers would be awesome and weatherproof, but it'd take a lot of long pig to keep one fed, and perhaps after all, one wouldn't feel quite comfortable with a tiger who'd acquired a taste for long pig.

[conuly]

That was her reasoning, that the animals that could survive a winter (or summer, for the polar bears and penguins and whatnot) wherever they were (and North America is HUGE, with a lot of climactic variation, not to mention the rest of the world!) or else migrate to where they could survive, would probably do all right. The rest would die in the winter or else survive but never reproduce much, but at any rate, until that happened they were a valid concern and she was lucky to have not encountered any before.

"Cheetahs are said to be the most trainable, but they come from a hot, dry land, and would probably not adapt very well to cold rain and snow."

Well, so do my pet cats, and yet cats are one of the most wildly successful invasive species across the planet.

Though that might fade once humans all die off in a cataclysmic event. Perhaps only those in desert areas would survive very long as a feral, then wild species. They're still very closely related to their next closest relative, aren't they?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

There'd be a few, for a while, here and there, but the vast majority wouldn't make it through their first season. People underestimate how crucial territory is in the lives of wild animals: zoo-bred critters have never had any but their cages, don't even know how to establish any - it'd be like turning a bunch of children out in the wilderness. Actually, depending on the children and the terrain, they might do better than the poor beasties would.

There's a LOT of differences between cheetahs and domestic cats. Cheetahs went through a serious evolutionary bottleneck of their own; they're not genetically adaptable like the domestic cat - which didn't spread around the world on its own anyway, but was deliberately carried around by humans. The domestic cat is extremely prolific, too; left unspayed, a female cat has an average of twelve kittens a year. A female cheetah has an average of 3-5 cubs every two years.

Domestic cats are closely enough related to several wild species to interbreed with them. Supposedly the Maine coon cat is descended from a cross between Norwegian forest cats brought by the Vikings, and the local wildcats. Both Maine coon cats and Norwegian forest cats are well-adapted to snowy climes, having had plenty of time to evolve for them. The cheetahs have had no time, and I don't think they're closely-related enough to any other feline to interbreed with them.

I think the cats would do better if the humans all died off in the cataclysmic event than they would if the humans were still around and hunting. The surviving dogs would be a problem for them either way, of course - maybe less if the humans were hunting the dogs, which they naturally would do: wild dogs are dangerous, but they're also good eating; more meat and easier to hunt than cats. Eventually, a balance of nature would be achieved: I suspect the canids would be the peak predators, but they don't climb, so the cats could manage to stay out of their way.

We've got cougars here, and they can be a problem in some areas - they might be more of one if there were fewer humans, or then again they might get hunted out if there were enough humans left with guns and no gun-laws. Cougars can be tamed, but they can't be domesticated even as much as a cheetah can be, so I don't know if it would be possible to train one to hunt cooperatively or share its kills. Ocelots, servals and margays can be tamed too, but it's my understanding that leopards cannot be - that no matter how carefully they're hand-reared, they'll still leop on a tasty monkey any chance they get. I see no reason why the snow leopard couldn't adapt to the mountains of this continent once it got there, but it'd be a long, highly perilous journey that few or none would survive. As far as I know, the other leopard species are all warm-climate critters.

[conuly]

Something else to remember, though, is that most of the world is lacking a very large group of species in the form of megafauna (blame humans) and also that due to human encroachment there are fewer of most wild species than there would otherwise be.

Given that zoos and humans naturally coexist, and humans don't generally coexist with other large wild animals, is territory finding so important? The zoo animals would be moving into (and dying in, many of them, but lets talk about the survivors) territory that was formerly human-controlled and perforce devoid of most other wildlife.

So there absolutely is a niche to fill that can't all be filled with the remaining native wildlife, and relatively open territory as well.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

It's dogs and humans that naturally co-exist, and there would be a lot of dogs gone feral - plus, dogs, wolves and coyotes all interbreed quite easily, and there are a lot more coyotes around than people think. Even in NYC, so I've heard; certainly there are plenty of them in and around the cities of the West. and plenty more once one gets outside the cities. The cat-hunting bastards have killed two of my own dear kitties, and a whole bunch of my kitty-friends; they're also known to sometimes attack peoples' small dogs while they're being walked in the parks.

We're also living with cougars (http://wdfw.wa.gov/living/cougars.html), which do occasionally kill people, but which are primarily dog-hunters: they like to lurk on porch roofs and drop on the dog as it comes outside. Where I lived when my daughter was small, we had the bear coming through the yard - with her cub, once - to get the fish guts old Herman didn't dump far enough away from the house. An old friend of my housemate's was killed by a mountain goat just a couple years ago, not too far from here.. The barred owls are aggressive to humans, and the Great Horned can be aggressive too; they'll swoop silently out of the dark and strike your head like it was a squirrel. And then there are the damn raccoons: don't even get me started about them. They're not that large maybe, but they're fearless, smart, and extremely aggressive; they'll kill cats and small dogs if they can, and lay utter waste to a hen-house.

The thing about territory: yes, it's not just important, but essential - it's a part of the animal's body-map; all the scents, sounds and feelings of the known turf, and everything else that lives in it, hunter or hunted. Even migratory animals don't migrate at random; they follow a more-or-less known course. Take a beastie out of its territory, and it's lost - it doesn't know where to find food or safety; can't compete with hunters who know the terrain and the habits of the local prey; doesn't know when or how it may be attacked.

There's going to be a lot of competition out there for hunting territory. Once the humans receded, the coyotes and cougars would move in; the big dogs would form feral packs; the zoo-bred predators mostly couldn't compete with them in hunting, nor make it across their hunting-grounds unchallenged. 'Home turf advantage': the animal defending its territory usually wins against an interloper. If it were wild cougar vs. zoo cheetah, I'd bet on the cougar.

I don't know how a zoo snow-leopard would do against one of our mountain goats, either; they are fierce and wicked. I know wild snow leopards eat them, but wild snow leopards had their mamas to teach them how. Cheetahs are plains cats; if they were to make a stand anywhere, it'd be the prairies, where the deer and the antelope play. Unfortunately, all that land already belongs to the wolves.

The tigers might well reign supreme. There are a lot of zoo tigers, and tigers naturally travel a long way to find their mates; the Siberian tiger could range far up into Canada, and give the grizzlies, moose and wolverines something to think about for a change. The Bengal tigers and South American leopards would be a serious menace if they got well-established in the South, especially if monkeys and chimps were regular items on their menus: doubtless all primates taste much the same. ^-^.

[conuly]

As far as house cats goes, Life Without Humans estimated they wouldn't last more than a few decades without any human assistance. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I doubt they'd live very well outside of their semi-native habitat.

They're good hunters, to be sure, but they aren't exactly apex predators.

There's another problem with cheetahs, and that's that other cat species don't like them. Don't lions go out of their way to hunt down cheetah cubs and kill them?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Yeah - poor kitties, everything would hunt them, and the rodents would be a lot fewer once they didn't have human food; plus the coyotes are mouse-hunters as well as cat-hunters.

I don't think the lions would have a snowflake's chance of getting established here; they seem to be really terrain-and-territory specific, dependent on large herds of migratory ungulants. We haven't got any of those; we only have limited buffalo and antelope, and they favor deep-snow country.

I think the dogs and wolves would do for the cheetahs. Cheetahs aren't the best of climbers, and they're only fast in the sprint; they couldn't outrun a pack.

Tigers could tip the balance, though. If tigers got well-established, they'd be hunting the canines, and their preferred terrain might not overlap all that much with the cheetah's preferred terrain. The tigers would probably eat a kitty if it was convenient, but not deliberately hunt cats for food, so if they kept the dogs thinned out, the kittehs might actually have a chance.

They would miss us, though. A lot. 8~{

[conuly]

You're assuming that just because I can only find one other fertile person that this means there are no others on earth. But maybe there *are*, and I just haven't found them yet, in which case they may need the genetic help. Better not to burn that bridge until I'm pretty darn sure the entire earth (or at least the parts of it accessible without my having to cross an ocean) is devoid of people.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"You're assuming that just because I can only find one other fertile person that this means there are no others on earth."

Yes, of course, because that was the basic assumption in your initial statement:

"Of course, that list correlates heavily with my "not even if we were the last two people on earth" list, and if I wouldn't fuck 'em to stave off human extinction I probably shouldn't eat 'em for the same reason"

"Last two people on earth" does seem to imply pretty unequivocally that there are no others. What I'm quibbling about here is the assumption that breeding with Odious Person X to (try to) save the human race from extinction if you and he were the last two people on earth, and eating Odious Person X to save yourself from starvation would be similar actions on any level.

If there are two or more fertile women, and/or two or more potent men, the gene pool expands accordingly. If we're assuming four people, it would be best if two are male; would also be best if there was as much genetic diversity as possible in the group to begin with - an Asian, an African, an Australian and a European-American would be optimum, especially if each was a 'mutt' in terms of their own continent's genetic strains.

Whatever the number of breeding wombs in the group, for at least the first few generations the Prime Directive will be to make as many babies as possible and to diversify the gene pool as much as possible. That means every woman breeds with a different man each time - even if the first generation is four people rather than two, the second generation is still going to have to breed with their siblings. Most women would not be able to bear 12 children, or even 8, with no medical assistance, and it's unlikely that all of the children they do bear would live to grow up to have children themselves.

However odious Odious Person X might be, if the human race was to be saved from extinction, every potential breeder would be needed. Could still kill them after they were done contributing to the Greater Good, of course, but not eat them.

[conuly]

The thing is, if things are that bad, can I be really certain that we are, in fact, the last two (fertile) people on earth?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Nope. You won't even know if the two of you are in fact fertile until you have a baby.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Have to wonder how much subsistence gardening the person who made the ignorant remark has ever done.

Whenever we run a story in which farmers share concerns for the harvest because it's been too hot/cold/wet/dry we get people commenting that farmers are always moaning and that only x months ago they were saying it was too cold/hot/dry/wet and it would be a bad harvest. I have to wonder whether any of those people have ever tried to grow anything. Spring was so late this year that my daffodils were over a month late. Not a huge issue for me, it just meant that we had flowers out at a weird time. But for the growers who supply the cut flower industry, daffs five weeks late meant missing both Mothers' Day and Easter - the two biggest days for them. (We featured one grower who didn't bother to cut his in the end, just left them in the fields as a display for passers by to enjoy. By the time they were fit to harvest there was no market for them.)

[conuly]

*headdesk*

How stupid can some people be?

[eofs.livejournal.com]

You and I both know the answer is "very". The comments you read on articles or blog posts and despair? That's basically the same as I get to do for my job

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Yep. No ripe tomatoes this year, not one.

(A few may ripen off the vine. The rest are becoming various green-tomato products.)